Spooky Hijinks by Madison Johns Read Free Book Online Page A

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    “Don’t beat me up about it. You can ask Elsie all about it when you see her.”
    “Jack is quite the sports enthusiast,” Eleanor added. “Plenty of rural areas off 55.”
    I gripped my purse tight and just shook my head. I just couldn’t believe it. Elsie moving in with Jack Winston made no sense. Why, they hadn’t even been seeing each other that long.
    It was too dark to see much, but I could tell that there were farms along the road, with a house here and there. This was considered Tawas City and a much more rural area. For the people who lived out here, they stayed out of the way of the local tourists, since many of them were farmers.
    Andrew turned into a driveway that was surrounded with trees, and when the floodlights blasted us, I caught sight of a white-tailed deer that glided away with leaps and bounds. They sure were beautiful animals, if they could be admired from a distance and not while darting across the road when you least expected them to.
    The car rolled to a stop, and I noticed other cars erratically parked in the drive—five from my count. It seemed like Elsie might just have a packed crowd. We exited the car, and Martha made her way to the door first, rapping on it lightly while we were waiting on Andrew gathering up Mr. Wilson’s walker for him.
    When the door was opened, it wasn’t Elsie who stood there. It was Bernice—more notably known as the Cat Lady—but these days, we preferred to call her Bernice.
    “Agnes and Eleanor,” Bernice said, “I didn’t know you girls would be dropping by.” She turned and looked inside for a moment and turned back to us, whispering, “Elsie didn’t want you girls to know she and Jack had moved out here, you see. She has a reputation to uphold, you know.”
    I smiled, knowing just what she meant since Elsie was known as the social icon of East Tawas where her house was. Some could say she had put on the airs of being some high-society woman, but the Tawas area just wasn’t like that.
    I waltzed in, happy that most of our senior friends were no longer on oxygen so we at least didn’t have to maneuver around the hoses. Elsie still used it, but I’ve been told it’s only at night when she sleeps. With her living with Jack now, I wondered how that went, since oxygen compressors were known to be quite noisy. Why, some people actually moved them outside a bedroom, providing they had hoses long enough to accommodate them.
    Elsie was nowhere to be seen, so I had the chance to check the place out without her standing over my shoulder. I had no idea why she’d care what Eleanor or I thought about her moving in with Jack, even though I did think it odd she had made a move that quickly.
    Inside, the walls were painted yellow and not white like Elsie’s house was— like, in every room. Her all-white furniture wasn’t here either, so at least the place didn’t look like the funeral parlor I’d often compared Elsie’s living room to at her house.
    Elsie came into the room holding a tray of sandwiches and froze in her tracks when we locked eyes. She wore a white sweater and denim jeans. I could actually say that I rather liked her downhome look, since she usually only wore powder blue clothing that matched her eyes. The only sign of blue anything now, though, was her earrings.
    “Agnes and Eleanor—wh-what are you doing here?”
    “We heard you were having a card party, and as you should know, we’d just hate to miss it. I didn’t know you had moved.”
    “Oh, that. I meant to call and tell you that I’d moved in with Jack Winston, but I guess I was so busy with moving that I simply forgot.”
    “So ... where is Jack?”
    “He’s out back, manning the grill.”
    “Grill, you say? This I have to see for myself, after you give us the grand tour.”
    “Now, Agnes,” Andrew began, “is that really necessary?”
    I ignored his question, but I decided to change the subject. “It’s freezing outside. Is Jack okay out there all