Juliette Rose Gets Maggie’s Attention

“What are you working on now?” Juliette asked halfway through the first sandwich.  “Anything in particular?”
“Juliette, really.  The least you could do when you want a favor is read my stuff.”
“I’ve been busy.”
Maggie perked up.  “With what?  Dirty deeds at the crossroads in Western Mass?”
“You can say that twice.”
“Something I might be interested in?”
“That depends.  [...]

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Juliette Rose Meets Maggie by the Charles

The next morning, Juliette Rose called in sick again to her regular job stirring up trouble in places other than Wilbur and headed the battered old VW microbus for Boston.  She was meeting an old friend of hers on the Cambridge bank of the Charles River for lunch.  In Wilbur, it was another beautiful spring [...]

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Juliette Rose Considers Her Options

“I can’t go in front of a judge and ask for an injunction on the basis of something Robert heard in the woods,” Roger was saying to an exasperated Juliette Rose. “We have to have something concrete, some kind of proof.”
“Like what?” DJ asked before Juliette could explode.
“Almost anything that would support what Robert says.  [...]

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An Informer

“It’s Don Nelson, I bet,” Juliette said. “He’s always been in favor of the road. Thinks it would be good for business, good for Wilbur’s tax base. And he gives a lot of money to those pricks.”
“If it is, he’s telling them right now that we know about the plant,” Roger said. [...]

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Working the Phone Tree

Meanwhile, news about the chemical plant was spreading across Wilbur like mosquitoes in May. Roger, Juliette Rose, and even Robert took turns on the phone calling everyone they knew, and those people called everyone they knew, and on it went until only a tiny fraction of Wilbur’s 700-odd residents were unaware of the sneaky [...]

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Mave Meets the Gang

Mave was all smiles when she reached the table, on her best behavior and with her soft Southern accent flying on all six cylinders. (I will not attempt to reproduce it. Use your imagination. That’s what it’s for.)  “Roger, darling,” she said in a voice that would have melted uranium.  “Here you are.”
“Yes, here I [...]

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Juliette Rose Meets the Dancing Vampire

Juliette Rose had been prepared to face the latest of Roger’s conquests with equanimity.  There had been a raft of them the last couple of years and none had survived long enough to so much as move in a toothbrush.  Her first sight of DJ had confirmed her initial feeling that there was nothing for [...]

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A Few Words from the Chief of Police

“Goddamn it, Juliette Rose,” Roger was saying. “You didn’t tell me the whole damn town was going to be here.”
“Brother Armitage,” Juliette Rose said suspiciously as he approached her. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m fine, Sister Julie,” Brother Armitage smiled, “and how are you?”
“A little busy at the moment.”
“So I see. Brother [...]

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Juliette Rose Lays It Out

Sure enough, three seconds later Juliette Rose banged the table with the palm of her hand to get everyone’s attention. She got it. The place got so quiet so quick you could have heard a mouse in the middle of picking its nose and embarrassed the hell out of it.
“I guess you all [...]

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Juliette Rose Throws a Tantrum

About the time Mave was waking up, Juliette Rose was having a large-sized cow in the Wilbur General Store parking lot. When she had discovered shortly after noon that Roger hadn’t shown as he almost always did, she’d started kicking things – the counter, the stools, the rack of postcards that nobody ever bought [...]

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