Andy was almost across Fourth Street when, from the corner of his eye, he saw someone smack in the middle of the pavement. Surely some bum hadn’t passed out cold. It was Wednesday, not Saturday when all the drunks came out of the mesquite and woodwork. Dammit! Had there been someone hiding in the attic and Agnes’s shotgun blast wounded them? Then the person sat up and brushed leaves from their hair and clothing.
Tall and thin, she had dark hair that fell to her waist and brown eyes. In her best earning days, she’d been the cream of the crop, but gravity had begun to work on her face, and at forty, she had hung up her hooker shoes and her suitcase of sex toys.
“Good evening, Andy,” Darla Jean said.
Andy extended a hand. “What in the hell are you doing sitting there? I thought you were a drunk or a dead man.”
She reached up and took his hand. “I was on my way to see if you were dead, and I fell down.”
He pulled her up. “Why would you think I’m dead?”
“Thanks for the hand. Figured Marty came home early from her classes, caught you, and killed you.”
The woman had always intimidated the hell out of Andy. He cleared his throat. “It was Agnes, and she shot the ceiling. I got away without a scratch. I got to admit I ducked when that blast went off, though.”
Darla reached out and brushed a bit of paper from his shoulder.
“Trixie all right?”
“She might appreciate you dropping by,” Andy said.
“That’s where I’m headed.” Darla Jean kicked off the other flip-flop, leaving them both on the street.
“That is littering, and it’s too late in the year to be wearing flip-flops,” Andy said.
“What you were doing might be adultery, and what kind of shoes I wear is none of your business,” Darla Jean said.
“I’m not married to Anna Ruth,” Andy said defensively.
“But you were married to Trixie when you started sleeping with Anna Ruth, weren’t you?” Darla Jean shot over her shoulder.
Andy picked up the flip-flops and tossed them in his trunk before he drove out of the church parking lot.
Trixie poured a second shot. She couldn’t remember when she didn’t know Marty and Cathy Andrews. Their mothers had grown up in Cadillac and were friends. Then she and the twins—and Jack Landry—had grown up together. First as toddlers in church, then as rambunctious kids, and later as teenagers. After graduation, Jack went into the Army, leaving Trixie, Cathy, and Marty to share everything: joys, tears, PMS, boyfriend troubles, divorce, sex stories, and everything in between.
Through it all, they had each other. They’d been her bridesmaids when she married Andy right out of high school. They’d been her support system when she divorced him. And now they were business partners.
Marriage to Andy had not been easy for either of them, but they’d been young and foolish. If they’d been older and wiser, they would have known that his obsession with neatness and her I-don’t-give-a-shit-about-keeping-things-in-order attitude would never work. The only thing that kept their marriage together was wild, passionate sex, and his affair with Anna Ruth was the thing that ended it.
A month after the divorce was final, Trixie had run into Andy at the Walmart in Sherman, six miles north of Cadillac. His hand brushed hers, and it was all downhill from there. They couldn’t keep their hands off each other any more than they could back when they were in high school.
Yep, she’d shared everything with her friends—except for Wednesday nights with Andy. Marty would kill him graveyard dead if she ever saw him in the house. Cathy was sweet enough that she’d provide the shovels to bury his sorry old ass out under the crape myrtle bushes in the backyard, and they could probably get Darla Jean to say a prayer over his body. But it was Marty who’d do the actual murder because she’d never trusted him. She said from the beginning, back when he and Trixie started dating her senior year in high school, that he’d been a player since he was old enough to talk a girl’s skirt up over her belly button and he’d never change. And he’d damn sure proven her right.
“Sorry sumbitch. I’m not going to sleep with him anymore,” she declared.
Darla Jean didn’t knock. She never did.
“You all right, girl? I just ran into that SOB, and I did hear you say you weren’t sleeping with him, didn’t I?” she asked as she pushed the door open.
“You did, but I won’t stick with it. You know I won’t. I never do.” Trixie shook her head from side to side. “The blast is still ringing in my ears, but it’s getting better. Did the sirens or the shot get your attention?”
“Honey, my first thought was that the rapture had come. I even said a prayer in case Jesus returned,” Darla Jean said.
Trixie looked down at Darla’s feet.
“Lost ’em out on the street, but Andy couldn’t leave them there to litter.” She laughed. “The pavement was still warm, and the grass felt pretty good on my feet. October in Texas don’t mean a person has to wear shoes, does it?”
“What would you have done if it had been the rapture?” Trixie asked.
“Well, I wouldn’t be standing here if it had been. I’d have been on my way to glory. Evidently the good Lord needs me to stay here a spell longer and take care of all y’all over here at Clawdy’s. Now tell me what happened and how in the world you got Andy out so slick and how come Agnes looked like she was trick-or-treating.”
Trixie raised her head. “That woman is going to be the death of all of us! Agnes was the one who called the cops and the ambulance. She thought I was being attacked in my room. I swear the old girl has a camera trained on the house. And she had a shotgun, I’m tellin’ you, a real, honest-to-God loaded gun. There’s a hole in the landing ceiling to prove it. And that’s not even the worst of it! She dragged her dead husband’s old clothes out of a mothball trunk and put them on so she’d look like a police officer. She had a fedora on top of her ratted-up hair. You should have seen her!”
Darla Jean poured a cup of coffee from the pot and heated it in the microwave while she nibbled on a leftover hot roll from lunch.
“I did see her”—she giggled— “while I was sitting on the street where I fell.”
“Are you all right?” Trixie asked.
“I’m fine. Just my pride was hurt and your cheatin’ husband even gave me a hand up. Who was she trying to shoot? You or Andy?” she asked.
“She blew a hole in the ceiling, and half the attic floated down on me. But it might have been a different story if I’d been holding that shotgun. We’d moved past the foreplay and were getting ready for the big production when the red, white, and blue strobes hit the window right along with the sirens.”
“I wondered what all that dust was doing on you. Figured you’d taken up another hobby. You’ve got to start giving Andy a brushing before he leaves. He had your scrapbooking bits and pieces on him. They were shinin’ on that dark uniform out there in the moonlight. You can bet if I can see them in the dark, they won’t get past Anna Ruth.” Darla Jean sat down at the table. “You havin’ sweet tea?”
Trixie held up her glass. “I’ve got J.D.’s special brand of tea.”
“Whiskey and another woman’s man. Been there. Only difference was I got paid,” Darla Jean told her.
“Oh, honey, I’m getting paid in more ways than one. I get good sex once a week, and I’m getting back at Anna Ruth at the same time. Why would he want to marry her? She can’t be good in bed because if she was, he wouldn’t be having sex with me every week,” Trixie asked.
“Men marry for reasons other than sex. He don’t need it from her long as you are puttin’ out. Lord don’t look kindly on a woman givin’ it away to a married man.”
“But it’s okay if you sell it to him?” Trixie asked.
Darla Jean smiled, her big brown eyes twinkling. “Don’t reckon he looks too kindly on that either or else he would have steered me in the direction of bein’ a madam rather than a preacher when I quit the business. But this ain’t about my past sins, Trixie Matthews! You almost got caught, girl! God is talkin’ to you pretty strong. He’s sayin’ that if you don’t give up your wickedness, he’s goin’ to stop talkin’ and let Agnes take care of things. You want that?”
“Hell no! I’d rather face off with the devil as that old girl. But I’m not giving up my Wednesday nights either. I’ll just be more careful.” Trixie giggled and felt some of the pressure release in her ears.
“There’s lots of men you can have sex with. Why Andy?” Darla Jean asked.
“He drives me crazy. I make him nuts. I’m messy; he’s a neat freak deluxe. Perfect is barely good enough for him. Anna Ruth is the same way. But put me and Andy in a bed and, honey, it’s worth taking the risk for.”
Cathy was sitting in the back booth of the Rib Joint, a little barbecue joint in Luella, Texas, when her phone rang.
“Shoot!” she mumbled. She was right at the end of the novel that just came out by Candy Parker, and it was so hot that she actually felt the heat coming through her e-reader. She’d discovered the author four years ago and preordered all her books the day they were available. She always bought them in ebook format. She couldn’t have faced Trixie or Marty if they’d known she was reading smut.
Agnes would pitch a hissy if she picked up one of Candy’s books. Lord, she might have a coronary and it would be laid to Cathy’s charge. Yes, ma’am, it was much easier to keep them on the e-reader. Agnes wouldn’t even know how to access a book on it if she did find it lying about.
The phone rang four times, and then there was a pause before it started ringing again. Someone must be in big trouble to need to talk to her that badly.
“Hello,” she said sweetly.
“This is Beulah. I called Violet, and she said you were already gone, and I called Marty but she’s not answering, and there’s not an answer at Clawdy’s. And I’m worried plumb out of my mind. There were shots fired and the police cars, the ambulance, and the fire truck are all over at your house. I’m afraid to go outside and Jack won’t answer my calls. I can just feel my blood pressure risin’. If someone has shot Jack, I don’t know if I can stand it. I’m looking out the window now, and there are policemen everywhere and they’re takin’ Agnes… My God, what is she wearing? Cathy, she’s shot Jack. And I’m afraid his black suit will be too small. Do you think they’ll let me bury him in his uniform?” Beulah’s voice cracked and she began to sob.
“I’ll be home in five minutes, Beulah. Did you tell Agnes about the vote?” Cathy asked.
“Oh, honey, it was awful, just awful. She cussed and carried on and threatened to shoot Violet. Oh my God! Do you think she went over to Clawdy’s and shot Trixie? I told her that Anna Ruth got chosen, but she was rantin’ about so much that she might’ve thought it was Trixie who kept her from getting in the club.”
“Agnes wouldn’t do that even if she was mad. I’ll call you. Don’t worry, sweetheart—Jack is fine.”
Cathy put her e-reader inside her oversized purse and headed for the door. Her high heels sunk into the gravel, and just as she got to her car, one popped clean off. She grabbed the hood to keep from falling. She hobbled around the car, crawled in, and looked longingly at her purse. A few more minutes and she’d have finished reading the chapter. She hated to stop in the middle of a scene, but it would have to wait.
She started up the car and sighed. If only her fiancé, Ethan, could be as passionate as the men that Candy Parker wrote about. It didn’t matter if they were cowboys, firemen, Navy SEALS, or even mechanics. They all had one thing in common. They knew how to turn a woman on until all she could think about were their hands and lips on every part of her body.
She muttered as she drove, “So Ethan isn’t passionate. He is respectable and he has morals. After we are married, he’ll show more emotion. He just doesn’t want to get all involved when we’ve agreed not to have sex until we are married.”
Actually, she could read about it every chance she got, but the real thing scared the bejesus out of her. In today’s world, women were not virgins at thirty-four—but Cathy was. Marty lost her virginity at the age of fifteen and came home that night to sit on her twin bed and tell Cathy every single detail.
It had all started in high school right after Marty’s first bad boy cowboy talked her into a hayloft and Andy talked Trixie into the back seat of his car. It had been easy for Cathy to let them think that she had been doing it as long as either of them. It was the one thing, possibly the only thing, she kept secret from them. Well, that and her appetite for erotic romance. At first it was easy just to let them think she was bonking the guy in the library where she went every night. She never actually said that she had sex, but a little insinuation can go a long way. Like telling them that they should try doing it in between the back two bookshelves because the danger of almost getting caught was so exciting.
Then when she was thirty and they’d gone to a male strip joint in Dallas to celebrate, she’d let them believe she was going home with Butch, the stripper cowboy in chaps, boots, and a barbed wire tat on his bicep. The next morning, she just rolled her eyes and measured out about a foot between her hands when they asked her how things went with him in the motel room. Sometimes it wasn’t what you actually said but what they thought they heard.
She held her breath as she turned off State Highway 11 and down Main Street. She didn’t see flashing lights or hear sirens anywhere near the café. Everything was as quiet as it was every Wednesday night when she pulled up in the driveway. She parked her car and hit the back porch in a jog, threw open the door, and there were Trixie and Darla Jean sitting at the table, cool as cucumbers.
Trixie looked at Cathy’s feet. “Is this barefoot night?”
“I broke a heel getting here. Beulah called and thought someone had shot Jack in this house. She said there were police cars and even the ambulance. Please tell me they didn’t park on the lawn and ruin my flower beds. In the dark I couldn’t see a blessed thing and I just put the pansies out last week. They’ve not even had time to get adjusted to the ground.”
“Your lawn is fine. The flower beds didn’t lose a single petal, and the trouble was Agnes,” Trixie said.
“There were police cars, the ambulance, and the fire truck. But they kept it all on the curb,” Darla Jean said.
Cathy’s eyes went to the glass Trixie was holding. “Tea with no ice?”
“Jack Daniel’s, neat. Want one? You might need it before you go upstairs. Agnes brought her shotgun and blew a hole in the ceiling.”
Cathy shook her head. She should be glad that no one was hurt, and it was all a silly mix-up, but she wasn’t. She’d wanted to sit in the Rib Joint and finish her book. She’d even begged off from dessert at Ethan’s, saying that she had to make sweet potato pies for Clawdy’s lunch the next day and she’d best get on home to get a head start on them.
She pulled out a chair and sat down. She pushed the sleeves of her baby blue sweater up to the elbows, reached in her purse for her phone, and poked in some numbers. “I’ve got to call Beulah before y’all tell me the story. She thinks Jack is lyin’ over here dead, and she’s frettin’ about whether his black suit is goin’ to be too tight.”
“That’s Beulah,” Trixie said.
Cathy finished her call and looked up. “I smell mothballs.”
“Agnes called in the troops when she thought she saw someone molesting me. I had candles lit and the shades drawn. Who knows what she saw? Probably me putting on or taking off my big chenille robe, and she came over here smelling like mothballs,” Trixie said.
“Smelling like what?”
“You heard me. You should have seen her, Cathy. She pulled her husband’s old clothes out of a mothball trunk and put them on so the rapist would think she was the Cadillac police.” Trixie reached for the whiskey to refill her glass. “Sure you don’t want one?”
“After tonight it looks tempting, but no thanks,” Cathy said.
“Agnes would drive a holiness preacher to whiskey. Want me to see if Andy can fix that hole in the ceiling over the weekend?”
Cathy grabbed the whiskey from her hands and put it back in the cabinet. “You stay away from that man! He cheated on you and broke your heart. I won’t let him drive you into alcoholism. I mean it, Trixie!”
Darla Jean snorted when she giggled.
Trixie shot her a look that said the night wasn’t over and the shotgun had not gone home yet. “Hey, don’t punish me because you couldn’t get me into your club shit. I wouldn’t have gone to the meetings anyway, even if they had voted me in. Why in the hell would I put myself into a situation where I had to be in the same room with Anna Ruth?”
“But if you’d won, she wouldn’t be there.” Cathy rolled her big blue-green eyes toward the ceiling.
Trixie changed the subject. “So did you and Ethan finally get in the horizontal position tonight?”
“I told you Ethan is a gentleman. We are saving sex until our wedding night when I fully well intend to get pregnant with a son, Ethan Prescott the Fifth. Doesn’t that sound classy? Ethan’s middle name is Edward, so we’ll probably call him that, and he’s going to have blond hair and big blue eyes.”
“It’ll be a girl and look and act just like Marty. One of those McCleary genes might surface and she’ll look like Agnes,” Trixie whispered. She could hear better and her hands weren’t shaking anymore. Thank God for Jack Daniel’s.
“I’ve waited…” Cathy hesitated before she spit out anymore.
“Waited for what?” Darla Jean asked.
“A man I can trust. Someone who loves me and won’t cheat on me.”
Trixie held up the glass with only a few drops of whiskey in the bottom. “Touché, Cathy.”
“I’m sorry, that was mean. I’m tired and cranky. I didn’t sleep well last night, and I don’t want to be in a club with Anna Ruth.”
Trixie nodded. “You are forgiven, darlin’. I’d be pissy if I had to go out to that museum called the Prescott house and spend time with Violet every week and had to face off with Anna Ruth once a month.”
Cathy fidgeted in the chair. “Violet’s not so bad. She just wants the very best for her son. As bad as I want a baby, I can almost understand her, but I’m tellin’ you, I’ll be glad when Ethan and I are married, have our own place, and don’t have to deal with her every time we are together.”
“You are a pushover, girl,” Trixie scolded.
“No, I’m not. I just try to be fair.”
“And do you understand Anna Ruth too?” Trixie asked.
“She is enough to drive me to the whiskey bottle with you.”
“And Andy? Do you feel sorry for him?” Trixie pushed.
“He doesn’t deserve to be understood. He cheated on you, and I’m not going to like him. I don’t want to talk about him or Agnes anymore. You promised to help me plan this wedding even though you aren’t fond of Ethan. I helped you plan yours, and I didn’t care much for Andy even then. At least I don’t have to worry about Ethan cheating on me.”
“Bravo,” Darla Jean said.
“I’m so sorry. That was ugly. What is the matter with me tonight?” Cathy groaned.
“But it was true. Your mamma and y’all girls did help with my wedding. Besides, Ethan will have his hands full with two women. He wouldn’t cheat on you, because that would involve a third woman in his life. He’d stroke out if he tried three,” Trixie said.
Cathy raised a perfectly arched eyebrow. “Three?”
“You and Mommy Dearest are about all he’ll be able to handle, especially with his campaign going on. No way would he bring in a mistress.” Trixie’s hearing was almost normal, and the whiskey was mellowing her out. “And, honey, even if I do think he’s stuffy, I intend for you to have one helluva wedding. Three months from now you will have the biggest splash Cadillac, Texas, has ever seen. We’ll even hire guards to keep the paparazzi back. It’ll be bigger than the Christmas Ho-Ho-Ho. I mean, after all, you are marrying Ethan Prescott the Fourth, the richest bastard in Cadillac, Texas.”
Cathy smiled. “Not the richest and not a bastard. His mamma and poppa were married.”
Marty looked over the top of her laptop computer at the students in her Adult Basic Education class. She only had to lean a little to the left and there he was in the flesh: Derek, the young cowboy who was the hero in her newest work in progress. His hair was dark, his chest was broad, and those biceps were made to hold a woman. She shut her eyes just long enough to get a good solid image of him naked and then she opened them and began to type.
It had begun as an outlet while she was still teaching full time. Nowadays, she used the time she was monitoring her ABE class to catch up on writing. Her students were all full-grown adults brushing up their skills to take the GED test.
That required little actual teaching. She stacked booklets on the end of her desk, and her students picked them up at the beginning of class. They worked at their own speed and raised a hand when they needed one-on-one help. If they finished early, they put their name on the front of the booklet and gave it back to her to grade. If they didn’t get it done by the time class ended, they put their name on the front and left it on the other end of her desk so they could work on it again the next week. Eight weeks to complete the class and then they took their GED test. If they passed, she never saw them again. If they didn’t need a lot of help, she could get the biggest part of a rough draft done in that time.
When her first book sold and her editor asked her if she was going to write under her name or an assumed one, she made the decision to use the pseudonym Candy Parker. She didn’t intend for anyone in Cadillac ever to know that she was writing erotic romance. She’d never do anything to embarrass her sister. So, Candy Parker, the erotic romance writer, was her second secret. The first being keeping Aunt Agnes out of the social club, no matter what the cost.
Class had ended, and she was standing on the sidewalk outside the college classroom building, watching Derek’s cute little butt get into his truck when her phone rang. If she was ten years younger she might have a little sample of that cowboy. She didn’t mind if her flings were slightly younger, but nineteen was just too danged young.
She answered the phone on the fourth ring just before it went to voicemail. “Hello.”
“Marty, I just passed Clawdy’s, and something has happened. There’s police cars and the ambulance and the fire truck all there,” said Christopher Green, a regular at the café.
“Thanks, Christopher. I’m on my way home,” she said.
“Sure thing. Hope everything is all right.”
“You sure it was my place or Aunt Agnes’s? She lives right across the street.”
“No, it was yours. They were leading Agnes back across the street. I had to stop and wait for the officer to get her across. Wouldn’t have known the old girl, but that red hair can’t be missed. She was wearing some kind of weird getup. Reckon she’s gone off the deep end?”
“I don’t have any idea, but I’m going home to see about it,” Marty said.
Dammit! Agnes had never liked Trixie or Janie. Had the old girl snuck in the café and killed Trixie in her sleep? Marty didn’t need a second speeding ticket in the same night so she kept a close watch on the speedometer. But when she left the main highway and entered the Cadillac city limits, she stepped on the gas. Andy or any of his town policemen wouldn’t stop Marty. Most of them had lunch at Clawdy’s on a regular basis, and she was the cook. They’d be afraid to give her a ticket.
She hit the back door in a dead run. “What in the hell happened? I got a call that there was an ambulance here.”
“You done missed the excitement,” Darla Jean said.
Marty looked at Trixie.
Trixie shrugged. “Aunt Agnes.”
“Dammit, Cathy! We ought to put her in a nursing home. What’d she do—get mad over that stupid club vote and come over here to start a fight with Trixie?” Marty asked.
“She threw a fit about the club, but that wasn’t the problem. And she ain’t never goin’ to a nursing home,” Cathy said. “Mamma made me promise after Daddy died so sudden that if she went like that, we’d take care of Aunt Agnes.”
Marty pulled a cold beer from the refrigerator. She’d promised her mother something about Aunt Agnes too and had gotten a speeding ticket that night, so she knew something about promises, but she damn sure didn’t have to like them.
“And you’re marrying Mr. Hoity-Toity and leaving me with the job. I didn’t make a promise, so my way of putting up with her is to poison the old witch and then shed a fake tear at her funeral. What’d she do?” Marty leaned against the counter and looked at Trixie. “You look like hell rained down on you.”
Trixie told the story for the third time while Marty drank two beers and swore the whole time.
Trixie pointed to the cabinet. “Cathy won’t let me have another two fingers of Jack, and I deserve it. It rained plaster dust, insulation, and who knows what from the attic. I might die from some kind of antique dust mite poisoning unless I wash all the stuff out of my system with whiskey.”
Marty melted into the last chair around the table. “When you start telling jokes that aren’t funny, you’ve had enough. I hope Aunt Agnes is constipated all day tomorrow and can’t even come over here. I don’t want to see her for a week.”
“Marty! She was protecting Trixie. I’d say she gets a gold star for that, because she doesn’t even like Trixie,” Cathy exclaimed.
“Oh, stop being so nice. You know she’s a meddling old woman,” Marty said.
“I’m tired of this whole thing. I’m going to bed,” Cathy said.
Before she could stand up, the kitchen door flew open without even a knock, and Anna Ruth blew into the room like a whirlwind. She grabbed Cathy around the neck and hugged her so tightly that Cathy’s eyes bugged out, and then she headed toward Marty.
“I was so excited that we’re going to be club sisters that I had to rush over here and tell you. Isn’t it just the most exciting thing ever?” She beamed.
Trixie and Marty locked gazes somewhere between the table and cabinet. It was one of those times when two lifetime friends could speak without using a single word. Marty would help Trixie mop up Main Street with Anna Ruth. All Trixie had to do was nod.
“Anna Ruth, I hardly think it’s appropriate for you to be—”
Anna Ruth interrupted before Cathy could finish the sentence. “Oh, don’t be silly. Trixie knows that she never had a chance at the club, don’t you?”
Marty stepped to one side. “What she’s saying is that Clawdy’s is closed.”
“But we are club sisters now. I have the right to come in the kitchen and talk to my sisters,” Anna Ruth protested.
“No, you don’t,” Trixie said.
“Tell her, Cathy. She’s just mad because I won and she lost.”
“Well, there is something about breaking up my marriage. Of course, it’s a little thing,” Trixie said.
Anna Ruth shrugged. “That doesn’t count. This is about the club, for God’s sake.”
“I’m going back to the church. Anna Ruth, I’ll walk you out.” Darla looped an arm around Anna Ruth’s shoulders. The small woman had no choice but to let herself be led outside. “Y’all remember to lock the door,” Darla Jean said over her shoulder. “We’ve had enough excitement for one night on our block.”
“Now I’m really going up to my room.” Cathy disappeared up the stairs.
“Lord, have mercy! How many times did she shoot the ceiling? It’s a mess up here,” she yelled in a few seconds.
“I’ll clean it up,” Trixie called up the stairs.
“Go on to bed. You fended off Aunt Agnes and didn’t pick up a butcher knife and kill Anna Ruth. I’ll do the cleanup,” Marty said.
Trixie covered a yawn with the back of her hand. “Guess I’m off to bed.”
Marty nodded. When she was alone, she retrieved her laptop from her truck and opened it at the kitchen table. She only had another five thousand words, and she’d have the rough draft done, but nothing came to mind without her sexy cowboy muse.
She sat there another ten minutes before she shut the laptop. It was all Agnes’s fault. She was a busybody who spied on everything that went on in the whole town of Cadillac and especially at Clawdy’s. But if Agnes said she saw two people in that bedroom, then she probably did. So who in the hell was Trixie having sex with?