Free Pies and Prejudice by Ellery Adams

bloodhound. “I’ve seen you riding your mutt around in your bike basket. It would be
such
a shame if he got loose and met with an accident. He’s such a
tiny
, little thing. So fragile.” She raised her brows suggestively.
    Ella Mae felt the temperature of her body rise, the pink skin of her cheeks darkening to a shade of rhubarb. Infusing her voice with all the menace she could muster, she mixed her age-old hatred for Loralyn with the ripe anger Sloan had ignited in her, she opened her mouth and cried, “Stay away from my dog
and
my family! If you don’t, Lord help me, I will KILL YOU!”
    Two things occurred seconds before Ella Mae’s threat was launched from her throat into the heavy Georgian air. The siren abruptly ceased and Loralyn raised her window, cutting off the end of Ella Mae’s words with the precision and finality of a guillotine’s blade.
    In what now seemed like deafening silence, her shout assaulted Bradford Knox instead, slamming into him like a prizefighter’s right hook. His eyes widened and he put his hand over his heart, as though to ward off a second blow. Reba’s chatter was forgotten and the juicy tidbits of gossip coursing back and forth between the Buick and the bank teller dried up like a desert riverbed.
    Ella Mae looked away from Knox to see the teller staring at her, openmouthed in astonishment. Behind the garrulous bank employee, a second teller and the branch manager looked at Ella Mae with a blend of shock and disapproval.
    People in Havenwood simply did not behave in such a manner. Ella Mae knew that by high noon everyone in town would know what she’d said and that her lack of good manners would be blamed on too many years of city living.
    It was with a sickening turn in her belly that she realized Reba still had her scarlet fingernail pressed against the bank window’s speaker button. Ella Mae could see that the faces of the customers in line were all turned in her direction.
    The silence was absolute.
    “Reba,” Ella whispered, gently pulling on the offending arm. The call button sprang back out and the teller’s metal drawer slid closed. “Can we go?”
    “But I didn’t get my sucker!” Reba protested.
    Sinking down in her seat, Ella Mae said, “I’ll buy you a whole bag of suckers. Just get out of this drive-through!”
    “You’re gonna have to go inside anyway, darlin’. No avoidin’ it. Make sure to get me a green sucker when you’re done, ya hear? The ones at Piggly Wiggly don’t taste the same.”
    Reba waved to the slack-jawed teller and gunned the car out of the lane, pulling to a stop at the bank’s entrance with a screech of brakes. Ella Mae was tempted to sit and wait in the Buick’s sweltering cabin until the current group of bank customers exited the building, but her future was waiting for her. It called to her, in a sweet voice that nonetheless demanded obedience, and she rushed to answer.
    By the end of the next business week, the LeFaye women owned the property at 9 Swallowtail Avenue. To celebrate the closing, they decided to go out to dinner at Le Bleu, the elegant restaurant inside Lake Havenwood’s luxury hotel. Reba had been invited too, but declined.
    “I’ve got a date with a hot mailman,” she’d explained to Ella Mae. “My regular carrier is about as sexy as an elephant seal, but he’s recoverin’ from foot surgery and the United States Postal Service saw fit to send me a James Dean lookalike. Sure, he’s older and thicker in the waist than Jimmy D., but I sure like the spark of devilry I see in his eyes.”
    “Have a good time!” Ella Mae had called as Reba sauntered out the door wearing a sequined miniskirt and flip-flops, her hair in a cloud of tight curls, and then silently wondered if she’d ever look forward to dating again.
    That night, she slipped into a celery-hued wrap dress, pulled her wavy hair back into a neat twist, and tucked a gardenia blossom behind her left ear. Her mother was radiant in a turquoise