Secrets Read Online Free PDF Page B

lavish praise on you.”
    â€œI know,” Cassie said as she looked out at the river. With each day she was coming closer to the time when she’d have to leave a house she’d come to love, leave a community she loved. And worst, leave people she had come to love.
    She was about to start back to the house when a sound from the mansion that was just visible through the trees made her jump.
    Dana looked at Cassie, her eyes wide. “Was that a shot?”
    There were two more explosions, sounding like two more shots.
    â€œDo you have a phone with you?” Dana asked. “I think we should call the police.”
    Cassie thought the same thing, but she wasn’t going to tell Dana that. After all, she was a nanny who deserved “lavish praise”—who used such a term nowadays?—so she wasn’t going to turn chicken and run away. She put her shoulders back. “I’m sure it’s nothing, but maybe I should check.” The last thing in the world she wanted to do was walk toward a house where she’d heard shots being fired, but she didn’t want the snooty Miss Perfect Dana Craig to know that.
    â€œMaybe I should go home and call from there,” Dana said.
    â€œYes, of course, you do that,” Cassie said, her head held high as she started walking faster. “I’m just worried that if nothing is wrong, Miss Fairmont might not like the police intruding on her.”
    â€œCertainly not,” Dana said, keeping pace with Cassie and not veering off toward her house. In front of them loomed the huge Fairmont mansion. It was a new house, but during the two years it had taken to build, no expense had been spared in making it a grand estate. There wasn’t a corbel or a post that wasn’t decorated in a tasteful, expensive way.
    â€œHow big do you think that place is?” Dana asked quietly.
    â€œTwenty-one thousand, two hundred and ten square feet,” Cassie said quickly.
    â€œWith only five bedrooms but twelve bathrooms,” Dana said.
    â€œAnd a screening room that seats thirty, and the house has its own generators.”
    â€œIn case the power goes out, the movie won’t be interrupted,” Dana said, then for a brief second she and Cassie almost exchanged smiles.
    â€œIt’s all on the Internet,” Cassie said as they reached the back of the formal garden that surrounded the house. “Anyone can read about it.”
    â€œIf you spend hours searching,” Dana said.
    â€œExactly,” Cassie answered.
    When they reached the garden with its manicured lawn, and the boxwood-edged shapes that were filled with pink begonias, they began to walk more slowly. The house loomed over them, with its huge windows seeming to look down on them. They were in the sacred territory of a woman who was a legend. She had been famous when Cassie’s mother was a child. There were few people on earth who could remember a time when Althea Fairmont wasn’t famous—at least it seemed that way. She’d been a child star before talking movies, looking up with big eyes, begging the villain not to throw her and her mother out into the street. The 1930s came, and along with them, Shirley Temple with her singing and dancing. Althea could do neither of those, but she could act. By the time Althea was fourteen, the studio was lying about her age and casting her with the Barrymores. When she reached thirty, the studio began lying about her age the other way.
    All that had been done had worked. Althea had starred in every type of movie and stage production. Whether she played a comedy, a tragedy, or did a guest appearance on a talk show, the viewer was guaranteed a great show. Althea Fairmont could play any part and had proven it many times over. Still, at her age—whatever it was, as the bios disagreed—whenever she appeared, there was a line waiting to see her.
    Now, Dana and Cassie walked through the garden, uninvited,