Murder & Mayhem in Goose Pimple Junction (6 page)

Everyone
clapped as Jack stepped forward, hugged Lou, and thanked everybody for coming.

Telling
the audience he appreciated the turn out, he looked at
Tess, locking eyes with her before sitting down in the big overstuffed chair and launching into reading. Firm, confident and funny, Tess liked his style of writing. His voice was strong and smooth—very masculine and powerful. With the intent to hook everyone and leave them desperate to find out the outcome of the book, he purposely ended with a suspenseful chapter.

Afterward,
Tess browsed the new fiction section, while Jack signed books and charmed the socks off everyone who came to meet him.

“
Well hidee, sugar. I'm so glad you came.” Tess looked up to see Louetta rushing up to her. “Whadja think a the new book? I think it’s gonna be the best one yay-et,” Lou said, turning a one-syllable word into two.

“
You may be right. And this is a great turn-out tonight.”

“
Idnit somethin’?” She looked around the store. “There must be
fitty people here tonight. I sure am glad you made it out. I know Jackson will 'preshade it.”

Tess’s
mind was working overtime to keep up with the Southern speak.

“
Well, didja read the books? Which one didja like best?”

“
The books? Oh, the books I bought—yes, I did like them. Well, it. I’ve only had a chance to read one of them so far. I’ve been working on the house a little, painting, scraping—”

Lou
interrupted, “Oh honey, tell me ‘bout it. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. This place just about runs me ragged.
‘
Course it’s gotten a lot worse since Betty Jane had to quit. She had to have surgery—female problems, don’t ya know.”

“
So . . . you own the bookstore?” Tess asked.

“
Sure. Didn’t I tell you that?”

Something
clicked into place, and Tess impulsively decided to ask for a job. “Did you say you’re short of help here, Lou? Are you hiring?
I would love to have a part-time job.”

“
And I can vouch for her, Lou, she’s good people,” Jack drawled, coming up behind her.

“
Well honey, you must be heaven sent. I’ve been prayin’ for someone reliable to come along. I knew it would be all right. Just gotta have a little faith and a lot of patience. But God is good, and I knew he’d send me somebody special and here you are.” She gave Tess a big hug, and then gave Jack one too. Beaming, she said to Tess, “I always take any chance I get to hug that man.” She giggled. “Now when can you start, Tess?”

“
Well, I…I suppose any time,” she stammered, taken aback at how fast she had landed a job and at how forward Lou was with Jack.

“
Now don’t go bein’ too pushy, Lou. You don’t wanna scare her off, do ya?”

“
Pushy, smushy, Tessie here will get used to me.”

“
Tess, you have to speak your mind around Lou. Don’t let her work you too hard,” Jack warned, putting an affectionate arm around Lou.  

“
Well, I’m not afraid of a little hard work, and I’m sure we can come up with a schedule that will suit us both.”

“
That’s the spirit. Now come on back here, and we’ll get some
paperwork done and iron out the details.” Lou headed for the back of the store, and Tess started to follow.

“
Actually, Lou,” Jack called after her; she stopped and turned.
“I was hopin’ to talk Tess into goin’ for a drink with me.” He looked questioningly at Tess.

“
Well bless your heart, of course you were. Don’t let me stop you! Y’all run along and we’ll talk tomorrow, Tessie. Jest come on by in the mornin’ and we’ll get everythin’ smoothed out.”

Tess
laughed nervously. She didn’t want to go anywhere alone with Jack, the Martian man. The cheating Martian man. She'd sworn off men. Especially lying, cheating men.

“
Lou, why don’t you join us?” Tess asked, hopefully, silently saying,
Pleasepleaseplease.

“
Well, I’d love to,” she said, clapping her hands together. “It looks like everybody’s clearin’ out of here. Jest let me get my purse and close up. I’ll meet you two kids outside in two shakes of a rat's tail.”

“
I think I love that woman. Nobody’s called me a kid in ages,” Tess said, as they walked outside.

“
Lou’s a honey. Salt of the earth. Just be careful of what you tell her. Her tongue’s tied in the middle and loose at both ends.”

“
Is there a thesaurus for Southern speak I could buy? A dictionary for colloquialisms?”

Jack
laughed. “I mean if you don’t want anyone to know it, don’t tell Lou.”

Tess
and Jack stepped out onto the sidewalk and stood under the bookstore’s big green awning. It was dark out, but the street lamps lit up the sidewalk. The trees lining the sidewalk were strung with little white lights year-round, and they gave a magical look to the town square.

“
Jack —”

“
You really—”

They
both stopped, and he said, “Ladies first.”

“
I was just going to say I want to thank you for vouching for me. You don’t even know me—I could end up making you look bad.”

“
Or you could end up cursing me for getting you involved with Lou.” She looked at him funny and he said, “I’m only kidding, she’s a dear, sweet, old woman, and I can tell you are, too.”

Tess’s
expression changed from questioning to a hard stare, and he quickly corrected himself.

“
I mean the sweet part. Not the old lady part. Seriously, you two will hit it off. Just don't tell her I said she was old. I'm happy to help, but
I wanted to warn you not to let her bulldoze you into working more than you want. She has a way of talking people into things before they know what they’re doing.”

Just
what has she talked you into, Jack? No, that’s ridiculous. Lou must be close to eighty years old. I’m getting ridiculously paranoid. Maybe that’s a side effect of being married to an unfaithful man.

“
She has a way of talking, period, if you know what I mean,” he added.

“
Oh, I see.” She was looking everywhere but at him.

“
What’ll it be tonight? A drink or a cup of coffee? I’m buyin’.”

“
Make it a sweet tea and you’re on,” Tess said, hoping Lou would hurry up.

* * *

Tess couldn’t sleep. It was two in the morning when she finally gave in and looked at the clock. After reading another of Jack's books until well after midnight, she tossed and turned for more than an hour. Maybe it was the sweet tea that was keeping her up. Or maybe it was thoughts of Jack. He'd done some pretty heavy flirting, and she was glad Lou had been along as a buffer. Jack was good-looking, intelligent, charming, and interesting. He made her laugh—the one trait that she found sexiest in a man. But she didn’t want to get involved with Jackson Wright. She needed a break from men. And she wasn't going to fall for a cheating man again. Jack was off limits. He had to be.

Not
wanting to think any more about Jack, she put a light sweater on over her camisole, grabbed her laptop and headed out to the covered porch—one of her favorite things about the house.

She
settled into the overstuffed cushions of the big wicker chair. It was a beautiful summer night; quiet except for the crickets' song. She took a deep breath to catch the faint scent of honeysuckle in the air. Opening the laptop, she brought up the page where she’d stopped
writing.

She
drew a blank. Relaxing into the chair, she tried to get her writer’s head back on, wracking her brain for what she wanted to say. Nothing. For over thirty minutes she couldn’t think of a thing to write.

I
can’t sleep, I can’t write, I might as well tackle the bedroom
.

Tess
headed back inside and turned on a light in her bedroom. The wallpaper in the room was a big, gaudy print that hurt Tess’s eyes to look at. It had big purple and red flowers on a deep burgundy background that made her feel like it was screaming at her.

“
It’s either you or me, wallpaper. And I like this house, so guess what?”

She
took off her sweater, changed into her old grubby jeans, and
gathered up all of the necessary tools. With a scraper in her back pocket, a spray bottle filled with water, and her iPod set to shuffle, Tess began spraying, scraping, and peeling off the offensive wallpaper layer after layer off the top half of one section of the wall, all the while singing along with the music.

Tess
sat down on the floor to work on the bottom half of the wall, tossing the paper onto the floor, intending to scrape continuously and clean up later. Some of it came off in long strips, but most of it came off in small, thin pieces.

After
working for an hour, she began to feel the effects of lack of sleep. She started cleaning up the scraps littering the floor and noticed some of the smaller pieces had fallen into the floor register under where she’d been working. Retrieving a screwdriver, Tess opened it up.

Sticking
her hand in, she not only grabbed a handful of paper scraps, but also a whole warren of dust bunnies. “Ew. Yuck!” she said aloud.

Kneeling
down to get better access to the register and squeezing her eyes closed in repulsion, she swept her hand along the bottom of the vent to grab as much as possible. Her fingers grazed something hard and cold, and she heard it slide across the bottom—definitely not a dust bunny. She scooped up the foreign object, a couple of crayons, and a handful of scraps, and dropped it all on the floor.

Klunk.

Brushing the dust balls away, she saw a little copper key with a small label attached by a string of yarn. It didn’t look like an ordinary house key. She picked it up and turned the label over. In faded pencil it said simply, “trunk.”

“
That’s odd,” she said aloud.

Her
thoughts immediately flew to Lou at the bookstore. This was her family's old house. Maybe she would know what the key belonged to. It did look very old. She’d have to remember to ask her about it
tomorrow.

Tess
put the key on her bedside table and finished cleaning up her mess. Back in bed, as she drifted off, she lay there thinking about how working at Stafford’s would be a good way to get out of the house and meet people, while also allowing her to pick up some extra cash.

Just
before she fell asleep completely, her thoughts turned to her discovery. She wondered who the trunk belonged to, how long the key had been lost in the register, and whether anyone had missed it.

hireyew
:  salutation \ hahy
uh
r-yoo\   how are you

Good morning, hireyew?

[  1932  ]

Police Chief Bug Preston took three witnesses, John Hobb, Nate
Hunter, and Tallulah Maggard, to the big city of Helechawa eleven days after the bank robbery, to identify Rod Pierce as one of the bandits.

The
chief and the witnesses arrived at the jail and were led to Pierce’s cell. Rod Pierce was disheveled, wearing clothes that looked like he’d slept in them for a week. It had been even longer since he’d shaved, and he didn’t have his false teeth in. Red-rimmed grey eyes sat under dirty, matted brown hair. Staring at them blankly through the bars, he decided he needed a drink. The others thought he needed a bath.

“
Well?” asked the sheriff. “The man’s a drunk and a bum. Question is, is this yer man?”

John
Hobb said, “That’s the man I saw pointing a gun at our teller and demanding money.”

Ta
llulah agreed. “Yessir. That’s the man who done stole our money and nearly scared the fire outta me.”

Nate Hunter
studied Pierce for several minutes before saying,
“I
s’pose
he could be one of the men I saw in the bank that day.”

“
What do you mean ‘
you s’pose’
? Is he or id’n he?” Bug Preston asked. Hunter nodded his head.

“
We’ll need one a you boys to transport him to Goose Pimple if ya don’t mind,” Preston drawled to the sheriff.

“
Chief, do you know how our town got its name?” Sheriff Bone asked, out of the blue.

Everyone
looked at him blankly.

“
Helechawa. It’s short for 'It’s hell each way’,” he laughed. “But the town itself ain’t no bed a roses neither. Old Coots here’ll be glad to
oblige, just ta git outta town.”