Read Online Vertigo Park and Other Tall Tales by Mark O'Donnell - Free Book Online

it true of New Year’s Eve? Why or why not?
    10. If this story were a pie, what flavor would it be? If it were a pie that happened to be able to speak, what kind of story would that pie be likely to tell? Would it be this story? If it were a pie that could talk but something was terribly wrong, maybe something psychosomatic or a scandal in its past, and it just didn’t, or wouldn’t, talk, what kind of thing might be done to that pie to encourage it or even force it to talk? Think before answering.
    EXTRA CREDIT PROJECT : Defend yourself.

THE CORPSE HAD FRECKLES
    The summer air hung as heavy and still as a significant pause in a personal hygiene lecture. Overhead, the desert sun glared down like a censorious, fire-lashed cyclopean eye on tourist and tarantula alike. Inside the thick adobe walls of Rancho Contento, however, all was so cool and dim that tomatoes wouldn’t even ripen. Bitty Borax and her legitimate cousin Anodyne sat in their grandfather’s well-dusted library of old deeds and desert realty law books, chatting away the afternoon. Ice cubes made the milk in their glasses even colder than regular cold milk, and their own mild dispositions contrasted with the scorching day outside.
    “Mmmm,” Bitty murmured, idly fiddling with the tiny cattle-skull motif that capped her swizzle stick. “It looks hot enough out there to roast a ghost!” Ordinarily, Bitty was as pert and direct as a prize show terrier, only with straight hair, but the languorous pace of her desert vacation had relaxed the young crime-solver to the point of whimsy.
    “Could you really roast a ghost?” Anodyne wondered aloud, and tried to sip her milk through her swizzle stick, forgetting for a moment that it wasn’t a straw. Anodyne wasn’t the brightest light on the Christmas tree, but she was always glad to be brought down out of the attic.
    “I don’t know, Anodyne,” reflected Bitty. “It’s metaphysical, isn’t it? There was that time in the Hindi fanatics’ tomb when I set what I thought was a ghost afire, but it was just a thuggee soapnapper in a bedsheet.”
    “Yes, I got your postcard,” Anodyne remembered. “I didn’t think you were going to make it!”
    “Well, that’s all lemonade under the bridgework now,” Bitty countered breezily. “Let’s dwell on the utter safety of this moment.”
    “All right,” said Anodyne sportingly. “I’m thinking of going sunbathing in the gulch. Would you like to join me?”
    “No, thanks,” Bitty smiled. “I’m too high-spirited to sunbathe. I would never lie down if it weren’t to go right to sleep. And anyway, Aunt Addle should be back soon from gathering stalagmites for luncheon centerpieces down at the old cavern. She may need help cleaning herself up. I know the radiation levelthere is next to nothing, but she’ll want to be decontaminated—just for ritual’s sake.”
    “Poor Aunt Addle,” Anodyne mused. “She’s been so restless since Uncle Fleck disappeared.” Aunt Addle was neither of their mothers, but the Boraxes were a close extended family.
    Suddenly, the sound of careening flesh knocking knickknacks off pedestals resounded from the ranch’s vestibule. The two girls leapt to their feet as if in reflexive response to an unholy but irresistible national anthem.
    “Prairie dogs on loco weed!” guessed Anodyne, edgily snapping her swizzle stick in two.
    “Maybe it’s the surly half-breed gardener getting the jump on happy hour!” Bitty postulated speedily. “But we’ll never know if we don’t go look!”
    They rushed to the vestibule. There stood Aunt Addle, shaking like a guilty verdict held by a jury foreman afraid to read it. Bits of cat fur clung to her hair and apron, and if she had gathered any stalagmites, she was empty-handed now.
    “Aunt Addle!” Bitty raced to her. “What’s wrong? Did you just discover the key to a very old and dangerous secret?”
    Aunt Addle was as unhinged as a screen door in a twister, and stared at the girls