Southern Discomfort by Margaret Maron Read Free Book Online Page A

license," said Herman. From the tone of his voice, I gathered he'd already said that more than once before I drove up.
    "Reese hasn't got a license and you let him wire everything by himself."
    "No, I don't and even if I did—"
    "Because I heard you tell Granddaddy and Uncle Seth I know more about how electricity works than he does."
    "Miss Big Ears is liable to hear something she don't want to hear, she keeps talking back to me," Herman said darkly.
    He still had his work clothes on, as if he'd just come in himself. Hot, tired, dirty and probably hungry, too. There was a pinched look on his face, and I had a feeling this might not be the best time to ask him to lend me a hammer. Or for Annie Sue to goad him into saying things it might be hard to back down from. She always makes a big dramatic deal out of things and since she turned sixteen, she and Herman always seem to be bumping heads.
    "Come on, honey," I said. "I bet your daddy could use a big glass of tea about now I know I sure could."
    Annie Sue wanted to stay and urge, but I was already steering Herman to the lawn chairs clustered under their big pecan tree, so she headed for the back door, impatience with adults in every step.
    "And bring me that pack of Tums over the sink," he called after her.
    The chairs were in deep shade and it was a pleasure to sit for a while though I knew that mosquitoes would chase us once the sun was fully down. I shooed their big lazy tom from my chair, and as soon as I sat down, he jumped back in my lap like a furry rug. A hot furry rug. But I'm always a sucker for a purring cat, and I missed having one around since Aunt Zell's cat disappeared a month or so earlier.
    An occasional car passed on the side street and from beyond the thick shrubbery, I heard the muffled laughter of young children splashing in their backyard pool. Nadine's gardenia bushes had almost finished blooming, yet a few creamy white blossoms hung on to perfume the air.
    Cindy McGee and another teenage girl pulled up in the drive behind my car, hopped out, and called, "Hey, Mr. Herman!" before heading for the back door with the familiarity of best friends who run in and out of one another's houses a dozen times a week. They were inside only a few minutes till they were out again, carrying two summery dresses on padded hangers. Their high light voices called, —Bye, Mr. Herman!"
    Herman shook his head. "Girls! How they keep up with which dress is whose is beyond me."
    "You still working over at Tinker's Landing?" I asked as car doors slammed and they drove away.
    He slouched down wearily in one of the wood-slatted chairs he'd built himself. "Yeah, finished up one house all except we were short two switch plates. I thought they were two-gangs, but turned out they were three and Reese didn't stock the trucks like he was supposed to."
    He gave a heavy sigh. "Guess I'll have to get Annie Sue to start doing it again."
    All his kids had worked there in the summers, but Annie Sue was the only one who actually liked it, a fact that seemed to be lost on my brother.
    "I swear," he said, "Reese should've been the girl and her the boy."
    Like me, Annie Sue was an accident of nature after Herman and Nadine thought they'd finished their family. They’d begun with twins, Reese and Denise. No surprise since twins ran in both families. Herman was one of two sets our daddy sired—he and Haywood, the "big twins," are seven and eight brothers up from me—and Nadine's grandmother was a twin, too. Edward came along two years later and that seemed to be all she wrote till he was in the second grade and Nadine got pregnant with Annie Sue.
    "I thought I was having the change early," Nadine always said.
    By that time, Herman had his electrician's license and his own business. Nadine had started doing the paperwork and answering the phone, so she just set up a playpen beside her desk and let Annie Sue teethe on new rubber insulators. The child was barely toddling before Herman stuck her in