CHAPTER 8Spotty didn’t mow the lawn that Saturday morning. Instead he told his mother he had to study and went to the alley behind Ned’s Hardware. He could always get out of some unpleasant task by saying he had to study. It was never a lie; he always had to study something.
Right now the problem to study was Matt. Why hadn’t he shown up?
At one o’clock, Spotty called Mrs. Wilde from the public phone booth at Benny’s filling station, a block from the hardware store. Mrs. Wilde, sounding really frantic, said Matt hadn’t come home or phoned or anything. Immediately Spotty was alarmed, and felt sparked with challenge.
“Do you know anything—where he might be maybe?” she asked.
“I saw him Thursday after school, Mrs. Wilde. He said he was close to finding his new cave.”
“Yes, he went cave h
