Pretty is as Pretty Dies

Chapter One-1

Chapter OneSEVERAL DAYS EARLIER:

It was a warm, but not yet muggy, 7:00 a.m. on what would become a blistering summer day. Sensible, elderly citizens of Bradley, North Carolina, were contentedly puttering about before the heat took a turn into truly oppressive territory. They plucked tomatoes off their backyard vines for lunch, refilled feeders for cardinals and bluebirds, wrestled with the complexities of the daily crossword, or munched leisurely bowls of Grape Nuts under humming screened-porch fans. Myrtle Clover could not be included among this placid part of the populace. An early-morning phone call had fired her up into a froth. Parke Stockard.

An unwelcome glimpse of herself in a shiny, copper kitchen pot revealed an Einstein-like image scowling back at her. She patted down her wispy poof of hair into a semblance of order and squinted at the rooster clock hanging on her kitchen wall. No, it wasn’t too early to call Elaine. Myrtle’s toddler grandson functioned admirably as Elaine’s alarm clock. What did it matter that he preferred watching the Teletubbies at 5:30 a.m.? In his baby head, everyone should be eager to watch Laa-laa wrangle her big, yellow ball from Dipsy’s clutches.

Elaine answered the phone with a weary hello. The early mornings must be hitting her pretty hard. Her voice was gravelly like she’d swallowed half of Jack’s sandbox.

“Parke Stockard is bad news, Elaine. Bad news. The whole town is riled up about her. And let me tell you what she’s done to me.”

Elaine was, really, trying to listen to her mother-in-law. Ordinarily, multi-tasking was her forte. But, with the cordless phone crunched between her ear and her shoulder as she cleaned up Cheerios her son had cheerfully tossed onto the linoleum, she couldn’t fully focus on the phone call. “Um. Really?” Elaine stretched to reach the crumbs on the other side of the chair and felt much older than thirty-six.

Myrtle paused for effect. This effect would have been more imposing if Elaine had been able to see Myrtle draw her octogenarian but sturdy frame to its full six feet. “She just finagled more space for her Bradley Bugle column.”

Elaine pulled the pepper shaker out of Jack’s chubby two-year old fist, prompting a howl of protest. She winced at the noise. “Why is that a problem for you?”

“Because now my helpful hints column is being cut by half! Sloan Jones, the editor, called me this morning first thing to let me know. Coward. Probably hoping I’d still be snoozing in bed and he’d get my answering machine. This town needs my helpful hints a lot more than the crud Parke Stockard spews on paper. That pointless ‘Posing Prettily with Parke’ column. Wretched woman.” She paused as Jack’s howling reached her ears. “Are you besieged? Is Jack making that racket? What are you doing to my darling grandson?”

Elaine jogged towards the back of the house, the darling grandson in hot pursuit. Taking refuge in the master bedroom, she yanked the door shut, locking it quickly. She brushed her black bob out of her eyes with a yellow latex-gloved hand. Elaine hoped Jack, now flinging his small body angrily against the door, would soon discover that the Teletubbies perma-played on the den TV. Looking down, she discovered she still clutched the pepper shaker. She set it down on a dresser and plucked off the latex gloves. “Nothing. He...it’s time for his nap as soon as I get off the phone with you. He got up at 4:30 for some reason today and so it’s already naptime.” She cut off her own hysterical laugh. Elaine was a morning person, but in no way interpreted 4:30 as qualifying as morning.

“Uh...,” Elaine rounded up her scattered thoughts. “I think her column is called ‘Lovely Living with Parke’, Myrtle. Why would Sloan cut your articles? Everyone raves about them.”

Myrtle plopped down at her living room desk and opened a computer file, glaring at the copy. “So my column has been kind of wacky the last couple of weeks. But you wouldn’t believe the tips people mailed in to me. I made do with that tip about Ivory soap under fitted sheets relieving leg cramps.” Myrtle snorted.

“And the tip about stopping nosebleeds,” Elaine helpfully reminded Myrtle. She noticed with relief that the screaming had trailed off and prayed his little feet were plodding off to the den.

“Oh right. That old wives’ tale about dropping a set of cold keys down the neck of the afflicted.” Myrtle morosely read the offending article off the computer screen.

“Sloan thinks I’m dabbling in the occult. But they weren’t my tips, after all.”

Elaine cautiously opened the bedroom door and peeked down the hall. No demented toddlers lurking there, only their sullen, teenaged French exchange student, stumbling sleepily out of the guest bedroom. Elaine apologized in rusty French for Jack’s eruption during Jean-Marc’s quality sleep time. Unfortunately for Elaine, her French apology translated as, “I’m happy Jack is a sunny goat.” Her foreign guest’s inexplicable eye-roll mystified Elaine.

Myrtle added some more sugar to her coffee cup. “Sloan has a crush on Parke, too.”

“Well, she’s a beautiful woman.”

“With hard eyes. Hard, beady little eyes. And that face that just screams WASP. Her nose is pointy enough to pop a balloon. Parke is pushy, bossy, and hateful to everybody.”

“She’s slender.”

“Bony,” answered Myrtle.

“And she’s in great shape. She must exercise every day.”

“She power walks. She pumps her arms way up and down like a chicken.”

“It’s supposed to be a great alternative to jogging, Myrtle.”

“Well, she looks like she’s trying to hightail it to the nearest bathroom.”

“Silly or not, it obviously works for her. She’s very fit,” said Elaine wistfully.

“And I’m not sure I’m buying this portrayal of Parke Stockard as evil incarnate. For one thing, she spends a heck of a lot of money to renovate the church. Word is she’s funding a new education wing for the Sunday School.”

Myrtle snorted. “A desperate and ultimately futile plot to save her immortal soul. Take it from someone who’s vastly old and immensely wise that Parke Stockard qualifies as truly wicked. She enjoys getting people’s goats.”

The hurricane of howling and thumping against the bedroom door resumed. Elaine wasn’t following Myrtle’s sudden livestock references and was trying to determine if Parke Stockard was still the subject of the conversation without revealing that she’d not been listening attentively the last few sentences.

Myrtle obsessed over minutiae in her life. But so did Elaine, whose ponderous problem for the week was Jack’s sudden ability to remove lids from sippy cups. Elaine thought it safest to pick up on the last thread of the conversation that she could remember. “Sloan wouldn’t cut your column because of a crush, Myrtle.”

“And Parke’s become the Bugle’s biggest advertiser, which apparently obligates Sloan to be her slave for life. Some free press. Just because she’s an all-powerful developer and realtor. He thinks she’s a big-shot since she used to write a society column in New York. Who cares?” Myrtle’s gusty sigh cannoned through the phone line, making Elaine cringe and pull the receiver off her ear. “That column kept me busy.”

Elaine said hastily, “Well now you’ll have your church work keeping you busy, won’t you?” All Red needed was his octogenarian mother getting bored again.

Myrtle’s voice was steely. “What church work is that?”

“The Altar Guild and Women of the Church. Red mentioned it this morning.”

There was a pregnant pause before Myrtle said, “I didn’t sign up for Altar Guild. And certainly not for Women of the Church. Bunch of old biddies. Did Red sign me up?”

Elaine would have recognized the danger signs in her mother-in-law’s tone if Jack hadn’t continued his noisy vigil outside her bedroom door. “Hmm.”

Myrtle fumed. “Parke Stockard was the best candidate for Bradley, North Carolina’s ‘Most Likely to be Murdered.’ But Red may have beaten her out.”

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