“I will mortgage my house if I have to just to pay for it,” I said.
“Good,” Molly said. “’Cause it’s a pain in the butt to make so it’s not going to be cheap like some ranch dressing dumped in a bowl. But since you girls like it so much, I’ll add it to Ida Belle’s wedding list.”
“I’ll get you more cash,” Ida Belle said.
Molly waved a hand in dismissal. “Consider it my wedding gift. You and Gertie were the first people to give me a chance with my business, and your recommendations helped me launch. Without your backing, I would have never gotten off the ground.”
“You could have force-fed people this dip,” I said.
Molly laughed. “Fierce and creative.”
“Thank you,” Ida Belle said, and I could tell she was really happy about the addition. “I cannot wait to see the rest of the items on the menu. I am sure everyone is going to be thrilled.”
“Heck, what’s not to be thrilled about?” Molly asked. “Crawfish, beer, my sides, Ally’s baking. It will be like everyone died and went to food heaven.”
“Isn’t that the truth,” I said, then looked at Ida Belle. “You should have gotten married months ago. Look at what we’ve been missing out on.”
“If Ida Belle would have said yes to Walter when he first asked, I would have still been in the pen,” Molly said.
“If she’d said yes when Walter first asked, you wouldn’t even have been born yet,” Gertie said.
We all laughed and Molly checked her watch. “Okay, girls, I have to cut this short. I’ve got a match scheduled with two ex-cons in fifteen minutes. Unless, of course, you want to give the cage a whirl.”
We all politely declined, and Molly grinned and shoved the bowl of dip at us as we left the kitchen.
“We might need a cage match to decide who gets to keep that dip,” Gertie said as we got in the SUV.
“I have an unopened box of Wheat Thins,” I said. “And a new bottle of wine that the clerk at the liquor store up the highway said tasted like raspberries.”
“Oh, that sounds great,” Gertie said. “Unless, of course, Ida Belle has any more nontraditional wedding errands to run.”
“My list for today is complete,” Ida Belle said. “I was thinking about fishing this evening, but sitting inside with the AC, wine, and that dip beats out fishing by a long shot.”
“Sitting quietly in a corner with AC and no dip should beat out fishing,” I said. “I swear this summer is hotter than last year.”
“Nah,” Gertie said. “You’d just come here from the sandpit, so you were more acclimated to really hot. It didn’t seem as bad. Now that you’re a regular, you’ll eventually give up and fish and sweat. It’s the Southern way.”
“Why would I go out in a boat and sweat when I never actually fish?” I asked.
“I keep hoping that one day it will look like so much fun that you’ll want to do it regularly,” Gertie said.
“You people aren’t regular,” I said. “You’re insane. You fish when it’s ninety-five degrees and when it’s thirty degrees. You fish in hurricanes. You’d probably fish in tornadoes as long as you thought your boat could outrun it.”
Gertie nodded.
“Same goes for hunting,” Ida Belle said to Gertie. “Remember that year we went hunting when we hit that record low of twenty degrees? I had on two pair of pants, three shirts, and five pair of socks. Thought I’d never get my waders on.”
“Would have bagged that duck if I hadn’t fallen in the bayou,” Gertie said. “Man, that was cold.”
“You almost died of hypothermia,” Ida Belle said. “Cold is a bit of an understatement. And I told you not to walk that close to the ledge. That overhang was just waiting to break off. All her yelling scared the ducks away for a week.”
“Quit your grousing,” Gertie said. “You still got your limit. All I got was pneumonia.”
“So I take it you learned your lesson?” I asked.
“Heck yeah,” Gertie said. “I wear a dry suit under my clothes now.”
Ida Belle shook her head as I laughed. Gertie logic.
Chapter Three
It was getting on toward late afternoon and Ida Belle, Gertie, and I were semi-comatose in my living room after consuming the entire box of Wheat Thins and the dip. I think we drank two bottles of wine but I honestly couldn’t remember. I was in a cream cheese and cracker haze. We’d turned on the television but no one was watching. I was certain that was the case as it was showing a golf tournament. Most likely, Merlin had walked on the remote and no one had the energy to fix the situation.
Gertie groaned. “I’m going to have to have water and air only until your wedding, or I’m not going to fit into my dress.”
“You aren’t going to fit into that dress unless you die and decay for a year or two,” Ida Belle said. “Why didn’t you just order it in your size?”
“I thought I’d be thinner by the time the wedding came around,” Gertie said.
“You ordered it two weeks ago,” Ida Belle said. “Were you planning on getting a horrible stomach flu?”
Gertie waved a hand in dismissal. “I can take a water pill and lose ten pounds in a day. I didn’t think another ten was out of the question.”
“You can take a water pill and spend all day in the bathroom,” Ida Belle said. “Remember what happened last time you went that route?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gertie mumbled.
I opened one eye. “This I have to hear.”
“Gertie had a hot date with the new widower in town,” Ida Belle said. “His wife’s body wasn’t even cold before the casserole queens lined up to get a shot at him, but that’s small-town living for you.”
“He had all of his teeth and hair,” Gertie said. “What did you expect?”
“Pension plan?” I asked.
“No one’s perfect,” Gertie said.
Ida Belle grinned. “So someone thinks she’s going to take a water pill and squeeze into a skirt she bought back when JFK was still alive.”
“It lifted my butt,” Gertie said.
“It squeezed your butt so tight it scared gravity,” Ida Belle said. “Anyway, Gertie took the water pill, thinking she had a few days before the wife kicked it, but she went early. So she grabs her casserole and heads over there the next day, then promptly runs past the eligible widower and straight into his bathroom…and didn’t leave until the next day.”
I grinned. “I hope you had enough toilet paper.”
Gertie grimaced. “There was only half a roll and the bathroom wasn’t even clean. Who has a death in the household and doesn’t think to clean their guest bathroom?”
Ida Belle chuckled. “It was a narrow miss—not catching the guy with all his teeth and a dirty bathroom.”
“It was clean when I left,” Gertie said. “I asked for Comet and a scrub brush. I could reach the sink and the tub from where I was sitting.”