Curing the Blues with a New Pair of Shoes Read online

  Crap. She’d played the Texas Ranger card again. She chastised herself for an unconscious need to keep falling back on Buddy. Even when he wasn’t even in town, she relied on him.

  “Bullshit,” the man roared. “No Texas Ranger would wait outside. He’d be in here taking care of business.” He turned toward the deputy again. “Move away from that fuckin’ door!”

  Sam’s attention was drawn from the stage to the commotion in the back of the room. To his horror, a drama that would be more believable on TV was playing out in front of him. A fist in his gut couldn’t have made the air leave his lungs any faster. Avery was standing there looking as helpless as if she were caught in a spiderweb. She looked beautiful. She looked like Faith Hill.

  And she was in trouble, life-threatening trouble, and he would be damned if he would simply stand by and watch.

  Bleachers had been pulled from the wall for seating during the talent show. He eased back into their weblike underbelly.

  From the corner of her eye Debbie Sue saw movement off to her right. Someone was picking his way through the bleacher supports beneath the seating. She couldn’t determine the person’s identity in the shadowy dimness, but she could see it was definitely an adult male. Whoever it was, the position was the only way to approach the man clutching Avery without being detected. Was it Vic? Besides Buddy, Vic was the only man she knew who had the guts to do something like that.

  A few seconds later, she knew it was Vic. She prayed silently for his success.

  The best thing she could do at this point was to try to keep the assailant’s attention on her and not the person easing toward him.

  Sam felt as if he were moving in waist-deep water. He was within ten feet of Avery and her captor. Both of them had their backs to him. The situation was perfect to execute an ambush, except that his foot caught the top of a crossbar and the clatter made Avery and her captor turn in his direction.

  The criminal yanked his gun from Avery and pointed it at Sam. “What do you think you’re gonna do, cowboy?”

  “Sam!” Avery cried.

  “Sam, is it? How about it, Sam? You lookin’ to save the little lady?”

  Before Sam could answer, Avery said, “Him? Save me? He couldn’t save a teaspoon of water in a typhoon. Go ahead. Just take me with you. I don’t want anything to do with him.”

  “You don’t mean that, Avery,” Sam said, never taking his eyes from the gun that was now leveled at his chest.

  “Oh, yes I do. You were supposed to call me. You said you would and you didn’t.” Her voice hitched. “After last night, I thought we had something.”

  The show of emotion by Avery made Sam giddy. Even angry and under these dire circumstances she was the most gorgeous woman he had ever seen. “Babe, you insisted on calling me. Don’t you remember? I kept saying I would call, but you wouldn’t hear of it. The last thing you said was, ‘I’ll call you tomorrow, sugar-lips.’

  Avery’s hand flew to her mouth and her eyes popped wide. “Oh, my God, I did. I did say that, didn’t I? Oh, Sam, I am so sorry.”

  “You don’t have to say you’re sorry, sweetheart. I wanted to call you all day. You’re all I’ve been thinking about, but my cell phone—”

  “Shut the fuck up!” the Elvis wannabe shouted. “Just shut the fuck up, the both of youse! What do you think this is, the Dr. Phil show?”

  “Looks more like The Jerry Springer Show to me.” Debbie Sue’s voice boomed through the speakers positioned around the gym. “Go get your mama out of her trailer and we’ll get busy with some hair pulling!”

  “What did you say?” the assailant bellowed.

  “You heard me. Tell your mama to put her teeth in and come join the party.”

  What the hell is she doing? Sam wondered. Was she attempting to create a diversion? The gunman could fire, and at close range, he could kill Avery. Or Sam. But from where Debbie Sue stood, many feet away, the guy had a better chance of missing her. Sam watched closely for the gunman to release his hold on Avery.

  “Don’t you talk about my mama,” the man yelled in fury.

  Before Sam could blink, another body, much larger than the one holding the gun, intervened.

  Pow!…Thump!…Thud!…Ka-wump!

  And it was all over.

  The gunman lay on the floor, a dazed expression on his face. Sam stared in awe at the big, bald stranger who had put him there. He had disarmed the criminal with moves and blows Sam had seen only in the Jason Bourne movies.

  “Oh, Sam,” Avery fell into Sam’s arms. Left with no choice, Sam gladly wrapped his arms around her.

  Edwina rushed up from somewhere, her high heels clacking on the wooden gym floor.

  The big bald guy, now holding the abductor by the collar, moved him around like a marionette on a string and thrust him toward the short man in a uniform. “Here ya go, deputy. Cuff this sucker and wait for us over by the door.”

  “Are you all right, darling?” Sam asked, holding Avery close to his body and brushing tendrils of hair from her face. “Did he hurt you?”

  “No, Sam. I’ve never been better.” She looked into his eyes and he went down for the count in a sea of green.

  A din rose as everyone in the crowd began talking at once.

  Deputy Bridges handcuffed the gunman’s beefy wrists and led him away. The sheriff appeared from out of nowhere and began barking orders. “Stand back!…Watch it!” He escorted the deputy and his prisoner toward the door.

  The big bald guy called to the sheriff and his deputy before they pushed through the doors, “You guys wait right there. I’m going with you.”

  Sam held Avery pinned to his side. “Man,” he said to the bald guy. “Where did you learn to do all that?”

  “The U.S. Navy, son.”

  “You must be the Navy SEAL—”

  “And my honey,” Edwina purred, fitting herself to the bald guy’s side. “Sam, this is my husband, Vic. Vic, this is Sam, the newspaper reporter from Dallas. And this is Avery, the newspaper reporter from Fort Worth.”

  “Thank you, Vic,” Avery said, stepping forward and placing a small kiss on his cheek.

  “My pleasure,” Vic said. “It’s nice to know I haven’t lost my skills.”

  Edwina snuggled closer to him. “You haven’t lost your skills, honey-bunch. I can assure you of that. Let’s go outside. It makes me hot when you save lives.”

  “I need to go with Billy Don and Harry, mama doll,” Vic said. “I’m not so sure they can handle that big ol’ boy all by themselves.”

  “I’ll go with them,” Sam offered, feeling strong and manly. His adrenaline was still pumping and he wanted to be sure the man that held Avery close to his body never had an opportunity to do it again. “You’ve done enough, Vic.” He brushed a kiss onto Avery’s perfect lips. “I’ll be right back, babe. Save a dance for me, will you?”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, let’s get this party back on track,” Debbie Sue called from the stage mike. The crowd let out a cheer. “We’ve got some incredible talent lined up for you tonight. Stick around for our Best Elvis Impersonator contest. We’ll be ready to go in half an hour.”

  The DJ started “Jailhouse Rock.”

  Perfect, Debbie Sue thought. An appropriate song after all that had just occurred.

  As she started to step down from the stage, a young man approached her. “Mrs. Overstreet?”

  Debbie Sue found herself facing Tommy Sullivan, Maudeen’s great-grandson. “Hey, Tommy, where’s that granny of yours? She’s supposed to be one of the judges tonight. She might be the only person here who actually knew Elvis. We can’t have the contest without her.”

  “I was hoping she was here. No one’s seen her all day. She’s not answering the phone or her door.”

  “Is her car gone?” Debbie Sue had always harbored a fear that Maudeen would drive away some day in a state of confusion. The octogenarian hadn’t had a driver’s license in years, but she had made it clear she had raised two families and buried four husbands
and if she took the notion to just drive off one day, she wanted to have wheels available. To pacify her, her family agreed to let the car stay parked at the Peaceful Oasis as long as she didn’t drive it.

  Debbie Sue didn’t know if the car would even run, but anything was possible if Maudeen was involved.

  “No, ma’am. It’s parked where it’s always parked.”

  “Tommy, we have to get over there and check on her. Why didn’t the facility manager let you in?”

  “We couldn’t find him. Grams never gave us a key. She said she didn’t want us surprising her and one of her boyfriends. She’s always cutting up like that,” the boy said, a lopsided grin on his face.

  Debbie Sue knew for a fact that Maudeen wasn’t kidding, but she chose not to dash the boy’s illusions about his great-grandmother.

  “I have a set.”

  “You do?”

  “She gave them to me so I could get in and work on her wigs.”

  “Oh.” Debbie Sue’s answer wasn’t a hundred percent truthful, but it seemed to satisfy the grandson. Maudeen had given Debbie Sue the key to have “just in case.”

  As she and Maudeen’s grandson started out the door, they met Edwina and Vic. Edwina’s hair was askew, her red lipstick smudged.

  “Good Lord, Ed, look at you! What are you, fifteen?”

  “No, I’m happily married and Vic and I were just leaving to revisit our wedding night. Where you headed?”

  “Vic, could you please stay here with Avery and watch over things? With Billy Don and Deputy Bridges both gone, someone needs to keep order. Edwina and I, we need to go somewhere.”

  “There you go with that ‘we’ shit again,” Edwina said. “Where are we going?”

  “Something’s wrong with Maudeen. No one’s seen her or talked to her and her apartment door is locked.”

  “I’ll drive,” Edwina said without hesitation.

  chapter twenty-five

  Edwina, belted in behind her Mustang’s steering wheel, raced toward the Peaceful Oasis, Salt Lick’s retirement center for the active elderly, located on the outskirts of town. Debbie Sue gripped the dashboard, bracing herself with each death-defying twist and turn. It wasn’t that Edwina was a bad driver, but one had to dodge potholes and ragged road edges on the Salt Lick streets. The roads and bridges section of Cabell County’s annual budget was miniscule.

  When Edwina screeched to a stop in a parking slot designated VISITORS ONLY in front of Peaceful Oasis, Debbie Sue exhaled for the first time in minutes.

  Pale golden light shone through Maudeen’s living-room window. “Well, at least the lights are on,” Debbie Sue said.

  Once inside, they turned left from the entry, walked along a dormitorylike hallway and stopped at Maudeen’s apartment door. A Christmas wreath, an animated Santa Claus face in the center, hung on the door and greeted them with a cheery ho-ho-ho.

  “It’s activated by motion,” Debbie Sue mumbled and made several raps with her knuckle.

  Doors along the corridor opened as occupants peeked to check on the noise in the hallway.

  When Maudeen didn’t come to the door, a knot of dread twisted in Debbie Sue’s stomach. She pawed through her purse, found her key ring and plugged Maudeen’s key into the slot. The door opened easily. Debbie Sue stuck her head through the crack in the doorway and saw a dimly lit but seemingly empty living room. “Maudeen? Maudeen, honey, are you here? Are you all right?”

  “Go on in,” Edwina insisted, pushing on her back.

  Before Debbie Sue could enter the room, a frail voice came from somewhere inside. “Debbie Sue? Edwina? Is that you?”

  Debbie Sue rushed in and found Maudeen sitting in a chair in the corner of the room. Her diminutive body was almost invisible under a purple crocheted afghan and a dark blue chenille robe. An open Bible lay on her lap.

  Debbie Sue squatted beside her chair. “Maudeen, honey, are you all right?”

  Maudeen slowly rearranged the afghan on her knees. “I’m fine, really. I’m just fine.”

  “Girl, you gave us a terrible fright,” Edwina said. “Why haven’t you answered the phone? And why didn’t you come to the door?”

  “I haven’t been feeling very well the past couple of days. I think I might have overdone it with the parade and all. It’s just old age creeping up on me, I guess.”

  Debbie Sue swallowed a lump in her throat. This woman was the closest thing to a grandmother she had ever had. She had been too young to remember when her mom’s mother passed away and she had known her father’s parents no better than she had known him. She loved Maudeen so much and to see her feeble and drawn was upsetting, even alarming.

  “Do you need to go to the hospital? Because we can take you. Right now. Ed, bring your car to the side exit—”

  “My heavens, no. I don’t need to go to the hospital. I’m just tired. You forget I’m an old woman. Lands, half the time I forget I’m an old woman.”

  Debbie Sue had never heard Maudeen admit to being old and now she had said it twice. Maudeen’s favorite comment about aging was, “The only age I worry about is the milk in my ice box.” Debbie Sue fought back tears. “I don’t like seeing you this way. Ed and I’ll spend the evening with you, won’t we, Ed?”

  “Well…”

  “Ed.”

  Raising her birdlike hands in protest, Maudeen shook her head. “I won’t hear of that. You two go on back to the birthday party. You tell all of ’em I’m sorry I can’t make it. Go on now. I’ll see you out.”

  Maudeen laboriously lifted herself from her chair and Debbie Sue and Edwina hurried to assist her. She took a step, but the afghan fell from her lap and became tangled around her feet. She stumbled forward.

  Debbie Sue caught her just before she fell, but not before her robe skewed to the side, exposing Maudeen’s feet.

  And she was wearing blue suede shoes.

  “Well, have a cow,” Edwina said, staring at Maudeen’s feet. “You’re wearing Elvis Presley’s shoes.”

  Debbie Sue gasped. “Maudeen!” She too stared in disbelief.

  Maudeen bent forward like a twenty-year-old and hastily covered her feet.

  “Maudeen, what are you doing with those shoes?” Debbie Sue asked.

  “Did you steal them from Hogg’s?” Edwina asked, bug-eyed.

  Maudeen looked down at her own feet. “Well, my goodness! How do you suppose those got there?”

  “How did you get them?” Debbie Sue said. “You should be ashamed of yourself, Maudeen. Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”

  “I do. But I’m waiting for you two to finish. What did you ask me again?”

  If Debbie Sue knew anything about Maudeen, she knew the elderly woman was ornery as an imp. She cut a narrow-lidded look of skepticism at her. “Maudeen…”

  “Oh, all right,” Maudeen snapped. “These shoes belong to me. Yes, I took them from Hogg’s. And no, I am not ashamed of myself.”

  “How did you get into the diner and into that case? Did someone help you?”

  “I’ve had a key to Hogg’s for thirty years,” she said. “All of my kids and grandkids have worked there at one time or another. That damn plastic case was so heavy I couldn’t lift it, so I used a hairpin to jimmy the lock. And these shoes are staying right where they belong. On my feet!”

  “Maudeen, honey”—Debbie Sue changed her tone to one more appropriate for screaming children and old people who talked out of their heads—“they don’t even fit you. Why do you think they belong to you?”

  “Because I gave them to Elvis over fifty years ago and after he left here, he sent me this.”

  Wobbling back to her Bible laying on the chair, she pulled from between its pages a yellowed piece of stationery. Stationery embossed with the initials EP in the top middle of the page.

  Debbie Sue took the paper and with Edwina breathing down her neck, read aloud:

  E. P.

  Miss Maudeen,

  Thank you again for the gift of the shoes. I don’
t know how to pay you back except to say that the next time these shoes make it to Salt lick, they belong to you. Who knows, maybe they’ll be worth something then.

  All my love,

  Elvis

  “Whoa,” Edwina exclaimed. “You really knew him?”

  “I’ve been telling you for years that I knew him,” Maudeen said defensively.

  “All this time I’ve thought that was just bullshit.”

  Debbie Sue looked up from the paper. “I suppose the owner of those shoes will want to have this writing authenticated, Maudeen. If you—”

  “Who’s the owner?” Maudeen asked.

  “Some museum curator in Vegas by the name of Adolph Sielvami. We haven’t had any luck making contact with him, but I’m sure he’ll be calling Judd Hogg after the festival is over.”

  “Adolph Sielvami,” Maudeen repeated. A grin played over her lips. “Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.”

  “Pardon?” Debbie Sue said. “What did you say?”

  “Oh, nothing. How about you two girls give me a ride to the gym? I need to judge a contest and Elvis’s shoes surely need to be there.”

  Avery sat on the bleachers tapping her foot to the music, drumming her fingers against her knee and watching the door. She still couldn’t believe she’d been such an idiot. God, the mean things she’d been thinking about Sam the better part of the day. She was ashamed of herself.

  This very situation was the reason people were single or products of divorce. Poor communication. Of course, in her case it was poor memory, but if they hadn’t eventually communicated they would have gone their separate ways. In some weird, twisted way she owed the angry gun-wielding man a thank-you.

  The door opened, she turned and looked and Sam—her good-looking Sam—came in. He spotted her and came her way. He charged up the bleacher steps two at a time and sank to sit beside her. He took her hand in his and reached to smooth strands of her long hair from her face.