Miss Julia Lays Down the Law

Book 16: Miss Julia

by Ann B. Ross

Genres: Humor & Satire; Women's Fiction; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

Ann B. Ross’s most recent addition to the series, Miss Julia’s Marvelous Makeover, was the first to hit the printed New York Times bestseller list, so Miss Julia fans both new and old will be especially keen to get their hands on the next one. The sixteenth in the series, Miss Julia Lays Down the Law is guaranteed to be the steel magnolia’s most exciting adventure yet.
It’s November and Miss Julia is looking forward to some quiet time before the holidays. That is until snobby Connie Clayborn and her rich husband move to town. At first, Miss Julia and the other ladies are pleased to be invited over for coffee, but the afternoon turns into a slap in the face when their hostess spouts nonstop criticism about Abbotsville. Why, how dare she? Days later, Miss Julia decides to confront Connie woman to woman, but when she arrives, Connie is lying on the kitchen floor—lifeless in a pool of blood. Who could have done this? Miss Julia will need to find out fast—particularly because her fingerprints are now all over the crime scene. . . .

Release date: April 7, 2015

Publisher: Penguin Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

Chapter 1

Holding my coat against the wind, I walked across the brittle grass of the Clayborns’ sloping yard to my car, paying no attention to the other women coming out of the house behind me. No one spoke—all the pleasantries and other closing remarks had been said inside, and everyone was anxious to leave, no one more so than I. I bent against the wind as I hurried toward the cars parked in the drive and along the street. The strong November breeze with a nip in it swirled off the mountain—another reason not to linger.

I slid into my car and closed the door, then, with shaking hands, rammed the key into the ignition.

Why hadn’t I said something?

Driving a little less carefully than was my wont, I hurried home, shivering occasionally as remnants of the startling lecture flashed in my mind—rural blight, complacent people, unsustainable economy, ugly mismatched storefronts, and on and on, until I’d thought I’d explode with outrage at the tongue lashing.

I hadn’t wanted to go to Connie Clayborn’s house for coffee, had thought of half a dozen reasons not to go, had almost called that morning to offer my apologies.

Yet I had gone because what else does one do when graciously invited, but graciously accept? As had a dozen or so women—many of whom were my close friends, and others, if not close, well known to me. It should have been a pleasant occasion, full of talk about the approaching holidays, the state of the weather, children, and grandchildren, as well as that of the nation. We were a fairly well-read and well-informed group.

I should’ve gotten up and left.

During the social hour, I had listened attentively to the comments of almost everyone there over the fact that Sam had lost the election for state senator a few days before. He’d lost, but not by much—he’d given Jimmy Ray Mooney a run for his money—yet a miss is as good as a mile in politics as well as in horseshoes, and we had to live with that. Hearing remarks from some who were sincerely sorry was hard enough, but I’d also had to attend to those pious souls who could hardly bring themselves to offer their regrets, but who had commiserated for the sake of politeness. That was probably why I hadn’t wanted to go in the first place, yet better to face it than to avoid it.

They were all eager to see how I was taking the loss—would I be angry, disgusted, bitter? None of the above. I had smiled, even laughed occasionally, saying, “We always deserve whomever we elect, don’t you think?” and let them interpret it as they pleased.

After pulling into my own driveway and parking, I strode into a quiet house, recalling that Lillian had said she’d be grocery shopping. With no one to talk to, but still on edge, I immediately went upstairs to change my clothes. I had worn a powder blue woolen princess-style dress with a double strand of pearls under a matching coat with my diamond brooch on the shoulder. After putting the jewelry away, I hung up the outfit and donned an everyday dress and a cardigan. Then, slipping into low-heeled shoes, I sat down in one of the easy chairs in front of a window that looked out over Polk Street, determined to compose myself after enduring a piercingly critical review of my shortcomings, as well as those of every other resident of Abbotsville, North Carolina.

Why had we put up with it?

Connie Clayborn had invited us to a coffee—the term we use for a morning social occasion in which coffee and hot tea are served along with an array of finger food. Such an occasion gave the hostess an opportunity to use her silver, her best or second-best china—depending upon whom she’d invited—and to display by the centerpiece her skill in flower arranging. And, of course, to show off her home.

I had been to hundreds of such gatherings over the years, but never to such a one as I’d been subjected to that morning. Let’s get this straight right at the beginning: it had not been a social occasion. The invitation to a coffee had been a ruse to get us to attend, and, being polite people, we had accepted even though Connie Clayborn was a newcomer to the town and barely known by most of us.

What had been the matter with us?

In hindsight, though, I realized that she had known us. She’d invited the cream of the crop, so to speak, knowing that if one of us accepted, the others would follow suit. Mildred Allen had been there, and so had LuAnne Conover, Emma Sue Ledbetter, Helen Stroud, Callie Armstrong, Sue Hargrove, and several other leading women of the town. Interestingly, though, neither Hazel Marie Pickens nor Binkie Enloe Bates had been there, perhaps because one was married to a private investigator and the other to a sheriff’s deputy—too blue collar for Connie, I supposed.

Which proved that Connie didn’t know us quite as well as she thought. Binkie, for instance, was one of the most successful lawyers in town, and Hazel Marie was the mother of Lloyd, the child of my late husband, Wesley Lloyd Springer, which meant that Lloyd and I shared the largest estate ever probated in Abbot County. Neither Binkie nor Hazel Marie would ever go hungry, so Connie Clayborn didn’t know everything about us.

As I went over in my mind the ones who had been invited, I realized that Connie had selected the most obviously wealthy and influential women in town either by virtue of their husbands—doctors, lawyers, or executives—or because of inherited wealth, plus one or two who’d made it on their own. But that didn’t explain the presence of Emma Sue Ledbetter, the wife of the minister of the First Presbyterian Church of Abbotsville, because I knew what we paid him. I now realized, however, just why Emma Sue had been invited—it was because she was so active and involved. Especially if whatever she did could be counted as another good deed to be chalked up.

I’d also thought that Connie had made a mistake with Helen Stroud because Helen had lost her financial standing when she’d lost her husband. But on second thought, perhaps Helen had not been a mistake, because if anything needed to be organized, supervised, and done right, she was the one who could do it.

But let me tell you about Connie. First of all, she was a little younger than some of us—late forties, I would venture, although about half of the guests had been in that age group. But none, I realized, had young children at home—we could all have been seen as women of leisure.

Connie and her husband, a top executive at the local plant of an international plastics company, had built a glass and stone house in the first and, so far, the only gated community in the county. I didn’t know what the plastics company made, but Connie had taken pains to let us know that they had lived in Switzerland, New Jersey, Chicago, and Boston during her husband’s climb to the top. It had occurred to me that being transferred to Abbotsville might indicate some slippage from those heights, but who knew?

I can’t believe we just sat there and took it.

The first time I’d met Connie, which had been a couple of weeks before at a reading by our local poet at the library, she’d walked up to me, held out her hand, and said, “Did you, by chance, go to Vassar? You look so familiar.” A claim that was patently unlikely to begin with, there being such a difference in our ages.

“No,” I’d replied, “I went to Winthrop.”

“Oh?” she asked with a lift of her eyebrows. “Where is that?”

“Rock Hill.” Then as she frowned, I said, “South Carolina.”

“Well, that explains it,” she’d said. “I don’t know the South very well.” Meaning, I surmised, that she’d never heard of the school or the town, and I realized that her motive in asking had been to let me know that she was a Vassar graduate. Lot of good that would do her in Abbotsville twenty years later.

Still, it probably explained why she dressed in twin sweater sets and pleated skirts, complete with heavy, clunky shoes. Though quite tall, she was not an unattractive woman, but, then, I wouldn’t call her especially attractive, either. She had dark brown hair, deep brown eyes, and an olive complexion that was prone to a sprinkle of dark moles. With her serious demeanor and black-rimmed eyeglasses, she seemed to me to be projecting intellectual, which, if she had to work that hard at it, probably meant she wasn’t.

She did, however, impress a number of people. Like Emma Sue Ledbetter, for one, who was thrilled to have such a superior being among us.

“Julia,” she’d whispered to me at the coffee, “Connie is unchurched, can you believe it? I invited her to Sunday services, and she said she’s a rationalist who depends on the positive energy of the universe to guide her life. I don’t know what that means.” Emma Sue added, frowning, “But it really hurt me to hear it. Isn’t she just the kind we want to reach? I mean, she’s so intelligent that she’ll see the truth if it’s presented to her. I think she’s ripe for evangelizing, so do whatever you can to reach her.”

“Well, Emma Sue,” I said, balancing a teacup on a dessert plate, “if she asks, I’ll be happy to respond. But I’m not much for bringing in the sheaves against their will.”

Emma Sue’s eyes automatically filled at that, but she said, “I know you don’t mean that, Julia. We must always be on the lookout for the little lost sheep.”

Later, as we’d mingled before Connie surprised us by calling us to order, Mildred Allen had sidled up to me and said, “Guess what? I really shocked our hostess by telling her that I, too, went to Vassar. I don’t think she knew that any Southern girl had even heard of it.” Mildred sipped from her cup, then, with an arched eyebrow, said, “Then I told her I’d left before finishing the first semester. Came back down south where people have manners. I think that makes me one up, if anybody’s counting, and I think someone is. She went and stayed. I went and left, having found it lacking.”

“Did you mention that you’ve also been to New York?”

Mildred sputtered, then laughed. For a heavy woman, she had a remarkably light heart.

Just as I was about to head for the guest bedroom to retrieve my coat, Connie began to herd us all into her large vaulted-ceiling living room, saying that she had something important to tell us. Then when we were seated around the room, on sofas, in chairs, on footstools, and on a bench, she stood in the middle and began to tell us what was wrong with us and what she had planned that would set us right.

The nerve of the woman!

Chapter 2

Hearing Lillian bustling around in the kitchen, I hurried down to discuss the morning’s events with her. As soon as I pushed through the door from the dining room, she said, “Miss Binkie call you this mornin’ right after you left.”

Binkie Enloe Bates was my curly-haired attorney, one of the feistiest lawyers around—anyone who tangled with her came out of it beaten and bedraggled. Married now to Sheriff’s Sergeant Coleman Bates, she was the mother of little Gracie, which I kept hoping would serve to domesticate her to some extent.

“Oh, my,” I said, suddenly concerned about the state of my finances. Binkie, along with Sam, took care of both halves of Wesley Lloyd Springer’s estate that Lloyd and I shared, and every time she called I had visions of stock market crashes, lawsuits, bursting bubbles, and bankruptcies. “What did she want?”

“She don’t tell me. Jus’ say she gonna be in court most of the day, an’ she call back later.”

“Well,” I said, pulling out a chair at the table, “that makes one more thing to worry about. Not that I don’t have enough on my plate already. I declare, Lillian, some people don’t have enough sense to come in out of the rain.”

She turned, frowning at me. “You talkin’ ’bout Miss Binkie?”

“Goodness, no. Binkie has more sense than is good for her, but that’s just my opinion. Nothing would do but she had to keep that law practice going, leaving little Gracie to be raised by someone else, and working when Coleman is off, and being off when he’s working. I wish she’d put more of that good sense into her home and family.” I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Of course if she did, I’d be left high and dry, so I can’t wish it too hard.”

Just as Lillian was pouring coffee for the two of us, the phone rang. Hoping it was Binkie so I could stop worrying about my economic well-being, I hurried to answer it. It wasn’t, but it was a welcome call, nonetheless.

“Julia?” Mildred said, “I’m so mad I’m about to pop. Come over and have lunch with me. I need to vent.”

“I’ll be right there.” And, telling Lillian where I was going, I headed next door to Mildred’s large Federal house. I, too, was dealing with a head of steam. Something needed to be done about newcomers who, with nothing but compassion in their hearts for the unenlightened, condescended to instruct us on how everything had been done better in New York, Boston, New Jersey, and Switzerland, and how if we tried harder we might eventually become a beacon in the South to every well-heeled shopper, tourist, and developer looking for a place to spend their money. As if that were what we all longed for.

Mildred met me at the door—a sure indication of her state of mind, for generally her excellent housekeeper, Ida Lee, was the greeter.

“Get in here,” Mildred said, “and calm me down.” Easier said than done, because she immediately went on. “I have never in my life been so insulted in such an insidious way that I didn’t even realize it at the time. What was wrong with us, Julia? Nobody said a word. We just sat there and listened to her run us down, and not only us but the entire town.” She took my coat, threw it on a velvet bench in the foyer, and led me into the dining room.

“Tell me about it,” I said in agreement. “I’ve been in a state of shock ever since. I mean, no one has ever criticized a whole group of people to their faces like she did.” I took the chair that Mildred indicated at the table, and she took her own. Ida Lee had already prepared our lunch, and our filled plates were waiting—open-faced Reuben sandwiches and, as a nod toward Mildred’s ongoing diet, tossed salads on the side.

Mildred lifted her fork as a signal to me, took a quick bite, and said, “I was offended as soon as she opened her mouth. She started right in by assuming we were the culprits, and it was our fault that the town looks the way it does. Julia,” Mildred went on, waving her fork, “none of us is on the town council, and I don’t know anyone who wants to be. I resented every word that came out of that woman’s mouth, and I had a good mind to get up and walk out.” She chewed for a minute. “I wish I had.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” I agreed. “But, Mildred, just what did she want us to do? It was such a mixture of criticism on the one hand and rah-rah enthusiasm on the other that I wasn’t sure whether she wanted us to hide our heads in shame or organize and take over the town.”

“It’s all so silly. Our main street is not Fifth Avenue and never will be. Does she not have any idea what it would take to make downtown into a—what did she call it?—a shoppers’ mecca or a bustling hive of activity? Where would people park, for one thing?”

“Yes, and how does she expect to get store owners to fall in with her plan? I mean, if she wants to give the street a face-lift—which I admit it could use—who’s going to pay for it?”

“Well,” Mildred said, pursing her mouth, “she was right about one thing. There’re an awful lot of closed and empty shops, but if she expects me to go into the retail business, she can keep expecting. I’m not interested.”

“Nor am I. But did you catch it when she said that with the pitiful state the town is in, it wouldn’t matter what kind of businesses we had as long as all the storefronts were alike and we had gas streetlamps?”

“I did!” Mildred let her fork fall to the plate. “Tattoo parlors, massage parlors, pool parlors—can you believe it! Anything that would draw people downtown. Well, what kind of people, I ask you!”

Ida Lee silently pushed open the door from the kitchen to see if we’d finished eating, then just as silently closed it. We were doing more talking than eating.

“What she should do,” I said, “is go over to Tennessee and take a look at some of those tourist towns. Every shop is filled with tacky stuff from Taiwan. And after you’ve bought one Smokey Mountain bear trinket made in Taiwan, who would want another one? And you know that area around the lake at the foot of the mountain—it caters to motorcycle gangs. Sam and I drove down there one Sunday afternoon last summer, and the roads were packed with swarms of motorcycles. And we couldn’t even find a place to eat for all the motorcycles in the parking lots. I won’t even mention the horrendous noise those things make.”

“Oh, I know,” Mildred said. “But it stands to reason that a town will draw the kind of people who want what that town has to offer. But what happens when we don’t want them?” Mildred carefully sliced a cherry tomato on her salad plate. Then she said, “Now, she did mention antique shops, which I might could agree to, but that was in the same breath as bars with dance floors. And, Julia, you know as well as I do that we have street dances every Friday night in the summer. That’s enough dancing as far as I’m concerned, and if you mix in liquor, you’ve got problems.”

“I know,” I said, sighing. “She didn’t seem to realize it, but her big ideas couldn’t possibly be implemented in a town this size. How in the world could we ever compete with Zurich or Bern or even Gatlinburg, for that matter? Fountains with sprays of water, marble statues, copper flower boxes, and riverboats in the middle of town—how do we do that? Divert Mud Creek so it’ll flow through Main Street? It all sounded too grandiose and, frankly, too expensive. I know of only one small town that was completely made over like she was talking about, but it took a Rockefeller to do it. And all we have is a town council that goes into shock at the mention of more trash receptacles.”

“Well, that’s where we come in, according to Connie. Remember, she said with our combined assets, we could turn this town upside down.” Mildred contemplated her plate, then looked up. “I guess that means we should open our pocketbooks. And she said we should organize, put a combined force before the town fathers, and demand they do something to rehabilitate the town. She forgets, or doesn’t know, that most of us are past the idealistic age. And the fantasy age, too. But did you catch that about how we should ensure that the town is in harmony with the universe? How’re we supposed to do that?”

“I have no idea. I didn’t even know that the universe carried a tune. I don’t keep up with musical groups, anyway.”

Taking a deep breath, I tried to ease my rising temper at the memory of Connie Clayborn’s scathing critique of our town and, even worse, of us. “I tell you the truth, Mildred, I’m at the age where I feel I’ve done my part. I’ve been to more committee meetings over the years than I can count, and I’m tired. If it wasn’t community work, it was church work, and nobody was ever satisfied. They always wanted more—more volunteers, more money, more of your time, more, more, more.

“But,” I went on, getting more exercised as I went, “what got to me most was when she scolded us for not using our gifts effectively for the benefit of others. Gifts, ha! What she meant was our time and money, without knowing one thing about what we do or don’t do. She called us lazy, self-serving, and burdened with too much leisure.”

“Yes,” Mildred said, “and I plead guilty to all three. What I do with my gifts is my business and not hers.”

“Amen to that. And she kept saying that it was our responsibility to give back. Give back to whom, I ask you! The only person I could give back to is Wesley Lloyd Springer and he’s dead. What she meant was simply give, not give back.”

“You said it, Julia. Just because I don’t volunteer for whatever somebody dreams up doesn’t mean I’m not contributing in my own way. And contributing heavily.”

“Actually,” I said, “I’ve done it all and more in my day. Well, I was never a runner, but nobody else was, either. But there was a time when I volunteered for everything that came along. I worked for the Literacy Council for years. I helped with Vacation Bible School, taught Sunday school classes to kindergartners, brought covered dishes to Wednesday night suppers, collected used clothing for those without and bought new clothes and toys for Christmas, donated to every project that helped children, gave to every fund-raising group that rang my doorbell or sent me a pledge card. And to tell the truth, I’ve had enough of it.”

“It never stopped, did it?” Mildred said, recalling the activities of our younger days. “And now she wants us to take on the town council! Why, Julia, can you imagine what that group of men would do if we showed up and started demanding copper flower boxes? I’ve got better things to do than cause strokes and heart attacks.”

“Well, speaking of better things to do,” I said, “you are going to Sue Hargrove’s tomorrow night, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yes, although my fingers are still sore from last week. I’m not much of a seamstress, but I do enjoy that group, and the ornaments we’re making are just lovely. Of course my snowman has bloodstains on it from sticking myself so much. But why don’t I pick you up and we’ll go together?”

“That’ll be fine,” I agreed. “I enjoy that group, too, although I expect Connie will be the number one topic. We’d better remind them that the Christmas sale is only a few weeks off, and we have to do more sewing than talking.” I took my last bite of salad, thinking of the only fund-raiser I was presently involved with. Every year a compatible group of women—usually the same ones—got together throughout the fall to make felt Christmas ornaments which we then decorated with seed pearls, sequins, and whatever else we could sew or glue on. Some were quite attractive, while others only the makers could love. Yet we sold out every year at the County Christmas Sale because we always chose a widely favored cause to receive the proceeds.

After a brief period of silence in which I had pleasant thoughts of Christmas, images of Connie intruded again. “You know, there was a time when, if you didn’t have a nine-to-five job, you were expected to be a full-time volunteer. And we both just about were. So it makes me doubly irate to hear Connie belittle and berate us. There she was, coming in here from up north or Switzerland or wherever, criticizing us when she knows absolutely nothing about us!” At the thought of it, I wanted to grind my teeth. “I’d like to give something back to her!”

“That’s the thing, Julia,” Mildred agreed. “She thinks she does know us. In fact, it was her holier-than-thou, know-it-all attitude that got to me the worst. And if somebody has invited her to the sewing group, I’m turning around and leaving. I’d like to snatch that woman bald-headed, and I just might do it if she starts in on us again.”

“You and me both,” I agreed, but what neither of us had touched on was the awful mortification that I had personally suffered throughout Connie’s tirade. Mildred was too careful of my feelings to bring it up, and my feelings were still too tender for me to say anything. But I still burned with resentment, and appreciated the fact that Mildred was letting me know whose side she was on.

Chapter 3

I’d barely stepped into my house after my lunch with Mildred when the telephone rang. Hoping it was Binkie, I hurried into the library to answer it, waving to Lillian as I passed. She was scrounging around in the pantry, mumbling about being sure she had another sack of flour somewhere.

As I picked up the phone and almost before the word hello was out of my mouth, Emma Sue Ledbetter started talking, and kept talking, hardly taking a breath.

“Julia, I’m so upset. I know I’m the worst of all Christians and I try to do better, I really do. I get up every morning and ask the Lord to lead and guide me, to show me what He wants, to prevent me from doing or saying anything that will hurt my witness, and, you know, to just be with me all day long. I try to watch what I say and what I do, knowing that He has His eye on the sparrow, and other people do, too. Because, as a minister’s wife, I’m under special scrutiny, to say nothing of the fact that our Father in heaven sees us as we really are, and . . . and . . . I just don’t know what else I can do.” Emma Sue began to cry, sobbing piteously over the phone.

“Oh, Emma Sue, please don’t cry,” I said, uneasy, as always, when she lost control of her emotions. “Listen. Emma Sue, listen a minute. Has something happened? Or are you talking about what happened at Connie Clayborn’s this morning?”

“Ye-es,” she sobbed. “It just seemed so unfair, because I’m doing the best I can. I go from morning till night every day of my life, except when I have a migraine and can’t get out of bed. Oh, Julia, what else am I supposed to do?”

“Not another thing, Emma Sue,” I said emphatically. “You already put everybody in the Presbyterian church to shame, and frankly a lot of us wish you’d slow down a little. You drive yourself too hard and take on everybody’s problems. It’s time you took care of yourself for a change.”

“Oh, I do,” Emma Sue said, sniffing. “It’s just that so many need so much, and I do so little. . . .” And the crying began again. “In fact,” she said as the breath caught in her throat, “I’ve been thinking I should give up working in the city park because I enjoy it so much. I could deliver more Meals on Wheels if I did. But now my heart’s just not in anything.”

“Emma Sue,” I said, almost losing patience, “stop running yourself down. I’m telling you that you don’t need to do another thing. Forget Connie Clayborn. And stop worrying about that park. It doesn’t need weeding in the wintertime. Mildred and I have already decided that Connie doesn’t know what she’s talking about. And she has some nerve excoriating us like she did!”

“But, Julia, she’s so intelligent. And she’s been all over the world, and she’s educated, and, and she’s, well, I guess she can’t help but compare us to other places she’s seen. And I know we fall short, especially me.”

“For goodness sakes, Emma Sue! She thinks she knows it all, but actually she’s as ignorant as a post. Just because she’s traveled farther than Edneyville doesn’t give her any special knowledge about us or what we do—or should do. You can’t let her get to you like this. And I’ll tell you another thing, I don’t think she’s so intelligent, because no intelligent person would have done what she did this morning. And I think she’d better watch her step before she really offends somebody. She might get taken down a notch or two.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Emma Sue said. “I think it behooves us to at least listen to criticism and use it to examine ourselves for flaws and ways to improve.”

“I’ve already done that, and I passed with flying colors. And so have