Joy Sparton and the Mystery in Room 7 by Ruth I. Johnson

Author:Ruth I. Johnson [Johnson, Ruth I.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8024-8992-0
Publisher: Moody Publishers
Published: 1974-08-27T04:00:00+00:00

I began to shudder. Was Carl the same Carlos that Sam was talking with? Was he the person the police had been looking for in room number seven last night? And how did Sam know him?

While I was standing there wondering all these things, the motel manager walked over to me, grabbed the paper from my hand and said roughly, “I’ll take that.”

6

The Suspicious Mr. Sinkey

FOR A MOMENT I trembled after the man had jerked the piece of paper from my hand. I looked up at him and saw that he wasn’t smiling. The tag on his coat showed his name to be B. Sinkey. The B. is for Ben, I thought to myself. But I didn’t dare ask him if I was right.

“It was blowing on the driveway,” I said, pointing to the note he crumpled in his hand. “Carlos dropped it when he and Sam went into that clinch.” I smiled as I said that.

The expression on Mr. Sinkey’s face changed. Suddenly he was smiling too. “Oh, I don’t think it came from him. I just saw it floating around and was going to come and pick it up. You know what they say about littering.” He laughed loudly enough for both Carlos and Sam to hear.

Littering, my foot! I thought to myself. If I hadn’t sneaked a look at that note, I might have believed him. But I had read it and I did know what it said. I wondered if Mr. Sinkey had seen me reading it. Right now all I knew was that this man was lying. And he had lied to us before. Last night when he had come to tell us about changing our room, he said it was because Dad was a preacher and he wanted to treat us special. We all knew that wasn’t the truth. And now I was sure he was lying about the note too.

He looked over toward Sam and nodded in his direction.

“A friend of yours?”

“My cousin from Latin America.”

“Latin America!” he said in surprise. “Did he know—this Carlos, or whatever his name is, from there?”

“I don’t know. Is Carlos from Latin America?”

“Well—well, I would assume so, wouldn’t you?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Do you know Carlos very well?”

“Oh, no, I just met him a few minutes ago. He came in to register for a room.”

“I hope you didn’t give him number seven,” Roy said, butting in on our conversation.

Mr. Sinkey bristled and then started to cough. When he could talk again, he looked at Roy.

“And what’s the matter with number seven?”

Roy looked at the motel manager in surprise.

“Don’t you remember? That’s the one the cops tried to raid last night.”

“Oh, yes, certainly.”

When Roy first mentioned room number seven, I thought Mr. Sinkey was going to explode. He had coughed like something had gone down the wrong hole in his throat. That Roy! He could say the dumbest things and get himself into trouble without even trying. Why did he have to say that right now? It sure had seemed to get to Mr.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.