Us and Uncle Fraud by Lois Lowry Read Free Book Online Page B

winter; now, of course, we had an oil furnace. Now the shed was dusty and cobwebbed and filled with junk. Marcus and I played in there, summers, fixing up forts and clubrooms, holding initiations, planning battles with the neighborhood kids. Each of us—even Tom—at some time or another, had been angered by some injustice and had run away, carrying a paper bag filled with food stolen from the refrigerator. We had ignored Mother's pleas to think twice, to be mature, to reach a compromise,
and we had run away—always to the shed, where we had huddled miserably until evening came, shadows lengthened, the air grew cold, and we could hear mice scuttling and rustling. Then we would come home, trudging back along the driveway with tear-stained faces, to apologize and be welcomed back.
    We would have to search the shed.
    "Anyway," Marcus said, "it might not mean 'table.'
Ya tebya lyublyu.
That last word could mean 'blue.' He could have hidden it in something blue."
    "A blue table," I suggested.
    "We don't
have
a blue table."
    I smoothed Claude's note and we looked at the words again. "Maybe," I said, "it's like those games in the children's page of the paper where you have to rearrange the letters?"
    "I hate those," Marcus groaned.
    "I do, too," I acknowledged. "But still: Look at the letters. Do you see any words?"
    Marcus looked. "Bubbly," he said, finally.
    "There aren't enough Vs," I decided.
    "Yeah, but he can't spell, remember? Maybe he didn't know there are supposed to be three Vs in 'bubbly.'"
    "
Great
," I said angrily. "It's bad enough to have to figure out a code. But when the guy who made the code can't spell? That's just
great.
"
    "Anyway," Marcus mused, "what would 'bubbly' mean?"
    "Ginger ale," I suggested.
    Marcus made a face. "No," he said. "That's dumb. I bet 'bubbly' would mean the river. Remember yesterday, how foamy and bubbly the river was? And Claude saw it, when we were over on the bank, behind the Leboffs' house."
    "Well, now
you're
being dumb. How on earth could you hide something in the river? Anyway, he didn't want us to go back there. He said it was dangerous to prowl around the Leboffs' house, even outside."
    We stared glumly at the note and finally I folded it up again and put it in the drawer of my little table.
    "It has to be here at the house," Marcus said decisively. "You want to try the attic first or the shed?"
    "The attic, I guess."
    And so we went there.

    "You two are absolutely filthy," Mother said when we came to dinner that evening. "What have you been doing? Look at your hands. Run up to the bathroom and
scrub.
"
    We did, and left the bathroom a disaster, with the towels streaked and the sink ringed with dirt.
    "We were in the attic," I explained to Mother. "We were looking for Claude's gift."
    "Oh?" She smiled. "And did you find it?"
    "No," Marcus said dejectedly.
    "I don't mind that he hid it," I told her. "But it's not fair that he hid it so we can't
find
it."
    "Well," Mother said mildly, "that's Claude. He likes to complicate things. And remember what he said in his note? All treasures are well hidden."
    She began to serve the food. Dinner on Easter was always the same: ham and deviled eggs, their whites stained with dye.
    Father helped himself to salad and passed it around. "That's Claude all right," he echoed Mother. "But has it occurred to you two pip-squeaks that perhaps there was never any gift at all?"
    Tom grinned, and popped half an egg into his mouth.
    "Of course it occurred to us," I said. "We're not dumb. But you weren't there yesterday when Claude told us about it. He was absolutely sincere; wasn't he, Marcus?"
    Marcus nodded, his mouth full.
    "He was absolutely sincere when he tried to peddle a thousand dollars worth of fraudulent oil stock to me, too," Father said, grinning.
    Tom swallowed his egg with a gulp and said, "He just makes stuff up. I think he's crazy."
    "He teases, Tom," Mother said. "Claude is a tease, that's all."
    I peeled a strip of fat