Last Chance Book Club

by Hope Ramsay

  He frowned. “Who did you hire? I didn’t know you were interviewing contractors.”

  “Well, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think I needed to check in with you. I hired JBR Construction.” She checked her watch. “Mr. Rodgers should be here in a few minutes.”

  The look on both Dash and Zeph’s faces gave her no comfort.

  “What?”

  Zeph smiled and nodded. “Well, ma’am, I need to be getting along. There are some chores I need to do for Mr. Dash.” And with that Zeph turned and strolled out of the theater.

  “Bad move, princess.”

  “They were the lowest bidder.”

  “Of course they were, but did you need to take the lowest bid? You should have plenty of money.”

  “Well, I do, but things cost so much more than I thought they would. I just wanted to keep a little cushion for contingencies, you know?”

  “Yeah, I guess, but sometimes you can be penny-wise and pound-foolish.”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Don’t you think it’s kind of strange that Angel Development is giving me all that money with no strings attached?”

  Dash smiled. “Honey, your book club friends are the folks behind Angel Development. Some of those women have more money than sense. So, no, I don’t think it’s strange. But you aren’t going to make them happy by using John Rodgers as your contractor.”

  “They don’t like him?”

  “I suspect they never heard of him. But I have. And Hugh has. Hettie might have had some dealings with him. He’s not straight, you know what I mean? He’ll come in low and then he’ll nickel-and-dime you. And he won’t do things right.”

  “Well, it’s too late. I signed the contract.”

  “Maybe I should talk to Eugene and see if you can unsign it.”

  She put her fists on her hips, anger suddenly flashing through her. “Dash, I didn’t ask your opinion. And I deeply resent you coming in here without my permission and throwing your weight around like this was your project. It’s not. I didn’t take your money, precisely because I was afraid of this.

  “I want to do this on my own. You heard what my mother said about me on Saturday. Can’t you see why this is so important to me?”

  “Honey, you’re making a mistake.”

  “Yeah, maybe I am. But if someone always catches me before I make a mistake, how on earth am I ever going to learn how to walk, much less run? I need to do this on my own.”

  “All right. But you watch that man, you hear? And if he starts doing things you don’t appreciate, then you tell me about it.”

  “Okay. I will.”

  He shook his head. “It’s a damn shame about the woodwork.”

  “About that,” she said. “Can you talk to Zeph? Everyone says he’s the only one I should have touching the candy counter and the columns here in the lobby. If I promise him that the general contractor won’t touch his work or give him any grief, do you think you could convince him to come back?”

  “I’ll try. But Zeph is funny about things.”

  “So I gathered.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” And with that Dash pushed his back off the counter and sauntered from the lobby, just in time to meet John Rodgers on his way in. Dash stopped briefly, his face grim as he said, “Howdy, John. I can’t say as I’m entirely happy that my cousin chose you for this job. But you should know that I’m watching every move you make, so don’t you try to cheat her, you hear?”

  And with that he was out the door, leaving her to deal with a suddenly annoyed and red-faced contractor.

  Aunt Miriam’s sweater was a big purple mess. Savannah had managed to learn how to knit and purl so that the stitches looked even, but decreasing to form armholes and yarning over to make button holes were quite beyond her.

  Which explained why she was sitting here at The Knit & Stitch on a Monday night at the shop’s bi-weekly knitting class. Pat Canaday was no fool. She knew the book club met on the first and third Wednesdays. So her knitting class was held on the second and fourth Mondays. That way, every Last Chance knitter was always within days of getting project help. Or having a gathering of women with whom they could share their strange addiction to yarn and their not-so-strange addiction to gossip.

  Pat took one look at Savannah’s purple pile of spun possum fur and shook her head. “Honey, that is the sorriest armhole I have ever seen. The problem is that you forgot to use an SSK for the right sleeve decreases and a knit-two-together for the left.”

  “Momma, that was completely confusing,” Molly said. “C’mon, Savannah, just sit down here with me, and I’ll show you the difference between an SSK and a knit-two-together, but I think you’re going to have to frog that back to right below the armhole.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that,” Savannah said.

  “It’s all right, sugar. It took me ages to learn how to knit,” Aunt Miriam said. The old lady was sitting in one of the big easy chairs in the front of the shop leafing through knitting magazines. Aunt Miriam had suggested this trip to Pat’s knitting class, mostly, Savannah thought, as an excuse to get out of the house.

  Things had been kind of tense these days in the house on Baruch Street, and all because of the Kismet renovation. Dash had managed to sweet-talk Zeph Gibbs into working on the historic woodwork in the Kismet’s lobby, and Zeph was doing an amazing job. But JBR Contractors were not, and that resulted in almost constant bickering between Savannah and her kissing cousin. The disagreements over the theater renovation masked the real truth. Savannah had developed a first-class crush on Dash. It was probably inevitable, given the fact that he was such a good dancer. But still, having a crush on Dash was stupid and dumb. He didn’t love her back. He had a thing for Hettie. And everyone in town knew it.

  So she went out of her way to avoid him. And when she couldn’t avoid him she picked fights with him that he seemed to enjoy.

  The truth was that Savannah kind of enjoyed the fights, too. At least when they were fighting, they weren’t trying to ignore each other.

  Molly gave her a short lesson that she finally understood, and then Savannah started ripping out stitches while the knitters around her gossiped.

  “So, anyway,” Kenzie was saying, “I saw Bill’s car parked in Hettie’s driveway again. Last night.”

  “Uh-huh, Violet Easley was saying at church just yesterday that she’s cooking more now than she ever did when Mr. Marshall was alive,” Lola May said. “Violet says Reverend Bill is particularly fond of her key lime pie. I swear that man has a serious sweet tooth.”

  Savannah was sorry she’d tuned back in to the conversation. Meanwhile her sweater unraveled, row-by-row.

  “Violet is too old for Bill,” Pat said.

  “Not to mention the fact that she’s a member of the AME church and black,” Molly added.

  “I don’t think Bill would turn down a soulmate based on the color of her skin,” Lola May said, “but Violet must be pushing sixty. I think the minister wants a family.”

  Savannah’s sweater continued to shrink as she wound the yarn into a ball. She wondered why the women never considered the possibility that Bill was over at Hettie’s house because of Hettie.

  Once again, she got that odd-twitchy feeling deep in her gut—half tingle, half itch.

  She looked up, right into the eyes of her great aunt. Miriam was smiling at her. Her big brown eyes, the very same big brown eyes that Savannah had inherited, were twinkling behind her trifocals.

  Miriam leaned over and put one of her gnarled hands on Savannah’s knee. “It’s kind of uncomfortable, isn’t it?” she whispered. “When that feeling comes over you, it’s like an itch that you can’t scratch. And then you just know.”

  Savannah looked around at the other women in the knitting circle. She leaned in toward her aunt. “Why don’t they see it?”

  Miriam shrugged. “Sometimes folks don’t see the most obvious things.” She grinned at this. Miriam didn’t look
very senile or demented, even if she did look kind of old and frail.

  “What did you tell Hettie?” Savannah whispered as Kenzie and Lola May continued to speculate about the various cooks of Allenberg County and their suitability as potential mates for the unmarried minister.

  “I never told Hettie anything worth saying,” Miriam said. “I gave her my standard advice to be looking for a man with good values and a strong desire for family.” She grinned.

  “But what about Bill?”

  “You think it through, Savannah, and you’ll figure it out. It’s never a good idea to just come right out with it, you know. People will rebel, and they’ll make mistakes. You have to lead them to the decision.”

  A sudden flash of heat flamed through Savannah. “You never meant Bill for me, did you? Hettie is good with bookkeeping. It’s always been about the bookkeeping and money management, not the cooking.”

  Miriam nodded ever so slightly.

  “But you invited him to dinner every other day.”

  She shrugged. “A matchmaker has to use all of her wiles sometimes. Especially when the people involved are hardheaded, confused, and just a little bit willful. I figured Hettie would see you as a threat.”

  “But what if I’d said yes to Bill’s proposal?”

  Miriam snorted. “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, my God, you knew he would propose, and you knew I would…”

  Aunt Miriam turned back to her magazine. She flipped a few pages then looked up. “Maybe. There is so much I’ve got to teach you before it’s my time to go, sugar.”

  “Teach me? About what?”

  “About the thing God put you here to do.”

  Savannah stared down at her knitting. “Obviously it’s not to knit you a sweater.”

  “Obviously,” Miriam said. “But there’s something to matching people up that’s almost like knitting a community together. You know?”

  “No, I don’t, but I have this feeling I’m going to learn.”

  “So what do you think, Miriam, will Bill ever realize that he and Jenny Carpenter are a match made in Heaven?” Pat asked.

  Miriam pressed her hand onto Savannah’s knee before she spoke. “Well, I don’t know,” the old woman said. “You know I only get the vaguest notions of what a person should be looking for. But then again, I think that’s good. It doesn’t limit his possibilities. There are so many good cooks in Allenberg.”

  Savannah stared at her aunt. Miriam was lying through her teeth and no one realized it. Miriam knew exactly who was the right person for Bill, and she’d been pulling that string for a long time.

  “All I know is that Jenny isn’t happy about Bill’s car being parked in Hettie’s driveway three nights a week,” Kenzie said.

  “Well,” Lola May replied, “I wouldn’t put too much in that. After all, she’s the treasurer of the Christ Church building fund, and he’s the pastor over there. And I’m sure he’s just there because of Violet’s cooking.”

  “Yeah, but three nights a week?” Kenzie asked, as she furiously worked on the Fair Isle sweater vest she’d told everyone she was making for her sister in Milwaukee. Kenzie didn’t need knitting lessons. She was knitting with two colors, holding yarn in both hands, and her needles were flying as she talked. “It makes him seem like a food moocher or something. He ought to be allowing the good single cooks of Allenberg County to cook for him. Not putting so much extra work on Violet’s shoulders.”

  “Of course, Hettie could always learn to cook,” Savannah said as she laboriously picked up stitches in her much-reduced project.

  “Ha, that’s a laugh,” Pat said. “Miriam, you remember that time Hettie brought Toll House cookies she baked herself to the Christmas Bazaar? I swear that woman put salt in those cookies instead of sugar. It was pitiful.”

  “Oh, my God, look at the theater.” Kenzie stood up. “Oh my God. Oh my God, Pat call the fire department.”

  Savannah dropped her knitting, stood up, and looked through the windows.

  Across Palmetto Avenue, a big, black cloud of smoke billowed up into the dark April sky from the back of the theater. She stood transfixed for the longest moment before she remembered Maverick.

  The poor cat was trapped. She grabbed her keys from her purse and rushed from the yarn store, heedless of the women trying to stop her.

  She tore across the street just as the sirens for the volunteer fire department sounded. She reached the door, only to find that it was unlocked.

  The contractors left it unlocked?

  She pulled open the doors and dashed inside calling Maverick’s name. Flames and heat came from the auditorium, but the smoke was so thick and the night so dark that she was blinded almost immediately. And the damn cat was as black as the smoke.

  She screamed Maverick’s name, over and over again, but the cat was nowhere. And the fire was consuming what was left of Granddaddy’s theater.

  Everything she wanted, everything she had ever dreamed of, all of her most precious memories, and her cat, were going up in smoke.

  Dash sat in the bleachers of the Davis High gymnasium watching Red Canaday put Todd through a battery of fitness tests.

  The boy had done surprisingly well, considering his general lack of fitness. He’d scored high on eye-hand coordination. He had quickness side-to-side, even if he wasn’t the fastest runner alive. He had great hands. Dash could see the gleam in Red’s eyes. With a good fitness program, Todd could develop into an excellent athlete.

  And no one knew better than Dash how important athletics could be to a kid who needed to blow off steam. Uncle Earnest had understood that. And Dash would be forever thankful that his uncle by marriage had signed him up for Little League all those years ago.

  Dash was just climbing down from his perch when the volunteer fire department siren sounded. At the same time, both Red’s and Dash’s cell phones started to beep. Dash pulled his iPhone from his pocket. He read the message as a dose of adrenaline hit his system.

  “C’mon, Todd, we gotta go.”

  “What is it?”

  “The Kismet. It’s on fire.”

  The next five minutes were a blur. Davis High wasn’t all that far from downtown Last Chance, but it was too far to run. So all three of them piled into Dash’s Caddy. They made it to the scene just about the same time as the Last Chance fire truck, the Last Chance police chief, and the Allenberg sheriff, who had probably been home with his wife and kids when the siren sounded.

  Red’s wife, Pat, and her knitting class, including Aunt Mim, stood on the sidewalk across the street from the theater. Dash swept his gaze over them as he dragged Todd in their direction.

  “Where’s Savannah?”

  “She went into the theater to save Maverick.”

  Todd made a funny strangled noise that might have broken Dash’s heart if his heart hadn’t suddenly started ricocheting around his rib cage.

  “Don’t you worry. She’s going to be okay.” He ran toward the theater, heedless of the shouts from the fire chief or anyone else who was organizing the effort to fight the fire.

  His only goal was to find that idiotic woman who thought—

  Zeph Gibbs emerged from the building, smoke billowing around him. He had Savannah and that damned cat in his arms.

  Savannah’s face was black but her eyes were open. She was hugging that stupid cat like it meant the world to her.

  Zeph stopped in front of him. “Here you go, Mr. Dash. Safe and sound.” He handed Savannah off.

  She felt right in his arms. His little sooty princess. She wasn’t too light or too heavy. She was conscious. She was alive. His heart could slow down now. But for some reason, his pulse continued to race.

  “I’m okay,” she said in a smoke-roughened voice. “You can put me down.”

  He ignored her and called over his shoulder to the Allenberg County sheriff. “Stone, I need EMTs, now!”

  The sheriff replied, “Already called. They’ll be here in a minute.”

 
“I don’t need—” The rest of Savannah’s words were lost in a coughing fit. The cat seemed unusually subdued.

  “I think we need the vet, too,” he yelled.

  “I’m on it,” Sheriff Rhodes said, and Dash had every reason to believe it.

  A moment later, a couple of EMTs from the Allenberg County Fire Department, which had also arrived on the scene, came running over with an oxygen tank.

  “We’ll take her,” one of them said, but Dash wasn’t about to let her go.

  “No, I’ve got her. Just strap on the oxygen.”

  “Dash, we need to figure out if she needs to go to the hospital.”

  “I’m okay,” she said, her voice sounding ragged. She had turned to look at The Kismet. The fire had engulfed most of the auditorium.

  The EMT strapped on an oxygen mask just as big fat crocodile tears filled her eyes and spilled down her sooty cheeks. The tears left white tracks across her face. It broke his heart to watch her as she watched The Kismet burn.

  A moment later Charlene Polk, one of the docs at the Last Chance veterinary clinic, showed up. She took Maverick.

  “We’ll just take him down to the clinic for observation. Smoke is dangerous for cats, too.”

  Savannah reluctantly let go of the cat. And Maverick let forth a howl when they were separated. But it was all for the best. At least that’s what the EMTs said when they forced Dash to put Savannah down on the back step of their van while they checked her over.

  Todd and Aunt Mim came over.

  “I’m okay,” she said again, her voice shaky as she reached out for Todd.

  The boy came into her arms. “Mom, I was so scared when they said you were inside.”

  “I’m okay,” she said again, as if she were trying to convince herself of it. Dash turned away.

  The combined fire departments of Last Chance and Allenberg County already had the blaze under control. The Kismet’s magnificent auditorium, with its painted-sky ceiling, was a total loss. But the front part of the theater, the minaret, and the marquee might be salvageable.

  One thing was certain, though: The price tag for this project had just gone right through the roof, quite literally.