Dollar Daze

by Gillespie, Karin

  “Of all the nerve! I never imagined you could stoop this low.” Birdie swung her buggy around. “Go on, then, make a fool of yourself. I simply don’t care.”

  She stormed down the aisle, leaving behind a stunned and shaken Mavis.

  Twenty-One

  Do vegetarians eat animal crackers?

  ~ Sign outside Boomer’s Butcher shop

  Elizabeth’s eyes sprung open as streaks of lemon-yellow sunlight slanted in the bedroom through the blinds. Glenda! Something had to be wrong. Her daughter was as regimented as a boot-camp recruit, always rising at six a.m. or earlier. But, judging by the amount of sunlight filtering into the room, it had to be at least seven o’clock.

  She flung off the covers and was about to tear off to the nursery when her nose picked up the smell of perking coffee. She also heard the sizzle of bacon in the cast-iron skillet. Timothy had obviously gotten Glenda out of her crib and was now making breakfast.

  Yesterday he’d brought home an oversized box of Godiva chocolates. The day before, it was a bag of yogurt-coated pretzels. If Elizabeth didn’t forgive Timothy soon, her walk was going to turn into a waddle.

  She slipped her feet into a pair of fuzzy mules lying beside the four-poster rice bed and padded into the kitchen. There she stood in the hallway, silently watching Timothy feed Glenda a baby-food jar of peaches.

  “Zoom!” he said to Glenda, whose chin was sluiced with orange goo. He twitched the spoon inches in front of her pursed rosebud lips. “Come on, into the hangar.”

  Timothy wore a cable-knit sweater that made his eyes look as blue as the hydrangeas that bloomed outside the back door in the summer. Dark bangs loped over his forehead as he leaned down to refill his spoon with peaches. Elizabeth found herself holding her breath.

  He could still do it to her. Still make her palms sweaty, still speed up the percussion of her heart. She’d always love him, even if he infuriated her.

  “That bacon I smell had better be crisp,” Elizabeth said as she perched on a stool at the breakfast nook.

  Timothy dropped the baby’s spoon and it clattered on the tray of Glenda’s high chair. “Elizabeth, you’re talking to me?”

  “Only because I’m hungry.” She banged her fist on the counter. “Where’s the chow?”

  “Elizabeth, I’m so sorry. It was wrong of me. I shouldn’t have ever bought that Nanny Cam. I promise you—”

  Elizabeth covered her ears with her hands. “Enough. I’ve heard it a million times. Last night I think you were even apologizing in your sleep. Let’s put it behind us. Okay?”

  “Deal,” Timothy said with a relieved smile. “The queen will get her breakfast as soon as the princess is fed.”

  “Thanks, by the way, for getting Glenda up. I don’t think I’ve slept that long since she was born.”

  “I could do it more often. I don’t mind—”

  “No,” Elizabeth said. “It’s my job. I’ll get up with Glenda like always.”

  Later, after Timothy left for work (lingering in the foyer, blowing kisses until she had to shove him out the door), Elizabeth tried on a half-dozen pairs of too-tight pants before she settled on a burgundy corduroy jumper that she could pull over her ever-widening hips.

  There’d be no lollygagging on the couch today. Yesterday she’d gotten a call from Patsy Dinkins, who lived behind the house Elizabeth had inherited from her grandmother.

  “Your renters packed up every stick of their furniture and left in the dead of the night,” Patsy reported. “Maybe you’d best check on the house.”

  Ever since she’d acquired Meemaw’s old house, Elizabeth had struggled to keep it rented. Tenants came and went, and the aging home was always in need of some kind of repair. Elizabeth wasn’t cut out to be a landlord, but she didn’t want to sell the place. She’d been raised by her grandmother and had spent the first eighteen years of her life in that house. The hardwood hallways were scuffed with her shoe marks, and the walls bore traces of her crayon scribblings.

  Still, she dreaded the task of trying to find new tenants. The people she’d rented it to last, a couple called the Hendricks, had seemed stable enough. They’d come to Cayboo Creek to work at the kaolin company just outside of town, and their rent payment always arrived on or before the first of the month. They were also relatively undemanding tenants. In six months they’d called her only once, to complain about an ant infestation in the kitchen.

  When Elizabeth had accompanied the exterminator to the house, all the beds were made and the aging appliances in the kitchen gleamed from good, old-fashioned elbow grease. She’d begun to regard the Hendricks as ideal tenants. What would cause them to steal off like thieves in the middle of the night?

  Half an hour later, Elizabeth pulled into the driveway of Meemaw’s old house. The forties-style brick ranch was located on the outskirts of a subdivision called Dogwood Village, and several commercial establishments were encroaching on the once-sleepy residential area. A florist was setting up shop across the street, and two blocks down an auto insurance office had opened up next to a dry-cleaning establishment.

  Elizabeth studied the house’s facade for a minute before going inside. Nothing had changed since her last visit, except the spacious picture window out front was now bare of curtains. Pine straw had collected on the striped metal awnings above the door and windows, causing them to sag from the weight. She made a mental note to hire someone to get on the roof with a rake.

  Holding Glenda in her arms, Elizabeth trudged up the concrete driveway, noticing several dark splotches. Hadn’t she once heard that pouring kitty litter on oil stains would soak up the grime? Maybe she could do that herself before she rented the house again.

  A few pieces of mail were stuffed in the aluminum box just outside the front door. Elizabeth collected the envelopes and turned her key in the lock, almost expecting Pierre, Meemaw’s bedraggled poodle, to jump up on her legs as soon as she entered. But there was no Pierre to greet her as she stepped inside. There was only the steady hum of the refrigerator and the stuffy, closed-up odor of the house.

  Her eyes searched the large, sunny living room, looking, as always, for reminders of her childhood. There was a shiny swatch of pink ribbon entangled in the brass chandelier above her head where her granddaddy—whom she called Peepaw—had hung balloons for her sweet-sixteen party. She smiled up at it as she left the empty living room and went down the hall, where there was a small built-in shelf for the telephone. Elizabeth searched until she spied a faint phone number, written in blue ballpoint, crawling up the wall beside the alcove.

  It was Clip Jenkins’s number, her high-school sweetheart. She’d doodled it nearly twelve years ago as she sat on a swivel stool in the hall talking on the phone.

  Drifting into the kitchen, she could almost hear the clang of pots and skillets over the hulking gas stove and smell the piquant aroma of fatback and black-eyed peas simmering over blue flames on the black iron burners. She could practically taste Meemaw’s oatmeal-raisin cookies, so crisp they’d snap when you broke them in half.

  Now, besides the appliances, the kitchen was stripped bare. Elizabeth could see the ghostly outline of pans on the wall where they’d once hung from hooks. She poked her nose into the pantry and found shelves dusty with flour and cornstarch. An opened package of saltines and a couple of cans of beets were the only things left behind by her former tenants. Equally empty was the Frigidaire. A squashed-in bottle of mustard lay on its side on the wire shelves of the refrigerator, and the icebox contained a freezer-burned bag of mixed vegetables.

  Elizabeth set the mail down on the counter, thinking how sad it was to see Meemaw’s kitchen so empty. It had been a beehive of activity when she was a child.

  Glenda was getting restless, squirming and making discontented grunting noises. Everything looked in order. Her tenants may have fled without warning, but at least they hadn’t damaged the house or
left it a mess.

  Elizabeth decided to glance into the bedrooms, sort through the mail, and head home. Then she’d place a “house for rent” ad in the Cayboo Creek Crier.

  A knock sounded on the door. Elizabeth crossed the recently installed blue carpet of the living room and peered out one of the three diamond-shaped windows that were lined up vertically in the front door.

  “Boomer!” She swung open the door. “This is a surprise.”

  “Hi, sugar bean. What’s shaking?” He wore a big, puffy coat with a far-lined hood that made him look like a bald, wide-eyed Eskimo. When he gathered her up in an enthusiastic hug, she felt like she was being mauled by a bear.

  “Boomer, I think you might be smooshing the baby,” Elizabeth said in a muffled voice.

  Boomer dropped his embrace and closely eyeballed Glenda, who stared back at him with a cautious gaze. “You smooshed, kid? Don’t fret. If your Uncle Boomer made a dent in you, it’ll pop right out.”

  “If you say so,” Elizabeth said with a smile. Boomer was not really Glenda’s uncle. He’d been Meemaw’s beau before she’d died of a stroke two years ago.

  “So, I see Bonnie and Clyde have fled the hideout.” Boomer stepped inside and glanced about the living room.

  “I guess so. Meemaw’s neighbor Patsy called me and told me the Hendricks took off in a U-Haul about two this morning.”

  “Patsy called me, too. I was here earlier, and so was the fuzz.”

  “Fuzz?”

  Boomer’s eyes narrowed. “The man, the coppers. The long arm of the law.”

  “What were the police doing here?” Elizabeth asked with alarm.

  “Asking questions. Turns out there was some moolah missing from the till at the kaolin plant. The local Mounties think your tenants might have sticky fingers.”

  “The Hendricks?” Elizabeth said in surprise. “Gosh, they seemed like such a nice, average couple. Last time I was here, they had a game of Boggle spread out on the kitchen table.”

  “Gangsters have to get their jollies, too, sister,” Boomer said in the whispery tones of a film-noir private eye. He was clearly enjoying all the intrigue.

  “I guess the police will want to talk to me,” Elizabeth said.

  “I gave them your number. They’ll most likely be calling you,” Boomer said. “But that’s not all. I have more news.”

  “Isn’t that enough?” Elizabeth shifted Glenda to her other shoulder. “I wonder if having former crooks as tenants will make this place harder to rent.”

  “Not necessarily. Families might get spooked, but businesses won’t care.” He grinned. “That’s the news. The city council recently zoned this side of the street for limited retail business.”

  “Really? Do I have to rent to a business?”

  “No. Either an individual or a business. It’s still zoned for residents, too. But you can see what direction this street is going. You’d be smart to get a thriving company in here. The city should have sent you a letter.”

  “I saw an official-looking piece of mail in the box today. Maybe that’s it.” Elizabeth took a step in the direction of the kitchen. “I’m going to grab the mail, and then I gotta go home. Glenda’s overdue for her nap.”

  “Glenda,” Boomer said, his gaze softening. “I keep forgetting you named your daughter after your meemaw.”

  “Yes. Meemaw would have loved her grandbaby.”

  Boomer’s eyes misted over, and he hastily rubbed at them with the back of his hand. “Enough of that. Gotta move on. That’s what I keep telling myself. If you don’t let go of the old, you’ll have no room for the new. Your meemaw used to say that all the time, you know.”

  “I remember,” Elizabeth said, startled for a moment as if Meemaw had spoken through Boomer.

  “A wise woman,” he said. He zipped up his coat and bugged his eyes at Glenda, who let out an amused shriek. “I best be going. Nice to see you, sugar bean, and your cute little ankle-biter. Let’s hope baby Glenda grows up feisty and pretty, just like her namesake.”

  “Thanks, Boomer.”

  “Sayonara,” he said with a jerky salute. The screen door thwacked him in the backside on his way out.

  Elizabeth laughed. “Sayonara, Boomer.”

  Twenty-Two

  Give Satan an inch and he’ll be a ruler.

  ~ Sign outside Rock of Ages Baptist Church

  “It’s celebration time!” Rusty had said to Mrs. Tobias over the phone. “Put on your best stepping-out clothes.”

  She dressed in her funky new outfit from Chico’s and gave her hair a soft curl, thinking the looser style made her look younger. If she squinted while she gazed at her reflection in her full-length bathroom mirror, she could almost imagine a forty-something woman staring back at her.

  “Not too shabby for a senior citizen,” Mrs. Tobias said to herself as she heard the doorbell chime.

  Rusty stood on her porch, wearing his ever-present black leather jacket. Underneath she saw a spotless white shirt and a blue silk tie.

  “This is a special night,” she remarked, touching the uneven knot of his tie. Clearly he wasn’t accustomed to dressing up.

  “It surely is,” he said, as the two strolled to his Honda Civic parked in the drive. He opened the passenger door of his car with the flourish of a footman helping her into an elegant carriage.

  Tonight they were celebrating the return of his dog, Hap. The wayward hound had finally found his way back to his master.

  “There he was, sitting in my garage, when I got home yesterday afternoon,” Rusty said. “Except for a few ticks and burrs, he’s the same old Hap. I hope the two of you can meet soon.”

  “I’d be delighted,” she said, tickled at the idea of being introduced to a dog. The momentary blip of distaste she’d experienced earlier that day upon seeing Rusty in his work clothes seemed silly. She relaxed into the passenger seat, listening to The Byrds on the CD player and enjoying the pleasant weight of Rusty’s arm slung over her shoulder.

  Then Rusty pulled into Savoy Center, an affluent shopping center in west Augusta, and Mrs. Tobias’s back stiffened.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “The best restaurant in Augusta. Jacque’s. I told you we were celebrating.” Rusty reached over to squeeze her shoulder.

  “Is Jacque’s even open now?” Mrs. Tobias glanced at the clock on the dash. Besides the county club, Jacque’s had been Harrison’s favorite restaurant. When he was alive, they’d dined there at least once a week.

  “Yes.” Rusty went around to the passenger door to let her out of the car. “They open at five for the sunset dinner specials.”

  Mrs. Tobias’s fingers fumbled with the latch of her seat belt. Most likely she wouldn’t see anyone she knew during early-bird hours. Only prom couples and little old ladies dined at such an unfashionable time of the evening.

  And what if she did run into her old friends? Did she actually care what they thought? A few months after Harrison died, they’d dropped her completely. There was no place for a widow in their chummy circle of couples.

  Drizzle stained the blacktop of the parking lot, so the pair sprinted from the car and ducked under the familiar black canvas awning in front of Jacque’s. Rusty held open the cumbersome oak door for Mrs. Tobias and followed her inside. The two stood blinking in the foyer, adjusting to the pale light of the restaurant.

  “Table for two?” asked a bored-looking hostess garbed in a short black dress.

  “I had reservations. The name’s Williams.”

  Rusty’s south Georgia accent sounded more pronounced than usual in the hushed, refined atmosphere of Jacque’s.

  The hostess didn’t bother to consult her book. Reservations weren’t necessary at such an early hour, and insiders knew that.

  “Follow me, please.” She led them all the way to the small tables in t
he back as Mrs. Tobias knew she would. Harrison and her group of friends used to call them the riffraff tables. Mrs. Tobias didn’t mind the insult. She’d prefer to be sequestered from prying eyes, but Rusty wouldn’t have any of it.

  “What about those high-backed booths in the front room?” he said as the hostess indicated a minuscule round table near the flapping kitchen door. He grinned. “This is a real special night for me and my date. We’ve got a lot to celebrate.”

  Mrs. Tobias cringed at Rusty’s chattiness with the hostess, which was a no-no at Jacque’s. You didn’t get familiar with the staff unless you were a regular, and even then there were certain boundaries that were never crossed.

  “This way, please,” the woman said, her young, impassive face revealing nothing.

  They were seated in a booth up front and handed thick, brown menus. No frou-frou foliage, faux waterfalls, or chrome for Jacque’s. The restaurant resembled an exclusive men’s club with its dark wainscoting, starched linen tablecloths, and oversized leather furniture. The menu also reflected the staid sensibilities of the decor. It featured simply prepared chops, steaks, and seafood, leaving the mango tuna tartare and duck-leg con-fit to more adventurous establishments.

  The waiter, who wore a stiff white shirt and black bow tie, approached the table. Jacque’s hired male servers exclusively. The management associated waitresses with tight pink uniforms and greasy diners.

  “Hey there, fellow,” Rusty said. “I don’t see the sunset dinners on this menu. Am I missing something?”

  The waiter’s lips twisted in an unfriendly way. “They’re not on the menu, sir. The sunset dinners include a choice of roasted chicken, broiled flounder, or a petite seven-ounce New York steak.”

  “That’s petite all right. Sounds more like shrimp than a steak,” Rusty joked. “None of those dinners sound interesting. Let’s just go whole hog, Gracie, and forget these boring sunset choices. But first I want a bottle of champagne. This one here.” He pointed at his selection in the wine list.