Can You Keep a Secret? by R. L. Stine Page A

crazy,” I added.
    Eddie nodded. “Know what? I’ll bet it was an inside job. Probably a guy who worked for the armored car company.”
    I squinted at him. “Why do you say that?”
    “Because … how did he know when they’d be loading the truck?”
    “He’d probably been at the mall watching for weeks,” I said. “You know. Getting the schedule down.”
    “Maybe. But someone would have noticed him,” Eddie said. “Lou said the guy showed up at just the right time. When they were piling the money for the whole week into the truck.” Eddie shook his head. “The guy had to have inside knowledge. That wasn’t just luck. I’ll bet one of the armored truck drivers was in on it.”
    I groaned. “What’s up with you? We’re not detectives. We don’t care who did it or how or anything. Let the police worry about that, okay? Let’s just make sure we never have to run into the guy.”
    “Okay, okay, Emmy. You’ve got to chill. We’re both way tense, okay. I was just talking. You know. Nervous talking. I don’t care who the guy is, either. But let’s keep it together. We’ll dig up the money, take it to the Fear Street Woods, and stuff it back in that tree.”
    We rode on in silence. A few raindrops spattered the windshield. The wind swirled around the car. I crossed my fingers and prayed the storm would hold off till we returned the briefcase and were out of the woods.
    Eddie pulled the car up to the pet cemetery. The gate was locked, but he knew a gap in the fence that we could slip through. I shivered as we found a path through rows of graves. There were raindrops carried on the wind, but so far, no downpour.
    “We should have brought a flashlight,” Eddie said. “The storm clouds are so low, the sky is pitch black.”
    “We didn’t know we were coming here, remember?” I said. My eyes were slowly adjusting to the darkness. I could make out the low gravestones on both sides of the path.
    What was that howling sound? A wolf?
    No. Just the wind through the trees.
    Stop it, Emmy.
    I spotted a shovel resting against a fat tree trunk in back of a grave. I grabbed it and handed it to Eddie. “You’re in business,” I said. “Now we just have to find the right grave.”
    “Not a problem,” he said, his words muffled by the wind. It blew his hair straight up, as if his hair was reacting in fright. Any other time, I would have laughed. He looked so stupid. But it was too creepy here to laugh. I reached out my hand and smoothed his hair down for him.
    He turned and led the way down the dirt path. I could see the outline of Mac’s office and living quarters on the other side of the cemetery. The windows on the little building were all dark.
    Darkness everywhere.
    Eddie stopped at the end of the row. We stepped over a clump of tall grass. The grass was wet and I could feel the cold water seep into the legs of my jeans.
    The grave in front of us looked newly dug. The dirt was still in clumps, not smooth. “This is it,” Eddie murmured.
    And as he said those words, the wind suddenly stopped. As if somebody had turned a switch. We stood there staring at each other in the sudden silence. Such a deep hush. As if the whole planet had stopped. As if we had died and were covered by the silence of the grave.
    Stop it, Emmy.
    Every muscle in my body was tense. My teeth hurt because I was clenching my jaw so tightly. I gazed around. Nothing moved. Nothing.
    “Maybe the storm will miss us,” Eddie said, breaking the silence, his voice strangely hollow on the still air. He dug the shovel into the lumpy layer of dirt and began to dig. The blade sliced easily through the loosely packed dirt, and in a few minutes, Eddie had dug up a low mound at the graveside.
    “Almost there,” he said, mopping his forehead with the back of his hand. His hair was damp and matted to his head. “I only buried it three feet down.”
    “Hurry,” I said. “I … I can’t stand the smell here. Why does it always smell so bad? Is