Read Online Talk of the Town by Anne Marie Rodgers - Free Book Online

always make more.”
    Putting on her jacket, Alice made the short trip on foot from the inn to town. She put posters on public bulletin boards at the General Store, the library, the post office and in the front window of the Good Apple Bakery with Clarissa Cottrell’s blessing. Her last stop was the Coffee Shop, where Hope Collins helpfully brought her some tape so she could position a flyer prominently in the front window right next to the menu June placed there every day.
    “Thank you so much,” she said to Hope and to June, who were behind the counter sorting currency during the afternoon lull.
    “I hope you find him,” June told her sympathetically. June was a cat lover too.
    Just then a commotion interrupted the women’s chat.
    Two grade-school boys burst into the shop, wild-eyed. “There’s a monster out there!” one of them blurted.
    Alice recognized him as Jason Ransom, one of Louise’s piano students. The other boy was Charles Matthews, also a piano student and a member of the Grace Chapel congregation.
    “A monster?” she said, making her eyes wide. “Did you see it?”
    “No, but we saw its tracks by the pond,” Charles told her. Hope and June were both listening, and a few other people lingering in the shop also looked as if they were dying to hear more.
    “Its tracks. What did they look like?” A raccoon, maybe , Alice thought. Although there were bears in Pennsylvania, they weren’t common to the area around Acorn Hill.
    “They were this big,” Jason said, measuring an imaginary track well over twelve inches long by spreading his hands apart.
    “That’s big,” Alice agreed.
    “What did they look like?” Hope asked.
    Charles clearly was so excited he could barely speak. “Like—like—like big, fat feet,” he said.
    “Well,” murmured June, “that’s helpful.”
    Alice swallowed a chuckle. “Where, exactly, at the pond did you find them?”
    “We can show you,” offered Jason.
    It was barely four o’clock and Alice didn’t have to get back to help with dinner quite yet, so she decided she could afford to spend a few minutes humoring the boys. “All right.”
    “I’ll come too.” The voice from behind Alice belonged to Ronald Simpson, Florence’s husband. His freckled face wore a smile, and Alice read the amusement twinkling in his brown eyes. “I’ve always had a yen to see a monster. Let’s take my car.”
    Alice and Ronald followed the boys out of the Coffee Shop. Ronald’s car was parked along the curb, and after holding the passenger door for Alice, Ronald went around to the driver’s side while the boys hopped into the back seat. Ronald headed north on Chapel Road, past the inn, to where Fairy Lane was located. As soon as Ronald parked along the lane, Charles and Jason tumbled out of the car and took off at a good clip. They were well ahead of Alice and Ronald by the time they reached the edge of the pond, but then both boys slowed and waited until the adults were close behind them before forging onward.
    It had rained a bit two nights before and on one side of the pond there was a gentle incline to the water. “The tracks are over here,” Jason told Alice and Ronald.
    A path had been worn around the pond by people strolling along the edge of the peaceful water.
    Near the water’s edge there were weeds and cattails, withered and brown from the winter, but new shoots of green were beginning to show.
    Now that they were at the pond, the two boys seemed strangely subdued and surprisingly content to stay near the adults. Ronald led the way along the bank, following clear impressions of sneakered feet that the boys must have left earlier in the rain-softened earth.
    Suddenly, Ronald stopped. Alice nearly plowed into him.
    “Holy moley!” His voice was awed. “Alice, take a look at this.”
    She moved around to his side. There, in the middle of the path ahead of them, were two well-formed impressions of massive feet. Whatever had made the prints had apparently