Cora didn’t bother to ask how. News traveled fast around Sunrise. She sat down, clutching the mug of coffee that had magically appeared in front of her.
Bea eyed her over the cookie tin she’d just popped open. “Spill the beans, honey. What brings our big-city girl back to Sunrise?”
Cora took a gulp of coffee for courage, instantly regretting it as it scalded her tongue. “Well, I?—”
“She met Jack Harlow,” Aggie cut in. “His truck was parked out back last night.”
Bea’s eyebrows shot up so fast Cora thought they might launch right off her forehead. “Jack Harlow? Oh, honey. That boy is trouble with a capital T-R-O-U-B-L-E.”
Winston tapped the table with his palm, his expression thoughtful. “Now, now. The Harlows might have a...colorfulhistory, but in my experience, there’s always more to the story.” He smiled mysteriously and, for a second, Cora half expected him to pull out a pipe and start puffing away. Winston was always convinced there was more to the story. And he was usually right, but he had a habit of being so long-winded about it that everyone gave up before they made it to the end.
Aggie pursed her lips. “Listen, Cora. Men like Jack are like exotic peppers—tempting, but they’ll leave you with nothing but heartburn and regrets.”
“Hold up,” Cora protested, setting her mug down with a clunk. “He seemed perfectly fine. He was only cooking.”And looking entirely too good while breaking and entering, she added silently.
She narrowed her eyes at the trio. “I thought he worked here. Lolly wouldn’t have let him into her kitchen if she thought he was bad news.”
Aggie snorted. “Remember that drummer she hired to be a server? Said he was between gigs and just needed a little work to get back on his feet. Turned out he was living in the storage closet and trying to brew his own kombucha in the mop bucket.”
“Lolly had to throw out everything that touched that floor.” Bea shuddered at the memory.
“Well, Jack doesn’t look like the mop-bucket kombucha type,” Cora said.
“No,” Aggie agreed, “he looks like the kind of man who knows he’s dangerous and doesn’t bother hiding it. Broody. Mysterious. Too quiet for his own good. Back in high school, he was always one step away from a suspension. I heard he wrecked his dirt bike outrunning a deputy, got caught sneaking into the marina, and there was that whole mess with the bait shack fire nobody ever proved was his fault. He up and vanished after graduation, then he just shows up again out of the blue? Seems like the kind of man you should steer clear of.”
Bea crossed her arms. “And don’t forget, he’s a Harlow. That name alone could clear a potluck faster than a fire drill.”
“Then why did Lolly hire him?” Cora asked.
“Never could figure that out,” Aggie said. “And he didn’tgive us much of a chance to either. He kept to himself. Came in at odd hours, always through the back door like a raccoon with a key. By the time we showed up for coffee, he was always long gone.”
Bea nodded. “For a while, we thought he was a rumor. Like Bigfoot, but with better hair.”
Cora blinked. “So he just skulks around here like a creeper, cooking in secret and then vanishing?”
“You know Lolly was tight-lipped when she wanted to be.” Winston tapped his pencil on the table in front of him. “She said he needed a place to land, and she wasn’t about to judge a man by his family tree.”
Before Cora could respond, the door burst open, and in tumbled Leonard Hathaway, Lolly’s attorney, looking like a startled squirrel, all twitchy energy and wide-eyed panic. His suit, at least two sizes too big, hung off his lanky frame as if he’d borrowed it from a better-fed relative, and his tie looked like a flower shop and a geometry textbook had gotten into a brawl.
“Miss Lockwood,” he wheezed, glasses askew. “We need to talk. It’s about the sale of the café.”
The room went silent.
“I’m sorry, did you say ‘sale’?” Winston asked, his voice dangerously calm.
Leonard’s eyes went wide as he finally registered the audience. He fidgeted, his oversized pants swishing like windbreakers. “Oh. Um, is there somewhere we can talk privately?”
Aggie slapped the table, cutting through the tension. “We’re family here, Leonard. Spit it out.”
Cora took a deep breath, ready to explain. “Guys, I need to tell you something. I didn’t come back to?—”
“Hold on,” Aggie said, holding up one hand. “Leonard, back it up. I need to make sure I’m not losing my mind here.”She turned to Cora. “Cora, were you about to say you were planning to sell the café?”
Cora’s throat suddenly went dry. This was not how she wanted this to go. “Yeah, that’s what I was about to tell you. I was...Iamplanning to sell The Spoon.” She glanced around at the faces she knew so well, the people who’d watched her grow up, shared countless meals with her, and seen her cry into her banana pudding more times than she’d care to admit. “I didn’t come back to stay forever. The plan was to?—”
“You can’t sell the café,” Leonard blurted out, his voice rushed and panicked. “Because there’s a lien against it.”
All eyes shot to Leonard, then back to Cora, like they were following a chaotic ping-pong match.
