CHAPTER 14: FRYING PANAT THE FRIGATE BOOKSTORE, A sparkling August morning mellowed into a golden August afternoon. Business was slow. Every twenty minutes or so Mudge would hear a car turn into the parking lot, and a crunch of clamshells, and a tinkle from the bell that hung on the wooden screen door.
Roosevelt Sherman, the Frigate’s owner, had taken his wife and kids to church. So it was up to Mudge to keep coffee brewing and a jazz CD playing, and welcome the customers.
He sold several local histories and cookbooks, a couple of novels, half a dozen postcards, and two signed picture books by local celebrity Edgar Rowdey. He ate a giant muffin he’d picked up at the Whistling Pig. He made more coffee.
He watched the flies circling in the doorway, and he thought about Darla.
It was wro
