It was ten thirty when Trixie finally had time for a five-minute break and poured herself a cup of coffee. She sat down at the kitchen table with Cathy and Marty and buttered a leftover biscuit. She’d barely gotten the first bite when the back door slung open and the faint aroma of mothballs filled the room.
“Good mornin’, Aunt Agnes,” Cathy said. “You had breakfast?”
“Hell yes, I’ve had breakfast, but that was hours ago. I wish y’all had the buffet up and ready. Now I’m ready for fried chicken.”
“It’s not ready, but I’ve got some leftovers from yesterday. You want me to pop them in the microwave?”
“Got beans and greens?” Agnes asked.
“Maybe a cup full of each.”
“Two pieces of dark chicken and whatever beans and greens you’ve got with pepper jelly on the side for my corn bread,” she said.
“You’re not mad at me? I figured you’d still be mad because you were wrong last night,” Trixie said.
“I don’t like you enough to be mad at you and I wasn’t wrong. Somebody was in that room with you. I’m mad at Cathy,” Agnes declared.
“What did I do?” Cathy asked.
“You’re the one who put Trixie’s name in the pot for the social club. If you hadn’t done that fool thing, then there would have been the six votes for me that she got.”
“And I didn’t even want to be in the damned old club,” Trixie said.
“How did you vote?” Agnes pointed at Marty. “I figured Cathy wouldn’t betray me, but she did. I guess you did too.”
Trixie waved to get everyone’s attention. “Okay, Agnes, how did you vote in the last presidential election?”
“That is not one damn bit of your business,” Agnes huffed.
“Point proven then,” Marty said. “Voting is private.”
“And Beulah should not have told you how many votes went which way,” Cathy chimed in.
Agnes shook her finger at the lot of them. “I’m going to be in that social club before I die. Speakin’ of which, Violet is about to put in a miserable year. It’d be in her best interest to shoot a member”—she looked right at Marty—“or find a way to make one move.”
“Why don’t you shoot Violet? She’s the one who doesn’t want you to be a member,” Trixie said.
“Because I want her to be alive and well the day she has to give me that little club pin to put on my lapel that says I’m a member. Put my food in a to-go box, Marty. I’ve had all of y’all I want for one day. It’s a cryin’ damn shame when a woman’s nieces treat her this way.”
“You can have my pin,” Marty said.
“Those are the gaudiest damn things I’ve ever seen! I don’t know why you’d want one of the ugly things,” Trixie said.
“I know! Back when Violet and Mamma designed them, they were to show the Fannin County women’s club that they had bragging rights to the hottest jalapeños in the whole state. Did you know they only had twenty-one of them made and that’s the reason there can’t be any more members in the club than that?” Cathy said.
“I thought the original charter said twenty.” Marty raised an eyebrow.
“It did, but Grandma wanted an extra one made just in case someone lost theirs. That’s why they had the extra one so that we could both get in.”
“Hmph,” Agnes snorted. “Nobody ever lost one of those ugly things. Hell, Violet would stand at the Pearly Gates and kick them into hell if they lost a club pin.”
Trixie giggled. “BR—Bitches Rule—in ruby red letters. Then the little emerald green jalapeño, which must stand for hot as hell. And after that S in rubies. I heard that in the beginning there was a big argument and the S should be a C for club instead of an S for society.”
“It stands for ‘stupidity,’” Agnes said.
Brenda Lee was belting out “Sweet Nothin’s” when the front door opened, and Trixie left Agnes still fussing, Cathy trying to calm her down, and Marty unloading the dishwasher. Customers had to be waited on no matter what the kitchen drama of the day was.
“What in the hell are you doing here?” Trixie hissed when she saw Andy.
Andy bypassed the cash register counter and sat down at a table in the old dining room. “A piece of sweet potato pie and a cup of coffee. That’s not a very nice line for a waitress. It won’t get you a tip, even if you do look like a young version of the woman singing that song. And would you please pour the coffee and cut my slice of pie? Marty might do something evil to it. I figure if Anna Ruth is welcome here, her being a club sister and all, then I should be able to get a good meal here at Clawdy’s. Right?”
“The sweet potato pie won’t be ready to serve until noon. All we have left from yesterday is pecan cobbler,” she said.
“My favorite. Add some of y’all’s whipped cream to the top. Not any of that stuff out of the tub or the can, either. I know the difference in fake and the real thing,” he said.
“Don’t bet on it, buster,” Trixie said.
Trixie filled a bowl with cobbler, warmed it in the microwave, and then topped it off with the last of yesterday’s whipped cream. She poured a cup of coffee, put both on a tray, and carried them out to Andy’s table.
Damn the club anyway! She could wring Cathy’s neck for putting her name on the ballot. And who in the devil did Marty vote for? If she had cast her vote for Anna Ruth, Trixie was selling her part of the business and moving plumb out of Cadillac.
* * *
Clawdy’s only served breakfast and lunch. Most days the lunch rush was over and done with by two and the café cleaned up by three, but that day, it was four straight up when Marty turned off the music. When the sisters got serious about converting their parents’ home into a café, they used their mother’s record covers for decoration and played the old music from them all day. It made a lively conversation starter when folks heard the song and tried to find the cover hanging on the wall that went with it. Thank goodness many of the old records had been remade into CDs. After that it was just a matter of buying a fancy player that held multiple CDs and changing them every night.
Marty shucked out of her jeans right in the middle of the kitchen floor and carried them to the utility room. She peeled her shirt over her head and threw it in the basket beside the washer and found an old grease-stained sweatshirt in the dryer and a pair of gray sweatpants that were stained up just as bad.
“See y’all later. I’m off to the garage. Trixie, give me your keys and I’ll get the oil changed in your car before we start on the Caddy.”
Trixie fished keys from her purse and tossed them. “Thanks a bunch.”
Marty caught them midair. “You’ve got that Chamber meeting, so I’ll get it done while you’re over at the community center. What are you doing this evening, Cathy?”
“Soon as I get out of these clothes, I’m going to make sure my flowers are all right, prune the crape myrtles, and harvest another crop of peppers before it frosts. I’ve got seeds, but I swear the people coming in here to eat can put away two quarts of pepper jelly a day.”
“You always plant the peppers right where your grandma and mamma did?” Trixie asked.
“Oh, yes. I’d be afraid to move them anywhere else for fear they wouldn’t do as well.”
“I bet the secret to raisin’ them hot devils is in the soil then, not in the pepper seeds.”
Cathy put a finger over her lips. “Shh. I figured that out a while back, but we can’t let the Fannin County women know it or they’ll be digging up my dirt. I don’t know what they put in that dirt, but it grows some fine jalapeños. What are you doing until Chamber time?”
“I’m going to tally up today’s receipts and get a bank deposit ready to put in the night drop. After the meeting, I’m going to work on my scrapbook. Mamma’s birthday will be here soon, and I’m hoping the pictures will jog her memory so she’ll be he
rself that day,” Trixie answered.
“I’ll see y’all later.” Marty waved from the back door. She jogged from the house to the garage, a freestanding building at the back of the lot where her vintage Caddy was kept. She inhaled deeply at the door. Oil, grease, tires, and car wax. It was the most exciting thing in the world, next to a naked cowboy in a hayloft.
“Hey, you’re here!” Jack’s head popped up from under the hood. He already had grease on his nose and a smear across his forehead. “Must’ve been one helluva busy day, but then it’s not every day that Agnes almost kills me, is it?”
Jack wasn’t the hunky material for a hero in her book, but he was a good-looking man. His brown hair was kept in a military cut, his shoulders were wide, and the spare tire around his waist wasn’t too awfully big. His hazel eyes were kind, and he’d never, not one time, let her down when she needed a friend. Like her, he could fix anything under the hood of a car. And he was a whole hell of a lot better at bodywork than she was.
“How’d you get into the story?” Marty asked.
“Mamma called Violet since you weren’t answering your phone and told her that shots had been fired and I was dead. Rumor has it that Agnes was doin’ the shootin’ and that I got shot protecting Trixie. Trixie was the dirty culprit, and the whole thing had to do with y’all’s club stuff.”
“It’s like that game we played when we were kids and someone whispered a sentence in your ear. By the time it got to the end of the line, it was so far removed from the original that it was just plumb crazy.” Marty giggled. “We need to change the oil in Trixie’s car before we start on the Caddy.”
“That because you feel guilty that you voted for Anna Ruth and not Agnes or Trixie?” Jack asked.
Marty sputtered and stammered, “What did you just say?”
“Mamma said that you folded your ballot and that you came in late and was the only one who put a folded one in the bowl. Don’t worry, I’m not telling, and if Mamma hadn’t thought I was dead, she probably wouldn’t have let it slip either. She’s afraid that if any of the club members find out that she let the cat out of the bag they’ll kick her out. Must be something sacred goes on at those meetings. Do y’all kill a fatted calf or what?”
Marty opened the old rounded refrigerator with rust around the door and pulled out a beer. She jerked the tab off and guzzled a third of it before coming up with an unladylike burp.
“Not bad for a skinny-ass girl.” Jack laughed. “Come look at this belt. Think we ought to replace it? You going to tell me about the fatted calf?”
“I wouldn’t know. The only time I show up is to vote. We’ll change the belt if it needs it. Which one?”
“The long one right here,” he said.
Six months before, one of the belts had blown, and Marty lost control out on a country road. A tree stopped the car and Marty wasn’t hurt, but the Caddy suffered severe front end damage. Jack had been helping a couple of nights a week.
She carried her beer to the pegboard where belts, small spare parts, and tools were neatly arranged. She picked out the right one and laid it on the fender.
“Where’s your beer?” she asked.
“I just got here a minute before you did. Alarm didn’t go off when it was supposed to. Here. You put on the belt, and I’ll get one,” he answered.
She took a screwdriver from his hand, deftly removed the old belt, held it up to the light, and pointed at the split. “Another mile and we’d have had a real problem. Can’t have the old girl breaking down right in the middle of the Cadillac Jalapeño Jubilee parade, can we? She’s been leading the pack for more than forty years.”
She was putting the new belt on when the wrench popped off and her knuckles hit the engine. She jerked her hand back, shook it, and yelled, “Son of a bitch!”
“Hurt?” Jack asked.
“What the hell do you think?”
He took her hand in his, and before she could wiggle, he poured the rest of her beer right on the open cuts. “That’ll heal it. You want me to put the belt on?”
“Hell no! My hand is busted up now, and I’ll make a damn believer out of it all by myself. Some friend you are, pouring beer on my poor hand.”
“Bubbles will clean it out. Stop your whinin’ and let’s get this damn thing on.”
“Soon as this belt is on, we need to change the oil in Trixie’s car. Should have done it to begin with and I might not have busted my knuckles. Wipe that grin off your face. Some friend you are,” Marty said.
“Ah, you know you’ve loved me forever,” Jack teased.
He had lived right next door his whole life and he’d moved back home two years before. He’d planned on staying with the military the full twenty years, but after that last tour in Iraq, he’d had enough.
The yards were split by a white picket fence with lantana on Cathy’s side and miniature roses on Beulah’s side. A gate was located right in the middle of the long expanse of fence and still squeaked on its hinges like it did when Cathy, Marty, Trixie, and Jack had run back and forth between the yards and houses all their growing-up years.
“What are we going to do in the evenings when we get the Caddy completely finished?” Jack asked.
“Well, I expect we can drink beer and just sit back and enjoy our work. Long as I can prop up my feet, talk to my friend even when he teases me, and smell oil and transmission fluid, I’m a happy woman.”
That time the belt slipped on as slick as if she’d greased the posts with hot butter.
“We could go over to my house and watch movies,” Jack said.
“Your house don’t smell like oil and transmission fluid. And I bet Beulah would pitch a hissy if we took beer in the kitchen door.”
“Yes, ma’am, she would. Speakin’ of kitchens?” He waggled his eyebrows.
“There’s some cold fried chicken and a plate of fried fish left.”
“Any Cathy’s sweet potato pie?”
“Couple of pieces and I think there’s a little bit of loaded mashed potatoes left in the refrigerator.”
He nodded. “I’ll have both slices of that pie and I want pepper jelly for my biscuit. Ain’t nobody in the world can make pepper jelly like y’all do. It’s my favorite.”
“With whipped cream and lots of it on the pie, right?” Marty smiled. Jack had always liked eating at her house better than his mamma’s. Beulah, bless her heart, knew her way around a kitchen, but what she produced couldn’t compare to Claudia Andrews’s cooking.
* * *
Trixie darted upstairs, took a fast shower, and dressed in black slacks, a red shirt with black lace on the scoop neck, and black high heels. She was the Chamber of Commerce delegate for Miss Clawdy’s Café. The Chamber and the City Council both helped with all the festivities in Cadillac, and that night they were discussing the craft festival, which was always held the weekend before Halloween. After that there would be the Jalapeño Jubilee in November and finally the big Christmas Ho-Ho-Ho Parade and Carnival in the middle of December. Then there was the town musical in the spring between Easter and Mother’s Day and the July 4th festival. Cadillac was one busy little town.
Each partner at Miss Clawdy’s had a community job. Trixie had been on the Chamber roster when she worked at the bank, so she was familiar with all the members and kept that place. Cathy was a member of the club and they were always big in the Jalapeño Jubilee. Marty was the secretary of the local Kiwanis Club and they did the Christmas Ho-Ho-Ho. So they all had a holiday responsibility.
Trixie looked up at the clock. She still had fifteen minutes. She might have time for a piece of cold fried fish if she ate fast. They’d have finger foods at the committee meeting. The Lord would strike Beulah Landry dead if she didn’t bring her deviled eggs to every single function and Beulah, like Violet Prescott, was one of the grand matriarchs of southern Grayson County. And Annabel would bring fancy co
okies. Someone else would have those little tidbits with ham and cheese rolled up in flour tortillas and cut into bite-sized pieces. In Cadillac, folks brought food to everything. It didn’t matter if it was a Chamber meeting, a funeral, or a baby shower. The catch was that the food wasn’t served until the function was over and Trixie would starve if someone got long-winded at the Chamber meeting.
Trixie grabbed a piece of fish and was about to take a bite when Agnes pushed into the kitchen. “I’m hungry. Y’all got any fish or chicken left? And I want a piece of that sweet potato pie, too.”
“Got some fish and a few pieces of chicken. The pie is gone. Marty carried the last two pieces out to Jack.”
“Well, shit. She’s probably bribin’ him to keep his mouth shut about the vote.” Agnes pulled down a to-go box and loaded it with chicken strips and fish.
“How would he know anything about that stupid club?”
“His mamma talks too much. Put this on my bill. I’m still not talkin’ to you.”
“You would have talked to Anna Ruth if y’all were in club together, though, wouldn’t you? And she’s not a bit better than my mamma.”
“No, she’s not, and when I get into the club she’d best be married to that philanderin’ son-of-a-bitch you couldn’t hang on to or I’ll vote that we kick her sorry ass out. I’m leaving now because I’m not talkin’ to you.”
“You going to fix the ceiling?” Trixie called out when she was on her way out.
“Hell, no! I was protecting you so you can get someone to come fix the ceiling. Besides, the twins need to update the upstairs anyway. I’ll never understand why they’d sink all their money into a café, for God’s sake. And namin’ it such a stupid name. Don’t be askin’ me to bail you out when it goes belly-up in this economy. Folks ain’t interested in good food. They want something fast and easy,” Agnes said.
The Sisters Café Page 5
