Pies and Prejudice (8 page)

“I won’t be baking anything for weeks, Reba. We have to remodel first.”

Shrugging, Reba walked Ella Mae to the back door. “All I’m sayin’ is that you’d best start gettin’ yourself on a schedule. The roosters won’t even be stirrin’ when your alarm goes off, but you gotta get your body used to wakin’ up before dawn. Bake a bunch of pies now and stick ’em in the freezer. You never know how many contractors will need a little butterin’ up.”

Ella Mae admitted that this was wise advice and then gestured at her newly pressed pants. “If I ride my bike into town…”

“I’ll drive you. I’ve gotta do some banking myself.” She grinned. “And I’m in the mood for a sucker. A green one. I don’t know what they put in the dye, but those green ones are the best. Taste a wee bit like cough syrup and cotton candy mixed together.”

“Ugh.” Ella Mae laughed. “You can’t beat the yellow ones. They taste like a day at the beach.”

Reba drove like a seventeen-year-old boy. She roared down the roads in her mammoth Buick, radio blasting, kicking up tornadoes of dust. She adopted the overly confident motorist’s practice of rolling stops and pretended to be completely unaware of the stick on her steering column that would activate her turn signal.

They reached the bank with plenty of time to spare. Ella Mae felt a little queasy, and her knuckles were bleached white from gripping the handle as Reba swerved around an elderly man edging the nose of his station wagon into the street.

“Just how many moving violations do you have?” Ella Mae asked the diminutive woman sitting beside her.

Pulling up to the drive-through teller lane adjacent the bank, Reba missed scratching the paint off her side mirror
on the building’s red brick by centimeters. “Honey, I’ve flirted my way outta more tickets that you can imagine.”

While Reba conducted her business with the jocular and chatty teller, Ella Mae rolled down her window in hopes of inviting a wisp of fresh air into the Buick’s stifling cabin. Reba had long rebelled against air-conditioning, claiming that Freon clogged the lungs.

She took her sweet time filling out her deposit slip, too busy exchanging gossip with the teller to realize that Ella Mae was wilting and that a long line was forming behind her car.

The growl of a diesel pickup truck pulling out of the teller lane to the right of the Buick caught Ella Mae’s attention. She watched as a large white Mercedes sedan took the truck’s place. The luxury car gleamed in the morning light like a polished opal and Ella Mae briefly wondered who was on the other side of the tinted window.

As though sensing a shift in the air, Reba abruptly stopped talking and swiveled her head to the side in order to check out the Mercedes.

“Knox,” she said, clearly intrigued. “Last time I saw him, he was drivin’ a beat-up Suburban. He’s sure come up in the world.”

Bradford Knox had eased down his dark window and was thrusting a freckled arm out of a form-fitting suit coat in order to grasp the plastic transfer tube. As Knox shifted in his seat, straining to reach the tube, his herringbone blazer bunched up at the neck. With his severely receded hairline, pronounced nose, and thick neck protruding from the crinkled suit jacket, Loralyn’s fiancé bore a close resemblance to a box turtle.

Catching Ella Mae’s eye, he smiled, conveying his embarrassment over having to struggle so hard to grab hold of the tube. She smiled back. No matter how close she got to those tubes, it was always a strain to close her fingers around the slippery plastic. She gave the older gentleman a
sympathetic nod, and in this brief exchange, Ella Mae decided that Bradford Knox was a likeable fellow, regardless of the car he drove or the woman he had chosen to marry.

Her congenial feelings toward Loralyn’s senior citizen suitor were reinforced by the courteousness with which he addressed the bank teller. Reba had finally signed her deposit slip but had yet to place it in the metal drawer, so now both of the drive-through lanes were thoroughly congested by a pair of chatty customers. Amazingly, no one in line seemed to mind. There were no honks or shouts or threatening raps against the window. Ella Mae reflected that had this holdup occurred in Manhattan, it was likely that someone would have already suffered bodily harm.

“I forgot how good it feels to slow down,” she whispered to the sunshine bathing her forearm. She listened to the birdsong coming from the magnificent magnolia shading the bank’s parking lot and marveled at the dinner-plate size of the tree’s white blossoms. Ella Mae was jarred from the tranquil moment by the abrupt clanging of the fire station’s alarm bell.

A baying from Knox’s passenger seat echoed the alarm, and Ella Mae leaned forward to catch a glimpse of an aged bloodhound, snout raised to the roof, howling his mournful tune. The wail of a passing fire truck momentarily prevented any further conversation between the tellers and their customers, and everyone froze, waiting for the sound to decrease in volume.

Ella Mae started to laugh. She found the bloodhound’s throaty song and the passions with which he bayed both funny and endearing. Bradford Knox smiled even wider and then put a comforting hand on the glossy fur of his dog’s left shoulder. Their shared mirth quickly dissipated when the rear window slid down to reveal the glowering face of Loralyn Gaynor.

“You are
not
going to get that property away from me!” she shouted angrily over the siren’s clamor.

Startled, Ella Mae gestured at the front of Knox’s car. “Does your fiancé enjoy his dog’s company more than yours?”

Loralyn glowered. “I refuse to sit on that seat. It’s covered in disgusting dog hair. Besides, I like being driven around. It befits someone of my status. Now, as I was saying, that property is mine!”

Ella Mae leaned farther out the window and tried to think of something to say that would assuage Loralyn’s ire. “The bid’s already been accepted. Let it go. I’m sure your fiancé will buy you something equally amazing as a wedding gift. He seems like a nice guy.”

Bradford Knox didn’t hear this exchange as he was doing his best to cajole the bloodhound into crooning out the passenger window but the dog turned the opposite direction and howled right into Bradford’s ear.

“You’ll be sorry you messed with me!” Loralyn spat. “If you go through with your plans, I’ll make sure your business fails. I’ll tell people I found bugs in your food. Or hair. Maybe even a fingernail!”

“Oh, grow up!” Ella Mae cried. “Don’t you ever get tired of being a bully?”

Whipping off her designer sunglasses, Loralyn’s eyes narrowed with hostility. “You took what was rightfully mine and I am
not
going to let this go! I own two nail salons, Little Miss Betty Crocker, so it’ll be all too easy to find something
unsavory
to put into a cherry pie or a chocolate tart.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Ella Mae growled loudly.

Loralyn grinned a wolfish grin. “I
would
! I’m tired of you LeFayes trying to steal my family’s thunder! You’re not our equals. Never have been and never will be. Your aunt Delia is beyond flaky, Verena is a pig, Sissy is a drama queen, and your mother is an arrogant, rose-snipping bitch!”

Ella Mae inhaled sharply and glanced at Reba to see whether she’d heard this string of insults, but Reba had her head out of the window and was yelling to the bank teller
through the speaker. Ella Mae caught the phrases “she didn’t!” and “wait until her husband finds out!” before turning back to her childhood nemesis.

“I refuse to respond to your baiting, Loralyn. I’m going to open my shop and you’ll have to deal with it!” She was sorely tempted to stick out her tongue and wiggle her fingers behind her ears like a triumphant five-year-old.

Loralyn laughed and the sound gave Ella Mae goose bumps. There was no joy in her laughter. It was a harsh, grating noise like the scrape of a fork against metal. “You’re a fool, Ella Mae.” She smoothed back a stray hair and glanced around to see whether anyone could possibly hear her over the cacophony created by the alarm and the bloodhound. “I’ve seen you riding your mutt around in your bike basket. It would be
such
a shame if he got loose and met with an accident. He’s such a
tiny
, little thing. So fragile.” She raised her brows suggestively.

Ella Mae felt the temperature of her body rise, the pink skin of her cheeks darkening to a shade of rhubarb. Infusing her voice with all the menace she could muster, she mixed her age-old hatred for Loralyn with the ripe anger Sloan had ignited in her, she opened her mouth and cried, “Stay away from my dog
and
my family! If you don’t, Lord help me, I will KILL YOU!”

Two things occurred seconds before Ella Mae’s threat was launched from her throat into the heavy Georgian air. The siren abruptly ceased and Loralyn raised her window, cutting off the end of Ella Mae’s words with the precision and finality of a guillotine’s blade.

In what now seemed like deafening silence, her shout assaulted Bradford Knox instead, slamming into him like a prizefighter’s right hook. His eyes widened and he put his hand over his heart, as though to ward off a second blow. Reba’s chatter was forgotten and the juicy tidbits of gossip coursing back and forth between the Buick and the bank teller dried up like a desert riverbed.

Ella Mae looked away from Knox to see the teller staring at her, openmouthed in astonishment. Behind the garrulous bank employee, a second teller and the branch manager looked at Ella Mae with a blend of shock and disapproval.

People in Havenwood simply did not behave in such a manner. Ella Mae knew that by high noon everyone in town would know what she’d said and that her lack of good manners would be blamed on too many years of city living.

It was with a sickening turn in her belly that she realized Reba still had her scarlet fingernail pressed against the bank window’s speaker button. Ella Mae could see that the faces of the customers in line were all turned in her direction.

The silence was absolute.

“Reba,” Ella whispered, gently pulling on the offending arm. The call button sprang back out and the teller’s metal drawer slid closed. “Can we go?”

“But I didn’t get my sucker!” Reba protested.

Sinking down in her seat, Ella Mae said, “I’ll buy you a whole bag of suckers. Just get out of this drive-through!”

“You’re gonna have to go inside anyway, darlin’. No avoidin’ it. Make sure to get me a green sucker when you’re done, ya hear? The ones at Piggly Wiggly don’t taste the same.”

Reba waved to the slack-jawed teller and gunned the car out of the lane, pulling to a stop at the bank’s entrance with a screech of brakes. Ella Mae was tempted to sit and wait in the Buick’s sweltering cabin until the current group of bank customers exited the building, but her future was waiting for her. It called to her, in a sweet voice that nonetheless demanded obedience, and she rushed to answer.

By the end of the next business week, the LeFaye women owned the property at 9 Swallowtail Avenue. To celebrate the closing, they decided to go out to dinner at Le Bleu, the elegant restaurant inside Lake Havenwood’s luxury hotel. Reba had been invited too, but declined.

“I’ve got a date with a hot mailman,” she’d explained to Ella Mae. “My regular carrier is about as sexy as an elephant seal, but he’s recoverin’ from foot surgery and the United States Postal Service saw fit to send me a James Dean lookalike. Sure, he’s older and thicker in the waist than Jimmy D., but I sure like the spark of devilry I see in his eyes.”

“Have a good time!” Ella Mae had called as Reba sauntered out the door wearing a sequined miniskirt and flip-flops, her hair in a cloud of tight curls, and then silently wondered if she’d ever look forward to dating again.

That night, she slipped into a celery-hued wrap dress, pulled her wavy hair back into a neat twist, and tucked a gardenia blossom behind her left ear. Her mother was radiant in a turquoise dress and a stunning necklace of platinum beads. Her black hair tumbled down her shoulders, the strands of silver framing her face reflected the light from her necklace, and for a moment, standing beneath the purpling sky, she appeared far younger than her fifty-eight years.

Ella Mae’s aunts were already seated at a table with a stunning view of Lake Havenwood when she and her mother strolled into the restaurant. Every head in the room turned to watch their progress.

Verena, attired in a black dress with a white jacket embellished by a fuchsia silk flower, shouted for champagne and the waiter hustled off to obey. Sissy wore a silk poet’s blouse and several strings of pearls while Dee wriggled uncomfortably in a form-fitting dress made of yellow linen.

“Stop
fidgeting
,” Sissy chided amiably. “You can’t wear those overalls every day!”

Dee pulled on the tail of her braid and flashed a self-effacing smile. “I like all the pockets. It feels strange not to have gum or Life Savers or my phone on hand.”

“Gum? You used those pockets to conceal your cigarettes back in high school,” Adelaide teased.

“And
other
things,” Sissy added with an enigmatic wink.

The waiter arrived carrying an ornate silver ice bucket on a tall stand. A second waiter held a tray of champagne flutes aloft and deftly placed a delicate crystal glass in front of each of the women at the table.

Verena waited until their glasses had been filled with the golden sparkling wine and then rose to her feet. “To The Charmed Pie Shoppe. May everyone who steps through its pink raspberry doors be changed by the experience!”

As Ella Mae raised her glass toward the center of the table, gently clinking rims with her mother and her aunts, an orb of light formed, like an immature planet within the center of their circle of glasses. It was too bright to look at directly, so Ella Mae averted her face. She’d done the same thing at the lake earlier, when the sun had reflected off the water’s mirrored surface. But this light was more complex. It had the shadowy depth of a cut diamond and hovered in the air like a Fourth of July sparkler freed from its stick.

Ella Mae caught her breath in disbelief, the hairs on her arms standing on end as a feeling like an electrical current shot through her body. She felt infused with a rush of unadulterated power. It was intoxicating and frightening and yet she did not want the sensation to stop. Not ever.