Beauty Shop Tales Read online

  Beauty Shop

  Tales

  Mystery

  and the Minister’s Wife

  Through the Fire

  A State of Grace

  Beauty Shop Tales

  A Test of Faith

  The Best Is Yet to Be

  Angels Undercover

  Into the Wilderness

  Where There’s a Will

  Dog Days

  The Missing Ingredient

  Open Arms

  A Token of Truth

  Who’s That Girl?

  For the Least of These

  A Matter of Trust

  Funny Money

  To Have and to Hold

  How the Heart Runs

  A Thousand Generations

  Home to Briar Mountain

  Flight of the Sparrows

  A Firm Foundation

  Off the Record

  A Distant Memory

  Tea and Sympathy

  The Master’s Hand

  Strangers in Their Midst

  Mystery and the Minister’s Wife is a registered trademark of Guideposts.

  Copyright © 2007 by Guideposts. 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, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. Inquiries should be addressed to the Rights & Permissions Department, Guideposts, 110 William Street, New York, New York 10038.

  The characters and events in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental.

  All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.

  Guideposts.org

  (800) 932-2145

  Guideposts Books & Inspirational Media

  Cover design by Dugan Design Group

  Cover illustration by Rose Lowry, www.illustrations.com

  Interior design by Cris Kossow

  Typeset by Nancy Tardi

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Betty Brooks and Anne Spitler,

  aunts extraordinaire,

  with love and gratitude.

  Chapter One

  Kate Hanlon poured a cup of fresh-brewed coffee into a ceramic mug emblazoned with the logo “World’s Best Preacher.” Sunshine streamed through the curtained windows above the sink that framed a fresh spring day. Kate walked around the L-shaped counter and handed the coffee to her husband, who was seated at the battered kitchen table wedged into the eat-in space of the parsonage’s tiny kitchen.

  “If you want half and half, you’ll have to add it yourself,” she said with a teasing smile as she passed him the mug. “I’m not contributing to your cholesterol levels today.”

  The Reverend Paul Hanlon, her husband of almost thirty years, harrumphed in response from behind his newspaper, but from where she stood Kate could see the twinkle in his eyes that belied his gruffness. Although they generally agreed on most things, Paul’s eating habits were a notable exception.

  “Skim milk doesn’t taste right,” he complained halfheartedly. “And isn’t that why I go running in the mornings? So I can put a little extra fat in my milk?”

  Still, he reached for the small pitcher on the table and tipped some of the nonfat milk into the mug.

  “Besides, how do you expect me to deny myself when the kitchen smells like heaven?” He nodded at the nearby countertop, where a row of homemade pies gave off a variety of mouthwatering aromas.

  Kate had been baking up a storm since shortly after dawn.

  “If you behave yourself until your next cholesterol check, I’ll bake a pie just for you,” she said, joining him at the table with her own mug of coffee. “Until then, I’ve got my hands full keeping up with your parishioners’ baked-good needs.”

  Though Kate often baked cookies and cakes for members of Faith Briar Church, she had found that her pies were also well received and had been trying lots of new recipes.

  Paul arched an eyebrow. “Real pie? Not sugar-free? No low-fat crust that tastes like chalk?”

  “Real pie,” Kate promised with a laugh. “Your choice of filling.”

  Paul’s smile spread across his face, a sight that had warmed Kate’s heart since the first time she’d laid eyes on him all those years ago.

  “Hmm.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I’ll have to think about that. Lots of possibilities—pecan, coconut, fudge.” His gaze traveled from pie to pie along the counter as if weighing the merits of each one.

  Kate stirred some skim milk into her own cup and added a spoonful of sugar. “Only if you’re good,” she reminded him.

  “When am I not?” Paul winked at her, looking more like a mischievous boy than the beloved pastor of Faith Briar Church.

  “So, what’s on your agenda this fine Saturday morning besides baking for my parishioners?” He reached over and squeezed her hand to show his appreciation for the way she cared for the members of his congregation.

  In every church you could count on twenty percent of the people to do eighty percent of the work, and in a small church like Faith Briar, sometimes it was more like ninety percent. Kate’s baking was an attempt to fill the need for meals and treats for parishioners who were ill or had just been released from the hospital in the nearby county seat of Pine Ridge. Somehow, there were never enough people available to prepare food for those in need at the exact time it was needed.

  “I’m scheduled for a visit to Betty’s Beauty Parlor,” Kate said reluctantly. Paul had a firm opinion about the place where Kate went to have her hair cut.

  “Another round of beauty shop tales, huh?” He picked up the Saturday-morning copy of the Copper Mill Chronicle and shook it open with a snap. “Maybe you could stuff cotton in your ears before you go.”

  “Oh, Paul, stop that.” She swatted his shoulder. “There’s more to the beauty shop than gossip.”

  He looked at her over the top of his paper. “Of course. There’s also backbiting, sniping, and the occasional outright untruth.”

  Kate sighed. While her husband wasn’t entirely wrong, he wasn’t entirely right either. What was it about a group of women in a hair salon that gave rise to idle chatter? She suspected the situation was the same the world over. Of course, men found their own places to “swap stories,” as some of the old-timers in Copper Mill called it.

  “I doubt it’s any worse than what goes on with Clifton Beasley and his gang of retirees on the front porch of Gorman’s Mercantile,” Kate remarked. “We ladies just get our hair done instead of whittling and drinking coffee.”

  Paul lowered the paper and smiled. “Point taken.”

  “What do you have to do today?” Kate asked him, eager to change the subject.

  As a pastor, her husband didn’t have much tolerance for gossip, but in a small town like Copper Mill, there wasn’t much he could do to quash it.

  “I’m going to make a practice batch of chili for the cook-off.”

  Kate grinned. “Let the games begin, huh?”

  The upcoming event was an annual tradition in the small town, a way to introduce a little warmth—literally and figuratively—into the spring.

  “I wish the men of Copper Mill would get this excited about cooking the other eleven months of the year. Then the women would have some help providing for those in need.” Kate waved her hand toward the pies on the counter for emphasis.

  Paul reached over to pat her shoulder. “You’re right. I’ll see what I can do. Right after the chili cook-off. Sam Gorman has been the champion three years running, but I think it’s time
for a new challenger to claim the title.”

  Sam was also the organist for Faith Briar Church, and Kate felt sure that her husband’s friendship and close working relationship with Sam only heightened the challenge between the two men.

  “My recipe’s in the box on the counter,” Kate said, nodding toward the stove. The old metal box contained many beloved recipes written out in her grandmother’s old-fashioned, spidery script.

  Paul set the newspaper aside. “I’m going to use my mother’s recipe. I think it’s in my desk somewhere.”

  Kate swallowed the first reply that sprang to her lips. Her mother-in-law had been a wonderful woman, but cooking had never been her strong point. Kate’s grandmother, though, had been an excellent cook, and a native Texan to boot. “My grandmother’s secret ingredient for her chili was—”

  “No, no. Don’t tell me,” Paul said, waving aside her words. “I’m going to win this myself. And Mama’s chili always was the best in these parts.”

  Kate forced herself to smile at her husband’s stubbornness. That particular trait had helped him persevere through difficult times as a minister, but sometimes she wished he wasn’t quite so determined.

  “Okay, okay. Just trying to help.” She sipped her coffee and then glanced at the clock on the wall. “I’d better get going, or I’m going to be late for my appointment.”

  Paul resumed his perusal of the newspaper, and then his brow furrowed. “That’s interesting.”

  “What is it?”

  “The house next door is for sale.”

  “Where? Let me see.” Kate rose from her chair to stand behind her husband and peer over his shoulder. The small boxed advertisement showed a picture of the modest white clapboard house next to the parsonage.

  Two bedrooms, one bath.

  1,100 sq. ft. As is.

  The house was the only thing that stood between the parsonage and Faith Briar Church. The three properties formed an L, much like her kitchen counter, with the parsonage on one end and the church on the other.

  Kate tried to suppress the flare of interest she felt. She had enough personal projects, not to mention her responsibilities as a minister’s wife, to keep her busy from dawn to dark. Still, a dozen possibilities for the property flitted through her mind, and she couldn’t help the growing excitement she felt. What if . . .

  Then her eyes landed on the asking price, and the little flare of interest died as quickly as it had sparked to life.

  “Who does it belong to?” she asked Paul.

  She’d never seen anyone coming or going from the house since they’d moved to Copper Mill. A mowing service tended to the yard, but other than that, there’d been no signs of life at the house.

  “I don’t think anyone’s lived there for over a year, but someone told me once it belonged to an older woman named Mavis Bixby, who moved away.” He glanced up at Kate. “Why?”

  “Oh, no reason.”

  The price was far more than the church could ever afford, especially since they’d had to rebuild the sanctuary after the fire last fall. Asking them to take on additional debt would be out of the question.

  “What happened to Mrs.Bixby?”

  Paul frowned. “I expect, given her age, she moved closer to family. Or maybe to a nursing home.”

  He turned the page, and Kate stepped back. She’d learned over the years that she couldn’t pursue every worthy idea or project that came to her, but she couldn’t deny a small sting of disappointment.

  “I’d better go,” she said, glancing at the clock again. “And don’t you go near those pies!”

  “I won’t touch the pies if you don’t listen to those beauty shop tales,” Paul said good-naturedly. “They never do anyone any good.”

  Kate bent over to kiss him. “You never know. Someday one of those tales might just save someone’s life.”

  Paul chuckled. “You have a vibrant imagination.”

  “Good luck finding the recipe.” She paused in the kitchen doorway. “Love you.”

  Paul’s eyes lit with a soft light. “Love you too, Katie.”

  She blew him a kiss and headed for the bedroom to grab her purse. The best part about being married for almost thirty years, she thought, was learning to understand and accept the other person’s foibles. Certainly, marriage wasn’t always easy, but she couldn’t imagine a better life than the one she’d spent with Paul. She’d enjoyed their life in San Antonio when he’d pastored a large church, but since moving to Copper Mill, they’d had more time to spend together. And Kate had found that she was as much in love with Paul as ever.

  With a smile still on her lips, she let herself out the front door and headed for the beauty shop.

  BETTY’S BEAUTY PARLOR occupied a downtown storefront at the end of a row of shops that included Gorman’s Mercantile and Emma’s Ice Cream. Betty Anderson, the owner, had squeezed chairs for three stylists as well as a tiny waiting area into the little space with its aqua-and-white checkerboard floor. Somehow the shop always seemed to hold more people than the square footage could possibly allow.

  The downtown area of Copper Mill bustled with its usual Saturday morning traffic as Kate circled the square twice before pulling into a parking space not far from the beauty shop. She waved a cheery hello to the older men sitting on the benches outside the Mercantile next door to Betty’s. They occupied their well-worn seats every morning, as if the town might stop running without them keeping watch. They reminded Kate of the village elders in the Bible, seated at the gates of the city, dispensing wisdom and justice to the people. Kate chuckled at the image as she approached the beauty shop entrance.

  A small bell jingled overhead when she opened the door. Betty stood behind the tall Formica counter that held the cash register, credit-card machine, appointment book, and a display of OPI nail polish. The shop had that familiar yet acrid smell of permanent solution and hair spray.

  “Good morning, Betty.” Kate shut the door behind her and squeezed into the waiting area.

  “Kate! Oh heavens.” Betty glanced at the watch pinned to her beautician’s smock. “Is it ten o’clock already?”

  Because of her propensity for storytelling—or gossip, as Paul called it—Betty always ran behind. If she hadn’t been the shop’s owner, her freely wagging tongue might have gotten her into trouble. As it was, it kept her customers both entertained and frustrated.

  “Ten o’clock on the dot,” Kate said. “But I can wait if you’re running behind.”

  Dot Bagley and Martha Sinclair, two of Betty’s regulars who were both members of Faith Briar Church, occupied one of the padded benches just inside the door, and they, too, greeted Kate with enthusiasm.

  “Kate Hanlon! How nice to see you.”

  Dot was as plump as she was sweet, but despite her inherently pleasant disposition, she was a significant branch in the Copper Mill grapevine. Kate would have felt more flattered by Dot’s enthusiasm if she hadn’t known the reason for her delight. The chatty ladies of Copper Mill had been trying to pry information out of Kate from the day she had set foot in town. She’d hoped they would come to understand that for a minister’s wife, discretion was a way of life. Instead, they seemed to view her not as a model of prudence but as a tough nut they’d crack if they kept trying long enough.

  “Where have you been keeping yourself?” Martha asked. She leaned forward as if to let Kate in on a conspiracy. “We’ve just been discussing the single state of those Wilson boys. We need to find them wives. Good-looking young men, all alone like that. It just isn’t right.”

  Martha, Kate had learned early on, fancied herself the leading matchmaker in Copper Mill, and her chief target were the twenty-something brothers who lived behind Weston’s Antiques. Kate knew that one of the boys might not be single much longer, but as was her custom, she held her tongue. Correcting Martha would only lead to further gossip, and Kate thought that when it came to courtship, young Jack Wilson deserved as much privacy as Copper Mill would allow.

  Thankful
ly, Betty interrupted the exchange and shooed Kate past the small waiting area into the main part of the shop. Two other stylists, Alicia and Ronda, were working on clients. Kate almost breathed a sigh of relief that the interrogation was over, until she recognized the brassy, older blonde sitting in Ronda’s chair.

  “Kate Hanlon!” Renee Lambert was Faith Briar Church’s busiest busybody.

  Oh dear. Kate had dodged the gossips at the front of the shop, but she might not be as lucky here.

  “What a treat to see you!” Renee spoke as if every sentence ended in an exclamation mark, her volume in no way dimmed by her seventy-something years. In her lap sat the ever-present Kisses, an aging Chihuahua whose big ears and bulging eyes dwarfed his body.

  Kate took a deep breath. “Good morning, Renee. It’s nice to see you too.”

  She waved as she passed but didn’t slow her steps as she gratefully followed Betty to the shampoo room in the back of the shop. Sometimes escape is the most Christian option, she thought with a smile.

  The little shampoo room was just as crowded as the main part of the salon. Two black vinyl reclining chairs backed by large sinks vied with a small refrigerator and a large oak desk in the small space. Kate wondered whether Betty ever felt claustrophobic, or if navigating the cluttered confines of the shop had become second nature to her.

  “Where have you been keeping yourself, Kate?” Renee called, undaunted by the oak-paneled partition that now divided them.

  Betty rolled her eyes as she guided Kate to one of the shampoo chairs, and Kate tried not to giggle.

  “I’d better shampoo you fast before her voice knocks holes in the paneling,” Betty whispered. Then in a louder voice, she called, “Kate can chat when I get done with her back here, Renee.” She winked at Kate.

  Kate chuckled and said to Betty in a whisper, “Well, I certainly won’t object if you take your time with the shampoo, but I don’t want to be responsible for any structural damage to the shop.”