Totally Fishy (A Miller Sisters Mystery) Read Online Free Page A

perfect woman. A feat that turned out to be harder than it sounded, because J.J. has remained single since the day June ran off.
    Joanie, at the Post Office, claimed she would sort mail wearing latex gloves because of the nasty perfume on some of J.J.'s mail. She claimed that one day she walked into Sal's Diner for lunch, and Joy Broussard told her she smelled like a French whore, while my mother wanted the name of her new perfume. Mom cinched it for Joanie, because everyone knows my mother has almost no sense of smell. When she does claim to smell something, there's either some summer visitor wearing nasty perfume that would gag a maggot, or eau-de-dog-crap on her shoes.
    Lately, the geriatric crowd has again taken up the "find J.J. a nice girl" cause. Granddaughters, nieces, family, friends-of-cousins-twice-removed-daughters-in-law's-step-children–you name it; they're lined up and ready to say, "I do."
    The scuttlebutt down at Sal's Diner is that up until a month or so ago, the "Mrs. J.J. Green Wannabes" took to staking out J.J.'s house. I heard the poor guy has to recon the neighborhood before he feels safe enough to go home at night. Hah! Made me almost feel sorry for him–please note I said almost .
    I mentioned Green's devious mind. I should have guessed something was up when on more than one occasion he had me pick him up on the next block while his squad car sat in his driveway. I saw him sneaking out from behind Mrs. Kelly's Hydrangea bush, but when I asked him about it, he said he'd lost his wallet. I might have commented that I thought it more likely he'd lost his marbles. He claimed he had none left from hanging out with us–smart ass.
    I've also noticed lately, I've come under fire by some–actually most of the eligible women in town. Leigh Swanson, the buxom beauty who owns the local beauty parlor, Ready, Set, Blow, pretended not to see me at the drug store last week, then she accidentally cut a large chunk of hair off the back of my head three days ago. Peggy Weller pretended not to see me when I tried to say hi to her at the grocery store, and Ellen Madsen (whom everyone in town considered the frontrunner in the "Go for the Green" stakes) accidentally dropped a large rock on my foot at the hardware store's garden center last week. Coincidence? Even in my worst state of paranoia, I think not.
    A curious person might ask what happened to account for the recent assaults on my poor person. Considering I'm at least ten years older than most of them and about one (alright, two) sizes wider across the butt, I should never have figured into the equation. Being the crack detective I am, however, I finally figured out that the blame falls squarely upon James Joseph Green's shoulders. That is, my mom told me the women in town blame me for sneaking through the back door and stealing J.J. off the shelf.
    As untrue as the story might be, the little rat-bastard Green must have planned the whole thing from the start, and being the unsuspecting dupe, I waltzed right into the trap.
    It began when J.J. asked me to help with the investigation into the murder of my mother's neighbor last month. I did, and noticed somewhere along the way J.J. became a little more playful, as well as a little more attentive to me than usual, especially in public. I admit I ate it up, never stopping to wonder what the most gorgeous man this side of Lake Michigan was doing with an average-looking, newly inducted member of the AARP, with flyaway reddish-brown hair and a family full of crazy people. I mean, we've hung out all our lives, and the most romantic we'd ever been happened playing Tarzan in the old barn with a rope on the old hay pulley between the lofts. One day, he ruffled my hair one time too many times and made fun of my Tarzan yodel. I shoved him out of the hayloft and the pansy broke his arm when he landed–as if it was my fault he couldn't have landed on his butt instead of his arm.
    Back to my story, it all culminated one afternoon