A big chalkboard had been propped up on an easel and it read:
TUESDAY IS OPEN MIC NIGHT!
Open Mic Night Sign-up
Glory Hallelujah Greenleafwas written on the board in pink chalk. It was the only name so far.
He looked about, but he didn’t see Britt right off.
But a girl who must be Glory Hallelujah Greenleaf was up on the stage, an acoustic guitar on her lap. She was tuning it.
An old bearded guy, wiry and small but surprisingly lissome, was on the floor in front of the stage, swaying and waving his arms around.
“You sit down, Marvin Wade, I don’t care how many drugs you did in the seventies, this ain’t no Grateful Dead show and I will not have you doing a swirly dance while I’m playing. This is a listening song. Or maybe... a make-out song.”
She flipped a sheet of long black hair over her shoulder, to a chorus of whistles and lascivious hoots. She was wearing a lacy sort of bustier-esque top that owed something to Stevie Nicks, and she had a very appealing rack.
“Take it off!” some doofus inevitably shouted.
“Yeah, Glory, show us your ti—”
“LANGUAGE!” Glenn bellowed as he strolled across the floor scooping up empty beer bottles, probably the world’s most futile admonishment. “This ain’t the Plugged Nickel!”
J. T. made a mental note to find out what the Plugged Nickel might be and where it was. If he had to guess, it was in the scary, in other words, interesting, part of Hellcat Canyon that Rosemary had warned him about and Britt had described pretty colorfully.
“There ain’t enough money in the world to get me to show them...” Glory Greenleaf paused. “...to you, Truck.”
“Hoooooooeeee!” A gleeful chorus and a few high-fives were exchanged.
The inevitable heckling lunkheads aside, this was a girl, J. T. was certain, who knew how to incite a riot, and might just do it in order to observe it, the way a pyromaniac stands back and admires the fires he sets.
She settled onto the chair and pulled the microphone up to her face, squinting in the overhead stage light. She had cheekbones cut like diamonds.
He suspected she was a dangerous little thing.
He’d been completely inoculated against dangerous little things ever since 1995, when one had keyed his car and set fire to the ficus on his front porch after he’d been photographed with his arm around another woman.
Lighting something on fire was a surefire way to get a lesson to stick, as far as he was concerned.
A brief shot of warm air against his cheek made him turn toward the door. A guy with a badge, who must be the sheriff, had quietly slipped into the Misty Cat and was leaning against the wall behind him, mostly in shadow, unobserved, as all faces were turned toward the stage.
He looked like a former halfback who’d parlayed a knack for busting heads into a career in law enforcement.
He intercepted J. T.’s glance and nodded politely. He had a cop face. Pleasant and unreadable.
Maybe the sheriff knew that drunk men and the girl with the guitar were a combustible combination and had stopped in to throw a nice wet blanket over that.
There were three names on the chalkboard now.
And then he saw her. She slipped out of the poolroom, carrying a tray.
His heart rate actually ratcheted up in speed.
He watched her move from table to table, taking orders, giving smiles, and it was ridiculous.
And then she was next to him.
“Hi,” she said.