Claws and Effect Read Online Free PDF Page B

stables, so beautiful most people would be thrilled to live in them.
    â€œLittle Mim?”
Tucker was incredulous.
    Little Mim, Harry’s age, was not an especially close friend of Harry’s. Little Mim had attended an expensive private school whereas Harry, Susan Tucker, BoomBoom, Fair, and the gang all attended Crozet High School. Then, too, Little Mim had a chip on her shoulder, which Harry usually knocked off. One would not describe them as close friends under any circumstances. Over the years they had learned to tolerate one another, always civil in discourse as befit Virginians.
    â€œNow don’t get off the sidewalk or she won’t allow you in the house. You hear?” Harry ordered.
    â€œWe hear.”
    Neither animal wanted to miss why Harry was calling on young Marilyn Sanburne.
    Little Mim opened the door, greeted them all, seating Harry by the fireside. Her Brittany spaniel kissed Tucker, who didn’t mind but felt the display of enthusiasm ought to be tempered. Murphy sat by the fireside.
    â€œI’ll get right to the point.” Little Mim pushed over a bowl of candies toward Harry. “I’m going to run for mayor and I need your help.”
    â€œI didn’t know your father was stepping down,” Harry said innocently, for Jim Sanburne had been mayor of Crozet for almost thirty years. Jim was good at getting people together. Everyone said Mim had married beneath her when she selected Jim from her many beaus. She did, if money and class were the issues. But Jim was a real man, not some fop who had inherited a bundle of money but no brains nor balls. He worked hard, played hard, and was good for the town. His Achilles’ heel proved to be women; but then men like Jim tend to attract more than their share. Mim used to hate him but over time they had worked things out. And she had to admit she’d married him on the rebound after a torrid affair with Dr. Larry Johnson back in the fifties. She’d had a breast cancer scare a few years back and that more than anything settled down Jim Sanburne.
    â€œHe’s not,” came Little Mim’s blithe reply as she leaned back on her sofa.
    â€œUh, Marilyn, what’s going on?”
    â€œCrozet needs a change.”
    â€œI thought your dad was doing a great job.”
    â€œHe has.” She crossed one leg over the other. “But Dad wants to bring in more business and I think that’s going to damage the town. We’re doing fine. We don’t need Diamond Mails.”
    â€œWhat’s Diamond Mails?”
    â€œDad’s trying to lure this big mail-order book club here from Hanover, Pennsylvania. You know those book clubs. There’s all kinds of them: history, gardening, investing, best-seller clubs. He wants to build a huge warehouse out there just beyond the high school, where the abandoned apple-packing shed is, on the White Hall Road? The groves are still behind it—on that nasty curve.”
    â€œSure. Everyone knows where it is.”
    â€œWell, that’s where he wants them to relocate. He says he’ll take the curve out of the road. The state will do it. Fat chance, I say, but Dad has friends in Richmond. Think about it. This monstrous ugly warehouse. About fifty to sixty jobs, which means sixty houses somewhere and worse, think of the mail. I mean, aren’t you already on overload?”
    â€œBut they’ll have their own shipping and mailing.”
    â€œOf course they will but the workers will go through you. Private mail.”
    â€œWell—that’s true.” Harry had just shoveled piles of Valentine’s Day cards. A future with more canvas bags bursting with mail loomed in her imagination.
    â€œIt’s time for our generation to make our contribution. You know everybody. People like you. I’d like your support.”
    â€œThat’s flattering.” Harry’s mind was spinning. She didn’t want to offend Little Mim and she