A Piggly Wiggly Christmas (11 page)

“What the hell!” Lady Roth began. “Or should I say, ‘Why the hell not?’ Yes, why should I not grab the Star of Bethlehem by the horns and wrestle it to the ground?” She paused long enough to roll her eyes a couple of times. “I realize that my metaphor was probably mixed. But then I always like things well mixed. Which reminds me—they do a first-rate dirty Gibson here, don’t they?”

As it was completely unclear to whom Lady Roth was addressing the comment, and the others were occupied with their coffee and pie, Gaylie Girl decided to field the question. “Judging by the Manhattan I sipped and savored, I’d have to agree. But just to clarify—am I hearing that you want to be our Star of Bethlehem?”

“You hear correctly. If I can’t shine on Broadway, I can sure as hell shine on top of the courthouse. And I am a widow, so I have every right to walk the widow’s walk.” Obviously amused with herself, Lady Roth produced more raucous laughter. “And talk the widow’s talk, for that matter.”

“Right on both counts,” Gaylie Girl added. “And we’re all absolutely delighted to hear that you’ll be gracing our little production come Christmas Eve. Your star will never shine brighter, I’m sure.”

It was nearly eleven o’clock, and Mr. Choppy had just finished the last of his warmed-up walnut-pecan pie and pushed back from the kitchen table. Meanwhile, Gaylie Girl had contented herself with watching him indulge while sipping her coffee and bringing him up to date on the evening at the Victorian Tea Room.

“Of course, you and Miz Laurie planned everything perfectly,” Mr. Choppy commented at one point. “The way to Lady Roth’s heart is definitely through her ego. Winin’, dinin’, the whole kit and caboodle. I’m not surprised you finally wore her down.”

Gaylie Girl could not resist a triumphant little chuckle. “And literally got her to agree to keep her mouth shut on Christmas Eve.”

“Hoo, boy! I wonder how many people have ever gotten that kinda result before?”

“You may be looking at the first one.” Then she decided to switch subjects. “How’s your work on the overlay bond issue coming?”

“Well, I got most of the changes we needed worked out tonight. Then it’s back to the councilmen for their approval. The books say we can swing it from a bonded indebtedness point of view, but it’s still gonna be up to the voters when we tackle it next spring.” He turned and pointed toward the refrigerator. “Oh, sweetheart, could you get me a little swallow a’ milk. Nothin’ like this kinda sugary pie to coat your windpipe somethin’ awful.”

He waited for the milk to arrive, downing it quickly and clearing his throat before resuming his train of thought. “Yes, indeed! That does hit the spot! Anyway, if the general public is as upset with all those potholes as you and Miz Laurie were that day Miz Novie drove you all over creation without seat belts, I expect we’ll win this thing handily.”

Gaylie Girl leaned in on her elbows. “Then it looks like both our projects are well on their way to success. My latest report from Euterpe says all the choirmasters have been cooperating with her on the selections, and we shouldn’t have any more complaints from Lawton Bead now that Lady Roth has agreed to refrain from her screeching.”

“Oh, I meant to tell you,” Mr. Choppy put in. “Henry Hempstead called up while you were out this evenin’. He just wanted to give us an update on things. Two trimesters down and one to go. Cherish is in great spirits and would love to have us drop by anytime. With a little advance notice, of course.”

“I’d love to, but I don’t know when we’d find the time. Maybe when we get a little closer to Christmas, and we both get some time off from the office. A visit in the spirit of the season might be just what we all need about then.”

Mr. Choppy leaned back in pleasant contemplation. “You know, I really do think of Cherish as a daughter more than ever now. Seems both she and Henry have lost their parents, so maybe I fill the void from their point of view, too. Do you think it’d be too pushy of me to suggest myself as the godfather of their child?”

Gaylie Girl reached over and gently patted his hand. “That’s a lovely idea, Hale. All she can say is no, and something tells me she won’t. First things first, though. Let’s just concentrate on getting the baby here safe and sound.”

M
eta Belford turned to her fiancé, Petey Lyons, and gave him a lengthy bear hug just inside the doorway of 18 Courthouse Street North—the somewhat antiquated store on The Square they had just purchased for a song. It was typical of commercial buildings put up in the late 1800s throughout the South, featuring two stories of brick, shuttered windows, and a fanciful lacework balcony. Back in the day, the merchants who owned them had kept their stores on the ground floor while living above with their families. The concept was now returning to favor amid a new wave of adaptive restoration, and Second Creek was becoming a prime example.

Meta finally loosened her hold slightly, and Petey managed to suck in a draft of air and exhale dramatically—all in one seamless maneuver.

“You’ve got quite a grip for a . . . girl!” he exclaimed.

She pulled back a bit more, feigning offense with an impish glee. “You just said ‘girl’ as if it were a dirty word. It was there in your hesitation. But I am a girl, at heart. An honest-to-goodness, romantic, artistic, daughter-of-a-Nitwitt girl. So don’t hold the fact that I work out at the gym against me. Which reminds me, does Second Creek have a gym where I can keep on exercising once we move here?”

Petey flashed a broad, triumphant smile. “Just so happens that the company I bought down here has a very state-of-the-art exercise center for the benefit of employees and their families. So I’d say the future wife of the owner of Pond-Raised Catfish certainly qualifies. You’ll be able to get all the reps you need.”

She scoured his tall frame and then playfully pointed at his stomach. “We should work out together, you know. I think I detected a hint of those dreaded love handles the last time we did it.”

“You detected nothing of the sort.” He gently grabbed her and pulled her toward him with a wicked grin. “I’m as fit as they come. Weigh the same as I did in college.”

“And I can go you one better, Mr. Peter Armistead Lyons Jr. Since the summer I shot up a tad bit over six feet at the age of fifteen, my weight hasn’t varied more than two pounds either way.”

He couldn’t resist giving her the exact same hug he’d just received. “Looks good on you,
girl
. There now. Did I put the right emphasis on it this time? No hesitation, I trust?”

She responded not with a smile of affirmation but with a kiss. The slow, fervent kind that only comes with being very much in love. “That was my official girlie-girl kiss. That should tell you everything you need to know.”

“I’ll make a note of it for future making out.”

In fact, Meta Constance Belford was a lot to take in all at once. It wasn’t just her height that made her stand out in a crowd. Her flowing blond mane seemed to take on a swirling life of its own every time she offered up a saucy tilt of the head. Petey himself had confessed to his mother that he had felt positively intoxicated the first time he had laid eyes on her just a few months back. All Gaylie Girl could answer then was, “She’s a tall drink of water, son!”

Meta had been just as smitten with him at first glance. She had even made a point of telling him that first evening back in September that he looked like he might have stepped out of the latest issue of
GQ
, what with his tanned skin, dark hair, and fashionable suggestion of stubble, while all anyone could say behind the scenes once they’d heard about the engagement was that the two of them were going to blow everyone away with the beautiful children they were going to make.

But there were one or two other issues to resolve before that fertile prospect could take place. The first was Renza Belford’s insistence that the wedding needed to be scheduled sooner rather than later—her concession to the idle minds she was certain were out there working overtime. Renza was Renza, of course, and would be properly dealt with in due time.

More pressing on this cold December morning was the matter of the newly acquired but long-unoccupied building that would soon become the second incarnation of Meta, Unlimited, Art Gallery—formerly of St. Augustine, Florida. Vacant way before the rash of closings caused by the coming of the MegaMart a few years earlier, 18 Courthouse Street North was going to need a bit of renovation to make it a suitable showcase for Meta’s inventive watercolors and edgy paper sculptures. One preliminary step was having all the wiring checked out, and Petey and Meta continued to wait downstairs patiently with their arms around each other for warmth while the initial inspection was concluding upstairs.

Momentarily, Rusty Jahnke of Jahnke’s World of Wiring interrupted the couple’s heated display of affection, leaning over from the lacework balcony above and getting their attention with a wave of his hand and a quick shout. “Hey! Uh . . . folks!?” He waited for them to move into view. “I’ve checked it all out, and I got some bad news for ya. You got you some major code violations, I’m afraid. But that’s par for the course in a buildin’ as old as this one is. Could be sixty, maybe seventy years since the wirin’ was put in! Needs rewirin’ real bad. First you got you some—”

“Why don’t you come down here and go over everything with us, Mr. Jahnke? I’ve already got a crick in my neck looking up at you!” Petey interrupted.

The diminutive electrician was down in a flash, whereupon he removed his camouflage-style hunting cap, revealing the thick head of rust-colored hair that had spawned his nickname. Then he took a notepad out of his back pocket and began reading a mile a minute. “It ain’t pretty, folks, and I wusht I could say otherwise, but you got you an uncovered junction box and an overwired panel to start with, and then you got a whole mess a’ backstabbed wires everywhere and no GFCIs that I could find and—”

“Whoa, there!” Petey exclaimed, pushing out his hand as if he were stopping traffic in the middle of the street. “Slow down. I don’t know the first thing about wiring. You might as well be speaking a foreign language. Could you maybe cut to the chase in layman’s language here?”

Rusty looked up from his list quickly and wagged his brows. “Sorry, folks. That’s a failin’ a’ mine, I guess. I get so carried away with my job. Wirin’s my life, ya know!”

“So we gather,” Petey observed, adding a pleasant smile to the equation. “You come highly recommended by Paul Belford. So we’re not disappointed in the least that you’re enthusiastic about your work. Just two things: what is this rewiring job going to cost us? And will you take the job?”

“Now as to that, the news is good. I can sure as all get-out do the job for ya.” Rusty tore a sheet from his pad and handed it over. “And there’s your damage. My good faith estimate. But I can assure ya, that’s the best price you’ll get in Second Creek. Mr. Belford’s right to swear by me, since I been workin’ with him ever since I started up my bid’ness.”

Petey took the sheet and scanned it while Meta looked on eagerly. “Seems reasonable to me. Takes a few thousand to make a few thousand, huh? At least that’s what my daddy always said while he was running Lyons Insole.”

“Will it take long to do everything?” Meta wanted to know. “I just can’t wait to open my gallery. We’ll worry about moving in upstairs later. I was hoping maybe we could have a soft opening in time for the new Caroling in The Square event on Christmas Eve. That should bring lots of people downtown to mill around, and some of them are bound to drop by the gallery if we’re open. Even if you don’t make a sale, you get the word out that you’re open for business, and that’s everything in the art world.”

Rusty cocked his head and squinted as he scratched the nape of his neck. “It wouldn’t take all that long if you didn’t have so many new outlets to install. But if you’re gonna be spotlightin’ all that artwork you told me about on these walls, you’ll need you plenty more to plug into. You could save you some money by not havin’ us put ’em in on the second floor just yet. We charge double for that, ya know.”