by Lisa Wingate
“Bad joke.”
Leaning over the washer, I decided that with that much soap, either everything would come out really clean or the washer would explode. “You don’t catch the field mice with glue traps, do you?”
“No glue traps.” His voice was close. “You’re safe.” I felt him near me. I looked up, and he’d leaned back against the washer, rested his palms on it comfortably, as if he didn’t have anything more important to do than stand there and talk. “So, who do you know in McGregor? They’re our archenemies, you know. The Bulldogs.”
The Bulldogs. I remembered that now. I was jealous of the girls in their cheerleader suits on Friday nights at the soda shop. “Oh, nobody special. It’s been a long time.”
“Mmmm.” Nodding, he eyed me speculatively. I felt the power of that gaze, the pull of it.
“I have a confession to make.” A tiny sliver of guilt had been needling me since he came back with the soap. “I snooped in your office. Sorry.”
He drew back a little, his eyebrows arching upward, as if that pleased him. “Not a problem. I don’t have any skeletons in my closet … or my office.” His voice was soft, low so that it rumbled in his chest. “Find anything interesting?”
Interesting … anything interesting … A pulse fluttered in my throat, thready, aware, expectant. “You should … close the washer.” What a completely idiotic thing to say. Every fiber of my body had gone wild, thoughts zinging randomly though my brain, as if someone had plugged me into a wall socket and the voltage was too high.
His eyes were the most gorgeous shade of golden brown now, like caramel with a small, silvery pool of mint melting toward the centers. “You’re doing it again, you know,” he said.
“What?” The word was throaty, inviting.
“Changing the subject. It makes you hard to figure out.”
“Sorry.” I knew I was leaning closer to him, or he was leaning closer to me.
“Don’t be,” he whispered, and I felt the room spin.
“What …” I swallowed hard, blinked, tried to gather a coherent thought, but I couldn’t. “What did you want to know?”
“Everything.” His lips met mine and I was lost. Any coherent thought flew from my mind, and there was only the scent, the touch, the feel of him. I felt his fingers slip into my hair, felt his body turn, lean into mine, felt my body mold against his, strangely familiar, as if I’d been imagining this before it happened.
Either the washer changed cycles or the earth moved, but everything shifted at once.
The ending of the kiss was like waking from some alternate state of reality. I leaned against the washer, hot and dizzy, my head floaty and light. I felt his hand trail along my skin, his fingers toying with mine, then letting go.
I stood staring into his eyes, trying to remember why I was there. “I guess we should go … ummm … pick up … the … uhhh …” Stringing together a complete sentence was suddenly impossible. What was it we were supposed to pick up? Bulldog … bull … dog … dog …
Kemp seemed as confused as I was. “The … uhhh …” He blinked hard, shook his head. “Dog.”
“Right, the dog. The dog’s … probably … ummm … probably ready.” I’d never had anyone kiss me like that before. Ever. That kind of kiss was dangerous.
I pushed off the washer and started toward the door, feeling like I was walking in a funhouse with a moving floor and wavy mirrors everywhere. Neither of us said anything as we exited the building and Kemp locked the door. While his back was turned, I caught my breath, patted my cheeks, smoothed stray strands of hair into my ponytail holder, tried to gather my scattered wits and put them back where they belonged.
On the way across the street to the vet clinic, we started a conversation about baseball—a harmless topic that was satisfactorily distant from whatever had just happened in the laundry room. Kemp asked me where I’d learned to play, and I revealed more than I’d intended to about my weird and disjointed upbringing. If it bothered him, he didn’t show it.
“Sounds like you’ve seen a lot of places,” he observed.
“We did,” I agreed. “You’re right. We did.”
He held open the door of the clinic, and for an instant we were in interestingly close quarters. Another jolt of … whatever … zinged through me.
Inside, I inquired about Don’s idiotic dog. I could hear him yapping insanely in back, probably annoying the other patients as they tried to recover from surgeries and flea dips. “Guess he’s awake,” I observed, and the receptionist nodded.
“He has been for a while. He’s a talker.” She glanced up at Kemp and smiled. “Hey there, Kempner. How’s everything today?”
“Everything’s good,” he answered. “How goes it in the veterinary business, Billie?”
Billie tucked a pencil into her partially gray updo. “Better. We got a new intern.” The answer came with a strange private smile, and then she leaned close to the speakerphone and pressed a button. “Ben, can you tell Doc to bring that black lab up here? The noisy one. His mom’s back.”
I grimaced at the idea of being Radar’s mom. Hawkeye, maybe, but Radar was an orphan.
I heard toenails scrambling in the hall long before Radar turned the corner, dragging someone behind him. The veterinary intern skidded through the door frame, narrowly escaped a broken nose, then abruptly dropped Radar’s leash and squealed, “Oh my gosh! Kemp! Where in the world did you come from?”
The next thing I knew, I was getting tackled by seventy pounds of slobbering Labrador, and the intern was wrapped around Kemp, who didn’t seem to mind at all. He twirled the disgustingly gorgeous veterinarian around the waiting room, then set her down, and a barrage of questions and answers flew back and forth between them.
“When did you get into town?”
“Yesterday. Doc Thomas broke his shoulder—bad cow. He finally admitted he needed some help around here.” She smiled and winked. “By the time that shoulder heals, I’ll have him to where he can’t live without me.” She backhanded Kemp playfully in the stomach. “Did you get the box of stuff I sent you? Did you hang everything up?”
Suddenly, Kemp looked embarrassed. “Yeah, not quite. It’s in my office, though.”
Bracing her hands on her hips, she scowled, and even that was cute. “I worked hard on those! Here I kept them all this time, and now you’re finally in one place and you don’t even hang them up? Okay, I’m insulted.”
Kemp cleared his throat and stretched his neck, as if all of a sudden his collar were too tight. “It’s been … busy here.”
“Yeah, right. You’ve been in Daily for what … eight, nine months?” She rolled her eyes, and if everything wasn’t clear about them, the fact that they knew each other well was unmistakable. “I’m not even the scrapbooky type, you know. I wouldn’t do that for just anybody. I was going to run by and surprise you this morning, but I couldn’t get away. Good thing I didn’t. I would’ve mashed that box right over your head, Kemp Eldridge.”
Good thing she didn’t, I thought, standing there holding Radar and feeling like a big purple third wheel in my eighties windsuit. Very good thing she didn’t.
This would be one of the skeletons he doesn’t have in his closet… .
“So, what are you doing here?” She nodded toward the reception desk to indicate here, as in the vet clinic.
“Had to pick up the dog.” Kemp motioned in my direction, and suddenly they were both looking at me. Kemp quickly performed introductions. “Kai Miller, Jennifer Mayfield, Jen, Kai.” Jennifer looked at me like she’d never seen me before, even though just a short time before we’d been engaged in friendly conversation and rat trap removal.
“Kai’s here waiting out the hurricane,” Kemp added.
“Ohhhh,” Jen breathed, then sailed across the lobby with an outstretched hand and a friendly smile. “Oh, well, great to meet you, officially. Welcome to Daily.”
“Thanks,” I said, putting on my best friendly-cruise-crew face as we officially shook hands. “Good to
meet you, too.” Really, it wasn’t. Meeting Jen opened up a whole line of questions that hadn’t been there before. Who was she? Why was she scrapbooking Kemp’s life? Why did I care?
Why had Kemp kissed me? Why did I get the feeling Jen wouldn’t have been happy if she knew that? Why were her carefully framed mementos stacked in the corner of Kemp’s office, where the cute little field mice could get to them?
I didn’t know, and the uneasy look on Kemp’s face told me I probably wouldn’t be finding out anytime soon—from him, anyway.
I did now know who the box came from.
I wished it were still a mystery.
Chapter 19
Donetta Bradford
Imagene’s daddy told me once, When you’re up against a wolf, you gotta think like a fox.
Betty Prine and her group were about as much a pack of wolves as I’ve ever seen. Folks like the Prines only want things one way. Their way.
Sometimes it seems like it’d be easier to let them kind of folks win. You get crossways of Betty Prine, you might end up like Lot’s wife. Betty could turn anybody into a pillar of salt, probably. If Betty put in a report on my building, and some inspector said I had to fix a bunch of things, or the insurance company decided not to insure me anymore, I wouldn’t have the money for all that, and Betty knew it. My hotel, and my beauty salon, and Frank’s auto repair shop in the back would be out of business, lickety-split. My brother and I’d be broke, and the building that’d been in my family over a hundred years would sit empty until it finally got sold off for taxes. The Prines’d bought more than one building on Main Street that way. They knew how to run somebody out of business without ever getting their hands dirty.
After Betty made her threats, my stomach was flippy as fish in a bucket. I had enough worries on my plate without taking on the Prines—there was Imagene’s van still stuck on the side of the road, and Kai’s bus we’d left in the woods, and my troubles with Ronald, and that little bit of matchmaking with Kemp and Kai. If I thought about it, I coulda come up with a whole list of reasons why it’d be easier to collect up some gas money for Sister Mona’s bunch and send them on their way.
But a crowded plate’s one of the biggest enemies of good works. Brother Ervin’d talked about it just a few Sundays ago in service. He’d brought some brown hen eggs and just stood there by the pulpit, juggling one and looking out into the congregation and greeting folks—saying whose baby looked cute this morning and who’d come back from being sick. Then he was juggling two eggs and doing the same thing.
“Brother Ervin, what are you doin’?” Amber Anderson’s littlest brother, Avery, asked finally. In the Amen pews up front, Betty Prine let out a little snort. She didn’t like anything that didn’t come straight out of Scripture, and juggling eggs wasn’t anyplace in the Bible.
“Well, I don’t know,” Brother Ervin answered and smiled at the boy. “What do you think I’m doin’, Avery?”
“Jugglin’ eggs, and lookin’ who’s here, and talkin’ to people,” the boy said.
Brother Ervin nodded and picked up another egg. Then he had three. He looked out at the crowd and told Millie Crawford that was a pretty new sweater she had on and did she knit it herself? Then he noticed that Bailey Henderson’s little boy’d got his cast off his arm. “What am I doing now, Avery?”
Avery looked at his peepaw, and his peepaw nodded for him to answer the question, so Avery did. “Jugglin’ three eggs and lookin’ to see who’s here, and askin’ Sammie Henderson about his arm.”
“That’s true.” Brother Ervin picked up another egg. Those were good, hard-shelled brown eggs, but I was getting worried, with four in the air. I figured Brother Ervin’d better quit gawking around and talking, and concentrate on what he was doin’. The Prines’d put in a big donation for our new carpet, and if those eggs landed on the floor … oh mercy!
“Now what?” Brother Ervin didn’t look out at Avery that time, which was good. He had to keep focused on the eggs.
“Jugglin’ four,” Avery said.
“Anything else?” Brother Ervin almost lost an egg again.
“No, sir, just jugglin’ four. Well, and you asked me a question, too.”
Brother Ervin nodded and shot a quick look at the egg basket. Little beads of sweat were gathering on his forehead, and his mustache was twitching on one side, flashing an eye tooth. “Avery, you keep tellin’ everybody what I’m doin’, all right?”
“All right.” Even Avery sounded worried now, and in the front row, Betty Prine’d pushed Harold halfway out of his seat, like she was gonna have him dive for the altar and catch the eggs before they hit the carpet.
“Okay. Right now, you look like you’re gonna get another egg,” Avery reported. “Okay, now you got five, but you’re just jugglin’ and watchin’ them hen eggs, and that’s all.”
A big ol’ bead of sweat ran down Brother Ervin’s nose and hung off the end. There was one more egg in the basket, and you coulda heard a cat cross a cotton bale in that room. Nobody was sleepin’ in church that day, I’ll tell you.
“You gonna do six, Brother Ervin?” Avery asked, but Ervin didn’t answer.
Now, I got faith in the Lord and Brother Ervin as His instrument, but I was worried, I’ll admit.
“Don’t you dare!” Betty Prine shrieked. “That carpet cost an arm and a leg.”
“It’s Stainmaster,” Imagene muttered behind me, which woulda made me chuckle, but I was froze in place.
“I hope he does it,” Kemp whispered, which was just like Kemp, livin’ on the edge. “I’ll clean it up.”
Lord, I started prayin’. Please don’t let Brother Ervin try for that last egg. It’d be a sad end to a good preachin’ career. Betty Prine’d get him fired, or worse… .
Half the church council was out of their seats already.
“You’re still jugglin’ five,” Avery reported. “Just jugglin’ and nothin’ else.”
Right then, Brother Ervin caught all the eggs—three in one set of fingers and two in the other, and a sigh went through the whole church.
“My goodness, Lola Fae, I think that is the prettiest pearl necklace I ever did see,” Brother Ervin said as he tucked the eggs back into the basket. “But you’re just about as white as it is. I didn’t scare ya, did I? And Nana Henderson, how’re you feelin’ today? That sciatic nerve get any better? What am I doin’ now, Avery?”
“Talkin’ to folks again and lookin’ who’s here, and asking about Nana Henderson’s static nerves.”
Brother Ervin nodded, smiling just a little, like he does when he’s about to make a point. “You notice anythin’ different from the first of this demonstration to the last?”
Avery thought for a minute, his sweet little face getting narrow around the nose. His peepaw leaned over and whispered something in his ear.
“Well,” the boy said finally, “at first, you was jugglin’ just a couple and talkin’ to folks and lookin’ out here, but the more eggs you got in the air, the more you had to look at the eggs and not the folks.”
Out went Brother Ervin’s lightnin’ finger. “Exactly! Avery Anderson, you ever think that maybe, when the Levite and the priest passed by that man who’d been robbed and left on the side of the road, maybe they had lots of things goin’ on? Maybe they had a couple meetings to get to, and the potluck list to worry about, and some business deal to do, and a fund-raiser goin’ on down at the Moose Lodge? Maybe they had so many eggs up in the air, they just didn’t hardly look twice at that man layin’ all beat-up and bloody. You think?”
“Maybe.” Avery shrugged his little shoulders up and down and grinned, enjoying having everyone’s attention. He’d be a star like his big sister someday. “But Brother Ervin, I reckon I know one thing for sure about that man on the side of the road.”
“What’s that, Avery?”
Avery’s big brown eyes got wide as a newborn calf’s, earnest and sweet. “I reckon it’s a lucky thing for him that Samaritan didn’t know how to juggle.”
The whole church had a big belly laugh, and it was three minutes before things quieted down enough for Brother Ervin to make the point that the biggest enemy of havin’ our hands ready for God’s work is having them full up with other things.
Brother Ervin and them eggs came to mind when I was thinkin’ about all the reasons it’d be easier to give in to Betty Prine and send the Holy Ghost bunch on their way. I figured my rememberin’ that sermon was a sign, so I decided to get Brother Ervin and a few others to help come up with some kind of a plan to outthink Betty Prine.
We met at my house so Betty wouldn’t know what was goin’ on. Lucy and Imagene got there first, and then Frank showed up, hopping mad about Betty’s threats, of course. Harlan Hanson drove over in his postal jeep, and then Brother Ervin came in, and Sharon Lee, that sweet little preacher from Daily Methodist, Pastor Harve from the little church out at Caney Creek, and at the last minute old stutterin’ Doyle Banes rolled in, driving his dump truck from the lime plant. He’d stopped off and picked up Bodie Rogers, who ran the Texan Talkies theater until it went out of business. Thinking back on it now, I knew why Bodie was here. It was Betty and Harold Prine that got the theater building condemned and closed down.
Right now, Bodie had a gleam in his eye, and his big square German face was hard set. “That’s just what she done to me,” he said, striking a big fist in the air so hard the half-dozen hairs combed over his bald spot lifted and fell back down again. “Her and Harold just wanted to get me out of business so people’d come rent from that video store they put in. Just want everybody to sit home and watch movies on TV. It ain’t the same as goin’ to the theater. It ain’t. Any decent town oughta have a place to go watch the picture show.”
“All right, now, let’s ride one horse at a time, here.” Brother Ervin took out his hankie, pulled off his eyeglasses and polished the lenses. “Right now, we got to solve the problem with the hurricane folks—without getting Betty and Harold Prine on the warpath. We got to get the folks out of the church and out of Donetta’s buildin’, but if they head on to Dallas or Waco, they’re gonna end up there with no place to stay. Every shelter from here to the Red River is full up. I did some callin’.”