Alberta Alibi Read Online Free Page B

over six feet, with huge shoulders and no neck, like a football player. His brown hair was clipped super short, and he had a wide mouth and small, beady eyes. The other man was older, thin and wiry with piercing blue eyes, a long, pointed nose and not much hair on top of his head.
    â€œShall we go, gentlemen?” Her dad continued down the short hallway with the two Mounties following close behind. Both of them looked glum.
    When they heard the front door open, Rusty whispered, “They’re going out to search the truck. Your dad said it was okay.”
    The door shut with a loud clunk and Huntley immediately dropped a pound of butter back into the grocery bag. “Stay here,” he told the three of them. “Tell me if they come back in.” He charged down the hall.
    Katie followed close behind him. Sheila turned to Rusty. “You stay here,” she said. “Let us know the second that front door opens.”
    Rusty nodded and Sheila followed the other two.
    The RCMP had left the office door open, and Huntley walked in as if he owned the place. Lagging behind, Sheila glared at the back of his head, but as soon as she stepped into the room, she forgot all about Huntley. Her dad’s office hadn’t changed a bit. The huge oak desk had once belonged to her great-grandfather, the first Walton born here. As always, the desk was piled high with stacks of papers and unopened envelopes. The brown leather chair behind her dad’s desk was as cracked and ugly as she remembered it. Beside the desk, a recycling box overflowed with papers that spilled out onto the floor around it.
    Sheila used to be the one who made sure all the recyclables made it to the recycling bins in town at least once a month. She wondered now if some of these papers had been in the box the whole time she was gone.
    There, on the computer table behind her dad’s desk, was the very same computer she had used to e-mail her friends and research her favorite topic, endangered animals. Especially ones that lived in this area, like grizzly bears.
    When the house was built, way back in 1910, this little room off the kitchen had been planned as a spare bedroom for a cook or a maid. Sheila’s dad used to tell her about the first Waltons to live here. They arrived from North Dakota to homestead on this quarter of land, and they brought more money with them than most immigrants had in those days. They also brought big plans to be rich landowners, like the “gentleman farmers” they heard about in England. Their dream was to have parties and play tennis and go to picnics and get steadily richer while hired help did all the work for them.
    The settlers were in for a shock when it turned out they had to work hard themselves if they were going to make any money at all from a horse and cattle ranch. They may not have hired any cooks or maids, but this room was used by hired ranch hands until the little cottage was built. Since her grandfather’s day this room had been an office, but because it started out as a bedroom, it had a closet. And that’s where Huntley was right now. Inside the closet.
    Katie stood behind him, blocking the doorway. Sheila peered over her shoulder. “He usually locks the door,” she said.
    But the door to the gun cabinet, inside the closet, was locked as tight as always. It was more like a cage than a cabinet. Thick metal bars, close together, made it impossible to get so much as a hand inside, or to pull a rifle out. Normally there were two rifles in the cabinet, one beside the other. Right now there was only one.
    â€œIt’s gone all right,” Huntley said. “I thought that’s what they said, but it was hard to hear through the door. I can’t believe it. Chris always keeps the guns locked up in here when he isn’t using them.”
    â€œI know that,” Sheila snapped. Then she said, half to herself, “Maybe he’s gone out after wolves or a cougar.