Last Chance Knit & Stitch (7 page)

Molly was in a terrible mood when she finally arrived at work. The parts had arrived for the piece-of-crap Hyundai, just as the rental car agency informed them that they would be sending a tow truck from Orangeburg. It appeared that Simon Wolfe didn’t actually need a rental car anymore since he had his daddy’s Taurus, not to mention all the vehicles on the lot at Wolfe Ford.

She turned her attention to Lessie Anderson’s fifteen-year-old Chrysler, which needed a tune-up. Molly was hip-deep in motor oil when her cell phone rang. She ignored it.

It rang again.

And again.

She climbed out of the service pit, wiped her hands on a dirty rag, and fished the phone from her pocket. She didn’t recognize the number. She was about to put the phone on silent when it rang again.

“Who the hell are you and why are you calling me?” she bellowed into the phone.

“Uh, it’s me, Ricki. You said I should call?”

“Oh, um, I’m sorry. I didn’t recognize the number.”

“I’m not using the store’s phone. There seems to be something wrong with it.”

Great. One more thing on Molly’s to-do list. “Besides the phone, what’s the problem?”

“Where do I find merino, and what the heck is it?”

Oh, brother. “Merino is a kind of wool.”

“Oh.” There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “Yes, but all this yarn is made of wool, isn’t it?”

Molly saw red. She opened her mouth to say something really snotty. But she stopped. Ricki wasn’t actually the person she was angry with. Momma was the main villain. Ricki was just an innocent bystander.

She took a calming breath and decided to treat this as a teachable moment. “Ricki, yarn is made from all kinds of fibers, like cotton and silk and even bamboo.”

“Really?”

Les Hayes came strolling into the garage. Les was supposed to be at work. What was he doing here? His big baby blues looked worried, even in the shade of his ball cap.

“Look, Ricki, I gotta go.”

“Oh, well, Lola May called, and she’s looking for dye lot 9824 of superwash merino.”

“Uh, Ricki, how could Lola May call if the phone isn’t working?”

Another long silence stretched out. “Well, uh, I kind of broke the phone. I mean I was trying to see if the yarn in the front was what she was looking for and the wire kind of came out from the phone.”

“Great.”

“No, it’s kind of not great, because the phone keeps ringing and I can’t answer it.”

“Unplug it, Ricki.” Molly no longer hid her exasperation. “I gotta go now.” She put the cell on silent mode and turned toward Les. “What are you doing here?”

“We have a big problem.”

Molly hoped he was talking about Momma leaving town and Ricki being clueless about yarn, because Molly didn’t need any more problems. “What is it?”

“The bank closed the dealership. Everyone was sent home—without pay. They gave us directions to the unemployment office. I’m headed there after lunch.”

Given the magnitude of his announcement, it was really rather remarkable that Les’s voice was steady, and he didn’t even sound panicky.

“Damn it! They didn’t waste any time, did they? And we don’t have anyplace to work on the Shelby. You got any ideas? When do we have to clear it out of there?”

“Uh, Molly, you don’t understand. The Shelby is locked up with everything else on the premises. And even though we have a bill of sale for the car, apparently it doesn’t matter. Ryan Polk was the one who made the announcement, and he told me that, as far as he was concerned, the Shelby is an asset of the dealership.”

“Well, that’s ridiculous.” The pitch of her voice headed toward the upper registers. Her hands started to shake, and the tops of her ears started to burn. She was furious. How could Ryan Polk do such a thing? He knew darn well the Shelby didn’t belong to Ira.

Greedy bastard.

“I tried to argue with Mr. Polk,” Les said, “but he had a bunch of security goons with him, and they were armed. Everyone was forced to leave with about five minutes’ notice. Molly, we aren’t going to get the car back anytime soon, and we’re going to have to fight the bank tooth and nail.”

She pulled a rag out of her pocket and started wiping grease from her hands. “We’ll just have to go talk to
Eugene Hanks. Or maybe we could take a contract out on Simon Wolfe.”

“It’s not Simon’s fault,” Bubba said, climbing out from under the Chevrolet he was working on.

“Of course it’s Simon’s fault.”

Bubba shook his head. “No. It’s not. Rachel’s uncle is in some kind of big hurry, and Simon has no power to stop him. I mean, Simon’s daddy owed Ryan’s bank a lot of money. I don’t think Simon set this in motion. I really don’t.”

“But he’s in a hurry to leave town,” Molly insisted.

“I know that. But it wouldn’t matter if he were staying,” Bubba said. “Ryan isn’t going to let Simon lay his hands on the dealership. That’s pretty clear. And I doubt Simon would be successful fighting over it in court since the business owes the bank all that money. The only good news is that the business is separate from Ira’s personal finances. Simon is planning to stay because he was named executor of the will, which means he has control over what happens to the house. It’s a good thing Aunt Charlotte’s house is protected from the bank, otherwise I wouldn’t put it past Ryan Polk to turn his own sister out. Course Simon is probably going to sell the house and move her off to California. So either way it sucks to be Aunt Charlotte.”

“Simon probably wants to pocket the money from the sale,” Molly said.

“Nah. Not Simon. I don’t think money motivates him. I think he’s just stuck here between his mother and his uncle. I kind of feel sorry for him. I’m telling you, some of my wife’s kinfolk could be described as money-grubbers. It’s not easy being related to those people, even by
marriage. You should hear the conversations I sometimes have with my mother-in-law. Honestly, the Polks can be pretty narrow-minded when it comes to cash.”

Les plopped down on a shop stool and changed the subject. “Bubba, you think LeRoy might hire me? I’ve got a lot of contacts with F-150 owners. There are going to be a lot of them looking for a reliable service center now that the dealership is closed.”

“You should talk to him,” Bubba said.

“Les, we need to make a plan for getting the Shelby back and finding a place where we can work on it. Why don’t I take you to dinner tonight at the Pig Place? I mean, Momma’s gone and—”

“Uh, well …” Les’s face turned red.

“What?”

“I, uh, kind of have a date with Tammy Nelson.”

“With Tammy? Of the horse teeth?”

He gave her the stink eye. “She does not have horse teeth. They are just really white.”

“And big. Almost as big as her—”

“Don’t say it, Molly.” Les hopped off the stool. “I’m going to go talk to LeRoy. Is he in?”

“Yeah, but we need to—”

“Molly, take a big breath and calm down, will you? There isn’t anything we can do about the Shelby right now. So there isn’t any point in letting it make you angry. And I have a date with a pretty woman, which I’m not going to break. Maybe tomorrow we can talk to Eugene, but I don’t have the money right now to hire a lawyer. Do you?”

“No, but we can’t let Ryan Polk steal our car, can we?”

M
olly hadn’t planned to attend tonight’s meeting of the Last Chance Book Club. She didn’t have anything nice to say about their book selection this time. Besides, she had planned to work on the Shelby.

But the bank had screwed up that option. And when she got home from work, she found her lazy, no-account brother sleeping on the couch, dirty dishes in the sink, and laundry overflowing the hamper in the bathroom.

She probably should have gone grocery shopping or tackled the laundry, but that would have ticked her off worse than she already was. So she took a shower, made herself a grilled cheese sandwich with the last remaining piece of American cheese, and headed out for her meeting.

Thank goodness Savannah White was on refreshment detail this week. She arrived with the most amazingly delicious apple strudel.

Molly found herself standing around the refreshment table with several club members including Jenny Carpenter, Arlene Whitaker, and Rocky deBracy, the wife
of the English baron whose textile machinery plant was single-handedly creating an economic renaissance in Last Chance.

“Honey,” Rocky said to Savannah as more members of the club trickled through the library doors, “you have to enter this strudel in the pie contest at this year’s Watermelon Festival.”

Savannah gave Jenny a little smile, as if she knew that Jenny’s string of pie-baking victories was about to come to an ignominious end. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said sweetly. “It’s not my recipe. It’s my granny’s. And I think she already won a few blue ribbons at the festival.”

Jenny maintained her composure. And why not? Jenny’s pies were as amazing as Savannah’s strudel. Molly was impressed by the baking prowess of both of them. When it was Molly’s time to bring refreshments, she always stopped at the doughnut shop.

Jane Rhodes waddled in carrying her knitting bag and looking like an over-inflated hot-air balloon. “Hey, honey,” Arlene said, draping an arm around her niece-by-marriage, “when are you going to have that baby?”

“I don’t know. I’m already three days past my due date, and I’m tired of people looking at me slant-wise and asking me why I’m still here. Like I’m going to disappear once baby Faith is born.” She ran her hand over her baby bump.

“So you’ve settled on a name?” Rocky asked. The baby in question was going to be Rocky’s niece.

Jane nodded. “Yeah. But I’m starting to think that she’s holding out until I finish this sweater.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a pink baby sweater that was missing one arm. Jane had been working on this sweater for weeks and weeks.

She gave Molly a pleading look. “I’m desperate. How do I pick up the stitches around the armhole again? You walked me through it on the first arm, but then I forgot how to do it. And I was going to go ask your mother, but I saw the notice on the door. Where is your mom?”

“That’s one of those unanswerable questions,” Molly said. “Apparently she’s gone to see the world. And she didn’t think she needed to take Coach with her.”

“Well, good for her,” Arlene said. “Don’t get me wrong, Moll. I love your daddy. He’s a great football coach and all, but he’s been ignoring your momma for some time.”

Molly didn’t respond to this. Because the more she thought about the situation, the more she realized there was blame on both sides. Coach had ignored Momma, but it wasn’t right for Momma to take off without a word and leave everything on Molly’s shoulders. She clamped her mouth shut and took Jane’s knitting into her hands.

She immediately relaxed. What was it about knitting that always calmed her down? She felt the same way when she was working on a car. Whenever her hands got busy, her brain slowed down, and she could live in the moment.

She was deep into a knitting lesson when Nita Wills, the town librarian, called the group together. Hettie Marshall Ellis had arrived. Hettie was the CEO of Country Pride Chicken, the second largest employer in Allenberg County. She had also recently eloped with Reverend William Ellis, the pastor of Christ Episcopal.

No one in town, much less the book club, knew how to deal with this new reality. Hettie was often regarded as the Queen Bee of Last Chance, but that seemed like a very unlikely role for a minister’s wife.

When everyone had settled down, Nita kicked off the book discussion. “I have a number of questions about our selection this time, but before I start, does anyone have a question of their own?”

“Yeah,” Molly said, “why on earth did we pick this book?”

A titter of laughter met this comment, but Nita wasn’t smiling. “I take it you didn’t like the book.”

“Nita, the book is over a thousand pages. I got to page two hundred and threw the paperback against the wall. Honestly, this was the most depressing thing I’ve read since
The Road
. Why do we read these books?”

“She’s got a point,” Arlene said. “I mean, I’m all for capitalism and freedom and all that, but honestly the author goes on and on about it. And she seems to think that anyone who gives to charity is either misguided or downright evil.”

Lola May snorted. “Arlene, didn’t you know that the best way to help poor folks is to let rich folks get richer?”

“Well, that is the morality that Ayn Rand espouses in this book,” Nita said.

“Well, it ain’t very moral,” Lola May countered.

Cathy Niles let go of a long, mournful sigh. “Can we read something light and fun next time? I really liked it when we read
Pride and Prejudice
. I’d like to read a love story that doesn’t involve the characters having long-winded conversations about original sin, morality, and free love. I don’t know about y’all but I don’t find any of that even remotely romantic.”

“That’s the point,” Nita said. “We’re reading to—”

“Nita, the book is just BS, and frankly someone should have edited it. It was boring,” Savannah said.

Everyone looked in Savannah’s direction. The use of even abbreviated profanity was frowned upon, especially with a minister’s wife in attendance.

Savannah faced them all with cool aplomb. “I’m sorry, y’all, but the ideas in this book are just mean. For instance, if folks followed Ayn Rand’s philosophy, The Kismet would have been torn down and replaced with a new, shiny, soulless multiplex. Instead, Dash helped Angel Development put money into the old theater, even though we all know it’s probably never going to show a profit. But having a theater will build up our community. And that’s important. Sometimes the community is just as important as the individual. And sometimes an individual needs help.”

“Hear, hear,” Molly said. “If it weren’t for Ira Wolfe and his generosity, I wouldn’t be anywhere near getting my own business off the ground. Of course, I can’t say the same about his no-account son, or Ira’s brother-in-law. Did y’all hear about how the bank closed the dealership?”

Everyone nodded except Savannah. She just stared at Molly, kind of the same way she’d stared yesterday at the Purly Girls meeting.