House Arrest by Franklin W. Dixon

Author:Franklin W. Dixon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin
Published: 2008-08-22T04:00:00+00:00

Logged Out

“What are you doing?”

I looked up at Joe. “What does it look like?” I waved the book I was reading. “Whatever, dude. Just asking,” he muttered.

I sighed. Things had been a little tense between us for the past day or so. It had started with that walk Joe had taken with Brynn. I admit it—I was starting to think about her. A lot. I was trying not to let it interfere with the case, but it was kind of hard. Especially when Joe kept wandering off with her every chance he got.

It didn’t help that absolutely nothing interesting had happened in the house since breakfast the day before. We’d barely even seen Veronica since my deprivation announcement. At least the mansion had a well-stocked library. I’d spent a lot of time sitting in front of the fire with a book. For one thing, that made it easy to observe my housemates as they wandered in and out of the great room. Although it was a little uncomfortable when Mikey would come in, stare sadly at the spot where the TV had been, then turn to glare at me.

I didn’t care if Mikey was annoyed with me. But being at odds with my brother was getting old. I closed my book and stood up.

“Hey,” I told Joe. “Let’s, um, go see if there’s any bottled water left in the supply closet.”

“Okay.”

I was in the lead as we rounded the corner. Mikey was just stepping out of the closet. He sort of jumped when he spotted us.

“Oh! Hey, guys,” he said. “I was just in there getting more, uh, toilet paper.”

“Really?” said Joe. “Where is it?”

Mikey glanced down at his empty hands. “Oh. Um, when I got in there I remembered I already got some.”

He hurried off. Joe and I let ourselves into the closet.

“That was weird,” he said. “Mikey, I mean.”

“Yeah.” I did want to talk about the case. But first I had something else to say. “Listen, Joe. About Brynn…”

“What about her?” he demanded, instantly suspicious.

I held up both hands. “Chill, man. I’m just saying we can’t let her distract us, okay? We’re supposed to be working here.”

He shrugged. “If you say so.”

He still sounded pretty tense. Fine. I wasn’t going to jolly him out of it this time. He was a big boy—he would just have to deal.

“Okay, we should probably talk about the latest incident—Mary getting shoved out by the wood-pile.”

“What about it?” Joe shook his head. “We already decided that was a dead end for now. Anyway, I think we should talk about Mikey. He’s been acting weirder and weirder. I think he should be on the top of the suspect list.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Too bad you had to go and tick him off by taking away his precious TV,” Joe added. “It would be a lot easier to question him if he wasn’t moping around.”

“Look, Joe,” I said with a flash of irritation. “If you’re mad about something, why don’t you just come out and—”

The door swung open.

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