A Day in Mossy Creek Read online

  Of course Katie Bell took note, which has, I hate to admit, kept me on the straight and narrow and off the butter and bacon. I did not want to gain notoriety as one of the resolution failures mentioned in the Bell Ringer column.

  All too soon I discovered I didn’t need Katie’s help. In the two weeks since New Year’s, my minor announcement at the New Year’s party had caused my cholesterol problem to become the town’s crusade. People constantly ask me how much weight I’ve lost after church, in line at the Piggly Wiggly, and even in the bathroom stall at the cinema-plex in Bigelow. If I miss a day of walking because of rain or cold, folks comment about not seeing me out and about. I have to explain I use my sister’s slow-as-sorghum-syrup treadmill during inclement weather. I don’t tell them that I have to stay on the thing darned near an hour and a half before my face glistens.

  I foolishly believed Katie Bell would be my biggest problem, since she’s always watching me in the hope I’ll mess up, but I have two worse problems—Sandy Crane and Spiva. Sandy, bless her big heart, has been getting my lazy butt out of bed for my morning walk before the roosters crow. She even changed my order at Mama’s All You Can Eat Café the other day when I backslid and the words “country-fried steak with mashed potatoes and sawmill gravy” came out of my mouth. Sandy looked over at waitress, Ellen Stancil, and said, “Pearl’s such a kidder. What she meant to say was that she’ll have the diet plate without the cottage cheese.”

  I could have predicted Sandy would make a nuisance of herself trying to help me, but I never expected my own sister to turn into a supreme saboteur. Spiva’s three years older, and she thinks that means she’s three times wiser when it comes to battling cholesterol. Only you can’t call what she’s doing a battle because she still eats everything she shouldn’t.

  Popping a pill is not fighting the good fight by my way of thinking, even though she’ll be sure to tell you it is. What’s truly upsetting about this sabotage is that Spiva is the same sister who once protected me from bullies at school. She even listened to my whining about sales profits with equal sympathy as she listened to my whining about the dearth of datable, middle-aged men in Mossy Creek—especially ones who like mature, literate, chubby women. I just didn’t get it. My sister was my best friend. Why did she want me to fail?

  Rather than add up my register so I could leave on time, I glanced at the clock again, then pondered how best to deal with those beckoning Swiss Cake Rolls. Maybe I could ask Sandy to exercise her police powers, perform a search and seizure, or just come into the house and hide them from me. Nope, that wouldn’t work. I’d tear up the place looking for them. Best to exercise my shaky willpower. Maybe it would get firm, too.

  The bell attached to the front door chimed. Relieved that I finally had someone to divert my carb obsession, I looked up from where I stood at the register to find Spiva bearing toward me like a member of the Benevolent Society looking for a donation. She was carrying a styrofoam plate full of brownies and homemade peanut-butter cookies with crosshatches scored across the top. And I thought the Little Debbie cakes were a diabolical temptation.

  Cherub my big toe! I could almost see little red horns sprouting from her ultra-short hairdo. She set the treats on the counter right in front of me, where I used to display chocolate truffles.

  “Want one?” she asked, her mountain twang lost in breathlessness from her jaunt across the square.

  Although my mouth watered at the thought of biting into one of those moist, chewy brownies, I summoned my willpower. “No, thanks.”

  “One little ol’ brownie isn’t going to hurt you,” she said, lifting one pencil drawn eyebrow. Spiva had an unfortunate tendency to over-pluck and therefore relied on her meager artistic skills to fill in.

  Yes, eating one brownie would hurt me. Mostly because I had no willpower to stop at one.

  The doorbell chimed again, and I looked up, hoping against hope that I’d have a real customer to distract me. No such luck. It was Katie Bell, notepad and pen in hand, here to watch me succumb to my sister’s temptation and record it for posterity.

  Great. Just what I needed. “Can I help you? Don’t you have another estate sale to go to? Missed any good quilts lately?” Patty Campbell’s end-run around Katie was already sashaying down the gossip trail.

  Katie, who was a good ten years younger and about thirty pounds lighter than me, brushed her highlighted hair out of her face in order to make eye contact. She wore one of those trendy hairstyles where the long sideswept pieces kept falling in front of her eyes and made me think of Cousin It from The Addams Family television show. Those eyes narrowed to evil slits. Her upper lip curled.

  “I’m looking for a cookbook,” Katie said. “All those baked goods at the church fundraiser have inspired me. I want one that includes downhome Southern fare, too. Crowder peas with salt pork. Fried chicken. Biscuits. That sort of thing.”

  My stomach growled in appreciation. Katie smiled at the noise and scribbled something on her notepad.

  Dinner. I would have my sensible dinner of broiled, skinless chicken breast, steamed carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower soon. Woo-hoo!

  Glad to have an excuse to remove myself from the chocolate and peanut-butter aroma wafting toward me from Spiva’s plate, I came around the counter and pointed Katie to the cooking section just as Sandy whisked into the store, nearly as out of breath as Spiva had been.

  “Drop the brownie!” she yelled, pinning me with her signature curly blonde Barney Fife stare.

  Thank goodness she didn’t have her gun drawn. I might have peed in my pants.

  I raised my hands to show there was no chocolate residue. “I’m clean, officer.”

  “You didn’t eat one before I got here, did you?” she asked, eyeing the tower of treats like they were made of hashish.

  “No. They’re Spiva’s.” I said and transitioned into my patented I-love-my-customers salesperson voice. “I don’t suppose you’re here to buy a book.”

  “Well, of course, I’m here to buy something,” Sandy said. “It’s just that I’ve had a busy day. Plus I’ve been working on a special investigation, and uh, let’s just say me and Jayne Reynolds have finished that investigation and given the chief our findings. And those findings kinda upset him, so he’s taken off down to Atlanta. So it’s just me and Bubba Mutt on duty right now.” She called her brother and fellow officer “Bubba Mutt.” To me, that always sounded like a character from Star Wars.

  Sandy surveyed the store, her gaze meeting Katie’s briefly as she noted the cookbook in her hands—The Soul Food Queen’s Big Ass Cookbook. “I’m interested in a book about nutrition.”

  “Knock yourself out,” I said, wishing she would literally, and pointed her to the row where Katie stood. “Bottom shelf.”

  Besides the impromptu visits, like now, and morning walks, Sandy had taken to phoning me at night, too—when the temptation was greatest, to provide me with what she called “positive reinforcement.” Shortly after I’d made my pronouncement at the New Year’s party, Sandy had also spent several days staking me out. She then presented me with a map of my bad eating patterns, such as my stop in the Naked Bean every morning for a scone and a caramel macchiato, my high-fat lunches at Bubba Rice’s and Mama’s, my Sunday Beechum’s Bakery doughnut habit. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate the help. It’s just that . . . I didn’t want it.

  I decided to leave my food angel and devils to their own devices. “Since you’re here, Spiva, you can watch the register for me. I’ve got some boxes to unload.”

  I was actually looking forward to ripping the cardboard and getting a piece of sugarless gum out of my desk in the storeroom. Gum would help me stave off the temptation lurking so innocently on the front counter. One could always hope.

  Spiva rolled her eyes but agreed to do as I bid. I did hear her moaning in ecstasy over the fudge brownies as I slammed the storeroo
m door behind me.

  All too soon I was done with the computer inventory and checked off the special order DVD I’d gotten in for Argie Rodriguez. Broadway Dance Moves—the hot new exercise craze. A picture formed in my head of big, burly, kilt-wearing Mac Campbell, a khaki-clad Amos Royden, who bore an uncanny resemblance to a dark-haired George Clooney, and former Atlanta Falcon Tag Garner, leaping in synch and snapping their fingers to the When You’re a Jet gang dance number from West Side Story. Not that any of those three beefcakes would be caught dead in a dance class. Still, Argie’s class at Wisteria Cottage had to be more fun than power walking through town in the cold with taskmaster Sandy.

  Smiling, I returned to the register and the angel and devils battling for my high cholesterol soul. I quickly dialed Argie’s number at the dance studio. She wasn’t answering so I left the message that her DVDs were in and that I was interested in her new class.

  Sandy grinned and nudged Katie. Spiva rolled her eyes and sighed deeply like I’d signed her up for class.

  “What’s your problem?” I asked.

  “I don’t have a problem, other than you pretending to be someone you’re not.” Those imaginary horns grew about another half-inch.

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  Spiva removed a palm-sized peanut butter cookie from the plate on the counter, bit off a substantial crescent, and jabbed what was left of the cookie at me. “You’ve changed since you started with this whole ridiculous diet and exercise kick.”

  “Okay, first of all it isn’t a kick. It’s a lifestyle change, and that’s a good thing. I don’t want to have high cholesterol.”

  “Then take the Lipitor, like me.”

  “I don’t want to take medicine if I don’t have to.”

  Spiva shrugged. “Well, it’s working for me.”

  “Is it?” I challenged.

  She took another nibble of her cookie, then set it down on the counter. “Have you for one minute thought about how what you’re doing affects people other than you? For example, how is this kick going to affect Chubby Cherubs? Those old people at Magnolia Manor count on us.”

  “And you think my diet and exercise regime is ridiculous!” I took the plate of goodies off the counter and dumped them in the trash.

  Spiva reached out, like she was going to dive in after her cookies and brownies, then stopped.

  “I’m still helping out at Magnolia Manor,” I said. “And I’ve got a long way to go before I get from chubby to svelte. I doubt that’s even possible. But hey, why not call our organization Cheerful Cherubs?”

  Spiva flushed red from her neck all the way up past her penciled eyebrows. “That’s just plain stupid.”

  “And so is that excuse you call a treadmill,” I said.

  “Doc Champion says exercising three times a week for thirty minutes is fine.”

  “Hah! What you do isn’t even a snail’s pace. Your machine has only has two speeds—slow and slower.”

  “You just have to succeed at everything, don’t you, Pearl? Miss Perfect. Well, maybe I think you’re showing off.”

  I heard a button click and saw Katie try to sneak out of the store with evidence of the Quinlan sisters’ argument on her handy dandy recorder. Great. Now we’d both be quoted in the Bell Ringer.

  Spiva moved her much larger body in a surprisingly agile glide to block Katie. “Hand over that tape.”

  “So now I’m the enemy? And you’re all buddy-buddy with Pearl?” Katie asked, pushing her hair out of her eyes. “Pearl?”

  “Sometimes blood ties are more important than cholesterol levels and treadmills,” I said.

  “You tell her, Pearl,” Sandy chimed in.

  That’s when Spiva took hold of the hand held tape recorder. Katie wouldn’t let go, and they careened into my display of Cliffs Notes. Yellow and black pamphlets scattered across the room, landing on the counter, several rows of bookshelves and the carpeted floor.

  “Stop it, both of you!” Sandy yelled. “In the name of the law!” She was in uniform and duty-bound to stop a brawl. Spiva shoved her with one hand. Spiva is big. Sandy is . . . not so big. Sandy bounced off a display of romance novels. Love hurts.

  Spiva used her weight to her full advantage and at long last ripped the recorder from Katie’s fingers. Spiva sprawled backwards and sat down hard on the floor. So did Katie. Spiva pressed the delete button. “No one gossips about my little sister. Except me.”

  “Thanks a lot, Spiva,” Katie spat out. “It might interest you to know that I had other material for my New Year’s resolutions column on that recorder.”

  Sandy chuckled. “And I bet not a bit of it was nice. Why not come up with something better, like sisters who can fight but still love each other deep down?”

  “That won’t sell papers.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” I said and went over and offered a hand to help Spiva get up. “You know I’m on this diet and exercise jaunt because I want to live a long time without having to move into Magnolia Manor. I’d like you to live a long time with me too, Spiva.”

  “I don’t think I can do it,” Spiva said. “I never met a food I didn’t like, except maybe brussel sprouts.”

  “If I can do it, you can do it.”

  Spiva eyed the trashcan holding the baked goods I’d tossed. “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, all you’ve gotta do is try. And I’ll be there trying right alongside you. We can do it.”

  “Okay. I’ll give it a go,” Spiva said, then offered a hand to Katie, who was attempting to upright herself from a pile of paperbacks. Spiva handed her back the recorder. “You might want to start writing about Creekites succeeding with their resolutions rather than focusing on the ones breaking them, Katie. You could start with Pearl, here. Do you know she’s already lost ten pounds?”

  There was the sister I’d grown up with, the one who championed me and made me feel like I could be anything I wanted.

  “Ten pounds?” Katie looked impressed.

  Spiva looked down at her comfortable shoes. “I’m sorry I was jealous of your success, Pearl. I don’t know what came over me.”

  “Me neither, but that’s okay. And I bet you a whole wheat, no-fat banana muffin that Dan McNeil could turbo-charge your treadmill. I’ll help you cart it to his shop.”

  Spiva wiggled her eyebrows and shook an imaginary cigar in an imitation of Groucho Marx. “That’s not all he could turbo-charge.”

  “I ought to arrest everybody in sight,” Sandy announced. She glared at Spiva. “You assaulted me. A police officer.”

  “Aw, you’re not hurt. You bounce just fine.”

  Sandy confiscated Katie’s recorder and pushed the delete button again. Katie apparently had started taping their latest exchange.

  “What did you go and do that for?” Katie whined.

  Sandy placed her hands on her hips. “This is a private reconciliation between sisters.”

  “Not when it’s in a public bookstore,” Katie said, pushing open the door and causing the bell to chime. “Listen to that. Every time a bell rings, a gossip columnist gets her wings. Gimme my tape recorder back.”

  Sandy followed her outside, still holding the recorder. “Don’t make me confiscate your property.”

  Katie shook a finger at her. “Don’t make me trot out my First Amendment rights.”

  “You can trot ‘em, jog ‘em, or make ‘em dance to rap music for all I care. You’re not getting this recorder back until you promise to keep quiet.”

  “That’s police brutality!”

  “Not unless I stomp the tape recorder. Hey, there’s an idea.”

  “Don’t you dare!”

  My door closed on their argument, bringing a swoosh of cold air into the shop. Spiva and I grinned at each other.

  “The way they figh
t, you’d think the two of them were sisters,” I said.

  We hugged.

  Mossy Creek Gazette

  Volume V, No. 3 • Mossy Creek, Georgia

  The Bell Ringer

  by Katie Bell

  Dear Faithful Readers:

  I’m postponing my New Year’s resolutions exposé while I hammer out some problems in my investigative methodology. Some of your fellow Creekites are being, shall we say, less than forthcoming about admitting they’ve already broken their year-end promises. I’m not asking for praise or pity, but do you realize how often your intrepid gossip reporter risks public scorn and even physical violence to bring you the latest juicy news? And that’s just toward my tape recorder!

  Chapter 8

  Sometimes you get carried away. Literally.

  Ida Gets More Than She Bargained For

  BY MID-AFTERNOON my posse and I arrived in Atlanta, ready to raise hell for the good of Mossy Creek and the Sitting Tree.

  The Georgia governor’s mansion is a big, brick, white-columned faux-plantation house surrounded by manicured lawns, beds of azaleas, and tall iron fences. It’s located smack in the middle of an exclusive Atlanta neighborhood called Buckhead, where all the driveways are protected by gates and all the mansions come with maids, gardeners, and lifetime tickets to the Atlanta Ballet. Even on a cold Saturday afternoon in the barest depths of wintertime, Buckhead feels luscious.

  Ingrid, Hope and I feigned polite patience as we waited in a foyer. We were mature businesswomen in handsome suit-dresses. Who would have guessed what we plotted? We gazed demurely at a huge oil painting of a southern fox hunt. It was done in arch, 19th century style, but featured beagles instead of fox hounds and antebellum gents on prancing Tennessee Walking horses.

  “Ardaleen commissioned this bloated thing as a gift to the governor’s mansion,” I told Hope and Ingrid. “My sister wanted the artist to include a few happy slave children running along with the beagles. Ham’s staff had to explain why that might tick off every black voter in the state.”