Soup...Er...Myrtle!: A Myrtle Crumb Mystery (Myrtle Crumb Mystery Series) by Gayle Trent Page A

Besides,
that was between me and the Lord. It wasn’t any of Bettie Easton’s business.
    So here’s what I did say:
“I’ll be glad to pitch in a day or two a week. When do you need me?”
    “Could you come tomorrow?” she
asked.
    “What kind of weather are they
calling for?”
    “It’s supposed to be partly cloudy
and in the low forties.”
    “All right,” I said. “What time
should I be there?”
    “Eleven in the morning would be
fine…even a little earlier, if you can swing it, would be great.”
    “I can swing it just fine,” I said.
“I’ll be there at ten.”
    “That’s great, hon. Doris will help
you get familiar with everything.”
    By the time we hung up, me and
Matlock had already missed ten minutes of Myrna and William. I’d been watching
even though the TV was muted, and it didn’t look like we’d missed anything
important.
    When the movie went to commercial, I
told Matlock I’d better set the alarm while I was thinking about it.
    “There’s no way I’d give Bettie
Easton the satisfaction of being as much as one minute late in the morning.”
     
    * * *
     
    I got up Thursday morning way
earlier than I’d planned. It was before Matlock had been aiming to get up too
because he raised up his head, looked at me like I was crazy, and then flopped
back onto the bed.
    “Well, excuse me, Mr. Night Owl,” I
told him. “If you’d have asked me before Bettie Easton called last night when
I’d be up this morning, I’d have said whenever I good and well feel like it. I
sure wouldn’t have been up before the sun could even melt the ice off the car.”
    Matlock just sighed.
    “If you’re planning on peeing before
I leave, you’d better come on. I don’t have time to dawdle around.”
    I put on my housecoat and started
down the stairs. Matlock got off the bed and lumbered along behind me.
    Our backyard is fenced in, so I let
him out and then put the coffee on. If I’d known before dark yesterday that I’d
be leaving early this morning, I’d have put me a piece of cardboard over the
windshield of the Buick. My late husband Crandall taught me that trick when we
were both holding down jobs and going to work every day. As it was, I’d just go
out and start the car about five minutes before I had to leave. I never scraped
the windshield if I could help it.
    I heated up a few biscuits I had
left over from last night’s supper. Then I got out two mugs. I broke up a couple
of the biscuits into one of the mugs, poured coffee over the bread and added my
cream and sugar. I poured me some coffee in the other mug.
    After I ate my coffee and bread, I
called Matlock to come back in and gave him the other two biscuits with some gravy.
It wasn’t homemade gravy. It came out of a jar, and I heated it up in the
microwave. Now, normally, I make my own gravy, but I do keep a jar of
store-bought on hand for the occasional emergency—like not wanting to give poor
little Matlock old dry biscuits. It wasn’t his fault we had to get up early. It
was Bettie Easton’s. And she was sure gonna hear about it if I slipped and fell
and broke a bone.
    Old people don’t need to be getting
up and running around when it’s icy out. Not that I’m old. I don’t mean
me. I’m a very young sixty-five…as opposed to an old sixty-five. Some
people just seem to grow old before their time. You know what I mean? But not
me. I do what I can to take care of myself. I don’t like to mention my age—it’s
one of them don’t ask, don’t tell questions—but when people do find out
how old I am, they’re always plumb shocked. Or, at least, they act like they
are. And I don’t know of any Academy Award winners who’ve had occasion to find
out my age.
    Back to old people…. Some of these
M.E.L.O.N.S. are. Bettie Easton herself is no spring chicken. And then there’s
Melvia and her older sister Tansie. Of course, Tansie’s a big old blowsy thing.
It probably wouldn’t hurt her if she did fall. Now watch her fall and