Free Tribb's Trouble by Trevor Cole Page A

“It’s impressive.”
    â€œIt’s like the thumb of a monster!” She pretended to be scared and hid behind her hands. Tribb felt pretty sure she’d be an actress when she grew up. Either an actress or a comedian.
    â€œNow, now, Suzy,” said Linda at the stove. “You might hurt your father’s feelings.”
    But Tribb smiled. “The Mundays have always had big hands,” he said to Suzy. “You should have seen your great-grandfather’s.”
    â€œWell, I’m a Munday,” said Suzy, “and I have a small thumb. A dainty thumb.”
    â€œWho wants toast?” Linda asked.
    â€œI do!” said Tribb.
    â€œI do!” said Suzy.
    Tribb saw Linda reach for the bread bag on the counter. She opened it and pulled out a handful of bread slices. She was about to drop two into the toaster when she paused. She looked at the slices.
    â€œSomeone’s taken a bite out of these pieces of bread.” She looked at Tribb. “Who would do that?”
    â€œNot me!” said Tribb. He looked at Suzy. Suzy had made her thumb and index finger into a circle. She held the circle over her fork and squinted through it as if through a magnifying glass.
    â€œSuzy?” said Tribb. “Was it you?”
    â€œEgg yolk,” said Suzy. She looked up at Tribb, still squinting. “There’s a tiny bit of egg yolk on this fork. At least I think it’s egg yolk.” She smiled. “It might be alien poo.”
    Tribb sighed. “None of the women in this house listen to me.”
    â€œSuzy,” said Linda, still standing at the counter. “Did you take a bite out of these slices of bread and then put them back in the bag?”
    Beside Tribb, Suzy made her scrunched-up, you-must-be-crazy face, with one eyebrow raised high. “Why the hell would I do that?”
    â€œSuzy, don’t swear,” said Tribb. “Say heck instead of hell.”
    Suzy turned her you-must-be-crazy face to Tribb. “Why the heck would I do that?”
    â€œThank you.”
    Linda looked closely at the bread. “All these slices have a bite out of them in the same corner.” She picked up the bag. “There’s a hole in this bag.” She held it up so Tribb could see the hole. To Tribb, it looked about the size of his great-grandfather’s thumb.
    â€œI think we have mice,” said Linda.

Chapter Three

    Tribb was enjoying a beer with his friend Peter at the Cap and Cork Pub. They had met fifteen years before, when they both started working at Donner Metal Works. Tribb was a shift supervisor. No matter what day it was, he liked to arrive at work and joke, “Hope you enjoyed your weekend, boys. Munday’s here already.”
    â€œYou’ve been telling that joke for fifteen years and it still isn’t funny,” Peter would reply. “But keep trying.”
    Tribb always said that Peter was partly responsible for the life Tribb knew. About a year after they began working at Donner Metal Works, Peter had married a woman named Allison. Tribb was the best man at their wedding. At the weddingreception, Tribb had met Linda, who was a friend of Allison’s. Linda was pretty, with long reddish-blond hair. “I liked your best man speech,” she told Tribb at the reception. Then she rolled her eyes and grinned. “You tell terrible jokes.”
    Their life together had started that night. They dated for a while, and then they got married. Three years later, Suzy was born.
    Whenever Peter had a problem in his life, he told Tribb about it, and they tried to work it out. The same was true for Tribb; if he had a problem, Peter was the first to know. They worked well together on problems because they had different ways of going at them. Tribb liked to look at things from all sides and think a lot before he acted. Peter would rather try right away to solve a problem with action.
    Peter felt happiest when he could solve a