Down by the River Read Online Free PDF Page B

Morton Claypool was a traveling salesman who loved to read, thus their attraction to each other. He spent little enough time inGrace Valley, which appealed to Myrna as well, she being an older matron and quite set in her ways. Then after twenty years, Morton went off and didn’t return.
    That she was quite piqued by this disappearance Myrna kept mostly to herself for a couple of reasons. First, to her wifely chagrin, months had passed before she’d even noticed he hadn’t returned home. And second, she suspected another woman, a rather embarrassing fact. Rather than let it upset her unduly, she lifted her chin and wrote her way out of the funk of a disappeared husband. Literally. In many of the books that followed Morton’s departure, a murderous wife gets even with a philandering husband by killing him. Book after book, the murders varied in style but somehow get more gruesome with each telling. The first one she wrote for personal vengeance at being jilted, but the subsequent ones were for pure entertainment. The town thrived on both the books and the conjecture.
    Then bones were found in her garden, an event that threatened to topple Myrna and her writing career. Speculation grew into an accusation and the assistant district attorney looked at pressing charges.
    The bones turned out to be from more than one skeleton, eliminating the possibility that they were Morton’s. But during that scare, June, Elmer, Myrna and her attorney, John Cutler, all began investigating Morton’s disappearance in earnest. Their effortswere not rewarded; Morton seemed to become “more missing” all the time.
    June explained this to Jim as they drove to Myrna’s house. “We learned that six months after departing from Grace Valley, he retired and drew a pension, but it was mailed to a post office box. He continued to have a portion of his pension withheld to pay social security while the pension lasted, but the company he’d worked for went bust and the pension dried up. Then there was no record of his death or of his collecting social security. Poof.”
    “Your aunt must have been very upset,” Jim said.
    “Well…um… You’ll understand this better when you get to know her a little, but no, Myrna didn’t seem to be very upset. She was a little miffed that the sheriff’s department dug up her yard looking for a body and said, ‘They’re all going to feel so stupid when this is over.’ I was upset, almost unconsolable, bursting into tears at the mere thought of my precious little old aunt going to jail, but as we learned later, all that crying probably had more to do with being pregnant than being distraught. My father was fit to be tied. Tom Toopeek was in a nasty mood about the whole thing. But Myrna held up well, never doubting for a second that she’d be vindicated. In fact, last time we talked she hadn’t even given up writing the ‘missing husband capers.’” June sighed. “You’d think she’d have learned by now.”
    Though June said that, truthfully she wouldn’t have Myrna any other way. She could be so wonderfully oblivious, so unshakable. Doubtless the murdered spouse tales would go on indefinitely, getting only more shocking.
    Endeara answered the door, but behind her, peering out of the kitchen, was Amelia. Endeara stared up at Jim—he was more than six feet tall and very broad shouldered—and June could have sworn the woman swooned slightly. Amelia’s sigh was audible all the way from the kitchen. It was an extremely rare occurrence to find them both at the house at the same time. They quarreled so much that Myrna insisted they job share, coming to the house one at a time.
    There they all stood, June and Jim on the front porch, Endeara and Amelia staring soulfully at the handsome man beside June. “Are you going to invite us in?” June asked, but neither of them moved an inch.
    June heard the click-click-clicking of her aunt’s shoes on the hardwood floors. Myrna pulled off her glasses and let them