Southern Comfort Read Online Free PDF

consideration for the wooden floor, removed their shoes as well.
    She sat ramrod straight in her chair looking straight ahead. He supposed she was serious about not giving him any more information about anything at all.
    I wonder what has her so up in arms.
But he doubted he would be there long enough to find out. He had ten days before the ghost turned back up and after that he would probably hit the city limits as fast as he could.
    Until then … He allowed his gaze to wander around the gym. Things were painted in an unfortunate combination of green and black. Though most of it was simply black. The center ring on the basketball court, the wall in front of the far-end bleachers, the doorways leading into what had to be the locker rooms, everything black, with touches of green, reminiscent of that of the famous tractors.
    No wonder they wanted to change the school colors. He looked to one wall where a huge green and black turtle had been painted. Someone had drawn a ferocious looking face on the turtle, or at least they had tried to. On him, it just looked constipated.
    Newland leaned closer to Natalie. “Instead of changing the school colors, how about the mascot?”
    She cut her eyes in his direction with a look that clearly said,
“Will you shut up?”
    He didn’t know what her problem was. The meeting hadn’t even started yet.
    About that time Aubie stood, rapping what looked to be the end of a croquet mallet against the table.
    “Here ye, hear ye,” he said in that same singsong voice he’d used earlier. “I declare this town meeting now in session.”
    Aubie called forth the secretary to read the minutes from the last meeting. But since at the last meeting they had talked about making Earl Rogers paint his gas station to help spruce up Main Street and figuring out how to tear down Jude Maness’s barn before it fell on top of some unfortunate cows, Newland once again allowed his attention to wander once around the room. It seemed that most everyone there was a farmer of some sort, all dressed in overalls with mud-caked work boots. There were a few suits among the people, but not many. Most of the women had the same uniform of dress as women everywhere. He could almost pick them out as they sat there. Yoga mom, baseball mom, cheerleader mom, some things were the same the world over.
    He cut his glance toward the woman at his side. She was the one he couldn’t figure out. Dark brown hair pulled back into a smart bun. The tresses hadn’t dared loosen as they drove with the top down. He wanted to reach out and touch it and see if it felt as soft as it looked. Her makeup was light, but immaculate and precise. Perfect eyeliner, perfect amount of mascara, perfect shade of shadow. Just a tiny bit of blush on high cheekbones, and maybe a dusting of powder across the nose that might have had freckles on it. He couldn’t quite tell from this angle, though he hoped it was true. That was what she needed to break that I’m-so-perfect-I-don’t-know-what-to-do-with-myself attitude. Freckles. Yeah.
    Her diamond-studded earrings twinkled in the overhead lights when she turned slightly in his direction. As if sensing his gaze, she turned around to face the front once more. Everything about her from her car to her fingernails screamed money, but where did such money come from in a small town? Did it really matter?
    Anything could matter at this point, as far as Newland was concerned. A story was a story. If there was a story dealing with the town, he would walk away with that one as well as this ghost—existent or nonexistent—in Bitty Duncan’s graveyard. He didn’t care. All he needed was one good story, one
really
good story. Between the ghost, the sixteen-year-old mayor, and the old money sitting next to him, surely that story was in Turtle Creek.
    • • •
    Natalie could feel his eyes studying her as she tried to listen to the town meeting. School colors and hound dogs might not be important to him, but they were