G'Day to Die: A Passport to Peril Mystery - By Maddy Hunter Page 0,36
over here and set your keister down beside me,” Diana said. She nudged Bernice, who anchored the bench on her right, “Would you mind sliding over?”
“WHAT?” Bernice shouted.
Guy held up his hand in apology. “You’ll have to forgive her. The musket-firing demonstration seems to have short-circuited the hearing aid in her one ear and deafened her in the other. But it’s nothing to worry about. They tell me this happens to people all the time and the effects are only temporary.”
“WHAT?”
Oh, God.
“SLIDE DOWN, BERNICE!” Lucille Rassmuson gesticulated wildly from across the table. “MAKE ROOM FOR EMILY.”
In an effort to prevent us all from going deaf, I set my tray on the table and squeezed nimbly between Jake and Diana. “Well, would you look at that? I have room and then some, so you can tell Bernice to stay right where she is.”
“You tell her,” Lucille fussed. “Your vocal cords are younger.”
Nora Acres stared at me with her too-blue eyes. “If you don’t live in the orphanage,” she asked in her sandpaper voice, “where do you live?”
“I live in the United States, in the middle of the country, not too far from the city of Chicago. Have you heard of Chicago?”
“Is that near the Big Apple?”
“West of the Big Apple.”
“I live near the Big Winch.”
Heath draped his arm around his mother’s shoulder. “Coober Pedy’s most famous tourist attraction is the Big Winch.”
“Winch or wench?” asked Roger. “If it’s wench, you’ve got my attention.”
“It’s a gigantic bucket hanging from a crosspiece that has a crank on each ind,” said Heath. “A winch. All that’s missing is a will.”
“I’ve seen the Big Banana,” Nora muttered.
“The concrete thing at Coffs Harbour?” asked Lola. She dismissed it with a flick of her wrist. “Too cheesy for words. But Jake loooved the theme park, didn’t you, Jakey?”
Jake fell into the kind of silence that usually precedes volcanic eruptions. I shoved half my hot dog bun into my mouth and chewed furiously, hoping to get out of here before the ash began to fly.
Roger Piccolo caught Heath’s eye. “This is pure speculation, but would I be right to assume that Coober Pedy is intensely hot throughout the year?”
“Coober Pedy’s so hot, the divil moved out a few years back,” Heath teased.
“Wreaks havoc on the skin, doesn’t it?”
Heath arched an eyebrow. “We’re not a town of beauty queens, mate.”
“I’ve visited the Big Oyster,” said Nora. “It has searchlights for eyes.”
Roger pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. “What I’m trying to ask without sounding too insensitive is, do most of the people end up looking like your mother?”
Heath’s expression grew hard. “You’d bitter mind what you’re saying.”
“I’m trying to help! I’m a researcher for a company called GenerX Technologies, and I’d like to work with your mother to freshen her complexion. I can reverse sun damage and any visible signs of aging without scalpels or harsh chemicals and have her looking decades younger in a matter of months. Wouldn’t you like to see her lose the wrinkles? She could become the poster child for the nonsurgical face-lift. We could feature her on infomercials and follow up with a documentary that would go directly to DVD.”
“All the tables in the room, and I have to pick the one with the resident con artist,” Diana Squires groaned. She jabbed a cautionary finger at Heath. “Don’t believe a word he’s telling you. He’ll take you to the cleaners and leave your mom with the same number of wrinkles she has now. That garbage he sells might even give her a few more.”
Roger’s flabby cheeks puffed with indignation. “Well, well, well. I heard the competition walked among us. So, you’re the Infinity maggot. Kee-reist, I knew the stench in here was coming from more than just the boiled hot dogs.”
My hot dog was boiled? I stared cross-eyed at the uneaten portion sticking out of my mouth. Euw. I hated boiled hot dogs.
“What you’re smelling is success,” Diana shot back. “Considering the pathetic results GenerX has had with its product, I can understand why the scent is foreign to you.”
“I don’t know how industry maggots acquire their information,” Roger challenged, “but yours is all wrong. Your company would kill for GenerX’s market share, but it ain’t ever gonna happen because your product is crap.”
“I’ve visited the Big Bull,” said Nora. “It’s got bollocks wot swing in the breeze.”
Jake sailed a scrap of paper across the table at Roger. “What’s that?” Roger snapped, salvaging it from the clutter on his tray.