me, even though she’ll catch flak from Aunt Sugar if she does. If not, I’ll have to start applying for waitress work.”
She drove north out of Marshall, right past the lane leading back to the inn, and on toward Jefferson. She’d seen the Tipsy Gator only once, and that had been back when she was sixteen, so she had a tough time finding it now. Her folks had let her stay with Aunt Sugar for a whole month that year. The last Sunday she was there, Uncle Jasper put the boat into the bayou and they went fishing.
“What is that?” Jolene had pointed at a blue building trimmed in yellow. She could see a huge sign above the entrance, and it had an alligator propped up in a lawn chair with a beer in his hands.
“That is the Tipsy Gator. It’s a honky-tonk, and I don’t ever want to hear that you went in there. It’s not fit for proper girls, even if Dotty does own it,” Aunt Sugar had answered.
“Dotty owns a bar?” Jolene had almost fallen out of the boat.
“Yes, she does, but we don’t hold it against her,” Aunt Sugar had said.
Jolene had only planned to find the place from the road instead of the Big Cypress Bayou, and she didn’t expect to talk to Dotty that day—after all, it was New Year’s Day. She’d come back the next morning. But she sat there in the parking lot admiring the sign for a while. The same alligator was on the front as the back, but THE TIPSY GATOR was written above him in purple lettering. Maybe she should have a big sign designed to go out on the highway to show folks that’s where the turnoff to the Magnolia Inn was located.
She’d put the truck in reverse and was about to leave when Dotty pushed the back door open and tossed a bucket of soapy water to the side. Jolene turned off the engine and hurried across the lot, but she was too late. Dotty had already gone back inside, and the door was locked. Jolene rapped on it as hard as she could and shivered as she waited.
Finally Dotty yelled, “Who is it?”
“Just a bartender lookin’ for a job,” she hollered.
“I thought I recognized your voice.” Dotty threw open the door. “Come on in here out of the cold, darlin’.”
“I need a job,” Jolene blurted out.
“Why? You’ve got the inn to remodel and run. And besides, Sugar would shoot me on the spot if I put you to work in the Gator.” Dotty steered her toward the bar. “Want a beer?”
“I’d love a club soda with a twist of lime,” Jolene said. “But it’s like this . . .” She went on to tell her about the meeting with Reuben. “Aunt Sugar says that no one is completely evil or completely good. I discovered my bad part when he was so smug. I wanted to strangle him.”
“Well,” Dotty said, “that little peckerhead could’ve stood a lot of stranglin’ when he was a kid. He like to have driven Sugar crazy when he came for the summer, but he was always sweet to Jasper, so she endured him.”
She rounded the end of the bar and made two drinks—the one Jolene had asked for and a strawberry daiquiri for herself. “It’s five o’clock somewhere, isn’t it, chère? Mortgage the Magnolia and buy him out.”
“I have no credit. I’m as afraid of a credit card as I am of drinking after what happened when Daddy died. You know that Mama had to sell everything to get out of debt. I have a hundred dollars in my checking account right now. I don’t think there’s a bank in Texas that would even consider giving me money.” She bit back tears. “I just need a job. Please, Dotty.”
“You should ask Lucy and Flossie about that. Either one of them would gladly put you to work in their antique stores,” Dotty said.
“I don’t know a thing about antiques. I’ve been a bartender since my twenty-first birthday. Come on, Dotty, even if it’s just part-time?”
“How about I loan you enough to live on until someone buys the other half?” Dotty asked. “I mean it, chère. Sugar will never speak to me if I hire you.”
“Why not hire me? It’s good honest work, and she never fussed at me for what I did all these years. Loans are the same as credit in my books.” Jolene had always loved it when Dotty called her