The Happy Hour Choir

Book 1: Ellery Novel

by Sally Kilpatrick

Genres: Women's Fiction

Synopsis

A small-town honky-tonk piano player finds love and redemption when she becomes the church pianist in this heartwarming debut novel.

Life has dealt Beulah Land a tough hand to play, least of all being named after a hymn. A teenage pregnancy estranged her from her family, and a tragedy caused her to lose what little faith remained after that. The wayward daughter of a Baptist deacon, she spends her nights playing the piano at The Fountain, a honky-tonk located just across the road from County Line Methodist. But when she learns that a dear friend’s dying wish is for her to take over as the church’s piano player, she realizes it may be time to face the music . . .

Beulah butts heads with Luke Daniels, the new pastor at County Line, who is determined to cling to tradition even though he needs to attract more congregants to the aging church. But the choir also isn’t enthusiastic about Beulah’s contemporary take on the old songs and refuse to perform. Undaunted, Beulah assembles a ragtag group of patrons from The Fountain to form the Happy Hour Choir. And as the unexpected gig helps her let go of her painful past—and accept the love she didn’t think she deserved—she just may be able to prove to Luke that she can toe the line between sinner and saint . . .</

Release date: May 1, 2015

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

“Time to raise some hell and make some bank,” I muttered to myself that night as I slammed the door to my ancient Toyota hatchback. The gravel parking lot of The Fountain was still empty, but soon it would fill up with old trucks and loud rednecks.

Unease skittered down my spine. I looked around, but everything seemed normal. The sun sank over the Graingers’ pasture in front of me. County Line Methodist still sat across the road behind me. To my right, the cinder-block exterior of The Fountain hadn’t changed since the fifties, but the parsonage across the parking lot had a light on.

Ah, someone was moving in. Probably another loudmouthed, double-chinned, potbellied, red-faced hypocrite like my father. To that I said, Let the games begin. No preacher had managed to stay longer than two years since one minister declared war on The Fountain back in the eighties. He hadn’t counted on people’s affection for Bill. Or for beer, for that matter.

“Ho there, Beulah,” Bill said as I walked in. He scrubbed furiously at a wooden counter several generations older than I was. The counter was a holdover from when The Fountain had been the County Line Store, a respectable establishment where old men sat on five-gallon buckets to play checkers while drinking Cokes from glass bottles with peanuts in the bottom.

When the old men went the way of the dinosaurs, Bill made a startling discovery: His store actually sat in the neighboring county, a not-quite-as-dry county. The County Line Store was reborn as a place to buy your beer and even relax and knock one back with the boys. Entertainment in the boondocks was scarce, and that’s why I eventually entered the picture.

“I got you something new to try.” Bill stopped his scrubbing to reach into the huge ice-filled stainless-steel trough behind him. He was always buying a six-pack of something different because he knew better than most how I didn’t like to follow the crowd. Never more than a six-pack, though, because he also knew the majority of The Fountain’s patrons preferred the same old same old.

He popped off the top and placed a longneck in front of me. “This here’s a Stella something or other. I tried one when me and Marsha went up to the Budweiser plant in St. Louis. It’s another one of them foreign beers you like.”

I kept my smile in check. Bill believed in buying American beer, specifically Budweiser, and American cars, specifically Chevrolet. I didn’t have the heart to tell him the Germans had bought the former and every country but America was producing parts for the latter. Instead, I took a long pull of the beer and appreciated how it went down smooth. “This is a good beer, Bill. Thank you.”

“I’m glad you like it.” He grinned widely and hitched each thumb behind his suspenders. Bill was old enough to be my grandfather, but I liked him a lot better than Grandpa Floyd. He handed me beers instead of stale chocolate-covered cherries accompanied by backhanded compliments.

I looked over at my piano, an old upright that had seen two world wars come and go. I wasn’t ready to weave my way through the cluster of café tables and chairs then hop up on the risers. No, I’d stay put with my Stella for a little while longer.

“Hey, y’all.” Tiffany Davis walked in, letting the screen door slap behind her. She leaned on the counter beside me, and Bill reached underneath for her apron. As usual, she had poured herself into a tight, low-cut tank top and a pair of shorty shorts. She also wore a UT baseball cap with a ponytail down her back—that was not usual.

“Hey, Tiff, I guess you’ve decided where you’re going?” Bill asked. He drew out a cola of some sort and slid it toward her.

“I’m going to Knoxville.” Tiffany beamed as she pointed to her obnoxiously orange hat. “In a few months I will officially be a freshman at the University of Tennessee.”

“Well, I hate to lose you,” Bill said, “but it’s good to see someone go off and show those college girls how we play ball around here.”

Jealousy squeezed my chest. I’d had my chance to get out of town and blown it. That was no reason to be mad at Tiffany. I forced goodwill into the smile I gave her. “You’re going to knock ’em dead, I know it.”

Blushing, she looked down at the wooden floor. “Thanks, Beulah. Maybe I ought to sweep up before folks start getting here.”

She went off to find a broom before we could remind her sweeping wouldn’t do a lick of good since everyone and his brother would track in dust and grime from the parking lot.

“That girl reminds me a lot of you,” Bill mused.

My eyes snapped to where Tiffany stood in the midst of the café chairs, broom in hand. She reminded him of me? She, who had decided to emulate Daisy Duke after watching one too many Dukes of Hazzard marathons on CMT? I looked down at what I was wearing: a low-slung black blouse that showed off my cleavage, the one Ginger claimed had to be on backward because it was cut down to my navel.

The last light of day seeped through the tiny windows at the top of the wall and caught Tiffany’s ponytail. I gulped. She’d dyed her beautiful blond hair my shade of red, a color that clashed something awful with her orange cap. That girl and I needed to have a serious heart-to-heart about a few things. She had a future. I didn’t.

I’d taken two steps in her direction when Bill hollered, “Hey, Beulah, it’s time.”

Talking with Tiffany would have to wait.

I took my seat at the piano and played a series of scales. Bill shook his head. He could never understand why I didn’t just sit down and start playing. Of course, after taking piano lessons with Ginger for over half my life, I had to start with scales. It was as though my fingers couldn’t find the keys if I didn’t follow the ritual.

The Gates brothers rolled in as I launched into Hank Junior’s “Family Tradition.” As always, they were happy to sing along, and Bill nodded in approval as he sold them a couple of beers. Next, Old Man MacGregor shuffled in. He settled at one of the café tables closest to me. I refused to look at his beady eyes or unkempt gray beard. He didn’t scare me, but I knew only too well he wasn’t quite right in the head.

Other patrons trickled in—most I knew, a few I didn’t know but still recognized—and I went from jazz to country and back to jazz again. I was playing one of my favorites from Ginger’s old New Orleans records when he walked in.

I had eyes. I could appreciate a superb male specimen just as well as the next person, but this guy was not your garden variety Fountain patron. In his polo and khakis, he stood out like Dom Pérignon and caviar at a Yessum County High School football game. He also stood about a foot taller than everyone else in the place.

Despite my superior powers of observation—and that while playing piano—the guys and gals never noticed but went on playing poker and pool, laughing and clapping. Old Man MacGregor took another drag of his cigarette, and Pete Gates picked up his brother Greg by the collar, indicating they were ready for their first fight of the evening. Bill, of course, would serve a bull moose without batting an eyelash as long as said moose had cash. He passed the new guy a beer.

Then Mr. Dom Pérignon looked my way, and he did one of those subtle double takes that never gets old. His eyes didn’t leave mine as he reached for the beer Bill offered him. I missed a note as I took in his broad shoulders and how his bicep flexed when he reached for the bottle. A new guy in town could be just what I needed to liven up the summer.

I was halfway through one of my favorite ragtime songs when I gathered the courage to look at him again. He seemed to know what I was playing. Bill, meanwhile, gave me the “wrap it up” twirl of the finger, a sign that he felt the patrons were getting bored and restless. I didn’t care.

I didn’t realize I’d been staring at Mr. Dom Pérignon until he gave me a lopsided smile. I grinned back in spite of myself, but then the cuckoo clock sang out the nine o’clock hour. I beat out a premature ending to the song.

Bill gave a shrill whistle and everyone looked over to where he stood behind his beloved counter. “Ladies and gents, I want to thank you for coming out tonight and I hope you’re having a good time.”

The Gates brothers quit elbowing each other long enough to catcall and clap. The stranger lifted his beer.

“As you well know, something special happened when the old jukebox in the corner died. We found someone even better, the lovely and talented Beulah Land.”

I ran the heel of my hand down the keys to enhance the drama. Let’s see how the new guy in town likes the old song that gave me my name. Slowly, I began to sing. “Far away the noise and strife upon my ear is falling.”

I winked at the stranger, but he frowned. He looked at patrons around him, stunned they’d all started singing along. A bad feeling settled in the pit of my stomach.

“Then I know the sins of man beset on every hand.”

“Damn straight,” cackled Old Man MacGregor.

“Doubt and fear and things of earth in vain to me are calling. None of these shall move me from Beulah Land.”

I paused again for dramatic effect and chanced another glance at the new guy. He sat perfectly still, his beer stuck midway up. He was not amused.

“I’m living on the mountain underneath a cloudless sky.”

“Praise God!” shouted the Gates brothers over everyone else.

“I’m drinking at the fountain that never shall run dry.”

Tiffany ducked under two beer bottles clinking. Guffaws, cheers, and clinks always drowned out the next few words: “Oh, yes, I’m feasting on the manna from a bountiful supply, for I am . . .”

The whole bar, minus one, joined me with a raucous “. . . dwelling in Beulah Land.”

“You wish, boys,” I drawled as I segued into a jazzed-up instrumental instead. The stranger finally lifted the beer to his lips, but he put it down without taking a drink. He put the half-empty bottle down on the ledge where he’d been sitting and headed for the door. My heart sank with an irrational disappointment. When I started singing the chorus again, though, he pivoted and walked toward me instead.

While I added a little something extra to the last verse, he took a seat at the table closest to me, patiently waiting. Man, I’d always been a sucker for baby blues, especially when paired with such dark hair. And for smoothly shaven cheeks that showed no signs of a wad of tobacco. Despite my disdain for the reddest of necks, I had a rule about not getting mixed up with rich men or preppies. Of course, rules were meant to be broken.

I sat there for a moment, my fingers still hovering over the keys, and the bar came to life around me. They knew the drill. My intermission was the time to yell across the room to one another. In fifteen minutes we’d start all over again, only everyone would be a little bit drunker and a whole lot rowdier.

“May I have a word?”

I didn’t expect the calm, low tone of his voice—nor the even gravel. He stepped closer, and a crisp scent floated over me: sandalwood.

“Sure. It’s my break,” I heard myself say.

“Maybe we could step outside where it’s a little quieter,” he suggested.

I looked him over, searching for signs he might be a serial killer. I didn’t think so, but one couldn’t be too sure. “Bill, I’m stepping outside,” I shouted, my eyes never leaving the stranger’s.

On the other side of the security light were several good spots to steal a kiss or three, but we stopped short in the triangular beam of light that splashed across the parking lot. Even with the door closed, I could hear the ruckus inside. The parsonage was only a few yards away, and I tried to imagine how any preacher there had to feel living so close to a party to which he hadn’t been invited.

“So, what word did you want to tell me?” I asked. “Or was that an excuse to get me outside and kiss me?”

His blue eyes widened ever so slightly, but he quickly composed himself. “I couldn’t leave without telling you how I felt about the song you played.”

My mouth went dry. How could I have been so stupid? Of course he wasn’t interested in me. He’d rolled into town from the college, and he’d been offended. “I’ve been playing that song for five years now, and I’ve never had one single complaint before tonight.”

“Five years?” He looked me over thoroughly as though he’d misjudged me. Based on the slight laugh lines at the corners of his eyes, I’d misjudged him, too. He wasn’t a college student, but he couldn’t be too much older than me.

“I was twenty at the time. Not that it’s any of your business.”

“Five years or not, it’s rude to sing a song like that and then stick sexual innuendo on the end.”

Great. New Guy was tall, dark, and handsome. Now, if only he had a mute button. “What are you? Some kind of preacher?”

“Fully ordained.”

Of course you are. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t tell since you were drinking a beer.”

He studied me carefully. “I vowed self-control, not abstinence. Besides, it’d be more impolite for me to sit around and not buy something.”

Damned, if that didn’t make sense. Still, he had to want something. “Are you here to ‘save’ me?”

“Not tonight.”

I snorted. Quick-witted sonuvabitch. “I don’t need to be saved, so you can stuff it.”

I could tell it was on the tip of his tongue to say something trite about how everyone needs to be saved. Instead, he exercised his vaunted self-control to stare me down. I had to admit some grudging admiration. No one stared me down except Ginger, and they all knew better than to try in The Fountain. New Guy didn’t know he was supposed to get mad, lose his temper, and call me names. Instead, he faced my anger with reason. “All right. I’m familiar with these vendettas. You play whatever you want to play, but stop and think about the other people in that bar. Do you really want to drag them down into sacrilege with you?”

“Sacrilege?” Something snapped behind my eyes. “You want to waltz into my workplace and talk to me about sacrilege. It’s a free damned country. If you don’t like the songs I sing, then you can leave.”

“Free country or fascist state, I wasn’t going to leave without telling you that singing hymns like a sexpot isn’t appropriate.” He still hadn’t looked away. “No matter who you are.”

“Appropriate? Who gives two shits about being appropriate?” I stood up straighter and crossed my arms, which had the unintended but fortunate effect of pushing my breasts up and out. Good. Let him take a look at what he isn’t going to touch. Ever. “I’ll do what I need to do to put food on the table. If I’m going to be saddled with this ridiculous name, then I might as well make the most of it.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Are you making the most of what you’ve been given?”

More preacher-speak. As if I hadn’t heard all of this mess about gifts and talents from my father a long time before. It was my business if I wanted to stay put in tiny Yessum County instead of driving up to Nashville to see if I could get a better job.

I turned to go. “You know what? Screw you. You don’t know the first thing about me.”

He grabbed my arm. “You have real talent. You shouldn’t be wasting it here.”

We both looked down to where his warm hand lightly circled my arm. He quickly released me, almost as though he couldn’t believe he’d reached out to touch me.

“I’ll do as I damned well please.” And I could’ve done you, but that ain’t happening now that I know you’re a sanctimonious asshole. “These people took care of me when I needed help, so my talents aren’t ‘wasted’ here. You can mind your own business, Preacher Man.”

He winced at my nickname for him, but he didn’t stop me when I made for the door. Instead, he shoved his hands in his pockets as though making sure he wouldn’t reach for me a second time. “Maybe you don’t know that much about me, either.”

“I know you’re a holier-than-thou jerk.” The screen door slammed between us for emphasis.

I bellied up to the bar and motioned for a beer. Bill handed me one as Tiffany stopped to load her tray. “Who was that guy?”

“Don’t know. Don’t care.”

“I care,” she said with an appreciative growl before carrying her wares across the room.

Bill looked from me to the half-full beer on the ledge. “C’mon, Beulah. Please tell me you’re not running off new customers.”

“Trust me when I tell you he’s not our type.” I chugged the rest of my beer. Time to get back to work.

I sat down at the piano a full seven minutes early, and perversely launched into another hymn. I wondered if my friend Preacher Man was still in the parking lot. Could he even hear me being more sacrilegious than usual? Probably not. I didn’t need to waste another thought on him, but the warm circle around my upper arm reminded me it’d been a long time since I’d been touched like that.

I hoped he was still out there fuming. When I hit a verse about the many dangers, toils, and snares, my heart squeezed. Is this actually guilt? No way was I going to feel guilty for offending some Holy Roller who should’ve known better than to come into a bar in the first place.

Of course, if I’d known what was going to happen next, I might’ve thought twice about playing hymns to piss off the Preacher Man.

At the first whiff of French toast, I knew my day was headed straight to hell in a handbasket. I stumbled into a pair of shorts and made the executive decision to ignore my smoky, matted hair. Playing piano until three in the morning didn’t exactly inspire good hygiene. Besides, Ginger had seen worse.

I stopped in the hallway, my toes squishing into shag carpet far older than my twenty-five years. There at the end of the hall sat the one room in the house I refused to enter, the nursery. On a morning not quite ten years ago, Ginger had served French toast. That was the worst morning of my life, so I didn’t have high hopes for this one. “Beulah Lou! Get down here and eat before it gets cold!”

I jumped out of my skin and headed for the stairs. At the bottom, I almost tripped, grabbing the newel ball from the post to steady myself. Instead it popped off into my hands and I bumbled into the wall. If Ginger was worried about my well-being after the thud, she didn’t say anything. I put the newel ball back gently. House maintenance wasn’t my specialty, and what Ginger didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.

“Took you long enough.” She turned and smiled as I padded across the well-worn linoleum. She stood with her hands on her hips, holding the spatula in her right hand so it poked from her body at a weird angle. It shook with the palsy that had robbed her of the ability to play piano anywhere but church. These days, even while playing hymns she’d played a hundred times before, she still missed notes, but I doubted anyone at County Line Methodist would ever say anything. That sorry bunch had their own assorted problems.

“Well, don’t just stand there,” she said. “Get you a plate.”

I took the spatula from her and opened the cupboard. “I’ll get breakfast for us. It’s the least I can do since you cooked.”

“Ah, but you’ll be doing dishes.” She winked as she eased into a metal chair with a vinyl seat. When she sat over the slash of duct tape that held the vinyl together, you could almost believe the chair was brand-new. Almost.

I slid a plate of French toast in front of her and turned to the coffeepot. Taking two mugs, I doctored the coffee: cream and three sugars for me, black with one sugar for her. My stomach flopped as I sat in my own scarred vinyl chair.

“Eat! Eat! You have to eat it while it’s hot!” She cut a generous hunk of toast and dipped it into the pool of syrup on her plate.

“How’re you feeling this morning, Ginger?” I already knew the answer because she was still wearing her pink terry-cloth robe with the threadbare elbows.

“Oh, I’m plodding along.” She smiled, but she wasn’t wearing lipstick. Ginger always wore lipstick. Without that telltale slash of red, she looked washed-out and faded, just like the gingham curtains behind her. Even her hair was a dull grayish blond from where she hadn’t been to the beauty shop to get it dyed. At least she had her eyebrows penciled in. And they were fairly straight considering she always shaved them off before attempting to re-create them with pencil in shaking hand.

I put my fork down, the first bite of my toast still dangling from the tines. “Go ahead and tell me how yesterday’s trip to the doctor went. I’m too old to be softened up by French toast.”

She studied her plate. “I’m not doing chemo this time.”

“It’s back? But—”

“No buts! Dr. Bowman told me he could only promise me two years with chemo, six months to a year without. I’ll keep my hair and take the six months, thank you very much.”

Tears stung my eyes. “Ginger, please—”

Her hand snaked across the table, her skin almost transparent except for the brown spots that did nothing to hide sinew and blue veins underneath. I would’ve thought it a skeleton’s hand if it hadn’t still been strong and warm.

“Beulah, we talked about this the first time. I can’t stay here forever. I’m pretty sure I’ve already outstayed my welcome.”

Tears blurred my vision, and I willed them back. Ginger patted my hand. “Don’t you worry about me. When I meet the good Lord, we’re going to stick our tongues out at you, and I’m going to convince Him to send thunderstorms when you misbehave just because you fuss about getting your hair wet. You think about that every time it rains!”

I laughed a nervous hiccup-laugh. My throat burned.

Her bleary brown eyes searched past their cataracts to find me. “All you have to do is remember what I told you about my funeral. If you let Anderson’s Funeral Home have an open-casket visitation so everybody and their momma can gawk at me and talk about how my shriveled-up corpse looks just like me, so help me God, I will haunt you every day for the rest of your life.”

I couldn’t help laughing again, but my throat cramped, choking the laugh into a grunt.

She looked absently out the breakfast room window at a fat cardinal perched on the birdhouse. “Now, I do have one last favor to ask of you.”

You took me in when I had nowhere else to go. “Anything.”

She chuckled, and her bleary eyes returned to lock with mine. “You might want to hear what the favor is before you answer so quickly.”

“Anything, Ginger. You’ve done so much for me. Without you . . .”

“I want you to take my place.”

“Take your place?” What did that mean? How could I ever begin to take Ginger Belmont’s place? I didn’t really have the disposition for teaching piano lessons to the neighborhood kids. Was I supposed to troll the town looking for unwed teen mothers? Could it be as simple as ladling out soup at the Jefferson Homeless Shelter every Tuesday? Or would it be defending the need to shelve Harry Potter books at the local Friends of the Library committee meeting?

“I want you to take my place at County Line.”

I felt the color drain from my face. Anything, anything but that. I owed my life to Ginger Belmont. But I didn’t owe one damned thing to God, and I wasn’t about to play piano for Him.

“Ginger.” I fought back nausea.

“It’s my dying wish. Would you deny me my dying wish?”

“That’s not fair, and you know it,” I croaked.

She squeezed my hand. Hard. “Life’s not fair, sweetie, and, oh, how we both know it.”

“But I can’t stop playing at The Fountain. Bill needs me,” I said.

“I didn’t say you had to stop playing at The Fountain.”

“Well, I can’t play at The Fountain and at church!”

“Why not?”

Ginger knew very well why not. Last night’s stranger wasn’t the only one who didn’t approve of my song selections.

Her eyes shifted to the floor. “Well, you could always find a new song to sing.”

I crossed my arms and settled in for a fight. “Bill renamed the place because of that song. I’m not changing it now.”

“Beulah, you can’t stay ticked off at God forever.”

I slammed my fists down on the table and stood. The metal legs of the table shrieked, but my voice came out low: “Watch me.”

Ginger’s penciled-in eyebrow arched to unnatural heights, telling me I needed to take it down a notch and have a seat. “Beulah Lou, you keep punishing yourself. You—”

“How am I punishing myself with your cancer? Can you tell me that?”

“Rejoice when a person dies and . . .” Ginger paused, but forced herself to forge ahead. “. . . mourn when a child is born.”

Her words stabbed me at my most vulnerable spot. “I don’t know how you can quote that religious bullshit to me,” I whispered.

“Because it’s the truth,” she said grimly. “I know you don’t see it that way, but it’s the truth. Now sit down and eat.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Sit down. And eat.”

I couldn’t argue with her or her penciled-in eyebrow, so I picked up my fork. My stomach pitched at the thought of food. For a moment, I felt sixteen again, and I tried to brush it aside. That was a year I hated to remember, much less relive.

Even with only a kiss of syrup, the sweet, sweet toast gagged me. The bacon didn’t look burnt, but it tasted like ashes.

I consoled myself with the idea that the preacher would probably fire me the minute he realized I was the woman from The Fountain. Then, Ginger wouldn’t be able to blame me for not fulfilling her dying wish.

Ginger’s hand shook as she tried to meet her m. . .