Popcorn Thief Read Online Free Page A

worried about her boy.
    An unseen ghost haunting Franklin? That just didn’t seem
right. Ghosts haunted Franklin because they needed his help. They’d been doing
it since he was a boy. Mama had always told him it was his duty. And he sure
hadn’t done anything to make a ghost want revenge or come after him.
    Maybe the ghost was just ornery enough to haunt Franklin
without wanting his help. But that still didn’t seem right. And it wouldn’t
worry Mama, not that much.
    What was this other ghost? And what did it really want?
    * * *
    On his lunch break the next day at the Kroger, Franklin
hurriedly ate his sandwich and went to find Charlene, the store manager.
    “Hey darlin’,” Charlene said, welcoming Franklin into the
little security booth on the balcony of the store. “What can I do you for?”
    The room held a half-dozen TV screens, all black and white,
showing different places in the store, like the liquor coolers in the back, the
two cashiers up front, and the baby and diaper aisle—they’d had a problem
recently with formula going missing. Like the rest of the store, the room smelled
like old wood and dust: The building was a turn-of-the-century store front,
gutted and converted into a more modern store.
    Franklin had never felt comfortable up there, spying on
everyone. Charlene always struck him as a little too keen on security.
    Charlene’s uniform was a long-sleeved white shirt with the
Kroger logo over her right breast pocket, black trousers, and a utility belt
that rivaled any comic book character’s. She cut her brown curly hair short and
always wore what Mama called “work makeup”—just enough to make her
pretty, but never enough to be noticed. Fortunately, Mama had never tried to
set Franklin up with Charlene. Franklin had always assumed it wasn’t because
Charlene was white, but because of her size: She was taller and wider than
Franklin (who wasn’t a small man) and at least twice as strong.
    “Figured I’d come and catch up on the local gossip,”
Franklin said with a grin, holding out his bribe: half a bowl of the fresh
blueberries that had just come in, drowning in cream.
    “You know I don’t gossip,” Charlene admonished as she took
the bowl with one hand, while indicating that Franklin should sit on the other
chair in her “command center.” “Thank you,” she added with a shy smile.
    “Then maybe you can catch me up on the news,” Franklin said.
    “Well, you know the Whittiers?” Charlene started. “They live
up near the big Baptist church, off Fifth. So Jimmy—you know Jimmy, the
dry cleaner—he was saying…”
    Franklin nodded, letting Charlene spin her tales. The
problem wasn’t ever getting Charlene talking, but getting her to stop. It was
why he’d come to see her at the end of his break, not the beginning.
    “So, have any bad people been killed on the highway
recently?” Franklin asked when he felt he could get a word in.
    “No, no, not that I could say,” Charlene said. She put the
empty bowl back on the desk in front of her. “You sure are a gruesome thing,
ain’t ya? Always asking about who’s dying.”
    Franklin shrugged and tried to act casual. “Just an interest
of mine,” he said truthfully.
    “The only big news we’ve had is that some big developer, a
businessman, has gone missing. He was supposed to call into his office yesterday,
on Monday, and didn’t,” Charlene said.
    “What do you mean, missing?” Franklin asked, wondering. A
developer—that might make a hungry ghost, particularly if he was looking
to buy up anything in their little sleepy town.
    “You can’t say a word to anyone else,” Charlene said,
leaning forward and lowering her voice. “I heard it on the scanner.”
    Charlene kept a police scanner in her car, and sometimes
followed Sheriff Thompson or went out to where there was trouble. Not that it
was illegal, but the sheriff and his deputies didn’t like Charlene much. She
insisted it was because they were threatened