Read Online The Grub-And-Stakers Move a Mountain by Charlotte MacLeod, Alisa Craig - Free Book Online Page A

would never have dreamed of programming.
    Dittany brought Old Faithful to a screaming halt two inches from the doorstep, rushed up, and pounded like mad on the brass knocker. Hazel appeared promptly, inched the door open on the chain, and said suspiciously, “Yes?”
    “Hazel,” snapped Dittany, “quit playing games and let me in.”
    “Good heavens, Dittany, is that you?” Hazel released the chain. “What on God’s green earth have you done to yourself?
    Here, give me that.” She picked up the raincoat Dittany dropped and hung it in the closet. As Roger always said, Neatness was Efficiency. “Now what’s this all about?”
    “Hazel, listen. You know Mrs. Poppy?”
    “Of course I know Mrs. Poppy. She’s that woman who’s supposed to come and clean for you but never does.”
    “She does sometimes,” said Dittany defensively. “Anyway, Mrs. Poppy has a friend, Mrs. Duckes, who does the office at McNaster’s every evening after work. I mean after he and his staff-oh, you know what I mean. Anyway, this Mrs. Duckes has a bad leg-I don’t know which or why so don’t bother to ask -and Mrs. Poppy was going to fill in for her but she caught a bad cold. She called me up while I was having my supper to tell me she couldn’t come tomorrow because she was too sick and then she went croaking on about how she’d promised to do the offices for Mrs. Duckes and how awful she felt about letting her down.”
    “Were you planning to get to the point any time in the foreseeable future?”
    “But that is the point, Hazel. I said I’d go to McNaster’s in her place, and I did.”
    “Dittany, you didn’t!”
    “What’s the sense in saying I didn’t when I just got through telling you I did?”
    “The exclamation was purely rhetorical. I only meant, my gosh, how did you ever have the nerve?”
    “Frankly, I’m not sure,” Dittany admitted. “You wouldn’t believe how scary it can be opening a strange broom closet.”
    Hazel took her guest gently by the arm and led her to Roger’s pet reclining chair. “Here, sit down and put your feet up, eh?
    I’m going to make us a pot of hot tea. You must be in shock. It won’t take a second.”
    Dittany was glad to obey. All of a sudden, like Mrs. Duckes, she was having trouble with her legs. She lay back and shut her eyes until Hazel came back with a tea tray on which, to Dittany’s unalloyed joy, was a slab of her superb carrot-walnut allspice cake with orange coconut frosting.
    “Eat this with your tea. The sweet will be good for you.”
    Dittany needed no coaxing. Disregarding the fact that she’d been carefully taught never to talk with her mouth full, she wolfed her cake and told her story at the same time.
    “McNaster was having a meeting with some men in his private office. The door was locked, but I listened outside. And I heard him having an argument about the Enchanted Mountain with some crooked lawyer whom he wanted to help him get hold of the land.”
    “You didn’t! I’m sorry. You did. Dittany, why?”
    “Because he wants to build himself a big house right smackdab on top. Those were his own words, Hazel, right smackdab on top. And he talked about building some more houses around the sides and that must be what he’s got Jim Streph working on the plans for. And that’s why that Frankland man was doing the perk tests, and why Mr. Architrave got murdered just as we thought.”
    “Dittany, he-I mean, are you sure?”
    “Well, this lawyer as much as accused McNaster of having one of his henchmen bump Mr. Architrave off because he was too honest to fake the results of the tests even if he was dumb enough to do them in the first place, which is true enough.”
    “Yes, it is,” said Hazel slowly. “And he was pigheaded enough to stick to his guns no matter what. I don’t see myself how that land could be buildable unless they ran sewer pipes because it’s all ledge under the leaf mold. That must be why McNaster wanted the tests done before the