Only I was worried plenty and not just about his injury, either. One thing was clear—Joe was nervous and hiding something. Had Joe seen something at the party, something that he didn’t want to reveal about Wakefield’s murder? Then another thought hit me: Watching him walk back across the yard and disappear into the orchard, all I could think was that this kind old man who I’d grown so fond of probably had more reason than anyone to want Ben Wakefield dead. His son’s death at Wakefield Lumber weighed heavily on him even today. And now, knowing he had been at the party that night, I realized he’d had the opportunity to kill him, just like so many others. Then there was the burn on his arm. He’d said it came from working on the tractor, but . . . I rubbed at a kink forming in the back of my neck as it occurred to me that maybe I’d been looking at this whole thing wrong. Maybe Millicent hadn’t paid Floyd to set fire to that woodpile. Maybe it was . . . No, it couldn’t be Joe. I bit at my lip, fretting over this latest revelation. It just couldn’t be Joe, could it? I bent down, scooping up Roscoe and pulling him close to steal a moment of comfort from his soft fur and warm little body before heading back into the house.
• • •
“You’re late,” Laney stated, rolling her eyes to the large clock that hung on the wall. From the sink across the room, Mrs. Whortlebe clucked her disapproval at my tardiness as she prepared the sink area for a client’s shampooing. She paused for a second to send a sharp look my way. “About time ya got here, Nola Mae. Didn’t your mama teach you the importance of being on time?”
“Yeah, you’re fifteen minutes late,” Laney complained. “And after I cut my lunch break short and all.”
I lowered my head. “I’m sorry, Laney. I got tied up at the Mercantile. Sally Jo needed my help with something.” That was only partially true. Actually, after stopping by the print shop to pick up the labels for my preserves, I’d gone in to check on some drip lines to replace the faulty ones in the south orchard. When I walked in, I found Sally Jo behind the counter, crying her eyes out. She was terribly upset about something, but I never could coax out of her what it was. Still, I was hesitant to leave until I got her settled down.
I slid into the chair across from Laney and plunked my hands on top of the table, sending her a pleading look. “Do you think you still have time to work me in? I want to look my best for the festival.”
Laney tapped the corner of the desk. “Pay up now. I don’t want you smudging my work trying to fish money out of your pocket when I’m done.”
Thanking her, I laid out the bills including an extra five on top of my already promised ten-dollar tip. This seemed to smooth her ruffled feathers. As she picked up the bills, I noticed she’d added tiny little gems to the tips of her own red nails. Probably a little extra bling for the weekend’s festivities. As for my color, there was already a bottle set out along with a few of the same torturous tools she’d used last time. “That shade looks familiar. A Knowing Blush?” I asked, remembering the name of the polish she’d used before.
“A Knowing Blush? Why, heavens no!” The corners of her lips curled upward. “This one’s called Double Trouble Pink.”
I narrowed my eyes. The names of these polishes were sounding fishy to me. A Knowing Blush and now Double Trouble Pink? Like maybe trouble was coming my way, or, heaven forbid, Hollis was in for another round of trouble. Or perhaps it was Laney’s subtle comment on the town’s most recent stream of unfortunate events: murder and now arson. Then again, Laney wasn’t really the subtle-comment type.
She got down to work, her mouth moving as quickly as her fingers as she jabbered on about the weekend’s festivities, what she planned to wear to this event and that—reminding me that I promised Hattie I’d come early to her shop Saturday morning for own my fashion fix—and other trivial tidbits that passed in one ear and out the other until my attention was sidetracked by a low moan coming from across the room. “Oooh, please don’t stop, Doris. This is the best shampoo I’ve ever had. I can just feel all my stress melting away.”
Doris let out an irritated sigh. “Shoot fire, girl! If I keep this up, I’ll scrub your hair right off. You wanna be bald?” For some reason her eyes slid my way with that comment, but she quickly caught herself, grabbed the extendable sprayer and started rinsing.
Laney pointed a nail file toward Doris and silently mouthed the word “cranky.”
“Yeah, I sort of figured that,” I whispered back, noticing Laney was bypassing the cuticle snipper this time. Thank goodness. “What’s going on with her? She’s usually so chipper.”
Laney shrugged and popped her gum. “All I know is that brother-in-law of yours stopped by earlier this morning.”
“Hollis?”
“That’s right. And Doris has been upset ever since.”
“Really?” What is that all about? Then I got to thinking that a lot of people seemed upset lately. First Ginny, then Sally Jo, and now Doris. All business owners and all suddenly upset. Was Hollis responsible for all this? Did it have something to do with his meeting with Millicent? A feeling of dread rolled through my stomach. “Do you know what he said to her?”
Laney shook her head. “No, sure don’t. Whatever it was got her all worked up, though.” She finished the polish on my first hand and removed my other from the soaking bowl. She leaned forward and, lowering her voice even more, added, “She’s off her game today. Should have seen what she did to the Crawford sisters earlier.”
“The Crawford sisters?” A mental image of the two elderly ladies with billows of snowy white curls flashed through my mind. “Do tell, Laney,” I said, lifting my first hand and admiring my newly glossed pink nails. I could definitely get used to this manicure thing.
She continued to whisper. “Well, they came in for their weekly color rinse and set this morning. Only Doris messed up the color and instead of leaving with their usual color, Silver Lining . . . Well, let’s just say they looked more like they’d been caught in a Purple Rain.”
“Uh-oh.”
Laney shook her head, her finely arched brows coming together as she concentrated on the fingertips of my second hand. For a while things grew quiet between us, until I broke the silence with another question. “Did you happen to run into Hollis last night at the Honky Tonk?”
Her head snapped up. “Yeah. So?” She sighed. “Did Ida send you over here to pump me about Hollis?”
“Ida? No. Why?”
She gave me a decisive once-over and shrugged before turning her focus back to my nails, carefully brushing the glass-like pink over each one. One thing about Laney, she took her work seriously.
I continued, “I just happened to see him there with Millicent and wondered what he was up to.”
“Why don’t you just ask him?”
I shrugged.
“Shoot!” She used her own nail to scrape a smudge of pink off my skin. “Hold still! You’re making me mess up.” She sighed and glanced impatiently at the clock. “If you want my opinion, they were just shootin’ the breeze. Honestly, I don’t think anything’s going on between them.” She looked up and winked. “Just in case Ida was wondering.”
“Going on? Oh, Ida wasn’t . . . I just happened to see him there and wondered what he was up to, that’s all.”
She looked up from my nails and rolled her eyes. “Well, duh. He was drinking. I hear tell that he’s there every night, slammin’ down the booze like it’s nobody’s business.”
“Oh, I see.” Deciding time was running short, I broached another topic on my mind. “I thought it was lousy what Millicent did to you with that casserole.”
She chomped down hard on her gum, but didn’t say anything.
“After all, you can’t help it if Ben Wakefield found you attractive.”
“That’s right. I mean, if you got it, flaunt it, right?”
I nodded, thinking Laney had the flaunt part down pat. Across the room someone cried out
and dropped a cussword. Laney and I both turned to see what the ruckus was about. It seemed Doris had the shampoo lady in her chair and was ripping through her hair with a comb. “Darn it, Doris. You’re tearing my hair out with that thing,” the lady was complaining.
“It’s not my fault. You’re the one who insisted on extra shampooing. Your curls have gone and tightened so much they’re about too tight to slip a second through, let alone any comb.”
Grimacing, I turned back to Laney and tried to steer things back to our own conversation. “By the way, did you happen to read the paper yesterday? All that business about the fire and the damage done to Millicent’s car?”
“Sure did.”
“Then you saw the bottles of Peach Jack in those pictures.”
Laney recapped the polish and slid it back into the rack, declaring me done. “Yeah, and we both know who likes Peach Jack.” She chuckled at her own cleverness.
I waved my hand in front of my mouth, blowing on my nails. “That’s just the point, isn’t it? Everyone in town knows about Hollis’s preference for the stuff. Making it the ideal way to frame him.”
Laney started to squirm with nervousness . . . or excitement, I couldn’t decide which, but a telling flush suddenly tinged the apples of her cheeks. A Knowing Blush, one could say. I pressed my lips together, trying to suppress my smugness. I’d hit on a nerve. Was she was about to spill? Perhaps tell me how she’d taken out her anger over the casserole thing on Millicent’s car?
My anticipation grew as she leaned over the table and cupped one hand to the side of her mouth. “That’s exactly what I was thinking, Nola. Sure, Hollis likes his Jack, but he’s not stupid. He wouldn’t go and trash Millicent’s car and then leave his bottle behind. I don’t care how snookered he might have been.” She sat back up and shrugged, bringing her voice back to its normal volume. “That’s just my opinion, though. Everyone else in town is sure it’s Hollis. Heard tell that he might lose his job over all this.”
“I’d be all for that!” Doris chimed in. She was rolling giant pink curlers into her client’s hair. “Why, they should have fired his sorry butt long ago. He’s nothin’ but a double-crossing, no-good, drunk . . .” She paused in the middle of her rant and looked my way. “Sorry, sweetie. I know he’s family and all—”
“Through marriage, not blood,” the woman in curlers piped up. “Which is a different matter altogether.”
I did a double take. How’d this woman know so much about me? I didn’t know her from Adam. But one thing I did know, this conversation was heading in the wrong direction. Deciding I’d better get out while I could, I snatched up my bag—ignoring Laney’s warnings about my still-wet polish—and made a hasty retreat.
Back in my Jeep, the first thing I did was dial Ray’s number on my cell phone. He wasn’t due back into town until Friday afternoon, but I figured these latest developments warranted disrupting him at work. I needed to let him know what I’d learned about Joe. I also wanted to find out if there was any news on Floyd Reeves. Mostly, though, I wanted to inform him about Hollis’s latest antics: his meeting with Millicent Wakefield and wreaking havoc with a few of the town’s small business owners. I wasn’t quite sure what Hollis was up to now, but I suspected it meant trouble. Double Trouble.
Chapter 18
Georgia Belle Fact #050: Finding a man is serious business. Dressing up your assets is just a wise business decision.
After speaking to Ray, who promised to look into this latest thing with Hollis, I pushed everything else to the back of my mind so I could spend the rest of the week focusing on getting ready for the festival and the debut of my family’s new sideline business. I cooked and stirred and tested and steamed up the kitchen for hours on end the next couple of days to get the actual products lined up. My feet ached from so much standing and my hair plastered itself to my head, but, in the end, if they didn’t sell, we’d have enough preserves to last us and half the town through the winter!
Between batches I had price tags to make and labels to affix. At the last minute, I decided to dress up my jars by adding a swatch of pretty fabric to each lid, tying it off with a decorative strip of raffia. Which turned out quite well, if I said so myself. Oh . . . then there was the sign for my booth. Borrowing inspiration from the chalkboard at Red’s Diner, I sprayed a board with chalkboard spray, trimmed it out with rustic scrap wood I found out in the barn and carefully painted on the words: Harper’s Famous Peach Recipes in white paint. The rest of the board I would complete with chalk, enabling me to change it depending on the product I’d be selling. Tomorrow, I’d only have the preserves to list. Hopefully, one day, I’d have several other products like Mama’s famous peach chutney, or my nana’s peach candy. . . . Maybe even sweetly spiced pickled peaches, a recipe one of my great-aunts perfected years ago. My mouth watered at the thought of that favorite fall treat of mine, which I loved to heat and eat over vanilla bean ice cream.
My enthusiasm grew as I wrapped up details and gathered my materials. Deciding I needed a practice run, I laid everything out on the dining room table. Stepping back, I was happy to see that the entire display, laid out on a blue gingham-covered table, exuded a feeling of down-home country goodness. Exactly the look I was going for.
However, as I quickly discovered first thing Saturday morning, all that down-home appeal added up to a lot to carry. Lucky for me, Ray, who’d rolled in late Friday night, was there to help me haul boxes from my parking spot two streets off the square, to Hattie’s Boutique. It was a little before eight in the morning and, even though the festival wasn’t due to open to the public until ten, the streets were already crowded with vendors setting up their wares and eager festheads mulling from booth to booth trying to catch a sneak preview of this year’s offerings. I was just as eager and had already spied a gorgeous braided rug in subdued earthy tones that would be perfect for the mudroom off the back of our kitchen. I made a note to return to the booth later.
On the courthouse lawn, a giant Peach Harvest Festival banner flapped in the morning breeze, which carried the faint scent of flowers mixed with the hot cinnamon smell of candied pecans being fired up. For the kiddie fair, a large colorful carousel, with mirrors and wildly painted horses, was the main attraction, next to an inflatable jump house and large slide. An expanse of lawn was left open, however, where I knew the Jaycees would be hosting potato sack races and a giant tug-of-war match.
“Can you smell that?” Hattie asked, as I entered her shop with my first load of supplies. She inhaled again, her eyes turning upward with pleasure. “The church ladies have already started baking.”
She was referring to our festival’s claim to fame—the world’s largest peach cobbler. The twelve-foot-by-six-foot culinary spectacular always took place down the street in the parking lot of the Mt. Zion Baptist Church. More than likely, preparations would have begun in the wee hours of the morning. It took several teams of people, working around the clock to mix the five-gallon buckets of ingredients, which were then placed in a pan, constructed of school bus floor panels, and stirred by giant boat oars. Throughout the day, the official baker would stoke the fires under the giant brick oven, sending up a wonderful aroma of hot peaches and buttery crust. Then, sometime around two in the afternoon, the church bells would ring, signaling that the first taste was ready.
“Yes,” I enthused, momentarily closing my eyes as memories of hot peach cobbler topped with hand-cranked peach ice cream flooded my mind and aroused my taste buds. “I can hardly wait to get my bowl.” Giant sized or not, in these parts, the Baptists were known for making the best cobbler around.
“Cute sign,” Cade said, pausing for a second to regard my handiwork. He was in the middle of helping Hattie push a rack crammed with outfits outside. In addition to my table, Hattie planned on displaying a rack of discount dresses in hopes of enticing customers into her store. I noticed she’d also arranged a small table in the corner of the boutique,
filled with covered trays of cookies and a large glass tea dispenser. “That a girl,” I said, pointing to the treats. “Bait them with a discount and reel them in with cookies.”
“It’s all about the marketing.” She laughed.
“Where do you want these?” Ray finally made his way into the boutique and was stumbling with the heavy box of preserves. I jumped in to help him maneuver the box to the counter. “I know two little girls who are going to love that carousel,” he commented.
“Are they ever! What time did Ida say she’d show up today?” I was eager to show her my booth and what I’d accomplished with the preserves. And, of course, the twins would be so proud to see their artwork on the labels.
“She wasn’t sure. Said it depended on what time Hollis could get away from work. The bank is open until eleven, I think.” I knew from our conversation a couple days before that Ray was eager to talk to Hollis. I’d told him about seeing Hollis meet with Millicent and also what Laney had said about Hollis upsetting Doris. Ray was anxious to get to the bottom of these new developments, but so far, Hollis had succeeded in avoiding him. He’d even had Ida make some lame excuse about why he couldn’t come to the phone last night.
“Maybe you can pin him down today,” I suggested.
Ray shrugged. “That’s the plan. But we’ll see. He’s definitely been avoiding me.” He rubbed both hands along the scruff on his chin. A bit of anger welled inside me. Here Ray was killing himself to get Hollis out of trouble while keeping his own law business going in Perry, and Hollis wouldn’t even take the time to answer his calls. What was wrong with that man? Made me wonder what new way he’d devised to land himself into trouble this time.
“What would you like me to do?” A dark-haired young man had entered the boutique, wearing jeans and a white T-shirt with this year’s Peach Festival logo. I guessed him to be almost six feet tall and probably close to eighteen years old.
Peaches and Scream (Georgia Peach Mystery, A) Page 22