Peaches and Scream (Georgia Peach Mystery, A) (21 page)

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.

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.

“Nash! You made it!” Hattie sidled up to the young man and made introductions. “Everyone, this is Nash Jones, the reverend’s son. I’ve hired him to come in and help out today.”

“Hello, Nash. I’m Nola.” I extended my hand, which he shook with a firm grip. I was liking the kid already. “Are you a student?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll be a senior at Cays Mill High.”

“Really? Then you must know Emily Wiggins? Her folks own Red’s Diner.”

Nash dipped his chin and grinned. “Yes, ma’am. Sure do.”

Hattie raised her brows and let out a little giggle. “Anyway,” she said, after introductions were finished. “Nash is here to help with whatever we need.”

Ray jiggled the keys to my Jeep. “How about helping me carry a few loads from the car, Nash?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll help, too,” Cade said, following them through the door.

As soon as they left, Hattie turned back to me and clapped her hands together. “Well, now that the boys are out of here, I have something to show you.”

She hauled me to one of the dressing rooms and pointed to a dress hanging on the hook. “Go in there and put this on and hurry out.”

I stammered for a response, but she cut me short with a little shove. “Hurry up, now. We don’t have much time. I want to get you fixed up before the boys get back with the next load.”

A few seconds later I emerged wearing the little peach lace sundress.

Hattie gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. “Why, if that isn’t the cutest ever! Come over here so I can see you better.”

Joining her in front of the mirror, I twirled around, sizing up my new look. Hattie was right. With little capped sleeves, a scooped neck and a fitted bodice, the dress gave a feminine feel to my slim, boyish physique. The color was good, too. It seemed to make my blue eyes pop.

“Perfect, perfect, perfect!” Hattie was carrying on. She clasped my hand and dragged me toward the countertop. “Let me just add a few special touches now.”

I watched as she dug in her purse and pulled out a wicked-looking comb and a tube of something. She took to my short crop with the comb, teasing along my crown and then following up with a dollop of hair gel, pulling at pieces
of my hair. “I’m just going to give this hair of yours a little zap of energy. Don’t worry, now. It’ll be fine.”

Trying to take her word for it, I stood motionless while she worked her way around my head, teasing and pulling. Finally she finished with the hair, dipped back into her purse and pulled out her makeup bag. “Now, for a touch of glamour.”

My hand shot up. “Oh, that’s okay,” I protested. “I’m not much for makeup.”

“Relax, will ya? And hold still,” she barked, a fully loaded mascara wand dancing preciously close to my eyeball.

The torture finished just as the shop bells jangled with the return of the guys. Snatching a pair of strappy sandals from atop the counter, she quickly stepped between me and the men. “Hurry, slip these on.”

I obeyed, tapping her on the shoulder when I was done.

She cleared her throat, getting everyone’s attention. “Excuse me, fellows. I want to introduce you to someone.”

Behind her, I rolled my eyes. She was really taking this thing too far.

She stepped aside and held out her hands like a game show hostess. “The new Nola Mae Harper, businesswoman and friend extraordinaire!”

Letting out a chuckle, I took a little bow for my audience. But when I raised my head I was surprised to see everyone staring at me with shocked expressions. “What?” I scurried back to the mirror for another look, hardly recognizing the woman who stared back at me. Hattie had worked my short hair into wispy angles that complemented my features, pronouncing my cheekbones and making my eyes appear larger and my lips look full and pouty. Or maybe it wasn’t the hair bringing out those features, but the way she’d accented my eyes and highlighted the angles of my face with makeup. Whatever it was, I liked the final result.

Apparently so did Cade. In the mirror, behind my own reflection, I noticed his eyes riveted on me. I stood motionless, my heart thudding as he took me in like a long drink of cool water.

Hattie stepped between us, breaking his trance. “Well, what do y’all think? Perfect for her big debut today, don’t ya think?”

“Yeah, looks great, sis,” Ray called out from across the room. He and Nash were busy trying to pull the base out on a portable table, oblivious to my transformation.

Cade, on the other hand, was anything but oblivious. “Perfect. Simply perfect,” he mumbled in a low, husky voice.

Hattie glanced back and forth between us, a gleam in her eye. “Well, I never would have imagined such an enthusiastic reaction, but I’m glad you approve, big brother.”

I felt my cheeks growing hotter and hotter and wondered if anyone else noticed they were about to burst into flames. I hastily moved toward the refreshment table, hoping some tea would cool me down.

•   •   •

“Is this your mama’s recipe?” Candace from the bank was standing at my festival table, scrutinizing a jar of preserves.

“Yes, ma’am. The one and only.”

“In that case, I’ll take two. Although I really shouldn’t on account of my blood sugar levels. Doc Harris said I should modify my eating habits.” She waved away his suggestion like it was a pesky fly. “Where do you suppose he gets off telling me to modify my eating habits? Have you ever sat next to him at a potluck?”

Shrugging, I took the jars and quickly wrapped them in tissue paper, placing them inside a brown-handled bag, which I tied off with a piece of red gingham ribbon. Sales had been steady, but not spectacular, with locals for the first couple hours and then slowly more people arriving from out of town as well. “Here you are,” I said, taking her money and dipping into my apron for change. “Are you having a nice time today?” I asked, trying to steer the conversation in a more positive direction, but wondering if I could try making a few jars of preserves with something sugar-free,
like Stevia powder. Of course, I had to remind myself, I’d just barely gotten a grip on the regular recipe.

“Well, I would be, of course, if it weren’t for my sciatica. Boy, it sure acts up when I walk on concrete. Doc told me I should get myself some thicker soled shoes, but I just can’t find any pretty ones,” she started whining.

“Was Hollis at the bank this morning?” I asked, cutting her short. I wasn’t raised to be so rude, but Candace could go on about her ailments forever.