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

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Bake Until Golden: A Novel (The Potluck Catering Club) Page 21

by Linda Evans Shepherd


  By “this thing” I assumed he meant Doreen’s murder and Evie’s arrest. “Just how long is your vacation?” I asked after mentally calculating the time line.

  “It’s over,” he said. “But Chris said that Vernon was beside himself, and I knew that Evangeline was an old friend of yours . . . yours and Jack’s.”

  “Yes, she was. Is! I mean, yes, she is.”

  He smiled, showing beautifully white, even teeth.

  “Look, what I’m trying to say, and doing a bad job of it, is that I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable. Yes, you and I . . . dated, if you want to call it that . . .”

  “We were just friends, Jack.”

  He stared at me kind of funny.

  “What?” I asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “You just called me Jack.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  To which he chuckled. “Yes. Yes, you did. But I understand. And yes, we were just friends. Two friends who might have become more had Jack not been your husband and had I not been such a good guy.” He raised his brow for effect.

  And I smiled. “You are a good guy.”

  “Good. Then we both agree that we’ll continue to be friends. You’ll do your job for Chris and I’ll do mine for Evangeline, and no more of this feeling strange around each other. Right?”

  “Right.”

  And with that he winked, turned, and walked away . . . just as the coffeepot coughed and sighed, letting me know the brewing was done.

  ———

  Before I left the office I received another call, this time from Andrew.

  “Just calling to make sure you’re doing okay,” he said.

  I hadn’t heard from him in several days, and the call caught me as off guard as everything else had that day. “I’m fine,” I said. “I went back to work yesterday . . . but I guess you know that.”

  “Actually, I do,” he said. “I think it’s a little soon, though. Are you sure you’re up to it?”

  Wasn’t this just what I needed? Jack’s daughter—my daughter—fussing over me all the time, and now Jack’s son doing the same? I closed my eyes. A dead husband in the grave and an old “friend” in and out of this office. Somewhere deep inside I wanted to just let out the most bloodcurdling scream ever let loose in the history of time. In fact, I thought, I just might go home and do that very thing later this evening.

  No, I wouldn’t, I told myself. I had too much pride for that. Besides, it would alert all the neighbors, and one of them might call Olivia, who would then pound on my door and demand to be let in. Or worse—she’d just use her key and let herself in!

  My eyes popped open. “How’d you know I went back to work?” I asked.

  I heard a low chuckle from the other end of the line. I couldn’t help but think it sounded just like Jack’s—just like his father’s. “I was in the card shop today and Britney told me.”

  “What? Is my personal life suddenly subject for conversation?”

  “No. I simply told her I’d seen your car parked around back, and she said you’d come back to work as of yesterday. We both think it’s too soon, by the way.”

  I frowned. “You do, do you?”

  “Yes. I would have just come up to talk with you but . . .”

  He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. I instinctively knew what the rest of his sentence would have been. Should have been. He didn’t want Chris to wonder why an employee of the funeral home was checking up on the recently departed’s widow.

  And with that, my suspicions were confirmed: Andrew Morrow knew that Jack Dippel was his father.

  And, if what I suspected was correct, he’d known it all along.

  Lizzie

  27

  Research Relish

  I left Evie’s and went straight to the high school. On the way I made two phone calls: the first to the center where my mother lives and the second to Samuel.

  The center informed me that Mom was doing just fine, that she was comfortable, eating well, and I was to put my mind at ease. “Come by any time you’d like, Mrs. Prattle, but she’s fine. She doesn’t know when you come and when you don’t, so don’t make yourself feel guilty if you miss a day now and then.”

  Miss a day? Lately, it seemed, I’d missed a whole lot more than a day. But what with school, two jobs, worrying about Michelle wanting to get pregnant, taking care of Samuel, and now this mess with Evangeline, I hardly had time to take a bath much less make sure Mom had had hers.

  My call to Samuel was quick and to the point. I’d already called him after court to let him know the results of the morning’s hearing. Now I needed to tell him I would be late getting home from work. “Several of the kids are going to stay after school to work on the Founders Day research for the concert next Friday night,” I said. “And, of course, I’ll need to be here with them. There’s a chicken tetrazzini in the freezer if you want to put that in the oven when you get home.”

  “Sounds good. Don’t work too hard,” he said.

  We hung up after a couple of air kisses, about the same time as I drove my car into the faculty parking lot of the school where our flag continued to fly at half-mast in memory of Jack.

  I sighed, then picked up my purse from the front passenger seat and reached to the backseat for the heavy sweater I kept there for days like today when I worked late and the temperature was sure to drop. Last I heard, it was supposed to get down to the low forties during the night. In a week or so—about the time for our Founders Day celebration weekend—we’d have nippy but sunshiny days in the mid-fifties and nights in the low twenties.

  “Lord, just don’t let it snow next weekend,” I said, though the story of Father Dyer in his snowshoes would appear even more authentic if Pastor Kevin had to wear them to march along Main Street during the festivities.

  My research team of high schoolers met me in the library after the final bell rang. There were four altogether—two girls and two boys—plus myself. They were all seniors who were studious. Good citizens. Polite to their teachers and truly interested in academics.

  Daniel Sullivan and Carter Vandiver were the two young men who sauntered in first, their backpacks jostling between their shoulder blades until they got to the table I’d set up for our work. There, their shoulders shifted as they’d done thousands of times over the past twelve years, and the backpacks came tumbling down to the floor.

  “Where are the girls?” I asked.

  “They’re coming,” Daniel answered. Then he rolled his eyes and said, “They had to go to the little girls’ room.” He and Carter shared a laugh.

  “Hey, Mrs. Prattle,” Carter said as he pulled out a chair and sat in it. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure,” I answered. I was carrying a stack of research books, which I placed on the table. “Fire away.”

  “Why do girls always have to go to the bathroom in packs? I mean, if I said to Daniel here, ‘Hey, Dan . . . I’ve got to go to the little boys’ room, wanna go with me?’ he’d probably give me a beat down.”

  “No probably about it, dude,” Daniel interjected. “I would give you a beat down.”

  “Well,” I said, thankful at that moment I’d reared both boys and girls, “I really don’t know the answer to that. Girls are just . . . chummy from the time they’re old enough to know what friends are all about. We might fuss from time to time, but in general, what happens to one happens to the other. And when we go to the little girls’ room, it’s for more reasons than just . . . nature’s call, if you will. We chat. We put on our makeup, if we wear any, and we ask each other if our outfits look good. Things like that.”

  I smiled at the perplexed look on the faces of the two young men. Carter finally shook his head and said, “Like I said, Daniel would give me a beat down.”

  “That’s just one of the many, many differences in boys and girls.” Then I grinned. “But aren’t you glad for those differences?” Which, of course, brought a furious blush to the faces of the boys.
<
br />   Just then, Barrie Owens—one of the prettiest girls ever to grace the halls of Summit View High—and her best friend Jocelyn Ritch came through the double doors of the library, whispering to each other at a rate only teenage girls can keep up with. For a moment I was hit with a sudden realization: these young people had their whole lives in front of them, and only the good Lord knew what the years ahead would hold. There had been a time, not too terribly long ago, that Evangeline Benson Vesey and I had walked through those very same doors. Evangeline, Vonnie, Doreen, and me. All friends at one time or another. All of us had gathered with some of the other girls in the bathroom to share high school gossip and to make sure our fashion was every bit as cool as we thought it was. Miniskirts and go-go boots.

  And oh! The nights we held dances here at this school. Our dresses were fanciful. Lovely. Romantic. We felt like princesses because we looked like princesses. Some nights, it seemed, we spent as much time huddled in the ladies’ room oohing and aahing over our dresses as we did sashaying them on the dance floor.

  I blinked as Barrie said, “Mrs. Prattle? Are you okay?”

  “What? Oh . . . yes. I was just thinking back. Sorry.” I placed my hand on the stack of books. “Okay, ladies and gentlemen, here are four books to help get us started. I’m going to go to the stacks to get a few more. There’s paper and pens in the middle of the table here. Let’s see what we can come up with to entertain the masses during the concert next Friday night. I’m looking for myths and legends from around these parts that people might not know about . . . something to really wow them.”

  The four nodded, each appearing truly excited. They reached for the books, pens, and legal pads of paper while I returned to the stacks.

  A few hours later we had woven some interesting tales—including a few haunted ones, which I said I would allow, even though I don’t believe in ghosts.

  Jocelyn was particularly excited over women’s roles during the gold rush. “Women didn’t work the gold mines,” she said to us, her captive audience, “but many found ways to start businesses—legitimate businesses—during those days.”

  “Such as?” I asked.

  “Such as setting up places for the miners to eat. Outdoor restaurants made from picnic-styled tables and benches. Women cooked and cleaned and—oh, this one woman’s journal talks about how she eventually made her husband a partner in her business.”

  We all laughed.

  “Why don’t we do a short play about it?” Daniel suggested. “We can show this man coming home late at night, mining dust all over his face and hands, and he stops. He sees his wife with all these other miners sitting around a table and he says, ‘Woman, what in the world are all these men doing here?’ and then she says, ‘They’re my customers!’”

  Again, we laughed, this time at the tone of Daniel’s voice, but then I said, “I think you have a good idea, there. Can you write it up tonight?”

  “Sure,” Daniel said, then made a note on his legal pad.

  “Here’s another one,” Carter said. “And this one has to do with Father Dyer.”

  “Oh?” I said. “Tell us.”

  “It’s the story of Father Dyer and a miner named Zeke Hannah. Crazy Old Zeke, he was called. Every Friday he’d go into the nearby town—it wasn’t Summit View—and he’d go to the saloon.” He cut his eyes toward Jocelyn. “Probably where the women were serving the liquor and charging for dances.”

  “Hey,” Jocelyn said in jest. “A girl’s gotta make a living.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Anyway, this story talks about how he was always claiming to have found a mother lode of gold, but there was never any proof of it, so people just ignored him. Father Dyer, though, was always nice to him.” Carter pointed down to the text in the book spread open before him. “This says that Zeke claimed to have hit gold, and he gave some of it to Father Dyer for safekeeping but that, when questioned, Father Dyer said that it wasn’t gold he was given but a Bible. Zeke Hannah was never heard from again, and no matter how hard this group of bad boys tried to find the satchel Father Dyer had been given, they never could find it.”

  “So?” I asked. “What do you think? Was it a Bible or was it gold?”

  “I say it was gold,” Daniel interjected.

  “Me too,” they each agreed.

  “Who wants to write this story for us? Make it a sort of Twilight Zone feel where one of you walks out and recites the legend,” I asked.

  “Here’s something else,” Carter said, still reading in the book. “Legend has it that if you stand in a certain place at night you can see the old lantern of Zeke waving back and forth in the hills.”

  “Wooooooo,” Daniel teased. “He’s still looking for the gooooooooold.”

  “Cut it out, nut case,” Carter said.

  “I wonder . . .” Barrie began.

  “Wonder what, Barrie?” I asked.

  “Well, remember when we were kids? We’d all go out and look for the lode of gold that was supposedly lost? Or the treasure chests of gold from the stagecoach robberies?”

  They all said they remembered.

  “Even I remember that,” I said. “Those legends have been around since the late 1800s and—believe it or not—I wasn’t even born then.”

  The foursome giggled. Barrie continued, “I was just wondering if the lode Crazy Old Zeke found was one of the same ones that we read about in school when we were kids. The one that was lost or stolen? What if Zeke saw a robbery in progress and then was able to get part of the gold?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be feasible that he was just a part of the robbery?” I asked.

  “Because Father Dyer took the gold and didn’t turn him or the gold in. Father Dyer would have never taken stolen gold.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “At least from what we know of the man.”

  “Unless he didn’t know it was stolen,” Daniel said.

  “That could be true too,” Carter said.

  “Well,” I said, “let’s put our heads together and see if we can read enough of the myths and legends from that time period, lay out the evidence, and see what we come up with.”

  “Let’s do it.” Daniel nearly jumped in his seat as he spoke.

  ———

  “So . . .” I said to Samuel later as we got ready for bed, “here’s what we came up with: there was a stagecoach robbery not too far from here about the same time as the legend of Zeke Hannah and Father Dyer takes place. Father Dyer, according to the records, was in a small mining town—no longer in existence—about twenty miles from here when the robbery took place. The robbery was about ten miles north of that settlement. And, according to the records, his next stop was south to Summit View, where the foundation of Grace Church had already been laid and some of the original walls had been erected.”

  “Okay,” Samuel said, listening intently as he turned down the covers of our bed. “And?”

  “And, what we think happened is this: Father Dyer didn’t know the gold was stolen, of course, because the robbery occurred north of where he was. Not to mention, he was headed south. So, he took the gold for Old Zeke and ended up storing it around here somewhere.”

  “Where do you suppose it was hidden?” Samuel asked. There was mirth in his eyes, and I could tell he wasn’t buying a word of our theory.

  “Carter thinks it was hidden in the church, Mr. Smarty. Maybe even in the foundation.”

  With that, Samuel blanched. “Now, look here, Liz. Don’t start spreading that rumor. You do, and everybody and his brother will want us to start digging up the foundation of the church, and the good Lord knows we’ve got enough problems with the restoration and addition right now.”

  “But the play . . . the program!” I plopped down on my side of the bed. “It’s going to be such an important part of the evening.”

  “I’m not kidding, Lizzie. Tell it any way you want to tell it, but leave Grace Church out of it.”

  I frowned, then sighed. “I’ll tell the kids,” I said. “We wo
n’t mention the theory of the gold being buried somewhere on church property.”

  Samuel gave a nod of his head. “Good. Because, in reality, Liz, you don’t know that it is. Old Father Dyer might have just used up that gold to do the good Lord’s work. After all, like you said, he didn’t know it was stolen.”

  I lay back on my pillow and pulled the covers up to my chin. “We don’t think he knew.”

  “And don’t go ruining the good name of Father Dyer, either. Everything we know about the man is good and decent.”

  I rolled onto my side and faced my husband. “I agree, Sam. I do. So if he didn’t know the gold was stolen and the gold was stolen, and he thought it belonged to a man no one ever heard from again so he couldn’t have given it back . . . where do you suppose it is?”

  Samuel turned his head to look at me. “I have no idea. Go to sleep, Lizzie. Maybe you’ll dream of finding a map.”

  I returned to my back. “Or maybe there’s a legend we just don’t know about yet.”

  “Lizzie. I’m tired, sweetheart.”

  “That gold is around here somewhere, Samuel. Maybe I just got caught up in the legends and myths some teenagers were weaving from books. Or maybe, just maybe, we’ve stumbled on a secret that’s been well-kept over the years.”

  “Well, let’s just hope the five of you are the only ones who know about it.” He reached over and turned off his bedside lamp. “Because the last thing this town needs is more excitement than we already have. Now, I love you and good night.”

  Lisa Leann

  28

  Fishy Business

  The worst thing about the evening of my boutique’s break-in and our near home invasion, already three days ago, was the fact I’d hung up on Mandy.

  That wouldn’t have been so bad except that was the last communiqué we’d received from our daughter. Henry was beside himself with worry; worry that grew after we’d rented then watched the movie Rendition, the story of a man who is falsely accused then tortured in an Egyptian jail. Was that why the authorities wanted to question Ray at the police station, so they could accuse him and imprison him for a crime he hadn’t committed?

 

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