Sammy Keyes and the Dead Giveaway Read Online Free PDF Page A

you ever saw,” Mrs. Willawago told me. “Oh, there were desks and the like, as any old office has, but the boys built a miniature railroad that went around the walls, complete with trestles they'd fashioned above the doors. If someone came into the building,
chuga-chuga-chuga-whoo-whoo
, it would trigger the train. Praise the Lord, what a sight! It would take a trip clear round, then come to a rest until the next person went through the door.
    “They had the place decorated with pictures of the men working the line, crossbucks and a gantry, a semaphore, steel gangs and spikers … all manner of railroading paraphernalia. Frank adored the place, which is how we got our start collecting and decorating in here. It was a real ferrophiliac's delight.”
    Now, I didn't know what half the things she'd mentioned were, but ferrophiliac? I couldn't let that one slide. So I asked, “Uh …ferro-
what
?”
    She laughed. “Ferrophiliac. Someone who loves railroads.”
    Before Mrs. Willawago told me about the railroad office, I thought it was just another old building ready for the dozer. There's chain-link clear around it, and all the windows and doors are boarded up. And slashed all over the plywood and the building's brick are layers and layers of graffiti. It was hard to imagine it ever being anything cute or, you know,
vibrant.
    But now that I knew its history, it made me kind of sad every time I walked by. It felt like the tomb of the railroad guys. A place where they'd spent their lives. A place that was now just fading memories.
    Anyway, I walked by the railroad office, then the weedy vacant lot next door, past two houses with more car parts out front than a wrecking yard, past another weedy lot, and then the Stones' house.
    The only reason I knew their name was because they lived next door to Mrs. Willawago, and she had joked that they were just a “Stone's throw away.” Their house was definitely weathered, but at least their front yard wasn't a car-parts graveyard. It didn't have flowers and a white picket fence or anything, but it did have the finest lawn I'd ever seen. Not fine as in great—fine as in fine hair. The blades were thin and delicate and cropped really close to the earth. Actually, the first time I saw the lawn, I thought it was fake, but even in Santa Martina most people don't mow fake grass, and that's exactly what Mr. Stone was doing as I walked by.
    He was pushing a little antique lawn mower. You know, no seat, no motor… just a handle and a wide spiral blade.And he was wearing the same thing he always seemed to wear—blue coveralls, work boots, cop-style glasses that turn dark in the sun, and one of those ball caps with the built-in safari cloths in back.
    I waved because it seemed pretty stupid not to, seeing how I was walking right by, but I might as well not have because he pretended not to see me.
    No big surprise. Mr. Stone's a bit of an odd duck, if you ask me. His weight's all in the middle, plus he's got an overgrown brown-and-gray moustache that curves around his mouth. So between that and the shades and the hat, he looks like a dressed-up walrus.
    He's also not very friendly, but Mrs. Willawago says he's actually nicer than he used to be. Apparently he injured his back at work, but she says she thinks he's been humbled by other medical problems—like skin cancer.
    Whatever. Humbled or not, he's still not very friendly.
    Anyway, it was trash day, so I moved Mrs. Willawago's empty bin into her garage, then picked up her mail and opened her front door. She likes me to just call hello and come in because it saves her from having to hobble over to answer the door. But this time I kind of choked on my hello because she was standing right there, flushed and flustered, clenching some papers in her hand. And she was breathing funny. Sort of shallow and
panty
.
    If she had been alone, I would have worried that she was having a heart attack. But there was another woman standing right beside her. A