Read Dutch Me Deadly for Free Online

whooshed open, prompting my guys to gather up their jackets and cameras and scramble toward the rear exit.
    “No exiting out the rear door!” shouted Charlotte. “You have to leave by the front. Get away from that door!” she yelled at the Dicks. “Honestly, you people are going to be the death of me!”
    Sensing blood pressures rising and excitement waning, I made a quick decision. “Bite your tongues and do as she says,” I cautioned under my breath. “I’ll have a heart-to-heart with her when I can get her alone. Maybe I can convince her to lighten up.”
    “I’m so excited to try on one of those white caps with the wings,” Margi enthused as we shuffled down the aisle single file. “Do you suppose it’ll look like the one the flying nun used to wear on that TV show? I wouldn’t mind flying around like she used to, but I have a few pounds on her, so I’d probably need a bigger hat.”
    “I’ve located the nearest photo shop on my GPS,” Tilly called out. “When you step off the bus, take a right and head due northwest.”
    Iowans are renowned for their remarkable senses of direction. Some people say it’s a learned skill, but I think we’re just born that way. My dad claims if Moses had been from Iowa, he’d have led the Jews through the desert in way under forty years, even with the inevitable delays for sandstorms and potty breaks.
    They hit the ground running. “Be back by two!” I yelled after them. Nana gave me a quick thumbs-up before overtaking Bernice in a footrace to the main street. The reunion people splintered into smaller groups and loitered in the parking lot awhile before following Nana’s lead toward the street. Dietger escaped across the lot to join a couple of uniformed bus drivers whose heads were engulfed in cigarette smoke, but Charlotte seemed to have disappeared into thin air.
    Noticing Mike and Mary Lou McManus in a small group still lingering by the bus, I hurried over to them. “Did anyone happen to see which way Charlotte went?”
    “Didn’t see her leave,” said the guy Mike had pointed out as the class clown, “but I hope the hell she never comes back.” He was small and wiry, with a fringe of white hair circling his head at ear level, a mustache like a whisk broom, and a nametag that identified him as Chip Soucy. “Geez, what a pill. Reminds me of that nun you girls were always complaining about back in school. The one who got drunk on her own power when she was principal. What did you call her? Sister Hippo?”
    Mary Lou exchanged smiles with two female classmates. “Sister Hip-PO-ly-tus,” they chimed in unison. “The Hippo didn’t refer to her size,” Mary Lou explained to me. “We weren’t that mean. It was short for hypocrite.”
    “She wore makeup,” accused one woman whose photo showed her younger self in a pageboy and bangs, “and we were supposed to act like we didn’t notice. I mean, no one’s cheeks are that red. Not even if they’re spray painted.”
    “She was so vindictive,” said the second classmate, a heavyset wo man with a tight perm. “She hated me, but the feeling was mu tual. I heard she lost her position after we graduated and got demoted to house keeping duties at the rectory. A lot of important people filed complaints about her to the diocese, so she got the shaft. And atheists say there is no God. Huh!”
    “Did you know there was a massive turnover in the teaching staff after we left?” asked Mike. “Keeping us in line for four years wore them all down.”
    “We didn’t wear them down,” corrected Mary Lou. “We kept them on their toes. Our standardized test scores showed that we were a bright class. That’s not bragging. It’s the truth.”
    “The only reason you girls did so well was because you didn’t have us boys in class to distract you,” teased Chip.
    “Wait a sec,” I interrupted. “You all went to the same school, but you didn’t have co-ed classes?”
    Mike nodded. “Boys on one side of the