Wicked Fix by Sarah Graves Read Free Book Online Page A

collection in the
    place, I thought was pretty silly. Victor didn't even lend
    Tupperware, because he didn't own any; too hard to
    sterilize properly. But he had probably enjoyed the idea
    of not locking and had gone overboard with it.
     
    Ellie put on my green plaid apron with the moose
    pattern trimmings and the moose heads chain-stitched
    in green embroidery floss. In it, I always resembled the
    animal depicted upon it, but she looked fetching.
     
    "So you never did find out where your father was,
    or what he was doing?" she asked.
     
    Sam finished wiping the radiator, went into the
    kitchen, and sat at the kitchen table. "Well, not what
    he was doing," he said reluctantly. He began turning
    the Morse book around and around on the table.
     
    "But you know where he was?" I put in worriedly.
     
    Because if he did know and hadn't said so, it must
    have been somewhere--
     
    "In the cemetery," Sam said miserably.
     
    --bad.
     
    He sighed again. "I went out on my bike twice, see.
    And the second time, I rode through Hillside Cemetery.
    Dad was on one of the benches."
     
    "Are you sure it was your father? It was dark."
     
    Ellie cracked two eggs expertly, reserving a little
    white for the glaze and beating the rest into the bowl
    with some milk. In the bowl already were the flour,
    sugar, and butter, and the Bakewell Cream powder,
    which as a substitute for ordinary baking powder is
    like using rocket fuel instead of gasoline.
     
    "Yeah," Sam said, "I'm sure. He didn't speak,
    though, so I guessed he wanted to be let alone. So," he
    shrugged, "I did."
     
    "Move over," Ellie said, shooing him to the side.
    Sam pushed the Ouija board in its box and the Morse
    book out of her way, as she deftly floured her hands
    and kneaded the scone batter twenty times, then flattened
    it into a pancake shape on the table.
     
    "So you went home," she said. "Back to Victor's, I
    mean."
     
    He nodded, watching her cut the pancake into a
    dozen wedges, then transfer the wedges to a baking
    sheet. Finally she spread them with beaten egg white
    and drizzled granulated sugar between her fingers until
    the sugar stopped soaking into the egg white.
     
    "Was Reuben's body already there, by any
    chance?" Popping the baking sheet into the oven, she
     
    dusted her hands together briskly and competently. I
    took her point: Although the blood had indeed seemed
    reasonably fresh when we found him, he could have
    been there a while.
     
    "I don't know. I wasn't looking for it," Sam said.
     
    Absently, he opened the Ouija board box, slid the
    planchette dejectedly over the varnished surface of the
    board. It was elaborately painted in crisp, glossy black,
    the standard numerals and letters spread out across it.
    The words 'Yes and No were displayed in the upper
    left-and-right-hand corners.
     
    "I was wishing Dad would call me over," he said,
    riddling with the planchette. "But he didn't, and then I
    was past him. I never looked at the gate."
     
    The planchette slipped off the edge of the table and
    fell to the floor; Monday came over and sniffed suspiciously
    at it.
     
    Sam picked it up again. "It felt lousy, you know?
    Not being able to help him. But he never does. Let me
    help him, I mean. And now if I have to say where he
    was when I saw him last night ..."
     
    "No one has asked you," Ellie said. "And I hope
    you're not thinking of volunteering any information
    before it's requested."
     
    We sat in glum silence until the oven timer's brr
    ring! interrupted my musing: Victor had bathed that
    morning, so thoroughly that to anyone who didn't
    know him it would look as if he'd been trying to wash
    something off.
     
    Even more, I mean, than usual. Ellie took the
    cream scones from the oven. "So the next time you
    knew where your father was, he was here? This morning?"
     
    But Sam shook his head again. "After I went to
    bed, I heard him. It was getting light out, so it must
    have been around five. I heard the shower run, and
    after that he did