Jackpot Baby Read online

  Things were going to change, she’d realized in alarm about an hour ago.

  Twelve people whose businesses had been hanging by a thread had just won enough money, even after taxes, to support themselves through old age if they were careful and invested wisely.

  She made a note to herself to find out what in the heck a Roth IRA was. Everyone was saying it was the thing to do with their money.

  That was already a small suggestion of change. People who never thought beyond paying the rent or the mortgage were now throwing around financial terms she’d never heard before.

  So her financial woes were over, but she couldn’t help wonder just what had begun tonight. Life in Jester had been difficult, but predictable. Hot in the summer, cold in the winter, friends were family and family was everything.

  The Merchants’ Association of Pine Run, the county seat, had always laughed at Jester because nine businesses comprised the entire economic base of the town. Still, they’d managed to do their part in community and charitable events. Imagine, she thought, what they would be able to do now.

  But would money affect the cohesive quality of their group? Would they build bigger houses and bow out of business life downtown, preferring lives of leisure? Or would some leave Jester altogether, finally able to chase their dreams?

  She’d accepted that her life was here, but she’d come to depend upon these people to give it its warmth and texture. They were what stood between her and loneliness. She didn’t think of herself as a business or career woman; she thought of herself as a nurturer. She provided food that kept her friends going, she listened to their problems, told them hers, exchanged advice and affection.

  She needed them!

  “Okay, calm down,” she told herself. “You tend to grasp and cling when you’re frightened. Relax. Forty million dollars is a good thing.”

  Maybe it would bring her a man, she speculated, that little frisson of excitement tickling between her breasts again. She wouldn’t want a man who was attracted to her money, of course, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if her winnings made her more attractive?

  What would it be like to have an unlimited wardrobe allowance? To have her hair done every week rather than every other month when she had it cut? To buy quality makeup instead of whatever was on sale at Cozy’s Drugstore, and a fragrance that was advertised in Vogue?

  Her excitement flared until she realized this was just another indication of the changes Jester was in for. Practical, hardworking Shelly Dupree was thinking about makeup…and men!

  Chapter One

  Shelly stood on the corner of Main Street, waiting for the light midafternoon traffic to pass, and stared at the check in her hand. One million, one hundred thousand dollars! The group had chosen the option of getting their money all at once rather than the annuitized $84,000 a year, and that had dropped the full figure by half. Still a fortune, as far as she was concerned.

  She knew it was unsophisticated to revel in her good fortune, probably even reckless to hold the check in her hand for all the world to see, but she couldn’t help it. She studied the neat, stick-straight ones printed on the check, then counted the zeroes. Five. Five zeroes! Seven figures! She was a millionaire!

  “Hey, Shelly! You buying us lunch today?” Chet Brower waved from ten feet above her in the bucket of the city works department truck. He and his brother Chuck, who stood below in a hard hat, were changing the street signs in downtown Jester—a change insisted upon by Mayor Bobby Larson. Few of the merchants were in agreement—the old names went back to Jester history—but the whole town was terminal with lottery fever and the influx of new life it had brought to Jester, even before any of the Main Street Millionaires had deposited their checks.

  Main Street was still Main Street, but the names of three major cross streets were being changed today. Her corner was now Big Draw Drive, a block east was Megabucks Boulevard and Lottery Lane was a block west. She’d expected things to change, but she hadn’t been prepared for just how much.

  News vans stood on every corner and seemed to spew an enormous number of people into downtown. They represented Billings, Helena, Missoula, even television stations from neighboring states. Reporters were scattered all over town, interviewing shop owners and people on the street, determined to make what they were calling the Main Street Millionaires national news.

  Gawkers had arrived from Pine Run, from Baker, Billings, and even Helena. Everyone wanted a glimpse of the Lucky Dozen, another name their group had acquired.

  Chuck came to Shelly and swept off his hard hat. The Brower twins were tall and big, the backbone of the city works department. They looked like linebackers, but thanks to their minister mother, they had hearts of gold.

  “Marry me, Shelly,” Chuck said, getting down on one knee on the sidewalk. “Then, buy me a Harley.”

  Shelly laughed and swatted his shoulder. Half a block away, a photographer drew a bead on them.

  “Oh, let’s see,” she said, pretending to give it some thought. “That would make me the Bride of Chuckie, wouldn’t it? Thanks, but I don’t think so.”

  “No!” Still on his knee, he caught her hands. “Think of me as Charles! Prince Charles! You’d be a princess if you married me.”

  Shelly patted his thinning brown hair. “Then you’d have two princesses, Chuck. Because you’re already married. You have three little redheaded children who look just like their mother. They’d be definite cogs in the works of a permanent relationship.”

  He held his hat to his chest and said with sober sincerity, “I could put up with it if you’ll buy me a Harley.”

  “How about a burger?” Chet called from the bucket. “And you don’t have to marry me.”

  Shelly looked up to see that Chet had taken down the old Peterson Drive sign with the bullet hole in it and put up the shiny new Big Draw Drive—white lettering on a forest-green background.

  “Free lunch for all my regulars tomorrow,” she said, a little stab of trepidation settling in her chest beside the tremors of excitement. “See you both?”

  Chuck got to his feet. “You’re a woman of style, Shelly,” he said, sweeping his hat with a flourish as he bowed.

  “Yeah, yeah,” she teased, starting across the street. “See you tomorrow.” She blew Chet a kiss over her shoulder.

  Harvey Brinkman’s photographer shot her walking across the street while Harvey stood by, dressed as always in jeans and a flack jacket—a foreign correspondent wanna-be stuck at the Pine Run Plain Talker, circulation just over 6,000, because he had a reputation for erroneous reporting. And at just twenty-five, with a slight build, a pale complexion and curly blond hair, he talked like a gangster from the forties.

  “Hi, doll!” he said as Shelly stepped onto the sidewalk. “Want to share with your fans what you’re doing with the dough?”

  “Nothing exciting,” she replied politely. “Just taking it to the bank.” What she really wanted to do was push him into the old trough in front of the Heartbreaker to clear his head and remind him that he was in Jester, Montana, not Afghanistan, and that this was the twenty-first century.

  But the trough that once held water was now a planter, and if he hadn’t figured out what time he was living in, there was little she could do to help him.

  “There’s got to be something you can tell us, Shelly,” he pleaded, hurrying along with her as she passed the barbershop and headed for Jester Savings and Loan. “You selling the coffee shop and going to Europe? Staying home, but spending all your moola on new duds?” His cursory glance at her blue corduroy slacks and the wool-lined red parka that covered a blue turtleneck suggested that she really ought to consider that. “Nobody ever gets to see what you look like under that big apron you always wear.”

  She kept walking, determined to suggest at the next city council meeting that they put water back in the old trough.

  Cameras flashed and microphones were pushed in front of her face as she walked through the savings and loan’s leaded-glass double doo
rs.

  “Shelly! Are you finally going to live your dreams?”

  “Can you tell us what they are?”

  “What does the man in your life think of all this money!”

  “Does it make up for not having children?”

  She imagined her mother looking down on her and saying, “Patience, Shelly. Courtesy at all times. When you run a restaurant, your business is hospitality.”

  This wasn’t her restaurant, but she’d been so conditioned to that creed that she tried to be kind to everyone and seldom lost her temper. Though this invasion of Jester was threatening to undermine her good humor. Still, she reminded herself, all these reporters, photographers and gawkers were eating regularly at The Brimming Cup.

  She knew them by name now. When they were eating with her, they were friendly and fun and never asked questions, though they did make her feel as though she was being watched all the time. And when they were doing their jobs, they were unrelenting.

  She answered their questions in order and smiled at each of them in turn. “I love Jester, but I might travel a little, the only man in my life is Sean Connery, and I doubt that anything would ever make up for not having children.”

  “Sean Connery!” Gloria Russo from the Helena Herald gasped. She was short and plump and around Harvey’s age.

  Harvey leaned toward her as Shelly walked past them toward a teller. “Relax,” he said. “It’s a cat.”

  “Oh.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” Sidney Brown, manager of the bank, was tall, slender and gray-haired in a three-piece gray suit. He pushed the reporters back as they tried to follow Shelly. “How many times do I have to remind you that the business transacted in a bank is private? Please! You’ve been harassing my depositors all day. I’d call the sheriff on you if he wasn’t already busy!”

  Only slightly chastened, the reporters moved back to a refreshment table set up across the room with cookies and punch.

  Shelly spent the next hour talking to Sidney about various savings plans, and opening a savings account until she could finally decide just what to do with her million. Her million! She loved thinking that word.

  She deposited everything except four months’ mortgage payments so that she could be one month ahead, a bonus for Dan Bertram, her cook, and several thousand dollars to “play with.” The very thought gave her goose bumps. Money to play with. After the hardworking, frugal life her parents led, the words sounded like sacrilege.

  When Shelly left the bank, the mayor and his assistant and self-appointed shadow, Paula Pratt, were on the sidewalk, being interviewed by the press. Bobby was wearing the earnest face he used in public.

  He was in his late forties, a big, broad-shouldered man with light brown hair graying at the temples. He might have had a look of sophistication, except that he seemed always to be trying to project that and the effort seemed to negate the impression. Many of the townspeople considered him an opportunistic good old boy, but Shelly thought he was more complicated than that.

  Randolph Larson, Bobby’s father, had also been mayor twenty years earlier. He’d been a wildcatter with a nose for oil. Though the family had been wealthy, he’d been a humble man with a sense of family and civic duty. And he’d given Bobby everything he wanted.

  Now Bobby, who’d played away his years at college and married a beautiful young girl who’d become a sour, childless, middle-aged woman always longing for Seattle society, was trying to fit into his father’s shoes. But he was prideful rather than humble, and it was obvious to everyone, certainly even to him, that the shoes were just too big.

  Consequently, hungry for the love and respect his father enjoyed, he took every opportunity for publicity, and fooled around on his wife, Regina.

  Shelly suspected that, at the moment, he was doing it with Paula Pratt.

  Paula was blond and shapely with a bra size higher than her IQ. She wore sheer blouses and lycra skirts and followed Bobby everywhere, calling him “Robert.” She carried a clipboard with her, and everyone speculated at Jester Merchants’ Association meetings about what was on it. Some thought it was the cartoon section from the morning’s Plain Talker. Other less trustful souls were sure she was taking down information to use against them later.

  “…town’s always been a wonderful place to live,” Bobby was saying to Marina Andrews from the television station in Great Falls. “And someday all the excitement will die down and it’ll just be us again, but until then—” he smiled with boyish charm for the camera “—please come to Jester and spend your money.” He laughed at his own clever patter.

  As Shelly tried to sneak by them unnoticed, Bobby reached an arm out for her and drew her in front of the camera. “And when you come, be sure to have pie at The Brimming Cup coffee shop owned by Shelly Dupree, here, one of our Main Street Millionaires. It’s an experience you won’t forget.”

  “Okay.” Marina made a throat-cutting gesture to her photographer. “Got it. Thanks, Mr. Mayor.”

  As Bobby and Paula moved on in search of another camera, Marina rolled her eyes at Shelly. “Someone who won’t stop talking on camera is almost as bad and someone who answers your questions with yes and no.” She offered Shelly her hand. “I’m Marina Andrews with…”

  Shelly nodded. “I recognized you. Isn’t there something more important going on somewhere else in the world?”

  Marina shrugged. “Well, there probably is, but this is the most interesting thing happening in Montana at the moment. I don’t suppose you’d like to round out my interview by telling me what you think of Jester and how you think it’ll be affected by twelve millionaires?”

  “I think Jester’s a wonderful place to live,” Shelly replied, backing away. “And I think once all of you leave, it’ll just be the same old Jester, and we’ll be the same old people.”

  Marina looked her in the eye. “Now, you don’t really believe that. You look different already.”

  Surprised, Shelly stopped where she stood. “But…we haven’t met.”

  Marina nodded. “Yes, we have. I was here when that windstorm two years ago ripped the roof off your place and the movie theater and we could see right inside from our helicopter.”

  Shelly frowned. “I don’t remember talking to you.” Though she remembered that her photo had appeared in the paper. A friend in Great Falls had sent it to her.

  “Well, you didn’t. I got the story from the barber. You were busy trying to get tarps pulled over everything to protect it until the roofer could come from Billings. It was a tough time for you, I know. And you didn’t look defeated, but you looked resigned, as if your life would never be any different and you knew it.” Marina shrugged her shoulders and smiled. “But, you don’t look that way today. You look…eager. Like maybe you could handle some things changing.”

  “Some things,” she agreed. “Just not everything.”

  “The right things.”

  “Yes.”

  Marina laughed with a journalist’s cynicism. “When you figure out a way to guarantee that, let me know.”

  Marina’s photographer pointed out Dean Kenning, closing up the barbershop, and they both hurried to waylay him.

  Shelly went back to The Brimming Cup. She pushed her way inside and caught a whiff of the beef barley soup she’d made after the lunch rush was over and left on to simmer. It smelled wonderful. She’d read somewhere that many people associated the days of the week with a color—Monday was red, tough and trying. Tuesday was yellow, quieter but still a challenge. And so on.

  But to her the days of the week were an aroma. Monday, garden vegetable; Tuesday, chicken noodle; Wednesday, beef barley; Thursday, ham and split pea; Friday, clam chowder.

  She’d wiped off tables before she left, and apparently they hadn’t been disturbed since. The chrome and blue vinyl of the tables and chairs in the middle of the room sparkled in the glaring winter sunlight. The blue vinyl booths up against the large plate-glass window with its blue-and-white-check valance were a slightly richer
shade than the blue of the chairs. She’d been able to move the tables and chairs out of harm’s way during the storm, but had had to replace the upholstery on the booths after tree branches and other debris ripped holes in the vinyl when the roof blew off.

  She’d changed so few things in the shop since her parents had died that she sometimes walked in expecting to hear her father in the kitchen or her mother behind the counter, filling napkin holders or setting up. She looked around now, sensing something different, some disturbance of the familiar space.

  She could hear Dan on the other side of the shelves that separated the counter from the kitchen. He’d put a Garth Brooks song on the jukebox as he always did when the place emptied and she walked toward the counter, humming.

  That was when she caught sight of the baby carrier on the corner of the counter. It had been behind her line of vision when she walked in the door.

  Something else for the lost-and-found closet, she thought, wondering how someone could have walked out without their carrier and not noticed.

  “Dan!” she shouted, as she walked toward it. “Who left the baby carrier?”

  There was a moment’s silence, then his gruff voice came from the kitchen. “What carrier?” He came through the break in the shelving between the pie case and the coffee setup. He was tall and rough looking with a beaky nose and an attitude to match. He wore a paper hat, an apron over his kitchen whites and a scowl. He was a grump, but, like the Brower brothers, he was pure gold wrapped in a deceptive package. His wife had died ten years before, he’d raised a boy and a girl by himself, and now that they were in college in Texas, he worked as many hours as Shelly did. “There hasn’t been a soul in here since you left.”

  “Maybe someone came in,” she speculated, “took the baby out of the carrier, and when no one appeared to wait on them…”

  Dan had turned toward the counter and interrupted her with a gasping, “Oh, God!”

  “What?” she demanded, hurrying toward the carrier. She suspected what his widened eyes and horrified expression might mean but couldn’t believe it.