Текст книги "Spring Fever"

Автор книги: Mary Kay Andrews

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

Like everybody else in Passcoe, as well as at the company, Annajane had been thoroughly charmed by her first meeting with Celia.

Davis had been singing the praises of the hotshot management consultant he’d met on a business trip to Chicago for months.

“Mama actually met her first, if you can believe it,” he’d told Annajane at a meeting the day after he returned.

Sallie often tagged along with both her sons on business trips after Glenn’s death. Not that she had much to do with the day-to-day operations of Quixie, but she’d made friends over the years with people in the soft drink business, and Annajane suspected she was eager to go along on the trips because it gave her a chance to get out of Passcoe, stay in the best hotels, catch up with old pals, and shop. Sallie Bayless was a world-class shopper.

“Mama was sitting in our suite, leafing through the program for the marketing meeting, and she got all excited when she saw that Celia Wakefield was on a panel about brand building,” Davis said. “Turns out, she’d just bought a little dress for Sophie from a company called Gingerpeachy at some ritzy boutique up there and went crazy over them,” Davis said. “Of course, Gingerpeachy is Celia’s company. Or was, until she sold it. Sallie insisted on sitting in on Celia’s panel, and she was so impressed, afterwards she invited Celia to meet us for dinner. I had drinks with her in the bar first, you know, just to see if she checked out.”

Davis rolled his eyes dramatically. “Of course, I took all of this with a grain of salt. I mean, come on, what does Sallie know about brand building, or marketing? I tried to get out of it gracefully, but you know Sallie. Damned if she didn’t force me to go to dinner, and damned if she wasn’t right. Wait until you meet this gal, Annajane. She’s the real deal!”

“This is a woman who really understands branding,” he told Annajane. “She built her own company from scratch—kids’ clothing, starting from the time she was twenty-one years old, working as a sales clerk at a little boutique in the middle of nowhere. She was the designer, the manufacturer, the marketer—everything. Last year, she sold the company to a big retailer. Believe that? Ten million dollars! Guess she’s gotten bored with the good life, because she’s doing consulting work these days.”

A few weeks later, Davis called her into his office and introduced her to Celia.

Annajane’s first impression had been that this was the most exquisite creature she’d ever met. The chair she was sitting in seemed to swallow her whole. Even with five-inch stiletto heels on her lime-green pumps, she was barely a notch above five feet tall. Her blond hair was silvery against a deep tennis-player’s tan, and her pale lavender suit and low-cut lime-green silk shell should have been too girly for business. But on Celia, it was perfection. She reminded Annajane of a hummingbird. The only thing missing was a tiny pair of wings.

“Annajane!” Celia had said, leaping up to shake her hand. “Davis has told me so much about you. He says you’re the heart and soul of the company. How can I lure you into going to lunch with me and sharing your insights on Quixie?”

Of course, Annajane had been flattered. Flattery was one of Celia’s many talents. She was warm and bubbly, so easy to talk to. They’d had a hilarious lunch, laughing and talking about the quirks of working for a small-town family-owned company. Celia had seemed surprised to learn that Mason was Annajane’s ex-husband.

“Really? And you still work for the company after all that? How do you stand it?”

Annajane winced now at how easily it had been for Celia to draw her into her confidences. For a few weeks, they’d been best buddies, sharing drinks, lunches, even a shopping trip to Charlotte.

Everybody, it seemed, loved Celia. Everybody except Pokey.

“She’s a phony,” Pokey said, after the first and only lunch date with Annajane and Celia. “If she’s so rich from selling her own company, why is she piddling around with contract consulting work for Quixie?”

Secretly, Annajane wondered if Pokey’s dislike of Celia wasn’t just a case of good old-fashioned jealousy. With three small children to ride herd over, Pokey was out of the loop on lots of things. And Annajane and Celia were seeing a lot of each other. But she kept that to herself.

Instead, she repeated what Celia told her about herself. “She’s only thirty-two. I think the payout is probably over a number of years, and some of it’s actually in stock she can’t touch for a few years. She’s too young to retire, and, anyway, she’s one of these people who always have to be doing something. She loves a challenge. And you’ve got to admit, with the way things are going, we’ve got a big challenge on our hands at Quixie.”

“She wants more than a job,” Pokey warned. “You wait and see.”

But before Annajane could come up with a good defense for Celia, the memos started.

Like Celia herself, they were charming and disarming initially, couched as questions at first, then as suggestions, and then, within a very short period of time, as directives and missives. Celia’s range was broad—she was interested in anything and everything that happened at Quixie, and no detail was too small for her laserlike focus.

But it wasn’t until she was on the receiving end of one of those memos—this one a coolly worded e-mail she received after filing an expense report following an out-of-town marketing association meeting—that Annajane realized just how lethal Celia’s influence could be.

AJ: Don’t you think it’s excessive to bill the company for airfare, meals and a night at an expensive New York hotel when we both know these conferences are really more about gossip and personal networking than they are about Quixie business?—CW

Stunned, Annajane had fired back with a memo of her own, detailing the subject matter of each meeting she’d attended and its value to the company, and adding the fact that she’d spent the other two nights of the conference in an old friend’s apartment, which cost the company nothing. And she’d ended her memo with one last observation.

CW: Obviously, I disagree with you about the value of these conferences. And by the way, didn’t you meet Davis and Sallie at a conference just like this one?—Annajane.

After that, there were no more lunches or shopping trips. She had, she admitted to Pokey, finally seen Celia’s true colors. And they weren’t pretty.

But to everybody else at Quixie, especially Mason, Celia Wakefield was regarded as the second coming. The one time Annajane had dared complain to Mason about one of Celia’s pointed memos to her, Mason worked himself into a righteous indignation.

She’d entered his office meekly and couched her objection as tactfully as possible, but he’d issued her a stinging and immediate rebuke. “Frankly, criticism of Celia, coming from you, seems kind of petty. She sees the big picture, Annajane, something we desperately need right now. She’s done a great job of analyzing these types of things, and I have no intention of reversing her.”

Annajane could see the matter was closed. She and Mason had managed to keep their relationship at the office on an even-keeled, professional level after their divorce, but during that brief meeting, she realized things had changed. Celia was making sure of that.

Not long after that, she noticed that Celia had been given her own parking space, with her name stenciled on the pavement, situated between Mason’s and Davis’s in the company lot. And not long after that, she’d seen Celia and Mason leaving for long lunches together. Soon, they were arriving at the office together on Monday mornings.

“He brought her to Sunday dinner at Mama’s,” Pokey reported. “You know how many women he’s dated since you two split up—and he’s never brought any of those women around the family. Hell, we never even met Sophie’s mother. I’ve got a bad, bad feeling about this chick.”

It wasn’t long before Annajane came to realize just how astute Pokey’s assessment of Celia was.

The day Celia and Davis presented her with plans for the upcoming summer promotion with the Donnell Boggs tie-in, a promotion she’d had no hand in at all, Annajane realized that Celia had quickly and stealthily cut her out of the decision-making loop in the marketing department. Before that day was out, Annajane had begun updating her résumé and quietly putting out feelers to find a new job. Her days at Quixie, she knew then, were numbered.

Still, the engagement announcement, just six weeks after her own engagement, had taken Annajane totally by surprise. And not, she would admit now, in a good way.

Celia Wakefield was not a woman to be trusted.

*   *   *

Annajane’s cell phone rang, startling her badly. She groped on her desk to find and answer it.

“Hello,” she whispered.

“Hey, Annajane,” it was Mason, sounding … awkward.

“Hi,” she said, already feeling guilty about eavesdropping on Celia.

“I’m over at the hospital, and Sophie’s awake, and asking for you,” Mason said. “I told her you’re pretty busy what with the move and all, but…”

“I was just wrapping up some work, and then I’ll be over,” Annajane said hurriedly. “How’s she feeling?”

“She’s kinda pitiful,” Mason admitted. “She’s trying to be brave, poor kid, but she can’t understand why it still hurts. I thought maybe you could take her mind off it.”

“I’ll stop on the way over and pick up a video we can watch together,” Annajane said. “I’ve got her copy of Milo and Otis at my place. She never gets tired of seeing that.”

“Great idea,” Mason said, sounding relieved. “Should have thought of that myself.”

Yes, Annajane thought to herself. You should have. Or your fiancée should have—if she weren’t so busy plotting something nefarious.

Annajane got up from her desk and looked around the room with a sigh. She really should make a start on clearing out some of this old junk before leaving for the hospital. That wooden bookshelf nearest the door, for example. The bottom shelf held a row of dusty cardboard filing boxes that had been sitting there since she’d moved into the office eight years ago. As far as she knew, the boxes hadn’t been touched for decades before that.

She grabbed the hand truck she’d borrowed from the plant and stacked three of the boxes on it. The cartons were unexpectedly heavy. A plume of dust arose as she lifted the lid of the carton on top, and she sneezed repeatedly. Inside the carton were stacks of age-browned file folders with fading but neatly typed labels. The top file was labeled CORRESPONDENCE, 1972. Clearly, the boxes contained nothing anybody had needed or wanted in the past forty or so years.

Annajane maneuvered the unwieldy load of file cartons through the plant and out to the loading dock, where a large Dumpster was located. She grunted as she hefted the first box into the empty Dumpster. But when she bent to unload the second box, which had been somewhat crushed from the weight of the top box, its sides collapsed, spilling the contents onto the concrete surface of the loading dock.

“Dammit,” she muttered, scooping up a load of papers.

Her mood changed when she saw the contents of the box. They were slick, full-color mechanicals of vintage Quixie advertisements.

The top ad had a vividly rendered illustration of Dixie, the Quixie Pixie, perched on the top of a Christmas tree, winking impishly and offering a bottle of Quixie to two pajama-clad children peeking around the corner of a living room that could have come straight out of a 1950s movie.

GO AHEAD, the ad’s headline urged. SANTA WON’T MIND.

C ELEBRATE C HRISTMAS WITH Q UIXIE C HERRY C OLA!

“Oh, wow,” she breathed, looking closer. A notation on the bottom of the mechanical indicated that the ad had run in the December 1957 issue of Look magazine. The illustration was signed, in the corner, with familiar block lettering. She blinked and looked again, but the signature was still there. Norman Rockwell.

She had no idea the company had once hired the country’s most famous illustrator for its ad campaigns.

Annajane looked at another mechanical. This one was for the June 1961 issue of Saturday Evening Post and showed Dixie again. The illustration had the mascot water-skiing behind a sleek speedboat driven by a pair of windswept but gorgeous bathing-suit-clad teenage girls. Both the girls held bottles of Quixie in their raised hands.

THE WATER’S FINE, the ad’s headline said. BUT QUIXIE IS EVEN BETTER.

She fanned through the rest of the files. There were more mechanicals for Quixie ads over the ages, artists’ sketches, and even memos about upcoming promotions.

One of the promotional pieces was a recipe booklet titled Entertaining Ideas with Delicious and Nutritious Quixie.

Delicious, yes, Annajane thought, but what demented marketer had dared to suggest that Quixie was actually healthy?

And yet, the booklet, which Annajane surmised was ’60s-era, offered more than a dozen recipes with accompanying color photographs for Quixie-inspired dishes, ranging from a Quixie-glazed Easter ham to an elaborate three-layer molded Quixie JELL-O “salad” to a Quixie-based fruit punch featuring a festive cherry and lime sherbet-accented frozen ice ring.

The recipe for Quixie baked beans was illustrated with a color photo of an immaculately coiffed housewife offering the gooey-looking brown concoction to a trio of eager children. The woman in the photo was definitely a dewy-eyed, probably not more than nineteen-year-old Sallie Bayless, although the children were young models, since Sallie’s own children weren’t even born yet.

“Mrs. Glendenning M. Bayless proudly serves her family healthful dishes from her personal recipe files,” the photo’s caption proclaimed.

That one gave Annajane a laugh. She’d eaten countless meals at her former mother-in-law’s house, and never once had Sallie served anything as pedestrian as baked beans. Sallie Bayless would have slit her own throat before following a recipe that called for combining canned baked beans, bacon, Vienna sausages, pineapple tidbits, and, yes, a twelve-ounce bottle of Quixie.

Still, the box was a miniature treasure trove of the company’s marketing history. She shuddered now to think how close she’d come to trashing all of it.

Annajane slid the ruined box off the hand truck and lifted the lid on the bottom box. So this was why her load had been so heavy! Inside she found a dozen old glass Quixie soda bottles, each of them different. Of course she’d glimpsed some of the same bottles in the glass display case in the company foyer, but they’d been there so long, she’d really never taken the time to examine them.

Most of the old bottles were either clear or the same pale green tint that was used in the current Quixie bottle. But the shape and silhouette and labels varied. One in particular drew her attention. She lifted it out and held it up to the sunlight.

The bottle was short and squat, an eight-ounce size, and its base bore concentric rings. On the label, the winking face of Dixie leaned out from the Q in the company name.

“Adorable,” Annajane breathed, turning the bottle this way and that. At the same time she was admiring it, she realized that she was thirsty, parched, dying, actually, for an icy-cold glass of delicious, even nutritious Quixie cherry cola. Talk about a subliminal message.

Suddenly, she heard the loading dock door open behind her and the familiar tap of heels and that overly loud voice.

“Well, hey,” she heard Celia say. “What on earth are you doing, Annajane?”

Reflexively, Annajane shoved the top on the file box.

“Just cleaning out my office,” she said, struggling to her feet.

“I’m so glad you’re doing that!” Celia exclaimed. “I promised Tracey we’d get the office spiffed up before she moves in, but the last time I peeked in there, I realized we’ll have a lot of work to do before the painters can come.” She favored Annajane with one of her twinkly smiles. “I realize you’ve still got another week to work, but that’s really just a technicality. I was hoping you’d get the place emptied out a little early. I know Davis wouldn’t mind if you quit a few days earlier.”

In other words, Annajane thought, “Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry?”

Annajane forced herself to return something like a smile, without Celia’s phony wattage. “That’s very sweet of you, but I wouldn’t dream of taking off work until I get every last loose end tied up. And I’ve still got lots I need to accomplish, especially with the summer sales promotion.”

In other words, back off, bitch. I’ll leave when I’m good and ready.

“Well,” Celia said reluctantly. “I guess you’ve got a better grasp of those kind of nitty-gritty details than me. Mason and Davis really want me focused more on the big-picture stuff.”

Like selling off the company? Annajane wondered.

Annajane pointed at the cartons on the loading dock. “While I was emptying boxes I did find some interesting old files and old bottles I think Mason might want to keep.”

Celia looked as fresh as a daisy. She wore a pale gray-blue sleeveless sheath that showed off her tanned arms, a chunky silver chain necklace, matching earrings, and gray-blue kitten-heel mules that brought her up to just about chin level with Annajane.

“Throw it all out,” Celia said, waving a hand in the direction of the Dumpster. “I swear, this place has mountains of old crap that these people have been hanging onto since God knows when. And don’t even get me started with Cherry Hill. Do you know that Sallie told me she actually still has all of Pokey’s old baby dresses? What is it with you Southerners? Doesn’t anybody ever throw anything away down here? Don’t even bother Mason with that junk, please. He’s got enough to worry about these days.”

He sure as hell does, Annajane thought.

Instead, she gave Celia a pleasant smile. “I’ve thrown out most of it, but if it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll just box up some of the stuff and take it home myself. Sort of a memento from my time with Quixie, you know?”

“Really?” Celia said, cocking her head and crossing her arms. She looked Annajane up and down and shook her head. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d be sentimental about something like your ex-husband’s family’s business. But then, I can’t pretend to understand much about your arrangement, which even you have to admit is pretty unusual.”

So now the claws come out, Annajane thought. Mee-owwww.

“I was born in Passcoe, and my daddy and my stepfather both worked for the company. And Mason and I had a life together,” Annajane said finally. “Quixie was an important part of that, even after the marriage was over. Some of our times were good, some of ’em not so good. Just because I’m moving away doesn’t mean I want to forget all of it.”

“Help yourself, then,” Celia said. She stepped daintily over the pile of advertisements.

14

“Look who I brought!” Annajane announced when she walked into Sophie’s hospital room. She held up the DVD so Sophie could see it.

“Milo and Otis!” the little girl cried.

Annajane brushed a kiss on Sophie’s forehead and looked over at Mason, who was sitting in a chair at his daughter’s bedside. “Is she being a good patient?”

“She’s an awesome patient,” Mason said, standing. “She’s letting the nurses take her temperature and pulse and check her incision, and she just had a little Jell-O for lunch. Here,” he said, gesturing toward the chair he’d just vacated. “Have a seat and I’ll put in the movie.”

As he was fiddling with the controls for the DVD player, the hospital room door opened.

“Aunt Pokey!” Sophie said. “We’re gonna watch Milo and Otis.”

“Thank Gawwwd,” Pokey said dramatically, dropping a large pink beribboned gift bag on Sophie’s bed tray. “I haven’t seen Milo and Otis for hours and hours.”

Sophie was tearing the tissue and ribbon from the gift bag. She held up the slightly dingy pink plastic purse that was her most treasured possession. “My pocketbook!” she exclaimed. She unsnapped the catch and took a quick peek at the contents.

“You left it in my car,” Pokey volunteered. “I threw out the chicken nuggets because they were getting a little, um, stinky. But you can keep everything else.”

Pokey looked over her niece’s head to Mason. “She had one of my lipsticks, the baby’s silver teething ring, some beer-can pop tabs, a key that I don’t recognize, and an empty Altoids tin.”

“Treasures,” Sophie said, tucking the pocketbook under her blanket. She dove back into the gift bag, exploring the rest of her loot. “New crayons!” she exclaimed, holding up a box of sixty-four Crayolas.

“And some coloring books. Pocahontas, Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty.”

Mason picked up one of the books and laughed. “How did Spider Man get in here with all these Disney princesses?”

“That’s a gift from those brutish boy cousins of hers,” Pokey said. “They seem to feel that Little Mermaid is strictly sissy stuff.”

“Can you stay for a while?” Mason asked his sister quietly. “Letha’s insisting on spending the night in the room with Sophie, but I sent her home to get a shower and some rest. I’ve got some stuff I need to do at the office. I’ll be back in an hour.”

“Why not?” Pokey said. “Pete took the boys out to ride around on the ATV around the lake. They won’t be home for hours and hours. With any luck,” she added, with a wink to her niece.

“Now it’s just us girls,” Pokey said, perching on the side of the hospital bed. “I love movie night with the girls. Think the nurses would make us popcorn if we ring that buzzer of yours, Sophie?”

“I can only have Jell-O. And apple juice,” Sophie reported sadly.

“Never mind,” Annajane said. “We’ll have popcorn and Milk Duds next time for girls’ movie night. And Quixie, of course.”

“When?” Sophie asked, not missing a beat.

Pokey looked at her best friend and raised one eyebrow. “Yes. When, Annajane? Soon?”

“Pretty soon,” Annajane amended. “Maybe Aunt Pokey will bring you to Atlanta to visit me after I move, Sophie. And we can have a whole girls’ movie weekend.”

“I don’t want you to move to Atlanta,” Sophie said plaintively.

“Me neither,” Pokey added.

“Thanks,” Annajane said, rolling her eyes. “Let’s just watch the movie now, okay? We’ll worry about coming attractions later on.”

Ninety minutes later, with Otis and Milo trotting bravely across country, while Sophie snored softly, Pokey eased off the bed, stood, and stretched.

She glanced at her watch. “Ugh. This is what I hate about being pregnant. I’m always hungry. Have you had lunch?”

“I could eat,” Annajane admitted. She moved over to the bed and smoothed a strand of Sophie’s hair behind her ear. “Do you think we should leave her like this?”

“Mason should be back soon,” Pokey said. “Anyway, she’ll probably sleep for at least another hour after that last dose of pain meds.”

They were getting ready to slip out of the room when the door swung open and Celia stepped inside. She held a huge stuffed pink rabbit under one arm and a plastic-wrapped slab of wedding cake in one hand, with a bobbing bouquet of balloons in the other.

“Oh,” Celia said, taking a half step backward when she saw Annajane and Pokey. “Oh. Hi.”

“We were just leaving,” Pokey said, taking Annajane by the elbow and steering her toward the doorway.

“Where’s Mason?” Celia called.

“Isn’t he with you?” Pokey asked innocently. “He left here nearly two hours ago.”

Celia frowned and put the bunny, cake, and balloons on the table by Sophie’s bed. “He was supposed to meet me here.”

“You know Mason,” Pokey said with a shrug.

Outside, in the hallway, Annajane gave Pokey a stern look. “You know he’s just out running errands. Are you trying to start trouble between Mason and Celia?”

“Yes,” Pokey said. “I am. It was only by an act of God that they didn’t get married yesterday. So now, I aim to do everything I can to get this wedding completely called off. Forever.”

“You’re crazy,” Annajane said, walking as fast as she could through the hospital corridor. “And it won’t do any good. By now you know Celia. She’s unstoppable. She gets what she wants. And she wants Mason.”

“Tough shit,” Pokey said, trotting along beside Annajane. “How long have you known me?”

“Too long,” Annajane muttered.

“How long?”

“Going on thirty years, God help me,” Annajane said.

“Do you remember Toni? With an I?”

Annajane wrinkled her brow, trying to remember anybody from their shared past named Toni.

“I give up. Who was Toni?”

“Toni the Pony,” Pokey prompted. “When we were ten?”

“Ohhhh, that Toni,” Annajane said. “Poor old thing. How old did she live to be?”

“She was seventeen when she just laid down in the pasture and went to sleep,” Pokey said proudly.

“And how does Toni the Pony have anything to do for your loathing of your future sister-in-law?” Annajane asked.

They’d left the hospital and were in the parking lot, headed, by unspoken mutual agreement, for Pokey’s Land Rover.

“Do you remember how Toni came to live at Cherry Hill?” Pokey asked, sliding into the front seat of the unlocked car.

“You wanted a pony. Your daddy bought you a pony. That’s how things usually worked in the life of Pokey Bayless,” Annajane said.

“Not just any pony. I wanted Toni. I guess you’ve forgotten. Mama hired some company that had pony rides to come out to Cherry Hill for my tenth birthday. Remember, we had the cowgirl theme?”

Annajane laughed. “I just found my monogrammed cowboy hat and personalized cap pistol when I was packing stuff last week. And I still didn’t throw them out, for some reason that escapes me right now. Your mama did throw some amazing birthday parties, that’s for sure.”

“The company brought four ponies to my party. And Toni was just … pathetic. She was so skinny, I wouldn’t let anybody get on to ride her. She had sores on her neck, and her eyes were all runny. I begged Mama to get Daddy to buy her for me, but Mama wouldn’t even consider it. She pointed out that Toni was about half-dead.”

“So you went to your daddy.”

“Exactly,” Pokey said, nodding. “Daddy agreed with Mama. Said I already had a dog and a cat and a lizard, and we didn’t even have a place to keep a pony, which was ridiculous, because we totally had a fenced-in pasture and the old dairy barn out at Granddad’s farm.”

“It’s coming back to me now,” Annajane said. “You pitched a fit and didn’t quit.”

“Toni would have died!” Pokey said. “She was sick, and those awful people treated their animals like crap. I begged and I pleaded. I got that woman’s phone number and called her up and told her I was gonna report her to the police for being mean to animals.”

“You were ten,” Annajane said, marveling at the memory. “How on earth?”

“I just knew I was the only person who could save Toni. I told Mama I would never ask for anything else the rest of my life. I prayed every night that they would buy Toni for me. I went on a hunger strike, refusing to eat.”

“Of course you ate when they weren’t looking,” Annajane reminded her.

“But not dinner,” Pokey said. “I kept it up for a whole week, pestering and whining and carrying on, until I finally wore Daddy out and he bought Toni just to shut me up.”

“You got your way,” Annajane agreed. “So that’s the moral of this story?”

“Toni came to live in a stall I fixed up for her at the farm. We got the vet to see her, and she got healthy and fat and happy, and I rode her every day until I got too tall to ride her without my feet dragging on the ground. So Toni lived out a long and happy life. And that, my friend, is the moral of this story. Never underestimate the power of Pokey Bayless Riggs, especially when it involves something or somebody she loves.”

“Hmm,” Annajane said. “You know I am your biggest fan and best friend for life, right? But you may have met your match with Celia.”

Pokey whipped the Land Rover into the parking lot at the only restaurant in Passcoe that was open on Sunday. The Smokey Pig. She put the car in park and turned to give Annajane an appraising look. “You know something you’re not telling me?”

Annajane shrugged. “I was in my office this morning. At Quixie. Trying to get some last-minute memos and reports out. I had my door closed, but I could hear her as she was walking down the hallway. You know how loud her voice is.”

“Celia?”

“Yeah. She was talking to somebody on her cell.”

“About?”

“I only heard one side of the conversation,” Annajane admitted. “She was telling somebody named Jerry that they had to go slow—because these people’s business was their life.”

“People—as in us?”

“That’s what I assumed,” Annajane said. “Look, I don’t really know what they were discussing.”

“But you have an idea. Let’s hear it.”

“She talked about Davis—and how since he’s the middle child, he always thinks he has something to prove to the world.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Pokey said under her breath.

“And that he was in favor of whatever Celia and her pal were discussing—because he wants to spread his wings, because he has bigger plans for himself. And she said she thought Davis was the key to the deal.”

“Good old Davis,” Pokey said. “Always scheming something. What else?”

Annajane laughed. “She said it might be tricky because the younger sister—you—didn’t really like her very much, but that you probably have a substantial ownership interest in the company.”

“Quixie!” Pokey exclaimed. “You think she was talking to this guy about trying to sell Quixie?”

“I don’t know,” Annajane said. “Maybe?”

“Son of a bitch,” Pokey said slowly. “What else did you hear?”

“Nothing. She walked on past my office, and then my phone rang, and it was Mason asking if I was going to come to the hospital because Sophie was asking for me.”

It was another beautiful spring day, so they found a wooden picnic table on the patio and placed orders for two Smokey specials—sliced pork, cole slaw, and potato salad. The waitress brought them jelly jars full of sweet iced tea, and they waved and greeted neighbors and acquaintances.

“We have got to stop Celia,” Pokey said, leaning across the table to keep from being overheard.

“Stop her from what? We don’t even know that she’s up to anything,” Annajane pointed out.

“First, we stop her from marrying my brother. Then, we stop her from whatever nefarious other plot she’s scheming in that adorable little blond head of hers,” Pokey said with a scowl. “This is war.”