Nightmare Mountain Read Online Free Page B

for Molly and Glendon to see. It had his picture on it. “This is my identification,” he said. “I need to come in and get some things.”
    “Is Aunt Karen going to be OK?” Molly asked.
    “I don’t know,” the sheriff said. “It was still touch and go when I left the hospital.” He stepped inside. “I need to collect samples of food,” he said. “Any leftovers of what she ate last night.”
    “Is that what made her sick?” Glendon said. “Something she ate?”
    “Could be.”
    “But we all ate the same things,” Molly said. “If the food was spoiled, wouldn’t all of us be sick?”
    “Maybe you didn’t eat exactly the same things. And maybe the food wasn’t spoiled. She could have some illness that doesn’t have anything to do with what she ate but we have to find out. So many crazy things happen these days; we can’t assume anything.”
    Molly frowned. What sort of illness? What crazy things?
    “You think she was poisoned, don’t you?” Glendon said.
    Molly’s jaw dropped. Poisoned!
    “It looks that way,” Sheriff Donley said. “We need to test the food, to be sure.”
    Stunned, Molly led the way to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator.
    “We had pot roast last night,” she said. “And potatoes and gravy.” A nice, normal dinner. Nothing weird. Certainly nothing poisonous.
    “We had carrots, too,” Glendon said. “And salad.”
    Molly removed a glass dish which contained the rest of the meat and potatoes. She didn’t see any leftover carrots or salad.
    “Let me look,” Glendon said, and he rummaged around in the refrigerator, opening containers and closing them again.
    “Here’s the extra gravy,” he said.
    The sheriff put the food into an insulated box that he’d brought along. “What about dessert?” he asked. “Did you have any dessert last night?”
    “I had cookies,” Molly said.
    “Me, too,” Glendon said, “but Mother didn’t have any.”
    “Are you positive?”
    “She didn’t feel too well, even before we ate,” Molly said. “Her nose was stuffy and she said she had a headache. We thought she was getting a cold or the flu. Are you
sure
she was poisoned?”
    Molly didn’t mean to doubt the sheriff’s word; it was just so preposterous. Who would poison Aunt Karen? And why?
    “What about snacks?” the sheriff asked. “Did you eat anything later in the evening?”
    “We had some popcorn,” Glendon said. “But all of us ate some, not just Mother.”
    “We all ate the pot roast, too,” Molly pointed out.
    “Where do you keep the popcorn?” the sheriff asked.
    Glendon opened a cupboard and removed a jar of popcorn.
    The sheriff put it in the box with the pot roast and gravy containers. “I don’t see how someone could poison unpopped popcorn,” he said, “but I’ll have it tested. I’ll take along the cookies, too.”
    Molly didn’t see how someone could poison popcorn, either, but then she didn’t see how any of this could be happening. She handed the sheriff the tin of cookies.
    “I
know
these aren’t poison,” she said. “I made them myself.”
    “Can you think of anything she might have eaten that the rest of you didn’t have?” the sheriff asked. “Anything at all?”
    Both Glendon and Molly shook their heads.
    “Your dad will be calling you, or coming home, as soon as he can,” the sheriff said. “Meanwhile, don’t eat anything from a package that’s already been opened. Do you understand?”
    Molly and Glendon nodded.
    After the sheriff left, Molly said, “I can’t believe this! Who would want to poison Aunt Karen? And how would the poison get put in the food? There was nobody here yesterday except us.”
    Glendon didn’t answer. Molly looked at him. He was glaring at her and the expression in his eyes made her take a quick step backwards.
    “Yes,” he said slowly. “Nobody else was here.”
    He thinks I did it,
Molly realized.
He thinks I poisoned Aunt Karen.
    “Glendon,” Molly said. “I would