Read Beckett's Cinderella for Free Online Page B

potato chips, son.” Suddenly Uncle Fred leaned forward, glaring at the screen. “What do you mean, strike? That pitch was outside by a gol-darn mile!”
    Liza left them to their game and headed down the hall to her bedroom. She would skim whatever it was he insisted she read, hand it back to him and show him the door, and that would be the end of that. If he did happen to be peddling some kind of get-rich-quick scheme, he’d come knocking on the wrong door this time. Any junk mail that even hinted that she was a big winner got tossed without ever getting opened. She didn’t want one red cent unless she knew exactly where it had come from.
    The papers slid out in a clump. For a moment she only stared at them lying there on her white cotton bedspread. They looked as if they’d been soaked in tea. The top sheet appeared to be a letter, so she started with that.
    â€œMy Dear Eli…”
    Liza made out that much before the ink faded. The ornate script was difficult to read, even without the faded ink and the work of generations of silverfish. She squinted at the date on the barely legible heading. September…was that 1900? Mercy! Someone should have taken better care of it, whether or not it was valuable. Maybe the writer was someone important. If it had been a baseball card from that era—if they’d even had baseball cards back then—her uncle would have done backflips, arthritis or not.
    She gave up halfway down the page after making out a word here, a few words there. Whoever had written the letter more than a hundred years ago appeared to be bragging about making loads of money on something or other, but the script was too ornate, the ink too faded, the insect damage too great, to make out more than a few random lines.
    Judging by the fancy borders, the rest of the papers appeared to be certificates of some sort. They were so fragile she didn’t dare risk prying them apart. In a separate clump were a few sheets that looked as if they might have been torn from a ledger. The only words she could make out were “Merchants Bank” and “deposit to the…” Amount of? Account of? Something that looked like shorehavers.
    Shorehavers? Shaveholders?
    â€œShareholders,” she murmured aloud, “500 shares of…”
    Whatever the name of the company, whatever the value of the stock, an army of silverfish had successfully obliterated the record.
    And then she caught her breath. That creep! That slow-talking, smooth-walking creep!
    Oh, sure. He’d found these valuable-looking certificates, but before they could go up for sale they needed to be authenticated by an expert. Wasn’t that the way it was supposed to go? Only poor Mr. Beckett, if that really was his name, couldn’t quite swing it alone. He was willing to cut her in, however, for the small sum of, say five hundred dollars—a thousand would be even better if she could scrape it up—to have the certificates authenticated. As earnest money, he would toss in an equal amount.
    How many suckers had he talked into investing in his scheme? It was a classic street con. The found wallet. The pocketbook left in a phone booth.
    What she ought to do was turn this jerk over to the sheriff.
    From the front of the house she heard a roar. Baseball fans were an excitable lot. Her uncle shouted, “Go it, son! Show them fellers how it’s done!”
    Evidently one of the Braves had hit a home run. She only hoped L. J. Beckett enjoyed the baseball game, because his other game wasn’t going to play. Not tonight. Not with her.
    Before leaving her room, she shook down her hair,gave it a few swipes with the hairbrush and then fastened it back up again, tighter than ever. It was more a security thing than a matter of style or even comfort. James used to call her a throwback to a time when women over a certain age wore their hair pinned up. Only their husbands had the privilege of seeing them