The Secret of the Missing Grave

by David Crossman

  She continued her lecture. “I researched this property very carefully before I purchased it. You may be sure that my boundaries extend all the way to your wall. I own the lane and everything over it and under it. If you or anyone else trespasses in any way, you shall have the law to answer to, and I will exact its full penalty without mercy. Do I make myself clear?”

  Mr. Proverb, ever the gentleman, murmured some apologies and ushered Bean and Ab before him to the door.

  “I will have my privacy,” Miss Valliers announced in parting.

  No sooner had Mr. Proverb laid his hand on the ornate bronze doorknob than a huge silhouette loomed ominously through the etched glass, and the door opened.

  10

  A WEB OF LIES

  “UNCLE PHIL,” Bean exclaimed in relief.

  “Hey, Beans. What are you doing here? Hi, Spencer. Abenstein.”

  Phil’s new nickname for Ab was Abenstein. She didn’t have a clue what it meant, but she took it as a compliment.

  “We had just come by to see Mrs .... ah, Mrs .... ah, Miss, ah ... ,” Mr. Proverb stuttered. He indicated the top of the stairs, but when all eyes turned to follow, there was no one there. Even the maid had vanished.

  Uncle Phil came in and set down the portfolio cases he was carrying. He smiled. “Mm. She has that affect on people, I’ve noticed. A lot like Halloween here, year-round.”

  “She was there a second ago,” said Ab.

  “Oh, I don’t doubt it,” Phil replied. “This place is full of secret passages, and she makes use of ’em. Hardly ever uses the halls like a normal person.”

  Bean shuddered. “All she needs is a broomstick, if you ask me.”

  “Now, now, Bean. You shouldn’t talk like that,” Mr. Proverb admonished.

  Uncle Phil laughed his big, booming, one-note laugh, and the house echoed with it. “Well, she does tend to be a little dramatic. I’ll give you that. But you get so you ignore it. What’s your business here, anyway?”

  They all left Miss Valliers’s house and walked next door, where they sat on the stone retaining wall in front of the Moses Webster House. Bean, Ab, and Mr. Proverb took turns telling the story.

  “And the fire alarm went off this morning about quarter of six or so and didn’t stop until everyone in town had gotten together down at the fire station,” Mr. Proverb said in conclusion. “Then, just as we were about to split up into search parties, these two came strolling down the street, big as life.”

  Uncle Phil stared from one to the other of them for a long time. “Hmph,” he said finally. “I thought when I was off the island, the whole place closed down.” He paused again for a long, uncomfortable minute. “So, you found the tunnel. I never gave that old cistern a thought.” He pounded Bean on the back. “Well done.”

  “But she won’t let us down there,” Ab complained. “We don’t even want the treasure, but I just can’t stand not knowing if it’s there, and what it is.”

  “Well, I guess that part will just have to stay a mystery,” said Mr. Proverb, slapping his knees as he stood up. “I’m sure not going to tussle with that woman in court. See you later, Phil. You two, see if you can stay out of trouble for a while, okay?” He patted Ab on the head and lumbered inside.

  Bean had been thinking. “What I can’t figure out is, who’s been using that room, and why?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Uncle Phil. “You said it was empty. So, no one’s using it.”

  Ab followed Bean’s argument. She cast a sidelong glance at Uncle Phil. “Somebody let us out,” she said. “And before that, those nights I heard the breathing, that was the air that gets compressed in that little room when the floor comes up and the door is closed. Somehow the air is forced up between the walls, and it just kind of gushes out at my end of the house.”

  “Very good,” said Bean. “That explains it, and the thumping you heard.”

  “Some kind of counterweights and pulley system in the wall,” added Ab.

  “That raises or lowers as the cisterns empty and fill.” Bean finished the explanation.

  “Hydraulics. Just as you said,” stated Ab.

  “Hydraulics,” said Uncle Phil thoughtfully. “Hmph. Imagine that.”

  “Which stil11eaves us with the question of who’s been using that room, and why.” said Bean.

  “There’s another possibility,” said Uncle Phil. “An old piece of machinery like that could just be going off by itself.”

  “How?” asked Bean.

  “Well, you say there’s a spring flowing into the cistern. That means there’s a regulator of some kind. And that means a gasket. What if it’s worn away and the water just trickles in all the time instead of when somebody wants it. When it gets full, it trips the mechanism. That would explain why Abby’s heard those noises at all hours of the night.”

  Phil continued: “If that’s the case, it’s probably been going up and down for years, but nobody noticed it because all the noise was at the back of the house. That room hasn’t been used much over the years.

  “Well, you’ll have to show it to me sometime.” Phil glanced at his wrist as if he were wearing a watch, which he wasn’t. “Gotta get to the boat. See you kids later.” He crossed the street and climbed into his truck. “Don’t go getting lost again;’ he said as he pulled away.

  Bean and Ab watched the faded yellow truck sputter noisily down the street. It was trailing a cloud of light blue smoke.

  “I don’t buy it,” said Ab.

  “Me neither,” Bean agreed. “This whole thing’s fishier than a bait bag on a hot rock, and I want to know what’s goin’ on.”

  “But how can we find out? You don’t still suspect Mr. Proverb, do you?”

  That would have taken more imagination than even Bean had. “No, not anymore,” he confessed.

  “Then who else is there? The only other people in the house now are Mrs. Proverb and my mom and dad. Everyone else is gone.” Bean saw the sudden flash in her eyes. “You don’t think—”

  “No, no,” said Bean quickly. “I don’t think it’s your folks, or Mrs. Proverb.” An idea suddenly came to him. “But I wonder ... ”

  “Wonder what?”

  “What if there’s someone else living in the house?” He looked at her with widening eyes. “Someone nobody knows about.”

  A three-pronged tingle scampered up Ab’s back and arms and met at the nape of her neck, where a little nest of light hairs stood quivering at attention. She grabbed Bean’s arm. “Don’t say that,” she screamed. Then, almost instantly, she added, “What do you mean?”

  Bean explained his idea. “Remember when Uncle Phil said the Winthrop House was full of secret passages? What if the Moses Webster House is, too?”

  They both turned their eyes slowly toward the tower of the Moses Webster House. “And somebody’s living up there,” said Bean. “Someone who nobody knows about.”

  “Oh, Bean,” said Ab, tugging frantically at his arm. “I wish you hadn’t said that. It’s too creepy. How am I supposed to sleep here anymore?”

  “Unless ... ,” said Bean.

  “Wait a second.” Ab held up her hand. “Is this ‘unless’ for the better or for the worse? ’Cause if it’s for the worse, I don’t want to hear it.”

  Bean’s gaze traveled deliberately across the lane to the Winthrop House. Ab’s followed. “Unless she’s already found the tunne1.”

  “You mean Maud Valliers is the one opening it?”

  “Sure,” said Bean, warming to the idea. “What if all the workings for the secret tunnel are on this side?”

  “In the Moses Webster House?”

  “Right. She probably doesn’t even know it—or didn’t—but that light you saw when we were trapped ... ”

  “It could have been Maud Valliers, down in the tunnel,” said Ab, her mind beginning to race. “Come to think of it, who else could it have been?”

  “Which would mean that she saw our note when we pushed it through the crack,” Bean theorized. “So she
flipped the switch, or whatever it is, and let us out.”

  “You’re right,” said Ab. “’Til then, she probably didn’t know about the hydraulics. She probably figured that all the mechanism was on her side, buried in the ground somewhere.”

  “I bet she’s not a happy tadpole right about now,” Bean theorized. “She thought she had the tunnel all to herself, but now she knows we know.”

  “The whole town knows,” said Ab. “I bet she was just waiting for the perfect time to take the treasure off the island in some way that no one would be suspicious.”

  Bean and Ab secreted themselves behind a bank of beach roses, through which they could study the Winthrop House unseen. “If that’s the case,” Ab continued, “she’ll have to start moving stuff out right away, in case people get too curious.”

  “Anyone we know?” Bean said with a laugh.

  “How can we find out what’s down there?” Ab said after a few minutes. “It’s driving me crazy not knowing.”

  Bean shrugged. “You heard her. She owns all the property right up to Mr. Proverb’s wall.”

  “So she says,” Ab retorted. “But that doesn’t make sense. I mean, it doesn’t make sense that Moses Webster would have let Isaiah Winthrop own the whole tunnel, does it?”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Bean replied after deliberating a minute. “Maybe we should check it out. Let’s go see Eb Clark.”

  “He lives all the way up to Dyer Island, doesn’t he?” said Ab, following breathlessly behind Bean as he sailed across the street, over the fence, and down the walk to his house.

  “No problem,” Bean called over his shoulder. He bounded onto the wood walkway and came to a stop against the railing. “We’ve got transportation.” He gestured grandly at the moped. Despite its new coat of paint, it still inspired skepticism rather than confidence.

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Why not? Mom had Alby Oakes go all over it. See? He even got the brake lights and the blinkers working.” Bean turned on the key and flipped the switches on the handlebars. Ab was suitably impressed as the corresponding equipment came to life.

  “I wonder if he fixed the horn,” said Bean, placing his ear in close proximity to the rusty metal disk. He pressed the button. At once a startlingly loud shriek, as if someone had stepped hard on the tail of a large mechanical cat, shattered the stillness. Bean and Ab nearly left their socks. Especially Bean, whose look of shocked amazement was fixed as if he’d been sprayed with liquid nitrogen.

  “What?” he said numbly.

  “I think it works,” Ab observed, still holding her ears.

  “Come on,” said Bean after he’d shaken off the effects of the blast. He straddled the seat and pumped the starter pedal a few times, until the engine purred calmly to life. “Pile on.”

  “Pile on where?” said Ab, scanning the bike for any sign of a seat.

  Bean patted the metal luggage rack atop the rear wheel. “Right here. Practically a sofa.”

  Ab overcame her better judgment and climbed on. “It’s not very comfortable,” she complained. “What am I supposed to hold on to?”

  Bean smiled. “Me,” he said, and he twisted the throttle and lifted his feet. Reflexively, she threw her arms around him as they sputtered across the grass, down the walk, and onto Main Street.

  It was about three and a half miles to Dyer Island. Off the main road, there were potholes everywhere, most of which Bean managed to hit at a brisk clip. Ab groused bitterly in his ear most of the way, but deep down she was enjoying the exhilaration and freedom. Now the whole island was theirs.

  They scooted down a little-used driveway of grass and bare granite ledge, then pulled to a stop near the kitchen door of a tidy little red Cape overlooking the Reach. Off in the distance, beyond the White Islands, loomed the Camden Hills on the mainland and, to the south a mile or so, the high dome of Hurricane Island.

  “My bum hurts,” said Ab, stumbling off the bike and massaging the offended region vigorously. “I think you missed one of those potholes.”

  “I’ll get it on the way back,” said Bean with a chuckle. He rapped loudly at the door, which was soon opened by a balding, stoop-shouldered man who greeted them warmly. “Beanbag, Abigail. Well, well. Come in, come on in.” He opened the screen door wide and stood as far to the side as his ample belly allowed. “Mother,” he bellowed, even though Mrs. Clark was only fifteen feet away, at the other end of the kitchen, “we’ve got comp’ny. Haul out that rhubarb pie again.”

  Mr. Clark pulled a couple of shiny white ladderback chairs from the table and motioned Ab and Bean toward them. Seeing that Ab was about to protest, he added, “Now, now. None of that. You sit and wrap yourself around some’ve Ma’s pie or you’ll break her heart. You don’t want to do that, do ya?”

  As Ab sat sheepishly at the table, she cast a quick glance at Eb’s substantial girth. She couldn’t help but think it had been a long time since he’d broken his wife’s heart.

  “Well, my goodness,” Mrs. Clark said as she placed two huge, steaming slices of rhubarb pie on the table. “Abigail, you’ve turned into quite the young lady since I saw you last.”

  Bean stopped himself from saying, boy, ain’t that the truth only by stuffing a forkful of pie into his mouth. He mumbled appreciatively about the pie, and chewed.

  Ab flushed bright crimson.

  “Happens at that age,” said Eb with a twinkle in his eye as he smiled at his wife. “Now, then. Much as Ma’d like to think so, I imagine it was more than her pie brought you all the way out here. What’s up?”

  Bean swallowed and cleared his throat. “It’s about the Winthrop House.”

  “Why ain’t I surprised?” said Eb, ladling a hefty dollop of double cream onto Ab’s slice of pie, then watching each mouthful as she ate it with almost as much pleasure as if he were eating it himself. “You’re the second person today’s asked the same question, and I’ll tell you the same as I told them. Near as I recall, Frog Hollow’s split dead even between the houses.”

  “What’s Frog Hollow?” Ab asked.

  “That’s the name of the lane,” Eb explained.

  “I didn’t even know it had a name,” said Bean, washing down the last of the pie with the cold milk that Mrs. Clark had placed in front of him.

  “Sure it does. Every road on the island has a name,” said Eb. “Used to have street signs, too. Wrought iron, mostly. Over time they just come down one after the other, and no one saw fit to replace ’em. Now only us old folks remember the names and the streets they go to.”

  “Who else asked?” said Ab. “About the lane—Frog Hollow?”

  “Maud Valliers herself,” said Eb. He cast a knowing sidelong glance at the kids. “I heard what happened down at the fire station this morning, and I’ll tell you what I think.” He tapped the side of his nose. “I think there’s some kind of treasure down in that cellar. And,” he added with emphasis, “that woman’s down there right now, slidin’ it all over to her side of the lane.

  “’Course,” he concluded, brushing crumbs from the table into his hand, “there’s nothin’ anyone can do about it without some kind of legal footwork. Seems the only way into the tunnel’s from her side, since your side’s plugged up.”

  Mr. Clark stood, went to the screen door, and pushed it open. “Nope. You ask me, she’s down there right now, and you can bet when they finally break through—if they ever do—there won’t be so much as a widow’s mite on poor ol’ Proverb’s side. That Maud Valliers, she bears watchin’. That’s what I think.”

  11

  TRAPPED AGAIN

  THE EVENING WIND WAS PICKING UP generous handfuls of salt-laden air and the scent of fresh-cut grass and tossing them in Ab’s and Bean’s faces as they puttered back toward town at twenty-five miles an hour. It felt like a hundred miles an hour except on the hills, where gravity forced them to a near standstill. Twice Ab had to climb off, because the moped simply refused to carry them both uphill.

  “What now?” Ab hol
lered breathlessly as she ran to catch up with Bean after one such stretch. She felt him shrug as she climbed on behind him.

  “You think there’s really a treasure down there? I mean, really, Bean?”

  Bean fell silent for a minute as they coasted down the far side of Harbor Hill to the village. “I didn’t really think so at first,” he allowed. “Back when we started, it was like a game—you know, somethin’ to do. But once we got going, I began to wonder, what if there really is a treasure? I mean, what if all the old stories are really true? Then, when we found the hydraulics and the tunnel ... well, that changed everything .”

  It sure did, Ab thought. A jumble of thoughts and feelings raced through her brain—excitement, curiosity, fear, a little apprehension—and over the whole confusing mixture loomed the glitter of gold and the ominous figure of Maud Valliers.

  Instinctively she squeezed Bean with both arms. A new, mysterious feeling struck through him, as if that squeeze had somehow connected the terminals of some sleeping biological battery deep in his core. The resulting shock nearly knocked him off the bike.

  Not that he’d have noticed.

  “You’re right,” said Ab. “This is a real mystery.”

  Bean pulled to a stop beside the pond near his grandparents’ house and shut off the engine with a flip of his thumb.

  “That was fun,” said Ab. She climbed off and ran her fingers through her hair, which was stiff with the potion of summer.

  Bean didn’t reply. He took a step or two to the edge of the pond, sat on a large rock, and stared at the still water. The wind had left them and gone to play elsewhere.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Ab announced.

  “You do?” Bean replied, a little alarmed. That was the last thing he wanted her to know.

  “Sure,” said Ab lightly, plucking a piece of grass and sticking it between her teeth, the way Bean always did. “You’re trying to figure out a way to get into the tunnel and find out what’s going on up there.”

  Bean didn’t take his eyes off the water. Something told him it was important not to look at Ab right now, for fear she’d be able to read his thoughts through his eyes. Everything had changed. The whole world had flipped upside down and turned itself inside out, like the reflection of the opposite shore in the mirrorlike surface of the pond. Trouble is, he was the only one who knew it. Everyone else was acting as though nothing had happened.