I realized I was rambling, but I couldn’t seem to stop.
“In any case,” I said with a sigh, “I wanted to give you an update and to thank you for being such a good friend. Thanks for putting up with my crap. Okay. Bye.” I hung up.
I called Max next, trying to hurry before I left Ewing and lost cell phone service.
“Max’s Tavern,” he answered in his good-natured voice.
“Hey, Max, it’s Carly. How are things workin’ out with Molly?”
“Well…” he drawled, and I knew it wasn’t great. “She’s slower than you, and she’s made a few mistakes, but it’s Ruth that’s the wrench in the engine. She’s ridin’ her hard.”
Great. “I’ll talk to Ruth when I come in, which is why I’m callin’. I’m gonna be about an hour late.”
He was silent for a moment, then hesitantly said, “Okay…”
I knew he wanted to know why, but I really didn’t want to tell him, and I also didn’t want to lie. “Thanks for your understanding, Max. I’ll be in as soon as I can. Promise. Oh! And before I go, I think we should consider hiring Ginger to help with the lunch shifts. I figured it would probably work with her kids’ schedules.”
“Huh,” he said as though mulling it over. “That might be a good idea, and as far as I know, Ruth doesn’t have a beef with her.” His voice was becoming staticky.
“Well, there’s a good sign,” I said. It was a sad day when you hired people based on their ability to get along with a contrary waitress.
The connection dropped after that, and I didn’t see Wyatt in my rearview mirror, not that I was surprised. Marco had told me that pepper spray would incapacitate a person for a good length of time—plenty of time to get away, although I was fairly certain this wasn’t what he’d had in mind.
As I drove through Drum, I saw Emmaline Haskell sitting in a chair on the sidewalk at the street corner by the library, and I said a quick prayer of thanks. She was an older woman who sometimes came to town with a five-gallon bucket of bouquets of flowers she grew on her land. Today I could see white, red, and yellow tulips sticking out of her bucket. I couldn’t see any parking spaces, so I waved to her when I got to the stop sign, feeling bad when she hobbled over, trying to drag the bucket with her.
I usually walked to her from the tavern when I knew she was in town, always eager to buy a couple of bouquets to brighten the house. Most people in town didn’t buy them, thinking they were a frivolous expense, but she was a sweet old woman, living alone and trying to get by on a small social security check, and I loved flowers. It was a win-win situation. Some days I was one of her only sales if people driving through didn’t stop.
“Oh, Miss Emmaline!” I shouted through my open passenger window. “Stop right there! You don’t have to bring the bucket to me! Just give me three of your prettiest bouquets.”
She leaned into my open passenger window and gave me a stricken look. “But that’s $30, Miss Carly.”
“I’m just plain Carly, Miss Emmaline,” I said, hating that she thought me better than her because she was poor as dirt and I had enough money to buy flowers. I dug into my wallet and pulled out two twenty-dollar bills, leaning over to hand them out the window. “You keep the change.”
She took the bills and looked them over. “Are you sure?”
“I have a couple of friends I want to give them to, and you have the prettiest flowers.” Then a thought hit me. “Miss Emmaline, would you be interested in a small job next week? I’d have to take you to Ewing, but I have a friend—Thelma Tureen—at the Greener Pastures nursing home and she loves flowers. I was going to take some bedding plants out there and help her plant them, but I don’t know the first thing about growing flowers.” (Not entirely true since I’d worked in a plant nursery in Arkansas for a month, but that wasn’t part of my official story.) “You’re clearly an expert. I could pick you up and we could go to the Piggly Wiggly in Ewing to pick up some plants—I’d pay you of course, and pay for the plants—and then you could tell me how to plant them in the courtyard. I’ll pick up something for lunch, and we can make an afternoon out of it.”
The look of shock on her face made me question whether I’d offended her somehow. I was about to backpedal and apologize when she gave me a watery smile.
“You don’t have to pay me, Miss Carly.”
“Carly,” I said insistently. Then I gave her a wink. “My momma taught me to respect my elders. Even if they are only slightly older than me.”
“Your momma did right by you, girl,” she said, wiping a tear from her eye. “I ain’t seen Thelma in over five years. I’d be honored to do it. No pay needed. And I’ll bring some of my own plants. I have a mess of ’em in my greenhouse.”
Of course they knew each other—both of them had lived in Drum for over sixty or more years. I had no intention of just taking her plants, but I figured we could work out some kind of payment later if she’d be willing to sell them without cutting into her own plantings. Right now I needed to get my flowers and get out to the Drummonds’ place.
She handed me four beautiful bouquets since I’d overpaid her, the stems in a bread loaf bag with
