Rogues & Rascals in Goose Pimple Junction (Goose Pimple Junction Mysteries Book 4) (3 page)

Caledonia opened the door to the lawyer’s office, giving herself a burst of cool air, and stuck her head in. She saw Melba Davis, her friend from church, behind the reception desk. “Melba toast, tell him I need to reschedule, okay, sugar?” she said in her genuine Southern twang.

“Well sure . . .” but she didn’t hear the rest of what her friend said; she had closed the door and was already halfway across the street before the woman had half a sentence out.

The store’s bell tinkled as she stepped through the door. “Good afternoon, Caledonia,” Miss Penny said with a pasted-on smile.

“Good afternoon, Penny,” she said, thinking rather than saying her favorite nickname for the woman: Bad Penny. “Do you by chance have that red dress in the window in a size six?”

“A six? For you?” She gave Caledonia the once-over as if judging her size and deciding a six was preposterous.

“Yes. For me.” Caledonia forced a smile and stared at the woman, daring her to come out with another one of her veiled insults. Caledonia’s mama always drilled into her how to be a gracious Southern woman, and a Southern woman didn’t make catty remarks or act rude in public, no matter what she may be thinking. Her smile held.

“Well, I imagine so. Let’s have a look-see.” The store was full of round racks of clothing, and Miss Penny walked through the tight aisles, her hands adjusting the clothing she passed. She stopped at a rack of dresses against the far wall. Finding the size on several of them, she pulled out two dresses.

Penny turned and said, “We’ll take the size eight back there too, just in case.” She winked at Caledonia and turned to lead the way to the fitting room. Sticking her tongue out, ever so quickly, at the woman’s back erased Caledonia’s smile.

The dressing room door closed. As soon as she had her dress off, she heard Miss Penny, a woman two years older than her and a constant burr in her butt since high school, say in false sincerity, “You just let me know if you need a bigger size now, you hear?”

Caledonia took a deep breath and said, “How lovely.”

She was delighted with the size six. The knee-length dress did wonderful things for her figure. She thought it showed off her size 34C bust with just the right amount to look sexy but not slutty, and it showed off her toned calves. She turned and checked the view from the back in the three-way mirror. “And it clings to my behind and shows off my greatest ass-et,” she said under her breath, giggling at the pun.

“Uh-oh,” came the sing-songy voice of Miss Penny on the other side of the door. “I hear laughter. Surely it isn’t that bad. Should I get you one of our body shapers? They’re tummy
and
thigh trimming, you know. Some people say it really helps hide those unwanted extra pounds that so many older women have. Or do you want me to see if I have a size ten?” Her voice went to an annoyingly high pitch at the end of the sentence in her attempt to be not-so-innocently helpful.

Caledonia clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle what she wanted to say. She could hear her mother’s voice admonishing her to “be kind, considerate and, above all, always a lady.”

So instead of what she was thinking, she said, “Why, no, precious, this one will do just fine.” She opened the dressing room door, and with a smile, deposited the size eight dress into Miss Piggy . . . Um . . . Penny’s hands. “I won’t be needing that one,” she scrunched her nose as punctuation, “sugar.”

Because she didn’t want to give Bad Penny any more business than she absolutely had to, and she certainly didn’t want the woman knowing all
her
business, she walked around the corner to The Panty Waist, a lingerie store, where she bought a lacy pair of red panties and matching strapless bra. She’d have to pull the big guns out, so to speak, she thought with another giggle.

On her way home, she called her husband, Philetus Swift Culpepper IV. “Hey, darlin’. I have a surprise for you,” she cooed into the cell phone. “You
will
be home at the normal time tonight, won’t you?” She listened and then said, “Great,” making it a three-syllable word. “I’ll see you soon, sugar.”

She hung up as she walked past Slick & Junebug’s Diner, looking in the window at the busy restaurant. Her smile faltered when she spotted her husband with . . . the little Dutch Boy? No, it was that insipid shyster woman lawyer who reminded her of the little Dutch Boy. Caledonia remembered her mother’s advice to never show anger in public, so she kept walking, smile firmly in place, confident that her husband would never be romantically involved with the likes of that woman. But why hadn’t he mentioned who he was with?

Caledonia was ready and waiting when Philetus came through the front door four hours later. She’d spent all afternoon getting dressed, starting with a long bath—”showers are for men,” her mother used to say—followed by lotion, powder, and perfume. She rolled her hair in big fat curlers to give it volume, and she applied just the right amount of makeup. And finally, the dress. She was twirling in front of her full-length mirror when her seventeen-year-old son Pickle came into the room.

“Gosh, Mom. You look real pretty.”

“Thank you, darlin’.” She kissed and patted his cheek. “Now, hon, I ordered a pizza for y’all, and you have the movie. You make sure your brother takes a bath and gets in bed at nine, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am. We already went over all this, Mama.”

“Well, I know, darlin’, but it’s my job to worry over my babies. You wouldn’t deprive me of my God-given right, would you?”

“Oh, Mama,” Pickle groaned. She kissed him again and rubbed the lipstick off his cheek with her thumb.

“You really are awful pretty tonight, Mama.”

After her careful preparations that took all afternoon and her son’s genuine compliments, she was devastated when her husband walked in and didn’t seem to notice her efforts at all.

She made a drink, handed it to him, and then stood back to give him a full view. Trying outwardly to act casual, she was inwardly crushed.

Finally, his drink finished, he asked, “So what’s for supper?”

She pasted on her smile again and said, “I’m taking you out tonight, sugar britches.”

He frowned. “What about the kids?”

“They’re staying home and having a pizza.”

“What’s the occasion? It’s not your birthday or anything is it?”

“No, silly. I thought it would be nice for just the two of us to go out is all.”

“Humph. What would be nice is for us to have a Visa bill under three thousand dollars this month,” he grumped.

She took a deep breath, smiled, and called out, “Pickle, Peanut, we’re going now. Y’all behave.”

The kids came running to say goodbye, and nine-year-old Peanut said, “Is Pickle really the boss of me while you’re gone?”

“Yes he is, my little peanut. And you best mind him, or I’ll be on you like ugly on an ape.” Caledonia used a combination of her serious voice and sweet smile that told her children she was serious, but she loved them dearly.

Dinner at The Silly Goose did not meet Caledonia’s expectations but not because of the restaurant or the food. Every man in the room—except for Phil—was aware of Caledonia Culpepper. He was moody and sullen, using his mouth to down three gin and tonics instead of talking to his wife. And since text messages dinged throughout their dinner, his attention was more on his cell phone than his wife. She tried to ignore it all and made several attempts at conversation. First, she tried discussing the upcoming cotillion at the country club.

“Caledonia, it’s not a damn cotillion. It’s more like a kegger, for gosh sakes.”

“Oh foo, every party’s a cotillion to me. You know that.”

She talked about politics, but Philetus had no opinions on the state of the economy or international affairs, and he did not contribute to the conversation.

She told him about the question their youngest son had asked that afternoon, “Weren’t Cain and Abel’s wives their sisters?” But Phil had no idea how to answer that, and he was too tired, he said, to think about it now.

Toward the end of the evening, he did finally take notice of his wife’s appearance. When they’d finished eating, she excused herself to the ladies’ room to powder her nose (which really meant apply her lipstick because her mama had taught her to never be seen in public without her lipstick perfectly applied). When she sashayed back to the table, all male eyes in the restaurant were on her sashay. She noticed her husband look up from his phone to her, and she saw his expression go from a smile to puzzled. He kind of tilted his head, squinting his left eye as he studied her.

She sat. “What?” She had visions of toilet paper sticking out of her dress or something equally as horrible.

“Did you go to the barber shop today?” he asked.

She stared at him for a long moment and then stood and quietly said, “It’s been lovely. But let’s go home now, Philetus.”

In their bedroom that night, she took her time getting undressed, waiting for him to notice her new lacy lingerie.

“Is that new?” he finally asked, just when she was ready to give in and put on her cotton pj’s.

“Yes,” she said hopefully, turning quickly to him, an instant smile on her face. But it was frozen in place after his next comment.

“How much did that set me back?”

Caledonia couldn’t figure out where she’d gone wrong. She was a good cook and provided carefully thought-out meals for her family. She took care of the kids and the house without the aid of a maid or a nanny. She made life at home easy for Philetus so all he had to do was go to work and come home. She thought of interesting things for them to do, places to go, and things to see. She never blew her nose in public or said a cuss word worse than “goshdarnit” or “dagnabbit.” She didn’t smoke, drink, or chew, and she didn’t associate with those who do . . . well, she maybe sipped—a lot—but she was never drunk in public.

And she never, ever, ever wore white shoes before Easter or after Labor Day.

She thought her mother would have been proud of the Southern woman she had become. Why wasn’t her husband proud?

She lay in bed that night, wondering what to do. She’d used her feminine wiles to her utmost power but to no avail. It was as if she were invisible to him.

Her mind went to the night of a Christmas party they’d attended. Beforehand, she’d coiffed, buffed, puffed, and readied herself until she glowed. Philetus didn’t take notice. But she did overhear him noticing a coworker.

It had hurt her to the core when she overheard him tell the woman, “You look great tonight, by the way.” It wasn’t just the words he’d said, but the way he said them that hurt. He was tender, sincere, genuine, and flirty. He’d never said anything like that, or in that way, to her—ever.

She’d cried herself to sleep that night, just as she did tonight.