The Yellow Rose Beauty Shop (Cadillac, Texas #3)(68)

“Good morning. I’m the poster girl today for the Yellow Rose Barbecue Ball.” She giggled. “Aren’t these simply divine? Heather did such a wonderful job of designing them. I’d like to put one in your window, Stella.”

She couldn’t say no but she damn sure didn’t want to say yes, so she nodded. Poor Annabel was grooming herself to take on Heather’s job, but Annabel would never be the second coming of Violet Prescott. She simply did not have enough mean in her bones or ice water flowing through her veins. Heather, with or without the fingernail, could fit the bill, so Annabel might as well learn to love the backseat.

“You want to leave it with me or hang it up yourself?” Stella asked.

Annabel flashed a smile. “I’ll be very happy to put it up myself. Y’all just go right on about your business. Don’t mind me. I’ll be done in just a second.”

She looked at the big display window with “The Yellow Rose” written in a half circle and “Beauty Shop” tucked up toward the top, but shook her head. “Not there.”

For two whole minutes she paced across the front of the shop, her heels making a noise on the tile floor like ducks flying south for the winter. Stella kept an eye on her while she combed out and teased up Lillian Thomas’s thin gray hair.

“What is she doing?” Lillian asked.

“Trying to decide where to put that poster. If she takes this much time with every one, it’ll be over before it’s advertised,” Stella whispered. Suddenly, her stomach knotted up and she barely made it to the bathroom before she upchucked everything but her toenails. When she returned, Annabel was still trying to find the perfect place for her poster.

She stopped what she was doing and glared at Stella. “I heard you are the cause of all this craziness. You look a little pale. Are you all right?”

“Yes, she is the reason for the barbecue ball. If she would have just gotten married right out of high school, she could already have her first divorce under her belt,” Piper said.

“Or if she would have chosen her own husband six months ago or picked one of those poor beggars that Nancy drugged and dragged to Sunday dinner, she wouldn’t have been in this mess. And I might add, we wouldn’t be searching for barbecue recipes,” Charlotte said. “And she is pale because she didn’t have time to put on her makeup this morning.”

Stella started counting backward and almost fainted right there in the floor. Holy mother of God! How was she even going to buy a pregnancy test without someone seeing and reporting back to the gossip hounds? Surely she was not pregnant. She was on the pill and it was more than 99 percent effective. Her stomach clenched again and she had to swallow hard to keep from rushing back to the bathroom a second time. She’d only missed one period and she could chalk that up to stress, right?

Annabel whipped around. “Nancy might have started something with her prayer request, but this is going to be the beginning of a whole new wonderful thing called marriage ministry and it will be a cultural affair for Cadillac. Miz Heather is working very hard on it.”

A blast of heat flooded the shop when Nancy pushed through the front door. “Wow, those posters look expensive,” she said.

Annabel was truly flustered. “This is going to be a wonderful event. We couldn’t have anything less than professionally done posters to advertise it. After all, this first ball is the foundation for something bigger and better each year.” She quickly removed the sign saying that there would be no more men’s haircuts given at the Yellow Rose and taped the sign in the window of the glass door. “Good day, ladies. Thank you for letting me put a poster in your window.”

If Agnes is grooming you to be next in line for her title and Heather is dethroning Violet, what’s going to happen to Cadillac? Stella’s inner voice asked.

Who gives a shit about Cadillac? What if I’m pregnant? Stella argued with the voice.

“Will Jed be upset or happy?” Stella mumbled.

“What did you say, honey?” Nancy asked. “I was watching Annabel and didn’t hear you.”

“I was just thinking out loud.”

Nancy pulled out the side of the poster, laid her cheek on the glass, and peeked at the bright colors.

“Hey, you can go outside and look at it from there,” Charlotte hollered.

“Oops,” Nancy said when the poster fell off the window and landed on the floor. “Guess the heat and me messing with it made the tape let go. But don’t worry, I can fix it. When I get done it will stay up there until eternity dawns.”

She jerked a partial roll of duct tape from her purse, held the poster back up to the window and ripped off long strips of gray tape. When it was firmly in place, it was slightly askew and looked like crap from the outside, but she seemed quite happy with her work.

“Good thing I’m following Annabel around. She means well but she just doesn’t have the equipment to work with. I done fixed the ones she put on the door at Clawdy’s and at Bless My Bloomers. I reckon I’ll have to check the one at the convenience store and over at the community center soon as she gets them put up,” Nancy said. “So, Lillian, how’s your garden this summer? Grasshoppers got your cucumbers yet?”



Piper flipped through the hangers at the Ross store in Sherman. She found a cute little black lace dress that might have worked for the ball, but only the outer skirt came to the floor. The lining was supposed to stop at midcalf and let the lace show legs from there down. Piper held it up to her body—the lining would have had trouble covering the elastic in her underpants, so she put it back on the rack.