Free Dew Drop Dead by James Howe Page A

his hand and picked up a small object lying nearby. It was a book, whose worn, brown leather cover had perfectly camouflaged it from their sight.
    Both boys were smiling. “I think we hit the jackpot,” Sebastian said. “Hurry up and open it.”
    â€œEasier said than done,” said David. “It’s all wet—the pages are stuck. Wait, I think I’ve got it.”
    But before he could say another word, Sebastian’s fingers grabbed his arm. “Ow!” David yelled. “What’s the matter with you?”
    â€œWe were right!” said Sebastian. His face grew pale, the color of the wind if the wind had a color. “We were right,” he repeated. “We were right.”
    David didn’t have to ask what he meant. He was almost afraid to look. When he finally dared, he no longer wanted to see. For there in a thicket of dark green trees, just a few feet behind the log where Sebastian had been sitting moments earlier, lay a body half-covered with leaves.

23
    â€œI CAN’T BELIEVE you found it,” Corrie said not much more than an hour later. Sebastian and David had practically dragged her from her dinner table to tell her the news. Now she was squeezed between the two of them on the front steps of her house. “It gives me chills just imagining it.”
    â€œIt gives you chills?” David said. “I don’t even want to think about trying to sleep tonight. Nightmare city.”
    â€œTell me everything,” said Corrie eagerly.
    David clutched his throat as if strangling himself. “The face was all blue and the tongue was sticking out like this and—”
    â€œWell, maybe not everything. What happened after you found it?”
    â€œWe went right to the police station,” Sebastian told her. “I don’t think Alex believed us at first. But it didn’t take long to convince him.”
    â€œDid he let you go with him to look for it?”
    â€œSure,” said David. “What do you think? We were the ones who found it. We knew where it was.”
    It occurred to Sebastian that they were all referring to the body as “it.” He guessed it was easier that way.
    â€œIt was dark by the time we got back there,” he said.
    â€œWho went?”
    â€œAlex, Rebecca, and a couple other cops, I forget their names. They used these big, heavy-duty flashlights, and when they found it, they threw a light on its face and Alex asked, Is this the same person you saw lying on the bed at the inn?’”
    â€œOh, gross,” said Corrie. “They made you look at it?”
    â€œJust for a minute.”
    David said, “We told him, ‘Yeah, that’s the guy,’ you know, like they do in the movies.”
    â€œBut then we weren’t sure. He wasn’t wearing that red-and-black shirt.”
    â€œHe wasn’t?”
    Sebastian shook his head. “And we never really got such a good look at the guy’s face—I mean the one at the inn. So we told Alex we thought it was the same person.”
    â€œThen what happened? Did you watch them, you know ...”
    â€œTake away the body?” Sebastian asked. Corrie nodded. “Uh-uh. Alex said we should go back with Rebecca and she’d drive us home.”
    â€œWhat did your parents say?” Corrie asked, trying to imagine how her parents would have reacted. Not happily, she thought.
    â€œOh, they were okay,” Sebastian said with a shrug of the shoulders. “They kept wanting to know if I was all right. I think they were worried I’d suffered some sort of trauma or something.”
    â€œNot my dad,” said David. “He kept milking me for details. That’s the thing with writers: Everything is research.”
    â€œNow aren’t you sorry you didn’t go with us this afternoon?” Sebastian asked.
    For the first time, Corrie smiled. “Are you kidding? I wouldn’t have wanted to be there for