“Great jewelry though,” said Patterson, helping himself to a wedge of the jalapeno cornbread from the sadly depleted platter.
“The only color she wore,” agreed Dixie. “If you don’t count the bright red lipstick and red nail polish. Splashy necklaces of coral, topazes, turquoise, jade and cinnabar. Unusual cloisonné brooches. I never saw her in a dress either. It was always slacks or leggings or tights. She said skirts made her legs look too short.”
“Short? She had great legs,” said Patterson.
He took a large bite of the cornbread and nearly choked. His already florid face turned even redder and his broad nose was almost purple.
Alarmed, Dixie thumped him on the back as tears streamed from his eyes while I tried to remember exactly how the Heimlich maneuver goes.
Across the narrow table, a heavyset woman quickly thrust her open can of beer at him and Patterson drained it in three long gulps. When he finally caught his breath, he said, “Thanks, Kay. I owe you one for saving my taste buds.”
“I’ll take it out in trade tomorrow,” the woman said and turned her attention to the platter of ribs that was going fast as more people filled their blue plastic plates.
A look of dismay flashed across Patterson’s broad face, a look instantly replaced by his former joviality as he told Dixie and me, “Watch out for those chunks of red. Those aren’t pimientos. They’re red chiles and hotter’n hell.”
“Yummy,” said Dixie, reaching for a piece. “I love it hot.”
“So what happened to Savannah?” I prodded as Patterson mopped his face and streaming eyes with his handkerchief.
“Nobody knows,” said Dixie. “She was at the top of the pile and she just disappeared. One Market she was doing all the high-end projects, next Market, poof! Gone. Nada. She was always temperamental though. It wasn’t the first time. She was always popping off to Europe or South America for a few months. Was it five years ago she was gone for so long, Jay?”
“Six,” said Patterson. “I remember because it was right after she smashed her car and nearly killed Drew.”
“Everyone knows she’ll be back when her money runs out, but this time it’s been at least eighteen months.”
“Ah, here’s where you all are,” said an easy male voice.
It was Chan Nolan, my erstwhile cowboy. He might have been looking at me, but I had to assume he was speaking to Dixie since he now had his arm around a pretty little blonde who wore a dress cut low enough to be his dancehall queen.
Jay Patterson immediately took my hand. “It’s been a pleasure, Judge Knott. See you, Dixie. Drew, your mother could use some help in there.”
“Tell her I’ll be right back,” said the blonde.
Patterson gave a curt nod, then turned on his heel and was gone.
Chan Nolan gave a boyish grin and reached for a piece of cornbread. “Was it something I said?”
“More like something you did,” Dixie told him crisply. “Deborah, this is my son-in-law.”
4
« ^ » “Very beautiful enamelled furniture, especially for bedchamber sets, is extensively manufactured.”The Great Industries of the United States, 1872
“We’ve met before,” Chan drawled.
Not wanting to go into all the circumstances of my misspent youth, I hastily said, “He and that blue ox just gave me a line dancing lesson.”
Chan raised an eyebrow, but mercifully took the hint. There was a battered tomcat sexiness to the smile that twitched the edge of his lips, a smile that meant he’d pursue the subject later if I knew anything about battered tomcats.
(And yeah, unfortunately, I do, having gone so far as to marry one once.)
The young woman hanging on his arm was Drew Patterson, who had her mother’s fair coloring and slender height and her father’s wide smile with only the merest hint of his broad nose. As she glanced from his face to mine and back again, I could almost see a hurt suspicion in her blue eyes, but she made a quick recovery.
“Dad’s still mad ’cause Jacaranda’s stealing the best vice president of sales in the business,” she told me after introductions were over.
Chan Nolan took a long pull on his beer. “Fitch and Patterson doesn’t have to worry about Jacaranda.”
“They’re moving into high end, aren’t they?”
“So?”
“Don’t be coy, Chan. You’ll be competing against us directly.”
Chan shrugged. “Fitch and Patterson doesn’t own high end.”
“But that infusion of Hong Kong money will make Jacaranda another one of the high rollers,” said Dixie.
Chan caught my eye and appealed to me for support. “You see how they gang up on me, Deborah? Like it’s my fault? Jacaranda’s going offshore and high end whether I’m there or not. So why shouldn’t I jump on a moving wagon?”
“What’s high end?” I asked. “And who or what is Jacaranda?”
“High end’s the luxury market,” he explained. “The best quality and most expensive furniture to make and sell.”
“And Jacaranda is a Texas company that makes schlock!” said Dixie.
“It might’ve been schlock years ago,” he agreed easily, “but they’ve been steadily upgrading and now they’re poised to get huge. Once they finish tooling up the Malaysia factory, you’re going to see hand-carved mahogany case goods that’ll set the market on its ear. By this time next year—”
“Coming through, please!”
I grabbed my new tote bag from under the edge of the table and stepped back as waiters removed the nearly empty serving dishes and deposited fresh platters of ribs and chicken.
More dancers surged forward to stoke up. I still wasn’t hungry but Drew fixed a plate for Chan with a proprietary air. “Cornbread, hon?”
“Yes, ma’am! And what about a couple of those brownies?” he said hungrily.
“Two?”
“One for me, one to take to Lynnette. She loves nuts and chocolate as good as I do.”
“Chan, you idiot!” Drew scolded. “You can’t give a seven-year-old chocolate at bedtime. She’ll be bouncing off the walls. Tell him, Dixie.”
“He’s the daddy, honey. I’m just the grandma.”
Dixie’s tone was light but that lightness didn’t quite reach her eyes.
Before Chan could reply, a pudgy middle-aged man tapped him on the shoulder. “We talk to you a minute, Nolan?”
The “we” was the heavy set woman who’d earlier handed Jay Patterson her beer when he was gasping from the jalapeno cornbread.
“Look, Jackson, I told you and Kay both—”
“Just hear what we’ve got to say, okay? Is that too much to ask after twenty-seven years?”
With an exaggerated sigh, Chan told us, “Be right back,” and followed them over to the corner that was probably the quietest place in the overcrowded ballroom at the moment.
“Poor Poppy,” said Drew. “He told Dad if Chan gives Muir an exclusive, they might as well close up now.”
Dixie frowned. “He’s yanking their account?”
I had only the vaguest idea what Drew and Dixie were talking about, but from the half-angry, half-entreating gestures the older man and woman were making, it certainly seemed as if Chan was yanking their chains, if nothing else.
Dixie saw my blank look and laughed. “Are we talking Urdish again?”
“I guess every industry has its shorthand jargon,” I said. “Are they buyers?”
Drew nodded, brushing a long blonde tress from her cheek. “Retailers. Here to check out the new designs and see what’s going to be hot this fall. Poppy Jackson has a beautiful old store in Green Oaks, Virginia, and Kay Adams has a store down at the beach. They’ve been selling us since before I was born.”
I began to see why those two seemed so hostile. “But why would Fitch and Patterson give another store an exclusive? Isn’t the object to sell as much furniture as possible as widely as possible?”