Treasure This

By Kay Leitch

A cracking whodunit for any age, 10+. Full of mystery, suspense and humour, with a hint of dark farce. When 12-year-old Addison finds a dead man in her aunt and uncle's garden shed, she's sure they couldn't have killed him. Could they? Super-sleuth Addy is determined to find out. But how can she make Caitlin (a wanabe Goth) and seven-year-old Leaf (in training for the SAS) believe her when the body disappears? Who are the two thugs watching Roseleigh Manor? And the question that's really driving her mad - how many more bodies are buried in that garden? Addy's investigations take her into the heart of old secrets and new lies, threatening to blow apart her family and everything she loves. Oh, and she's got that maths exam to worry about too ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kay Leitch
• Release date: Sep 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301864331

Kay Leitch

I worked in journalism for over twenty years, including four as production editor of Cosmopolitan Magazine and eleven as production editor of The Sunday Times Magazine. I wrote some features, travel writing and interviews. My love of journalism (I mean good journalism, not the celeb-driven drivel we see too much of these days) merged seamlessly into a love of books, so it was natural for me to dip my toe into the publishing pond when I left journalism for a quieter life.But my life didn't get quieter — I took an MA in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University and started writing books (and finishing them — that's the important part :) ). I read for a children's publisher, found out a little about the industry, started a company offering manuscript assessment, copyediting and proofreading, and then got involved in independent publishing with Electrik Inc, a small collective of very talented writers and editors.So here I am. Treasure This is my first children's novel: a whodunit for all ages over 10. I hope you like it.

Book preview

This is an Electrik Inc book

Electrik Inc is a collective combining great writing for children and young adults, sharp editing and professional independent publishing (ebooks and print on demand). With more than fifty years’ industry experience between them – plus four MAs in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University – the founders of Electrik Inc have one objective: to make each book the best it can be.

http://www.electrikinc.wordpress.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kay Leitch is a former production editor of Cosmopolitan Magazine and The Sunday Times Magazine. She is also a co-founder of Electrik Inc, an independent publishing collective based in Bath and founded by four professionals who met while taking an MA in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University. Electrik Inc ensures that every book with their logo is professionally edited and proofread, so that readers can be assured of quality. Treasure This is Kay’s debut novel. To find out more, visit: kaywritesheretoo.wordpress.com

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TREASURE THIS

A whodunit for any age 10+

When 12-year-old Addison finds a dead man in her aunt and uncle’s garden shed, she’s sure they couldn’t have killed him. Could they?

Super-sleuth Addy is determined to find out. But how can she make Caitlin (a wannabe Goth) and seven-year-old Leaf (in training for the SAS) believe her when the body disappears? Who are the two thugs watching Roseleigh Manor? And the question that’s really driving her mad – how many more bodies are buried in that garden?

Addy’s investigations take her into the heart of old secrets and new lies, threatening to blow apart her family and everything she loves.

Oh, and she’s got that maths exam to worry about, too.

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Published by boldbooks Ltd

Smashwords Edition

Text copyright 2013 Kay Leitch

Cover design copyright 2013 by John Dinsdale

All rights reserved

This book is also available in print at most online retailers.

This is a work of fiction. No resemblance to any person living or dead is intended or should be inferred. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-0-9926726-1-4

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For Peter and Elizabeth

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CHAPTER 1

I swear I saw a body in Aunt Ellie’s garden shed. Caitlin was a pig to punch me and call me a liar. It was there. Honest.

I stared at it. At the blood glooping off the bald head, and the black unblinking eyes. I yelped in fright and jumped back. Straight into a pile of broken pots on the grass. My ankle twisted.

‘Ow!’ I grabbed the corner of the shed to steady myself, the wind whipping my hair round my face. I swiped it away and made myself look again, leaning in the open door to peer closer.

The man lay on his back, crumpled against rakes and deckchairs like an oversized puppet with the strings cut. His dark coat looked as tatty as the leather glove that hung out of his pocket. Blood stained the mallet lying beside him, the one Harry used for knocking in the fence posts.

I clenched my fists and checked over my shoulder. No-one. I bent right over the body, searching for any sign of breathing. Not a flicker.

His face was droopy and grey and a gash ran from his forehead to his ear. Blood smeared his wispy white eyebrows and his eyes stared straight ahead, frozen in surprise. Well, I’d have been surprised too, if I’d been bashed on the head and dumped in a dirty old shed. I’d have been kicking and screaming – it would take a lot more than a mallet to stop me fighting back.

I spun, fists up, and scanned the garden.

‘Harry?’ Where was my uncle when I needed him?

Nothing. Only daffodils and tulips dotting the lawn, and rain clouds hanging low in the morning sky. I shivered, wishing I’d put on something warmer than jeans and a T-shirt.

I turned back to the dead eyes and grey face. My mouth was hanging open but I couldn’t help it. My nails bit into my palms. The splodges of blood on the man’s coat looked fresh … as in, new … as in … uh-oh. Whoever did this could still be here.

I almost called for Harry again. Or Aunt Ellie. Even Caitlin – but it was only about half eight, she wouldn’t be up for ages yet. Anyway, did I really want the murderer to hear me and know I was there?

Get out of here, a voice in my head screamed.

The shed was just a spit away from the herb pots. I leapt over them and pelted across the vegetable patch.

BANG!

The shed door slammed back on itself in the wind, like a gunshot. I kept running over the wide lawn, wishing Aunt Ellie and Harry didn’t live in an old rambling manor house with a garden the size of a park.

I dived in to the kitchen, sliding on the worn flagstones, and pulled the back door shut behind me, leaning against it. Then I realised: the killer might still be out there. My hands shook but I managed to turn the key in the lock and wiped my sweating palms down my jeans.

Then I thought, What if the madman’s in the house? You’ve just locked us all in with a psycho.

My feet did a kind of dance as I hopped and twitched with uncertainty. I unlocked the door again in case we needed to make a run for it, and legged it through the kitchen and across the hall floor, catching my breath at the bottom of the winding stairs that separated the hall and kitchen from the living room and the rest of the house. I popped my head into the living room.

‘Harry!’ I yelled. ‘Aunt Ellie?’

Silence.

I swung round the wooden banisters and took the stairs two at a time up to Caitlin’s room.

‘There’s a dead man in the shed! Get up. Get up! Honest, Caitlin. Please get up!’ I pulled at her duvet, trying to drag it off her.

She mumbled something that ended in ‘moron’. I admit I was babbling but I didn’t deserve being called that. I’m 12 now. I’m not stupid.

‘Come on, I mean it. He’s lying in a heap. Blood everywhere.’ I kept tugging the duvet while Caitlin held it tight under her chin.

‘Gerroff, you maniac. It’s not even nine yet!’ she moaned.

‘Caitlin! Honest. I’m not joking. We need the police. Now.’ I bounced on her legs.

‘Phone them, then! You’re just winding me up.’ She heaved me off, wrapped the duvet over her and turned to face the wall. I instantly regretted telling her yesterday that an earthquake in London had closed all the schools and the Easter holidays had been extended indefinitely.

Leaf heard the commotion and came running in. The top of his Spider Man pyjamas was inside out and his hair stuck up like brown tufts of grass. His eyes sparkled. ‘Dead body? Where? C’mon, Caitlin!’

I jerked the pillow from under Caitlin’s head. She gave a long squeal like she couldn’t bear any more and yelled, ‘Out!’

‘But you should’ve seen him.’ I kept trying. I described the blood, the pale lifeless face, and let my eyes roll up to show the dull dead stare.

‘That’s it!’ Caitlin threw off the duvet and jumped out of bed, her dark curls wild with sleep. She shoved me. I shoved her right back. She glared at me, pulled on her jeans and T-shirt and grabbed her mobile from under the pillow. ‘I’m going down there. And if there’s no dead body in that shed, yours is going in it.’

Leaf nodded, like that was a reasonable deal.

‘I didn’t make it up.’

Caitlin’s green eyes met mine and I knew what she was thinking: Dad in hospital with a heart attack, Mum at his side, us shunted off to the country to elderly relatives. Now this.

We ran downstairs and outside, me calling over my shoulder for them to hurry. Across the garden Harry was on his knees at the shed door. I skidded to a halt beside him on the damp grass, relieved. But only for a moment. He was mopping up the blood with an old cloth, whistling softly. At least he was okay – but whistling?

A cold fist clenched my tummy. Harry looked way too calm. Dirt smudged his temples, smearing into the line of his cropped white hair. His green dungarees were wet from where he knelt in the grass.

‘I was shouting everywhere for you,’ I said. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ I searched the shed floor for the body but all I could see was red.

Caitlin and Leaf stood either side of me and peered into the shed, too. Harry and Aunt Ellie’s gardening jackets and hats hung over each other, higgledy-piggledy. Even their wellington boots were covered in blood. Yeuk.

Harry frowned up at me, his blue eyes like bits of clear sky. ‘Who’s dead, Addison? What are you playing at now?’

Leaf strained to see over Harry’s shoulder. ‘Where’s the body, Addison? There’s no body!’ He tutted as if disappointed.

Caitlin snorted and punched my arm. ‘Liar! That’s the red paint for the garage.’

There was a lot more blood than there had been ten minutes ago. The inside of the shed was covered in it. And, yes, it definitely looked like paint. I felt my shoulders slump.

Caitlin got her mobile out. ‘I knew it,’ she said, walking off and texting, no doubt telling all her friends what a wuss her little sister was. Leaf headed back to the kitchen.

I clamped my mouth shut and stared down at Harry mopping up the paint with an old rag and a plastic dustpan. His yellow rubber gloves looked like he’d just slaughtered a pig. Icy fingers slid down my back. For a second he was a total stranger, not the fun uncle who’d helped us make dens and sledges whenever we visited.

Their house was called Roseleigh Manor and was old and big, with rooms the size of play-grounds, but I knew it had only taken me a minute to run upstairs and about ten to convince Caitlin I wasn’t making this up. And then another minute for us all to run back down to see Harry cleaning up the mess.

Twelve minutes for him to get rid of the body and pour paint on the blood to hide it. Even I could see that was a bit of a stretch for someone over seventy, who didn’t have super powers or an Olympic medal for sprinting.

But I know what I saw.

Harry smiled up at me, ‘Thought it was blood, did you?’ Like always, his voice had the hint of a soft Irish accent. ‘Think your Aunt Ellie fought a burglar, single handed, and shot him? Or was it a poisoned arrow?’ He chuckled.

I watched him bend and slop more paint into the pot, splashing his dungarees, and hoped he could feel my eyes boring into the back of his head. Sometimes I can tell when someone’s pretending to be relaxed and friendly. Robbie Carter does it at school because he knows I’m rubbish at maths (hard cash pays for correct test answers). Caitlin does it with Mum when she wants to stay over at a friend’s.

Harry was doing it now. Why was he lying?

I’ve always liked Harry. We called Aunt Ellie Aunt, but Harry said we could use his name. Mum had phoned them when Dad took ill because she knew we’d be miserable at Gran’s but we liked it here and would be well looked after. Aunt Ellie’s sharp and funny, when her memory’s not playing up, and Harry’s more of a friend than an uncle.

But what if he had killed that man? My stomach lurched at the thought.

I jumped at a noise behind me. Aunt Ellie stood under the pink cherry tree, drying her hands on some rags, her blue dress all wet down the front. I could see red dots mixed in with dirt on the hem. Her white hair was usually tied up, neat and tidy, now the wind blew bits of it onto her face.

She walked over, trying to smooth her hair back but not managing very well. ‘Sorry about the mess, Harry. The pot tipped over when I was pulling out a deckchair.’

I snorted. A deckchair? At half eight in the morning? It had been warm for Easter, but not today. Today was horrible. In every possible way.

‘No trouble,’ Harry said. ‘I’ll get some turps and clean the floor. Addison here thought we had a body in the shed.’

‘Really?’ Aunt Ellie laughed, stiff and polite. ‘What on earth made you think that, Addy dear?’

I kicked one of the broken pots by the side of the shed and watched it flip onto the flower border. The wet grass had soaked the bottoms of my black jeans.

Listen, I like Aunt Ellie. Technically, she’s our great-aunt – she’s a bit ancient but she’s sweet and kind and never shouts at anyone, so what I’d seen bothered me in lots of different ways. The idea that the Aunt Ellie I knew could bash someone on the head and kill them was fall-over crazy. She’s lovely – makes us laugh and takes us places, and tells me I’m clever at stuff when I’m not really. But how well did I know her? Until today, the worst thing I could say about her would be she was always forgetting stuff and her scrambled eggs were rubbery.

Now I knew she was a bad liar, too.

How did I know? High voice, silly laugh.

I scowled. Harry wasn’t the type to bash someone either. Maybe I should have been frightened but they looked about as threatening as a couple of hamsters. Old hamsters. I didn’t feel afraid any more, I felt angry.

What was going on? Usually the most exciting thing to happen around here was the village fair or a skanky old jumble sale.

Aunt Ellie twisted the dirty rags in her fingers. She had a smile fixed on her face, but she looked about to burst into tears.

That did it; Aunt Ellie is always calm and smiley and twinkly eyed. I thought her jaw would crack with that forced smile.

‘I know what I saw,’ I said.

I turned to stomp back to the house and spotted a glove – a tatty one with worn fingers – on the grass. It

Reviews for Treasure This

[sscarllet-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Treasure This was a an exciting read. I enjoyed the mystery and 'the chase' of it all, and I didn't guess the ending! My favorite part was Addison's voice. She came across as a sweet but trying to be tough adolescent. I would call her an updated version of Harriet the Spy. The realness of Addison's point of view makes me want to read more about her adventures.