Crowning the Slug Queen (A Callie Stone Mystery Book 1)

by L. M. Fortin

  “But the zucchini are running crazy. When you’re done with breakfast could you go out and pick all that you can find?”

  Callie nodded as Coral went on, “And because I don’t want to be drowning in zucchini, can you also pick about half of the blossoms? I got a recipe from the farmer’s market where you stuff them with goat cheese. It’s supposedly some kind of delicacy.”

  Callie raised an eyebrow at Grandma Minnie, but said, “Yes, I think I’ve seen it at some of the fancy restaurants in New York. I don’t think I’ve ever had it.”

  “Well, waste not, want not as they say.”

  Callie rinsed her plate off in the sink and grabbed some gardening gloves from the pile by the door.

  The rain had departed overnight. Standing by the flower bed planted next to the house, Callie could smell the lavender through the warm sun baking off the last of the morning’s dew. She walked to the barn, checked out the goat and her new kid, Basil, and grabbed a large basket.

  Thank goodness zucchini were much larger than green beans.

  On Sunday afternoon, Callie texted Jeremy. She was definitely enjoying the change of pace in her life, but she couldn’t honestly see herself gardening for her entire time here no matter how long that was. A few hours in town organizing an event would keep her from going stir crazy. Besides if she spent all her time at the farm, she’d never get any use out of her rental car.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  She set her phone alarm for six a.m. and managed to crawl out of bed. She didn’t shower, but instead immediately dressed in her dirty jeans and borrowed rubber boots. She’d have to upgrade her farm wardrobe in the very near future.

  Callie fed the chickens and gathered up the eggs as she had when she was a kid. She always found morning chores to be more fun than those done in the afternoon. Morning chores were things like feeding animals or sweeping or gathering a small amount of some vegetable her mom wanted to use that day. The tasks were short, and like collecting eggs one was going to eat for breakfast, immediately rewarding.

  Afternoon tasks, on the other hand, almost always seemed laborious to her. They didn’t really seem to be chores to her, but rather lengthy tasks like picking a whole run of green beans or crawling on her hands and knees after strawberries.

  After she finished her chores, she dropped by the kitchen and left the eggs on the counter. She knew her mom and grandma were awake and probably working somewhere, so she didn’t wait for them, but left a note she’d be in town for the morning.

  Freshly showered and in another pair of her expensive jeans, Callie went back out on River Road and headed into town. She didn’t take the Beltline this time, but took the slower surface streets staying on River Road until it turned into Chambers and then she turned on to Seventh Street. Jeremy wanted to meet her at a coffee shop before they went to the Skinner Days committee meeting.

  Callie was glad she had given herself extra time, because she had to make two U-turns before finding the parking garage. Maybe subconsciously she remembered Skinner’s special downtown maze of one-way streets and the way the conference center cut through some main arteries making them dead end in unexpected places.

  She parked at the lot under the Newsome Center and began walking the few blocks to the coffee shop, stopping momentarily on the corner to orient herself. The streets in the oldest part of downtown were paved with warm, red brick and along with the maple trees gave the area a mellow, old fashioned air. Across the street from the center she noticed a small community garden. There was a handmade sign being held up by a signpost made of what looked to be recycled bike parts. The sign read, “Felson’s Organic Garden.” By the looks of the prolific tomato and cucumber plants, Skinner’s mayor had a green thumb, although Callie wondered how much gardening was actually done in person by the mayor herself. Maybe having a successful garden was one of the requirements in being selected World Mayor.

  The corner she stood on was already occupied by one of Skinner’s ubiquitous panhandlers sitting in an alcove with his two dogs. He didn’t look as if he was a permanent resident, but more likely one of the younger people who moved from place to place as a chosen lifestyle. He was a young man, with clean, if worn, clothes. One of the dogs, a small white mutt that looked to be a combination of a terrier and a poodle, wagged at her and she reached down to pet it. “Do you need directions?” asked the young man. He had long brown hair tied back with a yellow scrap of fabric acting as a headband and wore a faded tie dye shirt and cargo shorts.

  She shook her head. “No, I’m from Skinner. I like to think I know my way around. I just haven’t been to this part of downtown in a while. But thank you for the offer. What’s your dog’s name?”

  “That’s Garcia. The other dog is Jerry.” At his name, the other dog lifted his head and sniffed the air.

  “Are you even old enough to have seen the Grateful Dead?” asked Callie.

  “The band is all about being in a state of mind, so I’m thinking age has nothing to do with it,” he said.

  As Callie had never been a fan of the band and didn’t totally understand other people’s devotion to it, this made as much sense as anything else to her. “I guess I can see that. Do you live here in Skinner?”

  “Off and on,” he said. “I generally spend the winter farther south. With climate change and all, Skinner is having some pretty cold winters, so it can be hard to get by without some sort of permanent place to hang.”

  “Why don’t you find a permanent place to hang?” asked Callie, genuinely curious.

  “Like what I said before, it’s a state of mind, baby. We take care of the earth and it takes care of us. There’s no need for structures and rules.”

  She laughed. “I think we approach the world from very different ends. By the way, my name’s Callie.” She stuck out her hand.

  He leaned up and shook it. “I’m Jacob. And I’m good with that. It takes all kinds to make the world. As you’re one of those types that makes money, can I ask you for a dollar? I will feed the dogs with it.”

  “Is this a good corner for panhandling?” she asked, as she pulled her wallet out of her purse. “There doesn’t seem to be a lot of traffic.”

  He shook his head. “At first, I choose this corner because the dogs really liked the garden and you know, I can go with the flow. It turns out the dogs were right as the garden people give out free vegetables during the day. So I don’t make a lot of money here, but I get to eat. I just have to keep the dogs from going over and digging it up.”

  “Seems like you’ve got some smart dogs then,” she said, giving Garcia a final pat on the head. “Have a good day,” she said as she started towards the coffee shop once again.

  Callie assumed Jeremy had chosen Caffe Misto, for its location near the Newsome Center, where they would be joining the committee. However, as soon as she stepped in and smelled the mixed odors of freshly roasted coffee and homemade cinnamon rolls, she thought differently. The number of people in line waiting for coffee apparently thought the same thing.

  Jeremy was already in line. “What can I get you? It’s on me.”

  She told him to order her a soy latte with a half shot of hazelnut and took a table in the back of the long narrow shop. The room was part of a renovated building and the walls were the original brick partially covered by large Persian carpets used as wall hangings. She took a table in the back to the room. Jeremy joined her a few minutes later with her coffee and a large, over-sized cinnamon roll.

  “Want to share? I love these, but they are always too large for me to eat alone.”

  She nodded eagerly. “I always enjoy helping out a friend in need.” Dinner last night had been some sort of vegetable stew that included kale and okra, both vegetables Callie usually went out of her way to avoid. Certainly it was healthy, but she could barely choke it down. A cinnamon roll might go a long way to balancing out that overly nutritious dinner.

  “So what is it you wanted me to help out with? I think you mentioned a beauty pageant of
some sort?” Callie imagined a spoiled batch of bikini wearing beauties who extolled the virtue of world peace.

  “Let’s just say it’s in the format of a beauty pageant. As beauty is in the eye of the beholder, our pageant queens aren’t the typical bathing beauties. In fact, I’d say the farther away from beauty they get, the greater their chance of winning. I know you’ve been out of town for a few years, but certainly you’ve heard of the Skinner Slug Queen?”

  Callie looked at him wide eyed. “Yes, as a sort of peripheral thing. It was considered pretty flamboyant when I was growing up and even in liberal Skinner, not always in a good way.”

  “I think the world has shifted significantly since then,” he said. “Here’s an article I pulled from the paper a few weeks ago that explains it faster than I could.”

  “In Skinner one can’t say life has gone to the dogs, but one could easily say it’s gone to the slugs. The Society for the Legitimization of the Ubiquitous Gastropod (S.L.U.G.) Queen competition is back as part of Skinner Days.

  The competition, created in 1983, is to Skinner what Miss America is to the United States. There are three parts to the contest: Costumes worn by the contestants, the answer to a question asked by previous winners (charmingly named the Old Queens) and a talent competition.

  The first winner, Bruce Gordon, was a bicycle designer. In his first public appearance as Slug Queen, Gordon dressed up in a mint-colored gown and rode atop a convertible. He was followed in the parade by a twenty-five-foot slug, modeled after a Chinese dragon. Other winners have included a lawyer, a fireman, a factory worker, and a teacher. In a time honored tradition, four of the Slug Queens have been men, including a father of seven.

  Last year’s winner, Miss Slugajawea, won with a dress sculpted entirely of spray foam which had been painted a luminous shade of green that glowed in black light. Her talent, pig calling, was put to use during a performance of America the Beautiful that brought down the house.

  This year’s competition is guaranteed to be at least as entertaining as last year’s, as the entrants include Gastronia Creepalot, a.k.a. Steve Felson, Mayor Dot Felson’s husband; Slimerita Rivera, a.k.a. Sheldon Normal, former owner of The Hemp Pot Smoke Shop; and Queen Slugabeth II, a.k.a. June Ness, a teacher at Edison Elementary School.

  Tickets to the event can be purchased at the Newsome Center ticket window and online through August 25th. The pageant will be held Saturday, as part of the Skinner Days weekend of events.”

  Callie laughed. “When you said comic beauty pageant, you weren’t kidding!”

  Jeremy said, “Do you think you could do it?”

  “Truly something like this is no different than any other event I’ve worked on. It’s all just a process. Define your goals, examine your resources, create a plan and follow it through, then evaluate. There’s no event that can’t be done with those steps. “ Callie knew she was glossing over the hundreds of steps that depending on the event might lay within those large basic categories, but if it could be put on a list and checked off, she knew she could do it. “I’m joining this one in the middle, so it shouldn’t be too hard.”

  “At the committee meeting, you’ll be brought up to speed as to where we are in the plan. The mayor will be there along with folks leading the entertainment, parade and marketing committees. They all have larger committees they report back to, but for today it will just be the small managing group.”

  “What role do you play?” asked Callie.

  “I’m coordinating sponsorship and I head that committee. Cloudburst Pub is the lead sponsor, and I wanted to protect our investment, as it were. The pageant is a key event to the success of the weekend and when Polly, the previous organizer, had to quit, I was a bit nervous about the whole thing going off well. It was a lucky day for me when you came into the Cloudburst.”

  Callie smiled at him. “I hope so.”

  They finished their coffee and cinnamon roll and left the shop to walk the few blocks to the Newsome Center. The center had been built in the mid ‘80’s and had become a hub for the fine arts, housing both the Skinner Symphony and the Skinner Opera. Traveling Broadway shows often stopped there, as well as traditional homegrown events, like the Nutcracker and local children’s art performances. Some might think of the center and theaters as a community theater, but she realized what Skinner had was much larger than the traditional small town one theater center.

  The construction on the outside of the building was dated, clearly pointing to the 1980’s, but the inside was timeless, as antiseptic and carpeted as any conference center Callie had ever been in.

  Most conference centers had a particular institutional feel. She was always fascinated by the wide variety of carpets in them. They were usually custom made. She didn’t know if there was a design goal to the carpets because they were usually a mix of swirling flowers and geometric patterns. Maybe they were created to lead the eye into ignoring any spills or fooling you into imagining the space looked larger than it really was.

  The air inside the average conference center always seemed stale and smelled of nothing. There were two exceptions. There were centers in high humidity areas such as New Orleans where most of the indoors seemed to smell like sweaty gym shoes to Callie. She assumed that was caused by the inability to remove all mold from the air systems. The second exception was the very upscale properties and they seemed to always smell of eucalyptus. Callie wasn’t sure if that was a purposeful scent or something that spilled over from the on-site spas all upscale properties had.

  The conference center in the Newsome, attached to the downtown Hilton, had neither of these scents. Callie breathed in the heavily air conditioned and processed air. She felt as if it were like water running through the gills of a fish and it invigorated her.

  They were the last arrivals at the committee meeting. Jeremy introduced her to the mayor. “Dot, this is Callie. I think she’s going to be able to fill in for Polly. Callie, this is Dot Felson.” Dot’s piercing blue eyes looked Callie up and down. Her short blonde hair was cut in a sleek bob that hugged her sharp chin.

  “At least her name is similar. That will make it easy to remember.” Callie was familiar with a certain level of fashion and although the mayor’s clothes were styled in the typical loose Skinnerton style, she knew the materials and tailoring were of the highest quality. Although Callie might not be able to name the exact designer of the clothing the mayor had on, she knew the shoes were the season’s latest Ferragamo pump. Callie wondered if the mayor were independently wealthy as she assumed the salary of the mayor of Skinner would not cover many purchases in that price range.

  Dot said, “We’re glad to have you here. It’s always nice to bring a true professional on board.”

  “Thank you, I’m happy to help. I think Jeremy is actually helping me, by giving me something to do instead of farm chores.”

  One of the other committee members, a lady with long curly gray hair and sporting a pair of narrow framed glasses said, “You’re Coral Stone’s daughter, right? She’s one of the greatest assets to the Skinner community. Her farm is a real example of how to live off the land and limit our impact on the earth.”

  As Callie had spent many hours that weekend fulfilling Coral’s raison d’être, she wasn’t necessarily in a charitable mood about it, but didn’t want to alienate anyone. “Yes, it’s quite amazing. I’m a big fan of the fresh eggs myself.”

  The woman put out her hand. “I’m Jorna Vitale-Cone. I’m the marketing chair.”

  “Jorna and her partner have an ad agency downtown and they are graciously volunteering their time,” said Jeremy.

  “And this is Marty Dales our entertainment chair and Kathleen Teigen, who’s head of the parade.” Callie noted that Marty’s hair was an unusually dark shade of black even though he looked to be in his mid-sixties. She couldn’t tell if it was dyed or if it was a wig. Which would make it a pretty good wig if she couldn’t tell it was fake, she thought. He didn’t stand to shake her hand, but merely n
odded at her.

  Kathleen Teigen was a small woman and reminded Callie of a jumpy, terrier-like dog. Her short curly hair was a mottled brown and she stood up with a quick, nervous energy and stuck her hand out. “It’s very nice to meet you,” she said in clipped tones. “I hear you’re some sort of expert event planner.”

  That let the cat out of the bag, thought Callie. “It’s what I do for a living. I’m,” was, “a director for conferences with a veteran’s non-profit organization in New York.”

  “A non-profit. That’s nice you use your skills for something good. When Jeremy told us you lived in New York, I expected you to come in wearing a fancy suit and show us how things are done in the big city,” said Marty.

  Callie smiled. “When it comes to events, I think you’ll find they’re done pretty much the same way no matter where you come from.” She knew she risked denigrating herself when she spoke of how uncomplicated planning an event was, but it was really how she felt. It wasn’t rocket science. However, it seemed there weren’t a great many people in the world who actually enjoyed the job and the stress that accompanied it. Of course, she now had proof of how bad it could get when things went wrong. Maybe she should stick to small, non-public events to minimize the potential for mishaps.

  However, she knew she wouldn’t enjoy that. There was a sharp joy, an adrenaline rush that went along with planning a successful event. The weeks or months of work culminating in that glorious day when she was the person who had all the answers and solved all the problems.

  Sometimes she felt a little like a magician. Make the attendees and staff happy and make sure they never saw all the behind the scenes work it took to get there. However, that style was a double edged sword. People often didn’t really get an appreciation for what she did until she was gone. She wondered how Bill Batson was getting along and if her veteran’s association missed her at all. Now she was in Skinner though, and she would do her best at whatever they were going to throw at her. Apparently, it included people imitating slugs.