Free Old Bones: a Hetty Fox Cozy Mystery (Hetty Fox Cozy Mysteries Book 2) by Anna Drake

we could only once a year on Thanksgiving Day, then everyone would fail to show up,” someone quipped. Laughter broke out across the room.
    “Why Hetty? Why have her do the negotiating?”
    “I thought we should use a neutral member. Someone who hasn’t been with us long enough to be set in her ways.”
    There was a quiet moment. “I think you’re very brave to take this on, Mrs. Fox,” Becky Stiles said. She had accompanied her aunt to today’s session.
    I wagged my finger at her. “Please, call me Hetty,” I reminded her. She blushed and nodded.
    I smiled. “I hope you’re well today. You seemed a little upset when we last met.”
    “Oh, yes. I’m tons better.”
    “I take it you’ve made peace with your boyfriend, then?”
    Her head jerked up. “How did you know about that?”
    “My dear. I’m a woman. Man troubles are as old as the hills. They’re usually written all over or faces. But please remember this, too: most of us have gone a round or two with a man we adore, and most of us are still here to tell the tale.”
    She grinned. “Everything is fine now. We’ve worked it out. Everything is just as it should be.”
    Ah, certainty of youth. “Does this fellow have a name?”
    “Gordon White,” she replied.
    “And what’s he like?”
    She closed her eyes for a moment and smiled to herself. And when she opened them, she stared me right in the eye.  “He’s everything I’m not. Bright… charming… good looking.” Her face took on a faraway look.
    I leaned forward, “My dear, I haven’t known you long, but I’d say you’re all those things, too.”
    Her gaze shifted to me. She looked utterly shocked. “Oh, mercy not me. I’m shy and not at all bright. Laura had to call me twenty times to get me to come with her today.”
    I finished up the last stitch in the row and turned my needle. “What do you do when you’re not mooning over your gentleman friend?”
    “I work in the hospital over in Weaverton. I’m a clerk there. I have Monday’s off. That’s why Laura wanted me to come with her today.”
    I glanced at her knitting. “It looks like you do good work.”
    “Thanks. I enjoy handwork. It calms me.”
    I nodded. “That’s true for me, too.”
    “So what are you two doing with your heads huddled together?” Laura asked.
    “Tending to our knitting,” I responded.
    Becky chuckled and Laura grinned
    “Where’s Toby?” I asked.
    “She’s sick,” Laura answered.
    I made a mental note to take her a get-well gift. I needed that woman on my good side if my negotiations were to have a ghost of a chance at succeeding.
    Tabitha Cummings came and sat down next to me. She stared at me through a pair of spectacles, which were perched on the very tip of her nose. “How’s your son-in-law holding up? It’s such a shame about his aunt lying dead in an attic like that for all those years.”
    I slipped my free needle into a loop and wound a strand of yarn around it. “He’s more than a little concerned. Like the rest of us, he never dreamed she was dead. Did you know Eva?”
    “Not really. She was younger than me by a more than a few years. I’d seen her around, and, of course… well, being a Langdon… just about everyone would know her, wouldn’t they?” She glanced around for confirmation, and several heads nodded.
    I set my  knitting down in my lap. “Was the family that important?”
    “Oh goodness, her father thought he ran the town.”
    “And did he?”
    Tabitha  glanced over at me. “Pretty much. He was a man extremely fond of his own opinions.”
    “Who’s that?” Dolly Wright asked. She was a young woman with curly blonde hair and a dimpled smile. She sat opposite Tabitha and was hard at work on a gaily colored lap rug.
    “Eva Landon’s dad,” Valerie said.
    “Oh my, isn’t that something?” Dolly asked. “A mummy, right here in Hendricksville.”
    Laura scowled at the woman. “And as it turns out, she was related to our dear Hetty. Hetty is Damon