Her backbone straightened.
What she needed was some food in her stomach, an opportunity to regroup after this. . . unfortunate turn of events.
“Should be the title for the story of my life,” Katie mumbled.
She dug in her jeans pocket for her keys and headed for her car, thinking all the while that the sleek Maserati appeared as out of place and ridiculous in these surroundings as she felt.
A basset hound sat in the entryway of the Legion Diner. It looked up at Katie beseechingly with drooping brown eyes, but remained on its haunches and didn’t try to enter with her through the open door. The interior of the Legion Diner looked as worn and weary as the rest of Vulture’s Canyon, but the smells wafting out of it made her stomach growl. Four pairs of eyes examined her when her boot heels clicked on the black-and-white-checkerboard tile floor. Katie picked the warmest gaze and sidled toward the woman behind the counter. She took a seat and tossed her Lena Erziak handbag on the barstool next to her.
“Hi,” she greeted the woman, who held a coffee cup in her hand. She had auburn hair, brandy-colored eyes and a figure that put Katie in the mind of a young Jane Russell. She glanced over her shoulder and saw a gray-haired man in his late fifties, his mouth frozen in midchew, watching her with frank suspicion from beneath shaggy eyebrows.
“Evening,” the woman behind the counter said. She had a light, musical voice, and while her stare was frank, it didn’t strike Katie as rude or inhospitable. “What can I get you?”
“What’s good?”
“Everything.” The female glanced down over Katie. “Nothing low-cal, though.”
“Great. I could eat a deep-fried horse.”
The woman looked amused in a patronizing kind of way, which Katie found mildly annoying. She surveyed the handwritten menu on a whiteboard next to the grill. There was the usual diner fare, but also the not-so-typical: meat loaf with mashed potatoes and gravy, $3.00; cheeseburger with French fries, $2.75; vegetarian sandwich on seven-grain bread, $3.00; loaf of homemade bread, $2.00 . . .
Cut, $6.00?
Cut? Perhaps it referred to a steak? Katie thought. The prices were right out of the 1970s. Whoever heard of a steak for six dollars?
“I’ll have a double cheeseburger with the works, onion rings and a large chocolate sha
ke, the thicker, the better,” Katie said.
“You got it,” the woman agreed levelly as she turned to start making Katie’s meal. She continued to speak to Katie with her back turned as she pulled some items out of a refrigerator. “I guess my little brother isn’t crazy after all.”
“Excuse me?” Katie asked.
The woman glanced over her shoulder. “My little brother, Derek.”
“Oh . . . Derek Legion . . . the boy who gave me directions,” Katie said, finally connecting the dots. “You’re his sister? Do you own the diner?”
The woman nodded as she tossed a couple hamburger patties on the grill and kicked the refrigerator door shut with one foot. “Name’s Sherona. Sherona Legion. Derek was telling me some tall tale about a movie star visiting Vulture’s Pass. I didn’t believe a word of it,” Sherona said as she lowered a metal basket of onion rings into sizzling oil, “but here you are.”
Katie looked around, but the other three people in the diner were even less likely candidates than her. “Movie star? Me?”
Sherona smiled as she flipped open the freezer and removed a carton of ice cream, moving around the small space like a dancer doing a familiar routine. “Well, Rill Pierce was a director, after all, and Derek said you were on your way to see him.”
She noticed Sherona’s musical voice had suddenly gone neutral and disinterested. Too disinterested? Katie glanced down at her lap. She’d showered, but some women had a sixth sense when it came to sex. Who was she to say Sherona couldn’t smell Rill on her?
Katie didn’t like to consider the fact that she might be instinctively sensing the same thing about Sherona Legion.
Out of the corner of her eye, Katie noticed the muscular guy wearing the fatigues seemed to tense and lean his ear closer at the sound of Rill’s name on Sherona’s tongue. She scanned Sherona’s voluptuous figure and scowled. Why couldn’t Sherona Legion cooperate and look like the other scruffy, disreputable characters in the town diner?
“Rill Pierce is a director,” Katie corrected shortly. She took a drink of the ice water Sherona had poured for her from a chilled metal pitcher. “One of the greatest screenplay writers and directors of our time. He’s just going through a rough patch right now, that’s all.” One of the three men behind her—Katie thought it might have been the survivalist guy wearing camo—snorted. Katie glared over her shoulder before she continued. “And I’m no movie star. I’m a tax attorney from Beverly Hills.”
Or at least I was.
She scowled. Why did people always make a habit of declaring their identity by telling strangers what they did for a living, anyway? What did that really tell anyone?
“You’re not here visiting Fordham, are you?”
Katie started at the sound of the accusing question coming from behind her. She swiveled around on the counter stool and planted her prized pair of Loeffler Randall Kit boots squarely on the lower rail. The gray-haired guy was still staring at her like she was a cockroach.