“I knowed it felt awful cold,” Dale said, trying to recall the moments before the blast. “Jake was havin’ to do all that announcing stuff with the megaphone. So he left me in charge of reheating that fried turkey of his. He told me he’d set it in the deep freezer in the shed so’s no varmints could get to it. I guess when I went to fetch it out, I picked up the wrong one.”
Dale hiccoughed, making Mom scowl.
“That moonshine you drunk didn’t help, neither,” Mom scolded. “I guess we can kiss that goodbye, too.”
Tom picked up a pink funnel from the ground. I wagged my eyebrows at him. “Bye-bye, Mary Ann.”
Mom stuck her finger in her ear and twisted it. “Did anybody hear whose fruitcake won? I think that dang explosion done took out my hearing aide.”
I glanced around the crowd, but all I saw was a sea of dazed faces, and Aunt Pansy busily picking shrapnel out of her fruit salad.
AFTER ASSESSING THE minor damages to kinfolk, side dishes and fruitcakes, everybody decided it was time to get on with the Jolly family Christmas lunch, such as it was. We all worked our way along the buffet spread, setting any explosion debris in little piles between the dishes. At the end of the table, carved into heaps of dark and light meat, was Uncle Jake’s fried turkey. It was cold, but the deep freezer had shielded it from the explosion.
“Let the Christmas Buffet commence!” Uncle Jake announced over the megaphone as we all took our places around the folding tables.
Hoots and hollers sounded around the table. We all raised our glasses of sweet tea to make a toast.
“To family!” Uncle Jake said. “Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em.”
“To family!” everyone hollered.
“And now, without further ado, Miss Tabitha Barfield will finish announcing the winner of this year’s Family Fruitcake Frenzy.”
Tabitha started to stand up, but fell back in her seat again. No doubt she was tipsy from all that boozy cake tasting.
“I see Tabitha’s off her meds again,” Mom sneered.
Tabitha’s second attempt at standing was more successful. She wobbled as she took the megaphone. “Thanks again to all who participated,” she began. “This year’s winning fruitcake belongs to...Lucille Jolly-Short...
The crowd groaned. Mom grinned like Freddie Kruger.
...and Miss Val Fremden. It’s a tie!”
I heard someone scream, but I couldn’t tell who it was amongst all the cheers and hoots and hollers.
“Yeeesssss!” I shouted. I shot Mom a smirk and a waggled my head at her.
“Careful, there Val,” Mom groused. “That high horse you’re ridin’ makes your butt look bigger.”
I laughed out loud. Not even Mom was going to take this victory away from me. I grinned and kissed Mom on the cheek. “Looks like you’re gonna have to learn to share, Mom.”
Mom turned her nose up and wiped my kiss away.
“It wasn’t an easy call,” said Tabitha as she walked up to us. “Lucille, you got taken down a notch by that pecan shell. You might be slipping.”
Mom grunted.
“And Val, your fruitcake was a hum-dinger. It went down like a fat kid on a greasy slide. But it didn’t quite have that...that ‘certain something.’”
Mom smirked to herself, then her face went sad. That “certain something” had just been blown to smithereens.
AS WE CLEANED UP THE aftermath of yet another festive holiday bloodletting, Tom was brimming with unanswered questions. As we washed up some of the surviving dishes, Tom and I had a chance to catch up and relive the highlights of the day.
“What was all that with the Tammy meltdown?” Tom asked. “The shopping bags of booze?”
“The way I see it, Tammy bought out the spiced rum at my Publix in hopes I couldn’t find any more, thus ruining my chances of re-making my fruitcake. Either that or she was going to use it herself. But then she found out about the castor oil.”
“Right,” Tom said. “The castor oil. What was up with that?”
“Same strategy, different grocery store. Mom tricked Tammy into thinking castor oil was her secret winning ingredient.”
Tom grimaced. “Castor oil?”
“Hey, like Mom said. You can’t fix stupid. Speaking of stupid, your phone call with the guys. The mayor’s place. What’s up with that?”
“Goober told me about Rich’s ‘big job’ at the mayor’s.” Tom shook his head. “You won’t believe it. The guy’s in charge of taking care of the mayor’s dog, Val. Rich is a human pooper scooper.”
“Yuck! But wait. How did Goober know that about Rich?”
“Goober said Rich handed him a flyer about a lost dog.”
“Still, how did Goober know who Rich was?”
“He didn’t. But when Goober described the guy’s nose....” Tom made a face that finished his sentence.
“Gee. That’s too bad. I was kind of hoping Rich would be the guy for Tammy.”
Tom smiled and kissed me. “That’s pretty charitable of you. And, hey. You never know. He still may be.”
A thought hit me like a hammer between the eyes. I pulled away from Tom. “I didn’t get you anything!”
Tom jumped back, startled. “What?”
“For Christmas. I didn’t get you anything. I...I just wanted to come clean now. I thought about a pocket knife. Then it seemed so lame....”
Tom laughed and hugged me tight. “Val, you don’t need to get me anything. This trip has been enough.”
I cringed and looked into his sea-green eyes. “Well, you did survive. That’s a gift, in a way, right?”
“It has certainly been memorable, I’ll give you that. And, as I recall, you did promise me it was going to be a blast.”
I WENT TO BED THAT night relieved. I’d survived another Christmas at my mother’s. I was all settled in, snug on the couch when I heard my cellphone buzz. It was Milly.
“Merry Christmas, Milly.”
“Merry Christmas, Val! I’m engaged!”
“What? Engaged?”
“Yes!”
“I’m so...so happy for you.”
“You sound more worried than happy.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just so surprising. And soon. I don’t want you to get in over your head, Milly.”
“I’m tired of using my head, Val. Love isn’t logical. And it doesn’t run on some imaginary schedule. It just happens, even when you don’t want it to.”
“Okay. But answer me this, Milly. How do you know Vance is the one?”
“I don’t know. It’s like...have you ever talked on the phone with somebody you’ve never met, then one day you meet that person and they don’t look anything like you imagined?”
“Uh...yeah, I guess.”
“Val, love is like that. Somehow your heart knows who that one special person is. You might not know them when you see them, but you know them when you feel them. Does that make sense?”
“Kind of, but not really.”
“Exactly!”
I laughed. “It sounds like you’ve found the perfect guy, Milly. I’m happy for you and Vance. Tell him Merry Christmas from me.”
“I will. Merry Christmas, Val.”
I clicked the phone off, set it on the coffee table and lay back on the couch. I truly was happy for Milly. Unlike me, she knew what she wanted. I settled into the covers. After all the anxiety I’d caused myself with my crazy thoughts about marriage, Tom hadn’t bought me a ring after all. Part of me was disappointed, but a big part of me was relieved.
I closed my eyes and sighed. I was in the clear for another year. All of a sudden, joy shot through me like an electric charge. My eyes flew open and an ear-to-ear grin spread across my face. I’d kicked Mom’s butt in the fruitcake competition! Woo hoo!
Chapter Thirty-Four
“I WANT YOU TO KNOW that I had me a big time,” Tom said as he hugged Mom and Dale goodbye.
I smiled at Tom’s effort to speak redneck as we stood at the front door
, suitcases packed, itching to get on with our trip back home. I patted Dawson on the head. The old hound looked a lot perkier this morning. He’d survived his fruitcake hangover. Mom, however, was another story. I could tell she was stewing about our tie in the Family Fruitcake Frenzy. The news had swept through the family grapevine like wildfire, and the calls she’d received yesterday had been somewhat less than congratulatory.
I hugged Mom. She stiffened in my arms. “Thanks for everything,” I said.
“Harrumph,” she grunted.
Tom eyed me, grinned, and shook Dale’s hand. “What’s the secret to a happy marriage, Mr. Short?”
Dale squinted up at Tom through his thick lenses. “Moonshine, son. It’ll make you do things you regret...but then it’ll make you forget ‘em, too.”
“Regrets!” Mom snorted. “Regrets ain’t any more use than standing on your tippy-toes to reach your own zipper.”
“Oh!” Dale exclaimed and looked my way. “I almost forgot to give you your Christmas present, Val.” He padded off in the direction of the kitchen.
“Here’s yours from me,” Mom said, and grudgingly handed over the petrified fruitcake trophy.
“Thanks, Mom. But...I didn’t get you anything.”
“You came. Like you said you would,” Mom said flatly. “That’ll have to do.”
I pushed the fruitcake back into her hands. “Here. You keep it, for now.”
Mom’s sour face sweetened a notch. As she shoved the fruitcake under her arm, Dale ambled back, toting two moonshine jugs. “I squeezed two jugs outta Mary Ann before the blast,” he said.
“What?” I asked. “Is this...the new Justas juice?”
Dale nodded with pride. “Yep. And it’s all yours, Val.”
“Thank you, Dale!” I hugged his slender frame, then took a jug and handed it to Tom. As I reached for the other jug, Mom swatted my hand away.
“Nothin’ doin’,” Mom barked. “Dale Short, one of them’s mine.”
She grabbed the second jug out of his hand and stared me down. Her cross, pouting face was no surprise, but her eyes caught me off guard. They hinted at...oh my word...respect! My mouth fell open.
“Now we’re even, Val,” Mom grunted. She nodded once and grinned at me like an unhinged bounty hunter. “May the best fruitcake win...next year.”
TOM AND I PILED OUR luggage into his SUV and climbed inside the escape pod. He put his hands on the steering wheel and looked over me. “Are you okay?”
“I guess. Why?”
“’Cause you look kind of stunned. Or sad. Wait a minute. Are you sorry to leave?” He winked at me. “They warned me that redneck roots can run deep.”
I sneered. “Not that deep.”
Tom laughed. “Even though it comes off looking like a grudge match, Val, your family loves you, you know.”
I smiled sourly. “Start the car, Tom. Let’s get out of here before the humidity puffs up my hair like Jiffy Pop.”
Tom shot me a grin. “You know, that Ricky was right.”
“What do you mean?”
Tom laid on his best redneck accent. “He told me you was a keeper.”
I laughed and backhanded his thigh. “Shut up!”
“All right. Just sayin’.” Tom kissed me, shifted into drive and pulled onto the dirt road.
As we bumped along the ruts in the red clay, I realized Tom was right. I was sad to leave. But I was also grateful as hell to be getting out of Hicksville. I breathed a long sigh of relief, as if I’d awoken from a nightmare and remembered I actually had passed all my final exams.
I relaxed and settled myself in for the long drive home. But the peaceful, easy feeling didn’t last long. We’d barely made it to the paved road when Tom punch me in the gut with a question from out of the blue.
“Val, do you know anything about the guys making a pet crematorium in their backyard?”
I jerked up in my seat. “Uh...what?”
Tom eyed me in his cop kind of way. “When I talked to Goober yesterday. He said Winky almost ate a cat leg off the grill. Jorge stopped him just in time. What the heck’s going on there?”
At that instant my cellphone rang, like a post-Christmas miracle.
“Wait a minute,” I said, and clicked the green answer button. “It’s Winky. You can ask him about it yourself. I’ll put him on speaker.”
“Hey, there, you two! Merry Christmas!” Winky’s voice blared out from my phone. Tom and I smiled at each other.
“Merry Christmas, Winky,” I answered back. “Did you and the gang have a good one?”
“We sure did. Not to brag nor nothin’, but we become kind a famous whilst you two was up there gallivanting around.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, you remember that story about us Three X-migos in the Beachcomber Busy Bee paper?”
Tom shot me a “What-the-hell?” stare.
“Yes...,” I said.
“Well, that there story got us enough work lined up to keep us busy ‘til New Year’s.”
“That’s great.”
“That ain’t all. Yore gonna love this, Val. When me and Winnie got back from Lakeland, we wasn’t ten minutes in the door when the dad-burned doorbell rang. It was that reporter gal, from the Bee, back to do what she called a ‘follow-up.’ Well, I thanked her kindly for her article, and told her that due to the publicity of it and all, me and the fellers prob’ly didn’t have to do no more pet cremations to make ends meet.”
I exchanged horrified looks with Tom. “Winky! You didn’t!”
“I shore did! You two should’a been there! That lady’s eyes lit up like a drunk on a beer-mas tree! She started asking all kind a questions about what we was up to. I give her the grand tour. Even showed her the grill.”
I cringed. “But not the freezer, right?”
Tom shot me a “Who are you?” look.
“Gaul-dang it, Val, that was the best part!” Winky bellowed. “I nearly fell out laughing when I opened the freezer door. That woman screamed louder’n you did. Then she fainted dead away. But I got to hand it to her. She was a true professional, I tell you. When she come to, she got over it real quick-like, and wrote down all the details.”
“Winky...that might not have been such a good idea....”
“Why not, Val? I figured there what’n no harm, seeing as how Hap-Pet-Ly Ever After was run by a bona fide officer of the law. It ought to have been on the up-an-up and all that.”
“A police officer?” Tom asked, his voice cracking. “Who?”
“Well, Hans Jergen, a-course,” Winky answered. “Didn’t Val show you the picture of old Hans at the party?”
“What?” Tom yelped. He looked me in the eye. “You knew Hans Jergen was behind that?”
Winky answered before I could stutter out a reply. “Yep. And when that reporter lady found out old Hansy was the son of the police chief, she took to hootin’ and hollerin’ like a regular ol’ hillbilly!”
“Oh dear lord,” Tom moaned.
“But I guess it wasn’t so legit as we thought, Val. Come to find out, this morning they fired old Hans Jergen for ‘conduct unbefitting an officer.’ I seen it on the news. Poor feller looked like a pit bull on death row.”
“Geeze,” Tom muttered and shook his head.
“Well, like they say, if the suit fits, wear it,” Winky said. “But don’t feel too bad about it Tom. They said on TV that after Jergen pays a $10,000 bond, he’ll be released on his own repugnance.”
My face cracked a tiny smile. I couldn’t help but snicker. “How appropriate.”
“Listen,” Winky said. “I gots to go. Let’s get together when you two get back in town.”
“Sure thing.” I clicked off the phone. Tom pulled his SUV to the side of the road, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.
“You knew?” Tom he growled.
“I only found out on the way up here,” I whined in my defense. “I figured it could all wait until after Christmas. I was going to chec
k it out before I bothered you with it.”
“Before you bothered me?” Tom shook his head. “That’s not the reason. You wanted to play Valiant Stranger. You wanted to investigate this on your own, didn’t you?”
“You make it sound like...it wasn’t like that –” I pleaded.
Tom stared, his face blank and resolved. “After all the trouble these exploits get you into, you can’t give them up. Admit it.”
“Well...okay. Maybe there’s a tiny bit of truth to that, Tom. But I wanted to make sure of the facts. I mean, who would believe that a police lieutenant would moonlight as a cat cremator?”
Tom studied me with an unreadable glare. I bit my lip and thought about spilling my guts. Should I tell him about how I’d read through Jergen’s tax returns earlier in the year and found out about Pet Patrol? How Pet Patrol turned out to be the business behind Hap-Pet-Ly Ever After? How I knew something bad was up because the mere mention of Pet Patrol to Jergen had been threatening enough to get him off Tom’s back? But from the look on Tom’s face, I could have been pouring gasoline on the fire....
“I’m sorry, Tom. I meant well. Honest. I mean, what should I have done?”
“I don’t know,” Tom barked. He shook his head at me, bewildered. “Cat cremator,” he whispered. “Lord almighty.” Then, like a dam breaking loose, the tension in Tom’s face let go. He snickered once, then burst out laughing. Relieved, I laughed along with him. And when our eyes met, we lost it. We screamed with laughter, and kept on laughing and laughing until our bodies shook and we could laugh no more.
JUST OUTSIDE GREENVILLE, we stopped on Highway 90 to get gas. While Tom topped off the tank, I took the opportunity to scout out some local delicacies.
“Want and RC Cola and a moon pie?” I asked as I climbed out the passenger side door.
“Sounds great,” Tom said. “Grab me a banana one, if they’ve got it.”
I grinned. “I’m sure they will.”
The shabby little convenience store didn’t disappoint. As I climbed back into the SUV beside Tom with the colas and moon pies, Tom ambushed me. He thrust a small, unwrapped box toward me just as I took a sip of RC. I saw it and spewed cola all over the dashboard like a burst pipe.
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