The Mulberry Tree Read online

  “Make a battle plan,” Bailey said out loud. “And figure out who my soldiers are.”

  Smiling, she went into the house. She had to prepare dinner for Matt.

  Thirteen

  It was Patsy who gave Bailey the idea.

  It was two days after she’d seen Arleen in the restaurant in Welborn, and Bailey had been going crazy trying to figure out what she wanted to do with her life.

  Absently, she had cooked meals for Matt, and when he showed her his latest house plan, she barely looked at it. “A penny . . . ,” Matt said, but Bailey didn’t respond. Her mind was fully occupied with the questions of what and how and who.

  Finally, it was what Patsy said that made the bells in her head start ringing. It was Patsy’s turn to have them over to her house, and Bailey had shown up with a carload of food. She’d reached the point that she couldn’t bear one more of Patsy’s tasteless dips-and-chips.

  “My problem with food,” Patsy said, “is that I don’t know what to serve before or after.”

  Bailey’s mind was elsewhere. She’d been reading all that she could find about marketing what the industry called “specialty items,” and it seemed that every avenue of the market was filled. There were gourmet jams everywhere, plus every conceivable sauce, mixed spice, and pickle; and as far as Bailey could tell, every country on Earth had a couple of lines of their products out. All she could see to do was repeat what others had already done. But what she really needed was a hole that could be filled.

  “Before?” Bailey asked absently.

  “You know, before the meal. What do you serve before the meal?”

  “Hors d’oeuvres,” Bailey said, not understanding what Patsy meant.

  “I know that,” Patsy said in disgust. “I know what the name of the food is, but I don’t know what to serve.”

  “You can—” Bailey began, but Patsy cut her off.

  “I know that I can make little puff pastry shells and fill them with some divine lobster concoction,” Patsy said, her voice heavy with sarcasm. “I’m not stupid. I watch those TV cooks just like everyone else does, but I don’t want to do that. Nobody seems to understand that there are people out here who really and truly hate to cook. We just want to get in and out of the kitchen as fast as possible. But we’re all supposed to pretend to want to be Martha Stewart.”

  Bailey was having such a difficult time understanding what Patsy meant that she was coming out of her reverie to listen. “Pretend to be Martha Stewart?” Bailey asked. “What do you mean?”

  “All those cooks on TV tell us that it’s easy to make fabulous meals. All we have to do is add a little of this and a little of that, and bam! we have a great meal. What they don’t tell us is that we have to, first of all, think of what we’re going to end up with, then we have to go to the grocery and buy all that stuff, then we have to create it. I don’t have a brain that works like that. And I don’t have the time to do all that! I buy a chicken, throw it in the oven, boil some vegetables and pour a canned sauce over them, and I can add water to some instant mashed potatoes, and eventually I can come up with a passable meal. When company comes, I want to do more, but I don’t know what to do for befores and afters. You know, hors d’oeuvres and dessert other than ice cream.”

  Bailey stood there blinking at her. “ ‘Befores and afters,’ ” she said softly, and her mind seemed to go round and round. Pickled mushrooms on a platter. Chopped olives served on rounds of toasted bread. A packaged pound cake with brandied cherries poured over it.

  “Befores and afters,” she said again, then she smiled. Then she smiled more broadly. Then she threw her arms around Patsy and hugged her.

  “What’s going on?” Scott called from across the yard. “Can anyone get in on this?”

  “Girl stuff,” Patsy yelled in his direction, then she lowered her voice. “You wanta tell me what’s in your head?”

  “Top secret,” Bailey said. “You have just given me the idea for my new business. Are you in or out?”

  “In,” Patsy said instantly.

  “Then don’t say a word to anyone, especially to anyone male,” Bailey said quickly as she saw Matt approaching.

  Ten minutes later, Janice said quietly to Bailey, “What are you up to?”

  “I’m going to start a business, and I’m going to do it in secrecy. I’m not letting any man know what I’m doing for fear that he’ll somehow, some way, talk me out of it. Are you in, or do you want to search your husband’s tax records back ten years?”

  For a moment Bailey thought she’d gone too far and that Janice just might throw her drink in her face. But when Janice spoke, her voice was so low that Bailey could barely hear her.

  “I found a bank account,” Janice said, her eyes on her husband, who was laughing at something Rick had said. “He doesn’t know that I found it, and he doesn’t know that I know what it’s for—or should I say, who it’s for? But I’ve diverted the interest, and I’m going to start diverting the principal. By the time he finds out about it, I’ll have enough to leave.”

  Bailey caught her breath. She knew that she didn’t like Janice’s husband, and she’d often thought how she wouldn’t like her mother-in-law supervising her children, as was the case in Janice’s life, but Bailey had never seen anything that made her think that Janice wanted out. “I can’t guarantee we’ll make a profit,” Bailey said. “We might lose our shirts.”

  “His shirt,” Janice said. “We might lose his shirt.” She then turned and walked away, but Bailey thought that Janice’s shoulders were straighter and her head a bit higher.

  By the next day, Bailey had figured out that the first order of business was to try to get Janice and Patsy to work with each other. First, she tried being sensible. “We can’t open a business together if two of the partners don’t speak to each other,” she said after they’d ordered lunch. Both women looked at her with faces of stone. It was obvious that they had no intention of budging on this issue.

  Bailey thought about playing therapist and asking what the root of their not talking was, then trying to fix it. But that thought lasted about thirty seconds. She didn’t have time to start two careers.

  That night Bailey served Matt grilled shrimp and steamed vegetables for dinner. It was a quick meal; she hadn’t had time to cook something more elaborate. “When Patsy is going somewhere, and she wants Janice to go with her, how does she ask her?”

  “Letters,” Matt said as he bit into a shrimp.

  “Letters?” Bailey asked, sounding as though she’d never heard of one.

  “They don’t speak, but they write to each other. Of course they don’t address the letters to each other, but Patsy uses green stationery and Janice uses blue, so everyone knows who the letter is to. In fact, the whole thing started because of—”

  Bailey held up her hand to stop him. “Don’t tell me why they don’t speak. I just need to know how to get them to communicate with one another now.”

  “Oh?” Matt said. “Speaking of which, what were you three discussing so seriously yesterday?”

  “Food,” Bailey said quickly.

  “Patsy was talking about food,” he said flatly, then watched as Bailey turned her face away so he wouldn’t see how red it got.

  “Yes, we were,” she said, her back to him.

  “I see.”

  Bailey turned back to him. “Letters are too slow. Do you think they’d do e-mail? How about a fax machine?”

  Matt was looking at her hard. “What are you up to?”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that it wasn’t any of his business, but instead she smiled. “We’re planning a surprise birthday party for Rick,” she said. “And Patsy wants me to make a truly fabulous dinner for him. I think she’s planning to invite about a hundred people.” For a moment she stood there blinking at him, her breath held. Would he swallow this? And when exactly was Rick’s birthday?

  Matt grunted as he picked up another shrimp. “You’d better get a wiggle on then, bec