The Ballad of Dixon Bell

But the feet pounding down the staircase a few minutes later belonged to Trace, not his sister. He burst into the kitchen, holding the cordless phone from her bedroom in one hand.

“Hey, Kate, this is Dixon Bell, that friend of yours, you know? And he wants me to play basketball with him and his friends next Saturday morning. Mr. DeVries and Mr. Crawford and—” he took a breath “—Pete. That’s okay, right? It’ll be just grown-ups except for me. I told him I thought you’d say yes. You will, right? I can go?”

Kate stared at her son for a moment, speechless. She hadn’t seen him this excited in months. Certainly not since his father had left. And maybe not for a long time before. One miracle, courtesy of Dixon Bell.

“Please, Kate?”

She shook her head to clear it. “I think it sounds great. Be sure to thank him for the invitation.” The urge to ask to speak with Dixon was almost overwhelming, but she managed to keep control as Trace put the phone to his ear.

“It’s okay,” he said, still with that Christmas-morning eagerness in his voice. “What time should I be there? Oh, okay. That’ll be good. I’ll be ready. What? Oh, sure.” He put the phone on the table beside Kate’s hand. “Dixon wants to talk to you.”

Breathless, she picked up the receiver with a shaking hand. “Hello?”

“Hey, Kate. How are you?” His warm voice seemed to release all the tension in her shoulders.

She sank back in her chair. “I’m fine, thanks. And I really appreciate that you’ve included Trace in your ball game. He’s thrilled, of course.”

“I think it’ll be fun. He’ll give us old guys a standard to strive for.”

“What time should I have him at the school Saturday?”

“Don’t worry about getting out so early. I’ll pick him up about a quarter to seven, if that’s okay.”

The conversation was coming to an end and she couldn’t think of a good reason to extend it. “If you’re sure…”

“That’s set, then. Now…” He paused for a long moment. “What about us?”

Kate wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. “Us?”

“Yes, ma’am. That dinner I wanted to share with you. Can we set something up?”

Be careful what you wish for, she thought, because it hurts so much when you have to refuse. “I—I don’t—”

“If dinner doesn’t work, what about lunch? I could bring Trace home after breakfast on Saturday, grab a shower and a change of clothes, then pick you up and we could have a sandwich together. Or,” he added when she still hadn’t found her voice, “you could meet me somewhere.”

Unable to resist any longer, Kate sighed. “I think we could do that. I—I would like to have lunch with you.”

“That’s a d—…that’s great.” She thought she heard him blow out a long breath. “I’ll look forward to seeing you…and Trace…on Saturday.”

Kate hung up the phone, feeling a wide smile crease her cheeks, stretch her lips. Dixon had such wonderful manners. He would “look forward” to seeing her on Saturday.

But not half as much as she would look forward to seeing him.

DIXON DIDN’T PUSH to keep Kate on the phone, though he couldn’t think of a nicer way to pass the Sunday afternoon than listening to her soft southern voice in his ear. An idea occurred to him—the possibility of writing a song about a woman’s voice, her words, her tone, and how they affected the man who loved her. The concept had potential, he decided, and went upstairs to fetch his pad of paper and make some notes. Sitting on his childhood bed in the sleepy quiet of the old house, he found it easy to think about Kate, to imagine words she might use in love, in laughter, in passion. Next weekend, he’d have hours to listen to what she had to say and how she said it. He only had to get through five long weekdays, first.

This afternoon, though, thinking too much about Kate unsettled him enough that he decided to get out of the house, despite the July heat. Miss Daisy had curled up on the sofa with the cats and the newest Tom Clancy novel, then slipped into a genteel nap, so Dixon tiptoed across the front hall and shut the door carefully behind him. On the right side of the house, where there had once been a rose bed and boxwood parterre in a knot pattern, he found shade and a weed-free spot under a tulip poplar. He checked for ant beds at the base of the trunk and settled in with his notepad on his knee to consider landscape plans.

But in only minutes his mind wandered back to Kate. Convincing her to have lunch with him had been a significant effort. She acted for all the world as if she was afraid that he would hurt her if she let him get too close. Which would make sense, Dixon thought, if he were L.T. LaRue. Did Kate believe all men were cut from the same cloth?

He looked around at the sound of a car door being shut and nearly growled aloud when he saw LaRue’s SUV parked in front of the house. Kate’s ex had brought someone else with him this time, a man Dixon didn’t recognize.

Already irritated, he got to his feet, dusted the grass and dirt off his butt and went to confront LaRue and guest before they could get more than halfway up the walk. “Can I help you gentlemen?”

L.T. grinned, as if he knew a really great secret. “Afternoon, Dixon. I thought I’d bring the mayor over and introduce the two of you. Mayor Curtis Tate, this is Dixon Bell, one of our newer residents. Miss Daisy Crawford’s grandson, of course.”

The mayor put out a thin, manicured hand. “Glad to meet you, Mr. Bell. Your grandmother is quite…uh…well known to those of us in New Skye government.” Tate was probably six foot three, gaunt and bony, with dark hair and a shifting gray gaze that Dixon immediately distrusted.

But he shook the man’s hand and even resisted the urge to wipe his palm on his slacks immediately afterward. “Good to meet you, Mr. Mayor. Miss Daisy does tend to speak her mind when she’s got something to say.”

“Yes, yes, she does.” He looked past Dixon’s shoulder at the house, then surveyed the tangled chaos of the garden. “This was a lovely place once.”

“And will be again. I’ll be doing a lot of work inside and out, but I expect to bring Magnolia Cottage back to its former glory in pretty quick order.”

L.T. put his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “Gotta have inspections for this kind of work, y’know. Rewiring, heating, AC, plumbing…all that takes approval from the right departments.”

“Your point being…?”

The mayor shrugged. “You can’t always count on these things going through in a timely fashion. Or at all.”

Dixon straightened up to his full height. “I believe I hear a threat in there somewhere.”

“Just a warning.” L.T. gave him another one of those grins. “You might find that your little…um…renovation project doesn’t go as smoothly as you expect. Whereas I could take this property off your hands in a matter of days.” He snapped his fingers. “Easy as pie.”

Behind Dixon, the front door squeaked open. “Do we have visitors, Dixon?” Miss Daisy called from the porch.

“They were just leaving.” Dixon refused to budge from his place, which left Tate and LaRue no choice about approaching the house.

And when he took a step forward, the other two men backed up. “Let me explain this very slowly.” He kept his voice low. “You two are leaving this property right now and you’re not ever setting foot here again. Because if you do,” he continued as they retreated toward the SUV, “I will greet you from the porch with a shotgun. Any part of that you don’t understand?”

Safe inside his vehicle, L.T. rolled down the electric windows. “You think you’ve got this settled, don’t you, Mr. Bell? Well, I’m telling you that I’ve got connections in this town. You haven’t heard the last of this issue, believe me. And I think you’ll be surprised at how our little disagreement gets resolved.” He revved the engine, then fishtailed his way down the driveway with a spray of gravel and dust.

Dixon joined Miss Daisy on the porch. “Scalawag about covers it as far as L.T. LaRue is concerned.”

“And was that the mayor?”

“Yes, ma’am. Appearances can be deceiving, of course, but I can’t say he inspired much confidence.”

“He’s as crooked as they come,” Miss Daisy said, leading the way into the house. “He owns a lot of the downtown real estate—or co-owns it with L.T., which is why we’ve been successful at the New Skye Historical Society in getting approval for renovations in the business district. We’ve increased the property values and made them more money. I take it they’re badgering you to buy this place?” She perched on the sofa and was immediately joined by cats, one on either side and the third in her lap.

Dixon dropped into a threadbare armchair. “You’ve heard from them before?”

“Off and on for several years. I was fortunate to be able to say that the property was in your name and I didn’t have the power to sell.” Her smile was mischievous. “Passing the buck, they call it.”

“I’m glad you had an easy way out, and that I was useful for something while I was gone. What do they want to do with the land?”

“Condos.” Miss Daisy said the word as if it were not used in polite company. “L.T.’s got this grand plan to build luxury town houses up here. Even wants to keep the name—Magnolia Cottage Condominiums, or some such.” She sniffed in disdain. “Given the quality of work he delivers, the place would be falling down around people’s ears within a year or two. Why, Gladys Sykes had him build her a pool house—against my advice, of course—and it wasn’t halfway through the summer that she had nails popping through the walls and boards warping, and she had to have the stucco completely replaced…”

She continued the litany of L.T.’s failings as she fixed bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches for supper, and even as they washed dishes and straightened up the kitchen afterward.

“L.T. LaRue is cheap and mean,” she concluded. “He’ll take advantage of his clients in any way he can find. How he manages to make so much money—not to mention acquiring the influence he appears to exert over what goes on—is a complete mystery to me and every well-intentioned, thinking person in this town.”

How he’d managed to convince Kate to marry him was an even bigger mystery, Dixon thought. But at least that problem was on the way to getting solved. And with L.T. out of the way, he and Kate could finally get started on the rest of their lives.

L.T. FLIPPED the air-conditioning a notch higher as he drove through the brick pillars marking the driveway for Magnolia Cottage. “Damn Dixon Bell, anyway. The man’s been gone for thirteen years—what does he want with a crumbling disaster like that house?”

Curtis Tate shook his head. “He’d be doing the city and himself a favor to get rid of it, have us build something decent on one of the best pieces of real estate in the entire county. It’s a waste, pure and simple, letting that prime land sit there unused.” Then the mayor flashed L.T. a sideways grin. “I imagine you’ve got some ideas on how we can ‘persuade’ Mr. Bell, though, don’t you?”

“With a little cooperation from the powers that be, Mr. Mayor, I think I can guarantee that Magnolia Cottage will become a real showplace, a development that’ll do this city proud.”

His passenger laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Well, hell, L.T., civic pride alone demands that we in the government cooperate in such a worthwhile endeavor.”

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