The Black Tower by BYARS BETSY

Author:BYARS, BETSY
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PENGUIN group
Published: 2010-02-26T05:00:00+00:00

16

THE THINK COCOON

Herculeah took out her granny glasses. She put them on, hooking the thin metal wires behind her ears.

Herculeah had gotten these glasses at Hidden Treasures, a secondhand store where she often shopped. Herculeah bought some of her clothes there, and other useful things. Once when she had been in Hidden Treasures, she had tried on these glasses. She couldn’t see anything out of them, but she discovered she could think better. The world seemed to blur into a mist, making her ideas stand out. “It’s like being in a think cocoon,” she had explained to Meat.

She was sitting on her bed, waiting for her thoughts to clear when her mother came and stood in the doorway.

“Have you got on those ridiculous glasses again?” her mother said. “You’re going to ruin your eyes.”

Herculeah couldn’t see her mom, but she knew she was there. She pushed the glasses to the top of her head.

“Hi, Mom.”

“So what was the phone message about? Why did you need me to come pick you up?”

“Oh, that. I meant to erase it. Meat’s mom came and got us. It was nothing. Meat fainted.”

“Fainted?”

“Oh, Mom, he faints all the time.”

“I didn’t know that. So what was the excitement you mentioned?”

“Meat was standing out in the yard and someone threw something out of the tower window, and Meat got dizzy watching it and fainted. End of story.”

Herculeah sincerely hoped it was.

“Someone was in the tower?”

“Yes, the sister.”

“I thought it was locked.”

“The new nurse said there are keys if you know where to look.”

“How would she know that? The woman’s only been there one day.”

“Good question.”

“I’ll have to talk to the lawyer. There’s been enough tragedy connected with that tower.”

“I know. Meat’s mom told us. Someone threw a stone from the tower and killed the governess.” She eyed her mother, pretending to be critical. “You could take some lessons from Mrs. Mac.”

Her mom knew Herculeah’s opinion of Mrs. Mac. She smiled. “How so?”

“She tells us things. For example, if she knew what you were working on for Mr. Hunt, she would tell us. She doesn’t treat everything as a big secret.”

Her mom seemed to think that over. “Mr. Randolph, the lawyer, was drawing up a will for Mr. Hunt. This was before his stroke, and he wanted some investigative work done. He contacted me. I was to find the other sister. That was the extent of my involvement, but I became interested in the old man. I felt sorry for him. I used to drop in and see him from time to time.”

“This sister you were going to find. It’s not the old crazy one who left the message on your machine.”

“No. There were younger sisters—twins. Only one of them is alive now, and that was who I was to find.”

Herculeah had her mom talking now, and she didn’t want her to stop. “Everybody says there’s money hidden in the house—even Nurse Wegman. By the way, I don’t trust her. She’s weird.”

“Mr. Randolph hired the nurses himself. They’re the same team that nursed his invalid mother, so you don’t have to worry about them.

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