Chez Stinky Read Online Free PDF Page B

smell? I think I need to go back up there and talk to your friend myself,” she said.
    “If I have your authorization, he can start today.”
    “Will the smell be gone by next weekend? Right now, I have to work and I have a big deadline.”
    “Yes, I’ll tell him your plans.”
    Kat thanked the lawyer, hung up, and turned back to the dense text of the Big Bad Proposal. Some of her most vivid childhood memories centered around the house and the land surrounding it. She spent long summer days hiking with her aunt through the trees and helping Aunt Abigail in the gardens around the house. Kat figured she probably wasn’t much help, but her aunt spent hours patiently explaining what all the herbs, vegetables, and flowers were and why she had planted them. Kat had asked a million questions, but Abigail loved to talk about growing things. She had shown Kat how to plant seeds and cover them with soil. Once the seedlings took root, Abigail also showed her how to identify the bad weeds from the good plants.
    Kat shook her head. “What am I doing? I have less than 24 hours to edit 350 pages.” She picked up her red pen and set to work.

    On Monday morning, Kat was exhausted. For the first time since college, she had pulled an all-nighter. Back then, some of her classmates seemed to be able to thrive on less than eight hours of sleep, but Kat was not one of them. The process of dragging herself into the office felt like she was slowly swimming through molasses. But the good news was that after editing all night, the Big Bad Proposal was marked up. All she had to do today was put the changes into the computer. Kat yawned mightily and went to the office kitchen for another cup of coffee.
    Maria walked up and did a hip bump against Kat. “You look like death, girl.”
    “Why thank you. I feel lovely today as well,” Kat answered with a smirk. “I’m guessing your Sunday was better than mine.”
    “Yeah baby. I got a new magazine, and I followed the instructions for one of those home spa days where you use up all the stuff in your refrigerator as natural beauty products. I made a mask out of mayonnaise and a hair gel out of honey.”
    Kat looked at Maria’s hair more closely. Her normally bouncy curls were oddly stiff with a crystalline sheen as if her hair had been frozen in a sugar storm. “I’m not sure you’re supposed to leave that type of thing on your hair.”
    “Well, I didn’t finish the article.”
    Kat raised her eyebrows and said, “You might want to wash your hair when you get home.” She headed back to her cubicle and sat down just as the phone rang, making her jump and jarring her dulled senses. All the caffeine was making her twitchy, but it wasn’t doing its job to keep her awake.
    “Hello, this is Kat.”
    “Hiya. My name is Herbert Fowler. I’m a friend of Larry Lowell. But you can call me Bud. Everybody does.”
    “Larry Lowell? Oh, are you the person looking at the house in Alpine Grove?”
    “Yep, that’s me. And I gotta tell ya, that’s one bad smell you got there, lady,” he said with a snort.
    “Yes. I noticed. Can you make it go away?”
    “Yeah, but it’s gonna cost ya,” Bud said with a slurp. It sounded like he was shifting chewing tobacco around in his mouth. Finally, he spat out, “I gotta find the varmint and then cut out the wall and then dee-spoze of the thing in a sanitary way.”
    Considering how disgusting she found chewing tobacco, Kat hated to think what Bud would regard as sanitary disposal. She didn’t exactly have a lot of options. “That sounds like a good plan, Mr. Fowler. Did you talk to Larry about this? I need to know the cost as well.”
    “Yep. He said that I need to talk to you ‘cuz you gotta come up with the money for the dee-spoz-al.”
    Kat said, “I think Larry is supposed to take care of it with the money from Abigail’s estate.”
    “Nope,” Bud said with an emphatic slurp.
    “I’d like to know how much this will cost. And can you take a