Talk of the Town Read Online Free PDF

permanence in it? That didn’t sound like the see-you-in-a-few-days kind of good-bye. That was the good-bye of a first-class passenger waving to a peasant on the deck of the Titanic .
    Lowering my purse, I turned around. Aunt Bee was watching me inquisitively with her hands folded over her flowered Daily Café apron.
    “I’m sorry.” Pulling the Bluetooth from my ear, I pointed to the phone hooked on my purse strap. “I couldn’t hear over the wind.”
    “Ohhh,” she breathed, blinking at the Bluetooth looped around my finger. “Well, lands, that thing’s tiny. I thought you were over here talkin’ to yourself.”
    I had a mental picture of how I must have looked, carrying on a conversation with my purse. “No, I was talking to my, uhhh . . . friend.” No point letting the locals know I was here on business. “My boyfriend, actually my fiancé.” As usual, nervousness caused me to blurt out something idiotic. I’d never been a good liar, or quick at inventing diversionary dialogue under pressure—a shortcoming that had ended my college on-camera internship almost before it began. The producer of the morning show quickly moved me behind the scenes and convinced me that production was where I belonged.
    “Oh, well bless your heart. Idn’t that nice?” Leaning from under the canopy, she checked the sky, then fished a plastic hair bonnet from her apron pocket and unfolded it like a tiny parachute in the wind. “I just wondered if you were all right over here. It’s fixin’ to come a toad strangler, and the washateria’s closed on Thurs-deys.” “ She nodded over her shoulder toward the darkened building behind us. “Come about five minutes from now, you’ll be stranded like a horned toad on a high rock.” Tying her bonnet into place, she squinted up and down the street, her faded hazel eyes narrow and perceptive. “You got a car near here somewhere?”
    “Around the corner.” I thumbed vaguely toward the alley, where I’d parked so as not to be noticed while I conducted my undercover surveillance for Project Amber. Clearly, the CIA would not be calling me with a job offer anytime soon.
    The woman craned to look past me, searching for my car over the top of her half-moon glasses. “It break down or somethin’?”
    “No, I’m fine, thanks.” A gust of wind blew me forward, and I had a sudden vision of the Discovery Channel’s Tornado Alley series. What time of year did those things usually happen? I couldn’t remember, but that would be my luck. Less than three months from my wedding to the perfect guy, I’d be swept off the face of the earth and deposited in Oz, where the dating prospects were limited to bald wizards, scarecrows, and tin men.
    “Oh goodness!” Aunt Bee grabbed my arm, waving vaguely toward the north. “Here it comes. Hurry!” Motioning frantically for me to follow, she turned and stepped off the curb, starting across the street in a flatfooted shuffle-jog.
    “Wait! What . . . Is it. . . ?” A clap of thunder drowned out my tornado inquiry, and I poked my head from under the washateria awning just in time to see what looked like a wall of rain overtaking the Buy-n-Bye convenience store at the edge of town. In thirty seconds or so, it would engulf my car, and about fifteen seconds after that I was going to be stranded like a horned toad on a high rock. Faced with that prospect, I dashed across the road after Aunt Bee. Being younger and more spry, I passed her up at the center line and was waiting under the canopy of the Chamber of Commerce when she arrived. We stood watching as the leading edge of the storm swept over Main Street like the Red Sea falling back together after Moses got through with it. Overhead, the Amber banner flapped in the wind, the deluge slowly turning the letters into an unintelligible but rather interesting tie-dye.
    Aunt Bee shook her head. “Guess the paint wadn’t set.”
    “Guess not.” One problem solved. That was easy.
    “Figures.”