The Private Eye

say? How reassuring,” Maggie measured flour for pancakes. “Did you see it advertised on the back of a cereal box and send away for it with a coupon?”
    “Probably,” Josh said. “I eat a lot of cereal. I almost never get real home-cooked breakfasts, you see.”
    “Well, well, well. Fireworks already.” The Colonel winked at Odessa. “Sounds like things are going to be lively around here for the next month.”
    Shirley walked into the kitchen, yawning. “You know what my Ricky always used to say about two people who went at it right off the bat like Josh and Maggie here?”
    “No. What did Ricky 'The Wrecker’ used to say?” Josh asked.
    “He'd say they were either meant for each other or else they would wind up throttling each other. One of the two.”
    “An interesting choice,” Josh observed blandly.
    MAGGIE WAS RATHER surprised to discover that during the next few days Josh fitted himself very comfortably into the routine at Peregrine Manor. As his injured ribs and ankle improved, he even turned out to be surprisingly useful around the place. He was always up first and had the coffee going by the time Maggie came downstairs. Furthermore, he seemed to be quite handy in the home-repair department. He gave her a hand painting three of the guest bathrooms, fixed a broken toilet seat and rehung the canopy over his bed.
    And he did not make any more passes.
    “I still don't know if you're much of an investigator, but you're certainly saving me a bundle of money that I would normally have spent on Dwight,” Maggie told him at one point.
    “Who's Dwight?”
    “Dwight Wilcox is a handyman in town. He usually takes care of the minor repairs around here for me,” she explained.
    By the end of the week Maggie realized she had already grown accustomed to Josh's presence. The intimacy of sharing the kitchen with him in the early morning hours had become something she unconsciously looked forward to each day.
    As far as she could tell, he was dutifully making inquiries into the incidents at Peregrine Manor. Josh spent a lot of time with the Colonel examining the basement where many of the problems had occurred, and he talked to Odessa and Shirley at length. He asked questions about the nephews and about Ricky 'The Wrecker' Ring. Furthermore, he disappeared into his room for hours on end to work on his computer-It all seemed very professional to Maggie.
    The only really annoying aspect of the situation was that she was getting very tired of making tea and scones at three in the afternoon.
    “I wonder what he does on that thing?” Shirley asked on Friday. She was sitting at the kitchen table along with the others. They were all watching Maggie mix up the scone dough.
    Josh had been up in his room for the past three hours and Maggie knew he would be down any minute de “Checking out the information he's collecting.” The Colonel looked knowledgeable. “Our man is a modem sort of investigator, just as I've suspected. Does most of his research on a computer, he told me. Quite bright, too. Shows a good grasp of technical matters, in general. Understood most of the details I gave him about my experiments, for example.”
    Odessa nodded, not looking up from her knitting.
    “Very easy to talk to, I'll say that much for him. I told him all about my three atrocious nephews. He certainly seemed to understand how nasty family can get. Said a lot of his early work in the investigation business involved unfortunate family situations.”
    Josh appeared in the doorway, minus his crutches.
    Maggie glanced at him as she bent over to shove the pan of scones into the oven. “No. Not for another fifteen minutes. Where are the crutches?”
    “I don't need them anymore. See?” Josh walked carefully into the room. He still limped but it was obvious he was again mobile. “I'll be all right as long as I don't try to run up and down the stairs. Boy, am I hungry”
    “Yes, it has been a whole three hours since lunch, hasn't it?” Maggie muttered.
    Josh glanced at his wristwatch and frowned. “More than three hours. What's happening around here? Says in the brochure that teatime is at three o'clock every afternoon. It's now 3:05.”
    Maggie shot him a narrow-eyed look. “Speaking of stairs, what would happen if you took an unfortunate tumble down a flight?”
    “I'd sue,” Josh assured her. “Tea ready?”
    The wall phone rang before Maggie could tell him to fix it himself if he was in that big a hurry. She picked up