The Red Hat Society's Domestic Goddess
Read The Red Hat Society's Domestic Goddess Online
Authors: Regina Hale Sutherland
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2006 by The Red Hat Society,® Inc.
Excerpt from
The Red Hat Society’s Acting Their Age
and
The Red Hat Society’s Queens of Woodlawn Avenue
copyright © 2006 by The Red Hat Society,® Inc. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976,
no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database
or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978-0-446-57000-8
Warner Vision is a trademark of Time Warner Inc. or an affiliated company. Used under license by Hachette Book Group USA,
which is not affiliated with Time Warner Inc.
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First eBook Edition: November 2009
Contents
A Preview of
Queens of Woodlawn Avenue
Chapter One“I hate the word housewife; I don’t like the word homemaker either. I want to be called Domestic Goddess.”
—
Rosearme
F
eeling like the rabbit in
Alice in Wonderland,
Millie Truman pulled her gray Taurus into the driveway of her condo and impatiently pushed her garage door opener. Late.
She was running late. But like the rabbit, at least she looked good. She spared a quick glance into her rearview mirror, admiring
the new ’do. Cinnamon. Since she loved the flavor so much, she’d taken a chance on the color.
And it had paid off. Of course, now she would have to hear her friends, Theresa and Kim, say, “I told you so.” They’d been
bugging her for a while to stop being so old-fashioned and get a dye job. She had to admit they were right; she looked much
younger than fifty-five.
Except… had the beautician missed a gray hair? She reached up for the offensive strand, but it dissolved between her fingers
like gossamer. A cobweb.
From cleaning Mitchell’s apartment. It figured. Her youngest son was responsible for all the gray hair she’d just gotten rid
of, too.
She’d stopped at his place after the beauty parlor, expecting only to have to do a quick dusting and vacuuming. But she’d
found his loft apartment totally trashed, as her granddaughter would say, like the frat houses he and his brother had lived
in during college. The big mess had probably not been the result of a party, though, just his usual fast-paced lifestyle.
While she was there, he’d rushed in to pack a suitcase for a business trip for the automotive firm where he worked. Except
she
had wound up packing the suitcase, after she found it shoved under his bed.
She didn’t want to think about what else she’d found under there. She brushed her hand through her cinnamon curls again, dislodging
another cobweb and shuddering.
What had happened to Heather, who’d actually made an attempt to keep the apartment neat? Millie had asked, but Mitchell had
just grinned and shrugged and made some smart remark about Suzy Homemaker types liking boring nine-to-five men like his brother,
Steven, the insurance agent.
Suzy Homemaker indeed, Millie sniffed. She preferred the term her fellow Red Hatters used:
Domestic Goddess.
Millie had reigned as one throughout thirty-one years of marriage, and she’d loved it. Like she’d told her dear husband,
it was her
job.
But Bruce had died five years ago, and she should have been able to retire her tiara and spend less time
cooking and cleaning and more time with her friends. But she’d still had Pop to take care of; he lived with her then… and
Mitchell, the confirmed bachelor. At least she hadn’t had to worry about Steven, who was happily married with a beautiful
daughter. Then. She was a little worried about his marriage now.
But she didn’t have time to worry. She had to clean up, bake her snack contribution for Movie Night at the community center,
and meet Kim, a neighbor and fellow Red Hat Society member, for dinner.
Resisting the urge to check for more cobwebs, she tore her gaze from the mirror and noticed that the garage door was up. But
there was no room for her car in the single stall of her end unit brick condo. Another car was already backed into it with
the trunk lid lifted. She pressed the brake, stopping an inch shy of its front bumper.
“What in the world…”
A robber. That should have been her first thought, and she should have been fumbling in her purse for her cell phone to call
911 while backing away. But the black car looked vaguely familiar, or as familiar as the grill of a vehicle can look. She’d
feel pretty silly if she called the police on someone she knew, especially if it was, as she now suspected, her oldest son.
Of the few people who had a key to her place, Mitchell was probably on a plane by now. Pop was in Arizona with his new wife,
or at least he had been when they’d talked a few nights ago. Process of elimination left Steven, but as Mitchell had just
pointed out, Steven worked nine to five. And it was only four o’clock.
Her hand trembling slightly, Millie shifted the gear into park but left her car running as she stepped out. For a quick getaway?
From her own house?
Maybe the cinnamon dye had leaked into her brain. Or she spent too much time with Kim. Kim was the daughter of a retired police
chief; she suspected everyone of something. The scary part was that she was occasionally right.
Remembering that, Millie opened the back door of the Taurus and reached for something to use as a weapon. Her fingers closed
over the handle of the vacuum, but the muscles in her shoulder protested as she started to lift it out.
She couldn’t blame Mitchell for her cramped muscles, though; those were courtesy of the aerobics class Kim had started at
the condo community center. Millie couldn’t very well not attend since it had been her idea for Kim to start the classes after
school budget cuts had cost her a Phys Ed teaching position.
But push-ups? Really?
Kim had a tendency to treat her new students like her old ones: teenagers.
Millie released the vacuum handle and reached for something else, pulling out a hot pink feather duster. Not very lethal.
But from all the dust left on it from Mitchell’s place, it might make a burglar sneeze hard enough for Millie to escape… if
the need arose.
She drew in a quick, fortifying breath, then walked into the garage. The car parked in it was the same make and model Steven
drove. While the trunk was open, the contents inside hadn’t been taken from
her
house. She
didn’t own a laptop or a set of golf clubs, so unless her robber had a Robin Hood complex, she was safe.
And if he did… she preferred jewelry to golf clubs and computers. Rings and necklaces. Tiaras she could do without.
The door between the house and the garage creaked as it slowly opened. Millie ducked behind it and lifted the duster, hoping
that her exercise-weary joints didn’t creak as loudly as the door hinges. Her heart beat hard and fast against her ribs as
a dark shadow emerged from the house.
Broad shoulders, thinning dark hair, expanding belly… he was not exactly her image of a cat burglar. He was her son. Steven
caught sight of her and gasped, “Mom!”
Millie’s heart rate subsided, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
Steven sneezed and gestured toward her weapon. “What the heck are you doing? Dusting the garage? You take this neatness thing
a little too far.”
“Steven?” It wasn’t like she didn’t recognize him; what she questioned was what he was doing at her house, at four o’clock.
“Did you have a golf outing?” she asked, waving the duster at his clubs in the trunk. The insurance company for which Pop,
Bruce, and now Steven worked their boring nine-to-five jobs often sponsored them. “It’s a great day for one.” Not that she
had spent much time in the gorgeous, warm weather, which was unusual for such an early spring day in Michigan.
Steven didn’t answer her, brushing a slightly shaking
hand over his thinning hair instead. He had his father’s hair, or premature lack thereof, as his younger brother relentlessly
teased him. Maybe it was the hair loss, or his growing waistline, but he always looked older than his almost-thirty-six years.
Today he looked even older, his face set in lines far too grim for a man his age.
“Bad game?” she teased, though he wasn’t dressed for golf. He was wearing suit pants and a dress shirt. The jacket lay across
the front seat of his car and his tie hung from the rearview mirror. Her heart started beating fast again.
“Mom…”
“Steven, what’s going on? You’re here in the afternoon, with the garage door down—”
“I shut the garage door because of your nosy neighbors. I already had a run-in with that crazy lady—”
“Crazy lady?”
“The neighbor who’s packing.”
He probably didn’t mean luggage or a can of mace, either. Besides being Hilltop Condominium’s aerobic instructor, Kim was
the unofficial neighborhood watch captain. Nothing and nobody got past her. “That’s Kim.”
“Dirty Harriet.”
“Actually, Harry’s what she calls the gun,” she said. If Kim had brought it out, she’d really been concerned. But since she’d
left, she must have ruled Steven out as a burglar, too.
“She named her gun?”
Millie smiled. You really had to know Kim for a while before you realized she wasn’t crazy. Just a little intense. “It’s not
real.”
“Could have fooled me,” he said, brushing that hand through his hair again. It was shaking even more.
But Millie didn’t believe it was his run-in with Kim that had him so upset. “It’s an air gun, kind of like the BB guns you
and Mitchell had growing up.”
That they’d used to shoot each other with before claiming the resulting welts on their skin were chicken pox. Millie might
have fallen for it, too, had they not both already had the chicken pox.
“Those can really hurt,” Steven said. He would know.
“She didn’t use Harry on you?” Millie asked, horrified. Because he looked like he was hurt. His brown eyes were dark and wounded,
his mouth tight and devoid of his usual easy smile.
“No,” he assured her, “but I could have done without meeting him today.”
Somehow she knew he was talking about more than the uncomfortable sensation of looking down a gun barrel. As she glanced again
toward his partially unpacked trunk, she had that uncomfortable sensation herself. “Steven, I’m sorry about that.”
He shrugged, his broad shoulders bobbing slowly up and down as if they carried a burden too heavy for him to bear. His gaze
kept sliding away from hers. He couldn’t meet her eyes, like when he’d been a little boy and had, on the rare occasion, done
something naughty. Unlike his younger brother, he’d never wanted her disapproval or disappointment.
“It’s not a big deal,” he said. “It’s good to know someone’s looking out for you.”
“Hey,
I
look out for me!” She brandished the fuchsia
duster, leaving a trail of cobwebs across the garage floor that she’d just swept that morning. Now she
would
have to dust it…