Free Wreck the Halls by Sarah Graves Page A

already decided that I wasn’t getting out. For another, I could see Kenty Dalrymple's windows from where the car was parked, which meant Faye Anne's neighbor could also look out one of them and see us. “Back the car up about fifteen feet,” I told Peter.
    “What?” He frowned, but did as I asked.
    “Good,” I said. “Now, you tell me what's in the diary that you’re so worried about, or I’m going to reach over there and lean on the horn until the cops come or your ears start bleeding, whichever happens first.”
    He flinched, and I noticed with pleasure that my “do it” voice still worked. But he still didn’t answer directly.
    “Anything seem funny to you about the method?” he mused. “I mean, cutting him up like that?”
    “Poetic justice,” I snapped. Something about Peter Christie had really begun getting on my nerves. Maybe it was the “I’m such a sweet guy” crap he was exuding from every pore.
    Or the way he kept evading my questions. Also the dash-lights were still on but the heater wasn’t.
    “Hey, buddy. My feet are cold. Get on with your story and make it a concise one, please. Or take us home.”
    Ellie still sat in the backseat: no comment. But I knew she was listening. This wasn’t the first time we’d found ourselves in, shall we say, unusual circumstances.
    By which I mean murder. People do it, here, and try to get away with it, too, just like anywhere else. And in the snooping department, Ellie and I had our division-oflabor routine pretty well written up and initialed. Maybe Peter believed we wouldn’t be blabbermouths because, in all the strange stuff Ellie and I had been involved in, we were always so far on the side of the underdog that we practically had fleas.
    Still, what Faye Anne really needed was a lawyer, not a pair of sympathetic but officially powerless Eastport women, teamed up with the dubiously motivated town Lothario, on a goofy mission. It all made me almost decide to insist on going home immediately.
    Almost; instead, I glanced down at my ringless left hand, illuminated in the dashboard glow.
    “I don’t want to say anything. I want you to look at it, and tell me what you think,” Peter said stubbornly. “I want your opinion.”
    I want, I want. Now he sounded like Victor. “Well, isn’t that special?” I began sarcastically, but just then a blue-and-white Eastport squad car went by in the street behind us, tires squeaking on snow.
    It gave no sign that its driver had seen us, though, not slowing. And with any luck, Kenty Dalrymple hadn’t noticed that we’d backed up, but hadn’t driven away.
    That she might not have seen us at all was way too much to hope for; Kenty was famed as a combination surveillance-and-public-address system.
    The squad car didn’t come back.
    “And you have to see it here,” Peter went on, ignoring my remark. “We certainly can’t take it with us.”
    But we could break into the house and rifle through thediary's contents, maybe muck up evidence… “Yeah,” I retorted, “let's not do that. It would be wrong.” Oh, this guy was a hoot.
    Still, I was curious about that diary. And Ellie was sitting there, waiting patiently for me to decide. But neither of those things were what really turned the trick for me in the end. It was Faye Anne, herself. Alone and in trouble she reminded me of someone I barely remembered, someone I hadn’t been able to help.
    Because when that help had been needed, I’d been only three years old.
    “And let's not get too comfortable with the first person plural, either,” I told Peter irritably, getting out. “We are not a team.”
    He slammed his car door. In the snow-covered neighborhood it sounded like a bomb going off. “Oh, for criminy's sake,” I protested.
    “Sorry, sorry. I forgot. I’m not used to this kind of thing.”
    “Sure, everything else in your life is so well ordered,” I shot back.
    “Ssh,” Ellie interjected quietly. A porch light had gone on two houses away.