Cold Tea on a Hot Day Read Online Free PDF Page A

anybody in this world. That’s the worry…so many strangers come down here these days from the city.”
    He felt vaguely guilty, since he had just driven in from a city. “Well, I’ll just have a look around.”
    The woman blinked, as if surprised.
    Just then a door from an office down on the left opened. A person—a small woman—appeared, saw Tate,and stepped back and shut the door. It happened so quickly that the only impression Tate had was of a small, grey-haired mouse of a woman. The office had window glass, but dark shades were drawn.
    Tate looked at the brown-haired woman, who said, “That is Zona Porter—no relation—our comptroller.”
    Tate waited several seconds to hear more, to possibly be introduced to this woman, but just then the phone on the desk rang, and the brown-haired woman immediately snatched it up.
    “ Valentine Voice, Charlotte speaking.” She gripped the telephone receiver. After several seconds, she told whoever was on the other end, “I’ll have Marilee call you back about that. She’s had to go out after Willie Lee. He’s wandered off from school again.” Her eyes lit on Tate. “Oh, wait! Mr. Holloway, the new publisher, is here. You can talk to him. Hold on a minute while I switch you over to another line…yes, he’s the new owner, Ms. Porter’s cousin…. I know it isn’t Saturday, he came early. Now I’m switching.”
    She said to Tate, “It’s the mayor. They’ve landed the detention center after all, and he wants to give you the story.”
    He stood there staring at her, and she stared back. Then a ringing sounded from a room behind Ms. Nation.
    “Go on and get it in Ms. Porter’s office,” the woman ordered, shooing him with her hand. “I have to keep this phone clear in case anyone calls about Willie Lee.”
    Tate turned and strode down the wide reception area to the opened doorway, the office he remembered as his uncle’s. Two long strides and he reached the enormous oldwalnut desk. Almost in a single motion, he tossed aside his hat and answered the phone, at the same time pulling a pad and pen from the breast pocket of his brown denim sport coat.
    His journalist’s instincts had kicked in. He was a newspaper owner, by golly.
     
    The mayor, a meek but earnest man with extremely thin fingers and hair, drove Tate out to see the site for the new detention center that would employ a hundred people right off the bat.
    There was a lot of controversy over the center, the mayor admitted. He stuttered over the word controversy. Tate listened to the man’s explanations and read a bit between the diplomatic lines. Many people didn’t want what they thought of as a prison in their midst.
    The mayor drove him all around, giving him a guided tour of the town and surrounding area. He took him into the Main Street Café and introduced him around, and then over to Blaine’s Drugstore and introduced him to Mr. Blaine, the only person in the store at the time and who seemed reticent to break away from his television. His only comment on the detention center was, “They’ll need a pharmacy, those boys.”
    After that Tate walked with the mayor, who shyly requested being called Walter, up and down both sides of the street, the mayor introducing him to various shop owners, who all said more or less, “Hey, Walter,” and slapped the mayor’s back fondly and got a warm backslapping in return. The mayor was generally beloved, Tate saw.
    When he finally begged off from a supper invitation by the mayor and returned to the newspaper offices, Miss Charlotte was on her feet.
    “I’m glad you are back. It’s after five o’clock, and time for me to go home. Leo took the disks for the mornin’ edition up to the printer. We didn’t think we could wait for you,” she added in the faintly critical tone Tate was beginning to recognize. “Harlan used to handle it. Since he quit, we’re all just sort of filling in for the time being.” There was an air of expectancy in that