AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 1
* * *
Harmony Wright was bored, and that was never a good thing. The last time she’d been bored, there had been a fire … a very big one. She’d like to say it was accidental, but that would be a damn lie. And she never lied to herself. The rest of the world was a different story, though. She’d spent most of her thirty years making sure everyone believed exactly what she wanted them to believe, when she wanted them to believe it. She might not have inherited much from her mother, the queen bee of San Angelo society, but she’d definitely inherited the ability to keep up appearances … and to make those appearances look like reality.
For example, all of her mother’s friends—and her enemies, for that matter—believed that Harmony was a perfect daughter. A chip off her mother’s hard-as-diamonds block. And while Harmony herself viewed this as the truth too, it wasn’t because she wore pastel sweater sets and pearls, just like Livinia Wright. It wasn’t because she taught Sunday school or was secretary of the garden club and treasurer of the Junior League. And it certainly wasn’t because she co-owned the Wright Way, which just happened to be the most successful bakery in San Angelo, Texas.
No, she wasn’t a good daughter because of any of those reasons, Harmony mused as she picked up a custom-made cannoli shell. She was a good daughter because she co-owned this damned bakery with her mother and, despite numerous opportunities and even more provocations, had yet to smother the woman with one of their Wright Way frilly aprons or slip rat poison into her morning Southern Comfort coffee. For that she figured she deserved the Motherfucking Daughter of the Year Award. Maybe even a Nobel Prize. Did they make one of those for children who survived impossible mothers? She picked up another cannoli shell shaped like a Glock nine millimeter. If they didn’t, they certainly should. In the very least she deserved some hazard pay.
She hummed a few bars of “Deep Six” by Marilyn Manson as she piped double-dark-chocolate ricotta filling into the barrel of the cannoli—which she called Take the Gun, Eat the Cannoli in honor of The Godfather—then set it down next to its fellow and picked up the next one. Gun cannoli might have seemed an unusual choice for a gentile, pearl-wearing baker, but this was Texas. Texans liked Jesus, guns, and football … not necessarily in that order.
Once she finished the cannoli, she moved on to a tray of her city-renowned donuts. It had taken years to perfect not only the recipe, but the various donut shapes as well. Each donut was a hand, with the fingers molded into a variety of different hand gestures, including the UT Hook ’em Horns and the Texas Aggie thumbs-up. She would have done a bear paw for Baylor, but come on, the bakery already had a bear claw, so it seemed redundant. Recently, she’d even designed a hand holding a lasso as an homage to her new brother-in-law, former quarterback and newly appointed offensive coordinator for the Fort Worth Wranglers. The fact that her personal favorite hand gesture—the stiff middle finger—was the only symbol she didn’t sell was yet another example of what a fine, upstanding daughter she was.
It was with that thought in mind that she picked up the first donut hand and refashioned it so that the middle finger pointed skyward. Then she carried it to the fryer and with a practiced hand, gently set it in and fried it up. When it was golden and lovely, she fished it out, plopped it on a drying rack, and smothered it with sugary glaze.
She poured herself a cappuccino, leaned against the stainless-steel work table, and gave herself ten minutes to enjoy her bird and ’cino. It was all of 5:18 a.m. Anyone who was anyone was just now dragging their sorry ass home from a night out. But she was here playing the good girl and stuffing cannoli. She bit into the middle finger.
Yep, she was bored, and it was making her antsy. Very, very antsy.
Thank God her annual vacation with her twin sister, Lyric, was in less than two weeks. They traded off planning and booking the vacations, and this year it was all Harmony. She’d put together a fun-filled two weeks that involved both BASE jumping and heli-skiing in Chile. The fact that volcanic eruptions were at an all-time high in the Andes only made her vacation choice more exciting.
And God knew she needed a little excitement after spending last year’s vacation in Williams Bay, Wisconsin. She and Lyric had spent two hellish weeks staring at stars through a telescope. While the place was beautiful, the fact that it was called “the birthplace of modern astrophysics” should have been a tip-off that the only person who’d be having fun was her astrophysicist sister. If Harmony hadn’t talked a local hot air balloonist into letting her do a little bungee jumping from his balloon, and a local cowboy into letting her hog-tie him up, the trip would have been a total bust.
That so wasn’t going to happen this year. With that thought in mind, Harmony finished up her donut, turned up the volume on her smartphone so that the walls shook with death metal, and got back to work.
An hour later, she turned off the death metal, zipped herself into a pink-and-black-striped sundress from Talbots, tied a starched, whit
e lacy apron around her waist, and applied a respectable amount of respectable pink lipstick and just a hint of mascara.
As she checked herself out in the full-length mirror on the back of her office door—just to make sure that all remnants of early-morning Harmony were sublimated—the left corner of her mouth turned up in a crooked smile. She looked just like every other Livinia Wright disciple, which meant that no one but her twin—and a few one-night stands that all lived at least fifty miles outside of town—knew that underneath all of this Talbots Suburban Housewife were breast-to-thigh tattoos, nipple rings, a hood piercing, and a shit-ton of bad attitude.
Which was exactly how she wanted it.
Kenny G’s saxophone hummed out of the bakery’s speakers as she closed her office door, grabbed the last tray—cheesecake brownies—and went to open up for the day. She flicked on the light for the dining room and slipped the brownies into the glass refrigerated countertop display case.
Five of her “coffee club” stood waiting outside the door. Every single one of the men had fought in Vietnam, insisted on drinking rotgut Folgers, ate more sweets than they confessed to their wives, and downed bad coffee like it was water. Since she’d refused to buy them cheap coffee, they brought their own can, used their own Bunn coffeepot, and had their own table in the corner.
With a smile as sweet as her cream-cheese brownies, she unlocked the door and held it open for them. In seconds it was wrenched out of her hand. These men were real Texans, and they would rather eat nuclear waste direct from “Commie Russia” than have a door opened for them by a lady. It wasn’t a slight against women’s lib. Just a deep-seated fear that their mommas could see them from heaven and would know that they’d passed up an opportunity to be good Southern gentlemen.
“Good morning, Mr. Laramey.” She stepped back and smiled. After Vietnam, Stan Laramey had moved to Hollywood and become a stuntman for Harrison Ford. After Stan had broken both of his legs shooting The Fugitive, he’d moved back to San Angelo to run his daddy’s cattle ranch.
“Hey there, baby girl.” His West Texas drawl held onto each word, making them slow as molasses and twice as thick. “Did you make them pecan sticky buns I like?”
“I made a whole two dozen, with extra orange zest just for you.” She kissed his cheek.
“Today’s his birthday, and I’d hate to hear him whine about not getting sticky buns on his birthday.” It was Jeremiah Pearson. His polyester pants had swallowed a good two-thirds of his torso, and the tennis balls on his walker shushed on the tiled floor. “Nobody whines as much as Stan Laramey.”
“I think you’re right about that.” John Horner, retired Texas Ranger turned cattle rancher filed in next. “Whiney little girls got nothin’ on Stan.”
“Now let’s all just get along, gentlemen.” Reverend J. Cooley Sadek was next. Since he was a man of the cloth, everyone looked to him as the peacemaker. Of course, they also looked to him to hold the bets for all sporting events, to run the Tuesday night poker game, and to drive the River Valley Baptist Church van when the coffee club took their monthly trips to the casino in Eagle Pass.
“We’re getting along. No one’s murdered anyone lately.” Lucas McDonald, Civil War enthusiast and ex–history teacher at San Angelo High, hunched over his cane and shuffled into the bakery. He gave Jeremiah Pearson the stink eye. “Even though it ain’t for lack of trying.”
“What did I do?” Mr. Pearson was all innocence.
“Them trash cans of yours been down at the end of your driveway for going on a week.” Mr. McDonald took neighborhood beautification to a whole new level. He’d been known to take a yardstick and measure the length of his neighbors’ grass.
“I just had both of my knees replaced. Walking is kinda painful, especially if I’m dragging a trash can behind me.” Mr. Pearson popped the top on the Folgers, stuffed a coffee filter into the Bunn, measured out the coffee, and hit the brew button.
“You’re here, ain’t ya?” According to the town in general, Mr. McDonald had always been an ass. The only reason anyone put up with him was because twice a year he ran the best Civil War reenactment in Texas—maybe even in the whole South.
Harmony mashed her lips together to keep from grinning. She kinda liked that about him. No one ran over Lucas McDonald, and God knew many had thought about it when they were behind the wheel and he was crossing the road.
“Life’s too short for you to act like a snapping turtle.” Reverend Sadek was a terminally cheerful person. More than once, Harmony had wanted to choke him with the chain holding the cross around his neck. It was only the fear of the wrath of Livinia Wright that had held her back.
She could see in his eyes that Mr. McDonald wanted to punch Reverend Sadek. The chocolate macadamia nut cookies he favored were totally on the house today.
She closed the door after them. “I’m guessing y’all are ordering the usual?”
Harmony didn’t know why she even bothered to ask. They always ordered the same things.
They all “yes ma’am”-ed in unison.
“Are we really celebrating your birthday, Stan?” Mr. McDonald eased down into his chair at their table. “You’re two hundred years old. Why are we celebrating your birthday?”
“You’re seventeen days older than I am and we celebrated your birthday,” Stan Laramey said around the toothpick that was always sticking out of the left side of his mouth.
“Yeah, but people like me. Nobody likes you.” Besides harassing humanity at large, Mr. McDonald’s favorite hobby was being cheap. He didn’t want to have to pick up Laramey’s tab because it was his birthday. Everyone knew not to use the bathroom at McDonald’s house, because he actually divided the two-ply toilet paper into two rolls. Of course, he was living on a teacher’s pension …
