The Ghost of Fossil Glen by Cynthia DeFelice Read Free Book Online Page B

unpack, clean, and price everything, and, wouldn’t you know, customers keep coming in and distracting me!”
    She turned to Dub. “You didn’t know how glamorous this job was, did you?”
    Dub laughed. “We could help,” he said.
    â€œThat’s nice of you, Dub. And I’d take you up on it, except that right now everything is so disorganized I wouldn’t know where to tell you to start.”
    â€œWhere’d you get all this stuff, Mom?” Allie asked.
    â€œI told you about the man in the van, didn’t I?”
    â€œOh, yeah.”
    â€œRemember this morning when we passed the Stiles house and I said I thought I recognized the van in the driveway? Well, I was right. It was the same one. That’s where all these new items came from.”
    Allie lifted her eyebrows. “All this is from the Stiles house?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œIs someone new moving in?” Dub asked.
    â€œI don’t know. But I’d certainly be glad to see someone living in that beautiful old house. It’s a shame for it to stand vacant like that.” Mrs. Nichols’s face brightened as she remembered something. “You came to see the desk, didn’t you? Come on. It’s right out here.”
    Allie and Dub followed Mrs. Nichols to the front of the shop. “What do you think?”
    By the window were an old-fashioned wooden desk and a matching chair. The desk had a high back with lots of little drawers and pigeonholes. Allie lifted the lid of the slanted writing surface. Inside were more drawers and cubbyholes. Larger drawers on both sides reached to the floor.
    The wood seemed to glow in the warm afternoon light that streamed through the window. Allie breathed deeply, catching the scent of lemon polish. “It’s so beautiful,” she said, rubbing her hand along the polished surface. Turning to her mother, she asked, “May I really have it?”
    Mrs. Nichols nodded. “If you like it, it’s yours.”
    â€œI love it,” said Allie.
    â€œTell you what,” said Mrs. Nichols. “Why don’t you two remove all the drawers to make it lighter. Then the three of us should have no problem carrying it. I’ll bring the car around to the front door, and we’ll see if we can fit it in.”
    Working together, they managed to wrestle the desk into the back seat of the car, and the drawers and the chair into the trunk.
    â€œThere,” said Mrs. Nichols. “But there’s no room for you two now.”
    â€œThat’s okay,” said Allie. “We were thinking about going to Dub’s to look up some stuff on his computer, anyway.”
    â€œAll right. But be home by six for dinner.”
    â€œOkay. After dinner, can we put the desk in my room?”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œBye, Mrs. Nichols,” said Dub.
    â€œNice to see you, Dub.”
    â€œThanks, Mom.”
    â€œBye, sweetie.”
    As she and Dub walked up the main street of town toward Dub’s house, Allie thought how strange it was that her new desk came from the Stiles house, and her mind flashed on the image of Lucy Stiles’s lonely grave.
    When they arrived at Dub’s house, he opened the door with a key he wore around his neck. No one was home. Dub’s mother traveled a lot for her job with a computer company, and his father was still at work. It was because of his mother’s job that Dub always had the most up-to-the-minute computer and programs.
    They got a package of cookies and some milk and sat side by side in front of the computer. Dub turned it on. While it clicked and whirred, he said, “Let’s try typing in the key word ‘ghost’ and see what we get.”
    â€œOkay,” said Allie. She watched, fascinated, as Dub used the mouse and keyboard to skip from screen to screen. Mumbling to himself, he said, “Space ghost, no. Ghost towns, no. Chinese hopping ghosts…”
    â€œThat