Nobody's There by Joan Lowery Nixon

Author:Joan Lowery Nixon [Nixon, Joan Lowery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-82343-4
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2012-10-31T04:00:00+00:00

The telephone was ringing as Abbie entered the kitchen. She sprinted to answer the ring, grabbed the receiver, and said, “Hello?”

“Hi,” Gigi answered. “I met my Friend today—Mrs. Gertrude Armistead. She’s darling. She’s typecast right out of a movie. She’s just what a great-grandmother ought to be.” Gigi laughed with delight. “And guess what—she’s not a hundred. She’s only eighty-nine. But she wears a perfume that smells like marshmallows and she loves to eat chocolate.”

Abbie laughed too. “Lucky you,” she said, surprised to hear a twinge of envy in her own voice. Trying to make up for it before Gigi noticed, she quickly said, “What did you do? Did you drive her somewhere?”

“No. Mrs. Armistead loves to play Chinese checkers and usually has no one to play with, so we drank iced tea with mint and played Chinese checkers.”

Abbie smiled. “You and I played Chinese checkers for years when we were kids. Remember? Dad used to join us sometimes and …” She broke off. “So who won? You or Mrs. Armistead?”

“She did,” Gigi said. “I thought maybe I’d have to let her win, like you do when you’re playing with little kids, but she’s a lot better player than I am. She told me I needed practice to keep up with her.”

“I’m glad you got somebody nice,” Abbie said.

“I could count on it that whomever I got would be better than your Mrs. Merkel,” Gigi said. “How did it go today? Is she still hunting for criminals?”

“She still thinks she’s a private eye,” Abbie said. “We went to a coffee shop where she could spy on someone out the window.”

Gigi laughed. “Who did she spy on?” she asked.

Abbie searched her mind for an answer, surprised that she could come up with nothing. “I don’t know,” she said.

“What do you mean, you don’t know? You were with her, weren’t you?”

Abbie sighed. “Yes, but I was kind of distracted. Dad’s … uh … that … Jamie Lane was our waitress.”

“Uh-oh.”

“I know. I asked Mrs. Merkel if we could leave and go somewhere else, but she said no. She didn’t care that being so close to that woman was really bothering me.”

“I’m sorry you had a rough time,” Gigi said.

Abbie thought about telling Gigi the rest of it—the car that almost ran them down, the crooks out of jail on bail, and the notebook filled with Mrs. Merkel’s secret notes. But at the moment she couldn’t talk about all that. Her only hope was to change the subject. “Want to go to a movie Sunday afternoon?” she asked.

“Sure,” Gigi said, and she began telling Abbie in detail about an Internet review of a new film they both wanted to see.

Abbie could hear Davy clumping down the stairs. In a moment he appeared in the kitchen doorway. He waved the thin, three-hole notebook over his head. “Come on,” he said in an exaggerated stage whisper. “You’ve got to tell me everything that happened before Mom gets home and it’s too late.”

Whatever Gigi was talking about at that moment was drowned out.

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