Spooky Business (Jane Garbo Mysteries Book 1)

by Addison Creek

  “And it’s a problem for us, too,” I added.

  The two sisters exchanged looks. They knew I was right.

  “Still, you should’ve told me,” I said.

  “Next time our very existence is threatened I’ll let you know,” said Pep.

  “Don’t be overly dramatic,” said Lark, using her thumb and index finger to twirl the skull earring she was wearing.

  “I’m never overly dramatic,” said Pep. “The other thing you should know is that the supernaturals on the property have been more rambunctious, especially the Skeleton Trio. But the Trio has also been the victim of some minor attacks, and so far we haven’t been able to figure out who’s doing what.”

  Just then Pep caught sight of a young man of about college age trying to slip a mug into his pocket without paying for it. In a flash she grabbed her booking ledger, darted around the corner, swept up to him, and slammed the thick book into his shoulder.

  “Ouch,” he cried.

  “Don’t you steal my mug,” she yelled.

  “Sorry,” he whimpered. He took the mug out, put it back onto the shelf, and quickly ran out of the store, looking over his shoulder the whole time to see if the curly-haired brunette terror was coming after him.

  As calm as could be, Pep fluffed her hair a little and came back to us. “Sorry about that. Where were we?”

  “Put the ledger down,” said Lark, staring at her as if she had never seen anything like her before.

  “I’m worried about the family,” I whispered. “We can’t really handle losing a lot of ghosts. Not to mention the poor ghosts.”

  “We’ll figure it out. Your mom always knows what to do,” said Lark soothingly.

  Usually my mom did know what to do, and I knew it. But with ghosts going missing and even Lizzie being sent out as a hunter, I wasn’t so sure my mom had things under control anymore.

  After a night spent watching excited customers come in and out of the gift shop, I was exhausted. It had officially been the longest day of my life.

  Not only that, my feet hurt.

  I trudged all the way up to the attic, having decided against staying with Pep and Lark in their room. Pep’s snoring was almost as bad as having a crazy ghost lady haunting me, and at least upstairs I’d have some time alone.

  “Oh, no. What are you doing here?” Lady Oakley demanded when she caught sight of me. She was floating over by the window, her long dress and cascading hair tumbling downward. “Didn’t you move somewhere else?”

  “No, this is my new room,” I said.

  “Are you the one who can touch ghosts?” she asked, as if to make sure.

  “Yes, so you keep me up awake at night and I’ll throw you out,” I said.

  “I’ll just come back in,” she sniffed.

  “Only once,” I tried threatening. It was the only way to talk to Lady Oakley. She was unreasonable on a level with Grandmother Cookie, not that anybody could really be on a level with Cookie.

  Lady Oakley snapped as if I had insulted her, and spun away. It didn’t take her long to float out of the attic and leave me in peace. I flung myself on the bed and closed my eyes, but sleep didn’t come for a long time.

  Chapter Eight

  I woke up the next morning with sunlight streaming onto my face, curtains being one of the items I hadn’t remembered to get out of the left side of the attic. Grumbling at the early hour, I nevertheless tumbled out of bed in a hurry. It was Friday, which meant that tomorrow the haunted house would also be open. Lots could go wrong, and given that it was my family it was likely that at least half the things that could go wrong would.

  I hadn’t spent a lot of time in the attic when I was growing up, so getting from there to the kitchen in a mansion as large as ours was actually harder than it sounds. When I made the mistake of taking a wrong turn I found myself in a passageway I had never seen before.

  Not wanting to turn back, I kept going, hoping to stumble on the right passageway one way or another. The hall I was in was hung with portraits of people I didn’t recognize, but I assumed they were witches and part of my family history and told myself to find out more about them some other time.

  When I got to the door at the end of the passage, it was locked. Out a small window near the door I could see the front yard, where Cookie was puttering around her cauldron despite the fact that there would be no customers for hours. I had no way to get her attention, and I wasn’t sure I needed to. Yet.

  The day was sunny but windswept; I could nearly taste the grinding salty air. The last glimpse of long summer days was fading.

  At my back was another door, but that one looked odd somehow. For one thing, there was no handle and no keyhole. After pushing and shoving on it for several minutes I realized that I wasn’t going to get through it.

  In frustration I turned to walk away and accidentally tripped on the edge of the ornate rug that ran the length of the hallway; I hadn’t noticed it at all until I stumbled it. I knocked my hand into the nearest sconce as I fell and landed on the floor with an “oof,” just as a loud scraping noise emanated from everywhere and nowhere.

  I scrambled to my feet in a hurry, only to see the panel of the wall that I’d been trying to open sliding away, revealing a secret passage.

  The mansion was chock-full of secret passages, most of which I hadn’t been able to find when I was younger. Then again, I really hadn’t enjoyed looking for them as a child. But the architect of this place must have had quite a sense of humor. Uncle Taft knew about most of the mansion’s secrets, but I had a feeling that even he wasn’t aware of all of them.

  Not willing to miss this opportunity, I went through into the darkness. The air was instantly colder, sending a chill down my spine. The door started scraping shut behind me, and before I could react, the white blur of the lighted hallway behind me disappeared. In that moment I realized—too late—that going into an inky black passage without any light or hope of getting back out wasn’t the best idea.

  The door slammed shut. Good idea or bad, I was stuck with it now.

  “This wasn’t one of your better ideas,” said Rose the white cat, making me jump.

  I could see blue eyes flickering at me out of the darkness, and that reminded me that I had a lighter in my pocket. I had brought it along in order to start a fire if I needed one, but I often carried one with me in any case. The mansion was always cold, plus you never knew when you might need to light a candle in a sconce, or illuminate your way down a dark and unknown hallway.

  “What were some of my better ideas?” I asked.

  “I need to spend some time thinking about that,” sniffed Rose.

  “I missed you yesterday,” I said.

  “I was on a mission,” said Rose. “Don’t get sentimental about it. You’re the one who left.”

  “I’m glad you missed me too,” I said. “How many dead mice are there?”

  “You mean yesterday or in the last hour?” Rose asked.

  “You’re a bloodthirsty savage,” I said.

  “I’m a cat,” she clarified.

  “You know where we are right now?” I said.

  “No, but I hope there’s a new mouse here,” said Rose. I could just picture her licking her chops in the darkness.

  “I don’t know how to get out of here, so we’d best go forward,” I muttered.

  “Great idea,” said Rose, swishing her fluffy white tail. “You first.”

  With only the lighter as a guide, I started moving ahead gingerly. The passage was as narrow as most secret passages; they wouldn’t be secret if they were bigger.

  “How was New York City?” Rose asked.

  “I missed home,” I admitted.

  “Don’t tell me you’re happy to be back,” said Rose.

  “I wouldn’t be anywhere else,” I said, thinking of what was happening with the skeletons and the ghosts.

  “You shouldn’t have tried so hard to make a go of it somewhere else anyway,” said Rose. “You have everything you co
uld ever want right here. All the mice in the world.”

  “Some people need more than mice,” I said.

  “You’re right. You need a man, too,” said Rose.

  “What makes you think that?” I laughed.

  “I know things,” said Rose.

  “Sure you do,” I said.

  “There are no cute guys around here. You didn’t have a fellow in New York, did you?” she asked.

  “No, I didn’t,” I said.

  “You should really try dating,” said Rose.

  “Thanks for the advice,” I said, rolling my eyes in the dark. I hadn’t even been home twenty-four hours and I was lost in a secret passage while my cat gave me advice about romance.

  “Any time,” said Rose.

  “How’s Down Below?” I asked.

  Rose was silent for a long time. Down Below wasn’t something we talked about in the mansion, but I knew Rose went down there, and I always asked her about it. She didn’t like the fact that I knew about her basement adventures, but I didn’t like the fact that she knew that sometimes I re-wore my socks. Oh well.

  “It’s a little . . . different . . . these days,” said Rose carefully.

  “You mean because of the disappearances?”

  “They told you?” Rose asked.

  “Reluctantly,” I admitted.

  “I’m sure they didn’t want to worry you,” said Rose.

  “If they didn’t want to worry me, they shouldn’t let Cookie tightrope walk on the roof,” I said.

  “We all have our faults,” said Rose sagely.

  “So why is the lower level different now?” I asked.

  “They’re just more careful,” said Rose.

  The reason we didn’t talk about Down Below was that my mother viewed it as her own personal failure. The basement was a huge labyrinth. Skeletons and ghosts that she had brought into the mansion had gone down there when they tired of the haunted house, and now they ran an underworld—filled with gambling and dark markets—in our extensive basement. My mother hated it, but she knew it was better to have it here at the house where we could keep an eye on it than to let the supernaturals loose in a world that had no idea they existed, much less how to deal with them.

  None of the family went down there anymore except every once in a great while when the furnace needed to be repaired. That hadn’t happened in two years, so no one knew what was going on at this point.

  Except Rose.

  “How about the mice down there?” I asked.

  “What mice?” Even in the dark I could tell Rose was grinning.

  “There are mice in the house itself?” I demanded.

  “No, definitely not. Forget I said anything,” said Rose.

  I shuddered.

  I held the lighter near the wall and ran my hands over it, noticing for the first time that it was covered with a floral wallpaper unlike any I had ever seen in the rest of the mansion. The woodwork here was different too.

  “You think we can get in there?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, I’m a cat,” Rose muttered.

  “Now you tell me,” I muttered back.

  I tried for several minutes to find any sort of secret doorway, with no luck. Unlike in the passage where I had fallen a little while ago, there were no sconces here, nor could I see any way out of the passage, much less into the space behind the walls. Tiring of trying to keep the lighter going while looking at the wall at the same time, I started moving again.

  This had become a very long trip to breakfast.

  I held my breath and tried not to panic. I was missing the first meal of the day.

  “You want to be careful of the hallway. There are stairs,” Rose warned.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  It wasn’t long before I came to a very steep and very narrow staircase. The thin walls pressed in, but I carefully headed down, because what other choice did I have?

  By the time I reached the bottom of the stairs I was pretty tired of my venture. This passage hadn’t led much of anywhere. I felt certain I had missed one or two secret doorways along the route, but since I hadn’t been able to see them, I wasn’t likely to get through them anyhow. All I could hope for now was to find a real door at the bottom of the stairs, so I could make my way to the kitchen and have my breakfast and coffee.

  Lots of coffee.

  “I think I smell bacon,” said Rose.

  I stopped to sniff. “I think you’re right.”

  “Maybe I need to double-check it,” said the cat hopefully

  “I don’t know what good that’s going to do you,” I said.

  Audrey wasn’t a fan of cats and did her best to keep Rose out of the kitchen, which meant Rose did her best to be in the kitchen as often as possible.

  “And you wonder why I eat so many mice,” Rose said bitterly.

  “You expect us to feed you bacon every morning?” I said.

  “Yes, if you’re offering,” said Rose.

  “Let’s ask Audrey what she thinks,” I suggested. In relation to Audrey and Rose, brooms and shooing were involved.

  “No need to be mean,” Rose shot back.

  “Here’s a door,” I said jubilantly.

  Feeling a deep sense of relief at the sight of an ordinary-looking old wooden door in front of me, I tried the loose handle. It jangled, but nothing else happened. I couldn’t see any light through the slit between the floor and the door, and it occurred to me to wonder exactly what was on the other side.

  But I still didn’t have much choice, so I pulled out my lighter and tried again.

  “Open the door already,” Rose ordered.

  “Stop acting so much like a cat,” I said.

  “I think you’re citing the myth that cats always want to be on the side of the door that they’re not on,” Rose said. “Forget the myth and open the door!”

  “Yes, I’m totally confused about that particular myth,” I whispered.

  With no idea how to open the door, I simply started pounding on it. The bacon smell was very strong, and I thought that just maybe the kitchen and Audrey were on the other side.

  “Who’s there?” a voice called.

  “Grandma Cookie, it’s Jane,” I called.

  “Jane lives in New York. You’re lying. I’m going to leave you there,” said the voice.

  I heard footsteps walking away and I growled. Ever so gently, I braced my forehead against the door and shook it.

  “Cookie, it really is Jane. Please open the door,” I yelled.

  When I didn’t hear anything in response, I started pounding again. It took several minutes before the door opened and my mother’s frowning face appeared there.

  “Cookie said it was a hummingbird in the wall.”

  “Not quite,” I said.

  “What were you doing in there?” my mom demanded.

  “I found it accidentally,” I explained.

  “What are you doing here?” Cookie demanded.

  “I was here yesterday,” I said.

  “I know you were, but I was trying to pretend you weren’t. Please don’t get in the way of that,” she sniffed.

  “How did you know about the secret door?” I asked.

  I stepped past her into the kitchen and looked back toward where I’d come from. Indeed, on the other side of the secret passage it looked like a normal wall.

  Just as my mom closed the door, Rose, who had entwined herself around my ankle, tried to dart back through into the secret passage.

  “What did you do that for?” I demanded as Rose’s nose narrowly missed being squished.

  She looked up at me with guilt. “I just felt like I had to.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “What’s for breakfast?” I said, turning back toward the kitchen.

  “Don’t act like you can’t smell the bacon,” my aunt Audrey laughed.

  “I can’t believe you’re making bacon. I’m an old lady. I shouldn’t be eating so much bacon,” Cookie berated her.


  “You shouldn’t have eaten three pieces of chocolate lava cake last night either, but that didn’t stop you,” said Audrey with her hands on her hips. “The doctor says you’re in perfect health and you’re going to live for a long, long time.”

  “No thanks to any of you,” Cookie sniped.

  “Get that cat out of my kitchen!”

  Audrey had just noticed Rose, and that had made her forget everything else in the world. Rose, for her part, was doing her best to sniff around in the lucky event that any bacon had been dropped on the floor. She even looked like she might be contemplating whether it was worth it to jump up onto the counter.

  Whether she wanted to risk the frying pan my aunt Audrey was now clutching was anyone’s guess, but in the end Rose decided against it and trotted slowly out of the room. She did her best to go fast enough so that she was just out of Audrey’s reach while still taking her time to smell everything.

  “That ridiculous cat,” Audrey seethed. She replaced the frying pan on its wall hook and went back to the counter to continue forking bacon onto everyone’s plates.

  “The boys ate early and went outside to tend to the grounds,” she said. “Lizzie went with them. I’m not sure what Lark and Pep are up to.”

  “I’m right here,” said Pep, walking into the kitchen.

  “Me too,” said Lark, following behind.

  The three of us spent the morning helping out around the grounds, where there was always something to be cleaned or moved or put away. Customers made a real mess in the haunted house, and everything had to be gone over and put back together after every open evening. The three of us worked until it was time for showers and lunch, at which point I went up to the attic to take a quick shower before heading back down to eat.

  For a split second I thought I heard an alarm going off, but I couldn’t place it and decided I must have imagined it. Shaking my head at all the noises the mansion served up on a daily basis, I got dressed and headed back downstairs, deciding rather rashly to take the secret passageway again.

  This time I took the torch with me and left it in the doorway just in case. But it didn’t take long to walk the passage and get down the stairs, and nothing out of the ordinary happened as I went.