'Til Grits Do Us Part Read Online Free PDF Page A

have no idea who he is.”
    Meg lowered her voice to a mysterious near-whisper. “Amanda’s former fiancé.”
    â€œAmanda? Amanda who?”
    As soon as I said her name, a ripple of something eerie flashed through my stomach. “Amanda Cummings?” I asked, sticking the bobblehead back in its stand. “The girl who disappeared?”
    â€œThat’s her.” Meg slowed a bit as we came into city limits, her Chevette flashing past a darkened Food Lion and Dollar General—their signs still glowing blue and red into the night sky. Country music blasted from a pool hall next to a lighted Shell station, clogged with jacked-up pickup trucks in various states of mud splatters.
    â€œAmanda’s that woman who turned up missing twelve years ago, Shiloh.” Meg jerked in the other lane around a slow-moving minivan. “Remember? ‘You were my first’? That’s what they found spray painted in red outside her old mailbox, in some weird loopy handwriting with funky
A
’s. Probably written by a lefty.”
    She jerked to a stop at a red light then looked both ways and ran it.
    Ohhhh, God
….
If a bull from Ron’s pasture doesn’t cream me tonight, an oncoming turkey truck might
.
    â€œPlus flowers and letters and a bunch of weird ranting gibberish.” Meg waved an arm. “Whoever’s doing this is nuts. I’m telling you.”
    â€œSo…why is this a big deal?” I raised an eyebrow, trying to understand. “So what if Ray is Amanda’s former fiancé? I guess he still lives here, right? From what I understand, they cleared his name years ago.” I crossed my arms stubbornly. “But I’m not doing this story anyway. I’ve already told you that.”
    â€œYou might not do the story, but you’ve gotta know why it’s so important.” Meg slowed again and turned down a rain-shiny side street near Gypsy Hill Park. “I’ve got a hunch Amanda’s killer really might be back.”
    â€œWhat? Come on.” I made a face. “That’s what they said when this same stuff happened five years ago, and nothing came of it.”
    â€œOh, it’s way bigger this time.” Meg glanced up at me. “And this time he’s after Ray.”
    She craned her head in the dim streetlights to read house numbers, checking them with the directions she’d scrawled on the back of a napkin from Thai Diner in Charlottesville.
    â€œYou’re not making sense, Meg. Nobody left Ray flowers or letters or spray painted his mailbox.” I leaned sideways to see past a long crack in Meg’s windshield. The crash site must not have been far because caution cones and flares already lined the street. Floodlights glimmered up ahead, and I glimpsed two red fire trucks through the spreading oak trees. “Spell out your theory for me.”
    â€œFirst, somebody who might be Amanda’s killer seems to be resurfacing, leaving all those creepy messages and threats related to her. And then somebody narrowly misses flattening her former fiancé by six inches and a piece of wallboard. What if somebody actually meant to kill him?” Meg looked over at me, a glow of police lights illuminating her pert, turned-up nose.
    She pressed on the brake, slowing as another police car zipped past us toward the fray. “I dunno, but it makes sense to me. And it makes me wonder something else.”
    â€œWonder what?” I untangled the lifeless seat belt and stuffed it behind the passenger’s seat, feeling my hands grow cold despite myself.
    Meg jerked the car over to the side of the road and threw it in P ARK. “Who’s next?”

Chapter 3
    S o, do you dig my theory?” Meg shook whatever so-called herbal brew she’d concocted, tipping her stinky mug dangerously close to my cubicle desk. Even under the glow of fluorescent lights in
The News Leader
office, she looked exactly the same as she