Got Your Number

Chapter One

    ROXANN BEADLEMAN’S scalp roasted, and she realized with a start that she was still wearing the red wig. Puffing out her cheeks at her carelessness, she yanked off the remainder of her disguise as she wedged her van Goldie into a parking space at Rigby's Diner, home of the Big Daddy Crab Plate. Rigby would fire her for sure. Waiting tables had never been her favorite gig, but the job had great benefits (Rigby's brother-in-law sold health insurance), and the schedule was flexible enough to accommodate her obligations to the Rescue program. Until this morning.
    She jumped out and bent at the waist to give her real hair—short and dark and plastered to her head—a lick and a promise with a vented brush. Biloxi, Mississippi, was celebrated for its sweltering heat, but she'd sort of expected a break by the twelfth day into the month of October. She slammed Goldie's door twice before it caught, then sprinted to the employee entrance of the diner.
    Shuttling the Lindberg family to the bus station had taken longer than she'd expected, mostly because the twin five-year-old boys had stripped down to their skivvies and tossed their clothes out the van windows. Twice. According to her travel watch (two faces to accommodate dual time zones), she was exactly one hour late.
    "You're an hour late,” Helen, the head waitress, confirmed when Roxann slid into the kitchen.
    "Car trouble." Not the first lie she'd told for a good cause.
    Helen clucked and balanced a third plate on her arm. "Imagine that, a twenty-five-year-old van giving you trouble." Helen was sixty, with the wit and legs of a coed.
    "Is Rigby angry?"
    "Yeah, but I covered for you. Still, you'd better get shakin'. I need a couple of étoufée platters." Helen disappeared, then stuck her head back in, winking a mascara-laden eye. "And I almost forgot—there's a Steve McQueen type at table nine waiting to see you. Been here goin' on a half hour."
    Anxiety twinged low in her stomach. She peeked around the divider between the blistering kitchen and the crowded dining room, but her view was obstructed by the weekly gathering of the Morning Glory Ladies, sporting straw gardening hats and lingering in the aisle to say their farewells. Roxann ducked back to dish up the étoufée for Helen, her stomach growling at the tangy aroma of shellfish and cracked pepper.
    She didn't have a clue who the man might be. That one call Melissa Cape had made to Roxann's cell phone still had the potential of landing them both in the bayou if the woman's private investigator ex-husband made the connection. But in truth, any of the men in Roxann's life would have elicited the same gut-clutching response as Frank Cape.
    Her father? The sole reason Walt Beadleman left his La-Z-Boy in the tiny living room of the tiny house in Baton Rouge was to cast for channel cats in the Mississippi River. He'd never think of floating on down to Biloxi to see his only child who was such a monumental disappointment, unless someone in the family had dropped dead.
    Her most recent lover? The last time she'd seen Richard Funderburk, he was spitting mad that she'd dare to confront him about his drinking. Then he'd simply disappeared—to a twelve-step program she'd hoped. Wasn't there a step about seeking forgiveness from those you'd wronged? He still owed her fifty bucks, the mooch. And at least as many orgasms.
    Her neighbor? Mr. Nealy had been hovering ever since her roommate and Rescue coworker Elise had wigged out, forcing Roxanne to ask Elise to move out. Roxann cringed when she imagined what the old man had picked up with his hearing aid pressed against the kitchen wall. Any doubts that he'd overheard Elise's stunning proclamation of passion had been erased when Mr. Nealy had "run into" Roxann at the trash Dumpster and proceeded to spin an unlikely tale whose moral seemed to be that just because a woman was a tomboy, it didn't mean that all her neighbors thought she was "you know."
    Of course, none of those men resembled Steve McQueen even if she'd swallowed the worm at the bottom of a bottle of Mezcal.
    At last the chatty garden ladies dismantled, giving her an unobstructed view of the dark-haired stranger sitting alone at table nine. Relief pulled at her shoulders—according to Melissa Cape's description, her ex was a slim blond. This fellow was fortyish and brawny, with a jutting profile. His blocked jaw was clean-shaven, and his hair well shy of his collar. His khaki shirt was J. Crew