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"You broke my brother's nose? How did that happen?" Laurie asked. I called her on my way home from Tom's.
"I hit him with the car door. It's like I'm cursed. I broke Chance's ankle, now Tom's nose."
"How did Jim survive you unscathed?"
"I'm beginning to wonder that myself. I really had high hopes for my date tonight."
"I'm sure Tom will reschedule."
"Yeah, I guess. I never got dinner, so I'm gonna pick something up in the cafe and maybe get a start on pulling down some of the clippings and photos if there are empty tables. I'll talk to you in the morning."
Hairy's was busy with the Saturday night crowd. I gave Rick my order on my way to my office so I didn't take a table away from paying customers. I just sat down when there was a knock on the door of my office. "Come in," I called, expecting Sally or Rick. "Chance, what are you doing here?"
"I heard you took Tom out before you even got to dinner," he said. "Figured you might want some company while you ate."
"How do you know what happened with Tom?"
"He called. It was a little hard to understand him, but I think I got the gist of it. You broke his nose with your truck door. You are a little hard on the men in your life," he said. "Maybe I should be glad you picked Tom. I'm still recovering." He made a motion to the cast on his leg.
"Does Tom know you're here?"
"I don't know. He knows me pretty well, so I don't think he'd be surprised."
"Great. If I hadn't been on the phone with you, Tom wouldn't have come out to see what was taking me so long. That makes this kind of your fault."
"Don't try to shift blame to me. Tom's just another victim of the curse of Everly Mason."
There was another knock on the door. "Come in," I said as Chance pushed the door open. Sally had a tray with two plates on it. "I thought you had a date tonight, Boss."
"Doesn't this look like a date?" Chance asked, taking the tray out of Sally's hands.
"In the office?" she asked.
"City Girl here has a fantasy that involves her desk. Figured we might as well eat in here so we're handy when the mood strikes. If we want dessert, we'll come out front. We don't want to be disturbed," Chance said.
"Sure, Chance," she said, grinning at him like a school girl with her first crush as she backed out of the office and closed the door behind her.
I pulled a piece of paper off my pad, balled it up, and threw it at Chance's head. "Now every time I call her into this office, she'll be looking at this desk and imagining us having sex on it."
"Seems like a good visual to me," he said. "Did you want to eat dinner first?"
"Cute."
We ate in silence. "Maybe I should drive back out to Tom's to check on him."
"You could, but if his nose is broken, he's not going to be up for much talking or anything else tonight. He'll probably take pain pills and crash."
"Shouldn't he go to the hospital?"
"He's a licensed EMT. There's only so much you can do for a broken nose. He'll take care of it himself."
"Of course, I'm sure he has his boy scout first aid badge too. This just sucks."
"If you’re feeling frustrated. I might be able to help you with that."
Chance followed me out into the cafe and helped me take down clippings and photos from the areas where tables were vacant. "Can you look over these?" I asked Chance, "and let me know which ones we should put back up. I want to limit it to things that are local or things with Harry or Dutch. Just separate the ones you think should go back up into one envelope. I'll see about getting them framed for display."
Chance hung out until we closed, and we pulled down all the stuff from the walls. "All we need to do now is wipe down the walls, and it'll be ready for paint tomorrow night. Do you want to come up and pick up that box of Harry's journal's I set aside for you?" I asked as we walked out of the cafe and I headed around back to the stairs to my apartment.
"Might as well. Mom said dad didn't keep anything like that. That's part of why he and Harry made a good team, I guess."
"Want a drink?" I asked.
"Is it a good idea for me to stay?" Chance asked.
"Probably not, but I'll try to keep my distance. Beer, Wine, coffee, or tea?"
Chance and I sat on opposite ends of the sofa and talked about the journal I was reading earlier. "I guess we won't really know what to expect until we've read several of them. This one seems like he's just recording what he sees and finds out in the woods. There's lots of dates and details, but not much commentary."
"He wasn't writing a fiction novel," Chance laughed. "If I go through a couple of the journals and find the same kind of stuff, we might want to let Tom and Jim go through some of them. There's a lot of information to go through."
"Divide and conquer," I said, leaning over to give Chance a high five. OK, maybe I could be friends with Chance.
"You OK about your date with Tom tonight?"
"Have to be, I guess. I'm sorry I broke his nose. You think he'll hold it against me?"
"I'm pretty sure Tom is ready to hold anything you'll let him against you."