knew that Iris was sweet on Henry. Everyone except Henry, that is.
Chapter 3
GUS HOLLISTER ACCEPTED THE BOX OF NEW KEYS FOR HIS office building from the locksmith. He promised to call if anything went awry. With the rest of his mental to-do list taken care of, he was about to head out of the office. He had no idea where he was going to go or what he was going to do. He slapped at his forehead. He needed to change the code to the security system on the off chance he might have mentioned it to Elaine at some point. No sense in taking chances at this stage of the game. When he was leaving the building, he would turn over the new keys and the new code to his two tenants. Thank God the doors were self-locking.
His last chore taken care of, Gus turned off the lights, took one last look around, and was about to close the door when the office phone rang. He walked back to the reception area and looked at the caller ID. His fist shot high in the air. Barney! His best friend in the whole wide world. Best friend since the age of four, when they had met in a sandbox at the park. Good old Barney. He blasted out a loud hello and waited.
“Hey! How’s it going, buddy?”
Instead of answering the question, Gus let loose with a volley of his own. “Where are you? When did you get back? How long are you staying? Can you meet me someplace, Barney? I’m just leaving the office now. I really need to talk to you. The long and short of things . . . never mind, I’ll tell you when I see you. Can you make Gilligan’s in, say, fifteen minutes? I’ll wait for you, all day if necessary.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Yeah, that bad, Barney.”
“Make it forty-five minutes, and I’m all yours.”
Gus stood for a few minutes, staring at the phone console after he disconnected the call. His world was suddenly looking a tad brighter, with Barney back in the picture. Barney, he was sure, would have some words of wisdom for him.
Best friends since the sandbox days, they’d gone through school together. Barney was the nerd, and Gus was the jock. He’d lost count of the jerks he’d popped for tormenting his best friend. They’d gone to the same college, graduated, and gone on to get their master’s degrees together, after which Barney took off in the financial world and set it on fire. At age thirty-two, Barney was the youngest hedge-fund manager on Wall Street, and he was worth billions. Not to mention, he had a sterling reputation. No shortcuts for him.
Outside, in the April morning sunshine, Gus looked around. To the east, he saw a bank of dark clouds heading his way. What was it his granny always said? April showers bring May flowers. Yeah, that was it.
His shoulders slumped at the mere thought of his grandmother. Barney was going to have a fit when he found out that Granny Rose wanted nothing to do with Gus. Barney loved Gus’s grandmother and dippy aunts as much as Gus did.
Gus went through his contortionist routine as he struggled to get into the Beetle. Barney was going to laugh his ass off when he saw the Bug. Gus winced in pain. Then again, Barney could be diplomatic at times. He might not say a word. Yeah, right.
Gus peeled out of the parking lot—as much as a Beetle could peel—and headed for the main drag of Sycamore Springs, Virginia. Population: eighty thousand. He loved this town. He’d grown up here. Knew every store, every nook and cranny of the town. He knew all the shortcuts, as did Barney, because they’d ridden their bikes all over when they were kids. He was partial, as was Barney, to the old section of town, where the drugstore still had a soda fountain, where the hardware store still set out its wares on nice days, where you could still get penny candy at the Emporium, only it was a nickel now.
Then there was Eva’s Café, with her homemade everything. The candy shop, the hat shop, and, of course, the filling station that served lunch to anyone in a hurry. All the shops, he still patronized, as did his grandmother and the aunts.
The new part of town was high tech, with Internet cafés, a Starbucks, it seemed, on every corner, and boutiques. There were trendy eateries and a few