Free The Jewel and the Key by Louise Spiegler

name.”
    â€œIt’s Addie. Addie McNeal.”
    â€œI’m Reg Powell.”
    â€œReg?”
    He made a face. “Don’t rub it in. Its Reginald on the birth certificate. And I don’t know what I ever did to deserve that.”
    Addie laughed. It
was
a pretty bad name.
    â€œSome great-uncle of Dad’s, I think. No one ever calls me by my full name, thank goodness. Here, I’ll take the cloth if you’re done.”
    â€œOh. Thanks.” Addie handed it to him and picked up the painted lunch box. She opened it and began rummaging for the antibiotic cream.
    â€œIs that a first-aid kit? That’s lucky. Are you taking one of those Red Cross classes?”
    â€œI ... No. I brought it just in case.” Addie hesitated. “Mrs. Turner asked me to come see if your mom was all right.”
    â€œOh, Mrs. Turner sent you?” Reg smiled uncertainly. “But—why? Something to do with the theater?”
    Addie began lightly applying the antibiotic to the wound. “She was afraid your mother might be injured. You know, like this girl. Knocked down by a piece of furniture or a brick or something.”
    â€œI appreciate your concern—or Meg Turner’s,” Reg said pleasantly. “But what has this girl getting hit with a brick got to do with my mother?”
    â€œWell, if a brick could fly off a building downtown, why couldn’t one fly off a building in Capitol Hill? Do you have some special kind of masonry or something?”
    â€œWhat are you talking about? A vigilante threw that brick. Or did you think that those upstanding defenders of law and order wouldn’t hit a kid?”
    Addie frowned. “I don’t understand.”
    A cry of pain interrupted them. The girls eyes snapped open. She jerked straight up and clutched her head. “Oww! It huuuurts!”
    Addie squeezed in next to her on the sofa and put her arm around her shoulder. “Shhh.”
    â€œI’ll call the doctor.” Reg headed for the door. “She probably needs laudanum.”
    â€œLaudanum?” Addie stared at him. “But—but that’s morphine, isn’t it?”
    â€œI think so. Why?”
    Was he serious? She examined him more closely, but he didn’t seem to be joking. “What’s wrong with a few aspirin? I’ve got some right here.” There were a few loose ibuprofen rattling around inside the kit. She shook two out and held them in her palm. “If you get her some water, she can take it now.”
    â€œThere’s sherry on the mantel.” He moved toward a crystal decanter half full of golden liquid.
    â€œSherry?”
Now she was feeling alarmed.
    â€œIt’s legal in your own home,” he retorted.
    â€œI
know
it’s legal. That's not the point.” For a moment she tried to step back and make sense of all this. Because something was really wrong here. She liked Reg, but—she shook her head and then started as the girl on the couch cried out.
    â€œOwww!” She was lightly touching the wound and looking from one to the other of them in panic. “What happened?” She glanced down at her clothes.
“Blood!”
    â€œYou got hit by a brick, and this”—Addie looked at Reg, who was mouthing
I'll get the water
as he left the room—“this very nice person is calling a doctor.”
    The girl stared at Addie as if she were the head of a human-trafficking ring. “Where am I?” Her voice had a lilting up-and-down accent, with heavy, round vowels. Scandinavian? Addie wondered. German? “Is this your house?”
    â€œNo. Reg lives here. My names Addie. What's yours?”
    â€œFrida Peterson.” Gingerly, she settled back on the pillow. Addie patted her hands, remembering when she was ten and had her tonsils removed. When she’d woken from the surgery, her dad had been sitting like this on the side of her bed, and she’d felt warm and