Risky Biscuits

by Mary Lee Ashford

  “Three Days of the Condor?” One of my favorites. I love old movies.

  “Right.” She took a sip from her cup. “I mean he’s okay but I don’t love him like I love that cake.” She paused. “Or George Clooney.”

  I’d have to ask Dixie about this cake. I hadn’t heard of it, but if Greer thought it was that good, it sounded like something we definitely should try.

  But back to Alma. “I’m sure it just slipped her mind.”

  Greer leaned back in her chair. “You’re probably right. I don’t mean to be griping. I know she’s a busy woman with being in charge of the cookbook and carting us old ladies around, but I’m kind of worried about her.”

  “I know you are.” I patted her hand.

  “She’s been on edge. Like the other day we were going to the bakery over in Marston and she turned the wrong direction on the highway. When I said, ‘Hey Alma, wrong way!’ she slammed on the brakes so hard that poor Freda Watson’s wig ended up in the front seat on top of Nellie’s pocketbook. It’s lucky we didn’t all have whiplash.”

  Glad that I didn’t have tea in my mouth this time, I tried not to snicker at the visual of Freda’s wig flying through the air and landing in Nellie’s lap. Stopping in the middle of the highway was serious and could have caused an accident. “Maybe when you see her, you can talk with her about what’s going on.”

  “I’ll do that.” Greer set her cup down. “She’s probably okay. I just hope it’s not a medical thing. We ladies of a certain age worry about that kind of stuff, you know.”

  I could imagine they might.

  “Bunny seemed to be having problems hearing when I picked her up.” Standing, I carried my cup to the sink and then returned to the living room. “Is that usual or something new?”

  “That’s been going on for a while.” Greer rolled her eyes. “We’ve been trying to get her to have it checked out, but she thinks she hears just fine. We’ll nag her until she gets to the doctor.”

  It’s true what they say about old age not being for sissies. These ladies, and Greer especially, were proof of that, and I loved how they took care of one another. I could see why Greer had moved to the Good Life and why she enjoyed living there.

  Picking up my bag to leave, I gave Greer a hug. “I need to talk with Alma about all the recipes she’s collected for the cookbook. I’ll see if I notice anything peculiar when we get together.”

  “Thank you.” She hugged me back and hung on for a bit. “You’re a dear to come and help me with things.”

  * * * *

  Back at the shop, Dixie had arrived with a bunch of supplies. I talked while she put things away in their places. My cinnamon-haired, no-nonsense business partner knows exactly where she wants things and I’ve found it’s best not to get in her way.

  “Greer seemed to think Alma had been distracted lately.” I handed her a large bag of pecans, wondering what tasty thing she was going to make with them. Pecan pie? Pralines? There were so many possibilities.

  “I’m thinking if Alma is having problems maybe she shouldn’t be driving the rest of those women around, even if it is mostly in town.” Dixie pushed a red curl off her forehead, placed several cans of soup on a shelf, and then shifted a few items around.

  Just then we heard a ding as the bell at the front door announced a visitor. Not as fancy as the “cluck” sound the door at the Red Hen Diner made, but an attention-getting ding. We’d found our bell sound handy because often I’m in the office at the back, and Dixie is in the kitchen. Since we weren’t really a storefront operation, we could have just kept the door locked but that seemed kind of unfriendly. Though, I have to tell you, there were times.

  We looked at each other. “Disco,” we said in unison.

  I handed the last of the baking flour to Dixie and poked my head out so I could see the front entrance. Sure enough, it was Disco, the guy who owned Flashback, the record and memorabilia shop down the street, and he was in fine form today. His real name was Dick Fusco but everyone in town called him Disco. An appropriate nickname, because it seemed like he was stuck in the seventies: his vocabulary, his hair, and especially his clothes.

  Today it looked like a rainbow unicorn had upchucked on Disco’s shirt. The eye-bruising colors were in no way toned down by the tan suede vest he wore, or the white bell-bottoms that completed the outfit. I felt like I should shade my eyes.

  “Be right with you,” I called out. “We’re just putting some things away.”

  I popped back into the storage area. “We were right. Do we have anything to feed him?”

  Dixie turned to look at me, hands on her hips. “It’s not our job to feed him.”

  “I know, but…” I smiled at her.

  “You are such a sucker for people.” She shook her head. “Okay. I tried a recipe for cherry-chocolate chip cookies and they didn’t turn out the way I wanted them to.”

  “Where’d you put them?” I looked on the shelves under Dixie’s work area. No cookies.

  “They’re over there.” She pointed at a shelf near our large trash container.

  “Looks like Disco rescued them just in time.” I grabbed the plate of cookies, transferred a few to a paper plate, and snagged one for myself.

  “Hey, Sugar, what’s shakin’?” Disco stood near the front counter looking at his cell phone. Even his modern technology had a seventies vibe as the phone cover was a psychedelic tie-dye pattern.

  “Hi, Disco.” Not really sure how to answer the “shakin’” question, I moved on. “How are you?”

  “I’m cool.” He looked at me over blue-tinted wire-rimmed glasses, but only for a second as his eyes slid immediately to the cookies. “I stopped by to ask if you’ve been having any problems with your deliveries.”

  “Not that I know of.” I placed the plate of cookies on the counter. “Help yourself to a cookie. I’ll check with Dixie. Why do you ask?”

  “I had a shipment of brains that should have been delivered, but I never got them.”

  “I’m sorry, hon, I thought you said ‘brains.’” Maybe, like Bunny, I needed my hearing checked.

  “That’s right.” Disco reached for the plate and grabbed a cookie. “Brains. The zombies came last week, just fine, but the brains…” He lifted his hands toward the ceiling, the fringe on his vest swaying, “…missing.”

  “Well,” I didn’t know how to respond to the dilemma of missing brains, “I guess that is a problem. Do you think they were lost in transit?”

  “Maybe.” He munched his cookie. “But the tracker says they got here and were delivered so I think maybe somebody snatched them.”

  Hmmm. Brain snatchers. Story at ten.

  “We don’t have many things delivered here and haven’t had anything shipped lately.” I picked up another cookie for myself. They were amazing. Whatever Dixie had thought was wrong with them was beyond me.

  She walked out of the backroom just as I took a bite of my second cookie.

  “Disco’s been telling me he’s had a problem with packages missing. Have you heard anything like that from others around the square?”

  “I ran into Tressa at the grocery store last week, and she said she’d had a box of hair products go missing. They’d been delivered, and she’d left them at the back door and gone to take care of a client. When she came back the box was gone.” Dixie sat down on a stool at the counter, tore off a paper towel, and picked up one of the cookies. She crumbled it between her fingers and onto the paper towel.

  Ah, apparently the texture had been the thing she’d thought needed improvement.

  “Tressa probably shouldn’t have left the box out there unattended,” I noted.

  Her salon was a few doors down from the Sugar and Spice Cookbooks office, the other direction from Disco’s Flashback shop.

  Dixie walked to a nearby wastebasket with the crumbs in her hand. “No, probably not, but this is St. Ignatius and we all do that kind of thing all the time.” She dropped the cookie remnants into the trash and came ba
ck to sit at the counter. Disco watched her with a look of disbelief on his face.

  “I guess my big-city paranoia is showing.” I pushed the rest of the plate of cookies toward Disco. “You should probably take those with you.”

  He latched onto the plate and moved it out of Dixie’s reach. Something on his face told me it wasn’t just Tressa leaving boxes outside, but that he had undoubtedly done the same thing.

  I pulled up a stool and sat beside Dixie, and as I did I caught her expression. So, not just Tressa and Disco. Add my business partner to the list.

  “I’m not naming any names here, but I’m afraid you all are going to have to change your ways.” I really wanted another cookie but wasn’t sure I wanted to battle Disco for the plate of treats.

  Neither of them would make eye contact with me. I sighed.

  Disco started to leave with his plate of cookies and then turned back. “Oh, the other reason I stopped by—Nick Marchant stopped in the store yesterday.”

  “Nick Marchant?” Dixie’s face immediately flushed. One of the drawbacks of having red hair and the fair skin that went with it: there’s no hiding your emotions. “Nick Marchant is back in town?”

  I wondered at her reaction. Usually it took a reference to our local sheriff, Terry Griffin, to get her riled up so quickly.

  “What’s up with this Nick?” I looked from one to the other. “They were talking about him when I was at the Red Hen earlier.”

  “He was really into finding out what you were up to.” Disco slid his wire-rimmed sunglasses back up. “I guess he’d stopped by here and nobody was here. He asked me about your hours and I told him you didn’t have regular hours. You don’t, right?”

  “No, we don’t.” Dixie pushed back her stool and stood, brushing her hands on her denim skirt. “And if he stops by again tell him…” she paused. “Never mind, it’s not your job to tell Nick Marchant anything. I’ll tell him myself.”

  “Okey dokey, catch ya later.” The door dinged as Disco opened it to go. “If you happen to hear anything about my box of brains, let me know.”

  I waited and let the door shut completely (which I thought showed great restraint) before I asked. “Okay, spill. Who is this Nick guy?”

  “The other son of Stanley Marchant, Marchant’s Savings and Loan,” Dixie answered. “Local boy made good. Came back after college, then left town, and never looked back. A successful Wall Street broker, according to his father.”

  “So that’s why the Red Hen was all a-buzz.” I tried to recall the details of the conversation I’d overheard. “Apparently, according to the gossip, he’s ‘still hot’ and drives a Jag.”

  “No doubt.” Dixie pushed a curl off her forehead. “He always was hot. I was one of many who was enamored with him in high school. We dated for a bit. Nick never dated anyone for very long. Actually, my going out with him was sort of the beginning of the problems Terry and I had. Ancient history.”

  Ah-ha. I had been trying for months to figure out the friction between Dixie and our handsome sheriff. I knew they’d dated years ago and then each had married someone else. The sheriff divorced, Dixie was widowed. But neither had been forthcoming about what had happened between the two of them.

  “Is he just back in town for a visit?” My eavesdropping hadn’t provided any further details about this guy other than his hotness and the cool factor of his car.

  “I have no idea.” Dixie shook her head, red curls bouncing. “I hadn’t heard a thing, I must be out of the gossip loop.”

  “Wonder why he wants to see you.” I brushed a few remaining crumbs off the counter. “Maybe he wants to pick up where he left off,” I teased.

  “No idea on that either.” She headed to the backroom.

  I understood there was always a stir when someone who’d been away for a while came back for a visit. But there seemed to be a bit more to it with this particular visitor and there was definitely more to the story with Dixie and Sherriff Terry.

  Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Another Aunt Cricket idiom. And in this case, there was definitely something still smoldering between my business partner and our handsome county sheriff. It would be interesting to see what the returned Nick Marchant brought to the bonfire.

  Chapter Two

  Two hours later, I pulled Big Blue into my driveway and sat in the Jeep a few minutes, gazing at the house in front of me before getting out. I was glad to be home. I loved the white Victorian house. Stately, yet homey, it welcomed me at the end of a busy day. One day I hoped to be able to buy the house from Greer, but in the meantime I would simply enjoy it. It was a bit like fostering a pet: you could love it but you shouldn’t get too attached. I kept reminding myself it wasn’t mine, but held out hope it might be.

  We’d moved a lot when I was growing up. My parents had divorced when I was five, and my mother and I had moved to an apartment. I had vague memories of the clean but small impersonal space. We had taken with us only a few personal belongings. Nothing to remind me in any sense of the only home I’d known. We had simply left it all behind. The four-poster bed with the pink-sprigged quilt, the small white tea set, the big dining room table, and Daddy. Or at least that’s how I remembered it. Most of the memories I had of Daddy after that time were of visits with him at a restaurant or ice cream shop. Those visits had always seemed magical and full of fun.

  Now I know in retrospect that my young view was extremely unfair to my mother. Cate Sugarbaker, nee Calloway, was practical and, in many ways, much more driven than Daddy had ever been. “Fun doesn’t put food on the table,” she’d say. And she had worked hard to take care of us. Though we’d started out in that first tiny apartment, after that the moves were always upward. Up to something bigger, something better, something in a nicer neighborhood. Still, I’d never call any of those places “homey.”

  Enough wallowing in the past, Sugar Calloway. Don’t let yesterday eat up today.

  If you guessed Aunt Cricket again, you’d be right. The woman had a saying for anything and everything.

  I grabbed my purse and the bag of groceries I’d picked up. Better get inside before my neighbor, Mrs. Pickett, came to complain about my loitering in the driveway. I wasn’t sure why, but the woman didn’t like me. I was convinced I could eventually win her over, but I sure as shootin’ hadn’t made much progress lately. With Mrs. Pickett, it was always something.

  Collecting my mail from the metal box on the front porch, I unlocked the front door and nudged it open with my hip. “Ernest, I’m home.”

  Now I bet you’re thinking I forgot to mention a roommate or a family member. Well, Ernest is both. The six-toed tabby-colored feline had arrived on my doorstep shortly after I moved in, and after I’d confirmed that he didn’t belong to anyone in the neighborhood, Ernest and I had become family.

  Most days when I came home he was asleep, either in the window seat or some other slice of sunshine, but today he was parked on the stairs with an expectant look on his face. Obviously, I’d taken too long at the grocery store.

  Not that Ernest was worried about me. More like he was worried his dish was empty. He stood and stretched, and I was sure I was in for a scolding. But before Ernest could make his way downstairs, my cell phone rang. I put the mail aside and glanced at the caller ID. It was as if my earlier reminiscing in the driveway had conjured up a phone call. It was my mother.

  Adding the new mail to the top of the stack already on the table by the door, I carried my groceries through to the kitchen.

  “Hello, Mama.” I pulled items from the bag and set them on the counter. Ernest joined me and wound around my legs as I worked.

  “Hello, Sugar. How are you?” Her soft drawl remained. Many a corporate rival had been lulled into a false sense of security not realizing that gentle siren voice belonged to a shark-like business mind.

  “I’m wonderful, and how are you?”

  “I’m doing well. I’ll cut to the chase.” She always did. “I’m calling because your father’s agent
has discovered some personal items of your daddy’s and I thought you might like to have them.”

  “Of course, I would.” My father had been a writer before his death. A premature death caused by his lifestyle, according to my mother. I wasn’t sure how his agent had ended up with some of Daddy’s personal things and couldn’t imagine what they might be, but whatever they were I wanted them.

  “I thought that would be the case but wanted to make sure. Do you want me to have Barry ship them here or directly to you?”

  Even though I was renting, my residence was far more permanent than my mother’s. I knew she’d been in her current condo for a while, but who knew how long she’d stay?

  “Have him send them to me here.” I thought about Disco and his missing brains. “Would you ask him to ship them with a signature required? You have my address, right?”

  “My assistant has it on file.”

  I had long suspected the birthday and Christmas gifts I received were signed by my mother, but probably selected and mailed by her trusty assistant, Jocelyn. A very nice lady and one with excellent taste based on the style and quality of the gifts.

  “Tell Jocelyn thanks from me.”

  I asked about the aunts. My mother’s sisters Cricket and Celia were forces to be reckoned with. I sent them my love and silently thanked my lucky stars I was thousands of miles away from the family trio of Steel Magnolias back in Georgia.

  After we hung up, I finished unpacking the rest of my groceries and then started water boiling for pasta.

  “Italian is on the menu for tonight,” I told Ernest. “Don’t tell Dixie the sauce is out of a jar, okay?”

  He didn’t seem interested in what I was having and pointedly walked to his dish, which was empty.

  “All right, buddy.” I went to the small pantry where I kept his food and pulled out the bag of cat food. “I hear you loud and clear.”

  Once Ernest was taken care of and I’d finished my own dinner and cleaned up the dishes, I grabbed a book off the stack I’d checked out from the St. Ignatius library a couple of days ago.

  Settling into my favorite overstuffed chair with an iced tea, I opened it. The Silver Gun was a mystery set in the 1930s and got me thinking about the article I’d read earlier at the Red Hen that mentioned the 1930s-era bank robbery. My next trip to the library I’d have to check and see if they had any information about that robbery. I usually browsed the fiction section, but I’d be willing to bet there was a collection of town history among the nonfiction shelves.