Violet snarled and growled. “You are a mean, jealous witch.”
“That’d be the pot calling the kettle black. Ain’t it nice that they’ve got a potty in your cell, though? You sure you want your son in there with you?” Agnes asked.
Andy opened the door and Ethan preceded him into the hallway in front of the jail cells. “Mother?”
“You can’t come in here. It’s too horrible. What if the press saw you sitting in a jail cell? It would ruin our chances at election.”
“I didn’t come to sit with you. We’ve paid the city fine for aggravated assault and we are taking you home,” he said.
“Well, shit!” Agnes whispered. “I really wanted to see if she’d use that pot.”
“Aunt Agnes!” Cathy and Marty chimed in together.
“Just get me away from that woman,” Violet said.
“Don’t you dare go home and sleep with my dear Herman,” Agnes yelled.
“Go to hell!” Violet screamed back.
“Nope! I keep tellin’ you that I ain’t spendin’ eternity with you.”
The door slammed and Agnes cackled. “We showed her, didn’t we? Bet she thinks twice before she calls Cathy a slut again.”
Marty bristled. “She did what?”
“I took care of it real good so don’t get your dander up. That felt so good that I wish I’d done it fifty years ago.”
It was thirty minutes before Andy came back. “Okay, Violet is at home now so I’ll let you go. Fifty-dollar fine for public disturbance, Agnes.”
“Pay him, Marty.”
“Why me?” she argued.
“Because I took up for your sister and kept you from a murder charge. You’d have killed her for calling Cathy a slut,” Agnes said.
Chapter 13
Agnes appeared the next morning with gauze wrapped around her arm from wrist to elbow and carrying it in a sling that smelled like mothballs. A bit of overkill for a scratch, but Trixie wasn’t saying a word.
Cathy hugged her gently. “Oh, Aunt Agnes, does it hurt?”
“Violet probably had rabies up under her fingernails. You reckon I need to take those horrible shots in my belly?” Agnes was able to use the arm very well to dip sausage gravy over the tops of two big buttermilk biscuits.
Cathy giggled. “We’re never going to live this down.”
Agnes’s sparkling eyes and tight little smile told Trixie that they’d not seen the end of the fifty-year-old cat fight.
“Sweet Nothin’s” was playing in the café when the chimes on the doorbell let everyone in the kitchen know the first customer of the day had arrived. Trixie went through the swinging doors backward, tying her apron. She stopped so fast that she almost pitched forward when she came face to face with cameras and a microphone pushed into her face.
“Miss Andrews?” The lady with the microphone took a step closer and a cameraman started filming.
“No, I’m Trixie. Which Miss Andrews do you want?”
The camera clicked off.
“Clawdy, of course,” the woman said.
“There is no Clawdy. The café is named for Claudia Andrews, but she passed on a while back. Would you like to speak to Cathy or Marty Andrews—they are her daughters?” Trixie asked.
“Either one will do fine,” the woman said.
“Hey, Cathy, you better take this one,” Trixie yelled toward the kitchen.
Cathy was stunned to see a cameraman with Sherman’s television station logo on the side. “What is this all about?”
The little red light flashed on the camera.
Agnes pushed her way in front of the cameras. “You want to know about the fracas at the football field last night, you ask me, not her. That was all my doings and she had no part in it.”
“We are here to ask you how you feel about this zoning business. We all love this cute little café in this area and would hate to see you have to sell out. Will you think about relocating to a bigger place, like Sherman or Denison, if your zoning laws are changed?”
“That was resolved at the last Council meeting,” Cathy said.
“It’s been reopened for review. The company that was looking at the house across the street decided to buy property in Sherman. And we have it from a good source that the Cadillac City Council is once again trying to decide if they’re going to rule that your house isn’t zoned for a business.”
“We thought it was taken care of. We’d have to discuss our options before we could make a statement. I’m in business with two partners,” Cathy said.
“This is all Violet Prescott’s doing,” Agnes said.
“Ethan Prescott’s mother?” The lady reporter gave the cameraman a sign to keep the cameras rolling.
“That’s right. It’s a long story, but she attacked me at the fireworks show last night. See?” Agnes held up the arm. “I might have to take rabies shots.”
“She bit you?”
“Who knows what she did, but just to be on the safe side, I’m on my way to the doctor’s office to see if a human bite can cause rabies.” Agnes limped out of the camera’s view into the kitchen.
“Well, Miss Andrews, thank you. We are doing a piece on the economy and how rezoning portions of our small towns might bring more business into them. Would you sign a release form giving us permission to air this?” the lady asked.
“Yes, ma’am, I will. Anything to help the small businesses,” Cathy said.
Damn that Violet Prescott. She should have left well enough alone. Now they’d have to watch Agnes like a hawk. Violet had no idea what kind of shit storm she’d just kicked up.
* * *
It was not what Darla Jean expected when Agnes opened the door and motioned her inside her home. It did not smell like mothballs but like bacon and biscuits. It didn’t have doilies and knickknacks everywhere, but was nicely decorated in earth tones.
“What the hell do you want?” Agnes asked.
“I’m your spiritual adviser and I’m advising you to ride down to Blue Ridge with me today,” Darla Jean said.
“Why would I do a fool thing like that?”
Darla Jean gave her a brief account of Lindsey, but she didn’t tell her that Cathy had called after the camera crew had left. The café was suddenly swamped with customers who seldom ever went out to lunch. And none of the three could watch Agnes so they’d enlisted Darla Jean’s help in keeping her out of meanness.
“Well, why didn’t you say so? Does this Lindsey and your sister know you are a hooker?” Agnes asked.
“I’m a preacher in the Christian Nondenominational Church and I’d just as soon not broadcast my past,” Darla Jean told her.
“Yes, but you used to be a hooker.”
“And you were pretty ornery yourself last night. I understand that you and Violet are sleeping with the same man. He must have a lot of stamina for an eighty-year-old man.”
Agnes laughed. “Okay, I’ll go with you. Cathy sent you to keep me out of trouble, didn’t she?”
Darla Jean smiled. “A spiritual adviser is bound by the same laws as a lawyer and his or her client. I’m sworn to secrecy, and if I answer that question, then God might not even let me dust off the clouds in heaven.”
“Honey, you’ll have to pray until there’s calluses on your knees ’fore God lets a hooker into heaven.”
Darla Jean said, “Way I figure it is if Jesus loved that woman at the well and she was a prostitute, he could love all of us, even you, Agnes.”
“He told her to go and sin no more,” Agnes said. “I reckon you are trying to do that part. Well, what in the hell are we waiting for? We can’t have Cathy worrying and burning the red beans or scorching the turnip greens. I heard she was making one more batch of pepper jelly today with the last of the jalapeños from her little garden. It would be a damn sin if she didn’t get it done up rig
ht. So you are my babysitter and I promise to be a good little girl today. Just don’t expect it every day.”
Agnes settled into Darla Jean’s vehicle and said, “I never thought about you having family. Your sister got any kids?”
“No, she never married. She was engaged to a fine young man and he was killed in Vietnam. She never got over it, but she’s really taken to Lindsey like a mother hen.”
“I wanted kids,” Agnes said. “Didn’t get them and Bert died when the twins were small so I kind of adopted them. You know they’re named after me and my sister. Martha Agnes and Catherine Francis.”
“They sure named them right. Marty is just as mouthy as you are,” Darla Jean said.
“Be careful now. At my age I can claim that I don’t remember promising to be good!”
“Okay, right three blocks down and then a left. I see it right now.”
“What do you see? I don’t see jack shit. This place hasn’t even got a McDonald’s,” Agnes said.
“No, but Betty’s church is having a dinner, so we’re eating lunch there.”
“Who died?” Agnes asked.
The parking lot was small but there were at least a dozen cars angled in toward the church.
“No one. It’s the monthly ladies’ auxiliary meeting and they have food. Hungry?”
“Starving, and I love church dinners. They are the best.”
Darla Jean settled Agnes in right beside Lindsey at the end of a long table. Agnes lowered her chin and whispered, “Tell me his name that hurt you and that sumbitch won’t never see the light of day again.”
Lindsey’s smile lit up the room.
“If you’ll tell me your story, I’ll tell you about the fistfight I got into yesterday. I’m wearing this so people will feel sorry for me and hate Violet for giving me rabies,” Agnes said.
“Violet is a dog?”
“She’s a bitch, but she’s only got two legs.”
Lindsey giggled. “You go first.”
“Nope, I’m hungry and you already got to eat so you talk first,” Agnes said.
Lindsey had barely smiled in the past week and hadn’t even opened up to Betty, but in less than two minutes she was talking to Agnes.
“Look, Betty.” Darla Jean tilted her head toward the other end of the table.
Chapter 14
A blast of bitter cold wind hit Cathy in the face when she opened the door and she almost ran back to the nice warm restaurant. It wasn’t just the cold. She didn’t want to go home. But it was midnight, closing time, and John had to get home to his wife, Maggie Rose. He talked about her a lot. She loved ribs. She liked a walk before bedtime. She loved to watch television.
He followed Cathy outside and to her car. He crawled into the passenger’s seat. “Turn on the heat and talk to me a while. Tomorrow is Sunday. You don’t have to open your café and I’m closed so we can sleep late.”
Imagining him as the hero in her romance stories was one thing. Sitting in the car with him when his wife might come around the corner and get the wrong idea was another. She liked her job at the Rib Joint. It put her in the midst of a very different bunch of people than she saw at Clawdy’s. They were exciting, wild, and loud. She darn sure didn’t want to get fired because the wife was jealous.
He sighed. “I’m in a Jesus mood. I could use some company.”
“A what mood?”
“A Jesus mood is what my grandma called it when I got like this. She said that I wouldn’t know what I wanted, and if I got it, I wouldn’t want it, and Jesus couldn’t even live with me. Talk to me. Tell me why you were in that fracas on the football field parking lot the other night at the craft show.”
Cathy blushed scarlet. “You were there?”
“I was for a little while. I ran out of Coke syrup and my friend at the convenience store had a spare. I drove by in time to see a fight going on. You do have a twin sister. I could hardly tell you apart from a distance. The elderly lady who was fighting? The one you were having trouble holding back, what’s her name?”
“That would be my Aunt Agnes who is actually my great-aunt, my mother’s aunt.”
“What happened?”
“It’s a long story.”
“It takes a lot to get me out of my Jesus moods, and I’ve got all night.”
“You want me to start with ‘In the beginning, God made dirt,’ or just jump into the fight scene?”
He chuckled. “I want the whole thing from the day of the dirt manufacturing.”
“Okay, but remember you asked for it. Won’t Maggie Rose be worried?”
“Give me just a minute to go make things right with her. It won’t take long. If you leave, you’ll be responsible for whatever I do when I’m in this mood.”
“I’ll wait,” she said.
Reading erotic fiction. Working at a place that sold beer. Talking to a married man after midnight. Aunt Agnes would take away her good twin crown.
He was only gone a minute and when he opened the car door, a small bundle of black and tan fur bounded inside, bounced up into her lap, and looked up at her with big brown eyes.
She rubbed the dog and it licked her hands. “Well, hello, pretty baby. Do you live here or are you lost?”
John reached out and touched the Pomeranian on the head. “I’ll be damned. She doesn’t usually like anyone but me. My friends can’t get close to her. She only weighs five pounds but she acts like a pit bull.”
She laughed as the dog licked her chin. “I’m a pushover. Dogs know it. You know what they say about not being able to fool dogs and kids.”
“You got that right. Cathy, meet Maggie Rose, my muse and best friend.”
* * *
The Lone Star Restaurant on Main Street in Cadillac did something that Clawdy’s didn’t, and that was opening for business on Sunday. They closed on Monday instead. That Sunday, Cathy, Marty, Darla Jean, and Trixie claimed the last table in the place. They were still looking over the menus when Agnes hollered from the front of the café.
“Get me a chair, Myrtle. I’ll eat with the girls,” she said.
The gray-haired waitress pulled a chair from a side wall and Agnes settled in beside Darla Jean. “So y’all beat the Baptists, did you? Must not take y’all as long to save, sanctify, and dehorn as it does us. If it wasn’t for not lettin’ Violet win, I’d change my membership just for that reason.”
Marty nodded toward the door. “Speak of the devil.”
Violet and Ethan stepped inside the door and looked around.
Violet and Agnes both saw each other at the same time. Violet shot evil looks across the café and Agnes fired them right back at her. If their stares had had sound effects, folks would have been running from machine gun fire.
Cathy reached out and touched Agnes on the shoulder. “Aunt Agnes, you stay right here.”
Agnes held up a palm toward Cathy. “I’ll go home and eat cat food before I let her sit at our table even if we do have room. You will not be that nice today, not after the things that bitch said about you.”
“I wasn’t going to suggest that. I just didn’t want you to go up there and antagonize her,” Cathy said.
“Well, I damn sure don’t want Ethan sitting here,” Marty said. “That would be as bad as letting Andy join us.”
“Wow! I didn’t know anything was that bad in your eyes,” Trixie said.
Darla Jean tilted her head toward the front of the café. “Guess if she can’t run you out of church, then you aren’t allowed to run her out of this place on Sunday. Are we going to have to split the church in two like Solomon was going to do with that baby?”
Agnes shrugged. “Y’all going to the Council meeting about this zoning shit tomorrow night?” She changed the subject.
“Oh, yeah!” Trixie said. “Are you going this time?”
“Damn too
tin’ I am. Anywhere Violet is, there I’ll be from now on. She don’t like it then she can leave town.”
“Aunt Agnes, you wouldn’t show up at the club, would you?” Cathy gasped.
“Hell, no! She can have that one, but only if she’s nice to your sister. One smart-ass remark about you and I’ll use her to wipe up her driveway and let the whole damn club watch. Hell, I might sell tickets.”
“Aunt Agnes, didn’t you listen to the preacher this morning?”
“I always listen. Sometimes I don’t agree.”
“Move over.” Jack grabbed an extra chair from a table for four with only three people at it.
He sat at the end with Trixie on one side of him and Darla Jean on the other. “I only got an hour. Don’t have time to wait for a booth or table. I’ll get y’all’s dinner since you are letting me sit by you.”
“Well, thank you, Jack. That’s sweet,” Agnes said.
“Missed you at church,” Trixie told him.
“You did?”
“Sure. There were old scrooges this morning. I could have used a smiling face.”
* * *
Ethan touched Violet on the wrist. “Don’t look at them. Pretend like you don’t even know they are there.”
“She just makes me so mad,” Violet whispered.
“Well, hello!” Anna Ruth sat down beside Violet. “Are you okay, honey? That was horrible the way Agnes treated you.”
“It was, wasn’t it?” Violet whimpered just enough for effect.
Anna Ruth patted her on the leg. “Y’all are waiting for a table, I guess?”
“Yes, we are. Looks like… oh, no!” Violet’s eyes almost popped out of her head.
“What? Are you ill? Can I get you some water?” Anna Ruth asked.
“Mrs. Prescott, we have a table for you,” Myrtle said.
It was the table right beside Agnes’s. She simply could not be that close to the redheaded witch. But Myrtle was already leading the way. It was follow or lose—those were Violet’s options, and she damn sure wasn’t going to forfeit to Agnes, especially when Lone Star was the only place open on Sunday. She stood up, back ramrod straight, and followed Myrtle to the table right beside Agnes.
The Sisters Café Page 18
