“Hey there, honey.”
She glanced up to see a man in his sixties, wearing an apron smeared with God only knew what, and a carafe of coffee in his hand.
“Hi,” Beth said.
“You want a menu, or the special?” he asked as he poured coffee for her.
“Uhh…”
“Take the special,” someone called from another table, and everyone else laughed.
“I guess the special,” she said, worried now about what she might be eating in a few minutes.
“Good choice, since that’s all I make.” The old waiter/cook sauntered toward the doorway to the kitchen.
“Don’t mind him,” another man said from two tables away. “He’s had a bug up his butt since his wife left three years ago. You get the eggs special for breakfast, cheeseburger, fries and soup for lunch, and whatever he decides to make for dinner.”
Half of the other patrons had plates of food in front of them, so she assumed they deemed whatever the special was as edible. “Three years is a long time…” And these were a lot of people eating the same thing every day.
“In this town time doesn’t mean much. Not to our generation.”
She smiled at that.
“Yep. We move at a lot slower pace than you young’ns,” another said. “Say, you just passin’ through?”
She shrugged then said with a cheeky smile, “I don’t know. Maybe you should try to convince me to stay.”
A man clear across the dining room guffawed. “Tell her about the Falke brothers, Bill.”
Her heart sped in excitement. “The Falke brothers?” she said, pretending ignorance and lifting her steaming coffee cup to her lips as if only slightly interested in their tale.
For the next two hours the elders of Leavenworth entertained her with stories of the town’s founding, and how the Falke brothers—a few generations back, not the ones she really wanted to hear about—helped Leavenworth flourish into a tourist town.
The gentlemen she’d chatted with wouldn’t let her pay her bill—a whopping four dollars and change—so she thanked them and promised to drop in again for breakfast soon. The eggs and hash browns had been a little too greasy, and the toast burned and butter-less, but the never-ending supply of coffee had been hot, strong and delicious. She’d enjoyed the company and learning about the town’s colorful history the most. She’d finally extracted herself from the conversation by telling them she had to get to work or she’d be fired and then would have to leave town. None of them seemed to want to see that happen.
Grinning over thoughts of their small-town hospitality, she climbed behind the wheel of her Jeep and headed to the other end of town and the veterinary clinic she’d looked up in the phonebook yesterday.
The clinic, with its gingerbread façade, sat about a half mile from the main tourist area, down a short, pretty, tree-lined drive. The sign out front was a simple one with Veterinarian etched in bold letters.
It wasn’t until she got out of the Jeep and went to the door that her eyes narrowed.
Heidi Falke, VMD was carved into a smaller wooden plaque. So, the town vet was related to the brothers. How convenient. She wondered if this Heidi was married to one of them, or a blood relation.
In any case, if she was close to the family, the vet might have some real answers.
Beth turned the doorknob and stepped inside. The floor was Italian tile, the walls a beautiful shade of mauve. Picturesque paintings of wild animals in their natural surroundings graced those walls, including a couple of predatory looking mountain lions. Possibly the classiest vet office she’d ever entered, though it still had the scent of a clinic—antiseptic cleaner with the undertone of animal dander.
“May I help you?” a white-haired woman asked as she came through a door behind the high counter.
“I was hoping I could see Dr. Falke. I don’t have an appointment, but…” She took a quick breath.
“My name’s Elizabeth Coldwell. I’m here about the family’s pet cougar.”
The older woman smiled. “I’ll let her know she has a visitor.”
Beth stared at one painting in particular while she waited. A portrait of Falke, she was sure, though the cat in the picture wore no collar. He was big, his head held high, his ears pricked as if listening to someone.
“My mother painted those.”
Beth turned to see Heidi—the woman who’d been in the store yesterday and attended to Kelan after Beth shot him.
“They’re gorgeous,” Beth said, referring to the paintings. “Is your mother a vet too?”
Heidi’s smile was a little sad when she shook her head. “No, just a talented artist, housewife and the best mom in the world. Why don’t you come into my office?” She held the door open for Beth and motioned her through.
The back hallway was closer to what she knew of vet clinics. Linoleum flooring—easy to clean-and walls coated in eggshell paint. Heidi’s office was just as comfortable as the waiting room she discovered when she entered behind the other woman. Same color scheme, same beautiful tiles.
“Have a seat, please,” Heidi said pleasantly as she rounded the massive oak desk and sat behind it. “You’re here to talk about Falke?”
“I am. I didn’t realize you were…related to the family.” Beth sat in one of two comfortable chairs facing Heidi. “Or are you married to one of them?” After last night, she could understand the attraction. Despite her disastrous run-in with the other Falke men, she could readily admit they were all quite handsome. But she thought she could see the family resemblance. Hair color, eye color.
“Oh no. I’m their only sister and baby of the family.” She folded her hands on top of the desk and wrinkled her nose, a smile curving her lips. “Not always fun with six overbearing big brothers.”
Six? That wasn’t what Kelan had told her. Although, she vaguely remembered a couple more coming on scene in the store yesterday morning. “And a giant housecat for a pet?” she asked, not wanting little sister to know about her attraction to two of her brothers.
Heidi snickered. “Falke, if not this Falke, then another, has been around since before I was born.
It’s…well, it’s an eccentricity that’s become a family tradition, I guess you could say. My ancestors helped build this town. They were the first to accept a catamount into the family. It’s been that way ever since.”
Beth kept her expression bland, but she’d just heard two hours of information on the eccentricities of the Falkes dating back to before most of the men in the diner were born. It would seem that Kelan and Reidar weren’t the only ones who hunted for women in pairs.
But the way Heidi phrased the relationship with Falke intrigued Beth. Like her brother said the day before, No one owned Falke.
“Again, I assure you, as my brothers did yesterday, that he’s not dangerous. He was raised with us.”
“So, he was born in captivity?”
Heidi hesitated, then gave a slight nod.
“Do you have others? Females? The mother? Does Falke have littermates?”
“No, no, and no.”
Three nos, four questions. “There were littermates?”
Heidi shook her head, but she seemed uncomfortable. She picked up a pen and fiddled with it, and Beth noticed that the vet wore a unique necklace—a pewter pendant similar to the medallion on Falke’s collar—on the collars all the brothers wore. The whole family sure took their infatuation with mountain lions to extremes.
“Oh. Okay. Umm…I was wondering,” she said, meeting Heidi’s hazel-eyed gaze, “if you’d allow me to take another blood sample from him.”
“Another?” Heidi asked, her eyebrows rising.
Beth nodded, pulled the folded lab results from her purse and handed the papers to Heidi.
“There’s something strange in the genetics tests I ran on the sample I drew from Falke at the lab. As you know, cougars have thirty-eight chromosomes, yet, when I ran Falke’s test, it comes up with twenty-three pairs. That’s forty-six total, the same as humans.”