by Sharon Sala
“Hello, Peanut!”
“Hi, Laurel. Thanks for the extra work you put in here.”
“Oh, you’re very welcome. How’s Ruby?”
“She’s doing great. Still banged up but in pretty good spirits, considering.”
“That’s wonderful. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“That’s mostly why I called,” Peanut said. “I wanted to see how you would feel about cleaning up Ruby’s house. You need to know that besides the fingerprint powder all over the place, there’s blood in the kitchen, the hall, and her bedroom. I want you to be honest with me. If doing that cleaning would upset you, all you have to—”
“I’d be happy to do that,” Laurel said. “Why would you think I wouldn’t?”
Peanut cleared his throat. “Well, Ruby was afraid it might remind you too much of—”
“Oh, you’re talking about Adam’s suicide? I cleaned up stuff from that incident that a wife should never have seen of her husband. Blood in Ruby’s house won’t faze me. When do you want it done?”
“As soon as you can work it into your schedule. It’s a big job, and whatever you need to charge is fine. Just send me the bill.”
“It will be my welcome home gift to Ruby, and I’m happy to do it.”
“You’re the best,” Peanut said. “The key to her front door is under the mat. Just put it back there after you’re done, and thank you a thousand times. Oh…there’s an old bedspread somewhere in the house that you can put on her bed. The kidnapper rolled her up in the one that was there to carry her out, so it’s long gone.”
Laurel shuddered. “Oh my God. I still can’t believe she endured all that. I’ll get to it next.”
“Thank you, Laurel.”
“You’re welcome. Have a good evening.”
Peanut hung up, satisfied that another piece of Ruby’s world would be put back in place.
* * *
Wilma was on a conference call with her sisters, Betsy and Loretta, trying to coordinate travel plans to Blessings.
“Loretta, you and Betsy could drive to Savannah Wednesday and stay with me, and we could all go down to Blessings on Thursday. There’s a quaint little bed-and-breakfast we could stay in and then not have to rush around Friday morning getting to the lawyer’s office,” Wilma said.
“Oh crap. That’s going to take up three, maybe four days,” Loretta said.
“Stop whining, Loretta,” Betsy said. “I’m the oldest, and I remember Uncle Elmer’s house. It was really pretty in its day. Even if it needs some cleaning and painting, it should be worth a lot of money. It sits on several lots, so the grounds around it were big too. Land is always worth money, and we’re going to rake in the dough.”
“Do you remember Uncle Elmer?” Wilma asked.
“Sort of, but he doesn’t matter,” Betsy said.
“I remember Mama telling us to take care of him when she was dying,” Wilma added.
Loretta snorted. “Well, I never went to see him,” she said.
“Neither did I,” Betsy said.
They both heard Wilma sigh. “We didn’t honor Mama’s last wishes. It makes me feel bad to think we let her twin brother die alone,” Wilma said.
“Oh, shut up, Wilma. You’re always a bleeding heart. Anyway…make reservations at the bed-and-breakfast, and we’ll be at your house Wednesday evening. We can all go out to dinner and make this a fun sister trip,” Loretta said.
“Okay. See you Wednesday,” Betsy said.
“See you,” Loretta echoed.
“Take care,” Wilma added, and then ended the conference call.
Back in Atlanta, Loretta got up from the sofa and gave her living room a close look. She liked her condo. It was in the right neighborhood and it was paid for, but it was due some updates. This windfall was going to come in handy.
What Wilma had said about them not honoring their mama’s dying words niggled at Loretta’s conscience, but she had been ignoring it for years, and this was not the time to start paying attention.
* * *
Rachel Goodhope was getting some bread dough ready to rise overnight. She had guests in two rooms, and by doing this, she’d have a jump start on making breakfast for them in the morning. She covered the yeast dough with plastic wrap and then set the big crockery bowl in the refrigerator and turned to face the mess she still had to clean up.
A few minutes later, she was elbow deep in hot water and soapy suds when her phone rang. She wiped her hands as she went to answer.
“Blessings Bed and Breakfast. Rachel speaking.”
“Rachel, my name is Wilma Smith. I would like to book three rooms for Thursday night.”
“Certainly,” Rachel said. “Please hold a moment so I can get to the office. I’m in another part of the inn right now.”
“Of course,” Wilma said. “I’m sorry to be calling so late, but this just came up.”
“No problem. Just a few seconds, and I’ll be back on the line,” Rachel said. She put the call on hold and ran down the hall to the office. “This is Rachel. Are you still there?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Wilma said.
“All right then. You said three rooms?”
“Yes, please.”
“May I please have the names for reservation purposes?”
“Wilma Smith, Loretta Baird, and Betsy Lowe. We’re sisters,” Wilma added, then rolled her eyes, wondering why she always felt the need to explain herself.
“That’s wonderful! A little sisters’ get-together then,” Rachel said. “I’ll need a credit card to hold the overnight reservations.”
Wilma gave her the number, then while she was waiting for Rachel to speak, she felt the need to keep talking.
“We’re actually coming into Blessings to attend the reading of our uncle Elmer Mathis’s will. We’ll be checking out Friday morning and returning to our respective homes afterward.”
Rachel frowned to herself. “Oh…I hadn’t heard that he’d passed. My sympathies on your loss. We all thought the world of Elmer.”
“Yes, well, that’s wonderful,” Wilma said. “So we’ll be seeing you early Thursday afternoon.”
“Fantastic,” Rachel said. “I serve breakfast from six a.m. to eleven a.m. The kitchen is closed after that, but there’s a wonderful restaurant here in Blessings called Granny’s Country Kitchen. It’s the perfect place for a meal.”
“Thank you. I’m sure we’ll manage,” Wilma said. “See you then.”
“Yes, ma’am. We’ll be looking forward to your arrival,” Rachel said.
After she disconnected, she posted the rooms into her online register, then returned to the kitchen to finish cleaning. To her delight, her husband, Bud, was almost through.
“Who was on the phone so late?” he asked.
“A late reservation for three rooms with a Thursday arrival, and thank you for cleaning up my mess,” Rachel said.
“Your mess is my mess,” he said.
Rachel hugged him. “You are a jewel, and I love you.”
Bud grinned. “Well, thank you, honey! I should do dishes more often, I think. You go on up. Take yourself a good, long soaking bath. You’ve earned it.”
Rachel sighed. It had been a long day. “Thank you, darling. Don’t forget to lock up.”
Chapter 6
Melissa Dean was getting ready to clock out at Bloomer’s Hardware when her boss, Fred Bloomer, called her into his office.
“I’ll be right there,” she said.
She hung up her canvas work apron and headed for the office.
“What’s up?” she asked, smiling at him as she walked in.
“Shut the door, please,” Fred said.
The hair stood up on the back of Melissa’s arms as she watched him taking an envelope from a desk drawer.
Fred barely looked at her as
he dropped the envelope into her hand.
“I’m sorry, Melissa. I didn’t want this to happen, but times are hard and business has been falling off. I’m going to have to let you go. I’ve given you an extra month’s salary to tide you over until you find another job.”
Melissa stared at the envelope he’d dropped into her hand and then looked up.
“Since I count out the drawer and make the deposit every night, I happen to know you just lied to me,” she said, trying desperately not to cry. “I should have known when your nephew showed up last month that I was going to be fired.”
“Now, I didn’t fire you, I—”
Melissa raised her hand.
“Don’t lie on top of it. I’ve worked here nineteen years. One more year, and I would have qualified for retirement. How fortunate for you that good old Tommy showed up in time. I thought better of you, Fred, and will not be using you for a reference, and I will tell people in town why I was let go.”
“Now see here… You can’t—”
“Yes, I can and will. It’s to protect my reputation, you know. I can’t have people thinking I did something awful to get fired after all these years. Oh…and just so you know…Tommy slips twenties out of the till. You’d better start paying attention to sales receipts and counting out your own money. I’ve been making him put it back, but now you’re on your own.”
Fred paled. “Why didn’t you tell—”
“Because he’s your nephew,” Melissa said, then turned around and walked out.
She made it all the way to her car before she burst into tears, then took off out of town, driving aimlessly as she gathered her thoughts. It was after eight p.m. before she got home, but she’d come to terms with this day.
She was at a crossroads.
It wasn’t the first time she’d had that experience. The day her husband, Andy, died had been the worst day of her life, so putting things into perspective, this was just another crossroads, not the end of the world.
Right now, the truth was that she was sad about losing Elmer Mathis and worried about her financial situation. The Mathis estate had always paid her for keeping Elmer’s house clean. Now she was about to lose that monthly deposit into her checking account that helped pay her rent. She didn’t want to become homeless as well as out of work.
There weren’t a lot of jobs in Blessings for women her age. Forty-seven wasn’t old, but after Andy’s death, Melissa had let the gray in her hair take over, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d bought a tube of lipstick.
Back in her house, she dropped her purse and car keys on the hall table and went to her room to change out of her work clothes, then went back to the kitchen in a bathrobe to fix some supper.
The events of the day had taken away her appetite, but she needed to stay busy, and making herself an omelet was the only thing she had the energy left to do.
She began breaking eggs in a bowl, then turned on the burner to heat up a pan. As she prepared the food, she thought again of Peanut Butterman’s phone call requesting her presence at the reading of Elmer’s will. She’d watched Elmer take his last breath before daylight this morning and had cried all the way home from Savannah, then changed into her work clothes and clocked in on time at the store. She hadn’t talked about it, and now she was glad she hadn’t. The last thing she wanted was having someone feel sorry for her.
She tilted the omelet out onto a plate, peppered it, and ate it standing up at the sink, then chased it with a longneck bottle of beer that she kept for the nights when missing Andy was too painful to ignore.
After cleaning up the kitchen, she went back to her bedroom and ran herself a bubble bath. She clipped her ponytail on top of her head, then stepped into the bubbles and sank into the old claw-foot tub until they were at her chin, and closed her eyes.
Almost instantly, Andy’s face appeared.
“Yes, my feelings are hurt, but I’m okay. Because I had you, I will always be okay.”
And then she cried until the water cooled and her fingertips were wrinkled.
* * *
Ruby was asleep, but her legs were jerking and her feet were kicking. She was once again locked in a nightmare that wouldn’t go away.
Jarrod hadn’t come home from work, and it was just after midnight. Ruby was sitting in the living room in the dark, afraid to go to bed, when she heard a car in the driveway. She leaped up and peered through a curtain. She could see from the porch light that it was Jarrod. When she saw him stagger as he got out of his truck, she knew he was drunk. Then she saw the pistol in his hand.
“Oh my God, oh my God,” Ruby moaned.
She unlocked the door to keep him from kicking it in and then ran. She had to hide until he passed out or she would die, but where? There was nowhere to hide in this house without him finding her. Her only chance was to get out of the house, so she headed for the back door in the kitchen, praying she could get out before he came in.
But she wasn’t fast enough. Jarrod bolted into the house, slamming the door behind him. Despite the lack of lights, he caught a glimpse of her running toward the kitchen.
“Come back here, you bitch!” Jarrod roared as he staggered after her, waving the .22 pistol in his hand.
Ruby’s heart was hammering so hard she could barely breathe, but she didn’t dare stop. Even when his footsteps followed her exit, she kept running.
Her hand was on the doorknob when he caught her, grabbing her by her hair.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he shouted, and threw her to the floor.
Ruby rolled onto her back and started begging.
“No, Jarrod, no. Don’t hurt me. Please, don’t hurt me.”
He waved the pistol in her face, and then to prove it was loaded, fired into the floor near her head.
Ruby screamed aloud in her sleep, just as she had that night, and then kept on screaming.
Peanut heard Ruby scream and was out of bed within seconds and running. She was still screaming and begging in a voice he didn’t recognize when he turned on the lights and called out her name.
“Ruby!”
She sat up with a gasp, saw Peanut coming toward her, and flew out of bed and into his arms.
“I’ve got you. I’ve got you,” he said.
Ruby’s arms went around his neck, her feet dangling off the floor.
“You’re safe, baby, you’re safe,” Peanut said. He backed them up and sat in the easy chair beside the window.
Ruby curled up in his arms, shaking.
“Talk to me,” Peanut said. “Don’t keep it inside. Let it go.”
“Ugly, so ugly,” Ruby said.
Peanut pushed her back enough that she could see his face.
“Look at me! Do you see disgust? Do you see judgment? You matter to me. I love you. I am so angry right now at whoever caused this dream that I would be hard-pressed not to take a whip to him, so let me guess. Jarrod Dye?”
She nodded.
Peanut pulled her close again. “Now talk to me, and remember I am your safe place to fall.”
Ruby took a deep breath and then shuddered. “Oh my God, Peanut.”
He kissed the top of her head, then looked down at his long, bare legs and realized that all he had on were gym shorts. But since it didn’t seem to bother Ruby, he wasn’t going to let it bother him.
Ruby reached for his arm, needing to hold onto him, as if saying it aloud gave power to the horror.
Peanut heard her take a deep breath, and then the words came tumbling out.
“Jarrod didn’t come home after work, which scared me. I knew he would come home drunk, so I was afraid to sleep. I sat up in the dark waiting, and when I heard him drive up, I looked out. I saw him stagger, then I saw the gun in his hand and I ran.”
Peanut was reeling. He would never have imagined she’d endured such a l
ife.
“He caught me before I could get out the back door. He shot the gun into the floor beside my head to prove he was in charge and then started shouting. A neighbor heard the gunshot, me screaming, and then Jarrod shouting that he was going to kill me. If the neighbor hadn’t called the police, I probably wouldn’t be here. I filed for divorce while Jarrod was in jail on assault charges, and I hid. He didn’t know where I was, but I showed up in court to testify against him. He went to prison.
“The divorce was granted, and I left Nashville in the dark of night. It was an accident that I wound up in Georgia, but I say to myself every day that it was God Who led me to Blessings. I never saw Jarrod again until the other day, and I’ve never told this to anyone…until you.”
Peanut was so enraged for her that it was all he could do to talk in a calm, rational voice. But he did, because she needed calm and rational.
He tilted her face to meet a very brief and gentle kiss. He needed that more than she probably did.
“First, know that everything between us stays between us. Second, remember that he’ll likely be in prison for most, if not all, of the rest of his life for the charges on this stunt, okay?”
Despite his calm voice, Ruby’s gaze was locked on the fury in his eyes, and she felt a sense of satisfaction that the man who loved her was this enraged on her behalf.
“Yes, okay,” she said.
Peanut glanced at the clock. It was after two a.m. “Do you think you can go back to sleep?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I had nightmares last night too. I think it’s going to take time to get past this.”
“Well, hell, Ruby. That is not okay with me.”
He stood up as if she weighed nothing in his arms and laid her back down in bed, then went to turn out the light.
Ruby had a glimpse of his long, bare body and the tight buns beneath the gym shorts before the lights went out. When he crawled into bed behind her, she shivered.
“It’s just me, and I’m not going to make a move beyond holding you in my arms. You have demons, Ruby. Sometimes my job requires me to slay demons for people, even the ones disguised in human form. I am good at my job.” He pulled the covers up over the both of them and spooned himself against her backside. “I’m here. I’ll know if you start dreaming again, and I’ll whisper the magic words in your ear that will drive those demons away.”