Casey Templeton Mysteries 2-Book Bundle. Gwen Molnar

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СКАЧАТЬ town of Richford — like West Edmonton Mall. Now that was a mall — biggest in the world, they said. But nobody in the family had ever won anything there, and here was Hank, not two months in Richford, and he had won first prize in the draw. A person had to be sixteen to enter. That left Casey out by two years.

      Casey had been born long after Hank when nobody in the family had expected there would be another baby. After three sons, Jake now twenty-four, Billy twenty-one, both at university, and Hank eighteen and a half, his parents likely wished, when they knew there was going to be another child, that it would be a girl. But instead along came Knightly Charles (after his two grandfathers’ middle names), always and forever after to be called KC, then Casey, white-blond and blue-eyed from day one. For about a week at each new school, people called him Knightly, and for some strange reason that suited Casey just fine. But once they got wind of his nickname, he was Casey to everyone.

      Since the death of Hank’s girlfriend, Cindy, two years earlier — she had been sick only two days when she died of meningitis — Hank had only two things he cared about: his twenty-year-old Harley-Davidson motorcycle and his computer. Casey heard his parents arguing over it all the time. His mom usually said something like, “Colin, nagging isn’t going to help. Hank’s still hurting. One day he’ll remember that there’s more in life than the Internet and the Harley. Trust me.”

      They had all liked Cindy a lot. She was tall, with masses of honey-coloured hair, sparkly dark brown eyes, and a great smile. She was smart and fun and so easy to be with. They didn’t talk about it much, but they missed her.

      Casey knew if he said good-night and went up to his room, Hank would hardly take any notice. So he did just that. Hank muttered something but didn’t even turn around. As Casey tucked his pillow under the duvet in case Hank did check on him in bed, he wondered how much time he would need to find his dad’s pipe and get back. An hour and a half, two hours max should do it. He went quietly downstairs, picked his coat and hat off the hook, put on his boots, took his dad’s flashlight, and silently opened and closed the back door. Standing on the porch for a minute, he waited to see if Hank had heard anything. Then he headed off. It was starting to snow a bit, and the sky had the reddish cloudy cast it had when a heavy snowstorm was brewing.

      He had heard all about the red snow sky on the Prairies, and how some years, heavy snow began falling as early as the first week of October. It seemed as if this would be one of those years.

      There wasn’t much about the Prairies winter, summer, spring, or fall that he hadn’t heard before from his parents. And they had finally gotten their wish to come back to Richford, “Paradise on the Prairies,” their hometown.

      “Don’t know where I’d call my hometown,” Casey muttered now as he continued to trudge through the snow to the Willson Place. He went over in his mind the six or so places he had lived so far. He was sure of one thing. He didn’t want to go back to the last one — Edmonton. There were too many bad family memories back there. He recalled the day his dad had gone off to Afghanistan in the first rotation of a Canadian commitment under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The Mounties’ role was to help train new recruits for the Afghan national police. Casey’s father had done a similar tour of duty in Bosnia in the 1990s. In Afghanistan, though, his dad had been seriously injured by an improvised explosive device embedded in a country road. Although he had fully recovered, the incident had played a part in his early retirement.

      And now Richford, the paradise his parents had remembered so fondly, wasn’t so great anymore. Now the Finegoods, the only Jewish family in town, had had a pipe bomb thrown at their store window, and Mrs. Olberg’s sister-in-law, Maria McKay, a Gypsy from Romania, had been knocked down and almost run over when she was crossing the street near where she lived. A van with smoked windows, which witnesses said had its licence plate taped over, left her on the road and roared away as a bunch of leaflets were tossed out its window. Casey’s mom had picked up one. It listed reasons why Gypsies shouldn’t be allowed to exist, never mind live, in Richford.

      Casey couldn’t explain why he felt compelled to get his dad’s pipe back tonight. It wasn’t as if his father was overly strict with Hank or Casey. It was more a feeling that Casey had of not wanting to let his dad down, especially since his father was such an upright kind of guy who never seemed to make a false move or do anything just for the fun of it.

      Actually, Casey now thought, he didn’t really know his father all that well. His dad had been gone for so much of his life. Walking on, he considered that fact and wondered if he was a stranger to his father, too. Casey would have bet that his dad didn’t know what he liked to read or listen to. Correction. His dad had to know what Casey listened to because he was always telling him to turn his music down. And Casey figured his father must have guessed by now that he loved to read fantasy. Likewise, Casey knew his dad liked biographies since he dragged them home from the library by the armful. And both of his parents liked jazz and classical music.

      Hank was always telling Casey he should relax around their father the way Hank did, but somehow he couldn’t. He was always doing something his father didn’t approve of, or if his dad did approve, he was doing it the wrong way. Maybe, he thought now, one day he would do something right.

      Casey had tried last week. He had thought he would surprise his dad by reorganizing his tool bench, but the favour hadn’t been appreciated. Oh, well …

      He remembered only vaguely when the Templetons had lived for four years in Regina. All the boys were at home and their dad worked downtown. They saw him every night at supper, and though Casey had been just a little kid, he could still picture his dad hitting fly balls to his older brothers and shooting baskets with them. Not with Casey, though. Never. He couldn’t think of a time when they had even gone for a walk together.

      Casey thought how different his relationship with his mother was. She was always there for him and drove him all over the place so he wouldn’t miss a single swim meet. His mother went to all the PTA meetings at every school he had ever attended, and what was more, she loved and understood him and gave him a little slack. Casey wished his dad were a little more lovable and a little less perfect.

      When he got to the edge of the field near the Old Willson Place, he looked across it and stopped cold. A faint light shone from the old house’s window, the window whose new drapes he had opened after school. As he watched, the light moved and went out.

      It took all his courage to start across the field, but he soon halted again to shine the flashlight on his watch. He had already used up twenty-five minutes. Hurrying didn’t help. He couldn’t go any faster because of the deep furrows. Up, down, up, down — the field seemed endless. Walking sideways didn’t help, either. His legs weren’t long enough to step up and over the furrows, and twice he sat down heavily astride humps of frozen earth.

      Then walking suddenly became easier. He had made it to the tree-lined road leading to the house. Not far to go now. Casey switched the flashlight to his right hand and pushed his left hand deep into his coat pocket to warm it. He had done quite a few dumb things in his life, but nothing as dumb as this. Hoping to glimpse the Willson gate, Casey held the flashlight as far as he could to his right. At the very moment he caught sight of the gate, his foot hit something unyielding on the path and he fell heavily into the snow, his flashlight cartwheeling away.

      Casey lay stunned for a moment, then sat up and slid over to a dim halo of light under the snow a metre or so ahead. He turned the flashlight back to see what had tripped him. Casey could make out a lump in the snow but couldn’t see what it was. He shone the light up higher. Above the snow were the tops of a pair of hiking boots, jean-clad legs, a heavy dark jacket with a high collar, and … nothing. Nothing? Casey leaped up. Now he could see a man’s head tilting so far back over the hinge edge of a wide chain-link gate that the face was thick with snow.

      Pulling СКАЧАТЬ