Land of a Hundred Wonders by Lesley Kagen Read Free Book Online Page B

a pitcher of sweet tea. I guess to put their two heads together and I hope that’s all. “Like always, Gib, turn back when I ring the come-and-get-it bell.”
    â€œTurn back when I hear the bell. Got it,” I say, heeling Peaches in the ribs.
    Now, even though I am 100% lovable with mostly Christian thoughts, as I enter the backwoods, I’m gonna have to confess to thinking: Mr. Buster Malloy is too dead. And when I solve that murder and publish that story, by next week Friday, everybody in town will be reading the front page of Gibby’s Gazette , their admiration piercing through the clouds and landing square in my mama’s heart. We’ll see then who is dumber than anthracite coal, Sheriff LeRoy Johnson. We’ll just see about that. Ya big asshole.

Mr. Charles Michael Murphy
    It’s not until after I come in the cottage back door and set the egg basket down on our kitchen table that I realize that me and Keeper have come home without my black leather-like briefcase. I left it in the bushes back at Tanner Farm. “Doggone it,” I shout, indecent mad at myself for forgetting.
    â€œWhere you been?” Grampa calls in a persnickety voice from the screened-in porch. He can get like that when he wakes up from a nap. “I just got off the phone with Jessie. She said you left more’n an hour ago.”
    â€œI . . . I . . .” I remember the lousy look Sheriff Johnson gave me when Miss Jessie went to retrieve my egg basket for me. I also recall Keeper yapping at snoring Sneaky Tim Ray when we snuck around him in the woods. But then . . . oh my goodness.
    I will not tell Grampa. He’ll only get red in the tips of his ears.
    Like I mentioned earlier, I usually don’t keep secrets from him, but in one of the chapters of The Importance of Perception in Meticulous Investigation , Howard Redmond states quite firmly that oftentimes, in the midst of an ongoing investigation, one must endeavor to conceal certain facts, so one might have to Prevaricate: Stray from the truth . Even from our loved ones if necessary. (For their own protection, you understand.)
    â€œI went over to Miss Lydia’s,” I lie, stepping out to the porch. Grampa’s perched on the edge of the flowered wicker sofa. Rumpled up. “Please don’t get mad.”
    Well, for godssakes, this is so UTTERLY discouraging. Why didn’t I tell him I stopped by to see Reverend Jack at the Methodist church? Or bed-ridden-with-lumbago Nellie Wilson? Ya know, someone who’d make me look all saintly. Not someone like Miss Lydia, who’s got squirrel skulls hanging off her trees that clang together when a storm’s coming and make a much better sound than you can ever imagine. Not someone who Grampa despises.
    Straightening up, Grampa shoves out through the screened door, letting it slam hard behind him. “I told ya time and time again to stay away from Lydia,” he shouts back at me. “ And Hundred Wonders.”
    Wish I could admit what I really did was go back to check on Mr. Buster Malloy’s dead body on Browntown Beach. (The flies have gotten to him some.)
    Not wanting to, because when he gets tempered like this, being around him’s ’bout as much fun as batting a hornets’ nest, I follow him out to our matching wood chairs on the lawn. I keep a stack of flat rocks under mine to use on perfecting my skimming skills. The lake’s green and smooth as a chalkboard. Baby waves making their way through the cattails, always a fine place to catch pollywogs. And the cicadas are calling to one another from the woods, sounding as desperate as I’m feeling. “Those goddamn fish bitin’ today?” I ask him.
    â€œYou’re wanderin’ off the subject and you’re cursin’,” he says, yanking his knife out from the leather sheaf that hangs from the tulip tree. Being a well-known whittler, Grampa was once asked by a museum in New York City