Cooked Goose

up as one of my snitches or something. I’ll call you Trixie Delight or Ample Samples.”
    She stepped up onto the porch as he climbed into his Buick. “Gee, thanks. But I know how much you pay your snitches. Don’t bother; five bucks doesn’t buy much these days. Just keep me in pizza and Danish.”
    “Sure thing. I got more freebie coupons where that came from.”
    “I’ll bet you do. Go get some sleep; you look like I feel. And that’s not a good thing.”
    When she walked into the house, she was a bit startled and dismayed to see the blinds thrown wide open, sunshine pouring in. New Age jazz was playing on the stereo -—cheery jazz. Tammy, the indomitable morning person, had struck again.
    “Good morning,” trilled a joyful greeting from the kitchen. Tammy bounded into the room, holding a glass of carrot juice in one hand and a large quartz crystal in the other.
    Savannah considered making a sarcastic comment about the kid “stroking her rocks” again, but that would only lead to a lecture about crystal power or some other hocus-pocus goofiness.
    “Don’t give me any of your ‘good morning’ crap,” Savannah mumbled as she tossed her purse and keys onto the piecrust table beside the front door. “It isn’t morning until I’ve slept.”
    Tammy giggled. “Oh, oh... our mistress is feeling a little testy,” she told Diamante, who was sunning herself in the open window. She held out some pink slips of paper to Savannah . “Here you go... messages.”
    Savannah refused to take them. “Go away. Leave me alone.”
    “Your sister, Vidalia, called.”
    Heading for the stairs, Savannah stuck her fingers in her ears and sang, “La, la, la, la, la-a-a-a-a. I can’t hear you. I’m going to take a hot bubble bath, and then I’m going to bed.”
    “She was crying.”
    Savannah paused, one foot on the bottom step. “Of course, she was crying. She’s seven months pregnant. All she does is cry or eat. Lately, she’s been crying and eating at the same time... and complaining about how much weight she’s gained.”
    “She says she’s going to leave her husband.”
    “Vidalia’s always threatening to leave Butch. But she won’t. He’s the one who’s buying the Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream she’s gorging herself with and the tissues she’s boo-hooing into. She may be pregnant and depressed, but the girl isn’t stupid.”
    Savannah continued on up the stairs, dragging her body that was becoming more weary with every step.
    Still obnoxiously cheery, Tammy called after her, “Well, this time I think she means it. In fact, she mentioned something about leaving him and coming out here to spend Christmas with you.”
    Suddenly energized, Savannah nearly tumbled over herself getting back down the stairs. “What? What did you say?”
    “And she mentioned something about bringing some twins.”
    “Oh my God!” Savannah choked on her own spit and couldn’t speak or even breathe for a moment.
    “Who are the twins?” Tammy asked, so innocently, with such casual indifference. She could afford to be nonchalant. She didn’t know.
    “The twins are my niece and nephew,” Savannah said. “Redheaded, freckle-faced five-year-olds.”
    “How cute!”
    “Cute, my ass. Those cherub-faced gargoyles could guard the gates of hell. They’re holy terrors, I tell you! The worst! Where is Vidalia’s phone number? Dear Lord! I have to stop her before she starts packing!”

    * * *

    10:02 A.M.

    She was too late.
    “Vidalia just hightailed it out of here and took my young’uns with her, she did,” Butch told Savannah when she called from her phone in the bedroom. “And here it’s just a few days before Christmas. I tell you, Savannah , that girl’s done gone plumb whacko on me. Worse than the last time she was pregnant, and you know what a nut-job she was then.”
    Good old Butch, Savannah thought as she sat on the edge of her bed and kicked off her shoes, he’d never win the “Sensitive Husband of the Year” Award. But Vidalia wasn’t a particularly easygoing gal either, even when she wasn’t pregnant, let alone when she was “big as a barn.”
    “Maybe she just went to the grocery store,” she said hopefully.
    “She packed six suitcases.”
    “The mall perhaps?”
    “She told me flat out she was going to California . Says she’s gonna live there with you in your spare bedroom, her and the twins and the new baby. Now what do you think of that there?”
    “I think I’m