Read Funhouse for Free Online Page A

was watching. I watched her house all night. Silly girl. The police probably think she’s loony-tunes. Laughed at her, I’ll bet!
    Have to hand it to her, though. I thought she’d split when she got my note. She didn’t. Stayed right there. Had every light in the condo on, though. The place looked like one giant light bulb!
    She stayed at Giambones’ last night. Okay by me. Plenty of time. After all, a few weeks ago I didn’t even know what I know now.
    Until I read Lila O’Hare’s journal.
    After that bunch of blank pages following the entry about losing The Boardwalk, she began writing again.
    My Tully is gone. I know people are saying that what he did was cowardly, but Tully was no coward. He did it for me and the baby. He didn’t know, that poor, sweet man, that the insurance company wouldn’t pay off in a suicide case.
    How am I going to take care of our baby when it comes?
    The man was dead? That was pretty gruesome. I wondered if those guys who took The Boardwalk from him felt guilty. Maybe not. I knew what my own father would say. He’d say, “Look, the guy couldn’t hack it. Is that my fault?”
    Well, yes, actually, I guess it could have been. If my father had been in on the deal. I hoped he hadn’t, but after all, the journal was in this trunk in this attic in this house and I had a sneaking suspicion that meant something. Lila went on:
    Buddy came to see me. He said I shouldn’t worry, that he’d take care of everything, that they all felt guilty about buying The Boardwalk, that they never thought it would drive Tully to suicide.
    They didn’t buy The Boardwalk. They stole it!
    But I have to let Buddy help me. I have no choice.
    She was going to let this creep help her out, after what he’d done. She must really be desperate.
    Tiny little hammers tattooing the inside of my skull made me put the journal down.

Chapter 10
    W HEN TESS WENT HOME the next day, Gina insisted she take one of the Giambone cats with her. “For company,” she said. “Take Trilby. She’s the most affectionate. She has a thing for laps and she loves to be petted. You can keep her until Shelley gets back.”
    “Is Trilby trained as an attack cat?” Tess joked, in an effort to calm the nerves that were stretched taut from uncertainty and lack of sleep. What had that purple note meant? And who had written it? And why? Had it really been just a sick joke?
    The cat was beautiful, a sleek Siamese with clear blue eyes. She purred with gratitude when she was allowed to lounge in Tess’s lap all the way home.
    Tess had barely had time to change into jean and a yellow sweatshirt when the phone rang. It was Gina. “Listen, I know you’re not going to be crazy about this idea,” she warned, “but just hear me out, okay? My dad asked me this morning if I could get a bunch of kids together to go to The Boardwalk sometime this week. Just to show people that it’s safe, you know?”
    But is it? Tess wondered.
    “I thought,” Gina continued, “since we have the day off, this afternoon would be a good time. I’ve already talked to Beak and Sam and they think it’s a good idea. Sam said he’d call Guy Joe. And I think Trudy and Candace might come, too. Trudy told me she was planning to sleep all day, but when I told her Guy Joe was coming, she changed her mind. And Sam said he’d bring Candace.”
    “I don’t want to go down there,” Tess protested. The oval table was still firmly pressed up against the French doors, a reminder that Saturday night’s note hadn’t been imagined. If the author had had something to do with the roller coaster crash, he might be hanging around The Boardwalk. Returning to the scene of the crime. Didn’t criminals do that sort of thing? “Why can’t we do something else?”
    “C’mon, Tess, please? First of all, there isn’t anything else to do. Secondly, my dad’s worried about what the accident will do to business on The Boardwalk, and I don’t blame him. Look, he hardly ever asks me