Tucker's Crossing (28 page)

Mable barely had enough time to leap out of the way when the rounder of the two, wearing a dark green skort and knee-high stockings, with a cart full of every kind of chili pepper one could imagine, let out a battle cry. Both women surged forward, ramming their carts into each other. A gigantic crash echoed, causing the store to fall silent and rubberneckers to fill the aisle.

“You can’t buy all of the cornmeal,” Ms. Luella snapped, waving her spoon in the air.

“You can’t tell me what to buy,” Mrs. McKinney snapped right back. “Plus, first come, first served.”

“I was here first, and you stole my cart.”

“With all of the cornmeal!”

“Looks to me that the only way you can win, Viola McKinney, is to cheat!” Ms. Luella used her massive handbag to smack Mrs. McKinney’s cart, sending it, and the entire stock of Sweet Plains’s cornmeal, flying across the aisle, grazing Mable’s thigh, only to crash into the baking powder display, and explode into a cloud of yellow and white.

When the meal settled, both women were floured, battered, and breathing heavy. And there, sprawled out on the floor, in the middle of the mess, surrounded by empty baking-powder tins and cornmeal bags, lay Mable, market proprietor and the last woman who would ever agree to judge the cook-off.

“Mable,” Shelby exclaimed, rushing over to help the woman up. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, thank you, dear.” She let Shelby haul her up, then turned toward the two culprits. “Y’all should be ashamed of yourselves.”

For a millisecond both women had the manners to look sheepish. Then the porky finger started pointing and handbags started swinging.

“Stop this,” Shelby yelled, placing herself firmly between the two. Ms. Luella threw a bag of toasted coconut around Shelby and nailed Mrs. McKinney in the shin. Mrs. McKinney went for a can of condensed milk. Shelby squatted low and stuck her arms straight out like a goalie. “One more thing goes airborne and you are both disqualified. Do I make myself clear?”

“But she was fixing to walk off with all the cornmeal,” Ms. Luella cried at the same time Mrs. McKinney yelled, “She bought up all the chili peppers. How can a woman make chili without no chili peppers?”

“Enough!” Logan shouted, making his way down aisle four, and he did not look happy. He stopped with one hand on his weapon, the other clutching his daughter’s hand, and Gina smiling in the wings.

To make it all the worse, the Ladies of Sweet—all twenty-three petite, tanned, and too well dressed for a small town—had chosen today of all days to talk to Mable about their special order of caviar and lox for the Miss Sweet Pageant celebration. And they weren’t shy, definitely regal, but not shy about letting Shelby know just what a disgrace she was making of everything.

“Someone mind telling me why I shouldn’t throw all of your as—” Logan looked down at Sidney, pigtails bouncing, eyes wide, waiting anxiously for the dirty word to fly as she clutched her two chili peppers and bag of cornmeal “—
behinds
in jail?”

“Behinds,” Sidney whispered on a giggle. Between the girl’s shirt, vest, skirt, socks, and shoes, she had on every color of the rainbow and a few Shelby didn’t recognize.

“That woman attacked me with a deadly weapon!”

“A cart is not a deadly weapon!” Mrs. McKinney argued.

“I was talking about the condensed milk!”

“I want to press charges!” both women cried at once.

Logan turned to Gina. “Why is this my problem?”

Her smile was wide and full of pleasure. “Because you wouldn’t listen to my warning and put me in charge. Then I made the executive decision to make Shelby the contest chair of the cook-off.”

“Christ, Gina. That’s like sending a Maltese to take on a gang of pit bulls.”

“Daddy—” Sidney tugged on Logan’s hand. “You shouldn’t take the Lord’s name in vain and you need to apologize to Ms. Shelby. I think you hurt her feelings.”

He had. Once again she was handling business—well, at least she had stopped the war from elevating to canned goods—and people were underestimating her, trying to do her job.

“Oh, and Ms. Shelby,” Sidney whispered. Shelby leaned down to get closer to the little girl, a fountain of blond ringlets tickling her cheek. “The one with the wooden spoon is staring at my chilies. And it’s kind of scary.”

“I’ll take care of it.” Shelby kissed her on the cheek, then straightened and addressed the troublemakers. “This ends now. Today. You two hear me? No. Zip it. I’m talking. You will pay for the ruined food—”

“I was just buying chili peppers, the chilies are no worse for wear—”

“You will both split the cost
and
you will work together to clean up this mess.” Shelby wagged a reprimanding finger.

“But—” Ms. Luella sputtered.

“No buts, get those brooms and start cleaning before
I
press charges,” Mable threatened.

Both women nodded solemnly, heads hung low.

Mable turned to Shelby. “You still looking for judges?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Mable gave a decisive nod, not to mention a look of satisfaction. “Well, consider one of those positions filled.”

“Really?” Shelby clutched the woman’s hand. “I can’t thank you enough.”

“You can’t let her judge,” Luella griped.

“It’s not fair, she’ll pick Esther’s chili just to spite us.”

“She uses ketchup and pinto beans.” Luella leaned in, lowering her voice as if she was about to say something sinful and foul. Sidney leaned in too. “
Beans.
In chili
.
Can you imagine?”

Sidney frowned, obviously disappointed.

“It’s god-awful,” Mrs. McKinney agreed, slowly shaking her head in disgust.

“Well, you should have thought of that before you made a mess of Mable’s store. Now go, before I change my mind and disqualify both of you.”

The two women scurried off, waddling and wiggling, their pace picking up with each step as neither would allow the other to gain even an inch. Low grumbles and disgruntled barbs trailed behind them as they disappeared around the corner.

Shelby picked up the only tin of baking powder that wasn’t emptied all over the floor. It was dented and covered in a fine dust, but still intact. Smiling, she brushed it off and tossed it in her cart.

Fifteen minutes later, after an update from Logan, which pretty much amounted to “nothing concrete” and “be careful,” Shelby had her groceries—baking powder included—a momentary blue-ribbon truce, and a second judge for her cook-off. All in all, a good day. But she’d be lying to herself if she didn’t admit that some of the smile that was plastered to her face had everything to do with seeing Cody and Jake for breakfast in the morning.

Then why, when she walked out to her car, loaded the groceries in her trunk and found her door unlocked, not an uncommon occurrence since she’d moved to Sweet Plains, did it send her heart racing? Because she was sure she’d locked it.

Shelby tossed her purse in the passenger seat, strapped in, and was putting the keys in the ignition when her phone chirped. She pulled it out and every last bit of air was sucked from her lungs. She read the screen again, “Go home, Bitch. Last warning.”

It wasn’t just the message that scared her. It was the number the caller ID said the text was placed from. Because there at the top of the screen, right above the “Go Home, Bitch,”
Cody Tucker
glowed in big letters.

Someone tapped at the window and Shelby jumped, her scream lodging in her throat. She turned to find a very apologetic and worried Logan.

“Sorry,” he said through the window, then took in her face and wrenched open the driver’s door. “You okay, Shelby?”

Tears of frustration stung the back of her throat. “I, um . . . I’m all right.”

“The hell you are. You’re shaking. Like you’re ready to pass out.” He paused. “Or cry. Oh, God, don’t cry.”

“I’m not going to cry.” But she might.

Logan squatted on his haunches next to her door. “You can either tell me what’s going on or I call Cody.”

“Where’s Sidney?” Shelby asked, not wanting to scare the little girl. It was why she hadn’t pressed Logan earlier in the store about the breakin.

“She’s with Gina. They’re having a sleepover tonight.” Another reason she hadn’t wanted to talk earlier; Gina would go ballistic if she heard about how her room was tossed. “So you going to tell me or do I need to call in backup?”

Shelby didn’t want his
backup
anywhere near this right now.

“When I got back from grocery shopping, my car was unlocked.”

“Did you lock it?”

“I thought so, but after last night my mind is kind of mush. I thought maybe I was just still on edge, imagining things. Then this came in.”

Shelby handed him the phone. He looked at the screen, then her.

“You think Cody did this?”

“No way” comes to mind.

But then she remembered his words from earlier.
I will do whatever I have to do to convince you two otherwise.
It was just a whisper but enough to give her pause. “It doesn’t really matter who sent it—it was sent.”

“Actually . . .” Logan gentled his voice. “If you ask me, it’s the only thing that matters. I could tell you how easy it is to spoof a call from another number. But that you believe Cody might have done this is a much bigger problem.”

“Spoofing?” she asked, needing a minute to gain some perspective.

“Where a person calls from one number and makes it look like it came from another. One time Gina placed a call to my folks’ house from the Chicken Ranch asking for me.”

Shelby smiled a little at that. “Is it illegal?”

“Could be, it’s a federal offense to transmit a text message that impersonates someone else’s number, especially when that transmission threatens someone’s well-being or life.”

“Did you arrest Gina?”

Now Logan smiled. “Nah, should have though. She gets away with too much.”

“She’s just pressing to see how far she can go before you shut her out.”

Logan blinked. “Is that what she wants?”

“No,” Shelby said, choosing her words carefully. Gina had confessed her feelings about Logan in confidence. Even if Shelby thought her friend was being stubborn and ruining her shot at happiness, it wasn’t her place to fix the problem. “I don’t think she knows what she wants. Dawn’s death affected her more than she’s willing to admit. And her mom doesn’t make it any easier on her.”

Logan didn’t say anything. His look was answer enough.

Shelby had asked Gina about her parents, finding it strange that her mother had only come to visit her once after the accident. Gina dismissed it with a flippant, “We’re not close.”

She’d never brought it up again, but Shelby had caught wind that Gina’s mom had been devastated when Dawn died, packing up her house and relocating to Austin days after the funeral. Sidney had made an innocent, offhand remark about how her grandma had said God doesn’t play fair because if he did he wouldn’t have taken the daughter who had a child counting on her.

Shelby never knew if Gina had overheard—she was sleeping and heavily medicated at the time—but could only imagine that the kind of woman who would say such a thing in front of a three-year-old wouldn’t hesitate to clue Gina in on her feelings directly.

“Back to your problem,” Logan began. “If I wanted to mess with Cody, I’d go after the one thing he cares about the most. His family.”

“He doesn’t think of me like that.” Even though he had just said he did. Too bad it was followed up with words like
right thing
and
best option.
“He feels responsible for me and he’s coming to love Jake, but we’re just . . .”

She was usually a pretty open person. But with this topic and Logan being Cody’s friend, nope. There was no way she could tell the sheriff about their engagement without looking pathetic.

“I’m not sure what’s going on with you two, except to tell you that he’s crazy about you.” Logan held up his hand as if begging her to let him finish, cutting off all of the comments she was about to make, and there were plenty. “I’ve known him my whole life and he has never lost it like he did over you in that bar. He has always been cool and relaxed. Had to be with the way he was raised. If you ask me, his ability to hold it in, stay unaffected in the chaos, is how he survived growing up in that house.”

“But that control stops him from living, from really connecting with people. It’s easy to understand why he’s so closed off, and from a distance to excuse it. But being on the receiving end of it can be . . . heartbreaking.”

“Then I reckon it’s your job to get him over his past. You fell in love with a guy who’s afraid of love, Shelby. Not the worst thing in the world.”

“When did you become so insightful?” Shelby joked, wanting to skip over Logan’s assessment of her feelings for Cody.

Logan laughed. “Just because I look good in uniform and speak like a true Texan should, that doesn’t mean I’m a Neanderthal.”

“Hot. Smart. Strapped with ammo,” she giggled. “How on earth are you still single?”

Logan blushed, actually blushed. The closed-off widower had just showed the first sign that he was done mourning. Gina’s life was about to get so much more complicated.

“You need my phone?”

“No, ma’am,” Logan said, standing, all business now. “I’ll need your permission to obtain your phone records though.”

“Deal, as long as you don’t call Cody about this.” She wanted to work tonight. Needed the adrenaline of running the floor. The confidence she got from making a difference in the chaos. And the distraction of other people’s problems to keep her from wallowing in her own.

“Afraid I can’t do that. His identity is the one in question. And even if it wasn’t, he’d bust my ass if I didn’t tell him what was going on.”

Great. Just great. This was the last thing she needed to deal with. Now Cody was going to storm into the clinic, all controlling and manly and yummy, demanding that she go home with him where he could keep an eye on her. Then he’d take her to bed—his bed—and they’d get naked, and she would probably orgasm. No, with Cody she would definitely orgasm, and she’d sleep in his arms, protected, sheltered, taken care of—and controlled.