Lover's Lane Read Free Page B

if you’d like to meet her, Carly may be working here this evening. I’ll tell her you might drop by.”
    “Really?” Jake looked down at the card, at the blank spot where the artist’s photo should be, and wondered if he’d hit pay dirt.
    It was his partner, Kat Vargas, who’d found the article in Budget Traveler , not him. The painting in the background of the photo had reminded her of a small oil hanging on the wall above his desk.
    Noting the similarities, Kat tore out the article, brought it in and slapped it on the desk in front of him. Then she had folded her arms, cocked her head, and asked, “Think it could be her? Your Obsession?”
    Jake pulled his thoughts back, quickly thanked Geoff, adding that he wasn’t certain he’d get by tonight but that he’d be in touch either way.
    Before he left, he picked up a map as he turned to go and shoved both the biocard and map into the pocket of his brown leather jacket.
    He had justified the drive up here by telling himself that he hadn’t had a weekend off in so long that he couldn’t remember when. But technically, this wasn’t exactly a weekend off.
    He was here on the off chance that Caroline Graham had finally slipped up. After six years, the young woman who seemed to have fallen off the face of the earth might have reappeared.
    It was a long shot. In fact, it was downright ridiculous to think there might be only one artist using the same technique, but if Caroline Graham had surfaced, if she were still painting and now calling herself Carly Nolan, then he might have stumbled onto a woman who had managed to elude one of the top investigative firms in Southern California for years.

2
    IF THERE WAS ONE THING CARLY NOLAN COULD DO WITH her eyes closed it was wait tables. She’d been at it off and on since she was fifteen.
    “Miss?”
    She put a smile on her face and walked over to the booth near the window where a couple of well-dressed tourists stared at the $4.99 breakfast specials she’d set before them two seconds ago.
    They weren’t happy. She knew the minute they’d parked their sleek new Jaguar out front that they wouldn’t be satisfied with anything at Plaza Diner. Their type usually drove straight through on the way to Carmel.
    “Do you need something else? Ketchup? Salsa?” Patience was not a virtue. It was a trick of the trade.
    The man in his sixties wore a cream-colored sweater draped around his shoulders. He stared at the stack of whole wheat toast triangles oozing butter as if they’d just crawled out of an alien mother ship.
    “I specifically asked for dry toast,” he reminded her.
    She reached for the plate of toast. “Sorry about that. I’ll get you another order.” She hadn’t taken two steps before he halted her in her tracks.
    “Excuse me? Miss?”
    She swung around. Smiled. Again. “Yes?”
    “Did the cook use milk in these scrambled eggs? I specifically asked that he use water.”
    “I wrote it down, so I’m sure he did.” Carly continued to smile as she pictured herself turning the stack of toast upside down on the man’s carefully styled white hair.
    “Just eat it, Frankie.” The man’s wife barely looked up as she quickly peppered her own scrambled eggs and took a sip of her coffee. She smiled apologetically when her husband lifted the eggs with his fork to peer beneath them.
    Carly carried the stack of toast to the wide window behind the counter that separated the kitchen from the main room of the diner. Glasses, the coffee machines, an old mint green malt and shake blender, along with green salad fixings were lined up beneath it. She set the toast down on the ledge beneath the chrome order wheel.
    “Dry stack, Joe.” She winked at José Caron. In his early sixties, broad shouldered and still devilishly handsome despite the pounds he’d added with age, Joe had been manning the grill at the Plaza Diner since before Carly was born.
    “Sure thing.” He winked back before he grabbed the stack and daubed each