Free Scumble by Ingrid Law Page A

bolt. I stopped and stared again at Sarah Jane’s address, realizing that I might be able to use the notebook as leverage. Maybe Sarah Jane would want her notebook back badly enough to make a trade. I knew if I could just get Grandma Dollop’s jar, I’d feel a whole lot better. It would be easier to learn to scumble my savvy if I didn’t have that shanghaied jar lingering cruelly on my conscience.
    Fifteen minutes later, I found myself on the front porch of the Cabot residence, after getting directions from someone on the street. It had taken a while. The town was as quiet as it had been two days before, and the few people I ran into hadn’t been eager to tell me how to find the Cabots.
    The house was a hulking Victorian structure that sat alone above the town, surrounded by dozens of stumps and one tall birch tree. It looked like a maniac logger had hit the place overnight and been chased away by Axehandle Hounds before he could cut down the last tree. The remaining paper-white birch bent over the house, its branches hugging the place like pale arms. A spiked, wrought iron fence encircled the entire property.
    Cautiously, I moved through the gate, climbed the stairs to the porch, and reached for the door knocker, hoping that nothing would fall apart.
    Sweat dripped from my hair, stinging my eyes. Autry’s dragonflies pestered me. When the Cabots’ housekeeper opened the door, I took a step back. Standing in the doorway, the frizzy-haired, bug-eyed woman clutched the handle of a carpet sweeper in one hand, and a glossy, rolled-up supermarket tabloid in the other, a headline about UFOs barely visible between her fingers. Whether it was the rolled-up paper that motivated them, or something else, Autry’s dragonflies gave up their bullyragging and struck off in a blue streak.
    Without blinking, the housekeeper raised her eyebrows a fraction of an inch, indicating quite clearly, and with the smallest possible effort, that I should speak quickly or get my little dogies yippee-ti-yi-yo gone.
    â€œUm, did Sarah Jane get back okay the other night?” I asked, my words tripping over themselves, as if Mom were standing over my shoulder telling me to be quick. “I mean, is Sarah Jane here? Can I see her?” I held my breath, watching out of the corner of my eye as the screws that held the doorknocker in place began to work their way loose.
    A full ten seconds passed while the housekeeper stared at me blankly. My request to see Sarah Jane appeared to have left her baffled.
    â€œAre you a . . . friend . . . of Miss Cabot’s?” she asked, and the way she said the word friend made me guess I was the first kid to come round knocking in quite some time. Maybe Sarah Jane had been telling the truth when she’d told me she had no friends.
    â€œSure. Yeah. Okay,” I answered, rubbing the faint bruise that shaded my chin like a smudge of newsprint, a souvenir from my last encounter with the intrepid Sarah Jane and her friendly, friendly fist. I held up Sarah Jane’s notebook. “See? I’ve got her notebook right here. Trust me, SJ and I go way back.” All the way back to Saturday.
    The housekeeper stepped back, nodding me into the house with the point of her chin. “I’m cleaning,” she said gruffly, rattling the carpet sweeper in my face. “You can wait in Mr. Cabot’s study while I call Miss Cabot down. Mr. Cabot’s not here and I always save his room for last.” She turned a sharp eye on me, rimpling her nose like she smelled something bad. Then added, “If you value your skin, don’t touch anything. Or Mr. Cabot might make you part of his collection.”
    â€œHis collection?”
    The woman didn’t elaborate. She didn’t have to. Cabot’s study spoke volumes for itself—and I didn’t think I liked what it had to say.

Chapter 11
    L OOKING UP, I GAZED INTO THE glassy, staring eyes of a zoo’s worth of