Casey Templeton Mysteries 2-Book Bundle. Gwen Molnar

was all Casey could think of doing. He went back to the living room. The fire was almost out, and though he had left the attic door open, the lower room was no warmer. All he had to put on the fire was a pillow. It ignited slowly, sent more smelly billows of ash into the room, and gradually began to burn. Casey sat against the wall beside Mr. Deverell, gently easing the teacher’s battered head onto his lap.

      So what was the payoff for the haters? Casey wondered as he closed his eyes and settled his shoulders more comfortably. What was the point of all the crazy stuff they were doing? Were they aiming just to make life miserable for the groups they focused their hate on — Jews, immigrants, gays, old people, and the disabled — or did they want to get rid of them entirely? That was pretty heavy thinking, and Casey tried to get his mind on something else.

      Only the occasional sizzle of burning feathers broke the silence in the old house. Casey burrowed deeper into his coat for warmth, but the bare floor was so cold that his backside was getting numb. He leaned over for a pillow and tucked it under him. At least he could sit in comfort. Casey eased Mr. Deverell’s left arm upward, carefully pulled off the stiff glove, and gently rubbed the man’s icy hand. When it started to feel a little less cold, Casey did the same thing for the right hand.

      His thoughts drifted back to the room with all the hate literature. It must be a kind of “hate cell,” a sort of headquarters for racists. There had been a real buzz in Richford when a new family had moved down the street from the Templeton house a few weeks ago. Casey had walked to school with the two children, Laszlo and Anna, both in grade one, though Laszlo was several years older than his sister. The language they spoke had fascinated Casey. His dad had said it was called Romany. The kids’ mother, his father had told him, was a Roma or Gypsy who had married Daisy Olberg’s kid brother, Jack McKay, when he was doing repairs on a Canadian nuclear reactor in Romania many years ago.

      “But Maria wasn’t the kind of Gypsy who goes from place to place in a caravan,” his father had said. “Daisy tells us Maria was the daughter of a Gypsy orchestra leader in an upscale Bucharest hotel. She sang with the orchestra, and that’s where Jack met her. When Jack was killed, the government helped Daisy bring Maria and the children to live in Richford.”

      Two weeks ago a poster, the HONK IF YOU HATE GYPSIES one, had been found stapled to the gate in front of the Olbergs’ place. Someone had heard a horn honking around two in the morning, but nobody had seen the car or had any idea who was doing the honking. And then there was the hit-and-run of Maria McKay.

      “Daisy told me,” Casey’s mother had said to Casey and his dad, “that even before the ‘accident,’ Maria was finding Richford very limiting and was thinking of moving away. This will make her want to move all the more.”

      The week before Maria was struck by a car a pipe bomb had gone off at the Finegoods’ big clothing and dry goods store. Swastikas were painted on their house’s double garage doors, with THE HOLOCAUST IS A HOAX poster taped in the middle of them. The poster had been printed by the National Alliance. Hank had discovered that the National Alliance was the largest and most active neo-Nazi organization in the United States and Canada.

      “The Web info says,” Hank had quoted to Casey, “that the National Alliance’s current strength can be attributed to ‘its skillful embrace of technology, its willingness to cooperate with other extremists, its energetic recruitment and other promotional activities, and its vicious propaganda.’”

      “I’m telling you, Casey,” Marcie Finegood had said as they were going into English class the day after the bombing, “whoever did that to my dad’s store better watch out!” Her eyes were red and her eyelids swollen, but her chin was thrust forward. “I’m mad as heck and I’m ready to fight back.”

      “I’m with you, Marcie,” he had said, smiling. “I’m ready to do something radically mean to whoever did this to your family.”

      He felt good now, knowing his discoveries would be the first step toward finding out who was responsible.

      A tremor went through the hand Casey was rubbing — the first sign of life in Mr. Deverell besides a pulse and shallow breathing. Would his messages get through to the Richford police? Casey wondered. What if they didn’t? What if he had to spend the night in this cold room? He couldn’t keep the fire going much longer, and if Mr. Deverell started to cool down again, that wouldn’t be good.

      Casey turned off the flashlight to conserve the battery. Was there anything else he could do? He switched on the light again to check his watch — nine-thirty. The two hours he had given himself to get the pipe and return home were up. Not that his parents would be home anytime soon.

      He thought he would try a little telepathy. Grandma, can you hear me? Please open your email and follow instructions. Hank, finish your game and check your email … check your mail … check your mail … Hank, check your email right now!

      Casey waited, then put another pillow on the fire. Even though he was cold, it was hard to stay awake. He went through the telepathy bit another couple of times, but nothing happened. “I’ll try it one more time,” he whispered to himself, but as he chanted, sleep overcame him. A quick movement of Mr. Deverell’s head jerked him awake, though. Why was the room so terribly cold?

      “Oh, no!” Casey put Mr. Deverell’s head down gently and crawled over to the fireplace. Not a spark! He tried blowing on the smouldering pillow. A cloud of half-burned feathers and ashes flew into his eyes.

      Poor Mr. Deverell, he thought, wouldn’t last long now. Casey had to get back to town. He just had to.

      Tucking the last few pillows tightly around his teacher, Casey picked up the flashlight. It wouldn’t go on. He unscrewed the bottom and switched the batteries. It flickered on and off a few times and then went out. Would he dare try getting back to town without the light? He could see the headline in the national edition of Toronto’s Globe and Mail, which the Templetons had delivered each morning: BOY AND TEACHER VICTIMS OF CENTRAL ALBERTA’S FIRST VICIOUS SNOWSTORM.

      Casey shut the door of the Old Willson Place, crossed the porch, and went down the front steps. He ploughed through the deep snow as far as the gate, then trudged down the road to the field. Crossing the frozen field the first time had been hard; re-crossing it now with the snow so deep would be almost impossible.

      At least he could tell if he was going straight across. If his progress was too easy, that meant he was moving along a furrow, not over it, so he pushed himself over another snow-piled furrow, then another until he fell. Snow spilled into his boots, and he felt the cold on his bare legs above his socks.

      What if he took a tumble and couldn’t get up again? He would freeze to death and so would Mr. Deverell.

      Casey hauled himself to his feet. A few furrows later he fell again and then again. Each time he sprawled a little longer in the snow. Each time it took more effort to get up until at last he stayed put.

      “Get up!” he yelled. “Get going!”

      Another voice, inside him, insisted, I can’t. It’s so nice and quiet here and I feel so deliciously sleepy. I’ll just lie here a little longer.

      “Get up, Casey! Get up!”

      Later … after, he thought. Then he began to dream about beating everyone else in the world at the snowboarding competition in Banff. Eventually, he wasn’t dreaming at all. He just lay there, buried in the heavy snow.

      CHAPTER THREE

      Casey didn’t know where he was when he woke and saw the worried faces of his parents and Hank hovering over him. In his freezing sleep he hadn’t heard the ambulance siren, hadn’t been aware of the frantic calling of his name by his father and Hank, didn’t know he had been discovered and carried by his dad to the ambulance parked at the Willson Place where a doctor and two paramedics worked on Mr. Deverell.

      “So, Casey,” Hank said now, patting his shoulder, “you’re some kind of hero saving Mr. Deverell’s life. But what the heck were you doing at the Old Willson Place? And why didn’t