Free The Talk of the Town by Fran Baker

doesn’t hurt to take precautions.”
    “Whose idea was this?”
    Barbara gawked at the furious flush on Roxie’s face. “Well, um, you know—”
    “No, I don’t know,” she refuted. “That’s why I’m asking. Who told you to lock up your purse?”
    “Fesol,” Barbara said with a downward twitch of her mouth. “He said he wouldn’t leave them out anymore if he were us and really, it just made sense . . .”
    Roxie didn’t hear Barbara’s words wither into nothingness. She had already wheeled and marched in the direction of the main office. All her earlier indignation returned, centralized on one person. Fesol was the one who hadn’t wanted to give Luke a chance. Fesol was the one hounding him now. Fesol was the one instilling nasty, vicious ideas in everyone else’s head. Roxie felt like strangling Fesol, but she contented herself with slamming into Layton Stewart’s office and insisting that something be done.
    Sitting behind his desk, he looked up from the circular he’d been studying with a flicker of concern for the frosted glass rattling in his just-slammed door. “Done about what, Roxie?”
    “Fesol!”
    “Fesol?”
    “Fesol Vernal,” Roxie clarified through clenched teeth. “Fesol Vernal and his snake-in-the-grass tactics!”
    Layton Stewart was a friendly-looking man with pomaded silver hair, wire-rimmed spectacles, and a ready smile. Now a slow version of that smile started at the edges of his mouth and worked its way up to his hazel eyes. Roxie stood shaking in front of his desk, unable to speak for fear of shocking him with language no one would ever suspect she knew.
    “I don’t think,” he remarked at last, “that I’ve seen anything quite like this since that tornado flattened Hector McKenzie’s barn back in twenty-eight.”
    “This isn’t funny, Mr. Stewart.”
    He nodded understandingly. “Well, then, suppose you sit down and tell me what ‘this’ is so I can appreciate the seriousness of it all.”
    Roxie looked mutinous for a fraction of a second, then plopped into the straight-backed chair beside his desk and took a deep, steadying breath before letting the words pour out. “You backed my decision on hiring Luke Bauer, which I truly appreciated, and I think you’ll agree now that we have to do what we can to help him adjust here. And that means putting a stop to Fesol’s interference. He’s undermining any chance Luke has of gaining people’s trust.”
    “Is that so?”
    When her employer used that tone, Roxie felt about four years old. She bit her lip and went on more slowly. “Fesol’s not only been watching everything Luke does, which influences others to do the same, he’s also told Barbara and the other women to lock their purses in their desks. That sort of advice engenders distrust.”
    “And what exactly do you recommend we do to stop this insidious fiend?”
    “Mr. Stewart! I’m serious.”
    Hooking his thumbs under his trademark red suspenders, he sat back in his chair and eyed Roxie over the tops of his spectacles. “I don’t like this sort of thing any more than you do, Roxie. But I can’t fire Fesol for being Fesol any more than I would fire Luke for being ‘that wild Bauer boy.’”
    “I wasn’t suggesting you fire Fesol—”
    “No, but there’s not much of anything else I can do,” he pointed out. “I can’t tell him to quit being suspicious. He’d just think me a naïve old fool.”
    A rueful smile touched Roxie’s lips. “He’s as much as told me I’m a young one.”
    “If people want to listen to Fesol and keep their valuables under lock and key, who are we to say they’re wrong?” he reasoned. “If it makes them feel better, can we really demand they don’t do it?”
    She had no answer for him so she just sat there and waited for him to continue.
    “I think you should let time take care of these things,” he counseled.
    “You think Luke will be all right?” she asked in a quiet tone.
    He nodded with the same