The Ghost of Gruesome High by Larry Parr

Author:Larry Parr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Fiction Works
Published: 2012-12-03T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

The pieces begin to fit together!

I could feel a sudden tension in the air, though I wasn’t sure why. “How do you know he didn’t steal them?” I asked, genuinely curious.

Mr. Greenwald stood up, dusted the knees of his blue jeans. “Because there’re parts of the story I still haven’t told you. Maybe it’s time I did. Get in the car. I’ll drive you home.”

Without thinking about what I was doing I swung my legs into the car. Mr. Greenwald closed the door, walked around the car and got in behind the wheel. We were out of the parking lot and pointed down the hill before he spoke.

“How did you find out about August Wallenberg?” he asked, finally.

“I spent the afternoon in the school library, reading old newspapers,” I answered quite simply. “According to the papers, it looked like an inside job and August Wallenberg had worked at the store for just three months before the robbery. The night of the robbery he disappeared along with the coins and no one has seen him since. It sure sounds like he did it.”

Mr. Greenwald didn’t say anything for a few seconds as he concentrated on making the right hand turn at the bottom of the hill which put us in relatively heavy Friday afternoon traffic. When he did speak, his words were slightly halting, as if he was considering each one carefully.

“I’ve read those newspaper accounts. In fact, I got the custodian to let me into the back room of the library just a couple of weeks ago so I could reread everything just in case there was something I missed the first time.”

(One small mystery was solved! Now at least I knew who had read the newspapers in the library recently!)

“Unfortunately I didn’t find anything new or anything I’d forgotten. I’m afraid this case has become enough of an obsession with me that I know just about everything there is to know about it.”

“But how do you know that August Wallenberg didn’t rob the store and go to South America or something?” I could tell this was making Mr. Greenwald uncomfortable for some reason—I could see him gripping the steering wheel harder and harder; the knuckles on his hands were completely white with the effort—but I didn’t understand why.

“Because August Wallenberg was my cousin. I’d known him all my life. He was very deeply in love with his wife—I’ve never seen two people more happy and more in love in my whole life—and there was no way on Earth he would have left her and never tried to contact her again.”

A part of me was deeply moved by the depth and sincerity of Mr. Greenwald’s conviction—and maybe he was absolutely right. But another part of me wasn’t convinced by that argument. It was all well and good for Mr. Greenwald to say— and to honestly believe—that August Wallenberg wouldn’t take the coins and run away because he just wasn’t the type of person to do something like that, but

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