Searching for Caleb Read Online Free PDF

that because she's the one with black hair, only she's been dyeing it for years now." She poured coffee into thick white cups. "You say your husband chose the house?" she asked Justine.
       "He always does."
       Red Emma flung him a glance. A fine-looking, straw-colored man. His conscience did not appear to be bothering him. "Look, honey," she told Justine. She set the coffeepot down and leaned over the counter. "How come you would let your husband choose where you live? Does he understand kitchens? Does he check for closet space and woodwork that doesn't crumble to bits the first time you try to scrub it down?"
       Justine laughed. "I doubt it," she said.
       Red Emma had once sent her husband to a used car lot to buy a family automobile and he had come home with a little teeny red creature meant for racing, set low to the ground, slit eyes for windows. It ate up every cent they had saved. She had never forgiven him. So now she felt personally involved, and she glared at this Duncan. He sat there as calm as you please building a pyramid out of sugar cubes. The grandfather was reading someone's discarded newspaper, holding it three feet away from him as old people tend to do and scowling and working his mouth around.
       Only the daughter seemed to understand. A nice girl, so trim and quiet.
       She wore a coat that was shabby but good quality, and she kept her eyes fixed on a catsup bottle as if something had shamed her. She knew what Red Emma was getting at.
       "There's other places," Red Emma said. "The Butters are letting, oh, a big place go, over by the schoolhouse."
       "Now on the average," Duncan said, and Red Emma turned, thinking he was speaking to her, "on the average a single one of the blocks in Cheops's pyramid weighed two and a half tons." No, it was the grandfather he meant that for, but the grandfather only looked up, irritated, maybe not even hearing, and turned a page of his paper. Duncan spun toward Meg, on his left. "It is accepted that wheels as such were not used in the construction," he told her. "Nor any but the most primitive surveying tools, so far as we know. Nevertheless, the greatest error to be found is only a little over five degrees on the east wall, and the others are almost perfect. And have you thought about the angle of the slant?"
       Meg looked back at him, expressionless.
       "It's my belief they built it from the top down," he said. He laughed.
       Red Emma thought he must be crazy.
       She flipped the hotcakes, loaded Justine's plate, and set it in front of her. "The Butters' house is a two-story affair," she said. "They also have a sleeping porch."
       "Oh, I believe Mr. Parkinson's place is going to be just fine," said Justine. "Besides, it's near where Duncan's going to work. This way he can come home for lunch."
       "Now where's he going to work?" Red Emma asked.
       "At the Blue Bottle Antique Shop."
       Oh, Lord. She should have known. That gilt-lettered place, run by a fat man nobody knew. Who needed antiques in Caro Mill? Only tourists, passing through on their way to the Eastern Shore, and most of them were in too much of a hurry to stop. But Red Emma still clung to a shred of hope (she liked to see people manage, somehow) and she said, "Well now, I suppose he could improve on what that Mr.-I don't recall his name. I suppose if he knows about antiques, and so on-"
       "Oh, Duncan knows about everything," said Justine.
       It didn't sound good, not at all.
       "He hasn't worked with antiques before but he did build some furniture once, a few jobs back-"
       Yes.
       "The man who owns the Blue Bottle is Duncan's mother's sister's brother-in-law. He wants to ease off a little, get somebody else to manage the store for him now that he's getting older."
       "We've used up all my mother's blood relations," Duncan said cheerfully.
       He was correcting the pitch of one pyramid wall. The truth that was coming out