Read Online Minerva Clark Gives Up the Ghost by Karen Karbo - Free Book Online

that I cannever pronounce. Working here would give your nose a heart attack. How did anyone do it? Mrs. Dagnitz came right in behind me, stepping accidentally on my heel. I may have become a stranger to Mrs. Dagnitz since she’d been gone, but in a few basic ways she was no stranger to me. She loved buying anything that you could carry away in a cute little handled bag.
    Mark Clark planted himself just inside the door. The longer Mrs. Dagnitz was in town, the more he just went along with the program. He picked up a piece of plum-colored soap and put it down without smelling it. He stuck his hands in his pockets.
    Mrs. Dagnitz grabbed a basket just inside the door and started filling it up with bath bombs and tubes of cream and hunks of that frightening black soap, happy as could be.
    â€œOh,” I said, making a show of looking around with a frantic expression. I wrapped my arms across my stomach, hoping to make my situation look desperate, as if I might be on the verge of food poisoning. “I really need to use the bathroom.” I scurried over to the clerk and asked whether they had a restroom. She looked up from where she was piling pink squares of bath salt in a tower. She said sorry—but there was a Starbucks three doors down. Thank you, surly counter-helper girl!
    â€œOhnnn,” I said, scurrying back toward the front door, where Mrs. Dagnitz was smelling a tangerine-colored bath bomb twice the size of a real tangerine. Ibent over like a bad actor doing a hunchback impersonation. “I’ll be right back,” I said.
    Mrs. Dagnitz placed the bath bomb back in the bin and looked at me, her tanned face expressionless. I could tell she was trying to figure out what was going on with me. Finally she said, “Mark, go with her.”
    â€œI’m all right!” I said, pulling the door open and hurrying out before Mark Clark could say a word to anyone. I didn’t know what I would do if he followed me, since I had no intention of going to Starbucks.
    Before entering Paisley’s on 23rd, I stopped to reread the sign in the window three times to make sure I wasn’t seeing things, to double-check that the business was moving SOON to 222 S.W. Corbett, and not 1222 N.W. Corbett or 2222 S.E. Corbett.
    VISIT US SOON AT OUR NEW LOCATION AT 222 S.W. CORBETT, the sign said in blue marker. I was positive that was the address of Angus Paine’s family grocery. I stood there for a minute, wondering whether I should text Angus to double-check the address, or whether I would just be using that as an excuse to text him. Why would I want to text him anyway? I already had a boyfriend. Would Kevin care if I was sending random texts to another boy, even if it was a boy I was solving a mystery for? And was I actually solving a mystery for Angus Paine? Hadn’t I just said a few hours earlier that I didn’t think there was any mystery to be solved? I shook my head like a dog after a bath, to clear mymind of troubling thoughts that would only slow me down.
    Inside, I hurried to the counter and stared down through the glass at a tray of pale yellow snickerdoodles, as if I might want to buy some. It was way too hot for cookies, too hot for anything. The tired ceiling fan stirred around the smells of vanilla and butter.
    Where was the counter person, anyway? The longer I stood there, the more wiggly I got. I bounced first one leg, then the other. Any minute now my mother would be standing on the sidewalk, her hands on her hips, staring at me through the pastry shop’s big window. I looked back over my shoulder, back out the window. Nothing. Two girls in baggy shorts straggled past, each carrying an icy coffee drink.
    I drummed my fingers on the glass counter. Once Mrs. Dagnitz had purchased her soap, she’d be wondering where I’d gotten off to, and why I wasn’t back, and what was going on here, had I really needed to use the bathroom or was I just using it as an excuse to run