The Mystery off Glen Road

cried impatiently. “My cousin, Ben Riker, is the only one. You met him when we solved the red trailer mystery, and he was up here last weekend.”
    Trixie shuddered. “Even if he is your full-blooded cousin, I can’t stand him. He’s always playing horrible practical jokes.”
    “I know,” Honey said soothingly. “He’s simply ghastly, but he doesn’t have to know that" you’ve fallen in love with him. He’s going to spend the Thanksgiving holidays with us, so all you have to do is pretend that you’re getting in practice so that you can, well, sort of make him like you when he arrives next week.”
    Trixie shuddered again. “Well, if I have to for Brian’s sake, I guess I have to. You know more about these things than I ever will, Honey. You’ll have to coach me. How are you supposed to act when you’re in love?”
    “I’m not sure,” Honey admitted. “But in the books, they sort of droop around the way Celia did before Tom finally asked her to marry him. And whenever you answer the phone, you don’t just doodle aimlessly with a pencil. You write your name and Ben’s and cancel out all the same letters in both names, and then you go through the letters that are left and say, ‘Love, hate, courtship, marriage.’ But if it doesn’t come out right, you leave out something so it always ends with both names saying ‘love’ and ‘marriage.’ Right up until the wedding yesterday, every piece of paper in the house was covered with Celia’s and Tom’s names, but toward the end, all Celia wrote all over everything was simply ‘Mrs. Thomas Delanoy.’ ”
    “Oh, woe,” Trixie groaned. “This is much, much more complicated than international intrigue. Do you really, honest and truly, think that if I write ‘Mrs. Benjamin Riker’ all over Moms’s shopping list, it’s going to make Dad take my diamond ring out of the bank? Instead,” she answered her own question, “it’ll probably make him put me into a straitjacket and have me toted off to the looney bin.”
    “Oh, don’t be so literal, Trixie,” Honey cried exasperatedly. “You know perfectly well what I mean, but you’d better start practicing now. Just swoon around and murmur to yourself, but loud enough so everybody else can hear you, ‘Oh, Ben, Ben! How can I live until the Thanksgiving holidays?’ ”
    Trixie stood up and gritted her teeth. “Blood is thicker than water, and anything for my own full-blooded brother Brian! But, Honey, I can’t swoon around in this outfit. Nobody can swoon properly unless she looks a little something like the Lily Maid of Astolat, which I definitely don’t.”
    At that moment there was a knock on Honey’s bedroom door, and Mart poked his head inside.
    “I’ve got news for you, Trix,” he said. “The electricity is on, so household chores await you at home.” Trixie suddenly decided that this was as good a time as any to start trying to convince Mart that she had gone “frail and feminine.”
    “Chores?” she asked, buffing her stubby, slightly soiled fingernails against the ragged cuff of her sweater. “Surely you can’t mean anything that might give me dishpan hands?”
    Mart stared at her, openmouthed. “Wha-at did you say?” he gasped.
    Trixie, trying to ignore her reflection in the mirror so she could imagine herself in a dainty frock, shook her .head sorrowfully. “It isn’t that I don’t want to cooperate, you must understand. It’s just that Ben, well, he wouldn’t like it. Ben. Ah, Ben!” If Mart had had long hair to clutch, he would have clutched it. As it was, he simply clasped his hands above his head and demanded, “Ben who, lamebrain? If you are referring to Benjamin Franklin, I’ve got news for you. He died before you were born and so couldn’t care less if you have dishpan hands.” Honey hurried to the rescue. “Trixie’s quite right, Mart,” she said firmly. “Ben wouldn’t like it. I mean, after all, when a girl starts wearing diamond rings, she’s just got to have pretty hands. What I mean is, it’s obvious, you know. Ben Riker and Trixie. It is obvious, isn’t it? I mean, he’s my own full-blooded cousin, and then Trixie is your very own full-blooded sister, so we should know, shouldn’t we?” Mart let out a loud groan. “So far as I am concerned, she’s a full-blooded, but very lazy, domestic servant. And if she doesn’t get down to the family abode soon and cope with the dust and dishes, I’ll brain her. Not,” he added as he