by Sharon Short
I gave up, left a note on the coffee table: “Called Elroy’s Filling Station and left message to tow your car there. I’m downstairs in my laundromat. Josie.”
Then I shrugged on my coat, let myself out of my apartment—slamming the door extra hard—and went out to the balcony landing. I stood there for a few seconds and stared at more snow swirling. Then I glanced down at my van, the lone vehicle in my laundromat’s parking lot. From the look of my van’s roof, about another half inch had fallen. If this kept up, by Sunday night, I’d have to call Chip Beavy, the grandson of one of my most beloved customers, and hire him to do one of his many odd-job specialties, in this case, plowing.
And if we really ended up with a doozy of a snowstorm in the next few days as predicted, I’d drive my van around to my more elderly customers and gather up their laundry to do at no extra charge. The last thing I wanted was a senior citizen falling and breaking a hip while struggling to bring a basketful of dirty laundry to my laundromat.
Truth be told, I knew I could leave my laundromat open and unattended that day and the next, and just have a few customers. Not too many laundromat customers over Thanksgiving weekend.
After the weekend, that would change. I’d be extra busy for a few days consulting on how to get stains out of Sunday-best outfits so folks could wear them for end-of-year holidays, too.
I went down the metal steps, around to the back entry to my laundromat, and let myself in, stomping off my boots on a mat just inside the door as I flipped on the overhead light in my combo office/storage room. I shrugged out of my coat and hung it on the old coat-rack, which had been used by my Uncle Horace.
Somehow that coatrack always gives me comfort. It’s an antique Uncle Horace bought years ago from Rusty Wilton, who owns the Antique Depot. Rusty’d been trying to buy it back ever since.
I went out into my laundromat, enjoying the morning ritual: flipping the sign in the door over from CLOSED to OPEN, making a pot of coffee at the front table for customers, pouring myself a mugful.
Then I went back to my storeroom/office and settled down at my desk. I fired up my computer—an electronic-age antique in its own right, seeing as how it was seven years old, and I accessed e-mail via my laundromat’s telephone line—and brought up the word-processing file for my latest monthly Stain-Busters column.
My stomach curled. My Stain-Buster’s column was due to Caleb Loudermilk on Monday and I was so rattled by all that had happened, I didn’t know where to begin, which wasn’t like me.
And Caleb was going to try to get my column to go weekly, in more newspapers in Ohio. How would I ever keep up with that?
But it sounded like a challenge, I thought, sipping my coffee and staring at the cursor blinking on my blank computer screen. And it might mean a little more money . . . which was usually tight for me. Maybe that meant I could afford to actually do the apartment conversion from two units to one bigger one, something I’d put off not just because of expense, but because at the back of my mind I thought what if Owen and I really became committed to each other, married even, and I moved out . . .
My stomach curled extra hard, and I winced. Until Owen, I’d only dated occasionally and never thought of marriage, but . . .
Hey, hadn’t Sally said Caleb was acting sweet on me? Was that possible? He was kind of cute . . .
I shook my head. Owen was my boyfriend. We might have a few problems, but we’d work them out. Right? My stomach curled yet again.
I really needed to get that column done. Thinking about stains, about how to advise people on how to deal with stains . . . that would surely clear my head, if I’d just focus on that . . .
“Vinegar solves an amazing number of life’s problems. Just not heartache . . .”
I stared at the opening line to my column and sighed. Column writing and sharing my stain expertise—usually my happy spot—wasn’t working for me that morning. Too much on my mind. Owen. Mama and Daddy showing up. Uncle Fenwick murdered. Daddy accused—maybe guilty, for all I knew—and Mama in my apartment upstairs . . .
The bell over the front door chimed and I jumped up, both because I was surprised by the fact that someone would want to come to my laundromat so early on the day after Thanksgiving, and because it was an excuse to get away from my woes.
I went out to the front of my laundromat, expecting to see someone who perhaps had a cranberry-juice or turkey-gravy-stain problem . . . and stopped short at the sight of who actually filled my laundromat.
Paradise’s antique shop owners. Practically all of them.
And they didn’t look at all happy.
The Antique Depot was in the old train depot that served passengers until the 1950s, when the last passenger train rolled through town. Freight trains still come rumbling through, though, which is why the Antique Depot carries mostly heavy furniture—pie safes and rolltop desks and the like—and very little china, Rusty Wilton, the Antique Depot’s owner, once told me with a twinkle in his eye.
Rusty’s usual expression of merriment, though, had given way to anxiety. He was, apparently, the designated spokesperson for the group of nine unhappy antique owners—Lorraine McMurphy looking unhappiest of all—who stood behind him and glared at me.
“I think you can guess why we’re here,” Rusty said.
“You’ve had an influx of antique linens and need help getting them stain free?” I gave a nervous laugh. “I know how tiresome those rust stains in old linens can be, and of course this isn’t the right time of year to use the old salt, lemon juice, and sunshine trick, but I’m sure I can . . .”
“Josie,” Rusty said, sounding just a little sad. He was seventy-ish, a small, stout leprechaun of a man, with a pulpy nose, florid face, and hair that had gone from a deep red to white overnight sometime back in the 1970s. I didn’t know why. “I think you know why we’re here. FleaMart. Your parents. They’re the investors in the orphanage, Josie.”
I didn’t even try to look shocked. I can’t ever fake my emotions, even when I want to try. “I only learned that yesterday,” I said, “when my parents showed up at a Thanksgiving reunion at my Mamaw Toadfern’s house. I didn’t know they were coming back to town. I sure had no idea they were behind FleaMart. I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do.”
“Oh sure, you didn’t know,” Lorraine muttered. She’s never liked me ever since I pointed out to her that the cleaning technique I’d recommended for linen and cotton tea towels wasn’t working on her “vintage” towels because, in fact, they were a polyester blend. She’d been duped by a clever seller. No antique shop owner wants to hear that. “You haven’t been in touch with most of the Toadfern clan for years. Everyone knows that. But now, suddenly, you are . . . just when your parents come back with a plan to put us out of business?”
“That May. She always was trouble,” someone else said.
“Not that Henry was any better. I remember when he was a young whelp and stuffed potatoes up all the tailpipes at a football game just because he’d gotten thrown off the team and that meant Fenwick was playing instead . . .”
I gulped. Somehow, word had gotten around about my parents being behind FleaMart, but not yet about Fenwick’s murder. That would change soon, I knew.
“Hush!” Rusty snapped over his shoulder at the other antique owners. He gave me a sympathetic look, and I felt grateful. “Josie, you know how hard it is to stay in business. These days, people think nothing of abandoning a local store to go to a bigger chain just to save money, no matter if they sacrifice service.”
“Yeah! Look what’s happening to the Quik Mart!” Lorraine said.
I knew just what was happening. It was a convenient location to pick up last-minute items—emergency chocolate, if your boyfriend was in the process of leaving you, for example—but even long-term customers were willing to abandon it to save some money at Big Sam’s Warehouse, even if it meant a half-hour drive up to Masonville. Even if it meant putting business owners they’d known all of their lives out of business. The Qui
k Mart was in danger of closing. We’d talked about that at the last Chamber of Commerce meeting. I myself knew I was hanging on to my business because of the nature of it—the laundromats up in Masonville couldn’t afford to have any more expensive machines than I did—but I knew I’d lost a few dress-shirt customers to the big dry-cleaning chain up in Masonville.
“Josie, if May and Henry go through with this . . . this . . . FleaMart operation, it could easily put us out of business,” Rusty said. “We’ve come to you to appeal to you to talk to them.”
“Uh, yeah, Josie,” Lorraine said. “Sorry about what I said a minute ago. Everyone liked your parents. Really.”
“Look, it’s not a matter of me wanting or not wanting to help you,” I said. “I don’t like the idea of FleaMart any more than the rest of you. But I really had no idea that my parents were behind this.” I swallowed. What I was about to say wouldn’t be easy, even though everyone already knew it. “Look, you all know I haven’t had any contact with my parents since I was a little kid. I’ve had no idea where they’ve been all these years. They just . . . showed up. Kinda like bad luck.”
Someone twittered appreciatively. Everyone could relate to the sudden, unforeseen appearance of bad luck.
“Josie, can’t you think of anything you could say at all to get your parents to rethink this?” Rusty asked.
“No, I’m sorry, I wish I could, but—” and then I stopped, seeing, suddenly, the image of my mama last night, begging me to help her get her beloved husband out of jail.
I did not want to get involved with my parents. I wished they’d never come. I wished they’d just go away. But here they were. Sometimes, reality just changes around you through no choice of your own . . . but you still have to deal with it. So, one way or another I was going to have to deal with my parents.
And in that moment, it seemed to me that the best way to deal with them would be to promise Mama I’d help find out who’d really killed Fenwick—which might mean, I knew, finding out Daddy really was the killer, although I wouldn’t point that out to Mama—in exchange for getting Mama to take their FleaMart plan somewhere else. In fact, it seemed a truly inspired idea!
I looked at Rusty. “Someone called you to let you know about my parents being the FleaMart investors?”
“Someone called each of us, late last night.”
“Yeah,” said Lorraine. “Then we met for breakfast at Sandy’s to figure out what to do. Came up with our plan and as soon as your Open sign flipped over, we paid our bills and trooped over.”
“Who called you?”
“Anonymous tip,” said someone else.
“We all had anonymous messages or calls sometime between eleven o’clock and midnight,” Rusty said.
Well after Rachel and I found Uncle Fenwick. Well after I went with Worthy to deliver the bad news to Mamaw Toadfern and Aunt Nora. But well before Chief Worthy and his colleagues had shown up at the Red Horse Motel to bring my daddy in for questioning.
I wondered what time Chief Worthy had received the anonymous tip.
And, already, I had another question. “Anyone have Caller ID?”
Several people looked confused, a few shook their heads or said “no,” but Lorraine said she did, and Rusty said, “I do, too. What are you thinking, Josie?”
“I’m thinking I want both of you to look up the number associated with the call and get back to me with that information.”
“Why?” Rusty asked.
“Because. I don’t know for sure . . . but I think I have a way to solve your problem and get my parents to leave town . . . without going through with FleaMart. But I’ll need that information from you, and you’ll need to trust me.”
“They might trust you, but you shouldn’t trust them!”
My mama was sitting in my chair at my desk, legs primly crossed at ankles, arms folded across her stomach. She was also wearing my navy blue shirtwaist dress—a 1950s number I’d picked up at the Vintage Closet, then removed a stain of unknown origin on the three-quarter sleeves (I guessed wine, and I must have guessed right, because the stain is gone), and replaced the missing and chipped buttons with ones from a blouse of the same vintage that refused to release its stains.
On Mama, the dress looked a little loose, but still fantastic. Which made me realize how tightly it fit me. A depressing thought, considering I’d worn it out with Owen on our last date before he left for Kansas City, to Casa Rinalti, a wonderful little Italian place up in Masonville. I’d gotten spaghetti sauce on the sleeve, which I’d removed with white vinegar.
“I’m glad to see you felt at home,” I said, a little too sharply.
“You didn’t expect me to wear the same clothes I came in, did you?” She wrinkled her nose. “And you don’t have much that’s stylish in your wardrobe. Except this. This is lovely.” She fingered the wide sleeve cuff appreciatively. “I’d say 1950s.”
“That’s right. Belonged once upon a time to Natalie Boles. I bought it at Lorraine McMurphy’s shop, the Vintage Closet, which is just a few stores down from the Antique Depot—”
Mama waved her hand at me. “Oh, I remember Lorraine. She never did like me. She thought I was always flirting with her husband, what’s his name?”
“Roy,” I said. And here I’d thought Lorraine disliked me because of my truth-telling about her vintage towels. How many people had judged me because of my parents’ actions . . . and I had never known it.
Mama rolled her eyes. “Like I’d want to have anything to do with that sad sack of bony—”
I stiffened. “Mama! Lorraine could still be out in my laundromat,” I hissed. “It’s not like this room is soundproof.”
“Oh, I don’t care if she hears me.”
“Well, I do,” I said firmly. “I still live in this town.”
Mama contemplated me sadly. “I always assumed you’d get out, eventually. You were such a smart little girl.” She shook her head, as if to rid herself of the sad expression, then glared at the door between my office/storeroom and laundromat. “I’m sure glad I got out of town,” she bellowed loudly. “No one here ever cared a bit about little May Foersthoefel Toadfern. Just gossiped meanly about me.”
She looked at me and grinned. “You think they heard that? I hope so.”
“Look, I don’t know why you left—if it was over gossip or something else—and frankly, I’m not sure I care.” Mama looked a little taken aback by that. “The fact is, you and Daddy returned because of this FleaMart plan.”
She grinned. “It’s going to be a wonderful store! A model of many future stores! Do you think Lorraine would like to sell us some of her stock for the vintage clothing department?”
“No, I don’t. I think the antique shop owners don’t like what FleaMart stands for—it takes away the thrill of the hunt for the customers, number one, and—”
“And scares the crap out of the owners that we’ll put them out of business,” Mama said, narrowing her eyes, looking angry and mean again. “Well, so what? What do I care if the likes of Lorraine goes out of business? Our first FleaMart in Arkansas is a big hit simply because it takes away the effort of finding the just-right antique or vintage item. Everyone is in a hurry these days, Josie, but lots of people want vintage stuff to make their homes look like they’ve inherited wonderful items or like they know just how to put these pieces together. Our concept is for those who aren’t into antiques for the hunt, but for a fast and easy way to get to the hottest version of the shabby chic look. Need a mission-style lamp for the corner of your living room? Don’t have time to go to a bunch of old, musty, overpriced places like Antique Depot or Vintage Closet? Then come to FleaMart! You can run in, pick out a lamp, have it delivered.
“Too busy for even that? Well, then, preview our stock on the Internet! Order a lamp, a tablecloth online! We’re even working on a book we’re going to self-publish and make available on our future Web site—Vintage Chic in One Week or Less! With updated links to available items each week.”
Mama waved her hand in a gesture that took in my office/storeroom. “You’re a businesswoman now, Josie. You should understand this. You have a logo, a motto. So do we. We’re in it for the money, sure, but we’re offering a service. We even have a motto that says it all: ‘Get Historical! Fast!’ Like it?”
I stared at her for a long moment. As tempting as it was, there was no point in debating her on the merits of Daddy’s and her business scheme. There was no point in throwing in her face that she had no right to lecture me on life, on Paradise, on business, when she’d just up and abandoned me when I was a kid. A fact that made me surprisingly angry, considering all these years I’d told myself—and believed it—that I didn’t care.
What I needed to do was lay it on the line for her, and get her and Daddy back out of Paradise—for good—as soon as I could. Then, I hoped, life in Paradise could go back to normal. A sleepy little town struggling to get by thanks to the industries of a pie company, the nearby man-made state lake and state prison, a gravel quarry, a few other businesses, and a dozen or so dusty, sleepy little antique shops, where true antique lovers could come and find a delightful treasure now and again.
“Mama, I’m only saying this once. You asked me last night to help you get Daddy out of jail, to help figure out who really killed his brother Fenwick. And I said no way. Well, I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to help you.”
Mama clapped her hands together, suddenly like a delighted little child. “Oh, thank you, Josie, thank you—”
“On one condition.”
She felt silent, clasped her hands in her lap.
“And that is that you and Daddy agree to drop this whole FleaMart deal.”
“What? The old orphanage is the perfect property! And believe it or not, this location is great. Folks can drive in from Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus . . . really think they’re going somewhere quaint and old-fashioned, coming here—”
I cringed, knowing that, in fact, folks in big cities did view our town that way—when and if they came for a visit.
