A Knock on the Door

Another excerpt from my current work in progress:

Chapter Four

Sunday morning dawned bright and warm, as if the weather had no recollection of the dark, stormy time two days ago. Miss Tootsie sat down to a breakfast of ham and eggs, biscuits, and gravy. Sunday was a day of leisure and relaxation. With Cocoa curled in her basket in front of the wood-burning cookstove, Miss Tootsie relaxed at the kitchen table with the newspaper she had picked up from Bonnie’s. She glanced through it, looking for an article about a prison escapee or something that would shed light on the shadowy person who had upset the happy tenor of her small town. She hoped this person was some vagrant who had already left town and there’d be no more break-ins.

A pot roast simmered on the back of the stove, complete with potatoes and carrots. Carrie and Bertha would come home with her after church and the three friends would share a good Sunday dinner. She had no doubt but that they would talk about who this prowler might be.

She looked at the front page of the paper. Nothing there pertained to any sort of news about an escaped prisoner. She glanced over the second page; a small article near the bottom caught her eye. Roy Richards, a convicted killer from the county, had passed away after spending ten years in the state penitentiary.

Miss Tootsie sighed as she folded the paper. Roy Richards—what a sad case that had been, a case that left two children without a parent. What had become of those two–a boy and a girl? Seemed to her that an aunt had taken them and then moved out of state. That was over ten years ago, but she still thought of the situation as pitiful, mostly because of the children. Roy had always claimed to be innocent, never admitted shooting anyone; but he was prone to drinking heavily and couldn’t furnish an alibi for the night Jack Leonard was shot. The jury had listened to a couple of eye witnesses, and it was their determination that sent Roy to prison. She sighed and re-folded the paper. Time to get ready for church.

Pastor Gibson’s sermon was uplifting and not too long, a perfect antidote to the stormy weather that had passed. He made no mention of the break-ins. Before he dismissed them, he asked the congregation to be in prayer for banker Strummond, who was feeling a bit under the weather and hadn’t been able to go to his job at the bank lately.

“So, what’s wrong with Banker Strummond?” Miss Tootsie asked as she and Carrie and Bertha walked to her house after church.

“He must be pretty sick. I’ve never known him to miss a day being in the bank,” Carrie said.

Bertha snorted. “His bread and butter is foreclosing on loans. Maybe he foreclosed on one too many and somebody threatened him.”

“One thing you’ll have to say for him, though,” Carrie said. “He went from being a lowly cashier up to being a bank officer pretty quickly. He has a lot of ambition.”

Miss Tootsie could smell the aroma of roast beef as she unlocked the front door. Cocoa met them, frolicking around their feet.

“She does love a good roast,” Miss Tootsie said. “Almost as much as I do.”

With three women setting the table, dishing up food, and pouring iced tea, it didn’t take long before they were all sitting down to eat.

“Have you heard any more about the burglaries?” Bertha asked. “Has Dru told you anything else?”

“Not a word,” Miss Tootsie said. “I’m wondering if it was possibly someone just wandering through, down on his luck and needing food.”

“That would certainly be the most comforting answer,” Carrie said. “I’d hate to think that this unknown person was still in town.”

Miss Tootsie had just set the apple pie on the table and exchanged tea glasses for coffee cups when someone knocked on the front door. “Who in the world?” she said. It was unusual to get a caller during mealtime and since the prowler mystery, she was a bit jumpy. “I’ll go see,” she added.

Bertha and Carrie scooted back their chairs. “And we’ll go with you,” Bertha said.

The three women hurried to the door.  A young woman stood on the porch holding a kitten, a threadbare satchel at her feet. Miss Tootsie guessed her age at early twenties or late teens, dressed in a clean, print dress.