A Body at Bunco Read Free

Burton. Better get your ice cream while you can! The shop will be closing soon. Something like that.”
    “If I did that, Sloan, I’d stand out, too. What are you asking me to do? Flip open a notebook and jot down every salacious thing that comes out of her mouth?”
    Sloan smiled hopefully.
    “That’s not going to work. Besides, where am I going to run into Luella White? She and I hardly run in the same circles,” said Myrtle. Myrtle, truth be told, didn’t run in any circles anymore. “I can’t exactly drop by for a visit and hang out on her sofa.”
    “It should be easy-peasy, Miss Myrtle,” said Sloan quickly. “You just cozy up to her at one of her clubs. Since she’s new to town, she’s joined everything. And if there’s one person who has her finger on the pulse of the raging metropolis of Bradley, North Carolina, it’s her.”
    “ She ,” corrected Myrtle. Whatever was to become of the Bradley Bugle with no copyeditor? “And I don’t do clubs.” She tapped the floor with her cane to emphasize her point.
    Sloan’s large face fell comically. “Not garden club?”
    “I’m on hiatus.”
    “Not book club?” asked Sloan rather desperately.
    “I haven’t read the last few selections. On purpose,” said Myrtle firmly.
    “Altar guild?”
    “I’m Presbyterian.”
    “Women of the Church, then?” asked Sloan, perspiring a little. “I can’t remember if Luella White is Methodist or Presbyterian.”
    “Women of the Church meet at an inconvenient time,” said Myrtle. Right smack in the middle of her favorite soap opera, Tomorrow’s Promise .
    The dismay on Sloan’s face made Myrtle relent a little. “Sloan, I’ll keep an eye out for her. I’m sure there’s a better way. I’ll get the Bradley Bugle ’s subscribers back—and that’s a promise.”
    It was a testament to Myrtle’s iron will and complete self-confidence that Sloan slumped in relief at her words.

Chapter Two
    Back at home, Myrtle realized it seemed unlikely that she would simply happen to run into Luella White. As she’d told Sloan, they didn’t run in the same circles and Myrtle didn’t want to start running in Luella’s.
    She was pulling out pasta sauce, olive oil, and noodles for an early supper when there was a frantic pounding on her front door.
    Myrtle cautiously peeked out front, saw her daughter-in-law Elaine holding toddler son Jack, and opened the door. “Mercy, Elaine! Whatever’s the matter?”
    Something was quite obviously the matter. Elaine’s eyes were wild. Upon closer inspection, Myrtle saw that one contributing factor to the wildness was the fact she had half her eye makeup on and half off.
    “I’m hosting Bunco tonight, Myrtle. And all our plumbing is backing up! There’s water all over the floors. It’s coming out of all the sinks, tubs, toilets. We had to shut off the main valve. The toilet was making a percolating noise like a coffeepot. It’s a disaster.”
    Jack reached out to Myrtle, clearly ready to escape from his distraught mother and Myrtle absently pulled the nearly-three year old into her arms before quickly giving his chubby cheek a kiss and setting him down. He’d gotten far too heavy for her. Jack immediately launched into a babbling monologue about trucks and Myrtle nodded, listening to him carefully for a few moments, asking him about the color and type of the trucks. Finally he decided to pretend to be a truck and Myrtle had a chance to talk to her daughter-in-law again. “Elaine, what on earth is Bunco? The plumbing I understand.”
    “It’s a game—a dice game. And there are a group of women who play the game once a month at alternating houses,” said Elaine.
    “Sort of like a bridge club?” Myrtle was trying to follow along, but Elaine was speaking so quickly and seemed so panicky that it was hard.
    So it’s my turn to host and we’re having a plumbing crisis.” Elaine blinked hard and Myrtle was suddenly very concerned Elaine might cry. Myrtle didn’t handle