“Okay, then.” The clunk of Mr. Jenkins’s cowboy boots hitting his desk reverberated through the phone. “I happen to know Belinda Sue personally, and I’d be more than happy to ring her up and ask her to go over the basics with you.”
Cordelia grimaced at the thought of just how personal a relationship he had with Belinda Sue. Did he prefer the hand or the whip? The vision of him squealing like a pig under Belinda Sue’s ministrations nearly made her retch.
“I understand the basics,” Cordelia said. “Though you should know, I’ll be writing you a strongly worded one-star review on Yelp for this.”
She hung up and flung her phone on the bedside table, then face-planted into the mattress. She had no way out of this. She couldn’t sell. Who would buy a cathouse full of golden-aged sexworkers? What about the law? Sex work wasn’t legal in Texas. Would she be on the hook if there was some kind of trouble? Perhaps Archer had been right all those years ago, and Satan had it out for her. She’d never been a religious sort, but if all those churches turned out to be right, this was surely the most direct path to hell.
Cordelia allowed herself fifteen minutes to eat sorrow by the spoonful before she stood and organized her thoughts while she organized her sock drawer. Her Great-Aunt Penelope must’ve lost her mind when she wrote her trust. Why didn’t she leave the Chickadee to Belinda Sue? She looked like she wouldn’t mind showing unruly patrons the business end of a .45.
If only Cordelia had gotten the chance to know her great-aunt. If she’d spent a single day in Cordelia’s company, she’d have known Cordelia fit in about as well as a porcupine at a nudist colony. Just one more reason for Cordelia to curse her spineless father for walking away, abandoning any chance of connecting his only child with her only family. His shadow had a long reach.
After Cordelia finished organizing her sock drawer, her mind still wasn’t as clear as she’d hoped, so she rearranged the towels in the bathroom closet by size and color, polished the knobs on the kitchen cabinets, and vacuumed a perfect diamond pattern into the living room rug. At the end of her mini cleaning spree, she still felt unsettled, but her spirits had lifted significantly. Perhaps her situation wasn’t as bleak as she’d feared. She had a roof over her head and a job that offered her respectability, if not comfort, in Dallas.
Just because she owned the Chickadee didn’t mean she had to be its madam. That wasn’t a condition of the trust. Mr. Arbuckle Jenkins said she couldn’t sell out from under the chicks, but he never said she had to stay. And having her name on the deeddidn’t make her a madam any more than renting her first apartment from a hoarder made her a trash collector.
Maybe she could turn the day-to-day operations over to one of the remaining chicks. They’d all get to stay, and Cordelia would be free from any legal obligation. Belinda Sue certainly appeared to have a head for this business. It would be like a promotion.
With that settled, Cordelia took out her notepad and began jotting down a list of things she needed to pick up from the grocery store. A quick trip into town would also allow her to check out the library and pick up a few more serious books that didn’t make her think about men like Archer Reed-Smythe. She’d just folded her list and tucked it into her purse when there was a light tapping on her door.
“Miss Cordelia? It’s Daisy. Is it okay if I come in?”
Cordelia’s brows pinched at the interruption, but now that she’d decided to turn operations over to Belinda Sue, she only needed to stay for a few more days, a week tops, and she didn’t want to give the impression she was a she-bear in satin. She opened the door, careful to keep her expression neutral. “I was just about to head into town, but I’ve got a few minutes. Would you like something to drink?”
“No, thank you.” Daisy walked in and made herself at home, touching the knickknacks on the shelves and rubbing the rubber plant leaves between her fingers. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay. You sure left in a hurry after Archer arrived.”
Cordelia internally groaned. “I didn’t want to disrupt your business.”
Daisy paused her fidgeting to spin around and face Cordelia. Her ruby-red lips popped open before she released a full-bellied laugh, bright as the sun. “Oh, honey, no. I wish.” Her lashes fluttered. “Archer Reed-Smythe is way too young and much too handsome to take up with the likes of us.”
A tension Cordelia didn’t know she was carrying in her shoulders loosened. “What was he doing here then, if he wasn’t here for business?”
“He was looking for his daddy, whoisone of my clients and closer in age to our regulars.” Daisy gave her a sly little smile. “Archer would suit you, though.”
“I don’t think so.” Cordelia sniffed. “He used to steal Barbies from the girls in class and hide them in a dirt hole in his backyard he called a booby trap.”
Daisy laughed. “Boys will be boys.”
“So they say.”
While Cordelia had no doubt Archer had likely matured in the last twenty years, there was still a roughness that wafted off him like cologne. Wild boys grew up to be dangerous men. The kind who couldn’t be tied down with barbed wire.
“And how long has the good Pastor Reed-Smythe been a card-carrying member of the Chickadee?” Cordelia asked.
Daisy’s chest puffed up proudly. “For the past thirty years.”
“Isn’t that something?” Cordelia couldn’t help but be amused by this information. She didn’t remember much about him, since her momma had been banned from attending church, but he sure did like to complain about how often they mowed their grass.
“I remember when you were little.” Daisy picked up one of the crystal hippos and nervously rubbed her thumb over its enlarged backside. “I asked Miss Penelope why she didn’t offer you and your momma a room when her no-good nephew left you two high and dry. She said you still had your house and the Chickadee was no place to raise a child.”
“Did my momma know Penelope?” Cordelia found it hard to believe that Sherilynn would keep a relative from her, considering how short they were on them. Even one tied to her deserting daddy.
“No. From what I understand, Travis wasn’t real fond of Penelope’s profession and didn’t acknowledge her as kin. His parents were from another county, so not many people knew anyway, and she wanted to respect his wishes by keeping her distance. Once he was gone, she didn’t know if it would be a good idea to approach Sherilynn. Back then, your momma...”
Cordelia held up a hand. “No need to say more.”
Her momma used to make a spectacle of herself. She could turn a cloudy day into a tornado, and she would steal anything that wasn’t nailed down. The sheriff had once fished her out of the wishing fountain in town, where she’d jumped in buck naked and tried to grab enough quarters for her next six-pack. It was that more than anything that made her such an outcast. Sarsaparilla Falls could deal with the drinking, they could even deal with her lack of responsibility, but they drew the line at her outlandish exhibitions.
“Right. Still, I wish we’d done a little more to look after y’all back then, but then y’all moved away and that was that.”
