Hidden Treasures by Judith Arnold Read Free Book Online

everyone.
    “Meryl,” she said pleasantly, even though Meryl Hummer was not her favorite person. The chief reporter for the Rockwell Gazette , Meryl had a way of turning every conversation into an interview. Her sense of her own importance was grossly inflated. The Rockwell Gazette was a flimsy weekly with so little news to report that it had to pad its pages with articles about every varsity, junior varsity and intramural sport at the high school. Senior Shot-Putter Sets His Sights on Plymouth State College, a headline might scream, or Outing Club Plans Annual Hike Up Mount Washington. Meryl favored large, bubble-shaped earrings that echoed the roundness of her face, and she always poked her curved chin outward as if it were a weapon, even though it was about as deadly as the edge of a teaspoon.
    “I hope you don’t mind my stopping by like this,” Meryl said, striding across the back lawn as purposefully as her short, stocky legs would allow. She carried a tweedy bag on a strap over her shoulder, and her cardigan was textured with pills and pulls. As she neared the back-porch light, Erica could see that she’d slathered her face with makeup that gave her complexion a uniformly dull peach hue. The effect, ironically, was to make her look much older than her thirty-something years.
    Before Erica could say whether she minded, Meryl had reached the steps, barely sparing Jed Willetz a glance. “Jed, I heard you were home,” she said as she brushed past him.
    “I’m not home,” he argued. “This isn’t home.”
    “If you say so.” Evidently, she wasn’t among the Rockwell womenfolk willing to drop her panties for him. According to Fern, Meryl was married to seventy-year-old Dunc Hummer, who’d earned his fortune years ago when the granite quarry north of town was more productive than it currently was, and used said fortune to shore up the Gazette so his child bride could continue to accumulate bylines. Jed Willetz apparently couldn’t compete with a sugar daddy like Dunc.
    Meryl’s gaze and her oddly artificial smile zeroed in on Erica as she dug into her bag. “I’m doing a story on the box. Where is it?”
    Erica suppressed a groan. Jed had warned that her that everyone would know about the box by tomorrow. Obviously, he’d missed his estimate by a few hours, but that minor error didn’t keep him from grinning smugly. He had a remarkably sexy grin, she noticed with some annoyance.
    She turned back to Meryl. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but the box isn’t for public consumption.”
    Meryl smiled. “No one wants to consume the box, Erica. The people of Rockwell just want an accurate report about what it looks like. I’ve already interviewed Glenn Rideout—”
    “Randy’s father? What does he have to do with it?”
    “He’s Randy’s father,” Meryl explained. She pulled a camera from her bag. “I’d like your side of the story, as well as a photo. This is page-one stuff.”
    “My side of the story?” Erica would have laughed if she didn’t feel so uneasy. “There’s no side of the story.”
    Erica slung the camera around her neck on its strap, then plucked a notepad and pen from a side pocket of her bag. She flipped open the pad and skimmed her jottings. “What I have is that Randy found the box—”
    “We found it together,” Erica muttered, aware thatperhaps there was more than one side of the story after all.
    “You’re disputing the Rideout version?” Meryl’s eyes sparkled.
    “There is no Rideout version. Glenn wasn’t here. He has no idea what happened.” Erica sighed. “Randy and I were planting my garden. Right where the zucchini were going to go—”
    “According to Glenn, you were planning to plant too many zucchini.”
    “Glenn wasn’t here,” Erica repeated. “That was Randy’s opinion, about too many zucchini plants. But I did research, and I believe I selected the correct number of zucchini plants.” She heard a chuckle rising from the foot of the steps