Read Online Ninth Key by Meg Cabot - Free Book Online

Course is on Seventeen Mile Drive, along with about five other golf courses and a bunch of scenic points, like the Lone Cypress, which is some kind of tree growing out of a boulder, and Seal Rock, on which there are, you guessed it, a lot of seals.
    Seventeen Mile Drive is also where you can check out the colliding currents of what they call the Restless Sea, the ocean along this part of the coast that’s too filled with riptides and undertows for anyone to swim in. It’s all giant crashing waves and tiny stretches of sand between great big boulders on which seagulls are always dropping mussels and stuff, hoping to split the shells open. Sometimes surfers get split open there, too, if they’re stupid enough to think they can ride the waves.
    And if you want, you can buy a really big mansion on a cliff overlooking all this natural beauty, for a mere, oh, zillion dollars or so.
    Which was apparently what Thaddeus “Red” Beaumont had done. He had snatched up one of those mansions, a really, really big one, I saw, when Sleepy finally pulled up in front of it. Such a big one, in fact, that it had a little guardhouse by the enormous spiky gate in front of its long, long driveway, with a guard in it watching TV.
    Sleepy, looking at the gate, went, “Are you sure this is the place?”
    I swallowed. I knew from what CeeCee had said that Mr. Beaumont was rich. But I hadn’t thought he was
this
rich.
    And just think, his kid had asked me to slow dance!
    “Um,” I said. “Maybe I should just see if he’s home before you take off.”
    Sleepy said, “Yeah, I guess.”
    I got out of the car and went up to the little guardhouse. I don’t mind telling you, I felt like a tool. I had been trying all day to get through to Mr. Beaumont, only to be told he was in a meeting, or on another line. For some reason, I’d imagined a personal touch might work. I don’t know what I’d been thinking, but I believe it had involved ringing the doorbell and then looking winsomely up into his face when he came to the door.
    That, I could see now, wasn’t going to happen.
    “Um, excuse me,” I said, into the little microphone at the guard’s house. Bulletproof glass, I noticed. Either Tad’s dad had some people who didn’t like him, or he was just a little paranoid.
    The guard looked up from his TV. He checked me out. I saw him check me out. I had kept my coat open so he’d be sure to see my plaid skirt and loafers. Then he looked past me, at the Rambler. This was no good. I did not want to be judged by my stepbrother and his crappy car.
    I tapped on the glass again to direct the guard’s attention back to me.
    “Hello,” I said, into the microphone. “My name’s Susannah Simon, and I’m a sophomore at the Mission Academy. I’m doing a story for our school paper on the ten most influential people in Carmel, and I was hoping to be able to interview Mr. Beaumont, but unfortunately, he hasn’t returned any of my calls, and the story is due tomorrow, so I was wondering if he might be home and if he’d see me.”
    The guard looked at me with a stunned expression on his face.
    “I’m a friend,” I said, “of Tad, Tad Beaumont, Mr. Beaumont’s son? He knows me, so if you want him, you know, to check me out on the security camera or whatever, I’m sure he could, you know, ID me. If my ID needs verifying, I mean.”
    The guard continued to stare at me. You would think a guy as rich as Mr. Beaumont could afford smarter guards.
    “But if this is a bad time,” I said, starting to back away, “I guess I could come back.”
    Then the guard did an extraordinary thing. He leaned forward, pressed a button, and said, into the speaker, “Honey, you talk faster than anyone I ever heard in my life. Would you care to repeat all that? Slowly, this time?”
    So I said my little speech again, more slowly this time, while behind me, Sleepy sat at the wheel with the motor running. I could hear the radio blaring inside the car, and Sleepy singing