Well Read, Then Dead(6)

            Ryan gave a “no big deal” shrug.

            Bridgy took over. “Get ready to have your cheek patted and be called ‘honey chile,’ and I wouldn’t wear that shirt unless you’re willing to sit through a thirty-minute lecture about gentlemanly appearance and behavior. The happy news is you can bring your appetite for southern. We’ll have grits and hush puppies aplenty on the menu.” She turned to me. “As I recall, you had one of your cutesy book names for the hush puppies. To Kill a Mockingbird?”

            “Close. Harper Lee Hush Puppies. And don’t forget True Grits.”

            “Like the movie?” Ryan knew his westerns.

            “Like the book.”

            Bridgy laughed at my response. “Sassy doesn’t know movies. She only knows books.”

            “Do so know movies,” I retorted. “Both movies. The forty-some-odd-years-ago True Grit with John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn and the recent one starring Jeff Bridges. That one revived interest in the ‘based on’ novel, True Grit, by Charles Portis. The movie tie-in edition of the book hit the best seller lists.”

            Bridgy wrinkled her forehead, gave me her “whatever” look and moved on. “Your boyfriend was here. He heard about Miguel and wanted the 411.”

            “Boyfriend?” I panicked, afraid Ryan had noticed my getting lost in the dreamy blue eyes of the new lieutenant.

            “You know. The reporter with the feminist name. Cady.”

            Cady Stanton. Irritated as I am by having Sassafras as a middle name, his mother named him after nineteenth-century women’s rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. I’d often wondered if she’d married Cady’s father for the sole purpose of having that last name for her children, Cady and his sister, Elizabeth.

            “He’s not my boyfriend,” I protested automatically.

            “You spent a weekend with him in Key West. If he’s not your boyfriend, what does that make you?” Bridgy was doing the hands on her hips thing again.

            “It was a literary seminar.” I waved my arm at the bookshelves. “Books, authors, readings. Anyway, we only traveled together. We had separate rooms.”

            Ryan guffawed. “You were right, Bridgy. She’s all about the books.”

            There was a loud bang on the door, and as we turned toward it, the face pressed up against the glass window pane screeched.

            “I can see you’re in there. Open this door.”

            “Sounds like that lady with the poufy lilac-colored hair. The one who runs the consignment shop.”

            Ryan nailed it. Rowena Gustavsen. Remembering this morning’s book club, I thought, This can’t be good.

            I opened the door and Rowena barged past me, her face nearly as purple as her hair. She dropped a huge lemon-colored purse on the Hemingway table and growled, “Which one of you sent that derelict to me? I demand to know.” Chunky plastic bracelets clattered on her wrist as she flung one arm high in the air and dropped it to a dramatic rest on her forehead. “I cannot have such riffraff in my shop. What will my clients think?”

            She finally stopped for a breath, followed by a deep sigh.

            “Rowena, sit down. Have a cup of tea.”

            She pulled out a chair, crumpled heavily onto the seat and propped her elbows on the table. I scurried to put on the kettle, hoping to keep her calm at all costs.

            I was reaching for the tea canister when she bellowed, “Sweet tea, if you have it.”