Soup...Er...Myrtle!: A Myrtle Crumb Mystery (Myrtle Crumb Mystery Series) Read online

  Soup…

  Er…

  Myrtle!

  by

  Gayle Trent

  Grace Abraham Publishing

  Washington Cooper, Inc.

  13335 Holbrook Street, Suite 10

  Bristol, VA 24202

  Copyright © 2014 by Gayle Trent

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  This book is a work of fiction. All the events, places, and characters are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Other Books in the Myrtle Crumb Series:

  Between a Clutch and a Hard Place

  When Good Bras Go Bad

  Claus of Death

  Table Of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  It was just before nine o’clock on a Wednesday night. Me and Matlock, my chocolate lab, had just got comfortable on the bed so we could watch one of those “Thin Man” movies on television. I told him he was just like their little dog Asta, except he was bigger and braver. And I said I was kinda like Myrna Loy only a tad taller and still living. And our Sheriff Cooper Norville (my beau) didn’t have much at all in common with William Powell. Coop was taller, broader, and a lot better looking.

  Anyway, I’d just got through setting the stage so to speak for Matlock, and we were ready to settle in and watch our movie when Bettie Easton called. Ain’t that always how it goes? You have your mind set on doing something, and somebody interrupts you before you even get started.

  I wouldn’t have answered the phone if I hadn’t been worried it was my daughter Faye. I mean, what if she or my precious grandbaby (who’s a teenager now, so don’t you dare tell her I called her a baby) needed me for something? Or, even if they didn’t, if Faye’d call over here this late and I didn’t answer, she’d be worried and would probably get in her car and come over here afraid I’d fell and broke my hip and couldn’t get up. And if she hadn’t heard from me in a day or two, she might even think I’d died and that Matlock had commenced to eating on me. Not that he would—except as a last resort. I mean, I’ve read about stuff like that happening…but it might just be one of them urban legend things.

  Anyhow, back to Bettie. When I answered the phone, she started talking like we were characters right out of Gone With the Wind so I knew she wanted something.

  “Good evening, Ms. Myrtle. I hope I didn’t disturb your respite.”

  See what I mean? Who says stuff like respite these days?

  “Well, I am getting ready to watch a movie,” I said. “Is anything wrong?”

  “Oh, no, hon. There’s nothing wrong. In fact, I hope we can help to make something right.”

  I didn’t have an answer to that, so I kept my mouth shut and waited for Bettie to make her point.

  “You see, I want our little ol’ community to think highly of the M.E.L.O.N.S.,” she said.

  The M.E.L.O.N.S. is a group Bettie came up with. The letters stand for Mature Elegant Ladies Open to Nice Suggestions. The first time she told me about it, I said it made us sound like old hookers. But Bettie said I was silly and that the M.E.L.O.N.S. are only open to nice suggestions. I still think it makes us sound like prostitutes, but we have parties and eat good, so I stick with it.

  “So how do we go about making M.E.L.O.N.S. the shining stars of Backwater?” I asked.

  “Well, at Bible study this evening—we missed you, by the way—Doris Phillips was saying that they could really use some help down at the food bank and soup kitchen, “ Bettie said. “I said I’d rally the M.E.L.O.N.S. to each help out a couple days a week. So…what do you say?”

  What I didn’t say was that I didn’t appreciate her little dig about my not going to Bible study. It was freezing cold, snow flurrying, and I didn’t want to get out in it. Besides, that was between me and the Lord. It wasn’t any of Bettie Easton’s business.

  So here’s what I did say: “I’ll be glad to pitch in a day or two a week. When do you need me?”

  “Could you come tomorrow?” she asked.

  “What kind of weather are they calling for?”

  “It’s supposed to be partly cloudy and in the low forties.”

  “All right,” I said. “What time should I be there?”

  “Eleven in the morning would be fine…even a little earlier, if you can swing it, would be great.”

  “I can swing it just fine,” I said. “I’ll be there at ten.”

  “That’s great, hon. Doris will help you get familiar with everything.”

  By the time we hung up, me and Matlock had already missed ten minutes of Myrna and William. I’d been watching even though the TV was muted, and it didn’t look like we’d missed anything important.

  When the movie went to commercial, I told Matlock I’d better set the alarm while I was thinking about it.

  “There’s no way I’d give Bettie Easton the satisfaction of being as much as one minute late in the morning.”

  * * *

  I got up Thursday morning way earlier than I’d planned. It was before Matlock had been aiming to get up too because he raised up his head, looked at me like I was crazy, and then flopped back onto the bed.

  “Well, excuse me, Mr. Night Owl,” I told him. “If you’d have asked me before Bettie Easton called last night when I’d be up this morning, I’d have said whenever I good and well feel like it. I sure wouldn’t have been up before the sun could even melt the ice off the car.”

  Matlock just sighed.

  “If you’re planning on peeing before I leave, you’d better come on. I don’t have time to dawdle around.”

  I put on my housecoat and started down the stairs. Matlock got off the bed and lumbered along behind me.

  Our backyard is fenced in, so I let him out and then put the coffee on. If I’d known before dark yesterday that I’d be leaving early this morning, I’d have put me a piece of cardboard over the windshield of the Buick. My late husband Crandall taught me that trick when we were both holding down jobs and going to work every day. As it was, I’d just go out and start the car about five minutes before I had to leave. I never scraped the windshield if I could help it.

  I heated up a few biscuits I had left over from last night’s supper. Then I got out two mugs. I broke up a couple of the biscuits into one of the mugs, poured coffee over the bread and added my cream and sugar. I poured me some coffee in the other mug.

  After I ate my coffee and bread, I called Matlock to come back in and gave him the other two biscuits with some gravy. It wasn’t homemade gravy. It came out of a jar, and I heated it up in the microwave. Now, normally, I make my own gravy, but I do keep a jar of store-bought on hand for the occasional emergency—like not wanting to give poor little Matlock old dry biscuits. It wasn’t his fault we had to get up early. It was Bettie Easton’s. And she was sure gonna hear about it if I slipped and fell and broke a bone.

  Old people don’t need to be getting up and running around when it’s icy out. Not that I’m old. I don’t mean me. I’m a very young sixty-five…as opposed to an old sixty-five. Some people just seem to grow old before their time. You know what I mean? But not
me. I do what I can to take care of myself. I don’t like to mention my age—it’s one of them don’t ask, don’t tell questions—but when people do find out how old I am, they’re always plumb shocked. Or, at least, they act like they are. And I don’t know of any Academy Award winners who’ve had occasion to find out my age.

  Back to old people…. Some of these M.E.L.O.N.S. are. Bettie Easton herself is no spring chicken. And then there’s Melvia and her older sister Tansie. Of course, Tansie’s a big old blowsy thing. It probably wouldn’t hurt her if she did fall. Now watch her fall and hurt herself, and I’ll feel so guilty I won’t be able to stand it.

  I hurried upstairs and threw on some jeans and a thick sweater. I took my time with my makeup. That little Bobbi Brown wrote a book telling aging women how to do their makeup. I have a copy of it, and it’s what I go by. I don’t need the book so much anymore, but I go back and look at it every now and then to refresh my memory. One of Bobbi’s important tips was to fill in your eyebrows. Old naked eyebrows and cakey powder age you like nobody’s business.

  After I got my face fixed, I put my boots on and went out and started the car. That ice seemed half an inch thick. It would likely take more than five minutes.

  I went back inside and turned on the TV so I could see the weather before I left. They said on the news it wasn’t supposed to get above thirty-eight degrees today, which was pretty good for January in Southwest Virginia but still awfully cold.

  * * *

  Bettie had been right about one thing—Doris Phillips had met me at the door just tickled pink to have a little help and more than willing to show me the ropes. Doris was a sweet little woman…short…a tad on the chubby side, which made her look like a mischievous schoolgirl when she was grinning and those hazel eyes of hers were sparkling.

  “Am I the first one here?” I asked. “Besides you, I mean.”

  “You are,” Doris said. “And I sure am glad to have you. I have a couple of other volunteers, but you’re the only M.E.L.O.N. coming in today. Bettie said she’d stagger it so that I’ll have somebody helping out all week.”

  “Well, that’s good. I catch on pretty quick. Just show me what you need me to do.”

  “Come on back,” she said.

  I followed Doris into the kitchen. There were three big stockpots on the stove.

  Doris nodded toward them. “Today we’re serving tomato, vegetable beef, and potato soups. Would you care to make the cornbread?”

  “Not at all,” I told her. I make awfully good cornbread, if I do say so myself.

  “Thank you. Everything you’ll need is either in the refrigerator or in that cupboard over top of the microwave.” She got a pan of biscuits out of the oven and put it on a wire rack beside another pan she had cooling. “The oven’s already hot for you. I’ll be in the dining room getting the tables ready if you need me.”

  The kitchen was tidy. Doris did a good job of keeping it stocked too.

  The food bank and soup kitchen aren’t directly affiliated with our church, but the church does a lot to support it. Doris and her husband Frank started the operation when they realized there were more homeless people in and around Backwater than any of us had ever dreamed. I’d always thought that homelessness was a big city thing. I mean, I knew we had poor people…just not to that extent.

  And as I stood in that kitchen mixing up the cornbread, I was thinking we’d have enough to send everybody off with a care package, especially after Doris popped her head in and asked me to make three skillets of cornbread. But after folks started filing in, I got afraid we wouldn’t have enough.

  Now, some of the people who came through that line were big old dirty, lazy-looking people. They acted like it was all they could do to shuffle one foot in front of the other. And, before anybody gets up on their high horse and tells me that I didn’t know those people and that maybe they had some kind of condition, I saw them. The only conditions they had were filth, greed, and laziness. If it hadn’t been for me and Doris, they’d have ate up everything before the people that truly needed it even got through the line.

  And, trust me, you could tell the ones that really needed this food. One woman and her two little girls nearly broke my heart. She was young herself, and the girls were both under the age of five or else they’d have been in school. The oldest one looked like she was getting close to school age, so I reckoned her to be about four years old. I imagined the other one was about two, but just barely. All three of them were clean and well kept. The little girls’ clothes were hand-me-downs that had probably been through the cycle more than once. The knees and elbows were starting to look shiny and worn. That’s common to see on the clothes of older young-uns because they tend to play harder. But with kids these ages, it made me reckon them little outfits had been around the block a few times.

  The woman had on a thin blue jean jacket right here in the very dead of winter. That told me she didn’t have a decent coat. She was about Faye’s size. I’d check and see if Faye had a coat she didn’t wear anymore.

  The girls had coats. Their momma took their coats off of them and held onto them with one hand while latching onto the girls with the other.

  “Honey, it looks to me like you could use an extra pair of hands,” I told her as she started through the line. “Why don’t you tell me what y’all want, and I’ll carry it to the table for you?”

  “Are you sure it’s no trouble?” she asked.

  “Not a bit,” I said.

  I went through the line with them, and they told me what they wanted. I got it on a tray for them and took it to their table.

  “I reckon I’d better get back to helping Doris now,” I said. “I hope to see y’all before you leave. I’m Myrtle, by the way.”

  “Thank you, Myrtle,” said the momma. “I’m Heather.” She nodded toward her oldest one. “My big girl here is Elizabeth, and my little one is Miranda Sue.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet all of you,” I said.

  “It’s nice to meet you too,” said Heather.

  The girls were too busy eating to say anything. God love them. They were hungry.

  I went back over to Doris. I started to tell her I was sorry I’d abandoned her for a minute; but if I’d said it, it’d have been a bald-faced lie so I didn’t say it. This wasn’t church, but it was close enough. I mean, we were feeding the hungry and stuff. Besides, Jesus always knows what you’re doing and where your heart’s at.

  And if Doris Phillips had a cross word to say to me, I meant to rebuke her right then and there. Not that I was gonna wag my finger in her face and say I rebuke you, Doris or anything like that. I was just going to get her told the way Jesus did that mean old Martha for tattling that her sister Mary wasn’t pulling her weight during the party. And Jesus told Martha that she’d best back up off Mary—I’m paraphrasing here a little—because Mary was doing important stuff herself. Just like me.

  But, lucky for both of us—me, especially, because I’d have hated to make a scene my very first day and ruin the M.E.L.O.N.S.’ already questionable reputation—Doris didn’t say a word about my going off to help the young mother.

  As I stood there beside Doris ladling soup into disposable bowls, my eyes kept wandering over to that little family. I wanted to help them. Of course, being a widow and a senior citizen on a fixed income wouldn’t allow me to do much, but I could do something. I could find that woman a coat and some gloves for her little chapped hands if nothing else.

  Chapter Two

  I had Faye and Sunny over to the house for supper that evening. We didn’t have anything fancy—just some spaghetti, homemade meatballs, and a loaf of French bread with garlic butter that I’d got from the bakery at the grocery store.

  We also had some cupcakes. I got those at the bakery too because I didn’t have time to make any myself. I’d reached for the half-dozen container thinking we’d all have one and then Faye and Sunny would take the other three home with them. But there I was grabbing up that dozen box, bigger th
an Ike. That’s when I knew I was going back to that soup kitchen the next day even though I wasn’t scheduled to work, and I knew what I was going to do with that other half dozen cupcakes.

  When Faye and Sunny got to the house, Sunny went running right to Matlock to hug his neck. Faye acts like she’s allergic to Matlock—and she very well may be—but I kinda figure she just doesn’t like him. She never has been one for dogs.

  “I’ll put him outside,” I said.

  “No, Mother, that’s all right. I took an allergy pill.”

  Well, wonders never cease. Maybe she was coming around.

  “I found a coat and some clothes too,” Faye went on. “Crimson and I will bring them in after we eat.”

  Crimson is Sunny’s given name. I don’t call her by that hippie name. I call her Sunny, short for Sunshine because she is my sunshine. I reckon it could be argued that Sunshine is a hippie name too. But I don’t call her Sunshine, and Sunny is not a hippie name.

  “I wish I still had some of Crimson’s old clothes,” Faye said. How old did you say the little girls are?”

  They look to be about two and four to me,” I said.

  “That’s so sad. After Steve died, Crimson and I didn’t have much…at least, not financially. But you and Dad were there for us. Wonder where this girl’s parents are?”

  “I don’t know, honey. I wish I did.”

  Faye’s husband Steve got killed in a car wreck when Sunny was just over a year old. Crandall and I never thought they were a good match, but Faye loved him…and he and Faye gave us Sunny.

  “I wish y’all would stop being Debbie Downers so we can eat,” Sunny said. “I’m starving. Lunch today sucked.”

  “Crimson!”

  “I mean, it was awful,” Sunny said.

  “Go get washed up,” Faye told her.

  I knew what sucked meant. Faye did too, naturally, but she thought it was bad language. Granted, it’s a tad crude, but it’s in the mainstream now. All the young ‘uns say it.