Towhee Get Your Gun

by J. R. Ripley

  Okay, so he had me there. I was disliking this guy more and more by the minute. “What made you decide to start your bar here? In Ruby Lake?”

  “Biergarten.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Biergarten.”

  I stepped aside as Gertrude Hammer, Gertie, town curmudgeon, ambled past, pushing a grocery cart that had no doubt been stolen from Lakeside Market. I say no doubt because the green plastic LAKESIDE MARKET placard was still welded to the back of the cart.

  “I heard it was a nice little town,” Paul replied. His close-set hazel eyes scanned me from head to toe. “Full of friendly people.” Paul popped open the passenger-side door of his truck and pulled out a battered toolbox, which he dropped carelessly to the sidewalk, where it landed with an ear-splitting rattle. “At least that’s what my buddy said.”

  “Ha!” We both heard Gertie snort from ten feet away. Gertie spun around, letting the grocery cart roll free. “Not Simms!” She had on a baggy gray sweat suit and a pair of shoes that looked like they might have been made from triceratops hide.

  Gertie had sold me the house and, while I’d felt ripped off and foolish at the time, for some reason she’d been desperate to buy it back from me. I hadn’t figured out why yet. The cart bounced down the curb and into the street.

  The tour van in its path screeched to a halt. I leapt into the road and retrieved it. “Here you go,” I said with a flourish, whipping the cart into old Gertie’s hands. Gertrude’s about a million years old, give or take an epoch.

  “Thanks,” Gertie spat. Her eyes fixed on me. “Watch out for this one. She’s a death magnet.”

  With that, the old woman gave her cart a shove and continued up the street.

  “Death magnet?” I huffed and stamped my foot.

  Paul laughed. “Man, Craig told me Ruby Lake had potential, but he never told me what a bunch of characters you all were!”

  “Craig?” I felt a terrible tension creeping up my neck, the blood draining from my face.

  “Yeah.” Paul’s teeth flashed white against his swarthy complexion. “Craig Bigelow. He’s the friend who turned me on to this place. We’re partners. I can’t wait till he gets here.”

  My heart went cold. I clenched my fists.

  “You okay?”

  Craig Bigelow—rhymes with gigolo, of course—was the man who’d taken my heart and broken it into six pieces. One for each year we’d been together. He wasn’t the only reason I’d left Raleigh and returned to Ruby Lake, but he was a big one.

  “I don’t know him at all.” I turned on my heel and retreated.

  2

  “Well?” asked Kim, sliding shut the cash register and handing a woman a receipt. The woman’s companion hefted a twenty-pound bag of unshelled black oil sunflower seeds, our bread and butter so to speak, over his left shoulder. The sunflower seeds were our biggest seller. They’re cheap and plentiful, and attract a wide variety of birds to backyard feeders.

  “Well what?” I asked, holding the door open as our customers departed.

  “Is he going to move his camper?”

  “We agreed to table the discussion for now,” I answered. I picked up the broom and dustpan and circled around the front counter, my arms working quickly.

  Kim planted her feet in my path. “Spill it.”

  I glanced up at her, giving her ankle boots a quick swipe with the tip of the broom.

  “Hey!” She stepped back. “These are Rockports!”

  “Serves you right.” I tried to squeeze by her. “You’re in my way.”

  “Fine.” Kim moved to one side, plopping her butt down on the counter. “But I know you. You clean when you’re upset.”

  I leaned the broom against the corner near the window. “Fine. You want me to spill? I’m spilling. His name is Paul Anderson and he’s opening a brew pub.” I paused as if he were going to interrupt me, then continued. “A biergarten,” I self-corrected. “And I’m afraid I let him or the situation or my own frustration,” I admitted, “get the best of me.”

  “A beer garden?” Kim took a swig from the water bottle she kept near the register. “Cool.”

  “Yes, I guess so.”

  “Beats having an empty shop next door, doesn’t it?”

  Kim was right. “Yes. That it does.” An empty shop doesn’t drive business. “Anyway, like I said, the owner’s name is Paul Anderson. The guy with the . . .” I stumbled. “Rambler, I think he said. So he’s going to be living in it for a while. Until he gets settled, he says.”

  “Is he single?”

  I looked down my nose at her. “I don’t know.”

  “He is good looking. Don’t you think?”

  “I suppose.” In a rattle-my-cage sort of way. “But what do you care? You’re seeing someone, remember?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Kim waved her hand at me. “I remember. In fact, Randy and I are planning to flip a house together.”

  “You are? Since when?” Kim followed me to the far rear of the store, where a small kitchenette served both staff and customers. I poured us each a glass of sweet tea from the jug in the under-the-counter fridge.

  “Since Randy heard about this great deal on a place over on Maple Lane. The old man that lived there had to move into a retirement home. Rolling Acres.”

  I nodded and licked my lips. I knew the place. Rolling Acres was a senior living facility out on the other end of the lake. As I recalled, there was one main building and a number of separate bungalows.

  Kim grabbed an open bag of peanut butter sandwich cookies. She offered them to me. I shook my head no but grabbed three before she could pull the bag back.

  “In fact,” Kim said, biting down on a cookie, “I think you know the guy that owned the house.”

  “Really?” I said, chewing. “Who?”

  “That old guy who feeds the birds.”

  My brow quirked up. “You’re going to have to do better than that. Do you know how many old guys we get in here who feed birds?” Senior citizens were a large percentage of the business. They had the time, the money, and the interest in backyard bird watching and feeding.

  Kim laughed. “Sorry.” She snapped her fingers. “It was that Mister—Mister . . .” She brightened. “Wincer? Whiskers?”

  “Withers?” I offered, setting down my glass.

  “Yeah, that’s it. Randy said he’s getting a great deal on the place.”

  “I didn’t know Floyd had sold his house.” I sat in one of the rockers and leaned back, folding my hands in my lap. “Come to think of it, I haven’t seen Floyd in the store lately.”

  Floyd Withers was a retired banker whose wife had passed away fairly recently. He had become a regular birdseed customer. He didn’t know diddly about birds, or bird feeders, for that matter, but his wife had been a bird lover and continuing to take care of the birds seemed to be his way of remembering her.

  “I guess that’s why.” Kim sat beside me.

  “What do you know about flipping houses?” I asked Kim. Kim’s a long-legged blonde whose devilish blue eyes normally convinced men to do anything that would have required her to get her hands dirty.

  “Nothing,” she readily admitted. “Randy knows all that stuff. I’m going to be his helper.”

  Randy Vincent was a local property manager. He owned a string of cabins at Ruby Lake and around town. He’d been separated for over a year from his wife, Lynda, who shared the business. Kim and Randy had been dating for months with Lynda’s blessing. According to Kim, the divorce would be final in a couple of months.

  “Good luck with that,” I said. And good luck to Randy, I thought. With Kim as a helper, he was going to need all the luck he could get. Kim was a great woman and a hard worker in her own way, but she knew as much about rehabbing a house as I knew about brewing beer.

  Squat.

  I stopped rocking and stared out the back window. “I haven’t told you the worst thing about Paul Anderson yet.”

  “What?”

  “He’s friends with Craig,” I
said, struggling to remain detached.

  “No.” Kim leaned sideways and gripped my wrist.

  “Yes.” I locked on to her brilliant blue eyes. The kind of eyes I could only wish I had. “And it gets worse.”

  Kim laughed as she shook her head. “No offense, but what could be worse than the guy next door knowing Craig?”

  I started rocking again, quickly, squeezing the handle of my mug so hard I thought it was going to shatter between my fingers. “Being partners with him.”

  “No!” Kim gasped, her hands clamping down on the rocker’s armrests.

  The chime at the door sounded, and we both rose.

  “Hi, Amy. Hey, Kim.” It was only Cousin Riley, one of my aunt Betty’s kids from her first husband, Fred Foxcombe. Aunt Betty is Mom’s twin sister. They are fraternal twins and very similar physically, even though this is not always the case with fraternal twins. However, Mom and Aunt Betty’s personalities were anything but similar. My aunt Betty can be spontaneous and change course in the blink of an eye. Mom’s always been on much more of an even keel. Aunt Betty lives across town with her third husband, Sterling. Mom, tired of living alone since Dad passed, lives on the third floor of Birds & Bees in an apartment with me.

  “Hello, Riley.” I wiped my hands on my apron while sending Kim eye signals that she should keep mum on the whole ex-boyfriend-coming-to-town thing. No point in spreading the news around Ruby Lake any sooner than it was bound to spread anyway.

  “What brings you here?” At first look, I’d have guessed a tornado. His flannel shirt was wrinkled and untucked, and his hair couldn’t make up its mind which way to go. He appeared not to have shaved in a week.

  “Weren’t you working at the theater today?” Kim asked.

  Riley nodded. “I just came from there.” He wiped his hand with a soiled hanky and stuffed it back in the front pocket of his jeans. “Did you hear what happened?”

  Riley’s the sort of jack-of-all-trades you find in any small town. Earning his living doing a little of this and a little of that. And a lot of loafing. So it was no surprise that he enjoyed working in the local community theater. He also considered himself something of an actor. Not too many folks in town agreed with that personal assessment.

  “I heard the curtain broke,” Kim answered.

  I shot Kim a look.

  She shrugged. “Anita telephoned while you were out.”

  That explained a lot. Anita Brown is the town’s dispatcher. She’s also quite adept at spreading any news around town.

  “Hey, it wasn’t my fault!” Riley said, pulling out his old hanky and rubbing it over his face. “That place is old. I ain’t responsible for the curtain rods.”

  “Did anybody get hurt?” I asked.

  Riley nodded. “Afraid so. Robert LaChance and Coralie Sampson.”

  Kim and I gasped in unison. “Not seriously, I hope,” I said, grabbing Riley’s forearm.

  “LaChance broke his arm and Coralie’s got a busted foot.”

  I winced. I’m a bit of an empathetic pain sufferer. Just hearing about other peoples’ injuries caused me discomfort.

  Riley nodded. “At least Miss Turner didn’t get hurt.” Like his twin sister, Rhonda, Cousin Riley had thick brown hair, hazel eyes, and a generous nose. Those eyes now shimmered with relief.

  “Ava Turner?” I asked, eyes growing wide.

  “The movie star?” Kim said.

  Riley’s head bobbed some more. “Mind if I get some of that tea?” He nodded toward Kim’s half-empty glass.

  “Help yourself,” I said, following Riley to the kitchenette. Any sarcasm I might have injected was lost on my cousin. “So, you say Miss Turner was there?”

  I waited as Riley filled his glass, drained it, then filled it once more. “That’s right.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. Better than that dirty handkerchief, I supposed. “Not two feet away when that big, old iron rod hit the ground. Splat!” He shoved his open palm downward. “Lucky she didn’t get clobbered herself.”

  “That’s terrible,” Kim said.

  “I’ll say.” I rinsed out the now-empty pitcher in the sink. I’d brew some more tea upstairs later.

  “Were Robert and Coralie in the cast or the crew?”

  “Both were in the show,” Riley answered. “I’m not sure what Lou is going to do now. I offered to fill in for Robert, but he and the director said my carpentry was too important and that they couldn’t afford to lose me.”

  Sure. “Who’s Lou?”

  Kim filled in for Riley, who had his hand in the cookie bag. “Lou Ferris is the overall theater manager and generally acts as stage manager, too, over at the Ruby Lake Theater On The Square. He’s been there for years. I’m surprised you didn’t know that.”

  I shrugged. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “Lou says the show’s in a real pickle,” Riley commented. “We’re supposed to open in a week. You know how the town counts on the income from those shows. But without a couple of actors to fill in, he says the theater might have to shut down.”

  “Shut down?” gasped Kim.

  Riley washed his hands in the sink, then ran his fingers down the sides of his pants, leaving wet streaks that did nothing to improve his appearance. “You know the old place has been losing money for years. And the building needs a good amount of work.”

  “They can’t do that,” I said. “Local theater is important to a town like Ruby Lake. Plus, the tourists patronize the theater every summer.”

  And summer was just around the corner. I toweled up the mess around the sink that Riley had created. “We need TOTS!” I exclaimed, throwing the towel down at the edge of the counter.

  Riley looked at me. “So you’ll do it?”

  My eyes squeezed together. “Do what?”

  “Take over Coralie’s part,” Riley said quickly, as if I should have known. “I already told everybody you would.”

  I should have known.

  “Yes!” squealed Kim. “She’ll do it!”

  “No!” I shouted back. “I won’t.”

  3

  “What did you say the name of this show is?”

  It was the next morning and we were on our way to the Theater On The Square, most often referred to by locals as TOTS, down on the west side of Ruby Lake’s main square. Kim was driving. I was fuming. Riley and Rhonda, his sister, were taking up space in the back seat. Mom was watching the store.

  How had I let myself get talked into performing in a community theater production? Kim and I had argued for an hour. She’d finally talked me into doing the show, albeit grudgingly, partly because I was getting a headache from going round in circles on the subject, and partly because she’d told me that I’d be doing the town a favor by helping to save the show.

  Not that I thought my taking over a minor role in the musical was a big enough favor that the town would, as a consequence, want to show their appreciation by nixing the whole eminent domain process that Birds & Bees was potentially facing.

  “Annie Get Your Gun,” Kim replied in answer to my question. She turned her head toward me. “Or in this case, Amy Get Your Gun.”

  “Very funny. Please keep your eyes on the road.”

  “Yes, Mom.” We drove past city hall, the local history museum, and the theater’s front entrance. There it was in all its glory, the marquee: ANNIE GET YOUR GUN—STARRING RUBY LAKE’S OWN AVA TURNER.

  Kim angled into the theater’s side lot, where about ten other cars were already parked.

  “Isn’t Ava Turner a little old,” I said, slamming the car door shut behind me, “to be playing Annie Oakley?”

  Kim glanced nervously over her shoulder. “Shush.” She waved her hand at me. “Keep your voice down.”

  “Why? There’s nobody out here but us.”

  Kim grabbed her purse from the backseat and locked the car. “Ava Turner played the role of Annie on Broadway,” she said. “In New York ”

  “I know where Broadway is.” I was a huge Broadwa
y fan, after all. Broadway music was the theme song to my life.

  Rhonda started around the building toward the front, facing the square. “Miss Turner was asked to play the role.”

  “By the director himself,” her brother added with a touch of reverence.

  Rhonda went on. “Besides, Miss Turner’s done a lot to support the theater and this town.”

  “She’s a great lady,” Riley put in.

  “She’s very private,” added Rhonda. “You know, this is the first time she has agreed to participate in one of our local productions.” My cousin gave me a look meant to imply that I should be both duly impressed and grateful for the honor Miss Turner had bestowed upon our town.

  While I mulled over their words, we entered the elegant old theater lobby, which was done up in shades of red and gold. Photos of the myriad stars—local, regional, and national—cluttered the gold leaf wallpaper.

  Photographs of Ava Turner, arguably Ruby Lake’s most famous citizen, occupied the place of honor, a shrine of sorts, between the doors leading to the seats. I studied several of the photos. The actress had never varied from her auburn hair, most often flowing, long, bouncy locks with that classic pin-curl look, but occasionally cut shorter for a dramatic role. Her eyes were a beautiful shade of green beneath perfectly shaped eyebrows.

  “Who is directing this show, anyway?” I wondered aloud.

  “August Mantooth,” Cousin Rhonda said with reverence.

  “August Mantooth?” I stopped in my tracks. “Cute. Stage name?”

  Riley looked at me funny. “Geez, Amy, it’s the man’s real name. I hope you’re going to behave yourself.”

  I flushed. Cousin Riley was admonishing me to behave myself? I bit the inside of my cheek and vowed to be on my best behavior.

  “Mr. Mantooth came all the way from New Jersey to direct.” This from Cousin Rhonda, Riley’s fraternal twin, just like Mom and Aunt Betty. Twins tend to run in families, and they have a long history of running in mine. If I ever had kids, I figured there just might be twins in my future.

  Rhonda and Riley, to this day, behave like two proverbial peas in a pod. They also have a younger brother, Rudy, four years my junior, who is nothing like them. Of course, he was from Aunt Betty’s Husband Number Two, so it was to be expected. The twins are nearly four years older than me, making them thirty-eight. Having never married, Rhonda was yet a Foxcombe.