Eloise laughed and stuffed her hands into the pockets of her uniform. The day was blustery and dogwood blossoms were scooting around the parking lot.
“Clip’s been coming around here a lot lately. He’s chewed my ear off, talking about you. Says he made a big mistake, letting you get away the way he did.”
I made a face and reached for my food. “I don’t care what that buzzard thinks. No offense. I know he’s your kin, but he’s not been my favorite person for a good while.”
“And no one could blame you,” Eloise said, raking her fingers through brown, fuzzy curls.
“I am a little curious about something though.” I shook my jalapeño pepper from its paper wrapper. “How in heaven’s name did Clip get that big, red truck he’s been tooling around in?”
Eloise’s pupils widened. She leaned over the window of my car and said, “You and everyone else in the family. His mama’s scared to pieces that he’s involved with the Mafia.”
“The Mafia? There isn’t any Mafia in Cayboo Creek,” I said.
“Oh, Clip’s mama thinks there is. She’s suspicious of that restaurant called the Olive Haven that opened up a couple of months ago on Highway One. She thinks it might be their headquarters.”
“What’s Clip’s explanation as to why he’s suddenly got such an expensive truck?” I asked.
“He just says he bought it. He showed his mama the title, but he won’t say where he got the money.”
I dabbed at my face with a Wet One. “You mean he didn’t even finance it?”
“That’s right. And Clip refuses to discuss it any further. You want to know something else? He bought this truck the day after you and he split up. Now what do you think about that?”
“Well, I had nothing to do with it,” I said. I was getting impatient with the conversation. I had enough troubles of my own without worrying if my ex-fiancé had turned into some kind of criminal.
“Of course you didn’t. Clip’s mama says you were the best thing that ever happened to him. According to her, you’re a saint.”
“Is that so?” I took a nibble of my drumstick. I was flattered. Not that Clip’s mother was the most sophisticated woman in the world. She read supermarket tabloids cover to cover and was utterly convinced that Batboy was a real person.
“Eloise!” called the manager of the Pick of the Chick.
Eloise rolled her eyes. “Gotta go. Don’t be a stranger now. I’d like to see you more often.”
After eating, I drove to the Augusta Library and checked out a stack of books on marketing, as well as a book entitled Ace the SAT. Although I didn’t think I had any chance of getting into the University, I decided to placate my husband.
I slid into my car and balanced a book on my knee, intending only to flip through it, but soon found myself engrossed in an account of Wells Fargo’s corporate turnaround. But I couldn’t keep my mind on the reading. I kept thinking about Mavis losing the Bottom Dollar Emporium and moving to South Dakota.
No one had made an offer on her house yet, but Mavis was talking about renting it out until it could be sold. She’d asked me and Timothy to serve as landlords while she was in South Dakota. She was also planning a liquidation sale of the Bottom Dollar shortly after the grand opening of the Super Saver. She was so resigned to moving that she’d bought seven pairs of long Johns during Goody’s winter clearance sale. As I was trying imagine a world without Mavis and the Bottom Dollar Emporium, a knock sounded on my passenger window. Startled, I let loose a shriek.
I looked up and saw Clip’s face looming through the glass. I cranked down the window.
“You like to have jarred the fillings right out of my teeth, Clip Jenkins,” I said.
Clip wore his blue RC Cola work shirt. The breeze stirred his reddish-gold bangs.
“Good afternoon, Liz. Or should I call you Mrs. Hollingsworth now?”
“How’d you find out my new last name?”
Clip shrugged. “Cayboo Creek is a real small town, Liz.” He stuck his head through the open window. I could smell his Mennen cologne, a musk blend of some sort. “Could you come out here? I need to talk to you.”
I turned the key in the ignition. “I gotta go, Clip.”
“Look, Liz.” He cast his eyes downward. “Jonelle didn’t mean nothing to me. That girl’s got snakes in her hair.” His fingers gripped the inside of the door. “It wasn’t anything like what I had with you. What the two of us had meant something.”
I looked into his familiar tanned face. I’d once counted the freckles on the bridge of his nose and traced the arch of his eyebrow with my finger. But now he just seemed a stranger to me.
“Move your fingers, Clip. I’m out of here.”
“This marriage of yours, Liz. It’s a rebound thing. We’ve been together since high school. You barely know this Timothy”
I started rolling up the window and revved the engine.
“You gotta hear me out, Liz. That family you married into—” His voice dropped to a ragged whisper. “They aren’t right, I tell you.”
I shook my head at him. “You’re the one who’s not right, Clip. I hear your mama is worried sick wondering where you got that fancy truck of yours.”
He sighed wearily. “Worst decision of my life.”
As he spoke, I noticed that there were dark splotches under his eyes, as if he hadn’t been sleeping.
“But in a couple of days everything will come out in the open. And you and I can have another chance, Liz,” he said softly.
I shook my head. “Clip, I’m married. Very happily married. I’m leaving now.”
“But Liz—”
The window went up and Clip hastily backed away. I took off, and in my rearview mirror I saw Clip gazing forlornly after my departing car.
Twenty-Five
When down in the mouth, remember Jonah. He came out all right.
~ Message in the Methodist Church Bulletin
The Cayboo Creek Crier slapped down on the stoop of the Bottom Dollar Emporium. I waved at Birdie’s grandson, Gordie, as he pedaled down Mule Pen Road, tossing papers, his red hair a flag of color in the pale morning sunlight. I scooped up the newspaper, knowing what the headline would read without even looking at it.
Once inside the store, Mavis noticed the paper in my hand. She held up her palm. “I don’t even want to see that thing.” She retreated into the storeroom with her coffee cup, saying, “If anyone asks for me, tell ‘em I’m busy.”
Hank plodded through the front door holding an African violet plant in his hand, followed by Birdie, who cradled a box of doughnuts.
“Where is she?” Hank said, scanning the store. Attalee had taken the paper from me and had it spread out, so we could all read the headline splashed across the front: “Super Saver Opens Today in Cayboo Creek.”
“She’s in the back, stewing,” Attalee said. She thumped the paper. “Doggit, Birdie. This headline’s so big it looks like an eye chart. Couldn’t you have buried this in the back, with the lost pet notices?”
Birdie had opened the doughnut box. Her index finger hovered like a divining rod over the rows of doughnuts, finally zeroing in on a chocolate one with pink sprinkles.
“As much as I love Mavis, I’m first and foremost a journalist,” she said, holding the doughnut delicately between her fingers. “This week the two biggest stories were the opening of the Super Saver Dollar Store or Reeky’s cat Moonbeam catching fire after leaping over one of those aromatherapy candles. A grand opening will nudge a charred kitty off the front page every time.”
Hank was sprawled out on a chair, drumming his fingers on his overall-covered belly. “Maybe I oughta go back and check on her.” He craned his neck in the direction of the storeroom. “You think I should?”
“Let her be for a while, Hank,” I said, gentl
y. “I think part of her thought this day would never come.”
Mavis emerged from the storeroom and was standing in the doorway, her broad forehead marred by grooves of distress.
“Mavis?” Hank said. “Are you all right?”
She shook her head. “I kept praying for a miracle, thinking that maybe God would smile on me. I even put an extra five dollars each week in the offering plate.” She covered her face with her hands. “That was just plain foolishness.”
Hank awkwardly patted her back with a pawlike hand.
Mavis removed a hankie from the pocket of her smock and blew her nose. “I’m truly a silly, old woman.”
“No, Mavis,” I said gently. “You’re not a bit silly.”
“I’m not just sad about this. I’m also angry,” Mavis said. “How dare these people come into town with their bulging bank accounts and their buying power and not give a care who they’re hurting! I’ve a half a mind to walk over there and give them what for.”
“We should go over there,” I said.
“Into enemy camp?” Hank asked. He’d helped himself to a powdered doughnut, and sugar trailed from his chin to the top button of his plaid shirt.
“Yes,” I said. “Not to bless them out. But just so we can see what we’re dealing with, once and for all. Maybe there’s something we’re missing.”
“What’s the point, Elizabeth?” Mavis said. “It’s all over.”
“Just humor me, Mavis,” I said.
Mavis pressed her lips so tightly together they disappeared. Then she fumbled in her pocket and out came the silver flash of her cash-register key. “Attalee, will you mind things while we’re gone? Nowadays, we can’t afford to miss even a chewing-gum purchase.”
Hank hitched up his overalls, while Birdie adjusted the brim of her basin-shaped hat. The three of them trudged behind me in a dejected line. I, on the other hand, felt a surge of hope urging me across the road.
Several cars were already parked in the Super Saver lot. None of them looked familiar except a bright, blue Volkswagen bug bumper-stickered “I break for butterflies.”
As if on cue, Reeky came out of the store hugging a paper bag brimming with items, the head of a toilet brush peering out at a jaunty angle. At the sight of our little group, arrayed in a phalanx, she screeched and dropped her bag.
I stopped a cylinder of breath mints with my foot, while Hank crouched down to pick up the other fallen items. He shamefacedly ignored a box of Tampax that had flung open, sending a half a dozen or more rolling merrily down a grassy knoll on the edge of the parking lot.
“You scared me to pieces,” Reeky said. “You shouldn’t creep up on folks like that.”
Hank had gathered up all of Reeky’s things and handed them to her.
Reeky blinked rapidly. The whites of her eyes had a pinkish cast to them like that of a rabbit’s. “I know this looks terrible. And I wouldn’t have dreamt of setting foot in here. Except today I got this coupon in the mail. It’s five dollars off every purchase of fifteen dollars or more. Five dollars. I swear that now that I’ve used the coupon, I’ll never darken their door again.”
She rummaged through her macramé bag and took out a piece of blue paper. “Here’s what I received. Of course they already tore off the coupon part.”
Mavis put on her reading glasses and read the paper aloud.
‘Howdy, Neighbors! Super Saver Sam wants you to save a lot of dough at your neighborhood Super Saver Dollar Store.’
“If that isn’t just the limit,” she said. “This big corporation pretending to be our neighbor.”
“Super Saver Sam’”s cartoon head was ridiculously oversized and he had an exaggerated cleft in his chin. Dollar signs danced in his eyes.
“Five-dollar savings,” Mavis said with a shake of her head. “It makes our coupon look pathetic.”
“Let’s just see what’s going on inside,” I said, shooting Reeky a poisonous look.
Plate glass was strung with multicolored triangular flags. Just outside, a line of gleaming shopping carts with the Super Saver logo beckoned customers, while a sleek, coin-operated spaceship promised to entertain the little ones.
“Seventy-five cents for this dinky ride,” Hank remarked. “That’s a crime.”
I was fixing to push the door, but it flung open on its own accord. A gale of icy air whooshed out, along with the stereo sounds of “Crystal Blue Persuasion.”
A hush fell over our group as we took in all of the sights of the new Super Saver Dollar Store. The clerks at each register were garbed in matching navy-blue smocks with red piping. (I recognized them as local girls, just out of high school. They’d turn surly soon enough, but today they all wore toothy, customer-friendly grins.)
The cash registers made satisfying blips as items were scanned through the line. Red, white, and blue balloons swayed above each checkout. But it was the inventory that boggled the mind. Bottles of shampoos, organized by color, stretched out in endless rows. Towers of towels loomed on the shelves. I gaped open-mouthed at an entire back wall devoted just to laundry detergents.
Feenie Myers, a regular at the Bottom Dollar, ducked behind a display of potted meat when she saw me coming, but I was too spellbound to pay her any mind.
The store was as big as an airplane hangar. We drifted like sleepwalkers through the seemingly endless aisles. Finally, Mavis tugged my wrist in the automotive department. (Such a thing didn’t exist at the Bottom Dollar.) “I’ve had enough. Let’s head on back.”
We exited to eager cries of, “Please come back and see us.”
As soon as we got back to the Bottom Dollar Emporium, Mavis collapsed into a chair. Hank handed her the little silver flask he always carried in the pocket of his overalls. Mavis unscrewed the cap and took a big swallow, even though the only alcohol that generally passed her lips was in Birdie’s Christmas rum cakes.
“Good Lord Almighty. It’s even worse than I thought. We might as well board up the windows today. No one is going to shop at the Bottom Dollar after they see that place,” Mavis said. Her cheeks were flushed from the alcohol.
“Now, dearie. Don’t get overwrought,” Birdie said, patting Mavis’s hand.
Mavis leveled her gaze at me. “What do you think, Elizabeth? Are you finally convinced that there’s no way to save the Bottom Dollar Emporium?”
Everyone waited for me to speak. Attalee, who was on a stepladder, dusting the tops of shelves, lowered her feather duster and peered down at me.
I cleared my throat. “After visiting the Super Saver, even I’m convinced that we don’t have a prayer trying to compete with them. They’re bigger and better than us. Going head to head with that place would be like a gnat trying to tussle with a killer bee.”
“Cripes, Elizabeth,” Attalee hissed. “You could try to soft-soap it some.”
“No. I need to hear the unvarnished truth,” Mavis said through colorless lips.
I smiled. “But in answer to your question, Mavis, yes, I think the Bottom Dollar Emporium can be saved. And I think I know exactly how to do it. Seeing the Super Saver up close has given me a wonderful idea. It’s the most fantastic idea I’ve ever had.”
“Well, what is it?” Birdie said. “Don’t leave us in the dark.”
“I’m not ready to share it yet,” I said, quickly. “I need to do a little research first. Before I get my hopes up, I have to make sure that my plan is feasible.”
I strode over to Mavis and slung my arm around her. “Tell you what, Mavis, give me twenty-four hours. That should be enough time if I take the rest of the day off. We’ll all meet here tomorrow and then I’ll tell you what I have in mind for the Bottom Dollar Emporium.”
Twenty-Six
People are like tea bags. You gotta put them in hot water before you know how strong they are.
~ Note tacked on the bulletin board of the Bottom Dollar Emporium
Timothy and I strolled down Scuffle Road, which was canopied by rows of Japanese magnolia trees in the process of losing their heavy pink and white blossoms. The street was downwind of the Wagon Wheel and usually smelled of cooking grease, but today it was as fragrant as a harlot’s bedchamber.
We passed by my neighbor Burris, who was sitting on his porch in his undershirt, smoking a cigarette and listening to a Clint Black song on a transistor radio.
“Hey there, Elizabeth,” he said, twitching his propped-up feet to the music.
“Hi, Burris,” I said. “What’s new?”
“Everyone’s talking about your top-secret plan to save the Bottom Dollar Emporium,” he replied. “At least, that was the word at the Tuff Luck Tavern last night.”
“Your secret is out,” Timothy said, squeezing my hand.
“Is it true, Elizabeth?” Burris asked. “Or just tavern talk?”
“It’s true,” I said, with a mysterious smile, as Timothy and I continued down the street.
When we were out of Burris’s earshot I said, “Maybe there’s something I’ve overlooked. Maybe my idea isn’t so great after all.”
“It’s a brilliant plan, Elizabeth,” Timothy said. “I don’t know how it can miss.”
“The main thing will be convincing Mavis. She might hate the whole idea.”
“She’ll love it,” Timothy said in a reassuring voice.
As we turned the corner and reached Main Street, I noticed that the Bottom Dollar parking lot was almost empty, which was unheard of for a Saturday morning.
Just as the two of us started up the walk, Birdie came rushing out of the store.
“Oh, Elizabeth, it’s terrible! Courtney Cooper is here and she’s got an offer on Mavis’s house,” Birdie said, breathlessly.
Bet Your Bottom Dollar (The Bottom Dollar Series Book 1) Page 16