“You heard about Haywood.” I took a sip of the coffee and wished I’d blown on it first as it seared the back of my throat.
“Sugar, who hasn’t? The news is all over town. Whenever I first heard, I couldn’t believe it. I’d just seen him yesterday with Hyacinth picking up some last-minute doodads for the ball.”
I copied her movements by setting my elbows on the countertop and leaning in. I cut straight to the chase. “Between the two of us, what do you know about Hyacinth’s drinking habits? I saw her this morning at the Silly Goose and she’d already been drinking, and I just saw her at the Delphinium’s bar, too. It looked like she had been there for a while.”
Surreptitiously, Jessa looked around and dropped her voice. “Shoo, girl, I’m surprised her blood isn’t ninety proof. When I was a drinking woman, that there Hyacinth could drink me under the table, and you know I could hold my liquor like no one’s business.”
Jessa had quit smoking and drinking after an unfortunate incident involving her heart two years ago: It had up and quit on her during a walk to work. If it hadn’t been for Odell’s quick thinking, she’d have died right outside this shop’s front door.
“You think she has a problem?” I whispered.
“Can’t rightly say. Lots of folks drink, social and all. Some more than others.”
“Is she one of those ‘some’?”
“If I was a betting woman, I’d say yes.”
“You are a betting woman.” Her love of scratch-off lotto tickets was well-known around here.
She laughed, a raucous, raspy, contagious sound that make me laugh too. “That’s right, I am.”
I didn’t know whether Hyacinth’s excessive drinking had anything to do with what had happened to Haywood. It was just one of the many pieces of the puzzle I was trying to figure out.
“Give me a sec and I’ll check those cupcakes.” She ducked into the kitchen.
Spinning on my stool, I glanced out the front windows. Virgil and Jenny Jane were standing outside the door, peeking inside. I gave them a little wave hello.
“The cupcakes need another couple of minutes. Who’re you waving to?” Jessa asked as she came back, squinting.
“I thought I saw someone I knew,” I lied quickly. But as I was about to spin back around, I did see Dr. Gabriel, Idella, and Hyacinth stroll by, Doc visibly drooping under the weight of shopping bags.
Idella had clearly made him pay at the local women’s boutiques for his earlier sniping.
As he trudged behind Idella and Hyacinth, I realized that the Kirbys must have been who Hyacinth had called for a ride home from the bar, and I was glad she was in capable hands.
Seeing Doc reminded me about Louella, the she-devil dog. “I don’t suppose you’re in the market for adopting a dog?”
“What dog? Did you find a stray?”
“It’s Virgil Keane’s old dog.”
“Louella?” Jessa tipped her head back and laughed again. Laughed so hard tears leaked from her eyes and black rivulets streamed down her face.
I didn’t think it was funny at all. “You could have just said no.”
Which made her laugh harder.
Heads turned and customers smiled at Jessa’s amusement.
“She’s been in Dr. Gabriel’s kennel since Virgil passed last May,” I said once she quieted enough for me to be heard. “In a moment of weakness I agreed to adopt her, but I can’t keep her. The cats would kick me out of the house.”
“Have mercy on your soul,” she gasped, using the pads of her fingertips to wipe beneath her eyes. “That dog ain’t right in the head.”
I was glad Virgil was outside and hadn’t heard that diss.
A couple in the shop stood up to leave, and Jessa called out, “Y’all have a good day! And congratulations again.”
Newlyweds. The town was full of them, so in love, making MoonPie eyes at each other.
They reminded me of Dylan, and I tried not to think too hard about his emotional state right now. I said to Jessa, “I don’t suppose you know where Mayor Ramelle is today?”
“Probably the same place she is every Sunday,” Jessa answered, tapping long nails on the counter.
“Where’s that?”
“Not sure, but Odell’s brother Otis flies her somewhere every Sunday afternoon in her pretty little plane, and back again long after nightfall. You could set a clock by it.”
Otis Yadkin was a former military pilot who now worked out of a hangar on the outskirts of Rock Creek, the next town over. I’d heard rumors all my life of his numerous airborne exploits, most of which were illegal and became more bawdy and exaggerated with each telling.
I was pretty sure they weren’t just rumors.
However, in between those exploits, he was an upstanding private pilot for some of the wealthier clientele in and around Darling County.
Knowing the dual sides of his personality, I had to wonder which hat he was wearing when he was ferrying Mayor Ramelle. Legal or illegal?
“I don’t suppose you can find out where he takes her, can you?” I asked.