Read The Legend of Sleepy Harlow for Free Online Page B

coughing wasn’t too bad. Nor was the wheezing. The face I made . . . well, there was nobody around to see it, so I didn’t care.
    With thumb and forefingers, I plucked the first soggy page of the manuscript off the even soggier pile and held it up to the light to read it, then started typing.
    By the time I was done with the page and consigned it to the fire, the computer screen in front of me read:
    Charles Sleep_ Har___
    The Stud_ of an Island Leg____
    by
    Mari____ ______john
    This method of decoding was obviously not going to work.
    My shoulders drooped, but I refused to be discouraged. It was like a game, wasn’t it? Like playing hangman. All I needed to do was fill in the blanks. Lucky for me, it wasn’t too tough; not for that first page, anyway. But by the time I’d transcribed what I could and thrown the next three pages of Marianne’s soggy tome into the flames, my eyes were spinning and my head was woozy.
    Then again, breathing in ammonia will do that to you.
    I yanked off my glasses and scrubbed my eyes with my fists, looking back over those first four pages and what I’d been able to decipher.
    It was pitifully little.
    A word here, a word there.
    A full sentence on page two. Hallelujah! Except that it didn’t make the least bit of sense with what I could read of the sentences before and after it.
    I considered the possibility that Marianne was simply a really bad writer, but honestly, that theory just didn’t hold water. As Luella had mentioned the day of the latest unfortunate incident with Jerry, Marianne wasn’t exactly the most imaginative person in the world. What she was, though, was thorough. And capable. Like most librarians I’d met, Marianne could rule the world if she chose to. She was that organized, that energetic. She might not be a ball of innovative fire, but she was plenty intelligent and dedicated to both her job and this book about Sleepy. She saw the book as her contribution to island history, her legacy, and I knew she’d never allow herself to be sloppy. She was too proud of what she’d produced.
    I owed it to Marianne to give it my best. I needed to try and read the sodden words more carefully and (hopefully) fill in the blanks, and I’d just picked another wet page from the garbage bag when I heard the bang of footsteps on the hallway stairs.
    “What the hell?”
    Noreen’s high-pitched keening preceded her into the parlor.
    “You messed with our equipment.”
    I was in the middle of trying to determine if a word smeared across the middle of page five was
robust
or
rosebush
and I didn’t spare her a look. “It’s all there,” I said, typing out
rosebush
and immediately deciding it should have been
robust
. I glanced over my shoulder at Noreen. “I needed the fireplace. And your equipment was in the way. It’s an emergency.”
    She sniffed the air. “I’ll say. No! Not that case, Fiona!” she yelled when she caught sight of something in the hallway and whirled around that way. “Take that other one first. It’s bigger.”
    Apparently, Fiona did, because when Noreen looked back at me, she was smug. “It makes more sense for the bigger equipment cases to go into the trucks first,” she said.
    “And it would make even more sense,” I suggested, “if you kept all the equipment out in the trucks when you got back. That way, you wouldn’t have to load and unload.”
    I’m pretty sure she would have admitted this was actually a good idea if she’d thought of it herself. The way it was, Noreen’s lips puckered like she’d sucked on a lemon. “It’s expensive equipment,” she said.
    “We have a very low crime rate here on South Bass. You don’t have a thing to worry about.”
    “Well . . .” She pretended to consider my plan. “We’ll see. For now—”
    Dimitri came down the steps so fast, he was huffing and puffing by the time he got to the bottom. “Everything’s set,” he said, stopping to catch his breath. “Liam, get the cameras into the