your acquaintance.”
He nodded to the large man sitting on the passenger side. “This here’s Ox Olesen. Me and Ed and Ox are gonna split the million three ways. Ox is gonna use the money to go to college to learn about computers, and I’m gonna buy a couple cows with it so I can start a dairy herd. See, we’re not so bad, it’s like Ed said, our roots are here in Skogen but we can’t make any money here. We talked about it, and we figure borrowing your aunt’s diary doesn’t really hurt anyone.”
Maggie shook her head in disbelief. Her initial fear and outrage were overwhelmed by her curiosity. “I can’t follow any of this. What’s this business about a million dollars?”
“Someone…I don’t think we should tell you who, offered a million dollars for your aunt’s diary.”
Maggie felt the breath catch in her chest. “A million dollars? Why on earth would anyone want to pay a million dollars for Aunt Kitty’s diary. I’ve read every word of it. It’s not worth a million dollars.”
“It is now,” Ed Kritch said. “Hey, we could give you some of the money to compensate for taking you away from the dance. We aren’t greedy. We don’t need the whole million. We could divide it up four ways instead of three.”
“I can’t give up Aunt Kitty’s diary,” Maggie said. “She entrusted it to me. I promised to make it into a book.”
“Bummer,” Ed Kritch said. “We didn’t count on that.”
“The way I see it,” Vern Walsh said, “is that your Aunt Kitty was a good old broad, and she’d probably like to help us all out. She’d be glad to know her diary was doing somebody some good.”
He turned into the driveway and gunned the car down the dirt road to Hank’s house. “If we get the diary real fast, then we can get back to the dance in time to see them crown the king and queen.”
Maggie crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes. “I’m not giving you the diary. It’s hidden and you’ll never find it. And have you considered the consequences of kidnapping me?”
“We’re real upstanding citizens,” Ed said. “We’ve never done anything wrong before. We thought we’d just lie like the dickens and folks would believe us.”
“Are you the ones who broke into the house last night and the night before?” Maggie asked.
“Nope. This is our first shot at it. I heard it was Lumpy Mooney who tried to get the diary last night. Word is he damn near broke his backside falling off the ladder.”
Everyone but Maggie got a good chuckle out of that.
Vern stopped a few feet back from the house. Two cars were parked in the driveway, and the lights to the house were blazing.
“Well, will you look at this!” he said. “That’s Slick Newman’s car. And the piece of junk in front of it belongs to that runt-nosed Purcell kid.”
“They’re after the diary,” Ed Kritch said. “Man, that really stinks. They broke right into Hank’s granny’s house. I tell you people in this town are going down the toilet. When I was a kid, you never had to worry about this sort of thing. You wouldn’t think of locking your front door when I was a kid.”
“So, what do you think?” Vern said. “You think we should get the sheriff?”
Ed chewed on his lower lip while he thought about it for a minute. “No,” he finally said. “The Purcell family’s hard up. Seven kids and old man Purcell’s been gimpy ever since Maynard Beasley mistook him for a deer and shot him in the knee. Why don’t we just go tell them it wasn’t polite to break in when nobody was home. Then we can all look for the diary and divide the money up. Hell, there’s enough to go around.”
A car pulled up behind them. Everyone turned around to squint into the headlights.
“Probably Hank,” Maggie said. “You’d better watch out. He’ll break every bone in your body when he gets hold of you.”
“Nah,” Ed said. “It’s not Hank. Hank drives a pickup, and these headlights are too low. Besides, Hank’s a good guy. He’d understand about us needing the money.”
The lights blinked off and several figures got out of the car. One of the men had a body slung over his shoulder. They approached Ed Kritch and looked in the window.
“It’s Spike,” Ed said, rolling down his window. “Hey, Spike, what are you doing here?”
“We got a hostage,” Spike said. “We come