Small Town Rumors

by Carolyn Brown

  “That’s good. Place seems empty without you.” Frank got into the Caddy and fired up the engine. “Your daddy will be real glad that you’re here for his birthday bash. It’s comin’ up in a few weeks.”

  “I’ll be here.” Jennie Sue waved as he drove away.

  Mabel bustled out of the kitchen and across the living room floor, grabbed Jennie Sue in a bear hug, and kissed both her cheeks. A short woman who was almost as wide as she was tall, she wore her gray hair in a tight little bun at the nape of her neck. Frank had always been like a grandfather to Jennie Sue, and his wife, Mabel, had been a nanny and surrogate grandmother all rolled into one. “Darlin’ girl, if I’d known you was comin’, I would have made apricot fried pies for you.”

  “Whatever you are cookin’ right now smells delicious. I’m starving. Haven’t had anything but a package of cheese crackers all mornin’. Is that fried chicken?”

  “Yes, and this chicken had four extra legs,” Mabel teased.

  “You used to tell me that all the time when I was a little girl.” Jennie Sue hugged her a second time.

  Charlotte set her lips in a firm line. “She doesn’t need pies or fried foods, for God’s sake. She’s gained at least ten pounds since we saw her in New York last Christmas. We’ll have to work hard on getting those off. So she’ll have a salad with no more than a quarter cup of smoked salmon on the top and low-fat dressing.”

  “She hates salmon.” Mabel winked at her. “So how about a side salad and a couple of chicken legs? You do still like drumsticks, right?”

  “That sounds amazing. So Daddy is having lunch here today?” Jennie Sue asked.

  “I am. Welcome home.” Dill stepped into the foyer and opened his arms. “Don’t get to see my baby girl often enough. Did you come home for my birthday?”

  “Of course she did.” Charlotte perked right up. “She’s going to help me plan it, and we’ll have family pictures made.”

  That gave her mother the perfect excuse, Jennie Sue thought as she walked into her father’s arms. The story of why she was home could also have something to do with her dad’s birthday. He smelled like bourbon and expensive aftershave, but what was that scent on his shirt? It sure wasn’t her mother’s Lalique perfume, but then, he probably didn’t buy the expensive stuff for his mistresses, since he changed them more often than Charlotte did Cadillacs—and that was once a year.

  When she was a little girl, he’d been on a pedestal so high that he disappeared into the clouds. And then came junior high school, when she found out about his affairs from a couple of students who were whispering in the girls’ bathroom at school about what they’d heard from their mothers. The pedestal came crashing down. She still loved him—after all, he was her daddy, and he was so charming. But a part of her heart had never forgiven him and most likely never would.

  “Glad you got home in time to eat with me, darlin’. I’ve got to go to Houston after lunch, but I’ll be home day after tomorrow for the Fourth of July party. How’d you get here? Flight into Dallas or Amarillo? You should have called. I’d have been glad to fly up to New York and get you.” He draped an arm around her shoulders and led her to the dining room.

  When Dill walked into a room, every woman in the place needed suspenders to keep her panties from sneaking down around her ankles. With a light frosting of gray hair at his temples and those crystal-clear blue eyes, tight jeans, high-dollar boots, and a belt buckle as big as his ego, he was a force to be reckoned with. Throw in all that beautiful oil money and he had his pick of young mistresses whenever he wanted to make a change.

  Jennie Sue wondered who the newest one was as she watched him pull out a chair for Charlotte. When she was living in New York, she didn’t have to think about the secrets in the Baker household—secrets that had turned her into an introvert in high school—but they all hit her smack in the face when she stepped through that front door.

  Dill seated Jennie Sue, too, before taking his place at the head of the table. “So why didn’t you let us know you were flying home?”

  “I came by bus, Daddy, because it was cheaper and it gave me a lot of time to think. I really did want to be here for Mama’s birthday and for yours. And”—she inhaled deeply and let it out slowly—“I need a job. Think you might find me one in the firm?”

  Dill eyed her carefully. “You have an apartment, a car, and very good alimony from that son of a bitch who left you. Why do you need a job?”

  “That’s what I thought, too, when I signed the divorce papers. But about a month ago, the IRS audited his company and found a lot of fraud and possibly some money laundering. So a couple of weeks ago he stole a bag of diamonds from the company and disappeared with one of his girlfriends. The government stepped in last week and took everything from me. I really, really need a job.”

  “Honey.” He patted her on the arm. “You are too pretty to work. You can stay right here and do whatever you ladies do all day. Your mama will take care of your time, and I’ll start a bank account for you tomorrow. Go down to Sweetwater to the Cadillac dealership and pick out whatever car you want.”

  “I’m twenty-eight years old. I want to be independent,” she protested.

  “Nonsense. When me and your mama are dead, this whole empire will belong to you. Your mama can find things for you to do, like fund-raisers, organizin’ parties, that kind of thing. Leave the moneymakin’ stuff to your old daddy here . . . and to a good CEO when I’m gone.” Dill set about eating his lunch.

  Jennie Sue had learned years ago to pick her battles—this wasn’t the time or place. Right now she had to get through the meal, and that meant enduring her mother’s dirty looks every time she took a bite of fried chicken.

  Cricket Lawson almost choked on a bite of cherry pie when she glanced across the road and saw Jennie Sue Baker getting off a Greyhound bus. She swallowed quickly and downed half a glass of sweet tea. Then she grabbed her camera and rushed to the window. She’d for sure think that she’d been dreaming by tomorrow if she didn’t have proof that Jennie Sue looked like hammered owl crap.

  Flashing pictures as fast as her little camera would work, she took at least forty shots of Jennie Sue in faded jeans, sneakers, and a faded orange T-shirt with the Longhorn insignia on the front. Jennie Sue started across the street toward the café, and Cricket’s pulse kicked up at least twenty points. She’d hated the girl in high school, but she’d put the past behind her for half an hour if she could shoot a few more close-ups of her without makeup. No one would believe this.

  “Dammit!” Cricket hissed when Charlotte pulled up in her white Caddy and Jennie Sue put a suitcase in the back seat. Leave it to that rich bitch to spoil Cricket’s day.

  “What are you doin’ over there?” Lettie Clifford asked from a nearby booth where she was having a banana split.

  “Damn that Charlotte Baker,” Cricket sighed.

  Lettie motioned toward the place across the table from her. “I like the way you’re thinkin’. Come over here, little girl, and tell me what you mean by that.”

  Cricket set her camera on the table and slid into the booth. “I’ve got time now that the morning rush is over. Jennie Sue Baker just got off the Greyhound bus that goes on to Sweetwater. She’s got one suitcase with her, and she looks like hell. I swear, she didn’t even have on makeup.”

  “No!” Lettie slapped a hand on each side of her chubby face. Standing at just over five feet, she had her dyed black hair worn in that kinky style that was popular in the seventies. One of the richest women in West Texas, she lived in the same little white frame house she’d been born in more than eighty years before, and she didn’t take shit off no one—especially Charlotte Baker and her Sweetwater Belles, or as Lettie called them, the Sweetwater Bitches.

  “Take a look at these.” Cricket touched a few buttons on the camera and showed the pictures to Lettie.

  Lettie flipped through them, shaking her head in disbelief the whole time. “That’s sure enough Jennie Sue Baker, but why would she be
sneaking into town on a bus? And why only one suitcase? It takes something bigger than that for Charlotte to carry her makeup kit in when she’s just going to the Walmart store.”

  Cricket gasped. “The great Charlotte Baker goes to Walmart?”

  “Darlin’, everyone needs toilet paper,” Lettie giggled.

  “I figured she’d send Mabel to buy it,” Cricket whispered.

  Lettie leaned forward. “I saw her in there with my own eyes. She was buyin’ toilet paper, and there was a bag of prescription drugs in the cart, but I couldn’t read what they were. Probably diet pills. She’s so afraid of gainin’ a pound that it’s downright crazy.”

  Cricket glanced around the empty café to be sure no one could hear her. “Lot of good it does her. Dill’s keepin’ company with Darlene O’Malley, and she’s younger than me and Jennie Sue.”

  “You mean that little redhead who works at the bank?” Lettie asked.

  “That’s the one. She graduated two years behind me, which makes her twenty-six, and that’s younger than his daughter. My cousin who works as a teller says that she’s his new personal manager on a couple of his accounts and has to be ready to go with him when he takes trips.” Cricket flipped through the pictures again.

  Lettie dipped into her ice cream. “Well, he better keep a good supply of them little blue pills in his briefcase is all I got to say.”

  “I know celebrities go out in public lookin’ like crap, but I’ve never seen Jennie Sue without fancy clothes, makeup, and her hair done perfect,” Cricket said.

  Amos Jones pushed into the store and wiped the sweat from his face with a red bandanna. “Hello, ladies.” He waved.

  “Wonder if he knows something?” Lettie whispered.

  “He might,” Cricket said out of the side of her mouth and then waved. “Hi, Amos.”

  “Y’all hear that Jennie Sue Baker is back in town and she came in on the bus just before noon?” He raised his voice. “I just saw her riding in the car with her mama a few minutes ago. Wonder what’s goin’ on?”

  “Come on over here and sit with us,” Lettie said. “How’s things at your bookstore?”

  “Doin’ right good.” He slid into the booth beside Cricket. “I heard that this new group of kids comin’ up into the world is goin’ back to real books rather than readin’ them on them damned devices that they hold in their hands. Millennium, they call them. Don’t know how they got that name hung on them, but it helps my business. Vinyl could be next. I got to be at the library here in a minute, but wanted to grab some lunch to take with me.”

  Cricket bit back a sigh and slipped her camera back into her purse. Like lots of older men, he used too much shaving lotion and talked too loud. Her brother, Rick, said it was because when folks got older, their senses of smell and hearing both deteriorated.

  “What have you heard about Jennie Sue comin’ back to town? She hasn’t been here in at least two years,” Lettie said.

  Cricket perked right up. Amos had a tell when he had good gossip—he puffed out his chest so that his bibbed overalls didn’t have a single wrinkle in them. And he grinned even bigger than usual, showing off perfectly white dentures in a face that looked like a cross between Andy Rooney and Mickey Rooney.

  “Just that she showed up on the bus. I can’t imagine why she’d ride a bus all the way from New York City when Dill has an airplane that he could fly up there and bring her home in style. She’s still married to that fancy-shmancy diamond dealer, isn’t she?” Amos asked.

  “Last I heard, but I’ll phone Mabel tonight and see what she knows.” Lettie’s head bobbed up and down in agreement. “Maybe she’s goin’ to work for Dill in the company.”

  “Who knows?” Amos’s grin got even bigger. “Right now, Dill is off in his private plane with that business lady from the bank, so he’s probably not thinkin’ about hirin’ Jennie Sue for a job in the oil company.” His phone pinged, and he worked it up from the bib pocket of his overalls. “Got a text from Nicky, that new gardener Charlotte hired. He says the news is that Jennie Sue is here to help plan Dill’s birthday party. You goin’ to it, Lettie?”

  “Hell, no! Only way I could get in is if I crashed my pickup truck through the front doors, and I ain’t willin’ to damage my truck. I’ve had it forty years now, and I’m right partial to the way my butt sits in the driver’s seat. You goin’ to ride that tricycle of yours to the party?”

  Amos chuckled. “I ain’t holdin’ my breath for an invitation. What about you, Cricket? Reckon Jennie Sue will invite you to the big wingding?”

  Cricket snorted. “That ain’t never goin’ to happen. I wonder why there’s never a big party for Charlotte?”

  “Never say never or it’ll come back and bite you right on the butt.” He shook a finger at her. “Charlotte hates her birthday because it proves she’s another year older.”

  “Gravity eventually gets us all,” Lettie said.

  “Ain’t that the truth,” Amos agreed. “Pulls us right into the grave. Change of subject here—y’all two got the Friday-night book-club selection read yet?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Cricket nodded.

  “Me and Nadine finished it last week. We’re ready for the discussion,” Lettie said.

  “That’s great. Hey, I heard Wilma done decided to retire from housekeepin’. Y’all find anyone to replace her?”

  “Not yet, but we’re lookin’. Got someone in mind?” Lettie put another bite of ice cream in her mouth.

  “No, but I’ll keep my ears open. Charlotte hired two new girls out at the Baker place this week. If they don’t work out, maybe you could get them,” Amos answered.

  “I don’t want her leftovers.” Lettie’s tone could have chilled Amos’s tea. “So, you believe this crock of bull about Jennie Sue bein’ here for her daddy’s birthday?”

  “Not for a minute,” Amos answered.

  Lettie rubbed her hands together. “That’s the way I figure it. She wouldn’t have had to ride a bus for more’n thirty hours, and she would’ve needed a U-Haul truck to get her baggage to the house. Who knows? It might be good enough to put Charlotte in her place once and for all. There’s for sure something goin’ on, and I intend to find out what it is.”

  “Me, too.” Amos nodded.

  Cricket slid out of the seat and adjusted her apron. “My late granny used to say that Charlotte comes from a long line of women who think their asses are gold plated.”

  “My sweet little wife”—Amos glanced up at the ceiling—“before the angels came to get her, used to say that if you could buy Charlotte for what she’s worth and sell her for what she thinks she’s worth, you’d make a fortune. Gert Wilson at the grocery store might know something more about all this Jennie Sue stuff, since one of those girls Charlotte hired is her niece.”

  “Bless Gert’s soul.” Lettie made a noise with her tongue like an old hen calling to her chickens. “If she hadn’t been born as ugly as a mud fence, she might have gotten a better job than checkin’ at a grocery store all these years. She’s got a heart of gold, but . . .”

  “But brains can only take a person so far.” Amos slid out of the booth. “See you ladies later. Looks like Elaine has my tea and call-in order all ready. It’s time to be openin’ the library for the afternoon.”

  “Why didn’t you show him them pictures?” Lettie asked.

  “Because I’m being selfish until we find out what she’s doin’ here,” Cricket declared.

  “Don’t get your hopes up about that happenin’ anytime soon. Them Bakers will close up ranks with all the Sweetwater Bitches and we’ll never find out a blessed thing,” Lettie said.

  “I can always hope that the almighty Jennie Sue Baker will be brought down a few notches. Got to get back to work,” Cricket said as she slid out of the booth.

  Rick wiped sweat from his brow as he settled into the driver’s seat of the bookmobile and drove it toward Bloom. It had air-conditioning when it was running, but with the budget cuts, he’d been told to use the
air only when he was driving from one place to another. The patrons had learned to get their books checked in and get more in a hurry.

  He’d just gotten it parked in the library lot when his sister, Cricket, pulled up in the truck. Twenty years ago, when he was ten years old and it was new, it had been red, but now it had more rust spots than paint. Still, it was the only vehicle they owned, and the engine still purred like it did when it was brand-new.

  She tossed the truck keys his way, and he caught them midair. He limped over to the library door and shoved the bookmobile keys into the return slot for books. On Mondays the town’s small library was closed by the time he got home from his run up to Roby. But on Tuesdays and Thursdays, he was back from Longworth in plenty of time to take the keys inside before Amos closed up.

  “So did you hear the latest news?” Cricket asked as she got into the passenger seat.

  “I hope it’s that the library got a big donation, and we can take the bookmobile back to Sylvester again. Those little old folks can’t get down here to the library, and I’d love to be able to visit with them again.” He started up the engine and headed east of town.

  “That would be a miracle, not news,” Cricket said. “Jennie Sue Baker came back to town. She got off the bus right in front of the café, and I’ve even got pictures to prove it.”

  “So?” Rick raised an eyebrow.

  “Jennie Sue, the queen of Bloom High School, cheerleader and all the trimmings? In my class—don’t you remember her?”

  “Sure I do, but how’s it news that she’s back in town? Her folks live here.” Rick remembered Jennie Sue Baker very well. She’d been one of the rich crowd, but she never came off as uppity or too good to talk to those who weren’t on her social level, in his opinion.

  “She was on a bus,” Cricket said.

  “I came home on a bus. It’s a means of transportation,” Rick said.

  “Not for the almighty Bakers of Bloom, Texas,” Cricket sighed. “The last time she came to town, for one of our class reunions, she arrived in a bright-red sports car with her diamond-dealin’ husband. Her daddy has an airplane, and her mama drives a brand-new Caddy all the time. I mean, like she trades it every fall for a newer model.”