The Cherry Cola Book Club (24 page)

Locke Linwood and Miss Voncille were comparing notes, sitting side by side on his living room sofa. It was a mere three days to the budget approval, and they were counting up their successes.

“Okay, that makes a total of sixteen of my life insurance customers with Vince Langham and his wife promising to drop by the library to sign the petition,” Locke was saying, puffing himself up proudly. “You have to realize that a lot of my clients have died off, so this is a pretty good response in my estimation.”

But Miss Voncille was far less sanguine, disdaining the humor he was trying to inject. “But sixteen is a just a drop in the bucket. Even if you add the twenty-three students who've responded to me positively. That's barely forty people. I wanted to do a lot better for Maura Beth, and frankly, I'm disappointed in my students. Maybe some of them didn't like me as well as I thought.”

“You've been in a pessimistic mood all this week about this, sweetheart. Please don't revert to type and channel that nitpicky schoolmarm of yours again. I thought you'd banished her for good,” he contended. “We can only do what we can do.”

“I think you're being a little nitpicky with me yourself,” she snapped back.

“Perhaps I am. Sorry.” Then he rose from the sofa and headed over to the bookcase where he again retrieved Pamela's letter from beyond the grave. “I think we both might be in need of a little inspiration again.” He resumed his seat and ran his finger halfway down the paper. “Go ahead and read it out loud starting right there. It shows you just how prescient my Pamela really was—why, she may even have been clairvoyant.”

Miss Voncille scanned the page quickly and began:

“Stop right there. You can't tell me that that doesn't give you goose bumps, knowing how long ago it was written.”

Miss Voncille looked up from the letter, staring over at Pamela's mesmerizing portrait. “I have to agree. It's definitely uncanny the way everything has converged to make her words seem as if they were written this morning. Hats off to you and your foresight, Miz Pamela.”

“My sentiments exactly. And it's my further opinion that this is a sign we'll succeed with this petition and that this is the right thing to do.”

“I'd certainly like to think so.”

“I believe there's more to this world than we could ever imagine.”

Miss Voncille considered for a moment and then raised an eyebrow. “I know this much. You just can't give up on your life because it gets hard and bad things happen to you. Eventually, something good that you've earned from hanging in there comes along. Like a sweet, chivalrous Southern gentleman fresh from his morning shave.”

“I'm happy to resemble that.”

They both leaned together in laughter, but she let go of the moment quickly. “I'm still wondering if this petition will sway Durden Sparks in the end, though. I've known him most of his conceited life, and I've never seen him not get his way.”

Locke nestled his shoulder against hers again and then shot her a dismissive look. “There's always a first time, and this may very well be it.”

Then Miss Voncille sighed dramatically. “Do you think I should call up Morbid Mamie and make sure she's put her John Hancock on our petition yet?”

Locke gave her a thumbs-up. “Not only that, but invite her and her sister over here for what will be our revenge game of bridge. I still have a bad taste in my mouth from last time.”

 

Jeremy McShay's daily phone calls and e-mails from Nashville had kept Maura Beth energized during the two-week petition countdown. Their conversations hadn't lasted all that long but had served to keep their burgeoning emotional connection alive and well, while their e-mails had contained the ordinary details of his life at the school and hers at the library. It particularly pleased Maura Beth that he was always the one to initiate the contact in the old-fashioned manner she had always projected both in her dreams and in her journal. She couldn't get enough of his thoughtful pursuit and made a habit of concluding each and every communication with her very own signature phrase:
Keep those cards and letters comin', folks!

Finally, though, all the long-distance flirting gave way to the day before the budget approval. Just past three o'clock that afternoon, Maura Beth had set out from the library on what she considered to be the most important journey of her life. The butterflies in her stomach felt more like a swarm of bees as she reached Commerce Street on foot, but she did her best to disguise her anxiety with an unwavering smile as she entered Audra Neely's Antiques to pick up her first petition.

“Here you go,” Audra said, smiling brightly while handing it over from behind a counter crowded with everything from music boxes to ceramic figurines. “I talked you up every time someone came in.”

“Thank you so much,” Maura Beth replied, not particularly surprised by the revelation. She had conjectured that the women who fancied the stylish Audra's cutesy boutique approach to antiquing were among the more sophisticated in Cherico and likely to be sympathetic to the cause.

Then came the surprising downer. “I only wish I could have collected more for you, Miz Mayhew. Business has been a little slow lately. It's the economy, you know.”

Maura Beth glanced at the sheet and counted the signatures. “Well, you got fifteen for me, Audra, including your own. That's fifteen I didn't have before I came in. And we'd love to have you make an appearance at City Hall when the final decision on the library is made.”

Once she was out on the sidewalk again, Maura Beth drew her overcoat closer to her body against the brisk November breeze. Those fifteen signatures were now registering as a nasty chill at the bone. What if all the petitions turned out to be so disappointing?

The Vernon Dotrice Insurance Agency a few doors down was next. As Maura Beth had discovered, the dynamic and very dashing Vernon had bought the business from Locke Linwood when he had retired a few years back. Furthermore, he had been double-teamed by Locke and Maura Beth herself with e-mails, phone calls, and personal visits, and was now thoroughly behind the valiant attempt to keep the library open.

“Hope this helps,” Vernon told her once they were seated inside his office. He handed over two copies of the petition with an impish grin and waited for her reaction.

“You're kidding?!” she exclaimed, scanning the paper with her eyes bugging.

“No, ma'am, I'm not. Seventy-five beauties—signed, sealed, and delivered. Hey, Mr. Linwood sold me a very solvent concern here. I took what he gave me and turned it into an even bigger goldmine.” He paused and gently wagged a finger. “Just one caveat. You might want to check my list against Mr. Linwood's to make sure there are no duplicates. I don't think there will be, though. I'm pretty sure all these signatures are customers I've won over since I bought the agency—and their spouses, in many cases. That's what really got the numbers up.”

“You must be the only game in town, then,” Maura Beth added, still a bit dazed by his results. “If I ever need life insurance, I promise I'll look you up.”

“You do that, Miz Mayhew. You know your way here. And, by the way, I'll make it a point to drop by your library now and then. I don't want to be just a signature on a piece of paper.”

“We'd love to see you in the Council Chambers tomorrow, too.”

“I'll see what I can do about rounding people up.”

An ecstatic Maura Beth felt her marrow warming again as she popped into Cherico Ace Hardware next door to greet the store manager, Harry Weeks. But she could tell by the evasive look on his wide, bearded face that this was probably going to be another Audra Neely's Antiques' outing.

“I'm sorry, Miz Mayhew,” he told her, taking the petition down from his bulletin board and handing it to her. “I guess people in the market for a hammer and nails don't go to the library much. Apples and oranges?”

Maura Beth glanced at the six signatures he'd collected for her but was careful to give him her brightest smile. “Thank you for putting it up for me, Mr. Weeks. That's all I could ask. If you get a moment, drop by the Council Chambers tomorrow around nine-thirty.”

As Maura Beth made her way one block over to The Cherico Market, she bucked up anyway. Her instincts had told her from the beginning that she wouldn't find much of an audience at the hardware store, but she couldn't imagine that James Hannigan, his employees, and customers wouldn't come through for her.

“There she is!” Mr. Hannigan exclaimed as the automatic doors parted for her, and she walked in eagerly anticipating some good news. The two embraced warmly, and a couple of the cashiers stopped their grocery scanning long enough to smile and wave.

“I hope you're having a special on signatures today,” Maura Beth told him, zeroing in on the sheets of paper he was holding in his hand.

“We outdid ourselves,” he said, leaning in and presenting three separate petitions to her.

She gasped in delight, feeling as if she'd just received an early Christmas present. Two of the sheets were completely filled, while the third sported only a few empty lines.

“Two-hundred and sixty names, to be exact,” he explained. “Count 'em.”

She held them against her overcoat and sighed. “I'll take your word. But it's lovely. Just lovely.”

“Frankly, I don't think my customers could resist the little announcement I kept making over the
P.A.
system,” he explained, puffing out his chest. “I've still got it memorized. Wanna hear it?”

“Absolutely!”

“Well, first I did the ‘Attention, shoppers!' opening because they always perk up when they hear that. ‘What's on sale?' they think right away. Then I said, ‘If you or your spouse or your children or any other member of your family swears by the library for any reason whatsoever, you'll want to be sure and sign our petitions on the bulletin board to keep it up and running. That's right, your Cherico Library could be closed for good starting the first day of January if you don't stand up to be counted. Books are the only thing about the library that should be shelved! Sign today!' ”

Maura Beth gave him another quick hug. “That's so clever, and it obviously worked.”

He blushed and gave her a shy smile. “Well, I do write all the copy around here, and it's not bad if I do say so myself.”

“As far as I'm concerned, you're the Shakespeare of the supermarket.”

Things were definitely looking up, as Maura Beth thanked Mr. Hannigan, reminded him of the time the budget approval would take place, and walked back to the library to complete her rounds—this time in her car. She had to drive over to Cherico Tresses and then out to The Marina Bar and Grill to pick up those petitions. But she would not know the final total until Periwinkle closed her doors that evening. Then she could add the library signatures to those collected at The Twinkle and by other members of the club such as Locke Linwood and Miss Voncille. That, and continue to solicit warm bodies in the seats for the actual budget approval.

But when all was said and done, would it be enough to force Councilman Sparks to do the right thing tomorrow morning?

A
s usual, Councilman Sparks did not know what to make of the latest message Lottie had left in the inbox on his desk. It was a mere fifteen minutes before he was about to head down the hall for the budget approval. “CCBC SAYS SRO”—she had printed in big block letters on his notepad. At the moment, however, further clarification would have to wait until she returned to her post in the outer office—most likely from one of her frequent trips to the ladies' room.

When she finally showed up a few minutes later, Councilman Sparks was hardly calm and collected as he blocked the door frame while holding her mysterious note in his outstretched hand. “What the hell does this mean, Lottie? You've got to give me a break from all these abbreviations. It took me half the afternoon in your absence last week to decipher that we were out of printer solution when you left me a message that read, ‘OOPS—NEED REORDER.' ”

“I'm sorry, sir,” Lottie replied, although she hardly sounded contrite. “I thought I had mentioned it to you earlier that day. The out of printer solution, OOPS part, I mean.”

“Never mind that. What does this latest hieroglyphic of yours mean?”

He moved aside so she could sit down at her desk, whereupon she started thumbing through some notes she had made to herself that morning in his absence. “Oh. They called around nine before you came in.”

He took a deep breath to steady himself. “Who are
they?
”

“The Cherry Cola Book Club,” Lottie explained at last. “You've been so involved with them lately, I thought you'd understand my abbreviation.”

He was frowning now. “You mean Miz Mayhew—of all people?”

“Yes, it was her.”

“Then why didn't you just write—” Once again, he realized he was fighting a losing battle and retreated from this latest argument on her terms. Then he made a mental note to ring in the New Year by advertising for a new secretary. He'd endured this comedy of errors long enough. “I'll settle for SRO. What does that mean?”

Lottie had an almost triumphant look on her face, obviously proud of stumping her boss one more time. “Standing room only. Miz Mayhew said that you should expect a full house for the budget approval. She was on her cell phone and already in her seat waiting, she said.”

“Those people never give up,” he mumbled as he rolled his eyes. “They've tacked up petitions all over town. But I checked out a couple on Commerce Street like the hardware and the antiques store, and I wasn't impressed with what I saw.” He checked his watch while narrowing his eyes. “Anyway, it's time to put all this foolishness to bed, Lottie. You hold down the fort while I give Miz Mayhew and her entourage the bad news.”

 

Maura Beth had not exaggerated when she had spoken to Lottie Howard and told her that there would not be an empty seat in the Council Chambers. All seventy chairs were occupied, and there were at least a dozen more people standing against the wall in the back of the room. As for her Cherry Cola Book Club friends, they were all seated with her on the front row. They had taken no chances and shown up thirty minutes early to ensure maximum physical presence, particularly that all-important eye contact with the councilmen as the budget process unfolded.

There were other friendly faces that Maura Beth was pleased to see among the crowd: James Hannigan, Audra Neely, Vernon Dotrice, Emma Frost, Terra Munrow—even the Crumpton sisters. But there were many others she did not recognize, and she assumed that they were the rank and file of citizens they had managed to reach with their campaign to save the library. That had to be a hopeful sign as the session got under way.

However, Maura Beth noted, as the tall, severe-looking City Clerk, Mrs. Benita Porter, began her robotic reading of each budget item, glaciers had been known to move faster in their trek to the sea.

“This is like listening to a recitation of the phone book,” Connie whispered to Maura Beth out of the side of her mouth. Mrs. Porter was taking forever working her way through the Sanitation Department budget, then had hit a snag regarding the question of how much money to allot for road salt during the upcoming year.

“Nobody knows how much snow we'll get,” Chunky Badham was pointing out. But he was not about to let up. “Last year, we got three big snows and that ice storm. My wife even had enough to make snow ice cream for me. Plus, I like to have gone off the road and into a ditch during that one we had last January. And it was because we didn't have enough road salt to put out where I live in the Netherfield Community. Now I realize we only have about twelve people out my way . . .”

He kept droning on and on, and neither of the other two councilmen saw fit to interrupt him.

Maura Beth felt her annoyance registering as an adrenaline rush. Here they were going on about how much extra road salt to purchase, while threatening to do away with her library entirely was waiting in the wings. She began playing mind games to calm herself. Which would the good people of Cherico prefer: a sprinkling of salt or books to read? In any case, an extra thousand dollars was finally appropriated for road salt, and there were no objections from the citizens attending, putting the stamp of approval on that specific budget item.

Utilities came next, and Maura Beth caught Councilman Sparks's gaze as Mrs. Porter waded through that particular appropriation. There was an unusual smugness to his handsome features, and her instincts were telling her that he intended to send her packing. But she held inside the folder on her lap the ultimate defense against such a decision—the voice of the people.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, Mrs. Porter announced, “The Cherico Library.”

To Maura Beth, those three words felt like bullets penetrating her flesh. She played another game in her head and breathed deeply. Would she end up suffering a fatal wound or live to order and process books for another day? Being in the line of fire was the pits. “Here we go,” Maura Beth whispered to Connie, and the two of them gave each other a reassuring smile.

Councilman Sparks rose after Mrs. Porter had reviewed the costs of running the library for another year, line item by line item—a total of $85,000. “It is our intention,” he began, “to redirect this money to a new project for Cherico. It is our belief that you, the taxpayers, are not getting your money's worth with our library facility. We further believe that using this money to prepare land just north of town for industrial use will attract new industry and good-paying jobs to Cherico, thus increasing our tax base and improving our infrastructure. At some time in the future, perhaps we will then have collected enough money to improve and reopen the library. But it is the City Council's decision to close the library as of December 31st and begin preparations for the industrial park. We will now entertain feedback from you, the taxpayers.”

As other hands and voices were raised all over the room, Maura Beth shot up immediately, brandishing the folder she had been so jealously guarding. “Councilman Sparks!” she exclaimed, taking no chance of being overlooked.

“Miz Mayhew?” he replied, refusing to match her urgent tone and careful to maintain his smile.

“On behalf of many of the taxpayers of Cherico, I would like to present to you today this folder of petitions requesting that the City Council keep The Cherico Library open. I have taken the time to check the names and addresses of all the signatures on these various petitions and have found them to be residents of our town, each and every one. No made-up or dead people, no jokes, no fakes. These are the taxpayers you represent, and as you will see, I have calculated and compiled the total number on all the petitions for you. Eight hundred and three people have expressed their desire to see The Cherico Library stay open. These signatures came mostly from various businesses around town, all of which are well-known to you, as well as the library itself. Those eight hundred and three signatures represent almost half the number of registered voters in this town—one thousand six hundred forty-five, according to public records.”

Councilman Sparks was having trouble keeping his smile in place. “That doesn't necessarily mean those eight hundred or so are all actually registered voters. Some of them could even be children or teenagers.”

“That might be true,” Maura Beth returned. “Although I think the underage signatures would probably be limited to the library. But in any case, children and teenagers grow up to be voters, Councilman. You above all should know that. Surely that's not going to be your argument against these signatures.”

His smile had completely disappeared now. “Hand me your folder, please.”

She reached over and gave it to him, taking a moment before continuing. Here was Scarlett at her best, daring anyone to take advantage of her.

“Furthermore, I'd like to say that the library's present budget is hardly adequate, even for a town of five thousand. But as the director, I'm not asking for an increase or a raise—only to continue to do my job for the people of Cherico. We've initiated a number of events recently that have this town buzzing about the library. I hardly have to remind you of that since you've attended some of these meetings, such as The Cherry Cola Book Club. I urge you and the other councilmen not to turn your back on what is fast becoming a popular and valuable community resource.”

“Listen to her, Durden!” Miss Voncille exclaimed, rising to her feet. “You can postpone that industrial park or find some other way to fund it. My parents always told me that there was some slush fund hanging around from the days the library started up originally. I believe there was some question as to what really happened to some of the money the women of the town donated at the time. Wasn't your father on the Council back then? Being the historian that I am, I'm also quite sure that no one has ever bothered to look into that whole matter. As the saying goes, they just let it ride.”

Councilman Sparks had gone from being supremely confident to actually looking uncomfortable for all the chamber to see. “Give me a few minutes, please,” he told her, sitting back down and thumbing through the petitions Maura Beth had presented to him. Then the folder was passed around to his cohorts. Finally, after the trio had huddled for a good five minutes with their backs to the crowd, Councilman Sparks turned and rose again, his best campaign smile restored to full glory.

“It is the decision of the City Council to postpone the industrial park for another year and to fund The Cherico Library for the corresponding year—”

Enthusiastic applause and cheering erupted across the room. Maura Beth jumped up, embracing Connie and Miss Voncille, who were sitting on either side of her, and the rest of the book club did the same with one another along the front row.

“If I might continue!” Councilman Sparks cried out, and he had to repeat himself to gain the floor before the commotion died down. “Over the next year, we will be monitoring the library in hopes of seeing increased circulation figures and use of the meeting room facilities by the citizens of this town. It is to be understood that we will be reviewing funding of the library at this same time next year. For the time being, however, we cannot go against the will of the people in this regard.”

“Thank you, Councilman,” Maura Beth said, nodding his way.

“Please remember that this is a one-year reprieve, Miz Mayhew. There are no guarantees.”

“I understand that. Or rather, Scarlett understands that.”

She watched him struggling to keep his face from turning sour. Ever the politician, however, he somehow managed. But Maura Beth's smile was genuine and full of the thrill of victory. Above all else, she had played the game and won.