Chapter 16 – Of Coffee and
Confidences
The two women stood in the living room of the Hipp
home examining a stain on a curtain, when Horace Hipp sneaked silently into
the kitchen by the back door. He knew his plan of attack was sound. He knew it
could work, if he could have three minutes in the kitchen, unnoticed and
undisturbed.
First, the letter. If it was still on the table in the
breakfast room, his plan was dust. They would see him. But – thankfully! – the
letter to the Mt. Moriah session had been placed on the kitchen counter by the
car keys. It lay there, innocently, under three other pieces of outgoing mail.
Also on the counter were two seed catalogs that had arrived for him the
previous day. The ladies’ plates, silverware, and half-drunk coffee mugs were
scattered messily as well. He knew he would be told to wash them up in the next
half hour. He placed the letter, now sealed, addressed and stamped, under the
front cover of one of the seed catalogs. It was well-concealed. Then he quietly
restacked the plates, and poured all the leftover coffee into one mug, placing
it inside the other mug. It sat ajar, leaning precariously over the seed
catalog. The coffee sloshed at the rim. Then he gingerly placed each piece of
silverware in the mug, with their heavy ends jutting upward and over, making
the mug top-heavy. It was a coffee catastrophe waiting to happen.
Horace Hipp breathed quietly. He was halfway there. He slid
across the kitchen to the refrigerator, opened it slowly, and extracted a
leftover piece of sausage. Now, all that was left was to beckon his accomplice
in crime. He knelt carefully next to the cat’s bowl, and merely squeezed the
bag of kitty treats, just a little squeeze. The bag made a quiet rustling
sound. Ezmerelda, Willina Hipp’s obese and evil cat, listened for that sound every
minute of every day. In four seconds, she was standing in the kitchen door,
green eyes fixed on the man’s hand, gray tail twitching in anticipation. Then
the man’s other hand reached out to her, and she smelled sausage. Sausage, so
much superior to treats! The man slowly walked toward the backdoor, moving the
delicacy toward the counter. He opened the door silently, made a beckoning
noise to the cat, tossed the sausage onto the stack of plates, and exited
through the door with just enough noise to catch his wife’s attention. The
closing door was muffled perfectly by the sound of crashing dishes as the
animal bumped over the mugs and gobbled the sausage in one gulp.
A moment later, Mrs. Hipp smacked her cat from the counter
and bemoaned the broken mug and spilled coffee. Horace re-entered the door he’d
just passed through, and noted the ruined seed catalog, but his wife was little
concerned with such things.
“Throw it out!” she ordered. “It’s soggy. We are going out,
President Hipp. Do finish the dishes,
throw out all this nasty mess, and put that cat out for the morning.” Mrs. Hipp gathered her keys and the
stack of mail. “Come, Miss Jones.
To the post office, and then the tea shop. There is God’s work to do!”
Horace Hipp nodded obediently. As the ladies walked down the
path, he was tossing the letter, drenched and brown, into the garbage with the
seed catalog, as instructed by his wife.
“If they don’t look at the letters before they put them into
the slot, they won’t even know it’s never gone!” And he crossed his fingers and looked longingly up to the
ceiling.
Lily Cloudee tapped on Athena Shepherd’s kitchen door. She
had not visited this house since Emma Lou Hopkins had lived here, over ten
years before. Emma Lou was a master with a paintbrush and had taught Lily all
about watercolors and shading fruit.
Athena was vacuuming the living room and did not hear the
knock at first. She welcomed Mrs. Cloudee with pleasure and surprise.
“Thank you, m’dear. I won’t keep you but a minute,” Lily
began. She looked around uncomfortably, and Athena, wiping her hands on her
apron, offered her a chair.
“That’s fine. Baby’s asleep, and I’m only cleaning. Would
you like a cup of coffee?”
“No, no. Had two cups this morning, and that’s my limit.”
Lily smiled at the young mother. Then she rallied to her final task of the
morning. She cleared her throat.
“Your Sam is a good friend of Billy Greeter, isn’t he?”
Athena’s face hardened and her eyes turned imperceptibly
colder. “Yes, he is. They’re best friends.” Athena turned her gaze away, toward
the window. “Why?”
Lily waited for Athena to look at her again, but it took
several moments. “You know what’s being said.”
“What?” Athena said sharply.
“About Billy. About a woman. And a baby.”
“A baby?” Athena stood up abruptly. “A baby! There is no
baby!”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“I’m sure you are,” Athena retorted.
“Athena! I came here as a friend.” She leaned toward the
younger woman. “Sit down, dear.”
Athena complied. She turned to Lily. “If anyone says there’s
a baby, that’s an outright lie. All this gossip is,” here she paused, “is
empty. It’s nothing.”
Lily tilted her head. “Nothing? There’s no truth in it at
all?”
Athena bit her lip. Lying would not help Billy. It would
only hurt in the long run. She
sighed.
“Very little to it. There was a woman who liked him. He
broke it off. He even left the office to escape the situation.” She looked again at Lily as her eyes
brimmed with emotion. “Why should he be persecuted for that? He’s done the
right thing.”
Lily Cloudee was silent. She turned Athena’s salt shaker
around in little circles on the tablecloth. Here was an honest question. But
how to stop the damage to Billy and his parents? How to stop the persecutors?
“Athena,” she began, “I came here just to let you know that
the gossip is getting rather bad. Billy should be warned that it will probably
involve the church, and his father as a session member.”
“What!?”
“Yes. I’m afraid so.”
“But Sam! How would he …?”
“That’s why I came. I want you to know. And perhaps we can
find a way to avoid all the hurt and meanness, if the men know ahead of time.”
Athena rested her head in her hands, shaking it in denial.
Then she looked again at Lily.
“My Aunt Hipp. She’s behind this, isn’t she?”
Lily said nothing. Athena’s mouth set in a hard line and she
smoothed the hair around her face.
“Thank you, Mrs. Cloudee. I cannot tell you how much I
appreciate this. I’ll handle it, as much as I can.”
“I spoke to Mrs. Greeter too, Athena.” Lily placed a kind hand on Athena’s, and
patted it.
“You’re very brave. This town is a gossip machine if ever
there was one.”
“Yes, well,” and Lily stood to take her leave. “Some is more
harmful than others. I cannot bear to see a young man ruined by
mean-spiritedness. Good-bye, dear.”
“Good-bye.”
Athena neglected her vacuuming and spent the next half-hour
pondering what to tell her husband.
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