Gluten for Punishment (3 page)

CHAPTER
3

I
t took five separate washings with vinegar and water and two kinds of shampoo before
my hair was clean of the gluten-filled glue. After using a deep conditioner, I rolled
my hair in a towel, then heated a tub full of bubbles, poured a glass of red wine,
and grabbed a copy of the
Oiltop Times
. The paper had gone to print after that day’s ceremony so the ribbon-cutting story
could be included. The paper had certainly got more news than it had bargained for.

The water was heaven. The wine, soothing. A picture of me and the highest-ranking
members of the chamber of commerce covered in flour splashed across the front page,
top of the fold, bigger than life.

“They say any publicity is good publicity,” I muttered and took another sip of the
wine. The story was interesting. Better yet, the name of the bakery had been used
more than once.

Lois Striker was quoted. “It’s such a shame to ruin a lovely ribbon cutting with a
horrible prank.”

Candy had covered the concerns of George and others about how the gluten-free trend
put wheat farmers out of work. I shook my head and swallowed more wine. It was just
nuts. Francy Bledsoe, president of the country club women’s committee, suggested someone
should open a “real” bakery across the street.

Thanks, Francy.

Interestingly enough, no one knew who threw the flour. Someone near the back said
they thought they’d heard running. When they glanced over, they saw two people jogging
around the corner but didn’t know if they had anything to do with the vandalism or
not. Everyone had simply stood and watched. Kind of like hanging around a bad accident,
they were more curious to see the result than to prevent it from happening.

The phone rang and I glanced at the door. My brother Tim bunked in the bedroom down
the hall. The phone kept ringing.

“Tim, get the phone, will you?” I called. There was no answer, of course. Tim was
either ignoring the phone, although I had no idea how, or he was out. I sighed long
and hard and waited for the ringing to stop. It did. Whoever it was could leave a
message on the machine. Right?

Wrong.

The ringing started back up again. Of course, whoever it was wasn’t going to let up.
I climbed out of the tub and wrapped myself in a towel and got to the hall phone in
time for it to stop. Crap. I dripped my way back to the bath, which was now lukewarm
at best.

Pulling the stopper of the claw-foot tub, I watched with no little sadness as the
bubbles disappeared down the drain. It was another five minutes of rinsing before
my hair was soft and free of conditioner. The wine was gone. With the paper crumpled
up on the bathroom floor, I felt better.

I shrugged into my fluffy robe, opened the door to the hall, and gave a short yelp
of fright. Standing there was a short, round figure in men’s dress pants and shirt.
Orange-red hair stuck out from under a fedora.

“You were in the bathtub.” My grandma Ruth pursed her lips. Her sparkling blue gaze
took in my wet hair and robe. “Good. After reading the article, I feared you might
be all alone and sick. When you didn’t answer the house phone or your cell phone,
I had your sister Joan keep calling until Bill and I could get over here.”

Grandma Ruth Panken Nathers was the granddaughter of Richard and Lillian Panken, founders
of Oiltop College. The pair had come to the wilds of Kansas as missionaries to start
a college in the middle of the prairie. Grandma’s dad, Charles, my great-grandfather,
met her mom, another redhead, at a state college in Colorado. The two made a fetching
pair, and it was rumored all the fun went out of the union when Grandma came along
and they had to get married.

Grandma Ruth was a spunky sort. She lived through her parents’ disputes, the loss
of all their wealth in the 1920s stock market debacle, and soldiered on, marrying
a car salesman from Wichita. When her husband, Irving, asked for a divorce after thirty
years so he could marry his mistress, she gave it to him. She and four of her eight
kids moved back to Oiltop, where she went back to college. She got her degree in journalism
and became Oiltop’s first female reporter. They retired her at seventy-five, after
which she took the Mensa test and became a lifetime member of the group where IQ score
was a badge of honor.

Grandma never remarried. As a middle-aged single mom, she’d proudly earned her way
into Oiltop’s society, not caring a lick about how much she shocked the country club
set. In fact, I suspected she liked shocking people with her outrageousness.

Some would call her a character. I must admit she certainly added color to my life.

“Good gracious, Grandma Ruth! You scared the wits out of me.”

“You really should keep your doors locked,” Grandma admonished, her voice rough from
her three-pack-a-day smoking habit. How she could afford to smoke that much on her
fixed income I had no idea. “Did you talk to your sister Rosa?”

“No.” I shrugged. “The phone stopped ringing before I could pick up.”

“Hmmph, the girl never did listen. Well, since you appear to be okay, what do you
have for dessert?”

“Is Bill downstairs?” Bill was Grandma Ruth’s longtime male companion. Sometime in
my childhood, Bill had latched onto Grandma and she’d found him interesting enough
to keep him around.

“Bill’s waitin’ in the den. He lit a fire in the fireplace. Hope it’s all right.”

“Let me get dressed.” I wrapped my robe around me tighter. “There’s pumpkin bread,
apple coffee cake, and peach pie. You make the coffee and I’ll be down to serve.”

“Will do, kiddo.” Grandma Ruth waved. “I’ll have a small smoke break while you get
dressed. Thank God your father had the good sense to install an elevator. Three floors
of stairs are hard on an old woman’s knees.”

By the time I put on a tee shirt and pajama pants and got downstairs, my hair had
frizzed. I passed the den to find Bill sitting next to the fireplace. Grandma came
in, flung her fedora on the hat rack, and mussed her short, carrot-orange hair. At
the age of ninety, she was proud to still have mostly red hair, even if the parts
of it that framed her large, square face were white.

“Grandma, you smell like a honky-tonk.” I waved my hand through the air to dissipate
the scent.

“I see you left the butt can full of sand on the porch next to the swing. Just like
your mother . . .” She settled down on the two-man settee next to Bill.

“Secondhand smoke kills,” I tossed out into the air. It was an old argument. Grandma
Ruth had taken up smoking on the advice of a doctor in the early 1940s. They’d told
her it would help her lose weight. I shook my head at the thought. Grandma was two
hundred pounds soaking wet, maybe more, and addicted to her beloved cancer sticks.

She laughed, thick and dark until she coughed. “At my age, everything kills, kiddo.
Need any help getting that dessert out here before I get any older?”

“I’ve got it,” I called on my way to the kitchen. “Hi, Bill.” I admit, the greeting
was an afterthought, but my mama had taught me to be polite.

“Hey, Toni,” Bill called. The man had a deep voice, which could carry nearly as far
as Grandma Ruth’s. Note, I said
nearly
as far. Grandma Ruth could yodel and was known for bringing the kids running from
all corners of town once she started. She swore it was because they knew supper was
ready.

Grandma considered opening a can of soup to be supper. She usually did it with her
nose in a book. She did a lot of things with her nose in a book.

As for the kids coming running to eat whatever mystery thing Grandma had cooked up,
I think they really just wanted to get home to make her stop yodeling before the neighbors
called the police. Either way, it had been effective.

Grandma Ruth and Bill discussed the article in the paper. Grandma had bought several
copies as family keepsakes. Meanwhile, I brought in two trays: one with pumpkin bread,
coffee cake, and pie; the other with coffee, cups, and creamer. I had learned early
how to serve with both hands full.

“It says no one saw anything,” Bill pointed out and helped himself to the food I placed
on the small table in front of them. You know, I might like Bill a bit better if he
at least said thank you once in a while instead of acting as if I was supposed to
wait on him hand and foot. It might be his age that led him to believe all women were
there to see to his every comfort, but that didn’t mean I had to like it. In my book
he was a bit of a freeloader. I wouldn’t tell Grandma this, of course. It would hurt
her feelings. She actually liked Bill.

I curled up in the velvet-covered, wing-backed chair next to the fireplace. Mom had
thought it would be fun to decorate the den in the Victorian manner with a 1970s twist.
It sort of looked like a bordello on dope.

“It quotes the chief directly, ‘No one saw a thing.’” Bill pushed his finger into
his copy of the paper, crumpling it onto the tabletop.

“I don’t believe it for a minute.” Grandma Ruth picked up a slice of coffee cake and
took a bite. “Yum, good job, kiddo.” She licked her fingers then lifted the crumbs,
which landed on her ample bosom, with her wet fingertip and popped them in her mouth.

“I believe it. Everyone was watching the ribbon cutting,” Bill pointed out. “Whoever
tossed the flour bombs was behind the crowd.”

“There were two bombs thrown,” I pointed out as I sipped my coffee. “Seems like someone
would have turned around after the first one hit.”

“Have you seen the photo?” Grandma Ruth asked as she reached for the pumpkin bread.
“Seriously. I would have been too busy laughing my fanny off at the sight of Pete
Hamm covered in flour to notice another bomb coming or even who threw it.”

“Laughing?” I drew my eyebrows together.

“Sure, this is a classic Charlie Chaplin prank.” Grandma smiled like the Cheshire
cat. “Did you look at the expression on your faces?”

I winced as she pushed the paper toward me. In the photo, my eyes were wide and dark
against the white of my face and my mouth was in the shape of an
O
. Great. I looked like a deranged mime ready to go into battle with an oversized pair
of scissors.

“It’s a great picture,” Bill had the audacity to say as he leaned back against the
red brocade settee.

“Mike told me the story was so good that they had to print a third edition of the
paper,” Grandma added. Mike was a friend of Grandma and the editor of the
Oiltop Times.
She winked at me. “He also said to thank you for the boost in sales.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with that.” I waved my hand at the offending shot. “The
last thing I care about is selling papers.”

“It’s a great story,” Bill said. “If interesting things happened more often in Oiltop,
the paper would be making money instead of losing it.” The man balanced a full plate
of pastries on one fat knee, a mug of coffee on the other. He had stuffed a napkin
in his shirtfront and currently carried an entire piece of peach pie toward his mouth
using his bare hand. I swear I had silverware on the tray next to the plates.

His bushy white eyebrows wiggled above his bulbous nose and sparkling green eyes.
His bald head shone in the light of the beaded shade beside him as he, too, licked
his fingers.

My gaze was drawn back to the paper and the full color photo. I sighed. “I suppose
someone in the family is blowing this picture up to couch size as we speak to use
as a prop in the next family reunion.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me none,” Grandma Ruth said. “We do love our practical jokes.”

A terrible thought occurred to me. “You don’t think someone in the family . . .”

“Oh, no, no.” Grandma reached over and patted my knee. “Of course not, we’re all proud
of you. Besides, we know how sick gluten makes you. A stunt like that could put you
in bed for days.”

“Did you call Doctor Proctor?” Bill asked.

Doc Proctor had been the family physician since I was born and was currently approaching
seventy years old himself. I kept my shudder to myself. “I’m fine, I promise. It’s
not like they could do anything. They don’t have shots for gluten allergies.”

“Great, you could die in your sleep.” Grandma frowned. The freckles on her face formed
a dark pattern when she got upset.

“Anyone could die in her sleep,” I pointed out. “I’ll be miserable for a while, but
as long as I’m careful I’ll get better.”

“Maybe I should spend the night.” Grandma’s blue eyes danced. “Make sure you’re okay.
I could bring you tea and tummy medicine.”

I love my grandma, but she could raise the roof with her snoring. Besides, she had
no idea how to make tea and I had to get up early to start baking. I needed sleep.
“I’ll be fine. I promise.” I made a point of looking at the grandfather clock in the
corner. It was nearly eleven. “Really, guys, I have to go to bed. Four
A.M.
comes early.”

“Wait, do you think this was an attempt to harm our little girl?” Bill asked, completely
ignoring my strong hint to get lost. He stacked more slices of pumpkin bread on his
plate. “I mean, lots of people know about her disease.” He turned his laser green
gaze on me. “Did you tell the chief this could harm your health?”