Aurora 06 - A Fool And His Honey Read Online Free PDF Page A

enthusiastically, and let my fingers do the walking.
    “Whoa! Whoa!” he said, gasping, holding me away. “Oh, later! After we come home!”
    “That better be a promise,” I said lightly, giving him a final pat and sitting at my vanity to twist the tube to apply Mad Rubies.
    “Take it as sworn to,” he told me.
    We should have taken twenty extra minutes and been late to the Lowrys‘.

Chapter Two
    Catledge Lowry met us at the door, his wide happy smile fixed in place.
    Catledge was a politician through and through. He had a good-sounding set of goals, he had a good campaign manager, and he’d done some worthwhile things. I didn’t trust him as far as I could throw him, and given Catledge’s six-foot-four frame, that wasn’t an inch. I just enjoyed Catledge for what he was.
    “Hey, good lookin‘!” he cried. “If your husband would just turn his back a minute, I’d give you a kiss to curl your toes, you beautiful thing!”
    “This beautiful thing would rather have a glass of wine, Catledge,” I said, smiling. “Besides, I don’t think you can bend down far enough.” I’m four-eleven.
    “Honey, I’d amputate my legs for the chance,” Catledge said dramatically, and I laughed.
    “Ellen might not care for that,” I said, handing him my coat.
    Martin reached past me to shake hands, and in a moment the men were deep in conversation about some yahoo’s chance in the Georgia governor’s race. I expected a flushed and harried Ellen to rush from the kitchen, but instead I saw her strolling through the garage door holding a brown paper bag containing, from its shape, a bottle of wine. She was groomed to a tee and in no great hurry, either. I had a moment of surprise and then Ellen was bending down to peck my cheek, and I was reconnecting with the bundle of nerves that was Ellen Dawson Lowry.
    Ellen was maybe five-ten, as tall as Martin, and thin as a rail. She dressed beautifully, used minimal makeup, would be an unobtrusive blonde for the next twenty years with a little help, and had graduated with honors from Sophie Newcomb. She’d intended to be a CPA. Then she’d married Gatledge, and all her mild ambition had been consumed in Catledge’s flashy brilliance.
    Ellen had told me she’d been happy when their sons had been young, and happy when she worked at the bank for a few years while the boys were in high school; but Catledge had wanted her to quit when he’d been elected mayor, and she had. At one time, when we’d had to work together on the board of a charity, we’d felt rather close. But after our year on the board was up, it had seemed harder and harder for us to meet, and our brief closeness faded.
    “Roe, you just get prettier and prettier!” Ellen gushed.

    “Oh, Ellen,” I mumbled, embarrassed at her strange manner.
    Ellen’s eyes had a glaze to them, and her hands moved nervously up and down the skirt of the dark blue-and-gold dress. The colors were becoming, but Ellen had lost even more weight and looked almost painfully thin.
    “What do you hear from your boys?” I asked.
    “Jefferson’s tenth in the senior class at Georgia Tech, and Tally is ... working on a special study in Tennessee.” Despite her hesitation over nineteen-year-old Tally’s current occupation, Ellen was like most mothers in her pleasure in talking about her children, and my questions kept our conversation rolling along until Mrs. Esther came in to announce dinner. Martin and I exchanged discreet glances.
    Lucinda Esther is a notable personality in Lawrenceton, and the fact that the Lowrys had hired her to produce this meal surprised us. This was not a dinner on which some important deal depended; this was not a crucial social event. Hiring Mrs. Esther always signaled that the meal was significant, perhaps when the parents of the bride entertained the parents of the groom for the first time, or when an important newcomer was welcomed into an affluent home.
    Maybe, in this instance, it meant the hostess was