Jennifer Greene - Sparkle

“Mrs. Price?”

“Yes, I’m here.” She clapped the receiver tighter to her ear.

“So…can you meet sometime next week? Say Monday morning, ten o’clock?”

“Yes,” she said.

When she hung up the phone, she was still bewildered how or why she could possibly have agreed.

Of course, she could go right in and tell Charles about the call this very minute.

She decided to do just that. She even took a brisk step forward—and then suddenly leaned back against the counter. She stood there without moving for a good long minute. Some instinct held her back. Maybe it was as simple as not wanting to interrupt Charles when he was already in an ornery mood.

Maybe it was something else.

She didn’t know. She couldn’t explain this silly, inexplicably strong intuition that she keep this information to herself…at least for now.

When Poppy clomped up the steps to Cal Asher’s office, it was five minutes to ten. She was crabby at having her Monday workday interrupted and she’d forgotten her thermos. No one—at least no one who knew her—could possibly expect her to be civil without her caffeine quota, and she’d been too darn busy this morning to guzzle it.

She charged in the gloomy vestibule and promptly found another reason to scowl. She wasn’t alone. Someone else had obviously arrived ahead of her and was waiting to see Cal.

More annoying yet, the lone woman sitting there was…well, Poppy couldn’t immediately remember her full name, but she was pretty sure the last name was Price and that she was a minister’s wife.

Poppy liked to think of herself as tolerant, but in her heart she knew perfectly well she was allergic to churches. She had no problem with religion. Hell, she even had some herself, even if she tended to be quiet about it. But something seemed to happen to a lot of people when they attended church. They started turning into serial sinners, tended to claim their beliefs were the only right ones and then felt obligated—for God knows what reason—to push those beliefs on everybody else. Poppy knew everybody else hadn’t noticed it, but as far as she could tell, something about chronic church attenders turned normal people mean, besides. They took cuts in line. Shoved in the grocery store. Demanded to be taken care of first at the vet, the doctor, the dentist, as if their problems were more important than everybody else’s.

In principle, Poppy didn’t care what anybody did as long as they treated their pets well. But wasting a good work morning in a lawyer’s office with no one to talk to but a pastor’s wife…well, it sucked.

She plunked down on a hard-back chair and glanced at her Swiss Army watch, willing the minute dial to hustle along. She’d always been very good at doing, very bad at waiting. She hadn’t dressed up for this shindig because she was going straight back to work, but her one pride and joy—her mane of thick russet hair—was freshly washed. And she’d taken the trouble to throw on a sweatshirt without holes and jeans more reputable than most. Naturally she hadn’t bothered with makeup because she didn’t own any.

As a young teenager, she remembered believing all the advertisements zealously pushed on girls to make them think that makeup had the power to change their looks. Eventually she’d recognized that scam for what it was. Nothing was going to make her pretty. Makeup made her more vulnerable instead of less, because it drew attention to her potatoes-plain face. Better for people to think she didn’t give a damn about her looks than to reveal she was sensitive about them.

Poppy glanced at her watch again, discovered less than forty seconds had passed and jumped to her feet. Might as well look around, since she couldn’t sit still.

Cal Asher still practiced law in the old family home on Main Street. Everybody knew the story about how he’d been the sole holdout when the town council fought to renovate the rest of Righteous. The tall, skinny brick home was tucked between Our Way—the town newspaper—and various other commercial ventures, from Silver Dream to Marcella’s Expert Hair Salon.

Cal’s house stood out like the eccentric he was, inside and out. The parlor/waiting area may have seen an update in the ’80s, but that would have been the l880s, as far as Poppy could tell. All the furnishings would have looked elegant—in another century. Doubtful it had been dusted since. The big room was crowded with character—lots of furniture with feet, lots of cracked crown molding and blistered woodwork, lamps with fringe and dangling crystals. She accidentally caught a glimpse of a funny-looking woman with a disheveled mane of reddish hair—realized it had to be her in that wavy, gilt-framed mirror on the far wall and swiftly turned away.

She wasn’t ignoring the pastor’s wife. Just couldn’t see a point in starting a conversation with someone she had nothing in common with. And she kept fretting who Cal was going to see first—yeah, the woman had arrived before her, but Poppy was the one who had a ten o’clock appointment. For which she’d been early. And for which Cal was now two minutes late.

The far double doors were opened by a scrawny little guy wearing a bow tie. “Miss Thompson and Mrs. Price, come this way, please.”

Poppy tossed a startled look at the pastor’s wife. The woman shot an equally startled look back at her—then smiled. “I didn’t expect we would be called in together,” the woman said.

“Neither did I. I don’t understand anything about this,” Poppy admitted.

“Me either. I have no idea what I’m even doing here.”

Okay, Poppy thought. So the Price woman wasn’t the stiff-as-dried-mud preachy type she’d instantly assumed. But they were still from alien planets. Price was wearing a mid-calf-length dress, a print with little flowers and a tidy belt. Her wheat-pale hair swayed just to her shoulders, curling under, a style that suited her perfectly. Her posture was perfect. In fact, she could have aced the course in modesty and decorum—which Poppy couldn’t do if her life depended on it—and most aggravating of all, the damn woman was beautiful.

Their ages were similar; she had to be late 30s, early 40s. But she was one of those classic beauties, great bones, striking blue eyes, a tall, reed-slim figure. No hips. How could Poppy ever relate to someone who didn’t know what a hip was? And the darn woman looked that good without any makeup or artifice in sight. It was enough to make Poppy want to smack her upside the head, just on general principle.

Once ushered into Cal Asher’s office, Poppy quickly took the far leather chair and stretched out her legs, work boots and all. Ms. Prissy Price took the chair next to her and sat as if she were happy with a ruler up her spine.

Cal was just putting something out of sight in a side desk drawer. Poppy wasn’t born yesterday; she saw him rub an arm across his mouth, clearly wiping the last traces of liquor from the swig he’d just stolen. He smiled at both of them, looking much like a genial Mark Twain from a century bygone—give or take the rheumy eyes. “Ladies, if you don’t know each other, Poppy, meet Bren, and vice versa.”

They did a mutual obligatory nod, then quickly ignored each other. “I hope this won’t take too long, Cal, I’ve got a ton of work waiting,” Poppy said briskly.

“Ah, yes. Don’t we all.” With a dramatic flair, Cal slowly stood, shifted a bad print of hunting dogs to the side and turned the dials on a large wall safe. Eventually he pulled out two boxes—they looked like plain old children’s shoe boxes—and set them on his desk. “Do you ladies know an old woman named Maude Rose?”

“This is about Maude?” Bren said bewilderedly. “But she died several weeks ago.”