Miss Julia Rocks the Cradle Read Online Free

anybody, he can.” Then, wanting to reassure Hazel Marie, I said, “It’s nice to have a private investigator at your beck and call, isn’t it? I always feel comforted when Mr. Pickens is on the job.”
    “You think Lloyd’s all right?” Hazel Marie asked, frowning. “I hope J.D. can find him.”
    “I’m sure he will. I expect every child in Lloyd’s class and then some are gathered around that teacher’s house. He’s probably with a group of friends, standing around hoping to see something. And as for Sam, well, you know how he is. He starts talking to somebody and loses track of time. Let’s not worry about them.”
    Easier said than done, of course, but I didn’t want Hazel Marie marking those babies. Which, as you know, can happen when an expectant mother gets a sudden scare.
    Lillian clunked a spoon against a pot, then quickly spun around. “Oh, Miss Julia, I forget to tell you somethin’ else. That groc’ry man say your last check bounce back from the bank an’ he want you to come in an’ see about it.”
    “What? ”
    She started to repeat herself, but I interrupted. “I heard you—I just didn’t understand. I haven’t written a check to the grocery store. You put everything on a credit card and I pay Visa every month. How could he have a check of mine?”
    “I don’t know, but he do ’cause he wave it ’round in my face.”
    “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “Why, I haven’t even been in that store since way before Christmas.”
    “Well, what you want me to tell him if he get after me again?”
    “Tell him he can just hold his horses. The bank has obviously made a mistake, and all he has to do is run it through again. Besides, Ingles will hardly go broke over one measly little check that’s not mine anyway.”
    Lillian frowned but didn’t argue. She took a small glass of orange juice and a few crackers and set them before Hazel Marie. “You need a little snack,” she said.
    “Oh, Lillian,” Hazel Marie said, smiling, “I’m so full, there’s hardly any room for anything else.”
    “That’s why I jus’ give you a little bit. But it’ll carry you till supper, when I don’t ’spect you to eat much then. You been eatin’ like a bird anyway—a little peck here an’ a little peck there.”
    “I’ll take it with me to the bedroom,” Hazel Marie said, as she clumsily leveraged herself out of the chair. “I want to call Etta Mae and get these shoes off before my feet start swelling.”
    “You better put those feet up,” I said, taking her arm and the orange juice and walking her through the back hall to the room she now shared with Mr. Pickens. “Maybe you can catch a little nap too.”
    After getting her settled with a movie magazine, I returned to the kitchen, intending to question Lillian further about that returned check. But the telephone rang before I could open my mouth. Because I was right beside the phone, I answered it and got a sudden gush of words from LuAnne Conover.
    “Julia,” she said, her breath catching in her throat. “What’s going on down there? I just got home from running errands downtown and came back on Polk Street. I passed your house and started to stop, but I had some frozen food and decided I better not. But anyway, right down the street from you, there were all these cars and people standing around like something was happening, and I stopped to ask about it, and would you believe that a deputy came over and told me to move along? He said I was blocking traffic, but there were only two cars behind me and they were just as interested as I was. So what was it?”
    “Well, LuAnne,” I said, “I don’t have the details, but Lloyd came home from school saying that they’d found a body in his teacher’s toolshed.”
    “A dead one? I can’t believe that. Who was it? Which teacher? I’ll bet you Thurlow Jones is involved. All those cars and people were around his house, in his yard, and on the sidewalk. I’ve never trusted that