Read Online A Bad Day for Scandal by Sophie Littlefield - Free Book Online

several days a week had helped her shed a fair amount of weight and given her a firm layer of muscle underneath her curves; after her recent hospitalization, she added some tai chi and yoga moves that the physical therapist had introduced. She’d never felt better, physically speaking, and she was glad to see the old gals taking care of themselves, too. Stella had a sneaking suspicion that if women kept themselves in fighting form, they’d be far less likely to let folks mistreat them.
    Gracie beamed. She loved being the center of attention. It was her husband who’d contributed the John Deere caps back when the friends had decided to form their own club, a considerable savings over the purple and red hats they were considering, since the Deere rep gave them away for free when he came to call on Ed Lewis’s feed store.
    “I’ve been thinking I ought to call them Biggest Loser folks,” Gracie confided. “Give Novella and Linda here a little bit of extra motivation, line ’em up on the scale in nothing but their underthings, on national television. Bet they’d take off all that lard then.”
    Novella’s jaw dropped and she raised a finger to point at Gracie. “I don’t know who appointed you May Queen,” she sputtered. “I’m large boned, is all. Always have been. Least I’ve still got a figure. ”
    “I know you ladies are anxious to get back to your exercising,” Stella cut in hastily. “Chrissy and I just had a quick question for you.”
    “Oooh, a business visit,” Shirlette said, clapping her hands to her cheeks. “Why, you should of said so, Stella.”
    The rest of the ladies crowded closer. Above them, the wind chimes clanked mournfully in the paltry wind. Thick gray clouds obscured the sun, giving the day a downcast, pessimistic feel. On the streets below, few shoppers hurried by. They were all over in Fairfax, Stella would wager, where they’d built a mall a while back. Her own shop was closed on Sundays and Tuesdays. Occasionally Stella considered staying open an extra day, but she doubted it would bring in any more customers. Which was unfortunate, given the state of her finances, and now that Priss’s money didn’t look like it would be coming through, she needed to be on the lookout for some other source of income.
    Meanwhile, she had some proactive ass-covering to get to. “I hear there was a little trouble out at the Porters’ place last night.”
    “Oh my yes,” Novella said. “Claire Binham saw all them cruisers over there this morning. She thought maybe Liman’d drunk himself into some sort of tragedy, like what Reverend Spokes done.”
    All the ladies bowed their heads at the mention of the reverend, letting a respectful moment of reflection pass. The reverend, whose cheerful if largely inebriated presence was a staple at all manner of community events, had been trying to park his enormous church-issued sedan at an unaccustomed angle at the far end of the Bethel Baptist parking lot late one summer evening when the Ladies’ Altar Society had called a meeting and taken up all the parking spaces. He’d run the sedan into the culvert directly behind the church and, tragically reckless about seat belt law, managed to get himself thrown out of the car and crushed beneath all those tons of Detroit steel, where he died a slow but, they all hoped, pleasantly inebriated death before he was discovered the following morning.
    “Well, I don’t think Liman got in any wrecks,” Stella allowed. Experience with the Green Hat Ladies had taught her that parceling out a bit of not-commonly-known facts generally stirred up plenty of enthusiasm for helping. Which was often fruitful, given that between them, the Ladies had about three hundred years of residence in Sawyer County, along with it knowledge of the undersides and underbellies of most of the local families.
    Stella had often reflected that if the nation’s top law enforcement agencies would each get themselves a flock of old biddies,