by Rhett DeVane
“What was that all about?”
Jake shrugged. “Oh, those were the Thurgood cousins in the flesh. They stop in every now and then just to visit the town queer. Must be some kind of testosterone-induced rite-of-passage.”
“I bet that bugs the hell outta you.”
“They don’t concern me one teeny tiny hair. My business comes from the upstanding adults in town, not the likes of those two.”
Jake opened the upright cooler and a rush of flower-scented air brushed past my cheeks. He selected a handful of delicate pastel blooms, sprays of white baby’s breath, and maidenhair fern. “The ladies of this town have been especially good to me, sister-girl. I had the flu in December right after I first opened. For over a week, your mama, cousin, and aunt brought me chicken ’n’ dumplin’s, stew, soup, and enough Gatorade to turn me into a University of Florida fan.”
No Florida State University fan would be caught drinking any beverage that carried the stigma of the University of Florida’s gator mascot. Being avid FSU Seminole fans practically from birth, we groaned in unison.
Jake laughed hard. “I remember waking up to see Piddie’s face looking at me, just painted with terrible concern. ‘Son, you don’t have the AID, do you?’ she asks. Then, Evelyn says, ‘Mama, it’s AIDS, not the AID! Besides, that’s none of your business!’ Your aunt fires back, ‘That’s what I said, the AID! And I don’t much care if he has it! But, if he does we need to run him on to Tallahassee, and get him some help!’ I told her,’ no, Piddie, I don’t have the AID, just the flu.’ Lordy, I was so paranoid up in New York after watching so many of my friends die, that I had gotten tested at least once every three months before I came home.”
“You don’t worry about that now?”
“Sister-girl, there’s so much bad stuff goin’ around out there, I practically want a validated health card and a blood test before I so much as kiss somebody on the cheek. I’m more of a no-mo’-sexual than a homo-sexual! Oh, I have a closeted friend from the capital that I see for dinner every now and then when I desire company. I really don’t need anything. I have it all right here.”
“No-mo’-sexual? I like that! That’s what I feel like being since dating Garrett Douglas. Maybe I’ll get that rumor going around town. Wouldn’t that confuse Miz Elvina!” I chuckled. “Why do you like this little half-dead town, anyway?”
Jake finished the pink and white Welcome Baby arrangement, misted the foliage, and returned it to the flower cooler.
“I love Chattahoochee. Always have. I didn’t want to leave it to start with! This will always be home to me.” He frowned. “It’s trying to die, sister-girl. Young folks leave as soon as they graduate, if they wait that long. Don’t you remember how it used to be so full of life?”
I nodded. Washington Street reminded me of a dog bone with the marrow sucked out. “I can’t say much. I left, too. Funny, I used to think this was the most boring place in the entire world. Now, I can sit by my dad’s fishpond for hours and listen to the silence.”
He rested a hand on my shoulder affectionately. “Why don’t you move home? Is there anything so special about Tallahassee that you can’t leave it?”
“I don’t know if I could be happy over here. I’d miss my friends, and I do have all my massage-therapy clients to think about. I absolutely would not miss the traffic over there, that’s one thing for sure.”
Jake snorted. “You’ve never driven in real traffic. It amazes me when I hear folks talk about Tallahassee and all the traffic jams. They need to go to a big city like New York to appreciate what real traffic is!”
“I could move back here, I suppose.” I shrugged. “It’s weird. I never thought I’d ever not have to think about money. Just between us, my folks left enough that I could retire right now if I wanted to.”
He perched on a wooden stool and smoothed the wrinkles from his neatly-pressed khaki trousers. “They always say not to make any major decisions right after losing someone close. You’re a bright girl. I’m sure you’ll figure it out. At least with the money behind you, you can focus on what you really want to do.” Jake pointed to my hands. “What’s that notebook you been carrying around?”
“Oh, I don’t know why I brought this in with me. I have no idea what it is. It was with my parents’ papers. Hank Henderson just gave it to me.”
“Lemme see.” Jake flipped through the yellowed pages. “Oh, my Lord! Hattie, you know what this is? It’s Max the Madhatter’s private notebook. Don’t you remember him? He was one of those patients that had town privileges back during the sixties. He used to hang out at your daddy’s store, along with all the other businesses on Washington.”
I vaguely recalled a short impish-looking man.
Jake continued, “He wasn’t mental, just kind of slow. You know, they used to lock ’em up when the family didn’t want them and they had nowhere else to go. He’d been a patient his whole life, from what I recall. Some of those old Florida State Hospital records had diagnoses like idiot or moron. I remember Max the Madhatter helping out around town doing odd jobs. People would pay him in chocolate. That was his passion! He used to scribble constantly in a notebook he carried all the time. No one had any idea what he was writing, or if he could even write at all.”
Jake flipped the pages. “Look at this! Little sketches and…looks like written descriptions of the downtown merchants. It’s just full of recipes and comments on all the types of chocolate he’d ever eaten, too. Hey, here’s one you will recognize!”
He pointed to a page with a scratchy faded handwritten title.
AUNT PIDDIE LONGMAN’S BEST DAMN CHOCOLATE ICING.
½ cup cocoa
5 Tablespoons soft butter
2 cups confectioner’s sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
Scant 1/3 cup milk
Mix your sugar and cocoa together. Mash the butter till it’s good ’n’ soft. Add the vanilla and the milk, then start to mix in the dry stuff, a little bit at a time till you got it all in. Blend it till you don’t have lumps. You can add nuts, too.
“Imagine that!” I said.
“Can I keep this for a couple of days? I’d like to read it all the way through and make a copy.”
I shrugged. “Sure. I’ll stop back by to get it. I have to go to Tallahassee tomorrow for a couple of days. I need to call my clients to assure them I haven’t disappeared off the face of the earth. And, I want to bring my cat, Shammie, over here. She gets lonely by herself.”
“Is that chamois as in ‘a soft cloth to dry your wet car’ or were you doing your best Carol Channing imitation of the diva herself saying ‘Sammy’?”
“It was originally Chamois, but I got tired of having to spell it out at the vet’s office, so now it’s Shammie.”
Jake clasped his hands together. A slight twitch danced at the side of his left eye. “That’s a first step—bringing your feline over. We’ll have you moved home before you know it! By the way, you do know that your daddy paid for the Madhatter’s funeral when he died? From what I heard, they buried Max with a Hershey Chocolate Bar in his hands.”
Shaking my head, I asked, “How do you know so much about this town?”
We looked at each other and grinned.
“Elvina Houston,” we said in unison.
Jake rumpled through a stack of papers and florist magazines and handed me a slim bound book. “Study this. It’s your assignment until the next time we meet.”
“From Mount Vernon to Chattahoochee by Grady Turnage,” I read.
“You’ll be amazed at the history here.”
I tucked the book into my purse. “You want to have lunch with me, today?”
“Only if you go down and get Stephanie or Julie at the Homeplace Restaurant to make us a couple of sandwiches to go. They both make a mean hot roast beef au jus! I have to make two more baby arrangements and a dish garden for Sweetbay Jones’s sister, home from her knee replacement.” He pulled a worn leather wallet from his pocket and handed over a twenty
dollar bill
“Be back in a flash!” I called over in my shoulder.
Aunt Piddie’s Chocolaty Cookies Good for What Ails You
Ingredients: 2 Tbsp. instant coffee dissolved in 2 Tbsp. boiling water, ½ cup margarine or butter, ½ cup white sugar, ½ cup brown sugar, 1 egg, 2 cups chocolate chips, 1 ½ cups bleached plain flour, ¾ tsp. baking soda, ½ tsp. salt.
Dissolve instant coffee in boiling water. Add butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar. Mix well. Add one egg, already beaten. Melt ½ cup of chocolate chips and add to mixture. Blend in flour, baking soda, and salt. Add remaining chocolate chips. Bake in 350º oven on an ungreased cookie sheet for about nine minutes.
These cookies are good for sour moods, chocolate hankerin’s, and fussy younguns.
Chapter Five
THE INSPIRATION
The office of Garrett Douglas, Inc. filled the first floor of a beautifully restored antebellum house on east Call Street near downtown Tallahassee. Thick garnet carpet muffled my footfall when I entered the richly appointed receiving room.
Jessica, Garrett’s petite blonde executive assistant, glanced up from a computer screen and smiled. “Hattie! I didn’t know you were back in town!” Her fine-featured porcelain face clouded with concern. “How’re you feeling?”
“Pretty good. Day by day, you know. Is himself in?”
“Believe it or not, you’re catching him at a good time. He just finished a conference call with the Tampa and Orlando affiliates, and he doesn’t have any other commitments until …let’s see…” She clicked to the computerized schedule screen. “…for another hour. Shall I announce you?”
“No, let me surprise him.”
I pushed open the heavy mahogany door to his suite. Garrett sat at his massive inlaid cherry desk, studying his Palm Pilot.
“Hattie!” he said as he arose. He circled the desk and gathered me into his arms.
Damn it! Why did he have to smell so good?
His lean body felt familiar, and mine, in direct betrayal of my current state of mind, melted into him like the last missing piece of a 5000 piece puzzle of the scenic Maine coastline.
“I tried to call you a couple of times last week,” he said as he ushered me to a buttery-soft leather couch.
“I figured the two hang-ups were you. For someone who eats, sleeps, and breathes technology, you surely hate to leave a message on a machine!”
Garrett ran a finger along the side of my face and touched my hair. “I’ve missed you, Hattie.”
“Amazing. You miss me more now than you did when we were actually dating.”
An actual brief flinch of pain crossed his suntanned features.
“Hattie, now…”
I held up one hand. “I’m sorry, Garrett. I didn’t come here to pick a fight. I came to offer a truce.”
“Really?” He eased back into the sofa and crossed his arms, a smug smile on his full lips. “So, you’ve come to your senses and given up on that whole parenthood issue. I knew you’d come running back to kiss and make up.”
I scowled deeply and gave him my best imitation of Chris’s Italian stare of death.
He raised an eyebrow. “But, since that obviously isn’t the case, I’ll do you the courtesy of hearing you out. I’m very good at negotiations.”
I walked into the back door of the farmhouse and deposited Shammie on the floor with her food bowl. Unlike most of the felines who had previously owned me, Shammie could adapt to any change as long as two important criteria were met: I was there, and food was within a few inches.
From across the kitchen, I saw the insistent blinking of the answering-machine light.
“Sister-girl!” Jake’s voice was high-pitched with urgency. “You must call me right away as soon as you get in. I need to see you, Evelyn, and Piddie as soon as possible!”
Since the line at the Dragonfly was busy, I phoned Evelyn’s house.
“Meet me uptown at Jake’s shop in fifteen minutes. Something’s up!”
“Wha, wha?” Evelyn stuttered.
“I have no idea. He sounded frantic on the message he left here. I’ll leave as soon as I can put some groceries in the refrigerator.”
Evelyn and Piddie screeched to a halt in her Lincoln Towncar behind my pick-up in front of Dragonfly Florist. Aunt Piddie almost knocked me over with her walker in her rush toward the door.
Jake was calmly misting the ferns in the display window.
“Jake!” Piddie called out.
Evelyn and I were right behind her.
Jake smiled. “Oh! Good! All three of you at once. I’ll find some chairs.”
“What the devil is wrong?” Piddie clutched her chest. “You’re not hurt are you? You’ve not had any more trouble, have you?”
“No, no. Relax.” Jake dropped a couple of old wooden stools and one folding chair onto the floor in the center of the shop. “I needed all of you here to share my divine inspiration!” He spread his thin arms wide and twirled in a circle.
Piddie lowered herself onto the folding chair. “You been nippin’ the liquid fertilizer again?”
He scowled “No. I am stone cold sober. Please, Evelyn, Sister-girl, sit.”
Jake grabbed the old gray notebook. “This—” he pointed, “is my Godsend. It has provided me with the most marvelous idea for the shop!”
He held his hands in the air, forming a frame. “Picture this. Three small bistro tables draped with red-checkered linen cloths. Matching café curtains gracing the picture window. Sparkling glass display cases filled with every conceivable kind of baked sweetbreads and chocolate confections. Freshly brewed coffee, regular and decaf. Maybe cappuccino and espresso, eventually. This notebook copied, published, and for sale. The book’s title: The Madhatter’s Guide to Chocolate. And—” He spread his hands wide to outline the imaginary writing on the entrance glass. “The name of the shop—The Madhatter’s Sweet Shop And Massage Parlor.”
All three of us stared at him.
Finally, Evelyn spoke. “Okay, so what do we have to do with all of this?” A thought struck her. “Oh, I get it! My famous chocolate macaroons!” She clapped her hands together. “My recipe makes about three dozen or so. I could easily turn out more with my new double oven.”
Piddie snorted. “The boy wants to draw customers, Evelyn. Not flies!”
Evelyn glared at her mother.
“Actually, Miz Evelyn,” Jake said, “your part is much more important than cooking. I need you to design the curtains and table covers.” He patted her on the shoulder.
“Well, heaven knows, I can sew! You know that for a fact, Jake Witherspoon!”
“Yesssss, ma’am!”
Piddie leaned forward. “What do I get to do?”
“You, Miz Piddie, will be in charge of advance advertising. I need you to talk it up, get folks all excited.”
Evelyn smirked. “You can put that old lady hotline to some good use for a change.”
Piddie tilted her chin upward and fluffed her towering bouffant with one hand. “We provide an important and much needed service for this community. You’d have to wait all the way to the local news outta one of the Tallahassee stations to hear stuff if it wasn’t for our help. Even then, most of what goes on over here doesn’t make it past the city-limits sign unless someone is kilt!”
Piddie frowned. “It would be a lot easier if we still had party lines. I could tell several folks at once, then let them spread the word.” She rested her finger against her lower lip and her brow furrowed. “I got it! I’ll call Elvina Houston and let it slip like it’s a not-to-be-told. She’ll save me a whole lotta calling.”
I nodded. “Great idea, Pid.”
Piddie chuckled. “Did I ever tell you all about the time Elvina caused Sissy Pridgeon to near’bout kill herself?”
Evelyn sighed. “Only about a hundred times.”
“I haven’t heard it,” Jake said. He inched closer, his eyes gleaming.
“Well…” Piddie settled herself into the tellin
g. “Long many years back in the ’50s, D. J. Cawthon was cleanin’ his gun and shot hisself in the foot. Well, Elvina was on the Cawthons’ party line. She was, as I recall, two rings to the Cawthons’ one short and one long. Anyway, she had a bad habit of picking up and listenin’ in. She was a busybody even then! She eavesdropped just long enough to overhear Madie Cawthon say that her husband had shot hisself, before Madie called out ‘is someone listenin’ in!?’. Elvina hung up and hotfooted it over to Sissy Pridgeon’s—she’s dead now—to tell her the news. By the time Sissy and Elvina finished callin’ the whole town with the news, they had the man shot dead! Course, it was always a race in those days to see who could get the first casserole to the bereaved family. Sissy and Elvina, as I heard it, near’bout kilt each other racin’ up the Cawthons’ steps. When D.J. answered the door with his foot all bandaged up, Elvina dropped the chicken soup pot she was carryin’ on the porch, and Sissy Pridgeon fainted dead out on the front steps. She gashed her head and bled all over the place! She had to have seven stitches to close the hole in her head, not to mention she broke one of her best glass casserole dishes!”
Jake and I hooted. Evelyn laughed in spite of herself.
Evelyn waved her bony hands through the air. “You know, I can just visualize it. I can make the curtains so it looks like a series of smaller windows instead of one big one. It’ll be much cozier that way. You have a tape measure?”
“Just a yard stick. Sorry.”
Evelyn jumped up and started for the door. “C’mon, Mama. Let’s get to the house. I’ll get my tape measure and calculator. We’ll be back up after we’ve had some lunch so I can figure how much material I’ll need.” She held the door for her mother.
I watched Evelyn gun the Towncar onto Washington Street. “So, other than the obvious part, how have you worked me into your little scenario?”
Jake pulled up a stool. “Here’s the hard part for me to ask, Hattie. I need a business partner.”
“I thought your mama left you fixed for money.”
