"Winter-NaturalBoy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Winter Laurel)

But none of those people bought the house. Three different sets of potential
buyers had inspected the house land been inspected by them) the day the gold
jacket woman put "Sold" on the sign, so Maddy and Matt didn't know who the buyer
was until the woman started moving in.

She hadn't been anywhere near their first choice, but she was far from the most
hideous of the potential buyers. One woman, no family, no pets that they could
see. "Drat," Maddy whispered. "Now who are we going to protect?" The key felt
dull and heavy in her pocket.

The woman wore bright colors that didn't necessarily go together, but somehow
seemed right. Or almost right. "Maybe she's kind of crazy," Matt said, a hopeful
note in his voice. "Maybe we'll have to keep an eye on her. She looks kind of
weird."

Maddy shrugged. In green sweatpants, a brilliant purple shirt, and yellow
socks-- even glittery shoelaces in her black running shoes-- the woman did look
strange. But not crazy.

They were using the jump-rope disguise that day, standing side by side on their
sidewalk, jumping in tandem, facing in the direction of the house and the woman
and the moving van. The movers were talking about them, they could tell from the
way the men looked over their shoulders and laughed. The woman smiled at them a
few times, in a distracted sort of way, in between directing men with boxes and
chairs and other pieces of furniture.

They had decided, earlier that morning, not to be too friendly right away. So
they didn't smile back, although Maddy felt as if she might like to. She thought
the woman looked interesting, even if you ignored her clothes. For one thing,
her hair was the exact color of butterscotch pudding, pulled into a skinny braid
that dribbled down the back of her purple shirt. For another, she had a really
wide mouth that seemed to naturally fall into at least half a smile. Was her
hair really that color, Maddy wondered, or did she dye it? It would be
interesting to meet a grownup who wanted to have hair that looked like
butterscotch. It was such a delicious color.

She was so intent on the woman that she didn't notice Matt had stopped jumping
until he grabbed her rope and made her trip. "Ow," she said. "Quit it."

"I'm bored," he said. "Let's do something else."

Maddy let him talk her into the park, with the promise that they'd watch again
in the afternoon.

For several weeks, they conducted surveillance. They noticed when the woman rode
her bike off in the mornings -- for work, they assumed -- and when she returned.
They looked in every window of the house. Particularly the window in the back of
the garage.

Through it, they Could see that the woman had no car, that the garage looked