A Dollar Short (The Bottom Dollar Series Book 2) Read online

  Lonnie and Chiffon had squealed like a couple of game-show contestants when they’d found out the news. He ran to the liquor store and picked up a box of Almaden white Zinfandel, and they toasted each other with plastic cups. Chiffon tossed out her dinner of charred Tuna Helper—burnt in her excitement over the news—and Lonnie took the whole family out for chicken-fried-steak night at the Chat ‘N’ Chew.

  Chiffon, who’d spent most of her thirty-six years in Cayboo Creek, was going to Hollywood! She’d get to visit a real movie set and maybe even meet America’s most famous female movie star, Janie-Lynn Lauren.

  Two weeks before their trip, she’d made arrangements for the kids to stay with Mavis and had driven across the Savannah River to the Kmart in Augusta, Georgia, and bought a brand-new coordinating outfit from the Kathy Ireland line.

  Two packed suitcases had stood by the front door, ready to go, a full week before their departure date. Chiffon fretted over the contents of her bags for three days, packing and repacking, hating the look of her frayed panties and scuffed shoes—wishing she had the cash to buy all new things. Lonnie pitched a fit over her Kmart purchase, saying it was criminal to spend sixty-two dollars for just one outfit. He was used to Chiffon digging out dollar-fifty slacks and shirts from the bins at the Methodist Church thrift shop, and didn’t have a clue about the high cost of clothes.

  Two days before they were set to leave, her best friend, Elizabeth, dropped by the house with a pink-and-white-striped Victoria’s Secret box and a playful grin on her face.

  “I figured this trip could be a second honeymoon for you and Lonnie,” she said with a wink as Chiffon unearthed a wispy white nightie from the layers of scented tissue.

  Chiffon appreciated her friend’s gesture, although she couldn’t imagine wearing such a virginal-looking nightie to bed without Lonnie laughing her right out of the room. When it came to lingerie, Chiffon’s tastes tended toward animal prints, peekaboo cutouts, or fire-engine red panty-and-bra sets.

  Besides, she and Lonnie had never needed any extra help in the bedroom. That area of their marriage was rock solid, even after three kids, a near bankruptcy, and her ten-pound—okay, maybe it was more like twenty-pound—weight gain since their wedding day ten years ago. Chiffon looked forward to having her husband all to herself in a hotel room without any interruptions from kids.

  Unfortunately, on the night before they were to leave, Gabby woke at two in the morning, squalling. Chiffon knew immediately that her baby’s cry sounded peculiar, and sure enough, when she reached into the crib, her daughter’s forehead was as warm as toast.

  Chiffon rummaged in the medicine cabinet for the baby thermometer and took Gabby’s temperature. When the thermometer registered 104 degrees, she shrieked loud enough to startle Lonnie out of bed.

  Long story short, the next morning Chiffon did not get on the plane to California in her Kathy Ireland sherbet top with matching flower-print capri pants. Instead, she spent the better part of her day in a grungy sweatsuit, slumped in a hard plastic chair on the pediatric floor, waiting for the doctors to tell her what was wrong with her baby.

  Despite Gabby’s illness, Chiffon insisted that Lonnie fly to California without her.

  “Babies are all the time getting high fevers. Most times it’s nothing,” she said to Lonnie, fighting back tears of disappointment. “No sense in both of us missing out.”

  Lonnie hemmed and hawed for about ten seconds, and then grabbed the tickets from Chiffon’s purse, saying, “Okay, darling. If that’s the way you want it.”

  By the time Chiffon imagined her husband on the plane, tearing open his foil bag of peanuts and leaning back in his seat to watch the in-flight movie, Gabby’s fever had broken. The doctor couldn’t find anything wrong, and Chiffon’s one-and-only opportunity to see Hollywood had gone down the drain.

  “Lonnie’s living it up,” Chiffon said as she popped a red gummy bear into her mouth. “He’s already visited Knott’s Berry Farm and the Gene Autry Museum. He got to see the Colt firearm display and ate lunch at the Golden Spur restaurant.”

  “Has he rubbed elbows with any movie stars?” Attalee asked eagerly.

  “He’ll be an extra on the Janie-Lynn Lauren movie for the next few days; no telling who he might run into,” Chiffon said. “But I’ve read that extras aren’t supposed to fraternize with the movie stars. Once an extra got fired on the spot just for eye-balling Sylvester Stallone.”

  “I bet you wish you were with him,” mused Mavis.

  “I don’t know. I hear California has some god-awful smog,” Chiffon replied.

  Since Lonnie had left, she’d been trying to conceal her disappointment over missing out on the Hollywood trip. Who cared about palm trees and a bunch of plastic movie stars? And did it really matter that she’d been on only one lousy vacation in her entire life? She and Lonnie had driven to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, for their honeymoon. Once there, she’d seen only the inside of their mountain cabin with the heart-shaped Jacuzzi and knotty-pine walls, completely missing out on some of the area’s most famous attractions, like Ripley’s Believe It or Not! and Hillbilly Golf.

  Chiffon bit into her quivering lower lip. “Lonnie’s promised to take lots of pictures and bring home a bunch of those tiny bottles of shampoo and hand lotion from the hotel,” she said with a brave smile. “And yesterday Dewitt lost his first baby tooth. If I’d been in California, I would have missed out on being the tooth fairy.”

  The bell over the front door jingled, and Birdie Murdock marched in carrying an armful of baby bottles.

  “I thought we could fill these with Jordan almonds,” Birdie said, wearing a pair of navy pumps that reverberated on the floor planks. “They’ll make delightful party favors.”

  “That’ll be cute,” Mavis said, relieving her of some of the bottles. She glanced at Birdie’s navy-and-white-checked suit and saw a red press ribbon pinned to the lapel. Birdie was publisher and reporter for the Cayboo Creek Crier.

  “Looks like you’ve just come from covering a story,” Mavis said. “Anything interesting going on in town?”

  “The principal of Cayboo Creek Elementary had to climb up on the roof of the school because her students read over four hundred books in one month,” Birdie said.

  “Brrrr,” Chiffon said with a mock shiver. “It must have been like the North Pole up there.”

  “Indeed it was. I’m completely windblown from taking her photograph,” Birdie said, removing her basin hat with the matching checked ribbon around the rim and smoothing her silver coiffure. “There was some real concern for the roof shingles. Esther Holmes is a woman of considerable girth.”

  “Plus, she’s big as a suckling pig,” Attalee remarked.

  Birdie ignored Attalee’s comment and sat across from Chiffon. “I was reminded of your sister, Chenille. When she was in the fourth grade, she held the record for most books read in a month by a single student. What a studious child she was! Have you spoken with her lately?”

  “It’s been a while. Chenille keeps busy with her teaching job in Bible Grove,” Chiffon said, refilling her coffee cup. “But she’ll come home for the occasional holiday.”

  “I haven’t seen her in years,” Birdie said. “Isn’t Bible Grove only about two hours away?”

  Chiffon smiled thinly. Truth was, her sister, Chenille, was a weird bird. She wore prissy blouses buttoned to her chin and shoes with large buckles or bows. And she continuously fussed over that little dog of hers, dressing him up in outfits that matched her own, brushing his teeth with a miniature toothbrush. It just wasn’t natural.

  The sisters hadn’t been close as children (Chenille with her nose in a book; Chiffon out and about with a tribe of friends), and they were even more distant as adults.

  Chiffon glanced at a clock on the wall. Where’d the morning go?

  “I better be on my way,”
she said, picking up the carrier in which her daughter dozed. “See you all tonight?”

  The ladies had promised to help Chiffon prepare for Elizabeth’s shower tomorrow. She’d agreed to host the party, since she wasn’t going to be in California.

  “We’ll be there,” Mavis said, with a good-bye wave.

  That evening Birdie stood on a kitchen stool, hanging pink and blue streamers from the living room ceiling. Chiffon filled baby bottles with pastel almonds from a large plastic bag, while Attalee and Mavis sat across from her at the kitchen table, putting the finishing touches on corsages fashioned from pacifiers.

  As usual, Chiffon had to pee, but she wanted to fill one last bottle before she went to the bathroom. Ever since she’d given birth to Gabby, her bladder had been all out of whack. Now drinking a half a can of Diet Pepsi would make her fidget in her seat. As she crossed one leg over the other to delay nature for a spell, Attalee looked up from her work and snapped her fingers.

  “I plumb forgot. I saw a commercial today for that TV show, Hollywood Hijinks. They said Janie-Lynn Lauren was going to be on tonight.”

  “Really?” Chiffon said. “What time does it start?”

  “Seven o’clock,” Attalee said.

  Birdie climbed down from the stool and glanced at her wristwatch. “It’s a minute till right now.”

  Chiffon picked up the remote from the lamp table and aimed it at the television. “Let’s take a break for a minute,” she said. “Maybe she’ll talk about her new movie.”

  The women abandoned their projects and gathered around the television.

  “Up next, a Hollywood Hijinks first,” announced Godiva Jones, the host, wearing a slinky silver dress and diamond chandelier earrings. “Superstar Janie-Lynn Lauren snuggles with a mystery man outside an L.A. watering hole. Hollywood Hijinks has exclusive footage of the torrid twosome.”

  “That Janie-Lynn is skin and bones,” Birdie tsked as the show went to a commercial. “Why, a good strong squall could carry her away.”

  “I read she takes three bites of her food at meals and then dumps salt all over it so she won’t eat any more,” Chiffon said.

  “She’s thin as a cake of lye soap after a week’s washing,” Attalee said. Her trick eye jumped behind the lens of her glasses. “A woman needs some meat on her frame.”

  Chiffon patted her middle, which was still plenty fleshy after the baby’s birth. Her mother had given her a Belly Buster for her birthday last month, but the gadget hadn’t shrunk her tummy one whit.

  “Onlookers gawked when Janie-Lynn Lauren fraternized with a new fellow at Joseph’s, an L.A. nightspot,” Godiva chirped after the break. “But the cozy couple only had eyes for each other. Rumor has it that Lauren’s latest lad is an extra on the set of her new movie, The Mail Order Bride.”

  Chiffon’s stomach twisted at the word “extra,” and she scooted to the edge of her chair.

  The footage of Janie-Lynn Lauren and her new boyfriend was dark and grainy. All Chiffon could discern was a shadowy, masculine figure smooching with the actress. Then, as the camera panned in for a tighter shot, she made out a familiar profile. A pair of copper-colored eyes sprang open, and her husband, Lonnie, stared directly into the camera, a hangdog look on his face.

  Time stood still as Chiffon gaped at the TV from her spot on the La-Z-Boy. Then a wet warmth, spreading from her bottom to the back of her thighs, jolted her out of her daze. It took a couple of seconds to realize she’d peed her pants.

  Two

  It takes forty-six muscles to smile, but only four to flip someone the bird.

  ~ Graffiti in the men’s room at the Tuff Luck Tavern

  At 10:10 the next morning, Chiffon pushed sixty in the Firebird. She was late to work, and her car rattled as she swerved off Mule Pen Road and lurched into the parking lot of the Wagon Wheel. When she hit the brakes, she patted her passenger seat, looking for the button she was supposed to pin on her uniform that said, “Howdy Pardner! Would You Like to Try a Piece of Pecan Pie?” but couldn’t find it. Leaning across the front seat, Chiffon shoved aside a stack of SpongeBob SquarePants coloring books and a tangle of Barbie dolls in the back, hoping to unearth the foolish-looking button. Two weeks ago, the owners of the Wagon Wheel had hired a new manager named Wilbur Peets. Ever since he’d arrived, he’d made it his business to fuss at Chiffon for every piddling thing. Yesterday he’d blessed her out because she didn’t suggestive-sell Hank Bryson on the Wagon Wheel’s new Flowering Onion appetizer.

  She’d tried to explain to Wilbur that, number one, Hank had been coming in the Wagon Wheel for going on ten years and always ordered the same dish: the Cowpoke chopped steak combo with a pineapple ring on the side. And number two, she happened to know that Hank had been keeping a close eye on his cholesterol count ever since he had a shunt put in his artery two years ago. The Flowering Onion crawled with fat and cholesterol, and to Chiffon, offering it to Hank would be like slipping a pack of Marlboros to a middle-school student.

  “You’re a waitress, not a doctor,” Wilbur said, rolling his eyes. He enjoyed putting her in her place, unlike Roy, her former manager, who called Chiffon his “secret weapon” and claimed that losing her would be worse for business than a mad-cow scare.

  But a month ago Roy was offered a job managing three Applebees over in Augusta, and the Wagon Wheel owners brought in Wilbur with his hotsy-totsy degree in hospitality from Georgia State University and his uppity attitude.

  Chiffon gave up on looking for her button and slammed the car door shut. She stormed across the parking lot, fuming.

  If Wilbur says anything to me; just one darn thing. She simply couldn’t handle it. Not after seeing the stunned faces of her friends as they feebly tried to convince her that maybe they’d seen someone who just looked like Lonnie with Janie-Lynn Lauren. Not after staying up all night dialing and redialing Lonnie’s hotel room until her finger throbbed, only to hear the drone of the phone ringing in her ear. Not after eating all the sweets in the house, which included a pint of freezer-burnt Neapolitan ice cream, a bag of semisweet chocolate chips, two capfuls of cherry cough syrup, and a thick layer of pecan dust at the bottom of an empty bag of Sandie Swirl cookies. Then waking up in the morning with her face plastered to the pillow, feeling like a stewed witch. Finally, the ultimate humiliation, finding a package of Depends on her doorstep as she left for work this morning. Attached was a note from Attalee.

  “From one gal with a bad bladder to another. This is our little secret.”

  Chiffon barreled through the door of the Wagon Wheel. Her platinum-blond hair sprang out from her hair net in frantic corkscrews (the wearing of the hated headwear was another one of Wilbur’s dopey new policies), and her chin jutted from her face like a half-cocked shotgun.

  Just let him say one single solitary thing. I’ll tell him what’s what.

  She spotted Wilbur standing by the cash register, clipboard in hand. As soon as he noticed her, he tapped his wristwatch and frowned. Then his gaze scanned her from head to toe, searching for something out of place. It alighted on the empty space on her blouse where her button was supposed to be.

  His lips, thin and colorless as rubber bands, twitched with displeasure.

  “Mrs. Butrell, not only are you ten minutes late, but you’re also out of uniform.” He scribbled on his clipboard. “I’m documenting this incident in your employee file.”

  You can set it on fire for all I care, Chiffon thought, and before she could stop herself, she stuck out her middle finger.

  “While you’re writing, Mr. Peet, put this in your dang file.”

  Wilbur’s whole body squirmed with a mixture of indignation and shock. Before he opened his mouth to speak, Chiffon turned around and flounced out of the restaurant. When she was safely inside her car, she shook with laughter for a full ten minutes.

  As liberating as it h
ad been to flip off Wilbur, it had also been incredibly stupid, she thought as she wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes with a corner of her uniform. Not only had she quit a job she’d held for ten years, but, in the heat of the moment, she’d clean forgotten that she’d counted on today’s tips to buy a bag of diapers and other necessities from the grocery store. There was only a dollar or two in her purse, and Lonnie had the Visa card. Their checking account was tapped out, and before he’d left, Lonnie had taken the hundred bucks or so they’d socked away and cashed it in for some traveler’s checks.

  Fiddlesticks! She was going to have to ask her mother for a few bucks, just until Lonnie dragged his sorry behind back to Cayboo Creek and cashed his paycheck from the NutraSweet plant in Augusta. (And Chiffon had no doubt he’d be back. This wasn’t the first time Lonnie had gotten loose from his leash, and she guessed it wouldn’t be the last.) She slammed the car into gear and screeched out of the parking lot.

  Her mother, Wanda, lived a couple of miles away in a modular home in a development called Whispering Pines. The emphasis was on the word “modular.” Wanda would frostily correct anyone who called her spanking-new manufactured home, with its garden tub and cathedral ceilings, a “mobile home” or, God forbid, a “trailer.”

  Chiffon parked next to Wanda’s pink Buick Regal, which she’d earned as a top-selling Mary Kay consultant. Her mother had also earned an all-expenses-paid tour of Europe that kicked off in a few days.

  Chiffon knocked on the door and it swung open immediately. Wanda stood in the white-carpeted foyer, wearing the red Mary Kay jacket that she’d gotten when she made sales director six months before. Now she was hell-bent on earning Mary Kay’s most prestigious award, the diamond bumblebee pin.