Boo Who

  Praise for

  Boo Who

  “Two weddings that might or might not take place, a gown four sizes too small, plans for one of the brides-to-be to become the new Martha Stewart, a town on the verge of bankruptcy—and just what’s up with those owls? Rene Gutteridge has done it again! Just as she did in Boo, Rene takes the quirky, yet quite likeable, characters of Skary, Indiana, adds some even quirkier plot twists, tosses in some pop culture references, and mixes it all together for a fun read. Boo Who is definitely a good thing.”

  —NANCY KENNEDY, author of Move Oven Victoria—I Know the Real Secret and When He Doesn’t Believe

  “What a funny, happy, redemptive book. It was a joy to immerse myself in the town of Skary, Indiana, with its quirky, lovable, but very real people. I hope to make many more visits to Skary!”

  —LINDA HALL, author of Steal Away and Chat Room

  “Boo Who was a one-sitting read that kept me riveted with its stunning characterization. Rene Gutteridge’s tightly-written novel wrapped humor, mystery, and romance into a sumptuous feast I couldn’t put down.”

  —KRISTIN BILLERBECK, author of What a Girl Wants and She’s Out of Control

  FOR CHERI

  a true joy and encouragement in my life

  CHAPTER 1

  “STEP BACK.” Tension made Garth Twyne’s tone harsh and his stomach sour. Everyone in the room kept a watchful eye on his shaking hand as it wielded the knife.

  The two sheriff’s deputies flanking him, each with one hand on his holster, glanced at each other nervously, then obeyed. Garth noticed a trickle of sweat rolling down Deputy Kinard’s temple. It glistened its way down his puffy cheek and under the fat rolls of his chin. Garth pulled at his hair and looked at the knife he was holding. Barely holding. His limbs shook as badly as if he were on a date. And now he had a sudden urge to go to the bathroom. What timing.

  “Why don’t you set that knife down,” Deputy Bledsoe said.

  “Why don’t you shut your trap!” Garth barked.

  Both deputies gasped then swallowed down the air.

  “Look, let’s just all settle down here,” Kinard said.

  Hyperventilation declared its warning in the center of Garth’s lungs. This was not a good sign. He’d performed a lot of different operations under a lot of different kinds of stress, but this was just absurd.

  “Can’t you two put your guns somewhere else?” he growled. “What are you going to do, shoot me?”

  Bledsoe snorted. “We’re just following the sheriff’s orders, Garth. Besides, they’re not even loaded.”

  Garth shot a skeptical glance to Kinard, who shrugged and said, “It’s Skary, Indiana, for crying out loud. The only thing we’d need a bullet for is to kill a snake.”

  “I know a few of those,” Bledsoe chuckled. His smile faded when he glanced at Garth and then the very real knife he was holding. “Anyway, what’s the problem here?”

  “The problem,” Garth seethed, “is that this is a delicate procedure, and it’s a little freaky having two men with guns breathing down my back.”

  “And add the fact that you’ll probably be thrown in jail if you botch this thing again.”

  It was true, he’d botched it years before and then let the sheriff believe his cat was neutered, hence creating the cat crisis in town. No thanks to old Missy Peeple, who had exposed the scandal, he now was having to reperform the operation. At gunpoint.

  “Quiet, Bledsoe,” Kinard said. “Garth, just do what you need to do. We’re just here to, um, supervise … make sure it’s done right.”

  Garth gripped the knife, clenched his teeth, and swallowed. By the sheet-white expressions on their faces, he knew Bledsoe and Kinard probably didn’t have the stomach to handle this. Skary’s bravest, huh? They should step into his shoes for a day.

  Kinard let out a gentle sigh. “That cat is a legend.”

  “A feline’s feline,” Bledsoe said with a salute. “A real lady’s man. I could probably use some pointers from that guy. I haven’t had a date in a year.”

  “All right,” Garth sighed. “Let’s just get this over with.”

  “Just remember, you kill this cat and you’ll have to face the sheriff,” Bledsoe said. “That cat is like a child to him.”

  All three men glanced down at the cat slumbering peacefully on the cold, metal table. This was a hard sight for any man to witness. Garth was about to make his first incision when Bledsoe stepped away from the table and toward the only window in the room, opened slightly to relieve the humidity that had suddenly formed when these two men first announced they’d be joining Garth for the operation. Outside the day was gray and sputtering a mix of snow and rain. It was as if the earth mourned for its most notorious cat.

  “I can’t watch,” Bledsoe whispered.

  Garth tried to concentrate on the task at hand. The knife still shook, but he wasn’t about to delay any longer. He remembered quite well when, not long ago, this cat looked dead to the world, then suddenly came alive without a moment’s warning. And this time the feline hadn’t gone under without a fight, either. He’d scratched the daylights out of the vet twice. Thief knew his time carousing in the streets of Skary, Indiana, was about to be over.

  “You’ve had a good life,” Garth murmured. He hated cats. Always had. Besides an aggravating allergy to them that brought hives to his skin and water to his eyes, they were snobs. All of them. Always thought they were better than everyone else. Tails high in the air. Noses turned up. Eyes that always looked as though they were bored to tears at the thought of spending another second around you. Yet needy. So stinkin’ needy. But as much as he hated cats, he couldn’t help feeling a bit of remorse for this poor fool, who had single-handedly populated the town with his offspring. Thief had even inspired a book by their town’s celebrity horror writer, Wolfe Boone. If only Garth’s life could be so exciting.

  He glanced over his shoulder. Kinard had turned away, too, and was staring at the table of instruments that glinted in the room’s fluorescent lights. A satisfied smirk formed on Garth’s face, and finally his hand stopped shaking.

  He looked back once more, and now both men peered out the window. He began the operation.

  After a few moments, Bledsoe said. “Hmm.”

  “What?” Kinard asked.

  “Look. There. In this tree next to the window.”

  “What? I don’t see anything.”

  “See? Near the top. It’s an owl.”

  “An owl? Oh, I do see it,” Kinard said. “You know, I can’t remember ever seeing an owl in these parts.”

  “Come on, give us a little hoot. Come on! Come on, little owl,” said Bledsoe.

  “Bledsoe, you sound like a moron,” Kinard said. He turned back toward the vet. “Garth, how’s it going over there?”

  “You want to come and look?”

  “No. No, um. Just keep it up, whatever you’re doing.”

  Garth rolled his eyes as Bledsoe continued to call to the owl as if it were a one-year-old. “Hewwo, wittle owl. Hewwo. Gimme a hoot. C’mon. Gimme a hoot.”

  This continued for several more agonizing seconds until finally Garth stopped what he was doing and said, “Bledsoe! Knock it off! Owls only hoot at night or early morning.”

  “Oh.” Bledsoe turned back around and observed the owl. The room was silent for several minutes, allowing for the concentration Garth needed to get it right this time. At last he set his instruments down, wiped his forehead, and was about to pronounce the operation a success when the silence was undone by a single sound, coming from outside the window.

  “Whooo.”

  CHAPTER 2

  “WOLFE! TOP OF THE MORNING to you!” Wolfe smiled as Oliver Stepaphanolopolis greeted him with a larger-than-life hug, followed by a good country sl
ap on the arm, then checked his watch. “Right on time, my friend. That’s what I like in my employees!”

  Wolfe looked around. By “employees,” he thought Oliver must mean Virginia, the receptionist, accountant, secretary, and backup car salesman who usually sat in a back office somewhere unless she was needed out on the “showroom floor,” which Oliver had explained currently was the first twenty feet of concrete out in front of the building. He hoped someday soon to build a real one, if business kept up.

  In the far corner of the small reception area was a three-foot-high Christmas tree, lights dangling haphazardly from its sorry-looking branches. A Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer clock with a blinking nose hung on a nearby wall, and underneath it on a small table rested a porcelain Nativity set. It appeared Joseph was missing an arm.

  Oliver, grinning from ear to ear, now offered a solid and pudgy hand for him to shake, which Wolfe did. “Well,” Oliver said as he looked out the front window of the building, “looks like we have a break in our usual stream of customers, so let’s go back to my office, and I’ll get you acquainted with the world of used car sales.”

  Wolfe followed him down a small, smoky hallway, which was strange because Oliver didn’t smoke and Virginia was on the other side of the building. His office was a perfect box, but with a window, though the view was of the scrap yard across the street. Wolfe was amused that the stereotypical used-car salesman clutter was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the office was quite neat. On the walls hung cheap framed prints of various sports cars, and a strange-looking silk tree leaned into one corner instead of standing straight up, but overall the office was pleasing to the senses. Wolfe even thought he smelled a hint of vanilla.

  Oliver offered him the vinyl seat on the other side of his desk, and then sat down across from him, scooting some neatly stacked folders to the left and pulling out a notebook.

  “Now, Wolfe,” he began, “I just want to make sure this is what you want. I mean, this is going to be quite a different kind of day than you’re used to. I imagine your mornings start with a lazy cup of coffee and a half an hour in front of your window thinking out some creepy new story line. Things can get rather hectic here. Especially during car-buying season.”

  “When’s car-buying season?”

  “Well, anytime peoples cars start breaking down.”

  “Oh.” Wolfe had been energetic about the idea of finding a new career. But ideas and reality, as he was well aware from his former profession, can be worlds apart. It had been a good “idea” to work selling cars. However, dread—the very kind he loved to build into the plots of his books—now stalked him as fiercely as one of his famous villains.

  Oliver prattled on. “So anyway, I have to say I was a little shocked when you answered the ad for a salesman position here.”

  It had only been a little over a month since Wolfe had been found facedown in the snowy forest near his home, on the brink of death. And just over four weeks since he’d asked Ainsley Marie Parker to marry him, the best day of his whole life.

  Since then he’d tried day after day to write something. Nothing would come. Not even a poem. And then one snowy evening, when Ainsley had drifted off into a light slumber on the couch in front of the fireplace, Wolfe had an unbelievable urge to be ordinary, common, an average Joe. He’d lived years being a celebrity, giving interviews, collecting awards, attending writers’ conferences and book signings. But he’d also lived years being alone. Now he felt a part of a community, he had friends, and people looked at him like he was one of them. He wanted that feeling to continue, and although he didn’t need the income, he knew the best way to be normal was to do what everyone else did … get a normal job.

  “I’m nervous,” Wolfe admitted, shifting his attention to Oliver’s eager face.

  Oliver nodded. “I can show you the ropes, my friend. I’ve always wanted to mentor another salesman, but I never had a big enough business to hire anyone but me and Virginia.”

  “Are you sure I’m the salesman type?”

  “We don’t hire sharks here,” Oliver said. “And we’re no clip joint.”

  “Clip joint?”

  “That’s a dealership that has a reputation for overcharging. Good example is Ron’s Car Lot, about fifteen miles east of County Line. Sure, we hammer the customers some—”

  “Hammer?”

  “It means put pressure on a customer to buy a vehicle. But it’s always done in good taste.”

  “Okay.”

  “And we’re a reputable car dealership. I won’t lie. We’ve got some Tin Lizzies out there. What dealership doesn’t? But we’d never sell a sled or even put it on the lot. And I’ve had some customers trade in some crop-dusters complete with a set of baldinis. But just one look and you know that we’ve got a lot full of cream puffs ready to bring in the long green.” Oliver smiled.

  “I have no idea what you just said.”

  “It takes a while.” Oliver stood and went to the wall nearest Wolfe. A large white poster board hung by string around a tack. “It’s a secret language.”

  “A secret language?”

  “All car salesmen must learn it. It’s how we communicate with one another.” Oliver flipped over the poster, and handwritten in black marker was a list titled The Secret Code Language. Wolfe scanned the vocabulary list.

  Tin Lizzie—a very old vehicle

  sled—a slow, cumbersome, and worthless vehicle

  baldinis—bald tires

  crop-duster—a car that blows smoke out the tailpipe

  cream puff—a used car in excellent condition

  long green—money

  The list went on and on. Wolfe felt his eyes grow wide. Oliver patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “It takes a while to learn these. That’ll be your homework over the holidays. I want you to go home, memorize the list, and come back after Christmas able to say one whole sentence using five of these words.”

  Wolfe shook his head. “When do we learn the secret handshake?”

  “Don’t jump ahead, buddy. You’ve got quite enough to learn for now.”

  “Oh! Oh! Oh oh oh!”

  The haughty and thin saleswoman, whose features all ended at some sort of sharp angle, gasped and stepped back a few inches. “What?”

  “This one,” Melb Cornforth said, stroking the silk, rubbing the lace between her fingers. “This one.”

  The saleswoman’s left eyebrow popped up in question, creating a perfect triangle above her small eye. “Um …”

  “It’s just gorgeous. I’d look like a princess in this one.” Tears welled in Melb’s eyes. A princess. That’s what she had become since Oliver had proposed to her. She whirled toward the mirror, holding the white dress in front of her. The sleeves poofed as if baby cherubim were holding up the material just for her. The gown flowed like a river, reflecting the light of what was sure to be a thousand candles lining the moonlit path she would walk down in her glass slippers. Oliver would be at the end of that path, hair slicked back on the sides, just the way she liked it. She glanced at the dress again in the mirror. Her wedding was going to be perfect.

  And then she saw it, dangling from the arm of the dress, twirling in the draft of the room. The price tag. Her face flushed with anxiety. She had a budget. She knew the number in her head. She’d said it out loud five times before she left, making an oath to herself as she placed her checkbook next to her Bible. She. Would. Not. Go. O. Ver. Buh. Dget.

  But. This. Was. The. Per. Feet. Gown.

  No! Budget. No! Budget.

  No budget. No budget. No budget.

  She flung the dress away from her the way a Southern belle might push away a suitor. It landed in a heap on the ground. The saleswoman gasped and ran to the dress’s aid. Scowling, she looked up at Melb and lifted the gown off the ground. Then Melb saw it. The price, doubly underlined: $3,000. She burst into tears.

  “What’s wrong?” the saleswoman asked, her tone curt with annoyance. “First you throw this dress on t
he ground and now you’re crying?”

  But she couldn’t stop crying. This was the dress she wanted. This was what she’d dreamed of walking down the aisle, the sidewalk, the beach, the hotel lobby in for her whole life. But she could not afford three thousand dollars. Oliver had outlined their budget—theirs because now they were a couple soon to be on the same budget together—and stressed the absolute discipline required to withstand the temptation of spending more than allotted.

  A hand tapped her back. “There, there.”

  Melb glanced at herself in the mirror. Black mascara caked her cheeks in perfectly even stripes from her eyes down to the corners of her mouth.

  “Maybe he’s not the one for you.”

  Melb cut her eyes sideways at the woman.

  “It’s just that you don’t seem very happy about getting married.”

  “I’m ecstatic,” she said, tears bubbling from the rims of her eyes. “It’s just, that, well, this dress is everything I ever dreamed of. But … I can’t afford three thousand dollars.”

  The woman’s edgy expression softened as she glanced down at the dress. “Didn’t you get it off that rack in the corner?” Melb nodded. “Well,” the woman said, “that’s our clearance rack.”

  She stopped in midsniffle. “Clearance, you say?”

  The woman smiled for the first time since Melb had stepped into her uppity little dress shop. “Seventy-five percent off.”

  Melb was trying to do the numbers in her head, but couldn’t quite carry the one and remember where to add the zero.

  “How does $750 sound?” the woman asked.

  “I’ll take it!” she exclaimed, squeezing the dress with all her might. Every part of this dress was puffy, from the sleeves to the waist to the bow on the back.

  The woman nodded. “That dress must’ve been waiting for just the right customer.”

  “Really? Why do you say that?”

  “We’ve had it in the store since 1989.”

  “Well your mama has arrived!” Melb shouted, and then did a little dance like those she’d seen Pentecostals do. She’d always wanted to dance in church like that and shout to the Lord. But instead she was raised to believe that dancing was bad and that complete silence in church was preferred over shouting.