What Happens in Texas

by Carolyn Brown

  “You could vacuum,” he said.

  “Yes, and you could have been a good husband and not cheated on me.” She followed him to the back door, picking more paper from the butt of his uniform.

  He brushed a kiss across her forehead. “See you next week,” he whispered before he slipped out the back door and quickly blended into the mass of milling men in uniforms.

  “What happened around here? I was on my way home. Heard it on the radio. Parked over in the church lot since everything was full here,” Andy asked Jack.

  Jack shook his head slowly. “Agnes thought she saw someone up there fightin’ with Trixie, but it wasn’t nothing. Agnes told my officer that she could see shadows behind the window shades and the man threw Trixie down on the bed and was raping her.”

  Trixie made out every word even though it was muddled. So it had been the candles that had brought the mothball queen across the street with her fedora and shotgun. Lord, Agnes Flynn was a meddlesome old witch. Claudia Burton Andrews had taken care of Agnes like she was her mother instead of her aunt, and she’d passed the legacy of looking after her on down to Cathy and Marty. But Trixie damn sure hadn’t taken on the job of taking care of the nosy old toot, so she could keep her red hair, stinky getup, and shotgun across the street.

  “She wasn’t defending a damn thing for me. She was just making sure nobody was getting something that she couldn’t. If it had been a rapist, she would have probably insisted I share with her,” Trixie muttered.

  Next week she was buying blackout drapes. No telling what would happen if Anna Ruth, Andy’s live-in girlfriend, found out he spent Wednesday nights in Trixie’s bed. And if Agnes ever discovered it, heaven help everyone, because the whole town of Cadillac, all 1,542 people, would know about it by breakfast the next morning. Agnes had a gossip hotline that worked faster than a sophomore boy his first time.

  Trixie heaved a sigh of relief when all the cop cars and the ambulance were finally gone. She’d deal with the shotgun and the hole in the ceiling later. Right then she needed a good stiff drink. She pushed the chair back, rustled around in the cabinet, and found the whiskey. She poured two fingers of Jack Daniels in a jelly glass, added one ice cube, brushed plaster dust from her chenille robe and hair, and sat back down at the table. It was a poor substitute for a bout of good old passionate sex, but at least it warmed her insides.

  Chapter 2

  Andy was almost across Fourth Street when, from the corner of his eye, he saw someone smack in the middle of the pavement. Surely some bum hadn’t passed out cold. It was Wednesday, not Saturday when all the drunks came out of the mesquite and woodwork. Dammit! Had there been someone hiding in the attic and Agnes’s shotgun blast wounded them? Then the person sat up and brushed leaves from her hair and clothing.

  Tall and thin, she had dark hair that fell to her waist and brown eyes. In her best earning days, she’d been the cream of the crop, but gravity had begun to work on her face, and at forty, she had hung up her hooker shoes and her suitcase of sex toys.

  “Good evening, Andy,” Darla Jean said.

  Andy extended a hand. “What in the hell are you doing sitting there? I thought you were a drunk or a dead man.”

  She reached up and took his hand. “I was on my way to see if you were dead and I fell down.”

  He pulled her up. “Why would you think I’m dead?”

  “Thanks for the hand. Figured Marty came home early from her classes, caught you, and killed you.”

  The woman had always intimidated the hell out of Andy. He cleared his throat. “It was Agnes, and she shot the ceiling. I got away without a scratch. I got to admit I ducked when that blast went off, though.”

  Darla reached out and brushed a bit of paper from his shoulder.

  “Trixie all right?”

  “She might appreciate you dropping by,” Andy said.

  “That’s where I’m headed.” Darla Jean kicked off the other flip-flop, leaving them both on the street.

  “That is littering, and it’s too late in the year to be wearing flip-flops,” Andy said.

  “What you were doing might be adultery, and what kind of shoes I wear is none of your business,” Darla Jean said.

  “I’m not married to Anna Ruth,” Andy said defensively.

  “But you were married to Trixie when you started sleeping with Anna Ruth, weren’t you?” Darla Jean shot over her shoulder.

  Andy picked up the flip-flops and tossed them in his trunk before he drove out of the church parking lot.

  * * *

  Trixie poured a second shot. She couldn’t remember when she didn’t know Marty and Cathy Andrews. Their mothers had grown up in Cadillac and were friends. Then she and the twins—and Jack Landry—had grown up together. First as toddlers in church, then as rambunctious kids, and later as teenagers. After graduation, Jack went into the Army, leaving Trixie, Cathy, and Marty to share everything: joys, tears, PMS, boyfriend troubles, divorce, sex stories, and everything in between.

  Through it all, they had each other. They’d been her bridesmaids when she married Andy right out of high school. They’d been her support system when she divorced him. And now they were business partners.

  Marriage to Andy had not been easy for either of them, but they’d been young and foolish. If they’d been older and wiser, they would have known that his obsession toward neatness and her I-don’t-give-a-shit-about-keeping-things-in-order attitude would never work. The only thing that kept their marriage together was wild, passionate sex, and his affair with Anna Ruth was the thing that ended it.

  A month after the divorce was final, Trixie had run into Andy at the Walmart store in Sherman, six miles north of Cadillac. His hand brushed hers and it was all downhill from there. They couldn’t keep their hands off each other anymore than they could back when they were in high school.

  Yep, she’d shared everything with her friends—except for Wednesday nights with Andy. Marty would kill him graveyard dead if she ever saw him in the house. Cathy was sweet enough that she’d provide the shovels to bury his sorry old ass out under the crape myrtle bushes in the backyard, and they could probably get Darla Jean to say a prayer over his body. But it was Marty who’d do the actual murder because she’d never trusted him. She said from the beginning, back when he and Trixie started dating her senior year in high school, that he’d been a player since he was old enough to talk a girl’s skirt up over her belly button and he’d never change. And he’d damn sure proven her right.

  “Sorry sumbitch. I’m not going to sleep with him anymore,” she declared.

  Darla Jean didn’t knock. She never did.

  “You all right, girl? I just ran into that SOB, and I did hear you say you weren’t sleeping with him, didn’t I?” she asked as she pushed the door open.

  “You did, but I won’t stick with it. You know I won’t. I never do.” Trixie shook her head from side to side. “The blast is still ringing in my ears, but it’s getting better. Did the sirens or the shot get your attention?”

  “Honey, my first thought was that the Rapture had come. I even said a prayer in case Jesus returned,” Darla Jean said.

  Trixie looked down at Darla’s feet.

  “Lost ’em out on the street, but Andy couldn’t leave them there to litter.” She laughed. “The pavement was still warm, and the grass felt pretty good on my feet. October in Texas don’t mean a person has to wear shoes, does it?”

  “What would you have done if it had been the Rapture?” Trixie asked.

  “Well, I wouldn’t be standing here if it had been. I’d have been on my way to glory. Evidently the good Lord needs me to stay here a spell longer and take care of all y’all over here at Clawdy’s. Now tell me what happened and how in the world you got Andy out so slick and how come Agnes looked like she was trick-or-treating.”

  Trixie raised her head. “That woman is going to be the death of all of us! Agnes was the one who called the cops and the ambulance. She thought I was being attacked in my room. I s
wear the old girl has a camera trained on the house. And she had a shotgun, I’m tellin’ you, a real, honest-to-God loaded gun. There’s a hole in the landing ceiling to prove it. And that’s not even the worst of it! She dragged her dead husband’s old clothes out of a mothball trunk and put them on so she’d look like a police officer. She had a fedora on top of that ratted-up red hair. You should have seen her!”

  Darla Jean poured a cup of coffee from the pot and heated it in the microwave while she nibbled on a leftover hot roll from lunch.

  “I did see her”—she giggled—“while I was sitting on the street where I fell.”

  “Are you all right?” Trixie asked.

  “I’m fine. Just my pride was hurt and your cheatin’ husband even gave me a hand up. Who was she trying to shoot? You or Andy?” she asked.

  “She blew a hole in the ceiling, and half the attic floated down on me. But it might have been a different story if I’d been holding that shotgun. We’d moved past the foreplay and were getting ready for the big production when the red, white, and blue strobes hit the window right along with the sirens.”

  “I wondered what all that dust was doing on you. Figured you’d taken up another hobby. You’ve got to start giving Andy a brushing before he leaves. He had your scrapbooking bits and pieces on him. They were shinin’ on that dark uniform out there in the moonlight. You can bet if I can see them in the dark, they won’t get past Anna Ruth.” Darla Jean sat down at the table. “You havin’ sweet tea?”

  Trixie held up her glass. “I’ve got J.D.’s special brand of tea.”

  “Whiskey and another woman’s man. Been there. Only difference was I got paid,” Darla Jean told her.

  “Oh, honey, I’m getting paid in more ways than one. I get good sex once a week, and I’m getting back at Anna Ruth at the same time. Why would he want to marry her? She can’t be good in bed because if she was, he wouldn’t be having sex with me every week,” Trixie asked.

  “Men marry for reasons other than sex. He don’t need it from her long as you are puttin’ out. Lord don’t look kindly on a woman givin’ it away to a married man.”

  “But it’s okay if you sell it to him?” Trixie asked.

  Darla Jean smiled, her big brown eyes twinkling. “Don’t reckon he looks too kindly on that either or else he would have steered me in the direction of bein’ a madam rather than a preacher when I quit the business. But this ain’t about my past sins, Trixie Matthews! You almost got caught, girl! God is talkin’ to you pretty strong. He’s sayin’ that if you don’t give up your wickedness, he’s goin’ to stop talkin’ and let Agnes take care of things. You want that?”

  “Hell no! I’d rather face off with the devil as that old girl. But I’m not giving up my Wednesday nights, either. I’ll just be more careful.” Trixie giggled and felt some of the pressure release in her ears.

  “There’s lots of men you can have sex with. Why Andy?” Darla Jean asked.

  “He drives me crazy. I make him nuts. I’m messy; he’s a neat freak deluxe. Perfect is barely good enough for him. Anna Ruth is the same way. But put me and Andy in a bed and, honey, it’s worth taking the risk for.”

  * * *

  Cathy was sitting in the back booth of the Rib Joint, a little barbecue joint in Luella, Texas, when her phone rang.

  “Shoot!” she mumbled. She was right at the end of the novel that just came out by Candy Parker, and it was so hot that she actually felt the heat coming through her e-reader. She’d discovered the author four years ago and preordered all her books the day they were available. She always bought them in ebook format. She couldn’t have faced Trixie or Marty if they’d known she was reading smut.

  Agnes would pitch a hissy if she picked up one of Candy’s books. Lord, she might have a coronary and it would be laid to Cathy’s charge. Yes, ma’am, it was much easier to keep them on the e-reader. Agnes wouldn’t even know how to access a book on it if she did find it lying about.

  The phone rang four times and then there was a pause before it started ringing again. Someone must be in big trouble to need to talk to her that badly.

  “Hello,” she said sweetly.

  “This is Beulah. I called Violet and she said you were already gone, and I called Marty but she’s not answering, and there’s not an answer at Clawdy’s. And I’m worried plumb out of my mind. There were shots fired and the police cars, the ambulance, and the fire truck are all over at your house. I’m afraid to go outside and Jack won’t answer my calls. I can just feel my blood pressure risin’. If someone has shot Jack, I don’t know if I can stand it. I’m looking out the window now, and there are policemen everywhere and they’re takin’ Agnes…my God, what is she wearing? Cathy, she’s shot Jack. And I’m afraid his black suit will be too small. Do you think they’ll let me bury him in his uniform?” Beulah’s voice cracked and she began to sob.

  “I’ll be home in five minutes, Beulah. Did you tell Agnes about the vote?” Cathy asked.

  “Oh, honey, it was awful, just awful. She cussed and carried on and threatened to shoot Violet. Oh my God! Do you think she went over to Clawdy’s and shot Trixie? I told her that Anna Ruth got chosen, but she was rantin’ about so much that she might’ve thought it was Trixie who kept her from getting in the club.”

  “Agnes wouldn’t do that even if she was mad. I’ll call you. Don’t worry, sweetheart—Jack is fine.”

  Cathy put her e-reader inside her oversize purse and headed for the door. Her high heels sunk into the gravel, and just as she got to her car, one popped clean off. She grabbed the hood to keep from falling. She hobbled around the car, crawled in, and looked longingly at her purse. A few more minutes and she’d have finished reading the chapter. She hated to stop in the middle of a scene, but it would have to wait.

  She started up the car and sighed. If only her fiancé, Ethan, could be as passionate as the men that Candy Parker wrote about. It didn’t matter if they were cowboys, firemen, Navy SEALs, or even mechanics. They all had one thing in common. They knew how to turn a woman on until all she could think about were their hands and lips on every part of her body.

  As she drove, she muttered, “So Ethan isn’t passionate. He is respectable and he has morals. After we are married, he’ll show more emotion. He just doesn’t want to get all involved when we’ve agreed not to have sex until we are married.”

  Actually, she could read about it every chance she got, but the real thing scared the bejesus out of her. In today’s world, women were not virgins at thirty-four—but Cathy was. Marty lost her virginity at the age of fifteen and came home that night to sit on her twin bed and tell Cathy every single detail.

  It had all started in high school right after Marty’s first bad boy cowboy talked her into a hayloft and Andy talked Trixie into the backseat of his car. It had been easy for Cathy to let them think that she had been doing it as long as either of them. It was the one thing, possibly the only thing, she kept secret from them. Well, that and her appetite for erotic romance. At first it was easy just to let them think she was bonking the guy in the library where she went every night. She never actually said that she had sex, but a little insinuation can go a long way. Like telling them that they should try doing it in between the back two bookshelves because the danger of almost getting caught was so exciting.

  Then when she was thirty and they’d gone to a male strip joint in Dallas to celebrate, she’d let them believe she was going home with Butch, the stripper cowboy in chaps, boots, and a barbed wire tat on his bicep. The next morning she just rolled her eyes and measured out about a foot between her hands when they asked her how things went with him in the motel room. Sometimes it wasn’t what you actually said but what they thought they heard.

  She held her breath as she turned off State Highway 11 and down Main Street. She didn’t see flashing lights or hear sirens anywhere near the café. Everything was as quiet as it was every Wednesday night when she pulled up in the driveway. She parked her car and hit the back porch in a jog, threw
open the door, and there were Trixie and Darla Jean sitting at the table, cool as cucumbers.

  Trixie looked at Cathy’s feet. “Is this barefoot night?”

  “I broke a heel getting here. Beulah called and thought someone had shot Jack in this house. She said there were police cars and even the ambulance. Please tell me they didn’t park on the lawn and ruin my flower beds. In the dark I couldn’t see a blessed thing and I just put the pansies out last week. They’ve not even had time to get adjusted to the ground.”

  “Your lawn is fine. The flower beds didn’t lose a single petal, and the trouble was Agnes,” Trixie said.

  “There were police cars, the ambulance, and the fire truck. But they kept it all on the curb,” Darla Jean said.

  Cathy’s eyes went to the glass Trixie was holding. “Tea with no ice?”

  “Jack Daniels, neat. Want one? You might need it before you go upstairs. Agnes brought her shotgun and blew a hole in the ceiling.”

  Cathy shook her head. She should be glad that no one was hurt and it was all a crazy mix-up, but she wasn’t. She’d wanted to sit in the Rib Joint and finish her book. She’d even begged off from dessert at Ethan’s, saying that she had to make sweet potato pies for Clawdy’s lunch the next day and she’d best get on home to get a head start on them.

  She pulled out a chair and sat down. She pushed the sleeves of her baby blue sweater up to the elbows, reached in her purse for her phone, and poked in some numbers. “I’ve got to call Beulah before y’all tell me the story. She thinks Jack is lyin’ over here dead, and she’s frettin’ about whether his black suit is goin’ to be too tight.”

  “That’s Beulah,” Trixie said.

  Cathy finished her call and looked up. “I smell mothballs.”

  “Agnes called in the troops when she thought she saw someone molesting me. I had candles lit and the shades drawn. Who knows what she saw. Probably me putting on or taking off my big chenille robe, and she came over here smelling like rat piss and mothballs,” Trixie said.