"Martin, Ann M - BSC029 - Mallory And The Mystery Diary" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin Ann M)

"You're welcome, Mallory-silly-billy-goo-goo. . . . Can I come with you?"
I thought about that. Claire loves Stacey, and I would need someone to ring the McGills' bell for me. On the other hand, if I stayed at the McGills', I didn't really want Claire hanging around.
At last I said tactfully, "I think the McGills are still unpacking, Claire. Their house is probably a mess. You know, boxes everywhere. I bet Stacey would rather have you see her house when it's all fixed up."
Claire accepted that. "Okay," she said. "Tell
Stacey I love her. Tell her she's still a silly-billy-goo-goo."
I grinned. "All right. See you later, alligator."
"After awhile, crocodile."
Sometimes, like now, Claire can be absolutely wonderful. At other times she can be a pain ... in ... the ... NECK!
I walked carefully through our backyard, through Stacey's backyard, and around to the front of her house. I climbed her porch steps and stood at the door. Now Ч how was I supposed to ring the bell? The casserole weighed a ton and I needed both hands to carry it. I tried resting it on my leg long enough to let go with one hand, but Ч "OW!" The casserole wasn't nearly cooled off. I was about to set it on the porch floor when I heard someone call, "Hello?"
"Hi . . . Stace? It's me, Mallory."
The front door opened. "I thought I heard someone out here," she said, grinning. "Come on in."
"Thanks." I stepped inside. "This is for you and your mom. My mother made it. It's a tuna casserole. And it's burning hot and incredibly heavy."
Stacey hurried me into the kitchen, where I set the casserole on the stove.
"Gosh, that was nice of your mother," said Stacey. "We've been eating take-out food all week, except for Thursday night when the Kishis invited us over for dinner. . . . Mom?" she called. "Hey, Mom!"
Mrs. McGill appeared from somewhere, looking dusty.
"Hi, Mal," she greeted me.
"Hi," I replied.
"Mom, look what Mrs. Pike sent over. A tuna casserole."
"Oh, how nice!" Stacey's mother lifted the lid off the dish and breathed in deeply. "Oh, that smells wonderful!" she exclaimed. "I'll call your mother to thank her as soon as I have a spare moment."
"You want to stay for awhile?" Stacey asked me. "Claud's here. She's helping Mom and me. Believe it or not, we're pretty much unpacked. But there are cartons and crumpled-up newspapers and those little Styrofoam things everywhere. So now we're trying to clean up. Claud's in the living room. Come take a look around."
It was funny. I'd always lived behind the
house Stacey had moved into, but I'd never been inside it. So I was pretty eager to look around, especially since it was such an old house.
Stacey took me on a tour. "This is the dining room. And this is the back hall. See? Those steps go upstairs, and there's another set of stairs at the front of the house."
"Cool!" I said.
Stacey led me all around the first floor and I looked at the low doorways, the funny wavy panes of glass in the windows, and the floors that tilted a little.
We met up with Claud and Mrs. McGill in the living room. Claudia was stuffing newspaper and Styrofoam bits into big garbage bags.
"I think we should save the boxes, though," Mrs. McGill said.
"Are you kidding?" said Stacey. "You better save them Ч after all the trouble I went through collecting those things in New York!" She turned to me. "I had to go begging at the grocery store nearly every day while we were packing. I thought the manager was going to kill me. There's no way I'm throwing them out."
"Why don't you take them up to the attic?" suggested Mrs. McGill. "We can always use boxes."
"The attic?" repeated Stacey. "I don't even know where it is. It's not one of those ladders you have to pull down from the ceiling, is it?"
"No. It's that doorway next to your bathroom, upstairs."
"You're kidding. I thought that was a linen closet. I didn't even bother to look inside!"
"That's because you hate changing your sheets," said Mrs. McGill, and we laughed.
Claud, Stacey, and I each nested some boxes together. We climbed to the second floor with them. Then Stacey opened the door to the "linen closet."
"What do you know?" she said. She put her boxes down and groped for a switch plate. "I am not going up these stairs in the dark," she announced.
"What are you afraid of? Bogeymen?" asked Claudia.
"Yes," replied Stacey. "We didn't have bogeymen in New York."
Stacey found the switch then, turned on the light, and we climbed the stairs cautiously.
"Phew, is it ever dusty here," said Claud.
"Really," I agreed, and sneezed.
We reached the top of the stairs, put our boxes on the floor, and just stared.
"Whoa," said Stacey. "Would you look at this."
Claudia and I were speechless. The attic was small, but it was crammed with stuff. I saw an old rocking chair, a brass headboard for a bed, several stacks of old magazines, a bird cage, a box full of books, one of those big, dome-shaped radios, a huge trunk, and more.
"I wonder who all this belongs to," Stacey whispered, and shivered. "Not the last people who owned the house. It looks like it's been around forever. Anyway, why wouldn't they have taken it with them?"
"An awful lot of people have lived in this house," I pointed out. "If every family left a few things behind, then Ч "I swept my hand around as if to say, "Well, you see what can happen."
Stacey took a step forward and tripped over one of our stacks of boxes. "Sheesh! There's barely room for these. But we'd have a lot more space if we got rid of that." She pointed to the trunk.
"Got rid of that?!" I cried. The trunk was handsome. Dusty, but handsome. Its lid was rounded. It was made of a rich-colored leather,
and the fastenings were brass. "You can't get rid of it! It's beautiful!" I exclaimed. "Besides, think what might be in it."
I crossed the attic, stepping over the boxes, and reached the trunk. I tried to open it. "Uh-oh," I said. "It's locked." I tried to lift it. I couldn't get it even an inch off the floor. "It must be stuffed," I added.
"I wonder what z's in it," said Claud, joining me. Her eyes had sort of glazed over. I knew she was thinking of Nancy Drew and mysteries.