Jackpot Baby

“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 doors.

“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.

“Maybe someone came in,” he said, stopping in front of the carrier and staring, “and maybe they left when I didn’t come out, but…but…”

“But, what?” Shelly leaned an elbow on the counter and looked into the front of the carrier. A fat-cheeked baby with bright blue eyes smiled gummily at her.

“But they didn’t take the baby out,” Dan said unnecessarily.

Chapter Two

“Oh, Dan!” Shelly exclaimed in a whisper. “Forgetting your baby carrier seems strange enough, but forgetting your baby?”

At her expression of indignation, the baby’s smile crumpled and he began to cry. Both little arms went up in agitation and Dan reached for a piece of paper tied to the blue-and-white crocheted blanket with a diaper pin.

“Oh, no. No, baby. Don’t cry.” Shelly took a tiny hand in hers and shook it playfully as Dan opened the note. “It’s okay. Don’t get upset. I’m sure your mom will be right back.”

Dan shifted his weight as he read. “Well, you’re wrong about that,” he said with a sigh. “Somebody left you this baby.”

“What?”

The baby shrieked at her loud exclamation and Shelly pulled him out of the carrier, blanket and all, and held him to her chest where he screamed in her ear.

“‘Please take care of Max,’” Dan read loudly over the baby’s screams. “‘I know you can give him all the love and money any little boy could need. Tell him I love him and I’m sorry.’”

“Sorry?” Shelly said in agitation. “Sorry? She leaves a helpless little baby in an empty coffee shop and she’s sorry? You poor baby!” She held the screeching baby tightly to her and paced back and forth behind the counter, Dan staring at her in concern.

“Call the sheriff,” he said. “He’ll get a caseworker from Pine Run to come get him.”

Shelly paced and shushed and talked nonsense, something she was surprised she knew how to do. Working with her parents in the coffee shop had left little time for the baby-sitting experience most other girls had acquired. But she found herself pressing her cheek to the baby’s hot cheek and patting his back. She noted that the scent of roses clung to him.

“He’s so small,” she said as the sobs quieted somewhat.

Dan nodded. “Most babies are.”

“How old do you think he is?”

He shrugged. “It’s been so long since mine were that size. I’d say maybe six, seven months.”

Even in her concern, Shelly was aware that there was something comfortable, comforting about the weight of the baby in her arms, about the little heart beating against her own.

She looked down into the unhappy little face, feeling a connection being made. Bright blue eyes looked back at her, a big tear perched on a bottom lid, stuck there. Max looked her over gravely then took a fistful of her hair. He studied it, then opened his mouth like a little bird and tried to bring the hair to it.

“Ouch. Ow.” Shelly offered him her index finger instead. “Here, take this. It’s used to being scraped and burned and otherwise abused.”

Max took it, put sharp little gums to it, then leaned sideways against her with a little piglet sound of contentment.

An urgent, protective feeling raged through her, taking every nurturing inclination she’d ever had and squaring it to make her feel—oh, God—maternal.

For a moment she felt as though a pair of giant hands had shaken her, disturbed her whole being and her world, then set her down again. Absently she saw through the window that snow had begun to fall.

Great, she thought. Shelly Rose Dupree, millionairess, caught in a snow globe.

No! she thought fiercely. No, no, no! This was probably just some passing sensation every girl or woman experienced when she held a baby. But this baby wasn’t hers. Someone had left it to her, but she was sure she’d change her mind in a heartbeat and be right back—probably before they even closed the coffee shop.

And she was not a candidate for motherhood. She loved children, sure, but she worked six long days a week, and she finally had some money to go places and do things. She couldn’t take care of a baby.

Dan was right. She had to go see Luke McNeil, the sheriff.

There. The maternal feeling left as quickly as it had come. The past two weeks had been such an emotional roller coaster. She was just stressed. Not to mention shocked by having a baby left on the counter of her coffee shop.

“Okay.” She tried to put Max back in the carrier, but he began to scream again, so she held him in her arms instead. “I’m going to see Luke. I hope he’s in his office, and not out on a call. Can you close up for me? Put the soup in the fridge? I’ll come in early and prep in the morning.”

“Sure.” Dan helped her into her coat, then took the gray sweater she kept in the back and wrapped it also around the baby. “Are you going to be okay? You need me to come?”

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “You take care of things here. Oh.” She pointed to the purse she’d left on the table in the first booth when she came in. “Take that envelope sticking out with your name on it, and put the purse on my shoulder.”

He did as she asked, then studied the envelope as he walked her to the door. “What’s this?”

“Open it when you get home,” she directed, then walked out into the snow, wrapping her coat around the baby. The sheriff’s office was kitty-corner from The Brimming Cup.

As she waited to cross the street, Shelly became aware that Luke was not out on a call, but he did seem to be having some kind of problem. She could see his tall, strong, uniformed body in the middle of a throng of people holding placards. They were marching around him and shouting.

No News Is Good News! she noticed one of the signs read as the sudden disappearance of traffic allowed her to cross diagonally. Other signs read, Clear Out Of Jester! Go Bother Somebody Else! Money Talks. It Says, Get Out Of Jester! Dean Kenning was carrying that one, but he was smiling. She had a feeling he’d joined the crowd out of amusement rather than any serious disapproval of the presence of the news media.

Shelly pushed her way through the crowd to approach Luke. He was tall and dark and had Native American ancestors. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” she asked.

“If you’re going to complain about the press,” he said with a long-suffering sigh, “it’s been taken care of. And then some.”

“I wasn’t,” she assured him.

He looked surprised. “But you hate them.”

“Yes, but I also realize we’re news and that pretty soon we won’t be and they’ll all go away. Luke, can we talk?”

“Sure.” He caught her arm and, opening his office door, pushed her gently inside. Then he turned to the protestors and said firmly, “You keep your voices down and stay out of the street.”

Several nodded and everyone kept marching.

Luke closed the door behind him. He had a small, cluttered office, but in the past six years that he’d occupied it, he’d solved Jester’s problem of nighttime vandalism, and two years ago he had caught a pair of prisoners who’d escaped from Folsom and were considered armed and dangerous. He had a toughness appropriate to his position, but he was a very nice man. At the moment, however, he was understandably preoccupied with the marchers and she needed him to focus on finding a solution to this baby.

He stopped in the middle of the office and turned to her. “What is it?”

She shifted her weight impatiently. “Luke!” She pointed to Max. “Have you completely failed to notice that I have a baby in my arms?”

He frowned at that, apparently unsure of her point. “I noticed. Whose is it?”

“I don’t know!” she snapped at him. “Someone left him in the coffee shop. Can you check if someone’s reported a baby missing?”

“No babies missing. What do you mean someone left it? How do you leave a baby?”

“They just did. I went to the bank to deposit my check and when I came back…” She handed him the note. “I can’t have a baby. You have to call whoever in Pine Run takes care of abandoned children.”

Max squirmed and fussed and she moved him into her left arm, hoping to placate him.

“You’re not making sense,” he said. “If you knew someone left this note with him, why did you ask if there were babies missing?”

“I don’t know. Just desperate. I thought maybe someone stole him, then decided they didn’t want him after all.”

He considered that, then nodded as though that might be possible. “I’ll check again. Meanwhile—” he put his fingertips to the baby’s cheek “—he feels hot.”

“Oh, no.” She’d noticed that earlier, but it hadn’t registered as a problem. “Do you think he’s sick?”

He shook his head. “I don’t have much firsthand experience with babies, except for having delivered a few. Why don’t you take him to the medical center and have the doc check him out, and I’ll see if I can round up somebody from Child and Family Services.”

“Good idea.” As Luke picked up the phone, Shelly went outside again, sheltering the now-screaming baby against her body. The protestors parted ranks to let her through and she hurried across the street, down the block and around the corner.

Nathan Perkins was the quintessential family doctor. He was a loving husband, devoted father of three, and a friend as well as physician to most patients he saw. He deserved the respect everyone in Jester gave him.

But Nathan wasn’t there, according to the young redheaded receptionist, who led her to a small examining room. Standing in for him was a tall, slender man with rich brown hair and a pair of gold-green cat’s eyes that put her on the edge the moment she looked into them. They looked her over, went to the screaming baby in her arms, then back to her eyes with a disapproval that confused her.

But she didn’t have time to think about it. She held Max out to the doctor. “Please,” she said. “Is something wrong with him?”

He took the baby, his large hands covering the baby’s torso. He walked around with him, putting a hand to his forehead and his cheek.

“Has he had his DPT shots?” he asked.

“Ah…?”

“Diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis vaccine,” he explained.

“I don’t know,” she replied.

“His HI?”

“Um…?”

“Hemophilus influenzae B.”

“I don’t know. I run The Brimming Cup and he was…”

“When did this start?” he interrupted.

“I just noticed it in the sheriff’s office when…”

Those eyes looked into hers again and stopped her cold. “Did you try baby aspirin?”

“No, I…”

“Cool bath?” He’d taken out a stethoscope and was listening to Max’s heart while the baby latched on to the instrument.

“No, I told you I was in the sheriff’s…”

He held a finger up for quiet as he listened. Then he removed the stethoscope, put it out of the baby’s reach, and asked with another direct glance into her eyes that had an angry quality to it she didn’t understand, “Do you know what he weighs?”

“No, I don’t. I…”

He leaned a hip on the examining table and held the baby to him, stroking his back and shushing him. He pointed her to the room’s only chair.

She sat, her mind a whirl of the afternoon’s shocking events and the doctor’s inexplicably aggressive behavior.

“This baby is supposed to be your first priority,” he said in a voice that had gentled only slightly and sounded as though it intended to preach. She suddenly realized what he must be thinking.

“Doctor, I’m…”

“How can you not know whether or not your baby’s been immunized?” he interrupted again. “How can you not know what he weighs? How can you have a baby and pursue a lifestyle that lands you in the sheriff’s office?”