Angel at Troublesome Creek Read Free

to know so much, how did my aunt end up at the bottom of those attic stairs? Who did kill Aunt Caroline?”
    “Oh, I can’t tell you that,” she said.
    “What do you mean, you can’t tell me? Why not?”
    Her eyes were wide and innocent. “Because I don’t know. I’m an angel, dear, not a clairvoyant. Besides …” Augusta Goodnight air-touched my face. “I imagine that’s for you to find out.”

C HAPTER T WO
     
    “D o I look like Nancy Drew?” I said. “Maybe you’d better go back to gardening.” I wasn’t doing such a great job of living . What made her think I could handle the puzzle of Aunt Caroline’s death?
    “Don’t give up on me yet, I’ll get the hang of it again,” Augusta said with a smile that was truly radiant. “After all, I did all right for Lucille Pettigrew.”
    “Who’s that?”
    “Lucille Pettigrew—my last assignment—lived to be eighty-seven. Wanted to see her grandson home from France, and she did. What a grand day that was! I hadn’t been as thrilled since Luther Burbank himself complimented me on my Shasta daisies.” Augusta studied me with a slight frown. “Corporal Gordon Pettigrew. Wonder if he ever married that girl he was writing to. He’d be about your age—good-looking too. Took a shell at Normandy. Didn’t lose the leg, but I’m afraid he’ll always walk with a slight limp.”
    “Are you talking about Normandy as in France ? Just how old do you think I am?” I glanced at my reflection in the toaster and wiped a smudge from my cheek. I knew I wasn’t looking my best, but still—
    “I know exactly how old you are, you’re twenty-six. They fill us in on background information before we come. That’s how I knew about your aunt’s storing tea bags in the garlic jar.”
    Poor Aunt Caroline. The coroner said it looked as though she’d fallen from the top of the attic stairs. But what in the world was she doing up there? She always got out of breath climbing those steep steps, and I had made her promise she wouldn’t go up there alone. I didn’t think my aunt would go back on her word. The delicate hankie Augusta had given me earlier was in a damp wad in my pants pocket, but I used it anyway.
    When I looked up, Augusta was beside me. She smelled of fresh strawberries and mint, and the touch of her small hand made me feel lighter somehow. “I know how terrible you must feel about your aunt,” she said. “But you will heal, I promise. It just takes time.”
    “She wasn’t really my aunt,” I explained, “but she was all I had, and I loved her. She and Uncle Henry took me in when I was barely eight; except for my parents, they were the only people who ever really cared about me … unless you count this one little boy back at Summerwood Acres.” Sam. I remembered how he’d comforted me when I first came to Summerwood and was so afraid of the dark. “Night is just day painted over, Mary G.,” Sam reasoned. And I’ve never forgotten it. “He probably wouldn’t remember me now,” I said.
    Augusta consulted a small notebook she’d taken from her seemingly bottomless handbag, and apparently finding nothing there, put it back with a click of the catch. “We don’t know that,” she said, “so we’ll just have to find out, won’t we? But first, I think you should decide what you’re going to do.”
    “Do?” I hadn’t thought further than jumping off the kitchen stool in the back hall with a rope around my neck. And I don’t care what Augusta Goodnight says, that rope seemed sturdy enough at the time!
    “With your life. You have to have someplace to live, work—unless, of course, you’re independently wealthy. Did I overlook that in my notes?”
    I would’ve laughed had I been so inclined. Not only was I not wealthy, Aunt Caroline had left several outstanding debts. Large debts. Already creditors were breathing down my neck, and there was barely enough to pay funeral expenses. “I guess the first thing to do is try and sell this