Welcome to Temptation/Bet Me Read online

  “Your insurance agent—” the Pillar began, but this time his wife interrupted him.

  “Are you friends of Clea Whipple’s?” Virginia said from the front seat, her color returning. “Is she home again? Oh, Stephen, did you hear that? We haven’t seen Clea for over twenty years. Except in the movies, of course.”

  Movie, Sophie wanted to say, since Clea had only made one, but the last thing she wanted was more conversation with the Pillars. She began to back away. “She’s home, but only until Sunday. Now, please, don’t let me keep you.”

  “Well, that’s so exciting.” Virginia trilled. “Is she still married to that handsome Zane Black? We watch him every night on the news.” Sophie turned to make her escape, and Virginia raised her voice to compensate. “You tell her Virginia Garvey said hi!”

  “They’ve got movie equipment,” Stephen bellowed. “And they’re filming on public land which is clearly illegal.”

  “A movie?” Virginia’s face lit up and her voice rose to a shout. “Oh, wait, tell me—”

  Sophie reached the other side of the road, pretending not to hear. Ahead of her, a torn and faded campaign poster fluttered on a tree: Tucker for Mayor: More of the Same.

  “Dear God, I hope not,” she said under her breath. She got in the car and maneuvered it back on the road while Stephen Garvey glared at her and Virginia fluttered her hand. The front fender scraped against the tire as she searched for the lane to the farm, touching her lip with the Kleenex to see if the bleeding had stopped.

  “What a butthead that guy was,” Amy said. “Are you all right?”

  “No.” Sophie looked for the Whipple mailbox. “I’ve got a smashed car, a moving violation, a sister who screws up my getaway, and a dead white male telling the whole damn town we’re making a movie.” She slowed as the bridge loomed ahead, and scowled over the steering wheel. “And we must have missed the turnoff for the farm because we’re almost in town now.”

  “No, there’s the mailbox.” Amy pointed with her broken sunglasses. “Turn left.”

  Sophie turned down the farm lane Clea had promised them was a good half-mile long. “This place gives me the creeps. . . .” Her voice trailed off as the dusty yard of a dilapidated farmhouse came into view. “Didn’t Clea say the farmhouse was a long way off the road?”

  “Maybe they moved the road,” Amy said as they pulled up in front of the house. “It’s been twenty-four years since she’s been back.” She peered through the windshield at the farmhouse. “Understandably.”

  Sophie tried to be fair as she turned off the ignition. The paint was peeling in dingy white strips from the side of the clapboards, and the gutter hung loose across the front of the peaked roof, but the house wasn’t a complete loss. There was a wide front porch across the entire front with a swing. And there was . . .

  Sophie looked around the dusty, barren yard. Nope, the porch was about it. “Great place to film. Yeah, we can trust Clea. I smell trouble.”

  Amy sniffed the air. “That’s dead fish. Must be the river.”

  She opened her car door as the screen door banged, and Clea Whipple came out onto her porch, her lush body straining at her bright blue sundress, her white-blonde hair almost incandescent in the sun. She shaded her cameo-perfect face with her hand and called, “You’re late.”

  “And hello to you, too,” Sophie said, and got out of the car to unload their supplies, starting with their cooler. It was full of Dempsey life essentials—lemonade and Dove Bars—and she was in need of immediate essential comfort.

  Amy went toward the house with the camera. “Isn’t this going to be wonderful?”

  Sophie looked at Clea, the most self-absorbed woman in the universe, staring blankly back at her from the derelict front porch. “Oh, yeah,” she said as she hauled the cooler out of the car.

  Nothing but good times ahead.

  Eight miles up the road, in Temptation’s marble-and-sandstone courthouse, Mayor Phineas T. Tucker wondered not for the first time why he was cursed with a council made up of a blowhard, a doormat, a high-school English teacher, the town coroner, an amateur actor, and his mother. The combination was depressing to contemplate even with the blowhard and the doormat missing, so while Hildy Mallow waxed poetic over the aesthetic benefits of reproduction vintage streetlights, Phin leaned back from the oak table to distract himself with his council secretary’s legs.

  Rachel Garvey had excellent legs. Of course, with only twenty years on them, they were too young for him no matter what his mother and hers thought, but they were still fine to look at.

  “. . . and since their beauty would discourage vandalism, the extra cost will pay for itself over time,” Hildy finished, confusing Phin until he remembered that Hildy was talking about streetlights and not Rachel’s legs.

  “That may be a little optimistic.” Liz Tucker’s voice was as cool as her champagne-tinted hair. “Of course, our alternative is those horrible modern lights that would clash with the nineteenth-century architecture.”

  Phin winced. The only nineteenth-century architecture in Temptation was in the wealthy part of town. Grateful that only a few citizens were sitting in the front row listening to his mother forget the little people once again, Phin sat up to head her off before she could offer them cake.

  “Yeah, but the good streetlights would go everywhere, right?” Frank Lutz said before Phin could intervene.

  “Right,” Phin said.

  “Okay.” Frank sat back and ran his hand over his matinee-idol hair, clearly relieved that the new development he’d built on the west side of town would have class lighting, too. “I’m for it. Let’s vote.”

  “Can we do that without Stephen and Virginia?” Liz said, and Hildy straightened her cardigan and said, “Certainly. If we all agree, we’ll have a majority no matter how they voted. And we all agree, right?”

  She stared pointedly at the fourth member of the council, Dr. Ed Yarnell, who gazed back, unfazed, armored with thirty years of council experience. If Phin thought about Ed too much, it depressed him, knowing that thirty years down the line he could be Ed: bald, sixty-something, and still staring at the same WPA mural of Justice Meeting Mercy. It was not how he wanted to spend his sixties. Hell, it wasn’t how he wanted to spend his thirties. He glanced guiltily at the sepia-toned photos of three of the four previous mayors—Phineas T. Tucker, his father; Phineas T. Tucker, his grandfather; and Phineas T. Tucker, his great-grandfather—all staring down their high-bridged noses, with cold eyes, at their latest and laziest incarnation.

  “Then we’ll vote,” Hildy said.

  “Call the roll, Rachel,” Phin said, and Rachel called Lutz, Mallow, Tucker, and Yarnell and got four yeses. “Motion passed. What’s next?”

  “The water tower,” Liz said, and Hildy said, “I don’t see why—” and then the double doors from the marble hall opened and the Garveys came in.

  “There was an accident.” Virginia plopped herself down in her chair, looking like a wad of bubblegum with big hair. “Hello, baby,” she said to Rachel, reaching across to pat her daughter’s hand. “This car came out of nowhere and didn’t stop. Two women, a snippy little redhead, Stephen says, and a nice brunette who was sweet to me. Curly hair. Low-class. They’re staying at the Whipple farm. And they’re making a movie. . . .”

  Phin watched Liz draw back, probably because “low-class” was such a low-class thing to say. “I’ll never understand why Stephen married one of his counter clerks,” he’d heard her tell his father once. “His mother must be revolving in her grave.”

  “Enough,” Stephen said now. “We’ve held up this meeting by coming late, let’s not waste more time with gossip.”

  “Are you all right?” Liz asked, and Virginia nodded.

  “Wait a minute, they’re making a movie?” Hildy said, and Virginia transferred her nod to her.

  “The water tower is on the table,” Phin said, deep-sixing his own interest in the news so he could get the meeting over with. If somebody really was