The Trouble With Valentine's Day Read Online Free Page B

didn’t win. Even drag queens have their standards.” She pulled out a pen and began writing out a check. “Regina showed me the pictures. I swear, Tiffer in a wig and rouge looks just like his mama. And Regina looks more like Charles Nelson Riley than Barbra Streisand. Seems a waste and a shame if that Sutter fella is gay, though. But it would explain why he isn’t married and never dates.” Ada ripped out the check and handed it to Kate. “And Myrtle Lake’s granddaughter, Rose, is after him, too. Rose is young and cute as they come, but he’s never parked his boots under her bed neither.”
    Kate wondered how Ada knew so much about the owner of the sporting goods store. Kate could have found out the same information easily enough, but she was a licenced private investigator. Ada was the manager of The Sandman Motel and obviously a very busy body.
    After Ada left the store, Kate locked the cash register and walked to the back. The room smelled of fresh meat and the bleach her grandfather always used to sanitize his equipment and cutting boards. At the far end of the room was the store’s small bakery, where her grandmother had made cakes and cookies and homemade bread. The equipment was covered, and no one had used it in over two years.
    Stanley sat at a long white table, having finished packaging T-bone steaks in six blue Styrofoam trays and plastic wrap. On the wall above him hung the same meat-cutting charts that Kate remembered from her childhood. Other than the deserted bakery, it appeared as if nothing had changed in a few decades, but it had. Her grandfather was older and tired easily. Her grandmother was gone, and Kate didn’t know why he didn’t sell the store or hire someone to run it for him.
    â€œAda’s gone,” Kate said. “You can come out now.”
    Stanley Caldwell looked up, his brown eyes reflecting the dull sadness of his heart. “I wasn’t hiding, Katie.”
    She folded her arms beneath her breasts and leaned a shoulder into boxes of paper products that needed to be carried into the storage room. He was the only person in the world who called her Katie, as if she were still a little girl. She continued to simply look at him until a slight smile lifted his white handlebar mustache.
    â€œWell, maybe I was,” he confessed as he stood; his potbelly pushed at the front of his bloody apron. “But that woman talks so much, she makes my head hurt.” He untied his apron and tossed it on the worktable. “I just can’t take a woman who talks too much. That’s one thing I liked about your grandmother. She didn’t talk just to hear her own voice.”
    Which wasn’t entirely true. Melba had loved to gossip as much as anyone else in town. And it had taken Kate less than two weeks to discover that Gospel included gossip in their daily diet like it was a fifth member of the food groups. Meat. Vegetable. Bread. Dairy. All served alongside a healthy portion of “Vonda’s youngest was caught smokin’ behind the school.”
    â€œWhat about the woman who works for the sheriff? She seems nice and doesn’t talk as much as Ada.”
    â€œThat’s Hazel.” Stanley picked up the packages of T-bones, and Kate followed as he carried them through the store to the display case. The worn wood floor still creaked in the places Kate remembered as a child. The same Thanks for Shopping Here sign still hung above the door, and candy and gum were still sold on the first aisle. These days, though, the penny candy was ten cents and the owner’s steps were slower, his shoulders more hunched, and his hands were gnarled.
    â€œHazel’s an okay gal,” her grandfather said as they stopped at the open refrigerated case. “But she isn’t your grandmother.”
    The meat case had three decks and was split into four sections: chicken, beef, pork, and prepackaged, which her grandfather always