Perilously Fun Fiction: A Bundle Pauline Jones (the red fox clan txt) 📖

Mickey looked up from his notes. “Seymour curse?” Even as the words left his mouth, he knew he’d made a mistake. This was one of those roads that shouldn’t be traveled. He knew it in his gut.

“Ineptitude.” Miss Theo looked wise. “There’s not a Seymour male, dead or alive, who isn’t a waste of space.” She gave them a bright smile that seemed to say, “Aren’t we glad we’ve got that behind us?”

Mickey decided the better part of valor would be to leave it behind them and try another tack. “Do you know if the garage is kept locked? Or the gate to the street?”

“Oh, you’d have to ask Boudreaux that, but I would imagine so. I mean, we haven’t been out in the Nash since his eyes went. He’s nearly blind, poor man, but still very eager.”

“We noticed,” Mickey said, dryly. “I understand Reggie is in Cleveland?”

Miss Theo nodded. “On business.”

“And when is he due back?” Delaney asked.

“Well, for the wedding, naturally. He’s giving the bride away. But also for the party.” This appeared to worry her, too, if the crease in her brow was indicative of worry. It was hard to know with a Seymour, Mickey was learning. “He promised to help Boudreaux pour the cement for the gazebo. Case of the inept leading the blind, I’m afraid. Hermi’s much too easy to get round, I’m afraid.”

“Cement?” Mickey spared a quick, thoughtful look at Delaney. He made a note while Delaney tried again with the freezer.

“Back to the freezer, Miss Theo. When was the last time you looked in it?”

“Last week. I wanted to get it started. I mean, you don’t just turn it on and get cold air, you know. It has to warm up, or would that be cool up?” A slight dark look lowered her gentle brow, then she brightened. “Luckily it was already on.”

For the first time since the mention of Reggie, Mickey felt a surge of hope. “So that means the body was stashed there sometime between when you looked in it and today—”

Miss Theo shook her head. “Oh no, it had to be before that.”

Mickey didn’t want to ask, because he was afraid he already knew the answer, but he had to. It was his job. “Why?”

“The body was already there. I’m guessing that’s why the freezer was on. Quite the heat wave we had this month, don’t you think?”

Her pale, helpful gaze beamed on Mickey, then shifted to Delaney. Mickey tried to ask, but the words couldn’t get out his constricted throat. Delaney tottered in to fill the gap. “And the time before that—that you looked in the freezer?”

“Oh, my,” she leaned back, her mind obviously going back in time. “It would have to be at least twenty.”

“Days?” Delaney asked with faint hope.

“Years, dear.”

“But—” Finally Mickey managed to speak. “But—why didn’t you call us when you first found it?”

“How could I call you, dear boy, when I didn’t know you?”

Fern leaned against the railing that overlooked the mall’s center court, lifting first one foot, then the other in an attempt to relieve the pain from her corns. Below her, the shrieks of the snow-crusted children rose in painful spirals of sound as the snow hill melted beneath the combined assault of bodies and heat.

Mercifully the Elvises were on break, reducing the crowd enough for Fern to pick out Donald’s forlorn figure propped against the central pillar. Soon she would descend the escalator and admit defeat in her attempts to find Luci Seymour, but there was no hurry . . .

Almost as if he read her thoughts, Donald looked up and saw her. She straightened, giving a disheartened shrug to the question she knew he was asking. Time to join him. She turned, almost missing his sudden outbreak of frenzy.

“What?” she mouthed, shaking her head.

He calmed down, managing a gesture to her right. Bewildered, Fern looked left, doing a full one-eighty turn before her gaze collided with the profile of their quarry: Luci Seymour leaning against the rail barely twelve inches from Fern. Fern gripped the rail as her heart rate surged. Through the mist that formed over her eyes, she saw Donald jumping up and down. She turned. Luci was heading for the escalator. In a daze, Fern turned to follow her. A crowd formed behind Fern, frustrating her desire to maintain a distance, and Fern was forced onto the escalator right behind Luci. What Fern could see of her, she looked happy, serene, cheerful. It was so unfair. Anger started deep but moved upwards, focusing on her, Luci, the cause of all Fern’s problems.

Just as the escalator began its drop, Luci leaned over the side to stare at the children playing in the snow below.

“Poor little mutts,” she said. “Someone ought to show them how to play in the snow.”

Luci arched up on her toes, craning for a better view. The action made it all blindingly clear for Fern. Someone should show the little mutts how to play in the snow.

She was jostled from behind. Instinctively Fern softened her knees, allowing herself to be thrust forward against the off-balance Luci. A judicious upward thrust and Fern had the satisfaction of seeing Luci sail over the side of the escalator and disappear from view.

Too bad she couldn’t enjoy the sensation. Or keep herself from tumbling down the moving stairs.

They tried to ask Miss Theo more questions, but the momentum was gone. She told them more about Reggie than they really wanted to know, something about the family crest that they didn’t understand, about his stepmother getting strangled by an irate tax evader and his father getting struck by lightning while using the toilet—thereby ending all hope of Reggie having brothers and sisters. Miss Theo seemed to think this was a good thing, Reggie’s side of the family being even more useless than was “normal.” Though she did concede that Reggie was less useless than she’d expected, given his maternity, paternity and jail time. When