Jack Loves Callie Tender (A Southern Cousins Mystery prequel, companion guide and cookbook) Read online

  Jack Loves Callie Tender

  Peggy Webb

  A Southern Cousins Mystery

  (a novella prequel and series companion guide)

  with bonus recipes

  Copyright 2013 by Peggy Webb

  Original cover art copyright 2013 by Cecilia Griffith

  Cover design copyright 2013 by Vicki Hinze

  All rights reserved

  Smashwords Edition

  Note from the author:

  Elvis is back! His brand new cover look features original art, exclusive to this series, done by my sweet, talented granddaughter, Cecilia Griffith.

  Look for Elvis and the Bridegroom Stiffs (A Southern Cousins Mystery, Book 6) in January of 2014, and Elvis and the Deadly Love Letters (A Southern Cousins short story) in February.

  Prologue

  I wasn’t on the premises when my human mom and dad met, but that doesn’t stop a basset hound of my intelligence and charm, not to mention my mismatched radar ears, from being the best dog to tell the story. After all, I’ve heard it a million times from Ruby Nell Valentine (Callie’s mama), who likes to think she runs the show around this little corner of northeast Mississippi. Of course, that honor goes to yours truly, but I don’t let on to Ruby Nell. She’s my source of peas and cornbread.

  Naturally, I’ve heard the story from Lovie (Callie’s cousin), whose version is slightly altered from that of Callie and Jack (my human parents).

  I’ve even heard it from Fayrene. She’s Ruby Nell’s best friend and the owner – along with her husband, Jarvetis Johnson – of Gas, Grits and Guts, the best little convenience store in downtown Mooreville. Actually, it’s the only convenience store in Mooreville (population 652 since Callie’s manicurist Darlene moved in with her little boy). Of course, she also moved in with a vicious cat named Mal and an uppity dog called William, if you want to count them. But who in his right mind would count a mean-eyed cat and a Lhasa Apso with legs so short he can’t even lift them to mark a tree?

  Back to Gas, Grits and Guts… Considering the Johnsons sell everything from pick axes to pickled pigs lips - and that Fayrene knows every morsel of gossip about everybody and is more than willing to tell it - they’ve put Mooreville on the map.

  Of course, Fayrene’s version of Jack and Callie’s story is slightly different from Ruby Nell’s. And I’m not even going to discuss how far off their version is from all the rest. But listen….I’m dog who can bury a bone where Callie’s silly spaniel can’t find it; not to mention that I was a world-wide icon in my other life as a singing sensation in a white sequined jump suit. I know how to dig up the truth. I know how to patch it up so that all the different versions make a coherent whole. Well, sort of.

  Besides, I know more about love me tender than anybody in the Valentine family. After all, I once spun love and heartbreak into a hit record faster than you can say, “Pass the PupPeroni.”

  I admit that my motives for telling this story are mixed. Naturally, I want to keep my fans happy by letting them be the first in the know. There’s nothing I like better than a horde of adoring fans.

  But I also want to turn Callie and Jack’s impossible dream into another wedding between my human parents. What could be better than seeing two people who are soul mates together again?

  Before you start pinning a medal on me, I have to confess that I’m a noble hound with a selfish side. I’m tired of being swapped back and forth. In spite of the fact that Jack put the star on Callie’s Christmas tree after Corky’s arrest in what the Valentines are calling the Blue Christmas caper, he’s still got that tacky apartment he rented after Callie threw him out.

  Maybe a stupid fish wouldn’t care whether his fish tank sat on the bedside table in Callie’s charming house or landed on the scruffed-up kitchen table at Jack’s place. But I’ve got a brain.

  Not to mention a mission.

  Why do you think I got sent back here in a dog suit in the first place? So I could take care of these misguided humans, that’s what. If I’m over at Jack’s place, how can I make sure Callie stops trying to take care of everybody else and takes care of herself? Who will be there to lick her face when she needs to hug a compassionate dog?

  And if I’m snoozing on my pink silk guitar shaped pillow by Callie’s bed, how can I teach Jack that he deserves a home? How can I be the amazing dog-on-the-spot who teaches him that dirty laundry left more than three weeks is a hazard to health and courtship?

  I could go on all day about the things I need to teach my humans, but I promised the real story of Jack and Callie. Never let it be said that Elvis Valentine Jones is not a dog of his word.

  Chapter One

  Callie and Jack have been Mooreville’s hottest topic of conversation since he pulled a gun at Gas, Grits and Guts to catch the Blue Christmas killer. Until then, everybody thought he was an international businessman. Now the speculation runs from FBI to CIA and even CNN, thanks to Fayrene.

  But the biggest speculation is personal. Trixie Moffett’s going to have a Christmas wedding to a man everybody barely knows, and you know how gossip runs sideways and crossways and even backwards. Now folks are talking about Jack and Callie’s wedding. Where did they meet? How did they get together? Where did he propose? Who was at the wedding? What was Mooreville’s premiere society wedding like? Will Jack ask her to tie the knot again so he can have Christmas dinner down on the Valentine farm as part of the family instead of a bad boy loner with a smart dog and a tacky apartment?

  About the only thing everybody agrees on is that when Jack Jones first blew into Mooreville, he was wearing a black tee shirt that showed every muscle he’s got and the tightest black jeans this side of decency.

  “Callie and Jack first met at the annual barbecue down on my farm.” Ruby Nell, who is wearing one of the sequined caftans she wears from Thanksgiving through New Year’s in honor of the holidays, makes this pronouncement as if it’s law and gospel.

  “No, they didn’t. They met at Gas, Grits and Guts.” Fayrene says her piece with equal certainty.

  “I ought to know. I’m the mother of the bride.”

  “Which makes you prodigious and therefore unreliable.”

  In Fayrenese, prodigious means prejudiced. She’s Mooreville’s Mrs. Maloprop. She can mutilate a word faster than I can dig up my treasured ham bone from Callie’s back yard.

  “That’s just plain tacky to sit here and argue with me in my own house, Fayrene. Especially during the Christmas season.”

  We’re not actually inside the farmhouse. Callie’s mama and Fayrene are sitting in rocking chairs on Ruby Nell’s front porch, and I’m flopped on my belly on the top step enjoying one of those sunny days down South that makes winter feel like summertime. I’m down on the farm waiting for Callie to finish up dispensing cute Christmas hairdos at her beauty shop and take me home. It goes without saying that Ruby Nell and Fayrene are meddling in Callie’s business.

  Which is fine with me as long as they have a good motive. And they do. Nothing would please Ruby Nell more than to see her only child back in the arms of Jack Jones. Permanently. She thinks he walks on water.

  And whatever Ruby Nell wants for Callie, Fayrene declares she wants it twice as bad. Ruby Nell may be the one to swoop around in colored caftans and have Callie change her hair color more often than most women change purses, but Fayrene is the one who always dresses in the color of money and drives a neon green hearse. In the drama queen department, I’d say they’re about equal.

  “Well, Ruby Nell,
” Fayrene says, “if we want to settle the argument, we can ride up to Hair.Net and ask Callie.”

  “We will do no such thing. I’m not about to have my daughter know that we’re down here discussing her business.”

  “I don’t think that would be news to her.”

  “Yes, but as long as I don’t admit it, she can pretend not to know. It’s easier that way.”

  “Why don’t we call Lovie? She can collaborate my story.”

  But Ruby Nell is in no mood for corroboration or collaboration. As usual, she just wants to be right.

  “Flitter, Fayrene. Those two tell each other everything. They grew up more like sisters than cousins. Suffice it to say, Callie and Jack met at the farm.”

  “Suffice it to say, I was taking Mayor Earl Getty’s credit card for a tank of gas and Callie was holding onto a bag of Lay’s potato chips when Jack Jones drove up in that fancy silver Jag.”

  “That was after my Fourth of July bash.”

  “It was not. I still had a table full of fireworks.”

  “You always have leftover fireworks after the Fourth.”

  Fayrene ignored that remark and went right on with her tale. I’ve heard it before and could quote it word for word, but it’s best to hear it from her lips.

  “He walked in looking like a movie star, all dressed in black, and my jaw just about came unhinged. When he took off those sunglasses and I saw his black eyes, I like to have had a heart prostration attack.”

  I don’t know whether Fayrene means the heat was about to do her in or if it was her heart. Either way, she’s not the star of this tale. If you’ll recall, the stars are Jack and Callie.

  “At least you’ve got the effect of my son-in-law right.”

  “Ex.”

  “Not yet. And not at all if I have anything to do with it.”

  “I agree a hundred per cent, Ruby Nell. If ever any two belonged together, it’s Jack and Callie. Why, when they saw each, they created such sparks I could have lit a match and blown Gas, Grits and Guts to Kingdom Come.”

  “They’re always like that, Fayrene. That doesn’t mean they met at your store first.”

  “You can’t prove they didn’t.”

  Fayrene is right. Ruby Nell is too close to the situation to be a reliable witness, plus she’s always getting facts mixed up with her more colorful fiction.

  If the two of them would ask yours truly, they’d find out they were both wrong. Jack and Callie are the ones who tell the truth. Jack has told me the story a gazillion times, especially since he lost Callie.

  And my human mom has spent many an evening sharing popcorn and Hershey bars with Lovie, spilling her guts and more than a few tears over Jack Jones.

  Both Fayrene’s and Ruby Nell’s stories have a grain of the truth – Jack came to Gas, Grits and Guts first, but Callie wasn’t there; and Callie brought Jack to Ruby Nell’s Fourth of July picnic that first evening, but that wasn’t where they met.

  The real story is best told by Jack Jones.

  Lying on Ruby Nell’s front step while my ears blowing in the wind while she and Fayrene drone on about stuff they’re making up on the spot, I rewind my internal record of Jack telling how he met Callie.

  o0o

  Jack

  I rolled into Tupelo on a whim, just me and my silver Jag and my demons, with not much else to speak of. I didn’t plan to stay. I don’t put down roots. Men living on the edge never do.

  It was the Fourth of July, and hotter than hell. When I pulled in for gas at a little country store called Gas, Grits and Guts, heat slammed into me like a bullet from a Luger. It must have been a hundred degrees in the shade.

  If it hadn’t been for the fact that Charlie Valentine lived fifteen minutes away in Tupelo, I’d have turned around and headed somewhere cool. Canada, maybe. Alaska. Anyplace but Mooreville, Mississippi.

  Still, Charlie was the man I wanted to see. And so I pumped my gas and then went inside to cool off and pay.

  The woman behind the cash register was wearing so much green she could have marched in a St. Patrick’s Day parade. Didn’t she know she’d dressed for the wrong holiday?

  “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  How could she tell? Now, I’m not a rude person by nature, just secretive. And I wasn’t about to strike up a conversation with a woman I didn’t intend to see again.

  “No.”

  Clipped and to the point. Maybe she’d get the message.

  “Let me guess. Hmmm. All in black. Hollywood?”

  “No.” I’d handed her a hundred, and I held my hand out for change.

  “Wait, don’t tell me. I’m good at accents. You’re foreign. Spanish?”

  I’d had enough of this third degree.

  “Si.”

  “Well, I just knew it. Wait till I tell Ruby Nell.”

  Thank God I wouldn’t be around when she did. I knew Ruby Nell. Well, I didn’t exactly know her, but I knew she was Charlie’s sister-in-law, widowed young when Charlie’s brother Michael died in a tractor accident. Widowed with one daughter. Charlie never said the daughter’s name and I never asked. Like I said, I don’t put down roots. And I sure as hell don’t make connections.

  I turned to leave and the woman actually trotted after me, still talking.

  “Welcome to our fair city.” How she could call this wide place in the road a city is a mystery to me. “Next time you come, you’ll want to try our specialty.” If I had anything to do with it, there wouldn’t be a next time. “It’s pickled pigs lips.”

  Good God.

  I couldn’t get out of Mooreville fast enough.

  Fifteen minutes later I was in Tupelo shooting the breeze with Charlie in his apartment above Eternal Rest Funeral Home. He’s the one who got me in this business. My mentor, some would say, and that’s about right. But above everything else, Charlie Valentine is my friend.

  I’d known Charlie for years, but this was my first visit with him in his hometown. The first thing I noted was that he’s more relaxed here. The second was the pride he takes in his family. Sure, he’d mentioned them before, but that was mostly just polite conversation.

  He had pictures all over his apartment, and he pointed them out to me with a tenderness I’d never heard. Of course, when you’re a Company man, you learn to keep your feelings to yourself. In my business – the one Charlie used to be in – vulnerability can get you killed.

  “And this is my niece, Callie.” Charlie shoved a photograph at me. It was nothing more than a snapshot, really, a woman on a horse, the wind blowing her hair. I couldn’t look at anything except her. Not that she was any great beauty. But there was something about her that made me want to know everything there was to know about Callie Valentine, right down to the size of her shoe.

  Charlie set the photograph back onto the table. “She’ll be at Ruby Nell’s tonight for the annual Fourth of July barbecue on the farm. Why don’t you join us?”

  I’d as soon have splinters stuck under my fingernails as meet a woman who could intrigue me with nothing more than a snapshot.

  “I can’t Charlie. I’ve got to be moving on.”

  “If you change your mind, you don’t even have to call ahead. We always have enough food for everybody who shows up.”

  Charlie gave me directions to the farm, but I was only half listening. In fact, I was thinking of how I’d ask him the best place for a good run. Keeping fit is part of my job. But mostly I just wanted to air out my brain before I headed out of town. Destination unknown.

  I was between assignments. Actually, I was on R and R, one my boss said I needed and I knew I didn’t. Stress never gets to me. I won’t let it.

  Charlie told me the best place to run was Ballard Park on the west side of town. So I headed in that direction hoping to find a nice empty park, everybody else home cooking hot dogs on the grill.

  The traffic told a different story. Looked like everybody in town was headed to Ballard Park. Still, I craved a run and if they had a tra
ck, I didn’t care how many people watched.

  Plenty, it turned out. There were hundreds of cars in the various parking lots, even more people wandering around the lake and spread out around the grassy areas on quilts and lawn chairs. On a large wooden stage tucked between some massive oaks that looked to be about a hundred years old, a band with a bunch of brass cranked out one patriotic tune after the other.

  I didn’t listen close enough to tell you the names. It made good running music. That’s all I wanted to know.

  A tall, thin man with a bad toupee and a voice made for radio and TV got up to the microphone and announced that fireworks would be starting shortly after dark. It didn’t matter to me. I wouldn’t be around to watch.

  I was on my fourth lap when the woman stepped onto the track. A white tee shirt that hugged a slim torso. Short shorts. Long tanned legs. Great butt. My kind of hair. Shiny. Chin length. Nothing fussy about the style. As she sprinted in front of me I noticed how the sun put red highlights in dark hair that in the shade didn’t look as if it held a speck of red.

  Mad at myself for noticing all the details, I put on a burst of speed. I was going to pass her and never look back. Get this run over with and get out of town.

  I was ripping her way when she stopped right in my path. I plowed into her so hard, her cell phone flew out of her hand, and she lost her balance. If I hadn’t caught her, she’d have smashed face first into the pavement.

  “I’m sorry.” I was sorrier than she’d ever know. This was a woman who fit right into a man’s arms. “You stopped right in front of me.”

  “I’m the one to apologize. It was my cousin, calling me.” She turned her face toward me. That face! Glowing with sweat and sincerity. “I’m Callie Valentine.”

  Good God. Charlie’s niece.

  She pulled herself away from me, and I tried not to let her see my relief.

  “I shouldn’t even be here, really.” Her laugh was nervous, and damned if I didn’t wonder why. Even hoped I was the cause.