Small Town Rumors(14)

Rick nodded. “I’d say that’s pretty stubborn, but I know another woman here in Bloom that’s about as stubborn as that, too.”

“You’d better not be talkin’ about me. In my opinion, Jennie Sue is just plain uppity, Amos,” Cricket said.

“Evenin’, Amos. I’m glad I got here before you closed.” A lady laid a book on the counter. “I hate to keep a book out over the due date. Did you hear that Jennie Sue Baker is going to clean houses for the Clifford sisters?”

“You ready to go home?” Rick asked Cricket under the older folks’ conversation.

“In a few minutes,” she said.

“I appreciate good patrons, Joyce. Tell me what you’ve heard.” With Amos’s hearing going, Rick was surprised people couldn’t follow the conversation from outside the building.

“It’s closin’ time for the library, and we’ve got work to do,” Rick said.

“Oh, okay.” Cricket shot a dirty look his way and then called out over her shoulder as they left, “See y’all later.”

Amos waved and kept listening to Joyce. Rick wondered if Jennie Sue’s ears were burning yet.





Chapter Three

You look like your grandma Vera Baker,” Nadine said as she handed the SUV keys over to Jennie Sue. “Sweetest woman I ever met. She wasn’t at all like the Wilshire side of your family. Why, I remember when we’d have a family dinner at the church for funerals, she’d always insist on bringing three or four desserts instead of trying to cancel dessert entirely, and she loved to garden. Sometimes she’d bring sacks full of vegetables to the church and leave them on the table in the foyer so folks could help themselves.”

Lettie nodded. “Sad day when she left this earth.”

Nadine was tall, thin as a rail, and had sparkling blue eyes. Her gray hair was twisted up into a bun on the top of her head. The sisters were definitely not lookalikes—not by any stretch of the word.

“Thank you, Jesus, for giving us a housekeeper and a driver. I was about to go crazy thinkin’ about sittin’ in the house another day,” Nadine said as she got into the back seat and fastened her seat belt.

“My name is not Jesus, and you’ve gone somewhere every day since Wilma quit workin’ for us,” Lettie said.

“Then thank you, sister,” Nadine said. “When we get done shopping, let’s go to the Dairyland for burgers and ice-cream cones for supper. My treat tonight.”

“You’re just wantin’ to flirt with that old man who carries the trays to the tables,” Lettie said.

“The day I quit flirtin’ is the day you two can put me in a casket, fold my arms over my chest, and send me on to see Flora up in heaven,” Nadine declared.

“How do you know Flora went to heaven?” Lettie asked. “She never set foot in the church after Mama died.”

“Because she was too mean and cantankerous for the devil to want her,” Nadine answered. “Lord, that girl was wild as a hooker on steroids when she was young.”

“And how wild is that?” Jennie Sue asked.

“She came close to breakin’ up your great-grandma’s weddin’. She was the girl the best man talked into doing a striptease for your great-grandpa’s bachelor party. That was what started the feud between the Wilshires and the Cliffords.”

“Oh, really?” Jennie Sue glanced in the rearview mirror.

“Your mama didn’t tell you all about it?”

“Guess not,” Jennie Sue answered.

“It’s a long story,” Lettie said. “We’ll tell it another time. Right now, we’ve got to be sure we got everything we need on our list for tomorrow’s dinner. You’re invited, Jennie Sue, if you aren’t goin’ home for the party there. If you are, we have dessert after the fireworks, so you can join us for that.”

“Thank you. I’m going to my folks’ house for their annual party tomorrow, but I might be able to slip away and get in on the dessert,” she answered. So the fact that her mother didn’t like the Cliffords because they were such big gossips didn’t cover the whole story. Maybe on Friday, when Jennie Sue cleaned Lettie’s house, she’d hear the rest of the tale.

Bloom was a little less than ten miles north of Sweetwater. The drive usually took about ten minutes unless there was traffic, and that night there was none. The sisters talked about their menu for dinner the next night the whole way to the Walmart. “Where do we meet up when we get done?” Jennie Sue asked when she stopped at the door to drop the sisters off.

“We’ll wait for you by the shopping carts,” Lettie answered. “We don’t never get scattered out when we shop. Tried that once and spent hours trying to find each other.”

“You could use your cell phones,” Jennie Sue said.

“Honey, I ain’t about to use mine anywhere they have fluorescent lighting. I heard tell that the combination of the lights and whatever signals are on the phones mixin’ up in a place like this can cause cancer,” Nadine said as she got out of the van. “And I don’t take chances like that.”

“That’s hogwash,” Lettie declared. “That can’t cause cancer or half the people in Texas would be droppin’ dead like flies all around us.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “But if there’s aliens out there—and I’m not sayin’ that they exist or that they don’t—but just in case there are, I bet they can listen in on them things. Give me a phone with a cord on it or even one of the cordless like we got in our houses now and there ain’t no way them little fellers can hear what I’m sayin’. That’s why I don’t use my cell phone in public unless it’s an emergency of some kind.”