Cemetery Silk by E. Joan Sims

could end up costing me more than I planned.
    â€œI can’t afford leather jackets right now, but when we get the book published you can have twenty.”
    â€œI don’t want twenty. I just want one, black, with pants to match.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œAnd a vest.”
    Thus, as any mother worth her salt, I allowed myself to be neatly blackmailed for daring to want something for myself.
    â€œNow, put on something dirty. We are going to go ride in the mud somewhere to complete our disguise.”
    â€œDisguise?”
    â€œYeh, mud. It was your idea, Cassie.”
    And so we spent a lovely afternoon driving in the fields by the pond, then by the bigger artificial lake by the cliffs. Everything was still wet and muddy from the rains last week and our camouflage was complete in no time at all.
    Cassie and Mother fell in love with my mean green machine once they saw where it would go and what it could do. We unanimously decided to name it Watson and christened it with a cherry slushy at the Dairy Queen.
    I brought a map and we sat at one of the tables in front of the DQ and planned our assault on the unsuspecting Mr. Dibber.
    William and Abigail had lived in Lanierville, a coal-mining town full of strip malls and fast food emporiums. It was a sad and dreary little place to live and a worse place to die. And now that we knew they could have lived anywhere in the world, it seemed especially tragic that Lanierville was their final resting place. It was, however, the place we decided to start our quest.
    Mother was the one who knew the route and planned our trip. She also had a list of Abigail’s friends and wanted us to call as many as we could. As she said, “You never know what someone may or may not know.”
    Criminology was hard work, so we rewarded ourselves with hot fudge sundaes and promised each other our next meal would have fewer fat grams.
    Cassie begged to drive home. I agreed even though I feared driving with her under the influence of chocolate. We piled into the front seat of Watson, hips touching a little more than before, and headed back to the farm to prepare for the morrow.
    Mother was up at the crack of dawn preparing low-fat pimento cheese sandwiches, which I insisted was an oxymoron, and a big jug of sweet iced tea for our road trip.
    Cassie came bopping into the kitchen already dressed and ready to go before I had finished my first cup of coffee. They were both as giddy and excited as little girls going to their first circus. I took my second cup and my grumpy old self off to a nice hot shower so they could have their fun uninterrupted by my morning meanies.
    While I was toweling off, I heard them outside in the driveway loading a big cooler into the back of Watson. I peeked out the bathroom window and watched as they circled the Jeep and kicked the tires. Cass actually rearranged some mud on the front fender and then began to argue with Mother over the advantages of mud on the license plate. Finally they agreed to put just enough to obscure the county name. I was impressed. I was also tickled. This promised to be fun.
    How could I have been so wrong? Ninty-four minutes of bickering and nit-picking later, I wanted to throw them both out. I finally spied a rest area and swung in without warning my combative passengers.
    â€œPaisley! What are you doing?”
    â€œMom, I have to pee,” complained Cassie.
    â€œWe have no time to ‘pee,’” remonstrated Mother. “If you expected to have to urinate, you should have done so before we left home.”
    â€œGran, if you don’t get out and let me go PEE, I can’t be responsible for what happens next!”
    Mother scrambled out as gracefully as she could. She gave my progeny a withering look that bounced off like a rubber band.
    I allowed myself a stifled scream and uttered a string of particularly vile and disgusting oaths in Spanish. My sisters-in-law had educated me well.
    â€œWhy, Paisley,