Miss Julia to the Rescue by Ann B. Ross Read Free Book Online

yeah, well, when do you expect him? … And he was finishing up where? … Is that right? Well, you know how those hill people can be. We’ve got a few of ’em around here… . No, I wouldn’t worry about him. He’ll be dragging in before long. Just tell him I called, and you take care of yourself.”
    He hung up the phone, turned to us and said, “West Virginia.”
    “Law,” Lillian said. “That’s ’way off from here. What in the world he doin’ up there?”
    “She’s not sure,” Coleman said. “She thinks he was hired to look into some kind of missing person’s case in Winston-Salem. But he called her last week and told her he had to check out somethingin West Virginia—he didn’t say exactly where. Then he called again last Friday and said he had to make one more stop before coming on home.”
    “One more stop in West Virginia?” I asked.
    Coleman nodded. “That’s what she understood, and she’s already worried. He’s three days overdue getting home and she’s not heard from him since last Friday—a week ago.”
    “That don’t sound good to me,” Lillian said.
    “Me, either,” Lloyd said.
    West Virginia
, I thought, which might as well be a foreign country, for all I knew about it. I knew a little about a few places in Virginia, but I’d never been to the west of it, but the name conjured up an image of mountains—it was located along the same range as our own Blue Ridge Mountains on the Appalachian range, or something like that. I wasn’t too up on geography. Coal country, I recalled from reading about mining disasters.
    “What can we do, Coleman?” I asked. “Because the more I think about that phone call, the more I feel that he needed help. I mean, he didn’t even sound like himself. It took me a minute to recognize his voice, but it
was
him, I’m pretty sure, especially because a deputy answered when we called back on his phone. Wouldn’t that mean Mr. Pickens wasn’t able to use it himself?”
    “Oh, me,” Lloyd moaned, “maybe he’s hurt, been in a car wreck or in a fight or …”
    “Hold on, Lloyd,” Coleman said. “Let’s not start thinking the worst. I’ll go back to the office and put in a call to the West Virginia State Police and to the sheriff in Charleston. They can check hospitals, accident calls, and so forth, throughout the state. Might take awhile, but it’s worth doing.”
    Lillian had walked over to Lloyd and put her arm around his shoulders. “He gonna be all right, Lloyd. Mr. Pickens never been in bad trouble before, an’ Coleman gonna find him, don’t you worry.” Then she looked at Coleman. “I jus’ don’t know why you callin’ Charleston when it down in South Car’lina. How they gonna know anything going on in West Virginia?”
    “Two Charlestons,” Coleman said with a brief grin. “Charleston, West Virginia, is the capital of that state, which makes it a good starting point for us.”
    “Oh,” she said. “Wonder why they do that? Look like one of ’em would pick another name.”
    Nobody answered her because nobody knew. And it wasn’t important anyway. We were all too focused on Mr. Pickens’s personal state to worry about the names of cities.
    Coleman was on his way out the door when I stopped him. “Should we tell Hazel Marie what’s going on?”
    He thought for a minute. “I hate to keep anything from her, but we really don’t know anything. Let’s wait until I talk to somebody up there and get a line on him. Time enough to tell her when we know something for sure.”
    I nodded, agreeing that we should wait. “Call or come by as soon as you hear anything. We’ll be here waiting.”
    “I’ll do it.” And he was out the door and gone.

    “Well,” I said, looking at the two worried faces staring after Coleman, “I don’t care what we tell Hazel Marie or don’t tell her. She’s already fretting because Mr. Pickens hasn’t come home, and she’ll be doing even more if he doesn’t soon call her. And if some