Miss Julia Stands Her Ground Read online

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Miss Julia's Christmas Day Menu

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Miss Julia Stands Her Ground

  A Viking Book / published by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2006 by Ann B. Ross

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  For information address:

  The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is

  http://www.penguinputnam.com

  ISBN: 978-1-1012-0130-5

  A Viking BOOK®

  Viking Books first published by The Viking Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  VIking and the “Viking” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Electronic edition: April, 2006

  Also by Ann B. Ross

  Miss Julia’s School of Beauty

  Miss Julia Meets Her Match

  Miss Julia Hits the Road

  Miss Julia Throws a Wedding

  Miss Julia Takes Over

  Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind

  This one is for the booksellers, librarians, and readers who have been Miss Julia’s loyal friends since the first book was published.

  Acknowledgments

  My thanks to Dr. William M. Surver, of Clemson University, and to Dr. Robert H. Dowdeswell, Henderson County medical examiner, for answering my questions about DNA and exhumations. My thanks, also, to Kathryn Wells, attorney and fellow sports fan, for her time and expertise. They all told me much more than Miss Julia needed to know, and in condensing the information, I may have made some errors. If so, I am the one at fault.

  Chapter 1

  “Hazel Marie?” I walked up a couple of stair steps, craning my head to see if she had heard me. “Hazel Marie, are you up there?”

  I could hear her footsteps as she came out into the hall and poked her head over the bannister. “I’m here, Miss Julia. Come on up.”

  “I’m trying,” I said, using the handrail to pull myself up the stairs, and thanking the Lord that I didn’t have to do it a dozen times a day. To be free of that arduous climb and perilous descent was the result of having moved down to Hazel Marie’s old room on the first floor, once Sam and I were firmly married.

  Hazel Marie had said the exchange of rooms was to give us privacy, and it did that, but I now think that she was more concerned with the preservation of life and limb. My life and limb, that is, since I wasn’t getting any younger, which was more apparent every day I lived, what with stiffening joints and wobbling limbs and people deliberately mumbling instead of speaking up as they should.

  I finally gained the second floor and followed her into the room that Wesley Lloyd Springer and I had shared for forty-something years. Shared doesn’t exactly give a clear picture of what went on there, however, because it’s true that we slept in the same bed, but that joint enterprise had been more like two strangers who happened to end up next to each other on a train trip. He, however, had reached his destination, while I was still traveling.

  But that was neither here nor there, for many things had changed since my first husband shucked off these mortal coils, and I’d learned to stand up for myself and do pretty much as I pleased.

  “Whew,” I said, relieved to sink down into an easy chair by the front window. I caught my breath and surveyed the changes in the room. “Hazel Marie, you’ve done a lovely job in here. I wouldn’t recognize it as the same room, and it pleases me to be able to say that.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad you like it. I just love it.” Hazel Marie turned slowly around, her eyes shining with pleasure at what she and Opal Nixon, Abbotsville’s correspondence course decorator, had wrought. The room was done in pink, and when I say done in pink, I mean pink wallpaper, pink bedding, pink carpet, pink upholstery, and pink fixtures in the bathroom. But to give the two of them credit, there was nothing frilly or girlish about the decor. It was elegant, with gold fringes and gilt mirrors and gilt picture frames and a great deal of texture in the use of silk and taffeta and plush this, that, and the other.

  It wouldn’t have been my choice, but then, I’m much more conservative and traditional in my decorative choices than Hazel Marie. So I was happy that she liked it and, since the room was quite unlike the rest of the house, comforted by the fact that hardly anybody else would see it.

  “Hazel Marie,” I said, heaving a sigh to indicate that I had something more on my mind than bedroom decor. “I am just sick at heart over Little Lloyd.”

  “Oh, I am, too.” She slumped down into the matching pink velvet chair to my right. “I couldn’t get to sleep last night, I was so upset. He tried so hard to be brave, it nearly broke my heart, and we had to pretend that it wasn’t such a big deal.”

  I nodded, recalling how I, too, had tossed and tumbled, aching half the night over that child’s tears he’d tried so valiantly to hide. “Well, of course it isn’t a big deal in the cosmic scheme of things, but it is for him. But, I’ll tell you, Hazel Marie, I’d rather have a deep disappointment myself than for him to have one. I would do anything in the world to protect that child.”

  “Oh, me, too.” Her eyes filled with tears and she sniffed before looking around for a Kleenex. “Excuse me, I better get some toilet paper.”

  She came back from the bathroom wiping her eyes with a few squares of pink Cottonelle tissue. “What can we do, Miss Julia?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve gone over in my mind any number of wholesome activities that might help him get over it, but nothing jumps out at me. I’ve even thought of offering to build a new gymnasium if the coach would reconsider.”

  “I think they play soccer on a field.”

  “I hope so. It’d be cheaper.”

  Hazel Marie took her seat again, her face streaked with tears with more on the way. “And I’d tell yo
u to do it, if I thought it’d work. But it wouldn’t. He just wanted to be good enough for the coach to choose him, and he wasn’t. That’s what hurts him so much.”

  “What we have to do, Hazel Marie, is aim him for next year. All is not lost because he didn’t make the team this time. After all, this is the first year he’s tried out for any kind of athletic endeavor. I think the coach just saw that he’s small and frail looking, and didn’t look any further. I know he feels it’s the end of the world now, but let’s look into some camps or lessons so he can learn the game.”

  “I’ve already called for some brochures for a soccer camp.” Hazel Marie bit her lip and looked off into the pinkish distance. “You know, I was relieved, and I think he was, too, when he didn’t make the football team. I don’t know why he went out for it in the first place. But, soccer? That’s where the little, wiry kids ought to be able to shine. If they had half a chance.”

  I nodded in agreement, but objectively speaking, Little Lloyd was certainly smaller than your average middle-school student, and he wasn’t what I’d call especially nimble on his feet. I wouldn’t say clumsy, just a little uncoordinated in his movements. On the up side, though, he was as smart as a whip, quick to grasp and process every lesson he was given, and many that he just picked up by himself or by listening to me.

  But that didn’t help the child’s feelings at the moment. He’d tried to put a good face on it, saying that soccer only lasted a few weeks during the fall, and that he’d aim for the tennis team in the spring. His bravery just tore me up, especially since he wasn’t exactly an Andre Agassi on the court, or a Chris Evert, either.

  “Well,” I said, putting my hands on the arm of the chair and pushing myself up out of it, “this isn’t helping matters, and I don’t know what will. But that coach just better stay out of my line of sight. I’m ready to give him a piece of my mind.”

  “Me, too. But coaches are a law unto themselves, and they pick the ones who can help them win.” Hazel Marie dabbed at her eyes again, then cocked her head to the side. “You know, when I was in school, we had clubs like the Future Farmers of America. I bet Lloyd could be in something like that.”

  “Lord, Hazel Marie, that child’s not interested in farming.” I turned at the door and looked back at her. “But if they had a Future Accountants of America, that would be more up his alley. He’s a whiz at numbers, you know.”

  “I know. I just wish he wasn’t so set on sports.” She caught her bottom lip in her teeth, and then, frowning, asked, “Miss Julia, did you know that Episcopalians pray an awful lot?”

  “Oh, I expect they’re about the same as the rest of us, and pray when they need to. Why?”

  “I think they do more than that,” she said. “I saw this special book they have over at Binkie’s the other day. I thought it was a Bible at first, but it was just full of all kinds of prayers for everything you can think of. Psalms, too.”

  “That’s real interesting, Hazel Marie. Maybe they have one for . . .” A door slammed downstairs, and my heart flipped in my chest. “That’s Sam,” I said, smiling as I did every time he came into the house. “Have you ever noticed how loud men are? They’re always slamming and banging and stomping around, like they have to let everybody know where they are.”

  She managed a rueful laugh. “I think they do it just to stir things up. J.D., for instance, is like a whirlwind. When it’s just you and me and Lillian, the house is so quiet and peaceful. But let one of them come in, and it’s like everything wakes up.”

  “Julia!” Sam’s voice carried up the stairs, and I hurried toward it.

  Meeting me at the foot of the stairs, he put his hands on my shoulders. I lifted my face toward him, expecting his usual greeting, but was taken aback when I didn’t get it. Turning me toward our room, he said, “Let’s go back here. I have something to tell you.”

  His voice was so full of ominous portent that I opened my eyes and immediately headed toward the back hall, him following every step of the way.

  He shut the door behind us. “You better sit down, Julia. This is going to upset you.”

  “I’ll take it standing up. What is it?”

  “Well, I’ve got to sit down.” And he did, taking one of the easy chairs by the double windows overlooking the back yard. “I just had a visitor. I don’t know how he tracked me down to my house, but he did.”

  Sam spent most mornings and some afternoons, now that he was retired from the practice of law, over at his house, using his study there as an office as he worked on a history of the legal doings of Abbot County. It gave him something to fill his time, and he enjoyed going through legal records, old court cases, looking up early attorneys and judges, and analyzing indictments, convictions, and sentences of our local criminal population, which occasionally had included a few of those same attorneys and judges.

  “Who’re we talking about?” I asked, somewhat disturbed that our marriage might be open to question again. “I’ll tell you this, Sam, I’m not going through another wedding ceremony. Two of them ought to be legal enough in anybody’s book.”

  “No, no,” Sam said, with a brief smile. “I think we’re safe on that score.” He took a deep breath and glanced out the window. The leaves on the dogwood trees were already turning red, and he seemed to take an inordinate interest in their various hues. “You remember Brother Vernon Puckett?”

  “Do I remember him?” I asked sharply. “How could I forget after what he put us through?” I took the chair across from Sam, fearing that anything to do with Hazel Marie’s itinerant uncle who went from evangelistic telecasts to tent meetings to selling Bibles door-to-door could only mean trouble for somebody. “What did he want?”

  “I’m still trying to figure that out.” Sam rubbed his fingers across his mouth, then went on. “He said he didn’t want anything but to put matters right. Said the Lord had spoken to him and put a burden on his heart. And that meant that he had to get up and act before a great wrong was allowed to fester and ruin a whole lot of lives.”

  “Shoo,” I said, waving my hand. “The Lord speaks to that man more than anybody I’ve ever heard of. It doesn’t mean a thing. He wants something, that’s a given, and when has he ever not wanted his hands on Little Lloyd’s inheritance? That’s in the back of his mind, mark my words.”

  “Maybe so. But if what he said is true, there’s no way in the world he’d have a chance at it. That’s what has me puzzled. He’d be better off to just let things slide, if he knows what he’s talking about.”

  “Well, what was he talking about?”

  Sam leaned over and took my hand. “He said, Julia, and I don’t believe it for one minute, but he said that Lloyd is not Wesley Lloyd’s child.”

  Chapter 2

  “That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!” I sprang from my chair and started pacing, just so agitated I couldn’t stand it. “Not Wesley Lloyd’s child? Why, Sam, the boy’s his spitting image, and I, who had every reason in the world not to believe it, couldn’t deny it from the minute I laid eyes on him.”

  “I know, Julia. Not one soul’s ever doubted it, not even Wesley Lloyd himself. After all, he tried to leave his entire estate to the boy on the night he died.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said, getting a quick surge of the anger I’d felt when I thought my husband had cut me out all together. Well, actually he had cut me out, but because he’d not known that a wife can’t be left destitute in this state, I’d gotten my half in spite of him and his last-minute, handwritten will on a piece of Hazel Marie’s pink stationery.

  I whirled around to face Sam again. “What does that trouble maker hope to gain by coming up with such a cock-and-bull story at this late date?”

  “I have no idea. Like I told you, he said he didn’t want anything but to set things right. Said he couldn’t live with himself to keep such a secret while his niece and bastard nephew took advantage of you.”

  “Oh,” I groaned, collapsing in the chair and holding my head i
n my hands. “Poor Hazel Marie. Her uncle will do anything to hurt her, and this just takes the cake.” I looked up at Sam. “She’s not taking advantage of me, Sam. Nor is that child. There’s not a more honest, more open person in the world than Hazel Marie Puckett, and why her sorry uncle wants to come in and stir things up, I don’t know.” I sprang up again, too disturbed to sit still.

  “Come over here and sit on my lap,” Sam said. “We’ll figure something out.”

  I waved my hand at him. “I don’t have lap sitting on my mind. Just what does Brother Vern plan to do with this information of his? Face Hazel Marie with it? Tell the child? Tell the whole world? And, come to think of it, why did he tell you? Why not me? I’m the one who, according to him, is being taken advantage of.”

  “You’re not going to like this, but he said he bypassed you because I’m the head of the household.” Sam’s eyes betrayed a twinkle, as a smile played around his mouth. “Maybe you didn’t know this, Julia, but you’re now under submission to your husband and should be protected from grave matters such as this.”

  I thought the top of my head would blow off at the arrogance of that know-it-all self-proclaimed preacher. Sam might be the head of the household in the Biblical view of things, but I had to be reckoned with, too. “I’ll show him who’s under submission! The idea.” I marched up to Sam and stood over him. “And what did you say to that?”

  “Fill in the blanks, Julia.” He took my hand and pulled me closer. “Let’s just say that when he left he had a new understanding of what marriage is. At least, this marriage. Now, let’s put our heads together and think how we’re going to handle this.”

  “Well, I’ll try.” I took a seat again, and tried to organize my spinning thoughts. Taking a deep breath, I said, “Maybe it’ll all blow over if we wait him out.” But then I couldn’t help the bitter edge that came into my voice. “Now that he’s confessed his suspicions, maybe the Lord’ll stop burdening his heart, and let him get some sleep.”