by Misty Simon
“But she’s a friend, and that way you and Alice can sit next to each other, like you normally do.” I tried to make it sound convincing, but she wasn’t buying it.
“You need to make better choices in friends. Now sit and stay.”
My mother chose that moment to turn around again and shook her head at me. Fine, but I was going to leave as soon as I could, then.
Tina Metzger finally came around with the cards, thank heavens. Alice pulled her six with wild abandon, almost flinging them all over the carefully setup table. I took the top one from the stack when she was done.
“Thanks, Tina. How’s your son?” I asked.
“We don’t have time for chitchat, Tallulah. Take your card and let her move along. She’s late as it is,” Ronda said.
No one but my father called me Tallulah, and that was only when he was irritated at me.
“We’ll talk later, Tallie.” Tina gave me a pained smile as Ronda took the whole stack of cards out of her hands and very carefully laid out four stacks of ten, then cut the stacks in half and removed the middle three cards from each.
Oh, yeah, it was going to be a long night.
But then Max dropped off a funnel cake absolutely covered in powdered sugar and gave me a kiss on my cheek just as the bingo caller at the front of the room turned on the microphone with a high-pitched whine.
Bill Jacobson, the minister at the First Presbyterian two streets up, laughed, and the sound boomed throughout the high-ceilinged building. “I’d say, ‘Let’s get ready to rumble,’ but I think that’s a different sport.”
Right. One that wouldn’t involve as much blood and foul language as I expected to fly around tonight.
And then we were off. We didn’t have one of those fancy automatic ball machines; we still had the metal roll cage that had to be hand cranked. Jenna’s husband, Nathan Front, sat with his sleeves rolled up next to Pastor Jacobson. He cranked and he cranked, and then the pastor pulled out the first ball.
“O-sixty-three.”
The numbers were called out fast and furious. I had a hard time keeping up, but Alice and Ronda were throwing down the disks on their cards like they were master blackjack dealers in Vegas.
“B-seven.” Pastor Jacobson held up the ball, then placed it in the slot in front of him about ten minutes later.
The woman in front of us stood up and screamed, “Bingo!” like her hair was on fire. A chorus of groans went up, and the foul language started up next to me as Aunt Ronda whisked her magnetic wand over her twelve cards, then squeezed the little chips off into her container, muttering words that would have made my mom wash my mouth out, even if I was almost thirty.
I looked around for Jenna but didn’t see her. I’d catch up with her later, maybe over tea with Gina. I had to make sitting here worth it somehow.
“Oh, Ronda, watch your language. There are more games in store, and you wouldn’t have wanted that basket, anyway. Look at it. It’s filled with those baking pans and oven mitts. You don’t even cook!” Alice reached across me to smack Ronda’s hand, and I worried that it might be the last thing she’d ever do.
Instead, Ronda shook her head like an angry dog and got herself set back up. I had almost expected spittle to fly from the corners of her mouth. Ah, well, it was still early in the game.
I took a bite of my funnel cake and smiled around it, as if enjoying it, but instead, I was enjoying the moment. Maybe a little too much, as I missed the first call of the next game.
Things were hopping after that. Games were won and lost. Alice got the basket from the bakery, which made her squeal, and I found that if I paid attention for the most part, I could people watch while I played my one card. The room was full tonight, with all manner of citizens from our town and a few people I didn’t know. Ronda’s husband, Hoagie, who owned the hardware store, buzzed by with a smile to hand her a drink. She snorted at him and shooed him away.
I watched with a smile as my mom’s cousin Velma—a real one, since she was her mother’s sister’s daughter—flirted with a guy at the snack table. Two men that I didn’t recognize walked the perimeter of the fire hall, then greeted with a hug the woman who ran the shoe repair shop on Locust. Uncle Sherman, the fire chief, waved to me, and Chief of Police Burton sent a terse nod my way.
Fortunately, it had been months since I’d had to have too much interaction with Burton. No one had gone toes up when they weren’t supposed to recently, so I had mostly been able to stay out of his hair. Of course we had people who were still passing away. My dad was as busy as ever at the funeral home, which had been in our family for generations, but for the most part, the deceased had lived full long lives, not died under mysterious circumstances. And I hadn’t found them. That was a win-win situation, as far as I was concerned.
Maybe it wasn’t such a bad night, after all.
Ronda was not having the best of nights, though, and her husband, Uncle Hoagie, had to force her hand down at the last moment, when she picked up one of her troll dolls and cocked her arm back to throw it at the pastor. Well, Hoagie managed only to delay her, since she chucked it hard as soon as he had walked away. The pastor knew enough to duck when the doll came zooming right at his head.
Alice chuckled from her seat next to me. “I told them they should put up the chicken-wire cage tonight, even if it is Christmas Eve, but they didn’t listen to me. Pastor Jacobson is getting more agile, though. Last week it hit him in the eye, and he had to give his sermon Wednesday night with a big old shiner.” She chuckled again. “You missed the B-three, dear.”
She put one of her disks on my card, and lo and behold, I had bingo! I shot out of my seat like there was a firecracker under me.
Alice clapped, and Ronda gave Grams a run for her money with the death glare she sent my way. Especially since it was the last game and she hadn’t won a single game all night long.
“Lousy interlopers. Shouldn’t even be allowed to play. Lucky greenhorn.” Each derogatory phrase, and some others that contained those words my mother would kill me for saying, was punctuated by her sweeping her arm across the table and scooping everything into her tote bag.
Stomping was a delicate word for the way Ronda pushed and shoved her way out of the hall and through the back door. It all happened so fast, I hadn’t even gotten around to moving from my place at the table yet.
I glanced toward Alice, and she shrugged her shoulders. After moving my gaze to where Ronda had sat, I saw that in her fury and haste, she’d left her purse on the chair next to her.
“Did you see Hoagie?” I asked Alice, really not wanting to do the right thing here and go after Ronda with her purse. Giving it to Uncle Hoagie to give to his irate wife would be far better than chasing after her.
“Nope. You’d better go get your prize, though, before someone else tries to steal it. And I’d watch my back on your way to your house, if I were you. I know it’s a short walk, but it could be a treacherous one, if you know what I mean.” She chuckled and kept packing up her own things. It wasn’t the same laugh as before, that jovial, fun one. This one had a slight tinge to it that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
“Okay then. Well, I’d better get this out to . . .” But Alice was already gone with her bag of luck.
Max approached, looking like someone I could get to do this errand for me.
“Hey, Tallie. Great win tonight. Now you can take me out to dinner.” He smiled at me, and I smiled back.
“Can you go give this to Ronda?” I held up her purse. “She went out the back.”
His face pulled into an adorable frown that had me frowning, too. “I promised I’d help break down the tables. Maybe you can catch her. I heard the parking lot is a madhouse.”
Well, darn it. I was going to have to face the evil queen of bingo, anyway.
Better to make it quick and be done. Maybe I could give it to Uncle Hoagie if I found him first. That would work.
With that in mind, I headed toward the back door. Everyone e
lse was heading out the bay doors out front, so of course Ronda had had to be the odd one out.
I couldn’t remember what kind of car she drove, but I’d probably find her by listening for her yelling at people to get out of her way so she could get home and practice her throw for next time.
Preparing to step out into the brisk winter air, I wished I had grabbed my coat and possibly my prize. I could have left Ronda’s purse with the pastor or even with Uncle Sherman, but my roots were showing, and I just couldn’t leave it with someone else.
The door latch turned in my hand easily enough, but the door stuck on something. I shoved it hard to get it to open, leaning into it with my considerable weight.
It finally moved, only to have a very dead Ronda flop around the edge, with a dent in her head and a very blank expression on her lifeless face.
“Tallie, you left without your winnings,” my grandmother said from behind me as I stood there with my mouth hanging open, registering very little. “I got them for you. That’s very bad form when the men and women who were generous enough to put this on would like to go home to their families on Christmas Eve. We need to talk about your manners, young lady.” She paused to take a breath. “Oh my heavens. Is that Ronda?”
“Bingo.”
Mrs. Graver’s Snickerdoodles or Tallie’s Cookie for All Occasions (like figuring out whodunnit!)
All the things you need:
For Snickerdoodles
1 cup butter, at room temperature
¾ cup granulated sugar
½ cup light brown sugar
1 egg
1 Tbsp vanilla
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cream of tartar (trust me on this one!)
½ tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2¾ cup white flour
For Cinnamon-Sugar Mixture
¼ cup granulated sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
Now here’s what you do with them:
Step 1: Preheat oven to 325°F.
Step 2: In a large bowl mix butter, granulated sugar, and light brown sugar together until light and fluffy. Add in egg, vanilla, baking soda, cream of tartar, salt, and cinnamon until smooth.
Step 3: Add flour, mixing until just combined.
Step 4: In a separate small bowl mix together cinnamon and sugar until combined.
Step 5: Using a tablespoon, take out a measure of dough and roll into a ball. Then roll each ball into the cinnamon-sugar mixture.
Step 6: Cover baking sheet with parchment paper for easy cookie removal. Place rolled dough on baking sheet about two inches apart. Bake for 10-12 minutes.
And voilà! Now, remember that you should probably share at least some of these cookies with others, although that’s not a hard and fast rule!
Misty Simon is the author of Cremains of the Day, Grounds for Remorse, Deceased and Desist, and Carpet Diem in the Tallie Graver Mystery series. She loves a good story and decided one day that she would try her hand at it. Eventually she got it right. There’s nothing better in the world than making someone laugh, and she hopes everyone at least snickers in the right places when reading her books. She lives with her husband, daughter, and three insane dogs in central Pennsylvania where she is hard at work on her next novel or three. She loves to hear from readers, so drop her a line at [email protected].
