Bake Until Golden: A Novel (The Potluck Catering Club)

by Linda Evans Shepherd

  We stared at each other for a good long time before she said, “Ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be.”

  ———

  I was given a cell of my own. I was led to a room where I was searched—and no, I don’t want to talk about it—told to take off my clothes, put in an orange jumpsuit (orange!), and then told to put my nice suit into a small bag that was labeled with my name.

  Evangeline Vesey: 20100003676.

  I was being assigned to the B pod, according to the booking officer at the county jail. She said—oh-so-matter-of-factly—that I was practically going to be alone in there.

  Not a lot of crime in Summit County, apparently.

  I was taken to the single cot cell, given a pillow, a sheet, and a blanket, and told to get comfortable for the night. “Tomorrow you’ll be arraigned,” she said. Then she smiled at me. “I’m sure you’ll be safe at home this time tomorrow.”

  I refused to sleep. I refused even to lie down. I made up my cot and then sat on it, sitting straight and tall for a good hour before I finally caved in and lay down. I crossed my feet at the ankles, laced my fingers together across my middle, and then stared up at the ceiling. I recited the Lord’s Prayer, the 23rd Psalm, and any other Scripture verse I could bring to mind. I chided myself for not having memorized more.

  I listened to the murmurings coming through walls from far away. I tried to make out the conversations but couldn’t. Every so often I heard the opening and closing of a door, a desk drawer, and—at one point—soft snoring.

  With a jerk, I realized it was my own.

  At 7:00 I was brought breakfast. At 7:30 Vernon showed up. I’ve never been so happy to see anyone in my life. He held me for a moment then said, “You do all right in here?”

  I nodded, but I didn’t say anything.

  “It was a long night without you,” he whispered.

  “For me too, without you, I mean.”

  He held me at arm’s length. “You look like you didn’t sleep a wink.”

  I felt myself blush. “Maybe for a few minutes.”

  Vernon looked down at his watch. “I’ve got Chris Lowe coming in a few minutes, Evie. He’s bringing a guy named Van Lauer.”

  “Wasn’t he . . .” I didn’t finish my sentence.

  “Wasn’t he what?”

  I shook my head. If I remembered correctly, Van Lauer was the attorney Goldie had been involved with—albeit briefly—back when she and Jack had separated. “Why is he bringing Van Lauer?”

  “He told me that Van just happened to be in town, and he’s a criminal attorney with more experience in this kind of thing. Chris thinks he’ll do a good job for us. They were law school buddies.”

  I nodded.

  “Just tell him everything you’ve told me. He’ll do the rest.”

  “Okay.”

  Van and Chris arrived a short while later. We were taken to a small room with a metal table and four hard-as-brick chairs. Van pulled out a legal pad from his dark brown attaché case, then a pen from inside his suit coat pocket.

  It looked expensive. Very expensive. I wondered how we were ever going to pay for this man’s services. As I gave my version of the encounters I’d had with Doreen in the supermarket, Velvet on the street, and Doreen at her home, Van Lauer took detailed notes. Once I finished telling my side, he leaned back in his chair and said, “Okay. I don’t think you’re a flight risk. And you have no prior record. All they have is circumstantial, so I think we can have you released on your own recognizance.”

  “Thank God,” Vernon said.

  “Does that mean I can go home?” I asked.

  Van Lauer—and goodness, but wasn’t he a handsome man?—smiled. I watched the crow’s feet gather around his eyes and then relax. “Yes, Mrs. Vesey. We’ll have you home in no time.”

  ———

  The girls were sitting in the courtroom, waiting for me as I was ushered in.

  So was the press.

  I smiled at the first and sneered at the second.

  By now I had redressed into the clothes I’d worn the day before. I’d combed my hair and even put on my lip gloss again. When I caught Lisa Leann’s eye, she pointed to her own lips and then mouthed: “Looks good.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. But only a little. After all, I had to convince this judge I was standing before that I was taking all this seriously—and I was—and that I was as innocent as I claimed to be.

  The district attorney was asked by the bailiff to read the charges, and she did.

  When the words “manslaughter in the first degree” were spoken out loud, I felt myself swoon. I had known this, of course. I’d heard these same words from the mouth of Nate Sawyer and had discussed them with Van Lauer and Chris Lowe.

  “A person is guilty of first-degree manslaughter,” Van Lauer had said, “when a person dies due to serious injury brought about by another person and the person committing the crime intended to do serious injury to that person.”

  Van said he expected that the district attorney would end up making us an offer to settle for manslaughter second degree, meaning that no malice had been intended.

  “I never laid a hand on her,” I said straightforward. “With malice or otherwise.”

  Then Van had only nodded. This time, he placed his arm around my shoulder and whispered, “You okay?”

  I collected myself and stood straight once more.

  “Mr. Lauer, how does your client plead?”

  “Not guilty, your honor,” he said. His voice sounded as strong and masculine as any I’d ever heard in my life.

  The judge—a man in his early fifties, what with the salt and peppering of his hair and beard and with his reading glasses perched near the tip of his nose—turned back to the district attorney.

  “We’re requesting a million in bail, your honor.”

  Awe and shock rippled through the courtroom. The judge hammered his gavel. “Enough.” Turning to Van, he asked, “Mr. Lauer?”

  “Your honor, we request that Mrs. Vesey be released on her own recognizance. The evidence is circumstantial at best, she is a beloved member of this community, she’s married to the sheriff and is the stepmother to the deputy sheriff. Her father was the former mayor and—”

  The judge waved his hand around his head as though a bug had somehow gotten inside the courthouse and was buzzing around his ear. “I know who she is, Mr. Lauer. My wife and I watch television, and I’ve been a citizen of this county since the day I was born. Evangeline Benson Vesey is no stranger to me.”

  I looked at the judge and blinked . . . waiting. I could hear the held breath of every one of my friends and family members behind me. I could imagine the pencils of the reporters, poised over pads of paper, and their cameras ready to snap my photograph.

  “Your honor,” the district attorney began.

  But the judge continued, “Enough, Ms. Bennett. I realize the seriousness of this crime, but I also know this woman doesn’t have so much as a parking ticket. She’s not going anywhere.” Then he turned to me. “Mrs. Vesey, do you have a visa?”

  I cleared my throat. “I do not.”

  “Well, then,” he said. “I don’t see you as being a flight risk nor do I think you are a danger to this community. I’m releasing you on your own recognizance, but I expect you to check in with the court at least once a week until trial, and I expect you not to leave the county.”

  I nodded. “I understand.”

  The judge looked over at the woman sitting to his left. “When do we set this for trial?” he asked.

  After a moment or two of staring at a computer screen, she answered, “Week of January 7.”

  “Ladies and gentleman,” the judge announced, “we’re setting voir dire on January 7 at 8:30 a.m. Any questions?”

  When no one answered, the gavel came down again, and with that I was dismissed to go home.

  Goldie

  26

  Sweet Tea

  Vernon had slipped me the key to the
house, so the girls and I went over to the Veseys’ immediately after court to prepare a luncheon for when he and Evie got back from the courthouse. They had to stay a while longer, of course, to finalize paperwork.

  Well, I say “the girls.” Donna wasn’t there; she’d left the courthouse after the hearing and went back to working her shift.

  “It’s a shame Donna can’t be here,” Lisa Leann said as though reading my mind. “Did I tell y’all that she came by to see me the other day?” Lisa Leann placed a plate of Texas fried chicken on Evie’s kitchen table. It was covered in aluminum foil and still I could smell its deliciousness from across the room where I stood at the stove dropping tea bags into a pot of boiling water.

  “What’d she say?” Lizzie asked from the refrigerator. She was pulling a crisp tossed salad from the refrigerator, one she’d brought by before heading to the courthouse. “Anything in particular?”

  Lisa Leann bobbed her head. “She said she’s got a hunch about something, though she didn’t say what. She did go over to the boutique, though.”

  “How come?” I asked. I turned off the stove’s burner, added two-thirds of a cup of sugar to the now-boiling tea, and then secured the lid onto the pot. I looked at the measuring cup in my hand and frowned. In my mother’s day and in the earlier years of my marriage, more than a cup of sugar would have been added to the brew. But these days we were all trying to watch our sugar intake and stay healthy.

  Fat lot of good it had done Jack.

  “Why don’t you try Splenda or something?” Vonnie asked from the other side of the room where she was warming potatoes in the microwave. “I just cannot believe all that sugar is healthy.”

  “No self-respecting Southern girl would dare put anything but sugar in her sweet tea,” I said, adding an extra twang to my accent.

  “No, ma’am,” Lisa Leann seconded. “We Southerners know our way around a recipe for sweet tea, and it doesn’t include anything artificial for sweetening.”

  I smiled at Lisa Leann. Bless her heart, she didn’t realize that most Georgia-bred Southern girls don’t consider Texas to be part of the South but rather the West, what with their ten-gallon hats for the men and pink cowboy boots for the ladies. “Back to Donna,” I said. “Why’d she go to the boutique?”

  Lisa Leann looked at me as though I’d just fallen out of a tree. “You know about the break-in.”

  I shrugged then reached for a gallon pitcher standing next to the stove. I took it over to the sink to rinse. “Of course I know about the break-in. I was just wondering if she had any leads.”

  “Well . . .” Lisa Leann lowered her voice. “I can tell you this much . . . nothing was taken from the boutique, but the carpet—you know the pretty Momeni at the fireplace?”

  “The what?” Vonnie asked just as the microwave dinged, letting her know the potatoes were well heated.

  Lisa Leann looked exasperated. “The Momeni . . . well, never mind. It’s the maroon rug with the green leaves and the pretty flowers.”

  Yes, we knew the rug. I stopped rinsing the gallon pitcher and rested for a minute with my arms crossed, waiting for the tea to finish steeping in the pot.

  “Anyway,” Lisa Leann continued, “apparently someone had mussed it.”

  “Mussed it?” Lizzie chimed in. She’d already begun to set the table, and Lisa Leann joined in to help her. “Why would anyone go into the boutique and simply muss a rug?”

  “I don’t know. But she called me and asked if I knew who owned the house before Henry bought it for me so I could have my wedding boutique. I told her I didn’t and she’d have to either ask Henry or go look it up. But Henry told her he bought it from the bank—from Samuel.” She stopped in her table-setting tasks to look at Lizzie.

  “Well, not from Samuel per se,” Lizzie was quick to correct. “But from the bank, yes. But I can tell you who owned the house, and Vonnie will remember too. Old Mrs. Hirvela—”

  Just then we heard the front door open. Evie called out, “I’m home!” as though she’d been gone a month of Sundays. We girls all stopped our lunch preparation tasks and hurried to the front of the house to greet her.

  I have to admit, Evangeline looked like a caged bird set free. She was bustling about the living room, picking up the newspaper Vernon had apparently been reading earlier in the morning before he left for the courthouse.

  “Oh, Vernon,” she said. “Look at all this mess and us with company.”

  Company? We were hardly company. But then I looked toward the front parlor to see both Chris Lowe and Van Lauer stepping over the threshold of the front door and into the house. I felt heat rise in my cheeks, my natural instincts going to war with my love—my foolish, foolish love—for Jack.

  I spun around before anyone might notice and returned to the kitchen, where I finished preparing the tea. And I listened as everyone clucked around Evangeline. Soon enough the whole lot of them had joined me. I stayed busy getting ice in the glasses, then pouring the tea and setting them at the top right of the plates.

  “Please tell me,” Van said from behind me, “that I’m looking at genuine sweet Southern iced tea.”

  I glanced up briefly and said, “Of course it is.” Even to my ears it sounded as though I were scolding a boy rather than answering a man.

  We had to set two extra places at the table because we’d not been told that Chris and Van were coming to the house. When they saw Vonnie make the correction they both apologized. But then Evangeline said, “After lunch we have to talk legal strategy.” Then she pinked and said, “Not that I’m shooing you all away. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate all this.”

  As we took our places at the table I said, “That’s okay, Evie. I’ll be going up to the office after lunch anyway.” I glanced at Chris. “I take it you’ve cleared your calendar for this afternoon, or do I need to do that?”

  Chris shook his head. “Already taken care of, but thank you.”

  Lizzie added, “And I have to get back to the high school. The kids are working hard doing their research for the Founders Day concert next Friday night and I really need to be there to help.”

  “Oh!” Lisa Leann jumped in. “That brings up another point . . .”

  But before she could finish, Vernon said, “Why don’t I say the blessing so we can eat while we talk?” To which we all laughed, then sobered as Vernon prayed.

  ———

  I was sitting at my desk by 2:00 that afternoon, listening to and noting the various phone calls that had come in that morning, mostly from reporters wanting to interview Evangeline, Chris, Van, or all three. I knew what Chris’s response would be, but I placed the little pink message slips on his desk anyway.

  Lisa Leann called at around 3:30 to say she was heading over to the church to store some things we’d need for the Founders Day dinner. “I’ve managed to find some old photographs of Father John Dyer that I’ve had blown up,” she said. “And the card shop you’re sitting on top of has ordered little plastic snowshoes that we’re going to scatter all over the tables, so I was wondering if you could get them on your way out and drop them off at the church.” It wasn’t really a question of whether or not I could but if I would.

  “Be happy to,” I said. “It won’t be until after 5:00 though.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll probably not get there until 4:00 or so because I need to stop at Walmart for some paper goods. Can you believe this thing is only a week and a half away?”

  I looked at my desk calendar. Today was the 5th of October. Friday the 15th the celebration began. Ten days. Only ten days, and with so much going on I wondered how we were going to pull it off. “Good thing we had all that get-it-done-quick training from the TV show, huh?” I teased.

  “You betcha it is,” she answered with a laugh. “Okay, girl. I’m off . . .”

  Van and Chris returned to the office no more than a minute after I hung up the phone. “Oh,” I said, mostly because I was startled to see Van, though I don’t know why. Seemed to me he jus
t kept turning up every time I turned around. “Um, would you like some coffee?”

  They both nodded and Chris said, “Thanks, Goldie, that would be nice. We’ll be in my office talking. Can you just bring it in there?”

  “I’d be happy to,” I said, then stood and made my way to our little kitchen/break room where the coffeepot stood on its head in the drainer in the sink. As I set about to prepare the coffee I heard the door of the room next to the break room open and then close.

  Someone—and it had to be Van—was using the restroom.

  I knew it had to be Van because Chris would have used his private bath. And then I wondered, as I measured out the coffee into the gold-wire filter, why Van hadn’t just gone in there. I added the water to the back of the coffeemaker then pushed the start button.

  “Hi.” A voice behind me broke my concentration.

  I turned. “Hello, Van.” I swallowed hard. “I just started the coffee.”

  He leaned against the door’s frame and crossed his arms. “So I see. Look, Goldie . . . I told Chris I needed to use the restroom, but really I wanted to talk to you. Privately.”

  I stood rigid. “So . . . talk.” It wasn’t like me to be unkind, really it wasn’t. But this was too much and too soon after Jack’s death. Goodness, he’d only been gone a few weeks. It was hardly appropriate for Van and me to discuss anything much less if it had to do with our one-time relationship.

  Oh, why did he have to be so handsome?

  “I just wanted to say,” he began slowly, “that I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, though clearly I am. I wanted to explain to you why I’m even here . . . why I came into town in the first place.”

  “Yes, why did you?” I crossed my arms.

  He took in a deep breath and blew it out. “I was actually in Vail on vacation. I decided to take it a little earlier this year. Do some more golfing. No skiing this time.”

  I didn’t respond. Mainly because I couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

  “And so,” he continued, “when I heard about Jack’s passing I asked Chris if I could attend the services with him and his family, and then I simply went back to Vail to . . . well, to enjoy the rest of my vacation. Then this thing happened . . .”