Who Stole Halloween?

by Martha Freeman

  Instead of answering, I retrieved my coat from the front hall. Mom started upstairs to get dressed, but she stopped halfway. “Speaking of breakfast,” she said, “did you get any coconut candy last night?”

  “Sorry, Mom,” I said. “We weren’t out long enough. But you’re a grown-up. You can buy all the coconut candy you want.”

  “That would be cheating,” Mom said. “Oh—and one more thing.”

  I pushed open the front door. “Yeah?”

  “You and Yasmeen did okay, Alex. For kids, I mean.”

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Bub was in the kitchen chopping celery for soup when Yasmeen and I arrived a little later. “I hear you two caught a catnapper last night,” he said. “Not too high and mighty this morning to help a fella do dishes I hope?”

  I was thinking “congratulations” might be nice, or simply, “I bet that kid was happy to get his cat back.” But praise is not Bub’s style, just like it’s not my mom’s. So I took a dishrag and turned on the water while Yasmeen pulled a drying towel out of the drawer. While we worked, we told Bub the latest about Miss Deirdre and the pills. Then we told him we had brought over the evidence from the other mystery—the case of the Harvey house ghost. When the last pan was clean, Bub put the lid on the soup pot and lowered the heat. Then we went into the front room and sat down at the dining room table, with the old ledger book, the billet doux, and the newspapers laid out in front of us.

  Bub said he didn’t know how it worked in real life, that I’d have to ask my mom about that, but in books and movies when the detectives were stuck, they usually reviewed the story one more time.

  “It’s worth a try,” I said.

  Bub nodded. “Okay, then. It’s 1879 and the richest guy in town, one Gilmore Harvey, finds out his beautiful young wife has a sweetheart, Floyd. So—in the proverbial jealous rage—he kills her.”

  “Right before Halloween,” Yasmeen added.

  Bub nodded. “Then on Halloween night itself, someone—or some thing—kills Mr. Harvey.”

  “Right,” I said. “And when the police find his body, they find Mrs. Harvey’s cat at the same time—”

  “Licking something red and sticky from his paws.” Yasmeen made a face.

  “So they blame the cat for killing Mr. Harvey,” Bub said. “Now, here, come to think of it, I have a question. Did they blame the cat just because of the red stuff on his paws? Or was there some other reason?”

  “It’s just like you always say, Bub: means, motive, opportunity. The cat was there in the room, so that’s opportunity. The cat wanted revenge for the death of his mistress, so that’s motive. And as for means—well, apparently, the cat had some mighty big claws.”

  “According to Mr. Stone,” Yasmeen said, “the body was so badly mauled it was like an attack by a ‘jungle beast.’ You couldn’t even tell who the person was anymore.”

  Something about what Yasmeen just said struck me funny, like it was illogical. It was a few seconds before I realized what. “If you couldn’t recognize the body . . . ,” I said slowly, “how did anybody even know the body was Mr. Harvey?”

  “Well, they knew because . . .” Yasmeen said, and then she stopped. “I don’t know how they knew.”

  “In those days they wouldn’t have the chemical tests they do now,” Bub said. “They probably would have identified him by his clothes.”

  Clothes, I thought. Hadn’t somebody said something about clothes not so long ago?

  When it came to me—and when at the same time a lot of other things made sense, too—I was so excited I jumped out of my chair: “The burned clothes in the parlor fireplace!”

  Yasmeen was annoyingly calm. “What burned clothes in what parlor fireplace?”

  “I never told you,” I said, “because it didn’t seem important compared with the ledger and the love letter and all.”

  “Tell me now,” Yasmeen said, and I explained how Mr. Blanco had found the old fireplace behind a wall, how he had saved the burned-up contents in a Ziploc bag, how it looked like maybe somebody had burned clothes in there. “Listen,” I said finally. “I don’t think it was Mr. Harvey at all who died on Halloween night. I think it was stouthearted Floyd. And the cat wasn’t the killer either. Mr. Harvey was.”

  Bub offered to drive Yasmeen and me to the Harvey house on his way to the grocery store, but he needed to make out his shopping list first, and we didn’t want to wait. “Promise me a full report,” he said. And out the door we ran.

  At the Harvey house, Mrs. Blanco was working the cash register. She didn’t say hello. She started apologizing, but I was so focused on getting hold of that Ziploc bag that I didn’t understand. Then I remembered the cat pills. In fact, I was kind of mad at her and Mr. Blanco for selling them, but I didn’t think they deserved worse than what my mom had called a slap on the wrist either.

  “Mrs. Blanco?” I interrupted her mid-sorry. “Yasmeen and I actually came about something different. Would it be okay if we took a look at the plastic bag of black stuff from the fireplace? We can take it out in the yard, if that’s okay.”

  The bag was still behind the counter, and Mrs. Blanco was very happy to hand it over. I think she would have handed over the money from the cash register, too, if I had asked her—anything to show how sorry she was. “You’ll need these,” she said, handing us each a pair of rubber gloves. “We keep them for scrubbing. Oh—and take some newspaper. You can pour the contents out onto it.”

  It was a cool day, so we sat in the sunshine on the grass where the pumpkins had been. I put on my gloves, and Yasmeen put on hers. We looked at each other, then I picked up the bag, unzipped it, and dumped it out.

  “Yuk,” Yasmeen said, and I sneezed. Black dust floated all around us, and the burned smell was terrible—even after more than a century. It didn’t take us long to get over the yuk, though, because what was inside the bag was interesting. Poking around among the black lumps, we found pieces of leather that might have come from someone’s shoes, several blackened pieces of cloth, and a hard, round thing, heavier than the leather, that we couldn’t identify at all.

  “Rub it,” Yasmeen said. “See if any of the black will come off.”

  I tore a page from the newspaper, wadded it up, spit on it, and started to rub. I expected Yasmeen to be grossed out by my spit, but she wasn’t, which shows that her curiosity was pretty overwhelming.

  Feeling a little like Aladdin with his lamp, I rubbed—and in a short while, I could see that the thing was made of metal, and in another short while that it was silver. In the sunshine it winked at me.

  “It’s a pocket watch!” Yasmeen said.

  “The back of one, I think. The glass and the face must have burned up—or melted.”

  “Keep rubbing!” Yasmeen said, as if I needed to be told. “Wouldn’t it be cool if—”

  I nodded and finished her thought. “If there was writing on it or something. Like: ‘To my darling Floyd, Yours always, Marianne.’ ”

  “Does it say that?”

  “No,” I said, and Yasmeen’s face fell. “But take a look at what it does say.”

  The surface of the watch was pretty clean, but the three letters etched into the metal had stayed grimy black, easy to read.

  “Who’s F.A.S.?” Yasmeen said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I mean the F could be Floyd, but his last name was Anderson—A, not S.”

  Yasmeen took the watch from me, studied it for a minute, and started laughing. That was weird by itself, but then she said, “My parents have these fancy towels they put out for guests,” which was totally weird.

  “Are you feeling okay?” I asked.

  She ignored my question. “See here how the A in the middle is so much bigger than the other two letters?” she asked. “That’s how it is on the towels, too—only on the towels it’s the P for Popp, the last name. Do you get it? It’s how old-fashioned monograms work. So the S on the right would’ve been Floyd’s middle name. And the big A is for Ander
son.” Yasmeen nodded. “This is his monogram all right, and that makes this his watch, too.”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Back inside, Mrs. Blanco asked if we had learned anything.

  “The watch belonged to Floyd after all,” I said.

  I could see from the way she nodded that Mrs. Blanco had no idea what I was talking about. “Why don’t you two wash your hands and go tell that to Mr. Blanco?” she said. “He’s working in the attic. I’m sure he’d be interested.”

  We had to go up two flights of stairs, the second one narrow, creaky, and dark. We could hear a roar above us. What in the world was that? Had the ghost learned a new trick?

  A trapdoor led to the attic itself. Feeling apprehensive, I pushed up on it and climbed through with Yasmeen behind me. We saw right away that the roar was only a vacuum cleaner. Mr. Blanco was on his knees suctioning out the vents around the edge of the roof. Leaves were flying everywhere. I had to tap him on the shoulder before he noticed us.

  Like his wife, he was totally apologetic: “Deirdre told me she was getting those pills from a pharmaceutical company. I had no idea she was cooking them up in her spare bedroom!”

  “I hope that all works out okay,” I said. “But what we really came to tell you is that Yasmeen and I figured out the mystery of the Harvey house ghost.”

  If I do say so myself, Yasmeen and I did a smooth job telling the story. It might not have been as elegant and spooky as Mr. Stone’s version, but maybe if it were told over and over for one hundred years, it would be. We started the same way Bub had earlier. In 1879 a rich man named Gilmore Harvey found out his beautiful wife, Marianne, had a sweetheart, an employee of his named Floyd Anderson. In a jealous rage Mr. Harvey killed his wife a few nights before Halloween, then blamed her death on a burglar. The body was discovered by Floyd. So far, this was the same as Mr. Stone’s version. But then the truth and the story diverged.

  “Probably Mr. Harvey was afraid the police would catch him eventually, so he came up with a clever plan. He decided to fake his own death,” I said. “First, he bought a suitcase. Then, somehow he got Floyd to come over on Halloween night. I guess that wouldn’t have been hard—he was Floyd’s boss. And when Floyd did, he killed him. Then . . .” I shuddered. This part was so grisly I didn’t want to think about it. “Then he put his own clothes on Floyd and made it look like a wild animal had attacked him with its claws.”

  “A wild animal or a wild cat wanting revenge,” Yasmeen said, “Marianne’s pet cat.”

  “ ‘Black as midnight, with eyes as green and bright as emeralds,’ ” I quoted from Mr. Stone’s story, “ ‘found by the hearth, cleaning something red and sticky from its paws.’ ”

  Yasmeen sighed. “Poor cat.”

  “Yeah,” I nodded. “Poor cat. Mr. Harvey framed him! I guess he hated the cat like he hated Marianne. He must have even put blood on the cat’s paws, so naturally, any cat would lick it off. And when the police found the body, that’s what the cat was doing.”

  “It looked like the cat was the killer,” Yasmeen said, “and I guess with its being Halloween and everything, such a supernatural kind of a story seemed more believable than it would’ve any other day.”

  “So the clothes I found in the fireplace?” Mr. Blanco said.

  “They were Floyd’s,” Yasmeen said, and she showed what was left of the pocket watch to Mr. Blanco.

  “Gilmore Harvey burned them, only he was in a hurry and didn’t do that great a job,” I said. “After that, he took his new portmanteau and he left town—never to return.”

  “There’s one other thing, though.” Yasmeen looked around the attic. It was dusty and dim, with crates and boxes everywhere. I bet there were a zillion clues to a zillion mysteries in that attic. But as far as what happened in the Harvey house—that one we had solved, hadn’t we?

  “There’s no other thing,” I said. “We have it all figured out. We are great detectives.” Heck, if no one else was going to make a fuss over what a good job we’d done, I would do it myself.

  “Oh, yes, there is,” Yasmeen said. “The ghost. Dad said ghosts usually come back because there’s unfinished business, some kind of injustice. But that doesn’t fit, does it? Mr. Harvey got his revenge, and he got away with it. For that matter, his ghost, if he’s got one, wouldn’t be hanging around here. It would be hanging around wherever Mr. Harvey himself ended up dying, wouldn’t it?”

  “So what are you saying?” I said. “It’s not Mr. Harvey’s ghost that haunts the Harvey house?”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” she said.

  “Then whose ghost is—” I started to ask, but Mr. Blanco interrupted me.

  “Uh, kids?” he said. “Actually, about the ghost. There isn’t one.”

  “What?” Yasmeen and I said at the same time. “But we’ve seen it,” I said. “Well, heard it anyway.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” Mr. Blanco said, “but today’s the first day I’ve come up here into the attic to work, and you wouldn’t believe the funky stuff—electrical wiring like nobody ever saw. And with the vents half blocked and the wind blowing through. Well, I’m not surprised we’ve been hearing noises downstairs.”

  “You mean the yowling?” I said.

  “Now that I’ve taken a look around up here, it’s all easily explained,” he said. “No need to bring in the spirit world. The wind blows a certain way through these half-clogged vents—it whistles, and this attic becomes an echo chamber. Plus the wires up here get blown around, too. And that disrupts the electrical connections.”

  “So the lights flash,” I said, “and then they go out?”

  “Exactly,” he said. “Anyway, I’m thinking the ghost is gone for good. I’m getting these vents cleared today, and I’ve got an electrician coming on Monday.”

  Yasmeen made a face. She wasn’t buying Mr. Blanco’s explanation. It was funny that till lately she never believed in ghosts. Now all of a sudden she seemed kind of attached to them. “I have a different theory,” she said.

  Mr. Blanco smiled. “Okay, shoot.”

  “There’s a ghost all right, but it’s not Mr. Harvey,” she said.

  “Floyd then?” I said. “Or Marianne?”

  Yasmeen shook her head. “What happened to them was tragic, but not like my dad described—not with unfinished business. Think about it. In the whole story, who is it that got the worst deal? Who is it that was executed for a crime he didn’t commit?”

  All of a sudden it was obvious. And I was going to say it, too—the cat. But I never got the chance, and neither did Yasmeen. This time it wasn’t some puny draft but an Arctic blast that shot through the attic, kicking the leaves and dust into a whirlwind as turbulent as a minitornado, knocking the boxes around so that they wobbled, they clattered, they fell and broke open. Then there was a flash of blue-green light, a crack like cannon fire, and finally a howl like the most enormous cat in the universe had had its tail pinched by the most enormous rocking chair.

  The whole thing lasted only a few seconds, but it was an overwhelming few seconds, and after the dust and leaves had settled, after the light had returned to its usual dimness, after the howling’s echo had subsided—we three were left looking at each other, blinking, our pulses racing.

  When I could breathe—and my heart had slowed to something like normal—I said, “I think you’re right, Mr. Blanco. I think, as of now, the ghost is gone for good.”

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Walking home from the Harvey house, Yasmeen had a goofy idea. “Let’s go visit Marianne,” she said, “and stouthearted Floyd. Let’s pay our respects.”

  “Not St. Bernard’s,” I whined, “not again.”

  “Oh, come on. After all, today’s All Saints Day! The first of November—the Day of the Dead in Latin American countries, the day you honor the ancestors.”

  “How do you know this stuff?” I asked.

  Yasmeen shrugged. “You pick up a lot when you read the encyclopedia. Hurry now—I’ll race y
a.”

  “I hate racing!” But I took off running, anyway.

  A few minutes later, all out of breath, we were standing in front of Marianne Harvey’s grumpy angel at St. Bernard’s cemetery. Yasmeen nodded at the markers. “The inscriptions make sense now,” she said. “Gilmore Harvey must have written them. He was trying to tell us something.”

  I read the two stones again. Gilmore Harvey’s: SO SHALL THE RIGHTEOUS ESCAPE THE GRAVE.

  And Marianne’s: IN DEATH, THE ETERNAL WIFE.

  Yasmeen sighed. “It’s all so sad, like Romeo and Juliet.” Her voice sounded peculiar, so I looked over. Wouldn’t you know there was a tear on her cheek? I shook my head, disgusted. Girls, I thought.

  Then I tried to talk, and my voice came out sounding like a frog. “We know it’s you down there, Floyd. Rest in peace, pal.”

  I called Dad from Yasmeen’s. “Be home at five-thirty,” he told me. “Oh—and bring Yasmeen, why don’t you? I’ve . . . uh, I’ve got something I need to give her.”

  Hanging out at the Popps is not usually that fun, because they don’t even have video games and all the snacks are healthy. But—honestly? I was trying to avoid cleaning the basement. Usually I wouldn’t mind that much, but now I was feeling sort of cheated. I mean, we had hardly gotten to trick-or-treat, I was going to wind up paying for the baby monitor out of my own savings, and worst of all, nobody seemed to care that we had solved the great catnapping caper.

  My house was really quiet when Yasmeen and I walked through the front door.

  “Luau?” I called. “Dad? Mom?”

  I looked at Yasmeen, and she shrugged.

  “Hello?” I called again.

  “Hello?” my dad’s voice answered. “That you, kids? I’m in the basement. Bring down the mop and you can help me with this floor, okay?”

  Great. He had saved me a grungy job, just like Mom promised.