Julie is upset when her parents told her she is spending the summer with her great aunt and uncle. Julie was mad because what she wants was not taken into consideration. Throughout the book Julie was frustrated with everyone in her family telling her what to do.
Glenda and Gabe live on a ranch that is more like a retirement community that happens to have randomly roaming cows. Julie has to stay with her aunt and uncle because Gabe fell down the steps leading down from his observatory.
Some strange events left Julie playing detective with the help of her best friend, Robin, who loved to read mysteries. Two men mysteriously fell to their deaths. One man fell from his balcony into the ravine below and another fell and hit is head on the edge of his stone fireplace. Gabe was lucky enough to survive and Julie is determined to protect him.
Several of the residents begin missing valuables. Most brush off the missing items because they thought they had just misplaced them. The items started showing up at local flea markets and thrift stores. It became obvious there was a thief on the ranch. Julie tried to make a connection between the murders and the thefts.
Julie looked around the ranch to see who would have access to the homes and the motive to steal. She is convinced the thief is a man named Damien. He worked at the pool and had been in the homes when he tried to sell memberships to people on the ranch. Damien also had a juvenile criminal record for theft. Julie took her concerns to the sheriff but was dismissed as a nosy girl. Julie did not know that the secretary at the sheriff's office was Damien's aunt. Myrtle used the screen name PDQ to warn Julie to drop her snooping. Eventually she realized Damien was not the thief.
The thief ended up being someone most of the residents trusted (isn't this usually the case). Millie Lee was the cleaning lady for most of the families. She had keys to the houses and she was careful to not steal items from the houses she was supposed to be working at on that particular day. The two men who were killed caught her trying to steal from their homes. Millie Lee was convinced Gabe had seen her leaving one of the houses through his telescope so she tried unsuccessful to kill him. When she realized Julie had discovered her crimes, she came to kill her. Julie managed to blind Millie with bright lights and trip her. Julie ended up saving her family despite not wanting to spend the summer on the ranch.
No comments:
Post a Comment