Read Death of a Crabby Cook for Free Online Page B

hoist a few Guinness stouts to wash down all the fish fare. One of my favorite events was the Shuck-and-Suck Competition, where oyster lovers raced to see how many of those slimy things they could eat in a timed period. And although the festival wasn’t cheap, the proceedsbenefited the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, so it was all for a good cause. Of course, being press, I always got in free.
    I checked the time on my cell phone. Aunt Abby said we had to be at the School Bus by nine to prepare. The gates opened at eleven. This year the event was expected to draw more than a hundred thousand people. I couldn’t imagine serving such a crowd!
    â€œAunt Abby?” I called out after letting myself in the open back door.
    â€œShe’s not here!” Dillon yelled from the recesses of the house.
    Surprised he was up so early, I followed his voice to his room, hoping he was decent. I peered in from the doorway. His bedroom was essentially unchanged since high school. The ragged Harry Potter comforter lay in a crumpled heap at the foot of the unmade bed. Clothes were strewn about the room as if the place had been burglarized. Piles of comic books, graphic novels, and computer magazines towered in uneven piles on every flat surface. A souped-up PC that Dillon had assembled from custom components sat on a desk, his gateway to the virtual gaming world. He also had one other desktop computer, three monitors, a laptop, two printers, and a couple of tablets. The only noise in the room came from the cooling fans that kept the big computers from overheating.
    But it was his pet white rat, Ratty, that kept me from actually entering his room. It didn’t matter that the creepy thing was in a cage.
    Dillon lay in his bed working on his laptop. A coffee cup that read “I Escaped from Alcatraz” sat overturnedon the small table beside him, empty and dried up. He still wore his SpongeBob Squarepants pajama bottoms and a stretched-out Angry Birds T-shirt. His feet were bare and his toenails needed clipping. The room smelled of old food mixed with dirty socks and a hint of pot.
    â€œWhere is she?” I asked from the doorway. If the rat didn’t get me, I had a feeling hantavirus or some other hazmat disease would.
    â€œSaid she was going to work,” he said without looking up.
    I checked the time on my cell phone: seven. “Already?”
    He gave a one-shoulder shrug.
    Huh. Apparently she’d left early for her “busterant,” as she liked to call it, no doubt anxious to get ready for the onslaught of festival customers. Odd that she hadn’t called or texted to hustle me along. I started to leave, sensing I’d better get over there quickly to help out, then had a thought. Maybe Dillon could do some online investigating to help take the heat off his mother.
    â€œDillon, I did some research on Oliver Jameson last night and turned up some interesting stuff. I thought maybe you could find out more about him.”
    â€œDone that,” he said, continuing his typing.
    â€œReally?” I blinked, surprised at his sudden display of initiative. “What did you find out?”
    Still typing on his laptop, Dillon recited much of the same information I’d located on the Internet the previous night.
    â€œYeah, I saw all that. Anything else?”
    He pulled his fingers from the laptop and met my eyes. “Did you know that Bones ’n’ Brew was in Chapter 11?”
    â€œNo kidding? How did you find that out?”
    â€œPublic record,” he said.
    â€œWas the place about to close?”
    Dillon shrugged again. “Chapter 11 usually means reorganizing in order to stay afloat. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.”
    I knew that. “Anything else?”
    â€œI’m working on a few leads,” he said coyly.
    I rolled my eyes. “Well, I need to find out what really happened to Oliver Jameson and I could use your help, since you’re an