The Babbling Brook Naked Poker Club - Book One Read Free

anymore.
    If I could come up with a replacement, I’d
surely vote to boot Josephine out. Too bad Bertie doesn’t play
worth beans. If he were playing with us, I expect, now that we’re
playing poker, we’d be treated to more Bertie stories than any of
us would care to hear. I like the man, but I like to talk too.
    Actually, I’m rather enjoying the Naked
Poker Game. I’m now old enough to tell my best stories without
worrying what people think. But when I told the story about my
missing out on being named Miss Ohio because Miss Congeniality
sabotaged me, I could tell Josephine didn’t believe it.
    I suspect she’s jealous of that as well as
Bertie. For sure, she wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in a beauty
pageant. For Pete’s sake, the woman wears jeans. What does she
think she is, forty? And she doesn’t wear makeup or dye her
hair.
    And I must say, Edna thoroughly annoyed me
one day by saying Josephine’s hair didn’t need to be dyed, because
the gray bits looked like highlights.
    Bullfeathers!

Chapter
Three
    Edna

    Josephine doesn’t like me much, but darned if I let it bother me.
She thinks she’s so smart. So what am I, chopped liver? I taught
school for twenty years, I’ll have you know. Geography, grammar,
and social studies. And nobody could keep control of a classroom
the way I did. Nobody. So, there.
    And I did it without any of those fancy
degrees young people get these days. Not that I would have sneezed
at the chance to go to a nice college. No, I would have jumped at
it. But times were tough back then.
    Ah, well. Spilled milk, water under the
bridge, and all that, and doggone it, I’m too old to still be
grieving.
    I was a good teacher, though. And my
students knew I wouldn’t put up with any shenanigans, just like I
didn’t let Helen get away with what she did to me and Jonquil.
    I’ve had other chances in my life to right
wrongs, and I took them. Never could abide a person who hurt
someone else on purpose. That’s why I made sure that big kid who
bullied the little kids had an accident. It was unfortunate that he
ended up paralyzed, but what I did saved a lot of other children
pain. That boy was not going to stop hurting the little kids until
someone stopped him. That’s for sure.
    I’d be willing to bet Josephine hasn’t
righted a single wrong in her entire life.

Chapter Four
    Lillian

    I taught math in the Cincinnati public schools for thirty years,
and when I retired, I needed a hobby. I chose Graphoanalysis
because the idea of being able to evaluate someone based on their
handwriting intrigued me. In the first workshop I took, when the
instructor called handwriting a blueprint of the psyche providing
insight into how the writer has responded to their life
experiences, I was hooked.
    Usually, I don’t mention I’m a
Graphoanalyst, though. It makes people nervous about writing me
notes. They don’t realize it takes a great deal of effort and very
careful measurement to know anything about them. Although they’re
correct in thinking I could evaluate them, it’s not something I do
for my own amusement.
    A valid analysis requires context. You see,
the traits displayed in a sample can be either bad or good
depending on what’s going on in the writer’s life. Aggression, for
example, can be a negative in someone whose life has no direction,
but a positive in someone trying to get ahead in their career.
    Once I got my Graphoanalyst certification, a
cousin on my mama’s side put me in touch with the police. I helped
in one serial murder case and two kidnappings. One of the kidnap
victims was killed, though, and I was awful sad about that for a
long time. Because of that, my Roger, he wanted me to stop, so I
did give up working with the police.
    But when one of my former students
recommended me to a large international corporation based in
Cincinnati, Roger agreed that would be okay. They needed help to
choose the right people for management positions, and I did
analyses for that