The Potluck Club—Takes the Cake
the Potluck Club
Takes the Cake
the
Potluck
Club
Takes the Cake
A NOVEL
Linda Evans Shepherd
and Eva Marie Everson
Grand Rapids, Michigan
©2007 by Linda Evans Shepherd and Eva Marie Everson
Published by Fleming H. Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.revellbooks.com
Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shepherd, Linda Evans.
Takes the cake : a novel / Linda Evans Shepherd and Eva Marie Everson.
p. cm. — (The Potluck Club)
ISBN 10: 0-8007-3074-7 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-0-8007-3074-1 (pbk.)
1.Women—Societies and clubs—Fiction. 2. Female friendship—Fiction.
3. Prayer groups—Fiction. 4. Women cooks—Fiction. 5. Colorado—Fiction.
6. Cookery—Fiction. I. Everson, Eva Marie. II. Title.
PS3619.H456T35 2007
813′.6—4dc22 2006100323
To Preston L. Purvis (1931–2006)—my daddy—who loved the stories of the Potluck Club and looked forward to the next installment. I love you and miss you more than I ever imagined possible.—“Ree-Baby”
Eva Marie Everson
To Eva and all my dear friends of the Advanced Writer’s and Speaker’s Association. What a team of encouragers you are. How glad I am that you are in my life.
Linda Evans Shepherd
Fiction by Linda Evans Shepherd and Eva Marie Everson
The Potluck Club
The Potluck Club—Trouble’s Brewing
Fiction by Eva Marie Everson
Shadow of Dreams
Summon the Shadows
Shadows of Light
Fiction by Linda Evans Shepherd
Ryan’s Trials
Kara’s Quest
Tangled Heart
Contents
7.
I Thought I ’Thaw a Puddy-Tat
12. Lizzie—Family Upside-Down Turnovers
14. Evangeline—Spilling Secrets
15.
Between a Rock and a Hollywood Place
18. Donna—High Altitude Directions
35.
The Great American Novelist
42. Evangeline—Feasting on Dreams
43.
Wonder Where... Wonder Who...
48. Lisa Leann—French-Fried Plans
52. Evangeline—Heart-Stirring Wedding
A lot had happened to the ladies of the Potluck Club.
A lot.
Then again, a lot had happened to Clay Whitefield, ace reporter for the
Gold Rush News
, though neither the job nor the title kept him going. What really buttered his biscuits was keeping his eyes and ears open to whatever was happening to his favorite ladies of Summit View, Colorado. The ladies of the Potluck Club.
Evangeline Benson, chief potlucker, had started the club in the dining room of her home years ago when she and the late Ruth Ann McDonald gathered for coffee cake and prayer. By the time Ruth Ann had passed on to glory, the club had grown, adding Lizzie Prattle, high school librarian and wife of Samuel, president of the Gold Mine Bank; Vonnie Westbrook, retired nurse and wife of Fred; Goldie Dippel, one-time homemaker, now legal secretary and wife of Coach Jack Dippel; and Donna Vesey, a deputy sheriff. Finally, and most recently, Lisa Leann Lambert, Texas transplant, had added herself to the mix.
Back up. The other thing that kept Clay Whitefield on his reporter’s toes was the aforementioned Donna Vesey, the youngest member of the Potluck Club.
Clay got up from the scarred desk in his tiny one-room apartment overlooking Main Street, which he shared with his two gerbils, Woodward and Bernstein. He needed a break from the notes he was tapping into his laptop computer, so he walked over to the single window overlooking the touristy town he called home and peered down to the snow-blown streets below.
He wondered what those ladies of the Potluck Club might be up to now. That’s when it hit him. It was Saturday. And not just any Saturday. Potluck Club Saturday. Rumor had it the venue had been changed to Lisa Leann’s home so as to blend a baby shower with the monthly potluck and prayer meeting.
Lisa Leann, his newest and most controversial columnist over at the
Gold Rush News
.
His stomach rumbled a bit as he spotted Fred Westbrook’s pickup truck heading down Main Street and turning toward where Lisa Leann lived. Clay cocked a red brow. Fred wasn’t alone. But who was that with him?
Could it be... nah... it couldn’t be.
Or could it?
Lisa Leann
I had to admire how clever Clay was to stalk his story about Vonnie and her “secret” son all the way through my front door and into my daughter’s baby shower. I could picture his headline now: “Hollywood’s David Harris’s Mother Is None Other Than Our Own Vonnie Westbrook! Ta-da!!”
I would have spilled the scoop to Clay myself if it hadn’t been so risky. (As the newest and only uninvited member of the Potluck Club, that kind of spill would have gotten me the boot for sure.)
But Vonnie’s story is so prime time it might even bring in the TV news trucks from Denver, not to mention the crew from
Hollywood
Nightly
. And to think, it was Summit View’s own Clay Whitefield who broke the story.
I made sure I was in earshot as Clay interviewed the players of this little drama as they sat in a corner near the fireplace.
First there was David, the son of Harmony Harris, the actress often considered the queen of the Hollywood musicals. Her frenzied fans had hounded both her and her secrets, trysts, and fortunes her entire career. Much as they did with Elvis, the press continued to unravel the seams of her private life even after her recent death to cancer. Their fascination with her was centered in part on the “who” of David’s father. In fact, the names of her most famous male costars were often linked to his paternity. So, this revelation that David was actually Harmony’s adopted son would cause a sensation.
And to think David’s birth mother was none other than our own ho-hum Potlucker Vonnie Westbrook, Sunday school teacher and retired nurse. Astounding.
As it turned out, Vonnie had been secretly married to a Latin hottie, a Joseph Ray Jewell, who’d been killed in ’Nam. And to think, poor old boring Fred, Vonnie’s current husband of thirty-five years, had never suspected his dear wife had been married before, much less had a child.
But surprise! He’d made the discovery in recent weeks, and now it looked like he was starting to come to terms with it. I mean, he was the one who’d picked David up at the Denver International Airport this afternoon and brought him to Mandy’s little baby shower. Bless his heart.
I pulled up a chair, with my back to Clay’s interview, and took in every word.
Clay asked the questions I would have asked myself, like, “Say, Fred, how’d it feel when you found out your wife had been secretly married to another man?” “David, what was it like to grow up with a movie star for a mother?” “Vonnie, why’d you keep your first marriage a secret?” “Did you really believe your baby died at birth?” You know—all the interesting stuff.
I tried to be a fly on the wall, but my other guests kept demanding my attention. That was to be expected, as this was the first time the Potluckers had been over to my luxury condo for a meeting. Of course, I knew I’d read the interview in the paper soon enough. But I wanted to see how Clay would translate it into print. And since I was the local paper’s newest advice columnist, I had a lot I could learn from such a scoop still in progress.