“Don’t worry, Gwen,” said Violet. “We’re going to help you figure out what’s going on.”
Henry looked at Jessie, and she nodded, encouraging him to bring up what they’d seen the night before. “We wanted to ask you about something,” Henry said. “Last night, when we heard the crash, we came up here to make sure everything was okay. In the hallway, we saw a black cat. Does it belong to someone who lives here?”
Gwen looked puzzled. “A cat? I don’t think so. When I bought the building, I decided to make it pet-free so the new carpet would stay nice longer. I would be quite alarmed if there were any pets in my building.”
Gwen told the children she needed to get back to her office to take care of some bills. When she was gone, Jessie turned to Henry. “Okay, even though I don’t believe in bad luck, I have to admit that the cat is pretty spooky. No animals at all in the building? Where did that cat come from?”
“I don’t know,” Henry said. “But there has to be an explanation. Cats don’t just appear out of nowhere, and they don’t bring bad luck.”
“Henry, there are just too many weird things going on up here,” Benny said. “What could explain them all?” Suddenly he got a funny look on his face and went quickly out of the bedroom and down the hall. Henry and the girls heard cupboard doors opening and closing in the kitchen. Then Benny ran back into the bedroom.
“And here’s another weird thing: my squirt gun!” Benny said. “The one we found yesterday. It’s gone!”
In the Dark
On Monday, the Alden children continued their work on the apartment while Gwen drove Grandfather to the courthouse, where he was supposed to report for jury duty. Gwen offered to bring them along and give them a tour of some of the other buildings downtown, but Henry said they’d like to get some work done first. Of course, the Aldens were glad to help out, but they also knew spending time in the apartment might give them a better chance of solving the mystery.
In her notebook, Jessie made a list of the work left to do to get the apartment ready for a new tenant.
Hang pictures in front bedroom
Paint last wall in back bedroom
Carry old bathroom tile to garbage
Wash bathroom floor
Henry found a pair of gloves and began stacking up the squares of cracked and stained ceramic tile that the workers had removed before putting in the new bathroom floor. Violet used a flat-head screwdriver to open a can of robin’s-egg-blue paint, and she and Benny got to work finishing painting in the back bedroom. In the kitchen, Jessie poured soap into a bucket and put it under the faucet to fill. Then she found a paint-speckled radio under the sink, plugged it in, and turned to a station playing Motown music.
The children couldn’t help but dance a little bit while they worked. The songs made the time pass more quickly—and they made Benny forget about the strange things that were happening on the thirteenth floor.
Soon a few workers arrived to finish up the kitchen cabinets and install a new air conditioner. Henry carried a crate of old tile down to the garbage.
In the bedroom, Benny climbed the ladder with his paintbrush to finish off the top corner of the wall. When they had started the job, the morning sun had been shining into the room and providing plenty of light. But now the sky was cloudy, and the room had grown dim.
“Violet, could you turn on the light?” Benny asked.
“Sure,” Violet said. She set down her brush and flicked the switch. The bulb flared for a second, but then they heard a loud pop and the lights went out. The Motown music went silent.
“What was that?” Benny asked, looking around, worried.
Violet looked up at Benny. “Don’t move,” she said. “I’m coming to help you down.”
“Okay, but don’t walk under the ladder!” Benny said.
Violet stopped. “Why not?”
“Remember what Felix said? It’s bad luck to walk under a ladder.”
“I think that’s probably a superstition, Benny,” Violet said. But she decided to go around the ladder, just to be on the safe side. She reached out her hand and helped Benny step down to the floor. “Don’t worry.”
Violet and Benny joined Jessie in the living room.
“What do you think happened?” Jessie asked one of the workers. He set down his drill and wiped his hands on a rag from his pocket.
“Felix told us this floor is cursed,” Benny said. “Do you think so too?”
“Well, let’s take a look,” the worker said. The children joined him in the kitchen, where he removed the plate covering the electrical outlet and peered inside the wall with his flashlight. He whistled long and low. “Now that is some old-fashioned wiring,” he said.
The other worker joined him and laughed when he saw the crusty-looking cords poking out of the wall. “You might even call it antique, though it’s not the kind of antique anyone would want in their house.”
The first worker turned to Benny. “Take a look in there, little fella,” he said, and he held the flashlight so Benny could see. “The electricity went out because of bad wiring. Superstitions—worries about bad luck and curses—those are just explanations for things that people can’t understand or see. In this case, we can say for sure that a mechanical problem is to blame.”
Henry came back into the apartment. “It smells like something’s burning in here,” he said. Jessie explained what had happened, and the worker with the flashlight told him the bad wiring could be a fire hazard. “This will need to be fixed by an electrician right away,” he said.
“What’s that I hear?” Gwen asked. She had just returned from delivering Grandfather to the courthouse. “Another bill to pay?”
“I’m afraid so,” the worker said to Gwen. “You don’t want to take any chances with electrical work.”
“Gwen,” said Henry, “do you think this could have caused the fire?”
Gwen thought that over. “I guess it’s possible,” she said. “But that would mean someone had to have been in this apartment and turned on the light. As far as I know, it was empty when the fire started. And no one has come forward to tell me otherwise.”
“What about the elevator?” Jessie asked. “Could the old wiring have caused that to stop?”
Gwen shrugged. “I really don’t know. What do you think, guys?” she asked the workers.
Both men shook their heads. “No, I don’t think so,” said the man who had uncovered the outlet. “If the elevator stopped, that was done by someone on purpose.”
“Or something,” said Benny. “Maybe the building did it on its own.”
“Oh, Benny,” said Jessie. “That’s nonsense. We just need more information to figure out how it happened.”
“Gwen,” said Henry, “do you think we could go down to the basement and take a look at the elevator’s controls? Maybe we’ll find something to explain what happened.”
Gwen shrugged. “I don’t see why not,” she said. “Let’s check it out.”
Henry asked the worker if he could borrow his flashlight, and together, the Aldens and Gwen took the elevator to B for basement. The doors opened to reveal a very old-looking room. Bare bulbs hung from the rafters, making a yellow glow on the worn concrete floor. A pile of old furniture stood in the corner beside some abandoned bikes. Along the back wall stood a row of huge iron tanks with pipes leading up to the ceiling.
“What are those?” Benny asked, pointing at them, his eyes wide.
“Those are the boilers that make all the hot water for the building,” Gwen explained. “We’ve had them updated a little, but they are still the original tanks, made out of solid cast iron. They hold a lot of water and still work pretty great. And thank goodness. I can’t imagine how much they weigh—or how we would ever get them out of here if they broke!”
She led the children around to the back of the elevator shaft to a small control room. Gwen used her key to open the door, and the Aldens followed her inside, though the room was so small they could barely fit. Henry t
urned on the flashlight and shined it at the wall. A rectangular panel was mounted there, and lights on the panel showed what floor the elevator was on. A glass casing with a black handle protected the elevator panel. Jessie took a step forward. As she looked more closely, she gasped. “The handle is broken!”
“It is?” Gwen asked. Jessie showed her how the handle had been yanked out of place. It hung down at a strange angle. “Yikes. This is not good,” Gwen said.
“Who would have done this?” Violet asked.
“Well, another question might be who could have done this,” Gwen said. “There’s only one other person besides me who has a key to this control room: Felix!”
Saucy Sal’s
Late that afternoon, the children returned to the guest suite to get cleaned up. Violet’s and Benny’s hands were spotted with blue paint, and Jessie had some construction dust in her hair. After they had gotten showered and dressed, Grandfather came home.
“How did it go?” Jessie asked.
“Well, it was a little dull,” Grandfather said with a smile. “Like many important things in life, jury duty involves a lot of waiting around. We spent a couple hours hearing testimony this morning, but then the judge called a recess, and the lawyers settled the case. So the judge dismissed us.”
“So you spent most of your day in a waiting room?” Jessie asked. She thought that sounded awfully boring.
“Yes, but I had Patricia Dancy’s next mystery novel with me. I finished the whole thing!”
“Wow!” Jessie said.
“What about the pizza?” Benny asked. “Did it have pepperoni?”
Grandfather laughed. “No pizza this time, Benny. I only had an egg sandwich out of a vending machine. I guess only juries on cases that last a whole day get pizza.”
“Well, it’s almost dinnertime,” Benny said with a gleam in his eye. “Maybe there’s still time for this to turn into a pizza day!”
“Hope springs eternal,” Grandfather said. He thought for a minute and then clapped his hands when an idea came to him. “And I have just the place!”
Saucy Sal’s was in a small brick building in a somewhat deserted neighborhood on the west side of Silver City. From the outside, the children noticed the restaurant looked a little run-down. The C in the red neon sign over the door was burned out, and the paint on the green shutters was peeling.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” Benny asked.
Grandfather nodded as he pulled the car into a parking space. “Oh yes,” he said. “Saucy Sal’s is famous for serving the best Silver City–style pizza.”
“What makes it Silver City style?” Henry asked.
“You’ll see,” Grandfather said as they went in. The inside of the restaurant couldn’t have been more different from its outside. A crowd of people stood in front of a counter, and behind it was a teenage girl wearing a red shirt and a name tag that said SUE. With a big smile for each person who came in, she wrote down the names of the groups and handed out menus for the customers to read over while they waited. In the main dining room, cheerful red booths lined one wall, and all the tables were covered with brown paper. Some children nearby were drawing a treasure map on their table with crayons. A balloon was tied to each child’s chair.
“This is such a happy place!” Violet said.
“Does everyone get a balloon?” Benny asked.
Grandfather nodded. “That’s the way they’ve done things at Saucy Sal’s for decades. Their old commercial used to say, ‘If you leave sad, your meal is free!’”
It was difficult for the children to wait for their turn to be seated. The restaurant was full of the delicious smell of bread and cheese and garlic, and they could almost taste the pizza. Just when their patience was about to wear out, Sue called, “Alden, party of five?”
Benny leaped from his chair. “That’s us!”
Benny led his siblings and grandfather as they followed the waitress on a winding path through the main dining room and around a corner to a quieter side room with a large, round table. The children took their places and ordered drinks—lemonade for Benny and Jessie, root beer for Violet, and water for Henry and Grandfather—and then Grandfather ordered a large Silver City–style pizza. The waitress gave each of the Aldens a balloon, and they helped each other tie the strings to their chairs.
From where they were on the far side of the city, they could see the whole skyline out the window.
“I just love Silver City,” Jessie said with a sigh, resting her cheek on her fist. “It’s so exciting to think that people come here from all over to work and live. Silver City is the perfect name. Everything is so new and shiny!”
“Some of it is new,” Violet said. “But some of it has been here for a long time. I think that the history of this place is what makes it so great. Think of all the different people who have come here from all over to start a new life. It’s so inspiring!”
“And think of the different foods from all over the world!” Benny said.
“Benny,” Grandfather said, “you show remarkable focus!”
“I really hope we can figure out what’s happening at the Bixby building,” Violet said, “and convince people not to be afraid of living there.”
“Grandfather,” Jessie said, “do you know why Felix has so many superstitions? It seems like he’s afraid of so many funny things: ladders, broken mirrors, cats, numbers. Has he really seen bad things come from them?”
Grandfather thought about this. “I guess it’s possible he has, but the most likely explanation is that those were coincidences. If he walked under a ladder and then lost his wallet, he might think walking under the ladder caused him to lose his wallet. But really it was just two things happening on the same day.”
“But why is he worried about mirrors but not other things made of glass, like windows?” Jessie asked.
“Many superstitions are based on beliefs people had a long time ago, before we had modern science to help us understand the world,” Grandfather explained. “For instance, the fear of ladders goes back to ancient Egypt, I believe. Ladders make the shape of a triangle, which was considered sacred, and Egyptians believed that walking through it was disrespectful. Disrespect could make the gods angry, and then bad things would happen to you as a result.”
Henry’s eyebrows went up. “Maybe Felix is interested in ancient Egypt.”
“Maybe,” Grandfather said. “Or maybe he doesn’t even know about that history. That’s the funny thing about superstitions. People who believe in them often don’t know why they do. Knowing the story behind them actually can make people feel less afraid.”
“What do you think, Benny?” Jessie asked. “Does knowing the story help?”
“A little,” Benny said. “But the thirteenth floor is still spooky.”
Just then, the waitress arrived at the table with a giant tray. Silver City–style pizza turned out to be constructed of thin layers of crust and cheese, stacked one on top of the other, a little like lasagna. On the very top was a thick layer of sauce and another layer of cheese. Grandfather used a large knife to cut the pizza and scoop it onto the children’s plates. In the sauce were the toppings that would usually be on top of a pizza: sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms.
Henry was the first to take a bite. “Yum!” he said.
“Mmm, I love all the cheese,” Violet said.
“And the sauce! It’s spicy!” added Jessie.
“Mmfffghhh,” said Benny. His mouth was full, and even though the children couldn’t understand what he was saying, they agreed. Everyone loved Silver City–style pizza!
Grandfather cut everyone a second piece and then excused himself to go say hello to the owner of the restaurant, whom he’d been friends with for many years. While he was gone, the children went over what they had learned about the mysterious events in the Bixby.
“I keep thinking about that black cat,” Violet said. “Where did it come from?”
“And I have a funny feeling about Mrs. Mason,
” Jessie said. “She isn’t very kind.”
“I hate to say it, but I agree,” said Violet.
“She isn’t very kind,” Henry said. “But that doesn’t mean she would try to scare people.”
“You’re right,” Jessie said, taking a sip of her lemonade, “but it’s strange how she suddenly appeared when the mirror broke. And then she took us right into the bedroom of that apartment. She didn’t seem at all surprised when we saw the broken glass—it was as if she already knew what happened before we got there.”
Henry nodded. “I was thinking about that too. If she came up in the elevator, wouldn’t we have heard the bell make a noise?”
“She could have taken the stairs,” Violet suggested.
Benny said. “What about Hayes?”
Grandfather returned to the table but didn’t interrupt the conversation.
“I think he seems really friendly,” Violet said. “After all, look at all the cookies he baked for the workers.”
“Yes,” Henry said, “but remember how he asked whether we had found anything in the apartment yesterday? When he saw that water gun, or whatever it was, it seemed like he wanted to take it.”
“Well,” Violet said, “maybe he was just nervous about the rumors that the floor is cursed. We’ve all been pretty nervous about that!”
“Maybe no one is doing these things,” Benny suggested. “Maybe the building really is cursed and trying to scare people away.”
Jessie shook her head. “That’s impossible, Benny. There has to be an explanation. Why didn’t Hayes come up to the thirteenth floor when the mirror broke? Isn’t his apartment below the apartment where they had the fire? It seems like he would have heard the crash—we heard it all the way at the end of the hall.”
“That’s a good question, Jessie,” Henry said. He wiped some sauce from his chin with a napkin. “It’s possible Hayes wasn’t home, but we’ll have to find out. And then there’s one more mysterious person at the Bixby—Felix.”
Secret on the Thirteenth Floor Page 4