Is the light coming from the old Holcomb mansion really Gus Vanderhagan coming back for his gold? What are the strange clicking noises coming from the vicinity of Goose Lake? Will the priceless necklace, which has been missing for so many years finally be found? Who is terrorizing the sweet old widow, Carey Morgan, and why?
"The Raven's Voice Detective Agency" solves it's first big case. Jud Coolidge, and his partner Hank Goble, are joined by their classmate, Gina Rae McGilkin, and Jud's eccentric uncle Stan - a would be inventor who lurks in the background assembling clues to solve "The Secret of Vanderhagan's Gold." But they soon discover that they are not working alone - someone else is also on the trail! But, who? The final words of a dying man; "Baby coffin' at night," is the only clue they have to go on.
The Judson Coolidge Mystery Series are mysteries for kids of all ages - even adults will enjoy trying to solve these mysteries as well as Hank Goble's quick and sarcastic wit and great personality. Hank is Jud's "Dr. Watson" and principle partner in "The Raven's Voice Detective Agency." They are always joined by their classmate, Gina Rae McGilkin whenever on a case. The series was meant to be a refreshing change and alternate choice to the seemingly endless stream of books being written these days about the occult. I'm hoping that there still may be at least a small number of parents who just may be looking for a different choice - a choice of good, clean, old fashioned mysteries with a cast of very engaging characters. "The Secret of Vanderhagan's Gold" is the first in the series and self published some years back. It can be ordered at authorhouse.com The next titled, "The Case of The Missing Macaw" is a finished manuscript looking for a publisher. I also have about 200 pages of manuscript for the last two in the series.
Excerpt
Here is all of Chapter Five.
Chapter Five-The Mystery Mansion~
On our way out Jud said, “I want to call a meeting, Henry. An official one.”
I didn’t ask what the difference was between an official meeting and just a regular one. As a full partner in the agency I guess I was supposed to already know. I didn’t see any reason why we couldn’t discuss what we were going to do at Beezler’s and call it good. But I agreed.
“Fine,” I said. “What time?”
Jud checked his watch which is one of those big, clunky kind that does everything but your homework. “Sixteen-hundred hours,” he said.
In case you didn’t know ( fat chance ) sixteen-hundred hours is the same thing as four o’clock. It’s the way the military tells time and it’s really dumb - like it’s some kind of secret code or something. I mean, if I can figure it out, it can’t be much of a secret. Anyway, at four . . . excuse me, at sixteen-hundred hours I met Jud at H. Q., which is short for “headquarters.” And, not only that, but I carried my own notebook from then on.
When I got there, the flag was up, and the raven was flapping in the breeze. Now, that was our sign that one of us was already there, so I knew Jud was waiting for me. I was huffing and puffing after the climb, but I made it. It might have been a little easier the second time, too. At this rate I figured it wouldn’t be long before weight would be a problem of the past. Either that, or I’d croak of a cardiac arrest, and I wouldn’t have any worries about losing weight.
Jud was focusing his binoculars out the window. I sat down to catch my breath and unscrewed an Oreo. I made short work of the white filling, and he fooled with his binoculars and talked.
“Did you know that binoculars are actually two small telescopes both focused at the same time by this thumb screw? The telescope was first invented in Holland, but there’s controversy over the inventor. Most people say it’s a Dutchman, in about sixteen-hundred and eight.”
“Sixteen-hundred and eight? That’s . . . that’s over three-hundred years ago.”
“Closer to four-hundred. Three-hundred and ninety-two to be exact. Amazing, isn’t it?”
“Uh-huh.”
Jud put his binoculars down and took out his notebook. He read something he had written down - something that only him and me would understand. He called it our “credo,”which, at first, I thought had something to do with a person’s religion or race. But it doesn’t. It has to do with how “The Raven’s Voice Detective Agency” would conduct business. Kinda like Jud’s version of The Constitution.
After that, he said that starting with the next meeting we would begin by not only reading the credo, but also something called the “minutes.” The minutes is what went on at the last meeting, and that’s why we couldn’t do it that time, on account of there wasn’t any meeting before that one.
After all that official stuff, Jud went on to talk about what he really wanted to discuss in the first place. The secret of Vanderhagn’s gold. It wasn’t long and Jud was fired up big time.
He smoothed down his disobedient curls and stuck one finger in the air. “Hank,” he said, “this could be our biggest . . . uh, I mean . . . this could be our first big case! Like I said before, I believe the place to begin is the Holcomb house, and I want to check it out a. s. a. p.! Maybe we’ll see the light . . . and maybe even who, or what is causing it.” He looked at his watch. “Can you make it at nineteen-hundred hours?”
“Seven at night? I mean, it’s practically dark at nineteen-hundred hours isn’t it?”
Jud gave me the same look my mom does whenever I forget to lift the toilet seat. “Hank, you’re not afraid of the dark are you?”
“Me? No way. Uh, I just thought that we could see better in the daytime, that’s all.”
To tell you the truth I wasn’t crazy about prowling around some drafty old house that was bound to be full of cobwebs and creaks and groans. To say nothing of running into some dead guy wandering around looking for his gold. But I reminded myself again that I was a partner. A full partner.
We met at Jud’s the next evening and rode our bikes on the dirt road that goes right by Carey Morgan’s place. Straight past Carey’s is Goose Lake. If you go to the right at Carey’s there’s another road, or, what’s left of a road, which dead ends into to the old Holcomb place. But we didn’t take any of those routes, on account of Jud wanting to be all secretive. We took an overgrown trail before Carey’s, which Jud imaginatively referred to as a “shortcut.” It also finds it’s way to the Holcomb place - eventually.
Jud had told me all about Goose Lake, and before the summer ended we planned on doing some serious fishing. Goose Lake has some of the best catfish and bluegill fishing around. Sometimes there’s even a bass or two caught. There’s no trout in Goose Lake, though. The shortcut wasn’t because of Carey Morgan - she’s a sweet elderly widow who owns most of the property including the lake. She’s really a nice lady. But just the same, Jud didn’t want anyone seeing us.
I said that the trail was overgrown. That was an understatement. To start with, the brush was well over our heads. Stickers and all kinds of “hitchhikers” stuck to our clothes and brush poked us as we worked our way through the mess. Just as we were passing through a swarm of gnats something went down the back of my neck.
“AAAHHHH! WHOA! OH NO!” I yelped.
Jud blinked his eyes. “What is it?”
I pulled my collar back for Jud to inspect. “I THINK IT’S A STINKING SPIDER! GET IT, WILL YOU?”
“Where? I don’t see any . . . AHHHGGGG. KAAA! KAAA!” Jud grabbed his throat and gagged. “A GNAT! I JUST SWALLOWED A GNAT!”
I considered giving Jud the old Heimlich maneuver, but I didn’t know if would work on something as small as a gnat. Besides, I had my own problems. I pulled off my shirt up and did a war dance, trying to dislodge the intruder on my back.
Well, the crises didn’t last that long. A minute or so later it was all over. The color in Jud’s face was back to normal, and he had stopped coughing. And thank God, whatever was crawling down my back was gone.
“Nice shortcut, Jud,” I told him, as we resumed our journey. He responded by pushing his glasses up and a whole lot of blinking.
The sun was down by the time we reached the old house. All you gotta do is imagine the typical haunted house you see in the movies, and that’s exactly the way the Holcomb house looked the first night I saw it - a huge two-story old mansion, with hardly any of it’s white paint left. A tiny tower sat at the very top. I tried to take my mind off how scary the place was at night by imagining people sitting up there a hundred years ago - you know, drinking tea and watching birds. But, in my heart, I just knew some gruesome beast lurked in the tower, just waiting to tear us limb from limb.
The trees on the property were huge - giant maples and eucalyptus. There were even a few “old-growth” redwoods, which had to be at least ten feet across the butt ( which is the lowest part of the tree ) and three-hundred feet tall. With a dark hole where the door once was, and two broken out windows over it, the old mansion almost looked like it had a face. A dark face watching our every move. A porch ran the distance of the front of the house and down one side to the back.
Before long, the only light we had was the pale moon peeking from behind the dark clouds occasionally. A cool breeze raised goose bumps on my arms. If anything was gonna jump out of nowhere and scare me into next Tuesday it was gonna happen then. I gotta tell ya, full partner or not, I had a bad feeling about the whole idea. I seriously considered handing in my resignation - effective immediately.
At first Jud said we would just wait and watch, but I knew that wouldn’t last. Pretty soon he got antsy and whispered, “I have an idea. Let’s hide inside and wait for whoever might come in. We could get a better look that way.”
“No way.”
“What was that?”
“I said . . . which way? Which way should we go? Through the front door?”
Jud gave me a funny look. “Of course we’re going through the front door.”
The minor issue of trespassing had occurred to me, but I couldn’t raise much of a protest on account of my mouth feeling like I ate a ball of cotton. Thank goodness I hadn’t spotted any “no trespassing” signs. But then they coulda been knocked down or destroyed by kids - kids like Bryce and Toby. Since the house didn’t even have a front door, I figured the owner wasn’t real concerned with security. Anyway, before we went inside, Jud spotted what looked like a little cemetery off to the side of the house.
“Let’s go over there for a minute,” he said, pointing at the graveyard.
Oh, goodie, I thought. What better time than at night to hang around an old graveyard?
It had a white picket fence around it. We counted six headstones, only they weren’t made out of stone. They were just slabs of wood. But the names were carved into them so they could still be read. There were two groups of two next to each other - “Lila” and “Bufford Burgess” and “George” and “Hazel Holcomb.” One of them read “Corrine Holcomb,” and, from the year she was born, to the time she died, was only six years. There was another one that said “In Memory of Father.” There were two more headstones that seemed like they should have been together, but they weren’t; the one for “Ken Eccal” was on the opposite side of the cemetery from the one that read “Dorothy Eccal.” There was also an unmarked grave beside the one for Ken Eccal.
After five minutes in that place I was starting to regret moving to Muldoon at all. It was a conclusion that I would arrive at more than once as Jud’s sidekick. But, like a good partner, I fell in behind Jud as he stepped through the dark, gaping hole of the old mansion. As soon as we were inside a stinking bat flew right at me! It took all the courage I ever thought I had not to scream. Even with Jud’s flashlight, which was way too small for my liking, we could only see a little at a time.
Well, we poked around as best we could. Then we headed for the second floor on the most creakiest stairs you could ever hope to step on. We were making our way through the bedroom one at a time when we heard the footsteps - weird footsteps. Like someone with a limp. ( I hate it when that happens. ) And they were headed up the stairs!
I poked Jud in the ribs.
“Ouch. What is it?” he whispered.
“I think I’m gonna have a heart attack.”
“Shhh. I think I hear something.”
I held my chest. “I’m not kidding, Jud. I think I’m headin’ for the big one! I think it’s him, Jud”
“Who?”
“You know . . . Gus, Gus Vanderhagan. Jud, I think he’s back for his gold. I really don’t think we should . . . ”
“Will you please be quiet? Just relax and follow me.”
At first I thought my heart was gonna stop. Then I thought it never would stop. It was bouncing all over the place. My legs instantly turned to jelly, and I felt the hair on my neck stand up. I just knew the evening would end with me heading for the E. R. Jud was fooling around with that silly flashlight of his the whole time trying to adjust the beam. Finally he gave up and shoved it into his back pocket still on.
By the time we spotted an old box springs leaning in the corner of a bedroom I was ready to jump from the top floor. The box springs just happened to be in a room that had an attic access. We figured we could climb the box springs and reach the crawl hole enough to pull ourselves up into the attic. So that’s what we did.
It was musty and damp up there and before Jud pulled out his flashlight, it was so dark I couldn’t see my own hand in front of my face. And, not only that, but the catwalk we were perched on was full of splinters. I didn’t find this out until later when I dug about a dozen of them from my fingers. Still, it was a whole lot better than facing whoever, or whatever it was that was creaking its way up those rickety stairs in our direction. I expected to hear old Gus Vanderhagan’s voice threatening us from out of the dark - warning us to stay away from his gold or he’d throttle us both. I accidentally nudged Jud again.
“What is it this time?” he whispered.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean it. But, I mean, what if he finds us? What do you think he’ll do to us after coming up those crummy old stairs . . . step by step? What if he gets his stinking, old bony fingers around our throats and . . . ”
“For Pete’s sake, Hank. Put a lid on it, will you? Do you want him to know where we are?”
“See! You believe its Gus too, don’t you?”
“I do not. Great. Now you’ve got me saying it. I’ll tell you this much, if he was looking for us, he wouldn’t have a hard time finding us the way you’re carrying on.”
“Fine! But my dad’s gonna be very upset if I come home minus my arms and legs.”
I clammed up after that. I held my breath and figured Jud was doing the same. It seemed like forever for the footsteps to disappear. Even after they did, we waited for quite a while before coming down. Not that we wanted to even then, but we couldn’t stay up there forever.
We flew down the stairs and headed for the doorway. I was only a few feet from freedom when I felt something pull me from behind!
“Oh, no!” I managed to squeak. “He’s got me, Jud. Gus Vander . . . oh, sorry. It’s just my jacket . . . hung up on . . . a . . . a nail.”
I felt foolish, but if it hadn’t been for that I wouldn’t have found a clue that turned out to be important later. It was something shining in a strip of moonlight on the hardwood floor. I unhooked myself and bent down. It was a tiny key. I put it in my pocket and joined Jud outside where he was standing with his head cocked to one side.
“Do you hear that?” he asked.
“Hear what?”
“Just listen.”
He cocked his head again and squinted like that would help him hear better. And there was something! A faint clicking of some kind.
“We better get going, Jud. We can investigate later. My parents are going to be worried.”
But Jud was reluctant to leave. “Didn’t you tell them it might be dark by the time you got home tonight?”
“Not exactly.”
“What does that mean . . . not exactly?”
“I don’t know, but I gotta get home - now!”
Let me tell ya, it was no picnic plowing back through all those stickers again. By the time we got back to the road, we were loaded up with fox tails and every other kind of stickery thing. At least we hadn’t swallowed any more bugs or picked up any unwanted insects down our pants this time.
Back in town the city hall building was all lit up.
Jud came up with the reason why. “My dad said that the city council is discussing some possible re-zoning of land in and around Muldoon.” He squinted. “Looks like Mr. Pomeroy’s car. Angus Muldoon’s car is here, too. And so is Mr. Z’s.”
“Maybe they’re on the city council.”
Jud pushed his glasses up. “Not that I know of. Maybe they’re just concerned citizens.”
I told Jud goodbye, but I don’t think he heard me, on account of he went into another trance right then. I didn’t stick around to ask him what he was pondering. I figured he would eventually tell me.
I was surprised that my parents weren’t upset with me - not at first anyway. I figured that they must have been busy and probably didn’t even notice how late it was. At least, that’s what I was hoping.
The first thing I did was take my bike to the garage. I wanted to see Chuck. I had fixed a really good spot for her as soon as we had all our stuff put away. Only, I couldn’t find her. She wasn’t in the garage. I went back into the house. Sometimes Mom lets her stay inside. But she wasn’t there either.
“What did you lose?” asked my dad. He didn’t look up from his newspaper.
“Chuck. Where is she?”
Dad put down his paper. “Good question, son. You don’t suppose someone could have left the garage door open today, do you?”
“But . . . but, I made sure the gate was . . . oh my gosh! I left the gate open! I let her out of the garage earlier, and I must have forgotten to shut the gate in the back yard . . . ”
I had left the gate open, and now Chuck was lost! I knew she had a great sense of smell and everything, but, what if something happened to her? What if she couldn’t get home? Worse yet, what if she had been hit by a car! I didn’t even want to think about it. I ran for the door.
“Where are you going?” asked Dad.
“To find her. To find Chuck. ” I was practically bawling. I had a lump in my throat. I swallowed hard. “I gotta find her, Dad. She might be hurt . . . or . . . or . . . ” But I didn’t want to say what I was thinking. If that ever happened, I could never forgive myself. She was my responsibility.
Dad was calm. He put his paper down and said, “We’ve already combed the neighborhood and most of the streets in town. And we’ve alerted enough folks that if she is anywhere nearby she’ll turn up. You might as well just relax now. You’re not going to solve anything by running around in the dark.”
Alone. Out there, in the dark. Because of me Chuck was out there in the dark, and who knows what’s happened to her?
Needless to say, Dad put me on restrictions for the next week. There was no way I could explain that I would have been home earlier if it hadn’t been for Jud getting me trapped in the attic of some old house and that a ghost was about to get us. That just wouldn’t work. The worst part was I couldn’t even go out and look for Chuck.
Jud called me the next day, and Mom told him why I was on restriction. He said he would still search for Chuck, but I wasn’t even allowed to talk to Jud on the phone, so that put me in the dark about what was happening with her. It was pretty bad all right. Dad could have put me on restriction for the rest of the century, and it wouldn’t be as bad as not knowing what happened to her.
You see, Chuck isn’t just an ordinary dog. My dad and I rescued her from the animal shelter. The man there said that she would have to be dealt within two days if no one adopted her by then. He tried to say it so I wouldn’t understand, but I knew what he meant all right. We took her home from that place, and now I wondered if I’d ever see her again.
Well, to my surprise, only two days later a man drove up to our house, and he had Chuck with him. He didn’t look any older than Dad ( the man - not Chuck ) but he had already lost most of his hair, so that all that was left was a little fringe. He had this funny little mustache, and his ears stuck out. Actually, he reminded me of Mr. Potato Head. And, not only that, he wasn’t that much bigger than me. I shook his had so hard that he must have thought I was never going to let go.
“Thanks a million,” I told him. “My name’s Hank Goble, sir.” I don’t know why, but I reached into my back pocket and gave him T. R. V. agency card. It just happened to be one of the least wrinkled. “Here, uh . . . if you ever need us.”
He smiled as he read the card. “My name is Vincent Pomeroy, Hank. Nice to meet you. Glad I could be of help. I have a basset, too.”
“Really? What’s her name?”
“It’s a he, and I call him Lightening because he moves so slow.”
He introduced himself to my parents, and after taking another look at my business card he said he had to be going.
Chuck didn’t act quite the same after that. Or, maybe I just imagined it. At least to me she didn’t. She didn’t seem to have much energy like she did before. She drank her water and ate food okay, but she wasn’t her old self. I wanted to take her to the vet, but there isn’t any in Muldoon, and the one in Carlsberg was on vacation. Dad said that as long as she was eating she was okay. He said that it’s when dogs stop eating that you have to start worrying.
Anyway, I got off restriction. It wasn’t too bad, on account of there was a freak storm that hit the area, and it rained most of the time I was grounded. So I guess I didn’t miss much. Jud came over as soon as I was a free man again. I had him take a look at Chuck.
“She looks that same as she always has to me,” he said. “Of course it’s hard to tell with this kind of dog since they always look so sad.”
Jud spotted my barbell set which still a thick layer of dust from when they sat in my garage in San Diego. “Do you ever use these things?”
“Naw. When I first got them I went gung ho, but that only lasted about two days. I got so stinking sore I couldn’t lift my arms for two weeks. You can try them if you want. You can even borrow them if you want to. The last time I tried I thought I heard something snap.”
“Really? Well, I would like to build up my biceps a little more.”
We both looked at his pencil-thin arms at the same time.
“A little more?” I asked.
He looked at me suspiciously. “Yeah. Why? Never mind. That can wait. Why don’t we check out your guitar?”
“Sure.”
We went to my room, and I dug out an Oreo from my guitar case. Jud didn’t want any. He wanted to talk more about our case, so I strummed while he talked.
He adjusted his glasses. “So, what do you think of our preliminary investigation?”
I lifted my shoulders. “You mean . . . like the footsteps?”
“Yeah. That and the clicking noise. What do you make of it?”
“Oh, yeah. Well, could it be one of those bugs . . . you know, they’re sort of like a grasshopper . . . ”
Jud shook his head. “No. Wrong part of the country. You’re talking about the cicada, which is mistakenly referred to as a locust, and is sometimes called a harvest fly. Trust me, if what we heard the other night were cicadas it would have a whole lot louder.” He cleared his throat. “You see, after they hatch there can be as many as ten thousand on a single tree. That’s a lot of noise.”
I should have known the “little professor” would have already researched the whole bug thing. The kid’s a regular walking encyclopedia.
“I guess so, a lot more than just a single clicking sound.”
“Exactly.”
“So, what do you think it was?”
Jud drummed his fingers on my guitar case and stared off for a minute. “Wish I knew.”
But something told me that he already did know.
“So, when is your uncle coming?” I asked.
“It’s hard to say. Uncle Stan doesn’t like making elaborate plans, but we usually know within a day or two. He’s pretty much a free spirit.”
“Uh-huh. And so . . . your parents . . . do they like, leave when he gets here?”
Jud avoided the question for a minute by pushing his glasses up and clearing his throat. But I waited him out, and he finally said, “Well . . . I guess you could say that.”
That explained why Mrs. Coolidge was in such a frenzy the day I met her. This uncle Stan character was beginning to sound more like a natural disaster than a human being.
“Stan and I are a lot alike. We get along great. He’s quite an inventor you know.”
“No. I didn’t know. What has he invented?”
“Well, let’s see. There’s the auto/egg flip . . . I mean . . . oh yeah, the co2 powered . . . no, that’s not exactly perfected either.” He blinked his real fast. “Now, there is the robo . . . I mean, well . . . he hasn’t actually completely completed any of his inventions yet, but he has some really cool ideas. Once he does get them finished, he’s going to get patents on them. You know - so no one can steal his ideas. I’m sure he’ll have investors lined up then. It’s just of matter time now.” He smoothed his curls. “I think he’ll be a big help on the case, too.”
Well, I didn’t know about all of that, but I woke up real early the next morning while it was still dark. I had been dreaming about this mad chef. He was wearing one of those tall white hats, and he held a spatula in his hand - only it made a bunch of racket and was going like crazy flinging eggs all over the place. Like a high speed Ferris wheel. Do you know what the word “portend” means? I looked it up. A portend is something that lets you know when something is about to happen. It’s like a warning.
The next day Jud called and said to meet him at H. Q. The flag was flapping, so I knew he was already there. Even though I’m sure rope climbing will never be one of my favorite pastimes, I had to admit that it was getting easier.
Jud read our official credo for our meeting that he had dreamed up. Then he read the minutes, which were pretty short. The first new business we talked about was what we could do to earn money for musical equipment we needed. I came up with the idea of lawn mowing and cleaning out garages and stuff like that. That’s what I did down south in San Diego. It’s how I got the money for my guitar.
“Sounds good to me,” said Jud. “Let’s put up some posters, and once we make a little money we can run an inexpensive ad.”
“Cool. We still have cardboard boxes left over from moving. We can cut some up for signs.”
So that’s what we did. For the rest of the day we made these posters and stuck them everywhere they’d let us. It was gonna be a piece of cake. In no time our phones would be ringing off the hook, and we’d be rich. Except for one thing. On our way back home we noticed our posters were disappearing as fast as we were putting them up.
“Maybe it’s the wind,” said Jud.
“No way. Maybe someone who’s full of wind.”
“Why would he do that?”
“You know him better than I do. I’d say the main reason is that he’s a jerk.”
Then I told Jud about someone trying to make off with my bike.
“And you think it was Bryce?”
“I couldn’t get a good enough look to be positive, but it was someone who was pretty good size and wearing a red tee shirt, too.”
“A lot of people wear red tee shirts.”
“Really? Name one.”
Jud fumbled with his glasses and tried smoothing his hair down. He blinked real fast. “Maybe you’re right. Well, there’s no use in going through all that work again. We’ll have to put an ad in sooner than expected.”
So that’s what we did. We went to the park and sat at a bench to compose our ad. I gotta admit, it was kinda clever, too. This is what it said:
WEEDS, ETC.
W - WE
E - EARN
E - EVERY
D - DIME
S - SO
CALL JUD OR HANK FOR PROMPT SERVICE -GARAGE CLEAN-OUTS OUR SPECIALTY
And then, of course, we added both of our phone numbers. Next we went home and called The Action Advertiser, which is where people advertise just about everything. We had to send in the money before they would begin our ad, so Jud asked his dad if he would do it for us on his way out of town. After that all we had to do was wait for the phone to ring and we’d be stinking rich. Something like that, anyway.
In the meantime Jud made some more business cards on his computer. They didn’t look half bad. So all of a sudden I went from hardly having a friend in the world to being a partner in two businesses and having my name on two different cards!
For the next few days, while waiting for the phone to ring, we talked about the case and practiced playing music quite a bit. Whenever we played at the park, we always had a bunch of kids around. They thought we were pretty hot, and that made me feel good. My parents have always told me that I sounded okay, but you know how your parents are - they’d say it was just wonderful even if it was killing them.
Jud called me the night of the dance and said that his uncle Stan was here. I guess that meant that his parents had made their escape. He also wanted to call another meeting to discuss a second inspection of the Holcomb place. I met Jud at his house, and from there we walked to the auditorium. I was kinda looking forward to meeting his eccentric uncle, but Stan was taking a shower, so I missed him. I noticed a couple of mysterious looking black cases of some kind sitting in the entry. There was only one small suitcase that seemed to hold clothes. It looked like uncle Stan traveled light. I could only guess what was in those boxes.
When we got about a block away we could hear the band already playing. My stomach was dancing with butterflies. Kids, along with their parents, and what I guessed were teachers, were packing into the gym. I recognized some of the townspeople I had already met.
I felt pretty good. Already things seemed to be changing for the better here in Muldoon. I realized I hadn’t thought about my weight problem for a long time - and I couldn’t even remember the last time I stood sideways.
Then, wouldn’t you know it? As soon as we walked in, the absolutely, very first person I see in the whole stinking place was my old pal Bryce Benson. And it looked like he had his trained friend Toby with him, too.
Perfect.
The third book in the funny Silver Sisters Mysteries series. The twins and their 80 year-old mother and uncle get into trouble sleuthing in Sin City.
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