Read Miss Julia Paints the Town for Free Online Page B

Leonard has moved out and LuAnne is just beside herself.”
    â€œMoved out?” Hazel Marie whispered, her eyes wide with shock. “Where to?”
    â€œI don’t know. I forgot to ask.”
    Hazel Marie frowned. “I wouldn’t think he had it in him.”
    â€œWell, me, either,” I said. “And I’m sure it won’t last long. I mean, what will he do all by himself? Of course, LuAnne’s convinced he has another woman somewhere.” I smiled wryly at the thought. “I can just imagine who.”
    â€œWho?” Hazel Marie asked.
    â€œWho what?”
    â€œWho does she think the other woman is?”
    â€œOh,” I said, waving my hand dismissively, “her first thought was Helen Stroud…”
    â€œHelen!” Hazel Marie levitated from her chair.
    â€œNo, no, wait. I said it was her first thought, but of course it’s not Helen. She wouldn’t have him on a silver platter.” Concern for Helen swept over me again. “Hazel Marie, I am just worried sick over that woman. I’ve called her and gone over there and I can’t get in touch with her. Everybody’s trying to find her to see what she knows, including a newspaper reporter who was hiding in that privet hedge I wish she’d get rid of. I don’t know what to do.”
    â€œOh, it’s just awful about Richard,” Hazel Marie said. “I hope…”
    â€œKnock, knock, anybody home?” James, who’d worked for Sam for years, opened the back door and stuck his head inside. “Oh, ’scuse me, Miss Julia, I didn’t know you in here. How you do? Hey, Miss Hazel Marie, Miss Lillian.”
    Lillian’s eyes rolled up in her head at the sound of his voice. A grim look settled on her face, as she lowered her head and heaved an exasperated sigh. She rarely had the time of day for James, but he popped in at our house often enough to make me wonder about his intentions, as well as her reception of them.
    â€œCome in, James,” I said. “It’s nice to see you. If you came to visit Lillian, we can leave you two alone.”
    As I picked up my cup and motioned to Hazel Marie, Lillian gave me an imploring look just as James said, “No’m, I don’t mean to in’errupt yo’ coffee-drinkin’, I jus’ hear something that make my blood run cold an’ Mr. Sam not home, so I stopped off here to tell somebody about it.”
    â€œIsn’t Sam at his house?” I asked. “That’s where he said he’d be, though why he’s working on a Saturday, I don’t know.”
    â€œWell, yessum, he come this mornin’, but he say he have to go downtown an’ he went. An’ I went to the sto’ to get him some snacks he like…”
    â€œSnacks!” I said. “He’s not supposed to be snacking, he’s supposed to be working. James, he’ll ruin his dinner if you feed him all day.”
    â€œNo’m, I don’t all day, jus’ ever’ now and then to keep his stren’th up.”
    But Hazel Marie wasn’t interested in Sam’s eating habits. “What made your blood run cold, James?”
    â€œIt all over the grocery sto’,” he said, his eyes getting wide with the thought of what he’d heard. “Folks all talkin’ in the aisles an’ at the meat counter, an’ somebody say it’ll be in the paper in the morning. So I’m not tellin’ anything don’t nobody else know.” He paused, perhaps to be sure he had our full attention. “They talkin’ about one of them sheriff’s deputies findin’ a car what’d run off Blake Mountain Road up where it twist an’ turn ’fore it run into the interstate, an’ that car ended up ’way down the side of the mountain in a gully, like. Nobody know how long it been there, it bein’ all smashed up and wrecked and stuck down in a creek with