by Lila Dare
“Like I said, no problem. I hope I didn’t overstep my bounds.”
“No,” she said in a whisper. “I needed the help.”
“Aw, Eve. It wasn’t that big of a deal.” Wynn ambled over to where his wife was leaning against the wall. “Come here, hon.” With studied casualness, he pulled her close to him. Her eyes were cold as she stared up into his, but after a heartbeat, she collapsed into his arms.
“We were joking around, Eve. That’s all,” he whispered to her, and he raised his head to wink at me.
It turned my stomach.
“I hope you’ll consider my offer,” said Eve, straightening. “And let me know quickly, please?”
“I will. Thank you for lunch and the tour.” I started for the door.
“Hey, Grace Ann!” Wynn called to me. “Aren’t you even going to say hi?”
I stared at him. “No, actually I’m not. I’m going to do my best to forget I even saw you, Wynn.”
Eve’s laugh was short and harsh. “I knew you were a smart woman from the moment I laid eyes on you.”
“Smart, but not as patient as you. Call you tomorrow.”
Turning on my heel, I left them there. A part of me admired her keeping her cool. Another part thought she was being stupid. I’d forgotten how much Wynn Goodman had hurt me, but seeing the damage he did to Eve brought it all back. To my surprise, I could suddenly recall every slight, every humiliation.
As I started my Fiesta, I thought about Eve Sebastiani Goodman. I liked her. Liked her a lot.
As for her husband, he could go straight to hell.
Chapter Thirty
“MOM?” I LET MYSELF INTO HER HOUSE THROUGH the back door and onto her screened-in back porch.
“In here, honey.” She and Althea sat face-to-face at a small table with a gallon of sweet tea between them. Both of them sported red, runny noses. I figured they’d been crying on each other’s shoulder. “We’re reminiscing. Going over old times. Like the first time you ever did foils, remember?”
I blushed. “How could I forget? I was trying to wrap foil around Mrs. Culver’s bangs but my hand slipped. I stuck my finger right up her nose.”
We all laughed at that memory.
“Remember the time you were rinsing Renni Stephens’s hair? She was eight months pregnant, and you were trying to avoid her belly?” Althea asked me.
“I lost my grip on the hose. It whipped out of my hand like a snake gone wild, twisting and turning, and soaking her from head to toe.” I shook my head. “It’s a wonder she forgave me.”
“Your mama and I have been having a whale of a time, cussing and discussing,” said Althea with a broad grin.
I poured myself a big glass of the tea, took a big swig, and choked.
“Th-that’s not sweet tea! What is it?” I coughed.
“No, it’s called a Pimm’s Cup. They drink it in England. I’ve been watching Downton Abbey, reading English literary novels, and I came across a reference. Kwasi told me how to make it. When your mother called, I figured she had bad news, so I brought along the ingredients. Like it?”
“Wow. It’s good, but it’s strong.”
Mom snickered softly, before blowing her nose. “Especially if you were planning on sweet tea.”
“So, how are you both?”
“Unemployed, flat busted, and drunk,” said Althea. “What time is it? Five?”
“Not nearly.”
“Well, shoot. Then I think I’ll sit a spell longer and have another drink. Before you lecture me about drinking and driving, young lady, Kwasi promised to swing by and pick me up.”
“What did you decide to do about the salon?” I asked my mother. As usual, she wore a knit top in a soft pastel pattern, with matching solid pants. Totally out-of-date, but it had been her work uniform all my life.
“There’s nothing for me to decide. It’s out of my hands. I called the insurance adjuster, and he’s got bigger fish to fry. I’m definitely small fry, get it?” And she started giggling and Althea chimed in until they were wiping the tears from their eyes.
“How long have you two been drinking like this?” I wondered.
“About an hour. Or two. It’s our second pitcher.” Althea raised the big glass vessel and pointed to the slices of orange, apple, and lime mingling with a sprig of mint on the bottom. “Wh-when we finished the last pitcher, we ate all our fruit like good girls.”
That fruit must have been saturated with strong spirits.
“Have you two had any lunch?”
“Just this,” said Mom, slurring her words. It sounded suspiciously like “justice.” That stopped me in my tracks. Was it justice for Mom and Althea and Stella and Rachel and me to be out of jobs? I didn’t think so. Mom had paid insurance all these years. As far as I knew, this was her first claim. As for the mailing list, one could argue as Eve did that Lisa Butterworth “got hers.” But unless I took the job at Snippets, I wasn’t sure I could get our customers back or hold out against Snippets’ big advertising and promotion budget. Whatever else Eve Sebastiani Goodman was, she struck me as a sharp cookie. I fully believed she was a terrific businesswoman, although I had no proof. There was a certain brisk, self-confidence and determination about her that suggested she knew exactly how to run a going concern.
And Violetta’s was no longer a going concern.
“I’m going to fix you two some lunch.”
I found a wedge of cheese, carrots, a cucumber, and a hard-boiled egg in the back of Mom’s refrigerator. After slicing the cheese, cleaning and cutting up the carrots and cuke, I mixed up tuna salad for Mom and Althea. Between nibbling on carrot and cucumber sticks, they ate tuna sandwiches.
Once they were a bit more cogent, I sat down with them and started to lay out a plan. “Eve Sebastiani Goodman contacted me today. She’s down here with her husband. Wynn Goodman.”
“I know who he is,” Mom said, stiffening. Forgive and forget did not apply when you hurt one of her girls.
“She offered me a job.”
Althea frowned slightly. “A job?”
“As manager.”
“Good for you,” said Mom, although since she had tuna in her mouth, it sounded more like “ood or oo.”
I nodded and took a deep breath. “Of Snippets.”
“Where?” asked Althea.
“The one down the street.”
The two old friends stared at each other. Althea’s strong jaw twitched. “I don’t know whether to congratulate you or call you a dirty traitor.”
“I know, I know. I have mixed feelings, too.”
Mom threw up a hand, waved it wearily, and said, “My gut says, ‘No, not my baby working for my competition,’ but my head says, ‘Yes, my girl is big enough to run her own business.’ I’ve known that for years.”
“I’m not sure that I can. I mean, I’ve always relied on you, Mom. But if I can come to you for help, I could give it a try. They’re promising me a lot of money. Seems that since Lisa died there, none of their managers is keen to move to that salon. Who can blame them? But that doesn’t bother me. It would mean a steady income. Besides, a lot of their customers are our former customers.” And I told the two women about Eve’s deal with me, the one where she agreed to give me back our client list.
“Huh. She should surrender that right now.” Althea wrapped angry arms around her chest. Today she was dressed in a bright green tee shirt with a handmade vest. The ensemble matched her spunky personality.
“Yes, you’re right, and if I pushed the point, she just might, but what good would that do us? We don’t have any place to service our customers, remember? So moving them here doesn’t do any of us any good.”
Mom nodded. “Tell me about it. I’ve been racking my brain for a way to keep the doors open, and jiminy, I sure can’t. There’s so much to do to get the needed repairs made.” With that she started sneezing.
“Seems to me that the first repair is to your health. We need to get you and Althea out of here, and we need to keep e
veryone else away until you get the all clear on the mold.”
“That makes sense. Walter has asked me if I want to move in with him. I guess I’m being old-fashioned, because that seems a bit scandalous.”
“Get with the program, girlfriend,” said Althea. “Time’s a-wasting. Why should you care what people think? I’d tell you that you can bunk up with me, but I don’t have a bit of space.”
Mom sipped her drink. “Grace Ann has a little bitty apartment. She doesn’t have any extra room. I called Alice Rose. She said she’d make room for me, but you know how rowdy those boys are. I’m not sure I can put up with much of that.”
“How do you feel about moving into Walter’s? He has a big house. His Victorian’s almost a twin to this one.”
She frowned. “We discussed it last night. He offered me my own bedroom, since we haven’t set a date. That’s the only way it would work for me. I’d need to know I would have privacy…sometimes.”
“Either of you heard from Stella? I am worried about her.” Althea’s voice was soft.
Stella Michaelson’s Nail Nook was a popular feature at Violetta’s. At first, her husband, Darryl, thought of Stella’s income as “pin money,” in a dismissive way, but over the years, he’d come to value how that extra money allowed them a lot of luxuries. A lot of men in the South are very traditional, with that “my wife’s job is caring for our home and me!” mindset. But a couple of years ago, when Stella was off work for a month after contracting a nasty case of bronchitis, Darryl had what we call a “come to Jesus” moment. After that, he made no secret of his appreciation for his wife’s contribution to the family income.
More recently, Darryl was laid off from the auto dealership where he worked in Brunswick. “You would think with the problems in the economy, folks would be hanging on to their old cars and needing a mechanic,” said Stella, but so far, Darryl had only been able to find odd jobs here and there. With the loss of his wages, and the normal expenses associated with parenting an eight-year-old, Stella’s contribution to the family finances had gone from frivolous to critical.
“I think I have a solution,” I said. “At least I hope so. If I go to work at Snippets, I’ll have hiring and firing privileges. That means I can hire all of you. I’ll also control scheduling.”
Althea’s mouth fell open, as did Mom’s. They looked at each other with raised eyebrows. “Hmm,” said Mom. “That’s a new wrinkle.”
“Hmm, indeed,” said Althea.
“Would that help?” I asked. “Because if it would, and if you think it would help Stella and Rachel, too, that’s reason enough for me to take the job. At least temporarily.”
Mom picked up the pair of tongs to pluck a mint spear out of the bottom of the pitcher. She chewed on it thoughtfully. “It would be like keeping Violetta’s intact, only with a different address.”
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
“But what about moving to Washington, DC?” Mom asked me.
I shrugged.
Althea was more blunt. “Did Marty bail out on you last night?”
“No. Not if by bailing out you mean did he stand me up. He was here.”
“Wasn’t he planning to stay a couple of days?” Althea pressed the point.
“Yes,” I said, but I studied my shoes.
Althea leaned forward, resting her weight on her forearms. “And did you set him straight? None of this calling you, forgetting about you, showing up late, and then being all kissy-face?”
“Sort of. Not exactly.” My cheeks turned hot.
“What exactly does ‘not exactly’ mean to you?” Mom queried gently.
“It means we broke up.”
“So you aren’t going to DC?”
“No.”
“Then I think you ought to take the job at Snippets,” Mom said.
Chapter Thirty-one
I TOLD THEM ABOUT HANK AND HIS DIRTY TRICK, hijacking my fingerprints and entering them in the SEPD system. “I don’t know what I’ll have to do to have them expunged,” I said.
“That man! Wait until I see him next. I’ll give him a piece of my mind. I haven’t even turned on the radio or opened the newspaper this morning. If I’d seen the article, I would have been beside myself,” said Mom. “You know, this was the first morning in years that I’ve been able to sleep in, so I enjoyed myself.”
Althea raised one perfectly groomed eyebrow. “I missed the article, too. Kwasi has convinced me to get the New York Times online. I read that every morning instead of our local rag. I got tired of opening the paper and seeing how another one of my customers had died. Now I buy the Sunday edition and take it in all at once.”
I laughed, but only a little.
“That no-good snake,” said Mom. “Hank Parker is a worthless piece of trash. What does Agent Dillon say about all this?”
“I’ve been told by my own off-the-record sources that he doesn’t have much use for Hank. Especially after this stunt. Anyone could have leaked my police station visit to the press, but the most natural person would be Hank. That’s his style.”
“There’s nothing for you to worry about, Grace Ann.” Mom patted my hand. “Not with Agent Dillon involved. He’s a good man. Not like some others we know.”
Her sly glance told me she was speaking of Wynn and what he’d done to me. She knew all about it, of course, because she’d helped Vonda unload me from her car. Mom had seen me struggle back to health after his betrayal and my bout with the flu. “You wouldn’t have gotten so sick if you hadn’t been sick at heart,” she’d told me as she pressed a cool washcloth to my forehead.
I wanted to spill everything I knew about the affair Wynn had with Lisa, and how Eve was pregnant, but I knew that would only upset my mother. Wynn was already a man she despised—and there was no reason to get her more angry. Mom took a very dim view of men who played around.
Then I remembered: She’d been through my father’s dying of pancreatic cancer. She knew what it was like to lose a spouse slowly and painfully.
“Well, I guess I’d better call Eve and tell her I think I’ll take the job.”
“When would you start?” Althea asked.
“Right away. The sooner I’m there, the sooner I can hire all of you.”
The proud woman said nothing, but the way her jaw relaxed spoke volumes. Althea, too, needed the income. With that in mind, I was more certain than ever that working for Snippets was a good idea. I told Mom and Althea good-bye, giving both of them hugs.
Once I got to the stop sign two blocks from Violetta’s, I called Eve. “That job? I think I’d like to try it.”
“Good,” she said. “I’m very, very pleased. Would seven be too early for you tomorrow?”
“Not at all.”
With an afternoon to kill, but a new job on the horizon, I decided to use my time sensibly. Almost on its own power, my car headed toward Magnolia House. If I was lucky, I’d get a little quality time with my BFF.
* * *
TEA AND SYMPATHY WAS ALL THAT I WANTED. VONDA had easily provided Item #1: a pitcher of sweet tea chilled to perfection and garnished with a lively sprig of mint.
As for Item #2 on my wish list, um, not so much. “You talked to that man from the GBI? Without an attorney? Even after you knew you were considered a person of interest? I better call Dooley right this instant and arrange an insanity hearing!” shrieked Vonda.
“Don’t. You. Dare.” I glared at her.
“Give me one good reason why, Grace Ann. One! That’s all I’m asking!” She jumped to her feet and glared at me. Her brown eyes fairly glowed with anger, as she trembled with fury. The pressure of my hand on her arm was all that kept her from grabbing the landline behind the front desk and calling our old high school friend.
“I’m warning you, Vonda Mary Agatha, do not call Dooley. If I’d wanted him to know about this, I could’ve talked to him myself.”
“Someone needs to protect you from yourself! You’ve given that GBI agent a hundred good
reasons to think you are Suspect Numero Uno. Do you have some deep-seated death wish? An overwhelming urge to style hair for inmates on death row?” Shaking off my hand, Vonda wobbled her way back down into her wicker chair. After scalding me with a horrified look, she started scrubbing her face with both hands. When her skin had turned a rosy pink, she sighed. “Bless your heart, Grace Ann. You do beat all.”
In Southern, “bless your heart” is code for “you are too stupid to live, so I hope God will watch after you, because you aren’t up to the job yourself.”
By the same token, “you do beat all” means (and I’m translating it loosely here, so as not to be too offensive) “there isn’t a dumber person on the planet. At least not that I know of.”
Maybe a Yankee would have laughed off my best friend’s concerns for my intelligence/safety/welfare, but I found myself paralyzed with anger. “Excuse me, Miss Cotton Bowl Princess Runner-up.”
“Runner-up? Dag nab it, you just had to throw that in my face, didn’t you? Well, let me tell you a thing or two, missy. You trust him? Goody. I feel a whole lot better, I sure do. Because you are such a fine, fine judge of character in men. I mean, just look at who you married.”
“That’s fat bacon coming from a girl whose own marital career is a wee bit checkered. Huh, when it comes to Ricky, you’re like a bad country song. You can’t decide whether to love him, leave him, or sign a long-term lease with him.” I glared at her.
Steam curled out the side of her nostrils. Woo-ee, was she mad. As I watched, she squinched her eyes into tiny black holes and then she sniffed at me. “Maybe I don’t give up as easy as you do. Maybe I’m trying to stick it out—to actually live my vows! After all, I do have a child!”
She might as well have picked up her fork and stuck it in my brain. For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a mama. It’s not something I share with most people. In fact, I bet Vonda and my mother are the only two people on earth who know that this has been my lifelong ambition. Given that Alice Rose has two adorable children, I don’t want to look like I’m munching a mouthful of sour grapes. So I’ve done a pretty fine job of keeping my baby-lust under wraps, if I do say so myself.