The Puzzle Master by Heather Spiva Read Free Book Online Page A

mean this one?”
    “Yep. It beats that pocketknife you bought last year. This one is hand made from the 1940’s.” He grinned, his yellow teeth like slats of a picket fence. “Goes for hundreds of dollars in an antique store.”
    Mother of pearl decorated the handle. His dad would be jealous over it, even Mason would want it, and Marshall liked fishing even more than him. Marshall looked at Luke who had a sideways grin. Mr. Luke had reeled him in, hook, line and sinker. Even more reason Marshall had to win the bet. “And if I lose?”
    “If you lose, you have to work here three days a week after school, and then on through the summer when we’re the busiest … for only three dollars an hour.”
    Marshall squinted again. “How is that a loss for me?”
    “Because you’re cheap labor.”
    “You don’t have to do it Marshall,” Iris said, a smile floating through her words. “Luke’s nice and all, but if you work here, he’ll really make you work.”
    “I would love to work here.”
     And that was no lie. It was like a dream come true. Heck, he’d work there for ten cents an hour. Marshall stuck out his hand, and Luke grasped it, thick and warm like a bear’s paw.
    “It’s a deal then?”
    “Deal.”
    “You two,” Iris said and nodded to herself. “Come on; better get this bet over with.” They turned to go to the back room. Luke hacked a laugh and put his feet back on the counter. Marshall was positive he had the better end of the deal.
    The two of them grabbed a root beer and Marshall dove into his granola bar.
    Marshall looked at the corner of the room where the air conditioning rattled away, chomping on his snack. He noticed four or five new puzzle boxes, sitting on top of each other. “What are those?”
    “Those are the only other puzzles in this whole place I could find, other than the giant one. I figured we should do the rest of them too.”
    “Iris,” said Marshall, “We’re barely going to have enough time to do the big one, let alone the small ones.”
    “They’re not that bad. Two of them are five hundred pieces. The other two are a thousand.”
    Marshall took a drink of his apple juice and sat down. He fingered the tiny puzzle pieces, falling all over the place like toppings on ice cream. “You have a point. Maybe we should start with the small ones. And work up to the big one? The small ones we could finish in a couple days. It would be good experience for you.”
    “How do we go about doing this anyway?” Iris asked. “I don’t know puzzles, remember.
    Marshall was suddenly excited. He’d done about a hundred puzzles. All of them were fun; easy; like solving a riddle. “We don’t have any room on the table. We’re gonna have to make room on the floor. Here,” he said and pointed to a part of the room, “Up against that wall. We can put a piece of cardboard down, and we’ll keep them all separate.”
    She nodded and her bobbed head of curls nodded too.
    “You’re uncle’s gonna think we’re crazy Iris.”
    “Yeah, oh well. He’s the crazy one.”
    Marshall stopped. “What?”
    “You see how he smokes,” she said. Her eyes looked like deep holes, as if something was down in them if he looked hard enough. “My aunt said before she had her stroke, that he’s dying of lung cancer.”
    “Luke? No way.” Marshall didn’t believe it. Luke would live for years more. He had to. He had a store to run, a place to keep going, junk to collect and sell.
    “You’ve heard him cough right?”
    Marshall thought. Yeah, he’d heard him cough. It was a bad one. He figured he was always perpetually getting over a cold, or something. But, lung cancer?
    “Yeah, but, he would’ve told me. I would know.”
    “Marshall,” said Iris, waiting for him to look at her, “he hasn’t even told me.”
    “Oh.”
    “If something happens to him, I don’t know what I’ll do. There isn’t any more family I can live with.” Marshall thought again. That would be like the worst