Free Nobody Knows Your Secret by Jeri Green Page A

here.”
    “What do you mean? You just said this house wasn’t nice.”
    “Oh, I don’t mean about that. Baloney.”
    “What’s the matter? You hit your leg getting out of the car?”
    “No,” Beanie said. “I was just thinkin’ how much I’m gonna miss your baloney.”
    “Oh, Bean. Don’t you worry about that. You’ll always have my baloney. Even if I have to hunt you down by a graveside to kingdom come to give it to you.”
    “Harvey don’t like us eatin’ while we work, Hadley,” Beanie said.
    “I’ll leave it with Harvey, then. And he can give it to you later.”
    “Okay, Hadley,” Beanie said. “You know, the clouds are sleepin’ on the ground over yonder.”
    Hadley looked across the meadow to the decaying remains of the amusement park. Gray tendrils of wispy fog swirled around the clown’s head, shrouding it like a veil. It twisted and moved, diving into the opened mouth of the clown and back out again.
    “Looks like the clown is hungry,” said Beanie. “I’m glad we are a far piece away. Ain’t you?”
    “It does look like it woke up on the wrong side of the bed,” said Hadley. “I never figured out why Vance Odis wanted folks entering his park through a giant face. And it’s not even a friendly or funny or inviting face. And who wants to be eaten by a clown? Never made sense to me.”
    “Me, neither. I think it would hurt. I’d run out before it could chew me up. Then, they’d say Beanie was spit out by a clown. But I don’t care none what they say.”
    Beanie studied the huge clown head.
    “Anything that ugly’s probably got bad breath too,” Beanie said. “That clown scares me.”
    “Good thing we don’t have to stand here all day and look at it. Come on. Let’s get to work.”
    They turned to the house, climbing up the steps to the front door. Hadley unlocked the door and peered inside.
    “Looks like the string is still intact, Beanie. Guess we will start here and just clear out the junk as we come to it.”
    Hadley set aside several empty cardboard boxes. The entrance to the house was crammed from floor to ceiling. The first piles she encountered looked like remnants of court cases Eustian had filed against one Hope Rock County citizen or another down through the years. No one was safe from being sued by him. She separated the reams of legal documents she and Beanie found from the books, clothes, shoes, lamps, and other debris cluttering the room into the boxes.
    “I think we should keep these papers separate in case the estate administrator needs them,” Hadley said.
    “Okay,” Beanie said, bending over to pick up a broken doll that was missing an eye and a leg.
    Its nasty hair was matted. A dark brown stain clung to its body.
    “Look, Hadley,” Beanie said, “this doll’s winkin’ at me.”
    “I don’t see why anyone would have saved that,” Hadley said. “It looks like it has some kind of contagious disease. Toss it in the dumpster heap, Bean.”
    “Wonder who poked out her eye?” Beanie said, throwing the doll on the pile of debris that would go to the dumpster outside. “Hadley?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Maybe Eustian Singlepenny was so crabby because he was so crunched in here.”
    “Could be,” said Hadley. “But I got a feeling he was just born that way. Crabby, crotchety, and just plain mean.”
    “Mean Beanie Bean. Hadley Badly Madly.”
    “What?”
    “I can’t make nuthin’ rhyme with Eustian, Hadley.”
    “Don’t even try, Bean,” Hadley said. “You’ll only end up giving yourself a hemorrhoid. Too much strain on the brain is a crime on the behime .”
    “You crack me up,” Beanie said.
    “Well, like I said, a crime on the behime.”
    They worked for about an hour carting junk from the room to the bottom of the porch. Each load in the wheelbarrow was delivered to the dumpster, and the cycle started all over again. Together, they made about a dozen trips back and forth. Finally, the entire floor was cleared of debris.
    “You know,