Trouble's Brewing Read online

  the Potluck Club

  Trouble’s Brewing

  the Potluck Club

  Trouble’s Brewing

  A NOVEL

  Linda Evans Shepherd

  and Eva Marie Everson

  © 2006 by Linda Evans Shepherd and Eva Marie Everson

  Published by Fleming H. Revell

  a division of Baker Publishing Group

  P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

  www.revellbooks.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Shepherd, Linda E., 1957—

  Trouble’s brewing : a novel / Linda Evans Shepherd and Eva Marie Everson.

  p. cm.—(The Potluck Club)

  ISBN 10: 0-8007-3065-8 (pbk.)

  ISBN 978-0-8007-3065-9 (pbk.)

  1. Women—Societies and clubs—Fiction. 2. Female friendship—Fiction.

  3. Prayer groups—Fiction. 4. Women cooks—Fiction. 5. Colorado—Fiction.

  6. Cookery—Fiction. I. Everson, Eva Marie. II. Title.

  PS3619.H456T76 2006

  813 .6—dc22 2006002690

  To the women in my life who have formed a prayer circle around me. (You know who you are.) I could not have survived this year without you.

  —Eva Marie Everson

  To my dear friends Sharon Williams, a caregiver; Pam Hyink, a therapist; and Betty Murch, a teacher. You three women are God’s earth angels who have blessed and enriched not only my life, but the life of my beautiful, disabled daughter, Laura. Thank you for all you’ve done to teach her to be, to love, and to live a joyful life. You were the ones who first believed in Laura when no one else could. Thank you for sharing your lives with one of God’s little ones who can never say thank-you. This is my way of saying it for her.

  Also, a special thank-you to the many who have cared and ministered to my precious child. I can’t name you all here, but know that I love and cherish you too.

  —Linda Evans Shepherd

  Fiction also by Linda Evans Shepherd and Eva Marie Everson

  The Potluck Club

  Fiction by Eva Marie Everson

  Shadow of Dreams

  Summon the Shadows

  Shadows of Light

  Fiction by Linda Evans Shepherd

  Ryan’s Trials

  Kara’s Quest

  Tangled Heart

  Contents

  10 Lisa Leann—Buttering Up Reporters

  11 Can He Get a Witness?

  12 Evangeline—Sweet and Sour Romance

  13 Between a Rock and a Hard Place

  14 Donna—Rye Getaway

  15 Texas Lassoed

  16 Evangeline—Spoiled Alliance

  17 If Oprah Can Do It …

  18 Goldie—Tossed Together

  19 Woodward and Bernstein and Shredding Machines

  20 Vonnie—Stirring Good-Bye

  21 Stranger in Town

  22 Donna—Lavish Breakfast

  23 Another Notch in the Belt

  24 Lizzie—Boiling Over

  25 Potluck Day

  26 Lisa Leann—Taste of Disaster

  27 Will the Next Mrs. Pastor Kevin Please Stand Up?

  28 Donna—Serving Trouble

  29 Friendship with Attitude Takes a Holiday

  30 Evangeline—A Little Tart

  31 Two-Finger Tango

  32 Goldie—Attempt to Defrost

  33 Faded Photographs

  34 Vonnie—Spreading a Rumor

  35 The Price of a Memory

  36 Lizzie—Serving Second Chances

  37 I’ll Take “Early Church History” for 100

  38 Lisa Leann—Chewing on the Facts

  39 Good Old-Fashioned Snail Mail

  40 Evangeline—Spilling the Beans

  41 If a Picture Paints a Thousand Words

  42 Goldie—Tasting a Possibility

  43 Advice from a Couple a’ Rats

  44 Donna—Sweet Peace

  45 Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

  46 Evangeline—Delicious Reunion

  47 I’ll Have What He’s Having

  48 Lisa Leann—Party Platter

  The Potluck Club Recipes

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  Join the Potluck Club

  A Sneak Peek

  1

  Good to the Last Drop

  Clay Whitefield burrowed under the musky blankets, eking out an attempt at a few minutes more sleep before heaving himself out of bed. The weight from the quilt his grandmother had handmade upon his arrival into the world lay over him like the history of her people, the Cheyenne. But his grandmother and her people were the last thing on his mind.

  Outside the window of his second-story flat, the town of Summit View, Colorado, was coming to life. With or without him. His boss, the editor and publisher of the Gold Rush News, was most likely sitting at his desk by now, wondering what time Clay would amble in. Shifts were changing at the hospital and down at the sheriff ’s department. Children were preparing for school. Sally Madison, owner of Higher Grounds Café, had already unlocked the doors to her establishment. Larry, her cook, had slapped a heap of lard onto the flat grill, readying it for the morning specials. One of Sally’s girls had started the coffee. The very thought of it brewing interrupted Clay’s dreams, and his nose twitched.

  He opened one eye. Across the room on a scarred table, his gerbils, Woodward and Bernstein, lay wrapped around each other as though they were one. Nearby, his laptop sat at attention, the screen saver banner sliding across its face, teasing him.

  CLAY WHITEFIELD, it said. ace reporter.

  He’d worked last night until the early hours of the morning; thus his attempt at sleeping in. The big story of his career had kept him up, driving him toward a completion he feared would never come. This story—this single story—had tickled his imagination when he was a child, encouraged him to do well when he’d gone off to the University of Northern Colorado to study journalism, and had propelled him back to his hometown upon graduation.

  It was the story of a group of women who called themselves the Potluck Club. But it was more than their monthly gatherings that kept his fingers to the keyboard and his pen and notebook in an everready position. It was their past secrets and current escapades.

  It was, most particularly, their youngest member.

  Because Clay Whitefield believed, with everything his journalistic heart had in it, that Donna Vesey was carrying the deepest secret of them all.

  2

  Grilling Interrogation

  It was a bad night to be driving in the mountains. I pulled into one of my favorite retreats, a quiet wooded area, to wait out the storm. I took a sip of my hot coffee and watched the wipers slap at the rain that had altered my view of once stick-straight pines into twisting shadows. As if to add to my concern, the voice of dispatch crackled out of my radio. “Unit three, we have a report of a vehicle in trouble at mile marker eight on River Canyon Road.”

  “Roger that. Unit three en route.”

  I hit my siren and raced my white Bronco down the canyon as the dark sky exploded in brilliant flashes and the rock walls throbbed in time to the rotating lights.

  At mile marker eight, my headlights illuminated a frantic man who darted from behind his parked jeep, waving his arms. I reached for my radio to call dispatch. “Unit three arrived at destination.
”

  “Roger. Be advised the National Weather Service has just issued a flash flood warning.”

  “Roger.” I powered down my window as rain pelted my face. “What seems to be the trouble?” I asked the drenched man who appeared to be in his midforties. He shivered before me in his T-shirt and jeans, his only defense against the storm’s chill.

  He leaned down, his eyes wide. “Hurry! You may be able to save her.”

  “Who?”

  “The lady in the car that slid into the river.”

  He pointed, and I turned my attention to the raging mountain river only a few yards from the road. Normally the river would be nothing more than the peaceful gurgle of melted snow, but tonight it roared as if demons coursed down its winding path. I blinked as I observed the glowing taillights of a sedan just beneath the river’s surface.

  My heart sunk as I surmised what must have happened. Canyon River Road was awash in a thick cushion of water. When the driver had tried to negotiate the curve, her car had hydroplaned off the road and into the river.

  I picked up the radio. “Dispatch, car with occupant submerged at Canyon River Road, mile marker eight. Additional rescue units requested.”

  I hung up the radio, reached for a length of rope I kept beneath my seat, and stepped into the downpour. A flooded canyon road was not a good place to be without backup.

  The man followed me to the river’s edge.

  “Did you see anyone besides the woman in the car?” I asked.

  The man’s Rockies baseball cap shielded his eyes from the deluge that rolled off his gray brim. His voice rose to compete with the angry river. “Only the driver.”

  I looked back at the river. The current was already tugging the submerged car farther downstream.

  At this point, I knew an attempt to rescue the occupant would result in certain death, either from drowning or from prolonged exposure to the ice-cold water. Even if I stood taller than five-foot-two, and even if I weighed two hundred pounds with rippling muscles as did some of my male counterparts, that current would knock me off my feet and carry any recoverable parts to a closed pine box to be displayed down at the local funeral home.

  The man turned to me. “What are you going to do?”

  I simply stared, scanning the black waters for signs of life. Suddenly, a head bobbed to the surface. It was the woman! She tried to call to us but gagged and choked against the raging current.

  With the woman out of the car, I saw a chance for rescue that couldn’t wait. Quickly, I knotted one end of the rope around a nearby pine and tied the other to my waist.

  “I’m going in,” I told the man before plunging into the frigid swirl of bone-chilling darkness.

  The current caught me like a limp rag doll, and the force of the water made me feel as if I were tied to the tail of a kite. When I caught my breath, I called to the woman, who clung to the hood of her car, which had bobbed above the river’s surface.

  “Let go and I’ll catch you!”

  Brave words for a young deputy who knew she’d taken on the impossible. Even if I could snag the woman as she swept past me, I would never be able to tow her back to the bank.

  I couldn’t tell if the woman obeyed my command or if the river itself pried her from the side of her car. Suddenly, she hurled toward me. I reached out as far as my tethered line would allow, my fingers just catching the hood of her jacket. I had her.

  “Grab on,” I called. And grab she did, climbing me as if I were a ladder. Her frenzy pushed my head beneath the surface, where foam, feet, knees, and elbows jabbed into my body and head.

  Inhaling a mouthful of water, I fought my attacker, spinning her around and grabbing her by the neck in a rescuer’s hold. I called back to the man on the shore. “Can you pull us in?”

  “I’ll try!”

  With slow progress, the three of us were finally united in a wet, exhausted heap on the river’s bank.

  The young woman, who had been silent against the overpowering waves, finally caught her breath and cried, “My baby! My baby’s still in the car!”

  I sat up and turned to look at the car, which had spiraled upside down, scraping its hood on the rocky river bottom as it slowly made its way downstream. Occasionally, the car’s headlights would penetrate the dark waters as if to illuminate its journey toward destruction.

  The woman continued to weep as she pushed strands of wet, brown hair from her face. Still sprawled on the bank, she rolled toward me and grabbed my sleeve. Her eyes wide with terror, she pleaded, “Please, save my baby!”

  Trembling, I stood to my feet, still gasping for breath. In an instant, I realized the car was moving into position. If I went back into the floodwaters, my length of rope might be able to reach it.

  I looked down at the woman. “Is your baby in the backseat?”

  “Yes! She’s strapped in her car seat.”

  I scoured the dark road for signs of headlights. Where was my backup?

  To my dismay, I was still the only rescuer at the scene. Not only was I alone, but the river was rising in a great yawn. That was a bad sign. A flash flood could be imminent and would result in a great wall of water and rock funneling down the canyon, wiping out everyone and everything in its path. I couldn’t predict if the wall of water would bear down on us or not, but I could predict a baby would die unless I tried to save her.

  When I looked back at the submerged car, I knew what I had to do. With no time to spare, I leaped back into the frigid waters.

  I felt disoriented as the river spun me downstream. When the rope jerked taut, it took me a second to get my bearings. That’s when I saw the car was upon me. I dove down, the light from the headlights creating a strange luminance in the churning waters. My feet had just touched the bottom when the car lifted then settled back against my foot. To my horror, I was pinned beneath the water. I fought to free myself, but it was of no use. I was caught fast. Just as my lungs felt as if they would explode, the current shifted the car, and I broke for the surface. Filling my lungs with air, I dove back down, grabbing a rear door handle. I used the handle as a handhold to pull myself to peer into the car. I was amazed to see a crying baby inside a pocket of air. She was alive!

  With numbed fingers, I managed to open the rear door, releasing the floodwaters upon the infant. I had only seconds to unbuckle her, knowing her lungs would quickly fill with water. When I finally yanked the buckle free, I pulled her limp body into my arms and swam for the surface.

  When my head broke above the flow, the ghost of my breath swirled above the water. My next gasp was met by an icy wave. My ears filled with water, and I could only hear the fizzy shush of the roar above me. I opened my eyes in the eerie underwater light. Before me were the wide eyes of the child staring back. I could see she was only barely alive. That realization quickened my efforts. As I fought to get her to the bank, a pine log careened into my shoulder. For a moment I was stunned. But before I could recover, the wild current ripped the child from my arms. In one terrible second, the baby was gone.

  The screams of a heartbroken mother woke me as I fought my tangled bedsheets, once again drowning in the old memory.

  I sat up and squinted against the morning light that peeked through the cracks of my heavy drapes. I sucked in a deep breath of cool morning air as I waited for my heart to stop pounding. It was only a dream. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t. Real. It was …

  Pain gripped me by the heart, and I put my face in my hands and began to berate myself once again.

  What in God’s name is wrong with me? It had been three years since the accident.

  I mean, what does it take to put one’s life back together? I had grieved, I had practically spent my life’s savings on a shrink, and I had finally moved from Boulder back home to good old Summit View, Colorado.

  It was a good move. With my dad’s influence as the local sheriff, I became one of his deputies. Not only did I have a “low stress” job, spending most of my time writing up reports about tourists with lost
wallets, but also I gained respect. The townsfolk knew I never backed down when awarding traffic tickets to deserving offenders, including the mayor and most of the Grace Church deacon board. My ticket-writing trademark, “It’s such a pleasure to write you up,” had raised more than a few eyebrows, not to mention a slew of letters to the editor of the local Gold Rush News. Hah. That kind of publicity only enhanced my tough-broad reputation. And that image comes hard-earned when you resemble a pixie.

  I rubbed my eyes and then forced my sleep-deprived body to the coffeepot and started a fresh brew. If I didn’t get a grip, I’d start to look as haunted as Wade Gage, my old high school sweetheart.

  Minutes later, I peered out my tiny kitchen window at Mount Paul shining bright in the morning sun. The mountain towered just behind my neighborhood of log bungalows. With the price of real estate in the Colorado high country, this tiny cabin was all I could afford. My landlord certainly appreciated my million-dollar view. He saw to it that I always coughed up the rent with his monthly threat, “I’d hate to sell this charmer out from under you, Donna, but as long as I get my rent on time, I’m happy.”

  Good ol’ Bob Burnett, Grace deacon, landlord, and RV park owner.

  I pictured his eyebrows arching up his bald head whenever I’d remark, “Careful, Bob, a couple of deserved speeding tickets could ruin your tidy profit.”

  After I’d drained the last of the coffeepot into my favorite mug, I contemplated a trip to Higher Grounds Café for some pancakes smothered in maple syrup. If I was lucky, I’d find Clay White-field, our local newspaper reporter, sitting in his favorite spot, poring over the Denver papers. I’d hate to admit this, especially as I’m still ticked at him for a couple of his recent news reports (one about Vonnie’s long-lost son and the other about how I ran from a bear), but he’s the closest thing I have to a friend. That is, unless you count the members of the Potluck Club, Grace Church’s prayer group. But who could say where I really stand with them? I’ve always suspected it was Vonnie who made the girls “play nice” whenever I walked into the room. Well, at least they know me well enough to obey the traffic laws.