“Slow morning?” I asked the bespectacled, middle-aged Pippi Longstocking-type behind the counter. I’d settled on a stool at The Daily Diner in Eureka, Montana, after the grueling drive through the mountains. I was ready for a hot cup of joe and a fattening meal.

“Small town,” she explained. Bright red hair swept her forehead, with the bulk of her mane tucked inside a white chef’s beret. A coral dress kept her buxom curves under control beneath a red and white striped apron. “Folks get to work with sunrise. I keep serving until noon for travelers and riffraff.” She offered a warm smile to go with the joke. 

“And we appreciate it,” I replied with my own disarming grin.

She offered coffee and I took a cup.

After the “accident” on my shortcut through Choteau, US-2 West led me around the southern end of Glacier National Park, into Columbia Falls and on to Whitefish. The zero-hour, ditch-side scenic view had cost me and I chanced a speeding ticket to make up time. 

Predawn darkness and blurred scenery couldn’t stop a flood of childhood memories. High mountains dripping spring water onto the rich scent of pine and earthy moss on frosted glaciers. Tart mountain berries, peppery beef jerky and Renée’s bony elbows jabbing into my side. Two of us smooshed between Mom and Dad with the added security of an old-school lap belt. 

“Got a country-fried steak that’ll take the edge off,” the hostess offered, breaking my reverie.

“Sounds perfect,” I replied. 

She glided over to the order window while my thoughts jumped back in time. Tucked in under a million stars in the hard bed of Dad’s ’59 Chevy Apache. Dad’s spicy scent keeping us in line. Mom’s unrestrained laughter. Bittersweet recollections from a reality so far gone it was like a scene from a movie whose title you can’t quite recall. 

The drive had flattened out on US-93 into Eureka. Lodgepole pines lined the road, providing the tunnel vision I needed to cover the final fifty miles of asphalt. 

Dawn came late in the mountains, and I’d stepped onto Eureka’s Main Street under yellowish sodium lighting at 6 a.m. The air smelled mountain-crisp with a hint of natural electricity. The child was missing something like thirty-three hours. A fact that concentrated an intoxicating buzz onto the base of my skull. 

The narrow space of The Daily Diner closed in like a coffin. Four booths beneath a plate-glass window offset its fifteen-foot counter. Quaint as a 1920s Norman Rockwell. Three suitable customers occupied eternity in the cramped booths. If I’d stepped into a painting, its surreal quality didn’t quench my hunger.

“You’ve traveled a bit,” the diner maven said with the certainty of bartenders, soothsayers and small-town cafe workers. 

“Ain’t it the truth.” I provided a half-smile. “Drove six hundred miles looking for my sister, Renée Pierce. Maybe you know of her. She’s a friend of Vicky Peale.” 

Her thick eyebrows shifted higher. “You’re the hunky brother of that fragile rockbrake that runs with Victoria?” Her radiant smile invited me closer. 

“How’s that? She’s earned a nickname?”

“The Rockbrake Twins. It’s what I call them.”

“Rockbrake,” I repeated, imagining an ancient native sparking two rocks together to make a primitive spearhead. “Sounds right.”

“It’s a wisp of a mountain flower, darlin’. Grows out of cracked stone.”

That tuned up the visual of the last time I saw Renée and Vicky together. I nodded. “Makes sense. So, you know the Peale family I’d guess.”  

A misfit in a suit sat beside me at the counter. He hitched himself further over a half-eaten piece of pie. An older adult couple sitting in the corner booth glanced our way.

“Can’t help but know that crew. Don’t need town gossip with a couple like Aidan and Lorna.” She swiped the counter with a towel. “Get your belly full and I’ll point you in the right direction.”

“Can’t argue with that wisdom, Miss…?”

“Faye’ll do. Steak settles a little heavy but it’ll make the day go easier after driving all night under the Big Sky.”

I sipped coffee and eyed a newspaper on the counter next to that grizzled octogenarian with the wrinkled suit and two days’ beard. A whiskey thief of the first order. The paper’s headline mentioned timber restrictions that threatened local loggers. No word of a missing child. Seemed prudent to let him be, though I was aching for a peek inside.

“You’ve got some weather around here,” I said.

The oldster ignored me.

Faye leaned two forearms on the Formica. “We call it Indian Spring.” Spearmint fresh breath followed her words, and her eyes twinkled under thick eyebrows. “Lures you into false security.” Her voice lowered so the whiskey thief would not hear. “You must’a come hither to dig up that darling child of theirs.” 

The phrase startled a heartbeat out of me. “You think she’s dead?”

She pushed back a foot. “Lordy, no!” 

Hands raised in surrender, I said, “Good to hear.” I curled my fingers back around my cup. “No point sticking around for a funeral.”

“Lookie who’s the hard heart now.”

“Sorry, Faye.” This woman talked as if she had information I might need. It was best to keep her friendly. “Looking for lost things gives a body plenty of reason to prepare for the worst.”

She pursed her lips and nodded. “I can see that.”

“Last bit of work netted a dead horse and an angry cowboy.” I left out the night in jail. Might be too soon in our relationship for that. “I try to keep an emotional distance as much as I can,” I concluded while holding a loose fist over my heart.

“Bit of a change from that sister of yours.”

“How’s that?”

“She’s no softy. Rockbrake, remember? Grows out of stone cracks. But her heart blossomed for the child.” Faye stepped off to pour another cup for Whiskey Thief. She spoke to him sternly, her words indiscernible to the rest of us in the diner. She came back with a grin. “Love to give that man hell,” she whispered. “Broke his wife’s heart with the drinking.”

“It’s good she has a champion,” I said, meaning more the young child than Whiskey’s matrimonial partner. 

Faye nodded and took the coffeepot around to the couple in the corner. The murmur of small talk hid behind the hum of an ice machine. Tinny country music played overhead. The odor of grilling meat made me wonder how long until the meal.

Faye returned. “Everyone wants to know about the handsome stranger who rolls into town.”

My expression challenged her discretion.

“Don’t worry. I didn’t tell them you’re a dandy detective on the hunt for the Peale child. They’ll figure that out for themselves soon enough.” She winked. “Gossip is a commodity in a small town cafe.”

“More dangerous than playing with a loaded gun,” I said.

“You have me there.” She smirked.

“Speaking of,” I said. “I could use a little insider information. Might help to get this deal done. If the Peale child really is missing, every minute means she’s a little further gone. If not, it’d be nice to get home to my own little girl.”

She honed in on that last bit. “A cutie, I’m sure. And a might ornery like her pa?” 

I raised an eyebrow. “Possibly.” 

“That Peale child.” Faye carefully patted the faultless curve of her hairdo. “Kayla, they call her. Got more curiosity than an alley cat.” A brisk sidestep allowed her to top off Whiskey’s coffee. 

The round bottom of the carafe scraped against the worn burner. A sound that scratched the hairs on the back of my neck, sending a shiver down my spine.

“Kayla’s the latest in the arsenal for them two knuckleheads,” she said.

“Fight a lot, do they?”

She ignored the prompt. “I looked after the older, Victoria, back in the day. This Kayla, though, she has it harder than her big sister did.”

“You don’t babysit Kayla, then.” I glanced around the diner. “Not if you’re here keeping this crowd happy.”

A quick scowl and a swish of her professionally coiffed hair confirmed my guess. “Poor child. Bounced back and forth between Daddy’s junkyard asylum and Mommy’s brothel.”

“Renée mentioned the dad is a bit off,” I said.

Faye pursed her lips. “Crazy, that man. Madder than any hatter from a storybook.” 

“Really?”  I asked. “Why say it like that?”

Her gaze held a secret polite people weren’t supposed to share. Before she could elaborate, the customers in the booth caught her attention, and she stepped away to assist them.

My thoughts turned darker than the coffee. This tale became more tangled by the minute. Who were these unstable parents? How did they let things get so out of control?

Faye reappeared on the other side of the counter from me. She jumped right into the scuttlebutt. 

“Aidan stalks the town blathering nonsense attacks on a person’s character like an acid-fried hippie. Otherwise, he hides out in his junk pile dreaming of a crystal palace or some such.” She took a breath to make sure Whiskey hadn’t perked up from his walking coma. 

“When the mood strikes, he tucks the little urchin Kayla in a hidey-hole in his junk pile to make her mother crazy. That Lorna. Always a new man with her. Latest is a handy-man,” she winked, “‘bout half her age. Damn lucky for her that Victoria cottons to females or we’d have a cat fight at the cathouse.” The joke flushed her face to Cadillac-pink. “Gets everyone in town stirred up, searching high and low. Two, three days, one time near a week, kid shows up right as rain. Everyone standing around with a handful of their own hair.” 

“My sister mixed up in all this?”

Faye leaned in once more. “I see that poor child dragged hither and yon like a kitten on a leash.” The sparkle in her eye became electric. “Your sister’s collusion comes out of genuine fear for the young child. Won’t surprise me a bit if the whole ordeal kills that love affair between those Rockbrake Twins.” Clouds drifted over the lightning. “My, my. Ain’t it like an episode of that new show Survivor?” She stepped back, cooling off a little with the move, to tend to the other customers.

I sat with the baffling story, watching it swirl around the bottom of my coffee cup. I should ask for a refill. In a to-go cup. This wasn’t a place for me. Not the kind of case you sort motives and missteps to uncover a missing horse or saddle. I needed to get on home, resurrect the deal with Johnny Horton Martin, and forget sleuthing. 

My cup was lifting off just as Faye slid a steaming plate beneath it. She took the mug out of my grip for a refill and replaced it neatly beside my knife hand.

“It’s good they got you, Connor. That crew needs a bomb tech before the whole damn thing explodes.”

Whiskey grunted. Maybe it was a weak bourbon cough. 

I picked up my fork and blade to cut into the gravy-laden beef. Do I stay and save the day? Or go home and save my own life?

The meat cut easily and tasted right. Its tenderness and comforting flavor calmed me. 

Most of the attention paid to the little girl lost went to local entertainment. No talk of someone who could actually save her if she needed saving. Maybe Faye was right, and I was the one could get the job done. Renée might even take kindly to that and return home to help me float the dealership off of that high chaparral sandbar.

I finished the steak, the green beans and most of the mashed potatoes. The clinkety-clank of my utensils coincided with Faye’s arrival, steaming styrofoam cup in hand.

“You’ll need this, I reckon.” She gave a minty salute. “Still got to round up that sister of yours and make it through a long day on right little shuteye.”

I handed her a twenty. “Keep it. For your wisdom. It’s likely to come in handy by the end of this trip.” 

The weather outside was freakishly mild. Good thing, because I needed something authentically frightening to wake my ass up.