Murder Boogies With Elvis Read Online Free

famous. She’d have worn the wiggle out.”
    “Possibly.”
    “So y’all come tonight. It’ll refresh your memories.”
    “They’re fresh.”
    We smiled at each other and walked along quietly for a while. Then Mitzi looked up at Red Mountain and said, “You know, Patricia Anne, on a sunny day like this, we’d be getting the full benefit of the moon. It seems so strange not to have Vulcan up there.”
    “We’ll get that big bare butt back.”
    We turned the corner and headed toward home. Our neighborhood is the first of the “over the mountain” suburbs, built when the word “suburbs” probably hadn’t been invented. With bedroom communities sprawling now into adjacent counties with hours of commuting time, we consider ourselves very lucky. Our houses have front porches, chain-link fences, sidewalks. And we’re ten minutes from everything, even downtown. Okay, so we’re not fancy, but we like it. And houses here seldom have “For sale” signs in the yards. Word of mouth sells them before realtors have a chance to list them. Mitzi and Arthur had recently come into a large amount of money and hadn’t even considered moving. They had added on a sunroom.
    “Come in for some coffee,” I said.
    “I can’t. Bridgett is bringing the baby by for me to baby-sit.”
    “Tough job.”
    We grinned at each other.
    “Why did they wait until we were in our sixties to have babies?”
    “Well, Alan and Lisa had their boys early, but I was teaching and they were in Atlanta. Believe you me, Joanna Nachman is going to be one spoiled baby.”
    We had stopped in front of my driveway. Mitzi gave me a hug. “I’m so thrilled for all of you.”
    “Me, too. Let me know if you want to go with us tonight.”
    “If I can get Arthur up off of his behind.” She gave a little wave and headed toward her house.
    I took Woofer’s leash off, gave him a couple of dog biscuits I had in my pocket, and went into the kitchen where Muffin was sitting on the table. I picked her up,hugged her, and told her she wasn’t supposed to be on the kitchen table. She smelled like clean, healthy, sweet cat. How was I going to give her back to Haley? And how had I gotten so enamored of this cat anyway? I was a dog person. Mary Alice was the cat person. Her cat, Bubba, slept on a heating pad on her kitchen counter, which I had always thought was terrible. Granted, he was old. But on the kitchen counter? And he never moved. Several times I had been suspicious that he was dead and only the heat was keeping him flexible. Once I had even picked up his paw and let it drop, checking. Bubba had opened his eyes, yawned widely, and gone back to sleep. Now I hoped that Muffin didn’t decide she wanted to sleep on the kitchen counter. I sat down in my recliner and held her, purring loudly, against me.
    Sleep slammed against me. One moment I was sitting there holding Muffin and the next moment the phone was ringing, I was cold, and an hour had disappeared from the morning.
    “Her name is Tammy Sue,” Sister said when I answered the phone.
    “Whose name?” I was still more than half asleep.
    “Virgil’s daughter. Are you all right? You sound loggy.”
    “I feel loggy. I was asleep. Wait a minute.” I got a glass of water and came back to the phone. “Okay.”
    “Well, her name is Tammy Sue and she’s thirty years old and her husband’s an Elvis impersonator.”
    “I thought it was her brother who was an Elvis impersonator.”
    “He is. Apparently St. Clair County is just a nest of them.”
    I thought of rural St. Clair County: rolling hills, small towns, cattle farms. A nest of Elvis impersonators?
    “How did that happen?”
    “How did what happen?”
    “How did St. Clair County get to be a nest of Elvis impersonators?”
    “Well, my Lord, Mouse, how should I know? I’m not a historian or an anthropologist. Virgil just said there were a bunch of them up there. Maybe it’s some kind of club or something.”
    “Like the Rotary.”
    “Could