Picking Up the Pieces: Rose Gardner Novella 5.5 (Volume 2) Read online

  “Bruce Wayne?” Her chin lowered as her eyes pierced mine. “You mean as your employee, right?”

  I took a deep breath, preparing myself for another round of arguing. “No, Vi. Not as my employee. He’ll be my partner.”

  “Where’d he get the money to buy in? Is he selling drugs?”

  Her comment infuriated me. “He put up the same amount of money you did. Nothing.”

  She gasped.

  “I don’t expect you to understand my decision, nor do I expect you to approve. I’m simply telling you how I’m restructuring.”

  “Rose…Let’s talk more about this.”

  I lifted my shoulders. “We have a lot of logistics to discuss about splitting the business, but we have nothing to discuss in regard to Bruce Wayne.”

  “Have you told Mason?” I heard the accusation in her voice.

  “Yes, and he stands behind my decision if for no other reason than because it is my business and my decision.”

  “Rose.” Her voice lowered. “Bruce Wayne’s a stoner with a terrible reputation. What’s that going to do for your business?”

  “We haven’t been hurtin’ for jobs yet, and it’s almost December. Not exactly peak planting time.”

  “But that was with him as an employee, not a co-owner. And how’s it going to look if you jump into a business arrangement with a known criminal?”

  If only she knew about my latest mess with Skeeter. “I don’t care what the people in this town think.”

  She frowned her disapproval. “You should. You need them to like you or they’ll never give you business.”

  “Again, we haven’t been hurting.”

  “That’s because I’m the face of the business.”

  My eyebrows rose. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that after the mayor’s wife is arrested for vandalism.”

  A sheepish grimace lifted the corner of her mouth. “I’m not going to press charges.”

  “What?”

  She put her hand on my arm. “Calm down, Rose. The insurance will still pay, so what good would it do? She’s sorry.”

  “You’ve talked to her?”

  “No, but Joe did.”

  “And he approves of this?”

  She nodded, tears brimming her eyes. “The town’s still gonna talk, but things will die down sooner now.”

  I hated to admit that I saw the wisdom in that. What Brody’s wife did was dead wrong, but pressing charges wasn’t going to solve anything. “So what’s gonna happen with you and Brody?”

  “If Brody left her now, it would be more than scandalous. If he stays for a while, things will eventually blow over. The timing will be better.”

  I could tell how devastated she was. It was obvious that she really loved him. “Any chance she’ll get back together with the Walmart manager from Lafayette County?”

  She shook her head, looking more pathetic than I’d ever seen her. “He got transferred to Jonesboro. He ended it.”

  I sighed. What a mess. “I’m still splitting the business, Vi.”

  She grasped her hands on her lap. “I can’t buy you out, Rose. You know that.”

  “I know, and despite calling you an employee earlier, I have no intention of taking the store from you.” I looked at her. “I’m not sure how this is going to work exactly. I still need the nursery for the plants and trees. You’ve got all the accounts set up already, so it doesn’t make sense to duplicate them. Maybe all the money will be dealt with under one big business, which will be under my control, and then you’ll run the nursery and I’ll run the landscaping portion.”

  She shook her head. “How’s that any different than it is now?”

  “You’re losing financial control. You’ll run the nursery and deal with the expansion, but anything involving budgeting needs my approval.” I took a breath. “And I’m gonna have an accountant run the books.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t trust you, Violet, plain and simple. And I don’t want to deal with it.”

  “That’s too expensive. We couldn’t make the loan payments.”

  “We don’t need to worry about the loan payments anymore, do we? You sure took care of that.” I gave her a wry smile. “We’ll use the money that was supposed to go to the loan payments to pay the accountant.”

  “We’ll have to get Joe’s approval.”

  I shook my head. “Joe’s not a partner. He has no say.”

  “Rose.” Her eyes widened in frustration. “Joe bailed us out. He paid off the loan and paid for a few other things besides. You said yourself that you can’t pay him back, and you’ve admitted on multiple occasions that we couldn’t have gotten the nursery going without his help. Face it. He was a partial owner before we even opened.”

  I groaned. I was sure that Jonah was right and Joe had no legal claim on the business, but it did feel wrong to just take his money. “Maybe he’ll let me set up a payment plan to reimburse him.”

  “No, he made it clear to me that he wanted to be a partial owner.”

  My anger flared again, but yelling at her wouldn’t help anything. “I need to think about it. What has the insurance company said?”

  “They say we can start cleanup next week. Joe walked through the shop and says it’s not as bad as it looks. We have to replace the merchandise and some display shelves, but we shouldn’t have any problems. Joe’s going to front the money so we can get started right away and we’ll use the insurance money to pay him back. We can open by the first of the year. In the meantime, we’ll sell the Christmas trees from the lot.”

  I suppressed another groan. More involvement from Joe. “I’ll need to speak to him about that. You’re no longer involved in this discussion. And I’ll need all the contact information for the insurance company so I can deal with them directly.”

  She started to protest, then stopped. “Okay.”

  My eyebrows lifted in surprise. No argument? “To be clear: we’re doing nothing until I talk to Joe. And I suspect he’ll be preoccupied for a while. In fact, he might be so preoccupied he’ll decide he’s not so eager to be a partner anymore.”

  “Or he might want the distraction.”

  Great. I suspected she was probably right. “Don’t tell anyone that Joe’s involved in this. At least for now.”

  “What are you going to tell Mason?”

  What was I going to tell him? I couldn’t imagine it going well.

  Chapter Six

  Bruce Wayne

  I’d done screwed up big time.

  The thing is, I knew it even as I was jumping into the middle of it. Kinda like when you’re driving and you see a car about to rear-end you and there’s not a doggone thing you can do to stop it from plowing into you. That’s exactly how it was when Rose was dead-set on talking to Skeeter Malcolm.

  In the few short months I’d worked for Rose Gardner, I’d learned one thing: Once she gets an idea in her head, there’s little chance of dissuading her. And seeing how there was no way to talk her out of it, I helped her.

  I knew what people were gonna say if word got out. They were gonna accuse me of dragging her into Henryetta’s underbelly. They already thought the worst of me and I was okay with it as long as they didn’t think the worst of her too.

  People had always assumed the worst of me, for as long as I could remember. Russell, the man who gave me his last name, hated my guts because of the man who’d gotten my mother pregnant the night of her senior prom. While Russell might have forgiven my mom for giving her virginity to the bad boy in her class, he sure never seemed to have forgotten about it judging from the way he looked at me. To add piss to the pool water, I looked just like Clark Kent Williamson. And if Clark Kent Williamson was nothing but trouble, then the fruit of his loins was bound to be too.

  I tried my best to be a good boy, but when you get in trouble for things you haven’t even done, you start figuring if you’re gonna get in trouble anyway, you might as well get a little fun out of it. Russell always complained that I never to
ok responsibility for nothing, and I never denied it.

  So nobody was more surprised than me that when Rose offered me partial ownership in the landscape business, I wanted it.

  But while I might have been lazy, I wasn’t entirely stupid. When people heard about Rose making me a co-owner, they’d say I’d somehow tricked her.

  If anything, she’d tricked me.

  I tried to turn down her offer, but she refused to let me help her with Skeeter unless I agreed. So I did. I had to, since I knew she’d seek him out on her own otherwise. Lettin’ her do that would have been like puttin’ a bunny in a cage with a wild dog.

  Only it didn’t turn out like I expected.

  When Skeeter got angry, wanting to know how Rose knew about the robbers, I panicked and told him about Rose’s visions. I didn’t see any other way to help her at the time, but as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized my mistake. For one thing, Rose had no idea I’d even figured out her secret. But more importantly, Skeeter knew her secret now, and a talent like Rose’s was something he was going to keep in his back pocket.

  Which meant that Rose was good and stuck.

  But Rose didn’t even seem to see the danger she was in. The very fact she kept back-talking Skeeter was proof enough of that. Sure, he thought it was cute, but it was like when some mouthy toddler didn’t mind his parents. It might be funny at first, but the cuteness would soon wear off and all you were left with was annoyance.

  The way the auction shook out hadn’t sat well with me. When the sheriff showed up, I’d just about had a heart attack. Joe Simmons would have skinned Rose alive if he’d caught her, but he would have locked me up and made sure I had plenty of gray hair before I ever tasted freedom again. But Rose had surprised me. Not only had she gotten away, but she’d held her own and earned Skeeter’s respect. For now. Something plenty of grown men had never done, myself included.

  Now Fenton County was abuzz with gossip about the Lady in Black and I was fairly certain Rose was oblivious to it all. She thought she was done with Skeeter but I’d bet my right eye that she’d only just seen the beginning.

  So now she had her money back, which meant the nursery was safe. Even though she’d said she would share it with me in exchange for helping her, I wasn’t about to hold her to it. I’d learned desperate people would make all sorts of promises to get out of trouble.

  Even so, Rose was different. I’d noticed that right away when she sat on my jury. While all the other jurors looked like they were about to pass out from the heat of the broken air conditioner, Rose watched the trial like it held the secret of life. Sure, she passed out, but I later realized it happened at the very moment she realized I was innocent. And when my old neighbor took the stand and told the judge that Rose had been snooping around Frank Mitchell’s house, investigating my case, you could have knocked me over with a feather. Judge McClary threw her in jail for contempt of court, and I watched in disbelief as she was escorted out of the courtroom.

  Why would someone I didn’t even know risk so much to help me?

  The very next week she sat across a table from me, both of us stuffed into a tiny room with my worthless attorney. She held her ground when my lawyer tried to make her look like a fool, and when she stared into my eyes, I about fell over. She truly believed I was innocent. Other than my best friend David, she was the only one who did. But truth be told, there were a few times when I’d seen doubt in David’s eyes.

  I spent plenty of sleepless nights pondering it. Why did she believe in me?

  At first I wondered if she wanted something, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what it could be. After I was released, I waited for her to show up asking for favors, but she never did. Not for a couple months and then not for what I expected.

  When David called to tell me that she wanted us to help her plant flowers at the new reverend’s church, I thought he was high on ’shrooms. But he swore to me that he was at work and sober.

  “That’s what she wants from me?” I asked in disbelief.

  David sounded leery. “So what do you wanna do?”

  I hadn’t worked since before my arrest for Frank Mitchell’s murder. No one would hire me, so there was no denying that I needed the money. But I could have been rolling in a bed full of hundred-dollar bills and I still would have gone. I owed her. I figured I’d pay off my debt, collect my paycheck, and be done with her.

  Little did I know I’d only just begun with her.

  Little did I know I’d finally found my purpose in life.

  One summer when I was twelve, my momma couldn’t take the bickering between me and Russell anymore, so she packed me up and sent me to her uncle’s farm. I mostly helped him with the cattle, but my aunt had a garden and I helped her weed the beds. Before the summer was over, she was calling me Farmer Bruce.

  I planned to go back the following summer. Instead, I ended up doing my first stint in juvie for shoplifting.

  Maybe it was working at a church. Maybe it was Reverend Jonah making me think I could do more with my life. Or maybe it was the woman who believed in me more than I believed in myself… Whatever the reason, when I first promised Rose I’d help her, it was because I owed her, but when I agreed to work with her on Jonah’s house, I did it because I loved it.

  Rose gave me my life back twice. And I wasn’t about to forget that.

  When I was in fourth grade, I read a book about a Chinese proverb. I wasn’t much of a reader, but I had a book report due. I grabbed the book out of the school library, hardly looking at the cover—I just needed a book to skim so I could write the report. But later that night, I started reading it and couldn’t put it down. It was about two men, a fisherman and a merchant. The merchant thought he was high and mighty and treated the fisherman like pond scum. The merchant needed to get to the other side of a lake in a hurry, so he asked the fisherman to use his boat to take him. Once they’d started their journey, the merchant confessed he couldn’t swim, which the fisher found ridiculous. But halfway across the lake, a sudden storm blew in and tipped the boat over. The fisherman frantically searched the water and pulled the merchant from his almost watery grave, laying him on top of the overturned boat.

  “Why did you save me?” the merchant asked. “I already paid you, and I didn’t hide how disgusting I thought you were.”

  “Everyone deserves a second chance,” the fisherman replied.

  Once they got back to shore, the merchant swore his loyalty to the fisherman. He said he owed his life to him, and from them on, he would forever be in his debt.

  For some reason that story stuck with me. Maybe it was because I could relate to the fisherman. Maybe it was because the merchant got his plate of humble pie—something I wished could happen to the high-and-mighty people in my life. Or maybe I just wanted to think someone could change their mind about me. You see, I always saw myself as the fisherman until I met Rose Gardner and I realized I’d got the story all wrong. The fisherman knew who he was the whole time. And I didn’t know who I was until I met Rose.

  But she had saved me twice, so what could I possibly do to pay her back? To my mind, taking her to see Skeeter Malcolm had done twenty times more harm than good. Even if Rose didn’t see it, I’d got her into the mess. Now I was gonna have to figure a way out of it.

  The morning after Thanksgiving I sat around in my house, twiddling my thumbs. We were plumb outta jobs and Rose was planning to split up the business, which meant there wouldn’t be anything to do for a while. But now that I’d had a taste of doing something I loved, I wasn’t content to sit around. Rose owned the whole shebang—the store and the landscaping part—even if she planned to split it apart. Right now the store was in shambles and someone had to clean it up. I figured I’d head over after lunch and get a good look at what we were facing.

  Rose’s truck was in the parking lot when I pulled up to the store. I usually hated coming to the nursery, but only because Violet was always there, looking down her perky nose at me. But
today her car was nowhere to be seen.

  I found Rose inside the shop, sitting on a folding chair in a small area that had been cleared of debris, two other folding chairs arranged in front of her. “Rose?” I asked as walked through the door.

  She turned to face me with a faraway look in her eyes, then gave me a soft smile. “What are you doin’ here, Bruce Wayne? I gave you the day off, remember?”

  “Sittin’ around didn’t feel right so I came to assess the damage. See what needed fixin’.” I sat in one of the chairs in front of her. “What are you doin’ here?”

  “Trying to figure out the right thing to do.”

  I chuckled. “You know what it is. Sounds like you don’t like it, but you know all the same.”

  She shook her head, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “Neely Kate better watch out. You’re giving her a run for her money.”

  I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but it was good to see her more like herself. “I heard everyone in town got their money back. I’m guessin’ you did too?”

  “Who’d a thought Skeeter would be a man of his word?”

  “Don’t count on that bein’ a regular occurrence. In fact, steer clear of him if you can.”

  She gave me an exasperated look. “It’s not like I plan on paying him weekly visits for tea.”

  The thought of Skeeter drinking from a tea cup with his pinky sticking out nearly made me laugh, but there were more serious issues underfoot. “You might not be planning on visiting Skeeter, but you know he’s gonna be calling on you. He’s gonna want you to help him again.”

  Her lips pressed together. “No way. I can’t.”

  “Skeeter’s not used to hearin’ no. He’s got ways of makin’ people do what he wants them to do.”

  “Mason’s in his office right now with the DA and the sheriff and they’re all abuzz about that woman with Skeeter.” She turned to me with pleading eyes. “Mason’s gonna kill me if he finds out who she really is. And what if the big-wigs in town learn that it was his girlfriend…he could lose his job because of me.” She shook her head. “No. I can’t risk doing anything like that again.”