The Coldwater Warm Hearts Club

by Lexi Eddings

  The light of understanding dawned in the old man’s eyes. “Oh, I get it. That way, each batch will be half as hot as this is right now.”

  And still four times hotter than Jake’s usual Lazy Man Chili. How could he tone it down more?

  “Put a can of condensed milk into both batches.” Jake had read somewhere that dairy took some of the heat out of spicy foods. The milk would turn the base broth into something resembling creamy tomato soup. When they dished up the chili later, Jake decided he’d have to garnish it with a little freshly grated Parmesan for good measure. “How about adding a few dollops of sour cream to both stockpots, too?”

  “Will do.” Lester gave him a snappy salute and went back to work, whistling tunelessly.

  Jake watched him from the corner of his eye while he filled the rest of the lunch orders Ethel had dropped off. By the time Lester had the second batch simmering, Jake had thought of another way to tone down the spiciness.

  “Add a bag of frozen corn to both pots,” Jake said as he rang the bell for Ethel to pick up another order. The grill was really humming, almost every table and booth full. At times like this, Jake wished he had six hands. Once Lester was trained, maybe it would be like having a couple more. For now, Jake was glad the old man at least did as he was told.

  If he understands the directions . . .

  “Well, would you look at that? The corn makes the chili even prettier, too, what with all them golden kernels floating amongst the beans and meat.” Lester seemed inordinately pleased with his patched-up concoction. “Looks like a party in a bowl, don’t it?”

  A party that’ll peel off the lining of your stomach, Jake thought. He nodded to give Lester encouragement anyway. Extra color was a plus in any dish, but his real goal was to add more starch. The corn should temper the hotness. He’d have to bake some bread that afternoon to go along with the chili. The supper crowd would need the extra carbs.

  Lester began dividing both batches in half, ladling them into a third stockpot. Good thing Jake had an industrial six-burner in the grill’s kitchen.

  “Get a couple of limes and squeeze the juice into the chili,” Jake said. The acid in citrus was supposed to tone down spiciness. Sugar was another cutting agent. “Chop up a couple of carrots into each pot.”

  The root vegetable was laden with natural sugars and would add another pop of color. If they somehow managed to make anything of Lester’s mistake, the finished product was going to have lots of layers of flavor tracked through it.

  Jake came over and sampled a spoonful. This time he swallowed. His eyes watered and beads of sweat popped out on his forehead.

  “Well?” Lester asked.

  “It’s mighty hot,” Jake said, “but I’m still standing.”

  “You know, when I was in Nam, the locals served up some pretty spicy stuff,” Lester said, “only they ate it with rice.”

  “Lester, you’re a genius.” Jake slapped him on the back.

  “We’ll keep this simmering all afternoon to thicken up the liquid. Then, instead of bread on the side, we’ll ladle it over a bed of brown and wild rice for the supper crowd. If we pair it with a nice cool side salad, it can be the evening special.”

  “How ’bout that? I done made a new special.” The old man clapped his hands together. “What’ll we call it?”

  “How about Lester’s Take-No-Prisoners Chili and Rice?”

  “Hot damn! That’ll do, jarhead.” Lester practically ran out to the chalkboard in the dining room to post the new dish that would be available on the supper menu that evening. “Yessirree, that’ll do.”

  As Jake watched him, it seemed as if Lester grew a couple of inches taller. His shoulders no longer slumped. There was a sprightliness in his walk instead of a shuffle. It was the first step in a long journey. As victories went, Lester’s unexpected creation of a new dish was a small one, but hopefully, it would lead to more.

  It occurred to Jake that Lester was like that chili—almost irredeemable at first. But with a tweak here and a second chance there, he might just be able to make something of himself, after all.

  * * *

  Only rural residents around Coldwater Cove had curbside mail delivery. Almost everyone in town had a post office box. The rest picked up their mail at the general delivery window. Lacy was fairly dancing on the inside after she picked up hers.

  She was eager to tell Jake about her good fortune, but it was the middle of the lunch rush. She couldn’t interrupt him now and she was only on a short break from the Gazette herself. She decided her folks would be most happy about her news, so she drove over to their place.

  There was also every chance she’d be able to shop in her folks’ refrigerator for a sandwich. Her bank account was looking lean at the moment.

  But that’s about to change!

  Seated on his Husqvarna, her dad was mowing his front lawn, turning tight, precise circles around the oak trunks. There was nothing unusual about that.

  But wearing a football helmet while he mowed was.

  As soon as Lacy pulled into the driveway, he cut the motor, climbed off the mower, and came to meet her.

  “What’s with the helmet, Dad?” she asked as he enfolded her in one of his bear hugs. “Planning on doing some racing with the Husky?”

  “No, that’d be silly. I’m just trying to protect the old noggin from those rats with fluffy tails.” He removed the helmet and shook his fist in the direction of the upper branches. “The darn things pelted me with acorns this morning.”

  Lacy looked up. The “rats” in question seemed not to be paying them any mind, scurrying from one branch to the next. They were more intent on scolding each other than giving any attention to the humans below.

  “Dad, I’ve never seen your squirrels do anything like that.”

  “Well, they did. Oh, I know they look innocent enough now, but . . . hey! What do you mean by ‘your squirrels’?”

  “Nothing. I don’t mean a thing.” She didn’t know anyone who gave the rodents as much thought, time, and effort as her dad. It wouldn’t be surprising if he felt like they were his, at least a little bit.

  “Where’s Mom?” she asked to change the subject.

  “In the house,” he said, still glaring up at the squirrels as if daring them to try something. “She’s putting ‘for sale’ tags on some of her treasures.”

  “You mean the yard sale to end all yard sales is still on?”

  Her dad nodded. Mom had set a date for the sale three times since Lacy had come home and each time, she discovered a conflict at the last minute that allowed her to cancel.

  “I’d better get in there and help,” Lacy said.

  “Go easy, daughter. This is hard for her, you know.”

  “Yeah, I sort of do.” She’d had a sit-down with Virgil Cooper over at the hardware store. Initially, she’d intended the interview to be about how he, as a member of the Coldwater Warm Hearts Club, planned to train Lester to work for him. But Lacy also had another agenda that had nothing to do with the Gazette article.

  Her mom had never really talked much about her childhood, and Lacy’s grandparents on that side of the family were gone before she was born. Since Mr. Cooper had mentioned that he’d known her mother before she married George Evans, Lacy quietly steered the conversation to his recollections of her mom when she was younger.

  Shirley Higginbottom Evans didn’t grow up on the wrong side of the tracks. There were no tracks at all in the little hill community where she was born. Her mother was raised in a two-room house with no running water. That circumstance didn’t change until the Higginbottoms moved down to Coldwater Cove when she was ready to go to high school.

  “But don’t feel sorry for her. Lots of us grew up with nothing so far as the world can see. Myself included,” Mr. Cooper had said. “Things are nice to have, but they don’t matter in the bigger picture. If you’re raised with love, that’ll trump indoor plumbing every time.”

  It also explained why her mom’s things me
ant so much to her. She’d never known any surplus until she married the man who would someday be Lacy’s father. Now Lacy was ashamed of the way she’d fussed at her mom over collecting too many thingamabobs and doodads.

  Lacy had been raised with love and indoor plumbing, so she was without excuse for her condescending attitude. She was determined to change that.

  She gave her dad a kiss on the cheek before turning to go into the house. He slapped the helmet back on and prepared to engage in another skirmish in the War of Squirrel Insurgency.

  “Mom,” Lacy called out as she removed her shoes at the slate entryway.

  “In here, dear.” Her voice had a little quaver in it. When Lacy found her mom affixing stickers to a set of gold-trimmed collectors’ plates, she noticed her nose was red. She’d been crying.

  “Mom, don’t do this.”

  “Whatever do you mean?” she said brightly, trying to blink back tears.

  “If these things mean so much to you, you shouldn’t part with them.”

  Mom cocked her head at her. “But you’re always trying to get me to cull my things.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve been known to be wrong. Often,” Lacy admitted. “If you love them, you should keep them.”

  “But you’re right, Lacy. I’ve been looking at the place with fresh eyes and I can see what you’ve been trying to tell me. That hutch is terribly overcrowded.”

  The shelves in the old oak piece sagged. Probably because it was crammed with two full sets of china, a dozen mismatched crystal goblets, and a couple hundred salt-and-pepper shakers. Shirley Evans would be hard-pressed to find room to add so much as a paper clip to the chaos.

  “Will it make you happy to have the hutch less crowded?” Lacy asked.

  Her mother ignored the question. “I have so many decorative items, none of them can be properly appreciated.”

  For the first time in Lacy’s life, her words were coming out of her mother’s mouth. The turnabout felt all wrong. “Mom, do you appreciate them?”

  “I do,” she admitted with a sigh. “Just knowing they’re there, even if I can’t see them all properly, makes me happy.” Her chin trembled. “I can’t help it, Lacy, I love my pretties.”

  “Then it would be wrong to part with them,” she said with a hand on her mom’s shoulder. “Keep the ones you love, Mom.”

  “What if I love them all?”

  Lacy smiled. “Then keep them all. Remember the family motto.”

  “If a little is good, a lot is a whole bunch better,” they repeated in unison, and then collapsed into a hug full of laughter. And a few tears.

  What was a little intentional clutter if it made her mom happy? Design wasn’t always about aesthetics. It was about surrounding yourself with things that lifted you up, things you loved, things that reflected who you were. Like a mossy stone, the house was filled with items her mom had collected as she rolled through life. This old Colonial, packed with all its bric-a-brac and whatnots and thingummies, was her mom down to the last frilly hand-tatted doily.

  Far be it from Lacy to change a thing.

  “Now, dear, I know you didn’t interrupt your busy day just to watch me blub over a few treasures. What’s up?”

  “I got some wonderful news today,” Lacy said, patting her jeans pocket. There was an envelope with a check for thirty thousand dollars in there. And it was made out to her!

  Her contact in Boston had authenticated the painting she’d sent him as a genuine, heretofore unknown, Erté original. He wrote that he’d ship it back if she wished, but if not, the check was his offer to buy the piece from her. Lacy only had to cash it to agree to his terms. This would knock a huge chunk out of her loan to the O’Learys.

  She had asked Jake to pray for her. It seemed God had listened.

  “Mom, do you remember that painting I bought the day we went to Gewgaws and Gizzwickies together?”

  “Sure.”

  She pulled out the check and explained what had happened. The pair of them danced around the room, hopping up and down. The check slipped from Lacy’s hand and fluttered to the floor.

  “Oops!” She retrieved it and quickly stuffed the check back into her pocket. “Don’t want to lose that.”

  “I should say not. See? You never know when you’ll find a real treasure in a secondhand shop,” her mom said. “You should come shopping with me more often. First you help Jake’s mom sell her Fiestaware for what it’s really worth and now this.”

  Lacy had been giddy with joy over her windfall, but at her mom’s words, her belly spiraled downward. Like Jake’s mother and her soup bowls, the people who had consigned the Erté to Gewgaws and Gizzwickies, whoever they were, had had no idea what they were selling.

  If Lacy didn’t try to find the original owner, she’d be no better than those bargain hunters from Kansas City who were trying to make off with Mrs. Tyler’s four-thousand-dollar bowl for a measly ten. It wasn’t fair to take advantage of people like that. Even though she definitely needed the money, the check in her pocket suddenly felt like a lead weight.

  What if the previous owners of the Erté also needed money? Wasn’t this a little like buying Manhattan from the Indians for a song? Lacy had chafed under the unfairness of her settlement with the Boston DA. But how could she, in good conscience, pass that unfairness on?

  And she realized, with a sinking heart, what she had to do.

  Her mother’s friend Gloria, who ran the consignment shop, would remember whom the painting had belonged to. Anyone who knew to the inch where a bunch of plastic grapes should be would surely recall the owner of a genuine Erté.

  Chapter 27

  Bold font, all caps. We want this headline to really pop.

  Nothing this unexpected has happened to a resident of

  Coldwater Cove since Alfred Mayhew won a blue ribbon for his roses at the state fair back in ’96. Make it sing!

  —a note from Wanda Cruikshank to the Coldwater Gazette typesetter and printer

  As it turned out, the person who had consigned the painting to Gewgaws and Gizzwickies was Tina-Louise “Grandma” Bugtussle. The artwork had come to town wrapped in a holey quilt, part of a pickup bed full of odds and ends.

  Gloria had sifted through the stuff and agreed to consign half a dozen items, including the Erté painting, which, thanks to the quilt, was undamaged. She judged the rest of the load to be of little value. Coming from a junk-shop owner, that was saying something. Since it was fit for nothing but kindling, Junior had hauled the remainder to the dump.

  “Them old things was just taking up space anyhow. High time we was rid of ’em,” Grandma Bugtussle told Lacy. “I been using the smokehouse for storage, you see, but after Junior bagged a wild hog, we had to clear out the place so’s we could cure us some ham.”

  She couldn’t remember exactly how the painting had come into the Bugtussle family’s possession, just that she’d inherited it from her mother-in-law. Great-Grandma Bugtussle had been a woman of generous proportions who’d grown tired of seeing “that skinny womarn” on her wall.

  Tina-Louise “Grandma” Bugtussle, who hadn’t missed too many meals herself, agreed that the lady in the painting was painfully thin. She hadn’t really fancied the thing, but “when somebody gives you something, whether you like it or not, you’d best take it. No tellin’ whether they might give you somethin’ good next time.”

  So the painting was relegated to the smokehouse along with other items she considered of no earthly use. “But if I’d a knowed that skinny womarn was worth so much, I’d a hung her in the outhouse at least. That ways somebody’d be lookin’ at her ever’ day.”

  She thanked Lacy profusely for being honest enough to seek out the original owner of the painting and promptly offered to pay her back the twenty-five dollars Lacy had laid out for the piece at Gewgaws and Gizzwickies. After a good bit of rooting around for carefully concealed Mason jars that were secreted in various places in the Bugtussle home, Grandma was only able to come up with $17.50,
but she promised she’d be good for the rest once she took that check for thirty grand to the bank.

  Evidently, the idea of a finder’s fee, or even the 15 percent per transaction Gloria charged at Gewgaws and Gizzwickies, never entered Grandma Bugtussel’s head.

  Lacy wasn’t about to bring it up. She didn’t trust herself to say much at all since it required every ounce of willpower she possessed to turn the money over to Mrs. Bugtussle. Heather Walker had always claimed she received more than she gave when she did a good turn for someone else.

  So far, Heather was wrong. Lacy waited for the glowing I-did-something-right feeling to come.

  Nothing.

  Lacy took copious notes for her article for the Gazette, carefully omitting the part she’d played in this unlikely art find. Besides the fact that Lacy was still trying to fly below the radar and didn’t want a mention even in a paper as obscure as the Coldwater Gazette, Wanda would want her to focus on the rags-to-riches human interest angle. So she asked Grandma Bugtussle what she planned to do with the thirty thousand.

  “Land sakes, I ain’t no Donald Trump. How should I know about high finance?”

  After a few minutes’ consideration, the old lady decided to use the windfall to replace the cinderblocks under the family home. The current ones had settled badly and the house had been a bit “shifty” all last winter. Then after that, if Junior could tinker with the old school bus that was parked in the front yard and get it running again, Grandma intended to take the whole Bugtussle clan out to California to see Disneyland.

  “Guess it makes sense for us to use the money to pay a call on the second happiest place on earth,” Grandma said.

  “The second?” Lacy asked, wondering how the old woman had so mixed up Disney’s claim to fame. “Where’s the first?”

  Grandma Bugtussle tutted under her breath. “Law, child, you ain’t got the sense you were born with, do you? The happiest place on earth is home, right here in the hills around Coldwater Cove, o’ course.”

  Lacy wasn’t too sure about that as she signed the check over to Mrs. Bugtussle. She didn’t have much cause to feel happy at the moment. “There are those who’d beg to differ.”