Soup...Er...Myrtle!: A Myrtle Crumb Mystery (Myrtle Crumb Mystery Series) (3 page)

When I left the soup kitchen, I went to the grocery
store to get Matlock and me something for dinner. After everybody else had been
served, we volunteers got us some food. Like Opal Grady, I’d had beef stew and
cornbread. So I was stuffed to the gills, but I feel like that’s a good time to
go to the grocery store. You don’t wind up with a bunch of stuff you don’t need
when you go full instead of hungry. Still, it made it harder to figure out what
I might want for supper.

I wandered the aisles trying to decide what looked good.
I wound up getting a couple cans of chicken breast meat, some red seedless
grapes, and some pecans. I’d make some chicken salad, and we’d eat it with
crackers.

Now before you go thinking that’s all I’d give a big dog
like Matlock for supper, his bites of chicken salad would just be to supplement
his dog food. And I knew better than to give him any bites that had grapes in
it too. So don’t be fussing at me…even in your mind. I don’t appreciate it.

Anyway, I took my basket of chicken salad fixins up to
the checkout lane and was waiting for the man in front of me to pay for his
candy bar and pop.

If I’d known him, I’d have said I hoped that wasn’t all
he was having for his lunch. Since I didn’t know him, I kept my mouth shut and
minded my own business. I
could
do that once in a while. Not often…but
occasionally.

I scanned the magazines next to the counter. It has
always confounded me to see headlines for “quick weight loss” on the same
covers as they have these delicious-looking desserts. I reckon they figure it’s
two sides of the same coin.

I glanced at the tabloids. That little Kate and William
are just darlin’…don’t you agree? And that baby…cute as a button. I’ve always
thought I’d have liked to have been royalty. I believe I could’ve done it up
right. I grinned at that thought, and then tried to quit before people thought
I was crazy.

I looked over at the register and saw a sign taped to it
warning the cashier not to accept checks from Opal Grady. Well, you can believe
that wiped any traces of that grin off my face!

 I probably wouldn’t have even paid any attention
to that sign if I hadn’t seen Opal earlier today.  Now it made me think.
Was Opal doing even worse than I’d thought? I mean, you have to figure that
somebody showing up at a soup kitchen for lunch ain’t doing real well, but I
didn’t think she’d bounce checks.

If she
had
bounced a check, she hadn’t done it on
purpose. And, yet, here her name was up on the side of this cash register for
everybody to take a gander at. Opal didn’t deserve to be humiliated like that!
I had to do something.

The man took his pop and candy bar and moved along.

“How are you?” The female cashier wore a bored look that
told me she didn’t give two hoots how I was.

“I’m perturbed that you have my friend Opal Grady’s name
plastered there on your register,” I said. “I find it hard to believe that Opal
would pass a bad check on purpose.”

The girl shrugged and chewed her cinnamon gum as she
scanned the items I’d put on the conveyor belt.

“It has to be a mistake,” I continued.

She shrugged again. “Store policy—you write more than
one bad check on us, you go up on the register.” She popped the gum and told me
my total.

I paid her with cash…and I was particularly glad I
had
cash because I didn’t think I’d be comfortable writing a check in this store. I
mean, they’d had to have made a mistake about Opal. Opal wasn’t the kind of
person to go around writing bad checks. She was a soprano in the choir, for
Pete’s sake.

* * *

When I got home, I let Matlock go into the backyard to
pee. After I put my groceries away and got him back in, I dug the phone book
out of my junk drawer and looked up Opal’s number. As I punched in the number,
I thought how best to tell her what I’d seen at the grocery store. By the time
Opal answered the phone, I’d decided to just come right out and say it.

“Opal, this is Myrtle Crumb.”

“Oh, mercy. I didn’t leave my pocketbook down at the
food bank again, did I?” she asked.

“No…at least, I don’t think so. That’s not why I’m
calling,” I said. “I’m calling to tell you I saw your name at the grocery
store. They’re accusing you of passing bad checks, and I believe you need to
set the record straight with those folks.”

“Oh, honey, I appreciate your getting all fired up on my
account,” Opal said. “But they must be talking about some other Opal. I ain’t
ever wrote a check in my life.”

“You’ve not?”

“No. My parents lived through the Great Depression, and
they never trusted banks,” she said. “So they taught me and my brothers not to
trust ‘em either. I’ve never had a savings or a checking account. I keep my
money at my house in a safe with my late husband’s hunting rifle right next to
it. And if I ain’t got money, I don’t buy…which is why I’ve been coming to the
soup kitchen and food bank a little more often lately.”

“Well, I’m just glad it’s not you they’re picking on at
the grocery store,” I said.

After we hung up, though, I found myself wondering just
how many Opal Gradys there could be in Backwater.

* * *

When I got to the soup kitchen Friday morning, Bettie
Easton was there. She came over to me and was waving around a piece of notebook
paper.

Bettie is an attractive woman with her shoulder-length
blonde bob and her trim figure, but the red lipstick she wears all the time is
a little much. A body tended to notice those lips coming at them before it
registered that they were attached to Bettie.

“Sweetie, I’m so sorry you dragged yourself out on this
frosty Friday,” Bettie said.

I didn’t comment on the fact that I hadn’t
dragged
myself anywhere, and I didn’t mention that Bettie’s annoying alliteration could
get on a person’s last nerves either. I was trying hard to be cheerful today.

Bettie held up the paper. “Take a look at this. Delphine
and I are here, and this list shows the other volunteers who’re working today.”

I took the paper and scanned over it. Heather’s name
wasn’t on it, but then I hadn’t really expected her to be able to volunteer
unless someone could take care of her daughters…and I had a bad feeling that
Heather was pretty much on her own.

Bettie just kept prattling on. “So you see, sweetie,
when I called you the other night, I didn’t intend to make you feel like you
had to come down here every day. Why, there’s….” She put out her index finger
and started counting the names. She stopped on one. “Huh…Harry Loomis…. I’ll
have to ask him how his car is doing.”

“Who’s Harry Loomis?” I asked.

“He’s a college kid who came in last week and bought a
car from us. He used a credit card,” she said. “We don’t have many people buy
cars with credit cards.”

Bettie and her family owned a big used car lot off the
Interstate.

“Why in the world would anybody buy a car using a credit
card?” I asked. “The interest would be awful.”

“He didn’t have any credit other than the card, so he
couldn’t get a bank loan,” Bettie said. “He probably has rich parents who’ll
help him pay off the card.”

“Let’s hope so.”

“But the point I’m trying to make is that you don’t have
to come every day, and I feel awful if I made you think you did.”

“You didn’t, Bettie.” I explained to her about Heather
and her children. “I’m hoping they’ll be here today. That poor girl needs a
coat in the worst way. Besides, Doris likes for me to make the cornbread.”

“Well, your cornbread
is
a culinary coop!” She
laughed. “And I hope the girl and her young ‘uns show up today. Maybe there’s
something I could do to help too…or maybe the M.E.L.O.N.S. could adopt the
family!”

Inwardly, I cringed. What had I done to sweet little
Heather? To Bettie, I smiled and said I should probably find Doris.

I went into the kitchen, and Delphine was pouring peanut
butter fudge into a long glass baking dish. Delphine can make fudge so good
it’d make a body slap his granny.

“Mornin’, Delphine. That sure does smell good.”

“Hi, Myrtle. I wish I’d done this at home last night.
I’m afraid it won’t have enough time to set up.”

“Let’s hope it will.”

Something outside the window over the sink caught my
attention, and I moved closer to the glass to get a better look. It was a man on
a bicycle. He had on a knit cap, and he’d wound a scarf from his neck to his
eyeballs. I didn’t know how the poor thing was breathing.

“What is it?” Delphine finished pouring her fudge into
the dish and came to take a peek too.

“Some poor goon is on a bicycle and it thirty degrees,”
I said.

The man stopped and leaned the bike against the wall of
our building.

“Let’s get him in here before he dies of frostbite or
something,” Delphine said. She opened the door. “Hey, mister! Are you all
right?”

He came into the kitchen shaking like a rabbit in a
bears’ den. “I wouldn’t mind a cup of hot coffee if you have one.” He unwrapped
the scarf, folded it, and tucked it into his coat pocket. “I’m Harry L-loomis.
I’m on th-the list to work today.”

His teeth were rattling so that he could barely talk.

It dawned on me that he’d said he was Harry Loomis. He
sure didn’t look like a college kid to me. Of course, I reckoned that riding a
bicycle around in thirty-degree weather would age a feller pretty dang quick.

“Did you say you’re Harry Loomis?” I asked.

“Yes, ma’am.” He took off his gloves and shoved them
into his pockets.

“Well, why didn’t you drive?” I asked.

When he frowned at me like I was crazy, I told him about
Bettie seeing his name on the list and telling me that he’d bought a car from
them last week.

“It didn’t quit on you already, did it?” I asked.

“That must’ve been some other Harry Loomis,” he said. “I
have seizures and never was allowed to get a driver’s license.” He gave me and
Delphine a wry grin. “Not that it’d do me any good anyhow. I can’t afford a
car.”

Delphine handed Harry his coffee. “There’s cream and
sugar there on the counter, so you can fix it however you like it.”

“I appreciate that, ma’am, but black is fine with me.”

Doris came in, and I asked her if she’d like for me to
get started on the cornbread. She said that if I didn’t mind, she’d appreciate
that.

As I got out a mixing bowl, I found myself wondering
about all these Harry Loomises and Opal Gradys running around Backwater.

Well, don’t you know I was tickled pink to see Heather
and those little ones come through the door? Once again, Heather had on that
thin blue jean jacket. We hadn’t started serving yet, so I hurried over to
them.

I bent over and spoke to the girls first. “Hello there,
little princesses! How are you today?”

The oldest said she was fine, and the youngest grinned
at me from behind her momma’s leg.

“Heather, I’ve got something in the car for you, if
you’d like to have it,” I whispered. “It’s a coat.”

“I appreciate it. How much do you want for it?” she
asked.

“I’ll not take a dime for it. It was my daughter’s, and
she’s not using it anymore. I’d just like to see somebody get some wear out of
it.”

“Are you sure you won’t let me pay you for it?”

“I’m positive. Grab me before you leave, and we’ll walk
out to the car and get it,” I said.

She told me she would, and I went over and got in place
in the serving line before the dining room started filling up. Today we were
serving potato soup, chicken and rice, and tomato bisque. I’ll warrant that
tomato bisque was Bettie’s concoction. She liked fancy stuff like that. I had
to admit, it did look tasty, but I was planning on going with the potato soup
if there was any left after everybody had gone through the line.

* * *

I saw Heather helping her girls into their coats as I
was finishing up my lunch. In case you’re wondering, there
had
 been
some potato soup left…and it was awfully good. I told Delphine I’d be right
back. Then I went and got my coat from the closet near the kitchen, put it on,
and returned to where Heather and the girls were standing.

“You ready?” I asked.

“Yep…as soon as I get Miranda Sue’s mittens on her,”
Heather said.

Miranda Sue was the littlest one, and she smiled up at
me as her momma slid the mittens over her tiny hands.

Once she had her daughters suited up, Heather took their
hands and we walked to the door. I held it open for them to go out ahead of me.

“Mine’s the white Buick right over there,” I said,
taking the key fob from my coat pocket and unlocking the door. The long gray
coat was hanging from a rack on the back passenger side. I got the coat and
held it up for Heather.  “What do you think?”

“I love it.” She looked down at the girls and ordered
them not to move because she was going to have to let go of their hands for a
minute.

I stepped over to kind of block the children into the
space as best as I could. You never knew when a young ‘un would see something
and try to run over and get a better look at it. Then again, that’s practically
what Delphine and I did when we saw Harry Loomis riding up on that bicycle
while ago. But something like that’ll make you look twice. I planned to offer
him a ride home, if we could figure out what to do with that bicycle. I didn’t
think it’d fit in the trunk.

Heather slipped on the coat, and it fit her like it was
made for her. She smiled at me. “It’s beautiful.”

“It is,” I told her. “It suits you. All you need to go
with it is a blue scarf to bring out your pretty eyes…and I might have one at
the house.”