The mystery in alligator alley

“I hope you never get close enough to find out!” Christina said. “Alligators are serious business. You should never get anywhere near them.”

Christina couldn’t believe her own ears.

She sounded just like her grandparents. For years, she’d gotten herself and her brother Grant into plenty of predicaments. They’d followed their mystery-writing grandmother Mimi and their cowboy-pilot grandfather Papa all over the world. But now she was a college student at the Savannah College of Art and Design in nearby Savannah, Georgia.

Her “what they don’t know won’t hurt them” attitude was gone.

She remembered it was a gator encounter that had brought her here in the first place. Mimi and Papa, who’d recently moved to Palmetto Bluff, South Carolina, had already planned to have their grandkids at their new home when the accident happened. Mimi was playing a round of golf at the May River Golf Club when her ball rolled into a small pond.

When she reached in to get it, she found herself ankle to eye with a small gator.

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