Manhunting in Mississippi (3 page)

She swal owed. “Where do I start, Gran?”

“I’m taking the couch, love seat, end tables and lamps, plus the bedroom suite and the kitchen table and chairs.” Her grandmother shrugged and grinned. “Everything else is

yours.”

Mouth open, Piper turned. “Mine? But Gran, I don’t have space for al this.”
Unless I buy this house.

Undaunted, Granny Falkner continued, “You can leave it here until the house sel s, then put the whole kit and caboodle in storage.”

Piper took a deep breath and nodded obediently. “Okay, I’l think of something.”

“Those boxes are personal things I gathered for you—let’s load them into your van so we’l have more room to move around in here.”

Staggering under the weight of the first box, Piper laughed. “What
is
al this stuff?”

Granny Falkner waved her hand in the air, then picked up another carton that appeared just as heavy. “Just books and such, a lot of old nonsense I saved for far too long. Go through it and keep what strikes your fancy and throw away the rest.”

Piper walked back through the kitchen and held open the screen door with her elbow. “Mom cal ed last night. She said to say hel o.”

“Why didn’t she cal and tel me herself?” her grandmother asked airily.

Sighing, Piper said, “I suggested the same thing.”

“She’s mad because I said something about that lazy bum she’s shacking up with.”

“She says they’re going to get married.”

Granny Falkner’s laugh crackled dryly. “After four trips to the altar, you’d think her judgment would improve.”

Nodding in mute agreement, Piper tingled with shame. Despite her grandmother’s wish to see her settled down, she wondered what Gran would think of the manhunt on which

she had decided to embark. Probably not much, she decided with a sideways glance at the woman whose wisdom and advice she treasured.

Her grandmother lowered her box onto the floor of the van. “In fifty-five years, the only thing Maggie managed to do right is have you. And how you turned out so wel , I’l never know.” She put her arm around Piper’s shoulders as they walked back to the house. “I live in eternal hope that your mother wil be just like you when she grows up.”

Her grandmother’s words reverberated in Piper’s head during the next few hours of packing and dusting and cleaning. Her mother’s track record was frightening—would her

own burgeoning desire for male companionship color her judgment, too? Wouldn’t she be better off without a man than launching into a series of rol er-coaster relationships? She didn’t know the first thing about finding a husband—her mother certainly wasn’t much of an example, and at the time, she hadn’t cared enough to study her sorority sisters in action. Worse, by deciding to buy her grandmother’s house and stay in Mudvil e, she’d narrowed the field of eligible men tremendously. Piper sighed. In the unlikely event that she did find a suitable dating prospect in town, she’d just have to wing it.

But on the late drive back to her town house, peering out the window at the forlorn little town she had made home a year ago, Piper had serious doubts about finding her dream man in the immediate vicinity. A decidedly garish neon sign read Welcome to Mudvil e. To make matters worse, the four center letters had expired, reducing the town greeting to Welcome to Mule.

The trip down Main Street took her past three used car lots festooned in multicolored plastic flags, nine beauty shops, six video-rental stores, two tanning parlors, “And a

partridge in a pear tree,” she murmured as she pul ed to a stop at one of the town’s two stoplights. Mudvil e consisted of two square blocks of dilapidated buildings and a few side streets, plus one fast-food restaurant where the town’s teenagers and desperate adults hung out. Then she chastised herself.
People in glass houses…

The blare of a horn caused her to jerk her head toward the vehicle on her right. Too late, she recognized the smoke-belching, rattletrap sports car of Lenny Kern, her neighbor’s son, who seemed determined to live at home until he could pool his social security check with his mother’s. With a thick paw, he motioned for her to rol down her window, and after a reluctant sigh, she obliged.

“Hey, Piper, what’s shakin’?” he bawled above the glass-shattering decibels of Hank Wil iams, Sr.

“Hey, Lenny,” she said with a tight smile.

“Wanna go for a ride?” he asked, grinning wide.

“No, thanks.”

“Aw, come on, Piper,
Top Gun
is playing at the dol ar theater.”

She grimaced. “I rented it several years ago.”

“Oh, real y?” He frowned, and bit his lower lip.

Thankful y, the light turned green. “So long, Lenny,” she said, pul ing away from the intersection. Her neighbor had been trying to wear her down into going out with him since she moved in. And she wasn’t
that
lonely…yet.

When she arrived at her town house, Piper parked, took out one of the boxes her grandmother had given her and went inside. She sprawled on the living-room floor in front of

the television. With the remote, she tuned into a rerun of a comedy that hadn’t been funny the first time, then pul ed the box toward her and placed it between her spread legs, curiosity coursing through her.

The smel of mothbal s, dried paper and stale flowers fil ed her nostrils as she lifted the lid. The box held a hodgepodge of memorabilia: dusty photo albums, yel owed songbooks, thick seventy-eight-size phonograph records and curling postcards. She thumbed through old issues of
Look
magazine, and smiled at hokey rhymes on ancient greeting cards. There were several paper-thin embroidered handkerchiefs, an invitation to her grandmother’s high-school graduation and a brittle newspaper article picturing a teenage Granny Falkner and her two sisters in gowns and upswept hairdos, grinning. The headline read Dance Marathons a Family Event for Sexton Sisters. Piper smiled in delight as she read about her dancing grandmother and two great-aunts, both of whom now lived in Florida. Only a year separated the three sisters and they were al stil ful of vinegar. Piper shook her head and bit her lower lip. The Sexton sisters had probably been the most sought-after women in the then-thriving town of Mudvil e, Mississippi. They had al married wel and enjoyed enduring marriages.

Near the bottom of the box, beneath pressed corsages, a string of buttons and a smal ring box of costume jewelry, Piper’s fingers curled around a hardback book the size of a videotape. She withdrew it slowly, thinking the faded pink journal was possibly a diary or even a recipe book. But hand-written on the front in neat slanted script were the words
The
Sexton Sisters’ Secret Guide to Marrying a Good Man.

Piper’s eyebrows lifted in amazement, and she laughed softly. Gran and her sisters had conducted their own manhunt? An ancestral account to guide her on her mission….

Maybe there was hope after al .

CHAPTER TWO

Always wear clean gloves, since a marriageable man might reveal himself in the most unlikely of places.

“’MORNIN’,
Piper. What’s shakin’?” Lenny Kern bel owed from the porch of his mother’s town house. He stood leaning against a post, picking his teeth, half-dressed and shiny, as if he’d been loitering long enough for the dew to have settled on him.

Piper, hoping to slink to her car unnoticed, acknowledged her neighbor without slowing. “Hey, Lenny.”

“Whew-we! You look
gooooooooood.
”

His gaze swept her figure, pausing at her yel ow silk blouse, and again at her knees extending from the snug, short black skirt. He grunted in appreciation and Piper briefly considered removing a too-tight high-heeled pump and bouncing it off his leering head.

“Did somebody die?” he asked, utterly serious.

“No,” she said slowly, as if speaking to a child, “I’m going to work.”

He shifted and scratched his hairy stomach, which protruded slightly over the waistband of his slept-in cutoff jean shorts. “You gotta work again today?”

She quirked an eyebrow and unlocked the door of her aged white minivan. “Yeah, Len, it’s cal ed gainful employment.”

“But you must put in—” he looked heavenward and counted on his fingers for what seemed like an eternity, then turned wide eyes her way “—close to forty hours a week!”

“At least,” she agreed wryly, opening the creaky door.

Lenny looked mournful. “I’m sorry for you, Piper. A woman like you shouldn’t have to do nothin’ but stay home and take care of her man.”

As she swung into her seat, with one hand tugging on her hem, she swore under her breath. “Some girls have al the luck, I guess.”

“Say, Piper, if you have an extra cake just layin’ around the food lab for the flies to eat, bring it home this evening, would ya? It’s Mom’s birthday.”

Striving to remain civil, Piper gripped the inside door handle and said, “You probably shouldn’t count on it, Len. Why don’t you order her something special?”

He snapped his fingers. “Good idea. I’l cal the day-old bakery and see if they’ve got something that ain’t too hard.”

She smiled tightly, feeling a pang of sympathy for sweet old Mrs. Kern. “Good luck, Len.” She closed the door and rammed the key into the ignition, her motions further hurried by the sight of Lenny loping off the porch and toward the van. He stopped and banged on the window, leaving large greasy fingerprints.

Reluctantly, Piper rol ed down the window two inches. “I’m running late, Len.”

He smoothed a hand over his uncombed raggedy mane of dark hair and grinned. He real y wasn’t a bad-looking man, he was just so…base. “Since I’m havin’ Mom a party,

why don’t you come over for a piece of cake, say, oh, about seven? We’l watch ‘Wheel of Fortune’ together.”

“I’l try to stop by and wish Margaret a happy birthday,” she said pleasantly, nodding and rol ing up the window at the same time she eased down the driveway.

“I’l get out my baby pictures!” Len yel ed, trotting alongside the van until she cut the wheels, prompting him to jump back into the wet grass to prevent a crushed bare foot.

Piper heaved a sigh of relief as she pul ed away, but guilt struck her when she saw Lenny’s shoulders sag in her rearview mirror. After staying up late to read
The Sexton
Sisters’ Secret Guide to Marrying a Good Man,
she’d gone to sleep with a smile on her lips and determination in her heart to keep an open mind where Mudvil e men were concerned.

But at the first sight of her persistent neighbor this morning, her mind had banged shut like a newly oiled door. And although she was a little more than positive that Lenny Kern did not hold the key to her destiny, she renewed her pledge to give every eligible man that crossed her path a fair assessment.

Low-hanging black clouds crowded the sky as she pul ed into the nearly deserted parking lot of a video rental store to return three movies. It looked like rain for sure. Rain wasn’t al that unusual for a summer day in Mississippi, but this one day, Piper had forgotten her umbrel a. Stil , perhaps a shower would al eviate some of the ever-present humidity, she thought hopeful y.

Piper reached around to loosen her blouse from her sticky back and glanced at the movies in her hand with a faint pang of embarrassment. Was there a flick she hadn’t seen?

Black-and-white, Technicolor or colorized, romance, action or science fiction—she loved them al . For ninety minutes she could escape, finding a new life infinitely more interesting and fulfil ing than hers.

It wasn’t as though she didn’t love her job as a food scientist—she
did.
And despite her good-natured complaints about living in a smal town, she enjoyed the sense of community in Mudvil e. But she realized last night while reading the manhunting guide that although she’d spent years convincing herself she didn’t want a man, she’d been fooling herself. She wanted her own happy ending, and as much as she hated to admit it, she wanted a loving companion by her side when the credits on her life rol ed by.

She had just slid the tapes into a night drop box when a sound from the front of the store drew her attention. Henry Walden, owner of Videovil e and town playboy, stuck his head out the door. “Piper Shepherd, is that you?”

Piper stared at the man who’d barely looked her way the five hundred or so times she’d been in his store. He had pale hair and tanned skin and seemingly row upon row of

bril iantly white teeth. Henry wore his usual uniform of tight jeans, black pointed-toe boots and sleeveless shirt that showed off the tiger’s-head tattoo on his left biceps. Although he looked to be in his mid-to late-thirties, he typical y kept company with girls half his age. And twice her bra size.

Stil , Henry was eligible, and handsome in a flashy kind of way. She remembered her pledge and smiled up at him. “Who does it look like, Henry?”

He seemed mesmerized by her legs. “I’m not sure—you look so…so…I’ve never seen you wear a dress.”

Satisfaction and surprise warmed her. Were men so superficial that a simple change of clothes could elicit such a response? She was the same person she’d been yesterday,

wearing drawstring khakis and an oversize T-shirt. Her scuffed clogs were substantial y more comfortable than these toe-pinching pumps, so she was relatively sure she
looked
happier in her old clothes.

“Funeral?” he asked, utterly serious.

“No,” she retorted. “Can’t a girl dress up once in a while?”

He crossed his muscular arms and pursed his lips, surveying her as if he’d just made a discovery. “Absolutely,” he said. “Listen, Piper, I’ve been meaning to cal you and see if you’d like to go out sometime. What do you say?”

Not quite sure if he was asking her out or asking her if he could ask her out, Piper nodded. “That would be nice…I think.”

He nodded confidently, as if he expected no less than her acquiescence, and chewed on the inside of his cheek. A smile curved his fetching mouth as he studied her legs. The

silence stretched between them until Piper felt as if she stood on two juicy drumsticks.