“You know what?” Nick said. “Just drop us at my house.”
“Aw, come on,” Danny said. “We can go somewhere else …”
But Nick said, “Nah—that's all right, we're just not really into it.”
So when we dropped Nick and Olivia off, Billy grumbled, “Off with ya, ye poxy landlubbers,” as they left the Hummer. “Walk the plank, then.” But we were actually all kinda relieved to see them go. There's only so much togetherness you can witness before you want to jump overboard yourself.
Anyway, after they were gone, we picked up some ice blocks at Reeba's Liquors 'cause Billy swore they had the biggest, slipperiest blocks in town. And after we'd loaded them into the Hummer, Danny said, “I think we should go to the golf course instead of the cemetery.”
Casey agreed. “The golf course is way better, Billy.”
“What about me bones?” Billy asked, rattling his bucket.
“Bury 'em at the golf course.”
“Aye!” Billy said. “Eighteen holes to choose from!” Everyone groaned, “Bil-ly!” but we set sail for the golf course. The driver had napped in the Hummer while we'd been at the dance, so it had taken him a little while to liven up. But he got back into whistling the yoho song, so thanks to him and Billy Bonkers Pratt, it didn't take long before we were all in a good mood again, singing and arging and acting like swashbucklin' pirates.
When we got near the golf course, Danny guided the driver through Country Club Estates, down some back roads to the end of a dead-end street, where the Black Pearl could park and not be noticed.
The guys lugged the blocks of ice through a break in the fence while Marissa carried her gym bag and I squeezed through with Billy's flag, his hook, and his bucket o' bones.
It was dark on the golf course, but the houses from the neighborhood to our right cast enough light on the grass to make it seem like we had just entered some secret fantasy world with rolling hills of moss.
“This is cool!” I whispered.
“It is, huh,” Casey said as we walked along.
“Do you do this a lot?”
“We used to,” he whispered. “It's been a while.” He grinned at me. “And never with a girl.”
I hadn't even thought about that. And now, knowing that it had crossed his mind could have made me feel uncomfortable, but it didn't—it made me feel good. This wasn't something they did with girls.
This was something they did with friends.
But we'd barely gotten onto the greens when all of a sudden megawatt lights snap on, totally blinding us. We all just stand there, squinting and using an arm to block the light like we're watching some alien ship descend. It's not an alien ship, of course, it's floodlights mounted to the back fences of some of the country club homes.
Dogs start barking. Then some guy we can't see because he's behind the lights shouts through a bullhorn, “This is a private facility. Get yourself and your stuff off the golf course!”
“We're not hurting anything!” Danny calls back. He hefts his bag. “It's just ice!”
“I said it's private! Get off the golf course or I'll call the police!”
“Great,” Danny grumbles, lowering the ice.
So we get out of there as fast as we can, and when we're back inside the Black Pearl, Billy says, “To the cemetery then?”
Casey and Danny are looking at each other like, I guess so…, but Marissa pipes up with, “How about the ball fields? You know, the ones on Miller? By the courthouse? There's a great hill—”
“Oh, by those trees!” Casey says. “That would be perfect.”
“Is there some place we can park?” Danny asks. “This thing isn't exactly inconspicuous, and that part of Miller's always crawlin' with cops.”
So I say, “We can park by the old railroad office.”
“That's right,” Marissa says. “There's a path that cuts behind it, clear through to Miller.”
“Is it dark?” Billy asks.
We nod.
“Deserted?”
We nod again, but this time Marissa and I look at each other like, Uh, maybe this isn't such a good idea after all…
“Perfect!” Billy pronounces, then adds, “Sounds like a bonny good place to bury me bones!”
“Stop with the bones already, would you?” Danny says.
“Arg!” Billy replies.
So I give the driver directions, and off we go. And on the ride over Danny asks, “Is this that same railroad office you were talking about before?”
“Right,” Marissa says.
“So this is the place you knocked those guys down with a shovel?”
She rolls her eyes a little. “Right again.”
“What were you doing over there, anyway?”
Marissa looks at me, so I tell them a little about Mrs. Willawago and my job walking Captain Patch. And I wasn't planning to say much more, but Marissa pipes up with, “Tell them the story about Goldie Danali.”
“Who?” Danny asks.
“Goldie Danali… it's a ghost story!”
All of a sudden Billy's way interested. “Do tell!” he says, leaning forward.
So I start to tell them about Goldie, but I get on this huge sidetrack about Mrs. Willawago and the houses on Hopper Street because, well, to me that's part of the story. So by the time I finish telling them about Goldie, and how her property got seized, and how now they can't rent the offices because people think they're haunted, Billy's shaking his head, going, “You done?”
I shrug like, Yeah.
“That is not how you tell a ghost story.” He drops his voice and gives it a spooky quiver as he says, “Goldie Danali. A simple soul. A quiet soul. Went to work each day in a golf cart …”
Everyone stifles a laugh, but just then the Black Pearl lurches to a stop, and when we turn to see why, we hear clanging and see lights flashing as the crossbars come down, blocking the railroad tracks.
We watch and wait, and finally Danny says, “What the heck?” 'cause with all that flashing and clanging and blocking the road, there's no train in sight.
Then the driver says, “I didn't think trains ran through Santa Martina.”
“They don't,” I tell him. “We just get the occasional locomotive.” He eyes me in his rearview mirror, so I shrug and say, “We don't understand it, either.”
The clanging and flashing continues for two minutes.
Three.
Then all at once it's quiet, the lights stop, and the bars lift.
The driver double-checks to make sure no locomotive's heading our way, then proceeds over the railroad tracks, muttering, “Must've been a ghost train.”
Now, I'm not one of these people who's all wooooooo, scared of ghosts. But something about being in that part of town in the dark and hearing him say ghost train sent shivers down my spine.
It did the same for Marissa, I could tell. And as the driver pulled to a stop alongside the abandoned railroad office, I started thinking that maybe we should find someplace else to go ice-blocking, but the guys are all, “Oh, dude, this is perfect. No one's gonna bug us here.”
So we haul the blocks of ice, the stupid bucket o' bones, and Marissa's duffel bag out of the Hummer and hurry to the corridor of trees behind the Hopper Street properties.
Billy zips ahead, then ambushes us from behind a tree. “Woooagh-ha-ha-ha-ha!” he roars, practically scaring the punch out of Marissa and me.
He, of course, thinks he's funnier than a whoopee cushion in church, but Danny's getting kinda irritated. “Shhh!” he says. “I don't want to get kicked out of here, too!”
“Who's gonna care about here?” Billy says. “It's public property, right? And we're the public, right? And what are we hurtin', huh?”
“Well, if you're too loud, they'll call the cops on us for disturbing the peace. Besides,” Danny grumbles, “I'd like to get a few rides in before the ice melts.”
“It's not gonna melt. They're big!”
“Mine's dripping all over the place! And so's you
rs, look!”
Billy says, “Who cares? They work better when they're a little melted.”
So we walk along with the two of them arguing until all of a sudden I see something strange up ahead. I grab Billy's sleeve and hold him back. “Shhh!”
“What?” he whispers. Then he opens his eyes wide and peers around. “Is it a ghost ye see?”
The others have come to a stop, too, and are looking where I'm looking.
“What is that?” Casey whispers.
My heart's racing like it is seeing a ghost, but it's something much more real than that. “That's a shovel,” I whisper back. We could see the handle going up and down, up and down in the corner of Mrs. Willawago's backyard.
“Who'd be digging at this time of night?” Casey whispers.
“Good question,” I say back.
Then Billy pipes up with, “Hey, is that the infamous, criminal-clonkin' shovel?”
“Yes! Now shush!” I whisper.
Up and down, up and down the shovel handle's going. We can't see hands or a head, and it's a weird sight because even though it's not reflective or anything, the handle seems very white.
Very eerie.
I've taken the lead now, moving closer, hugging Billy's stupid bucket o' bones with one arm as I sneak forward along the Stones' back fence.
Billy's doing an exaggerated tiptoe, chicken-walking his neck and high-stepping his legs like some cartoon character, and I can hear Danny whisper to Marissa, “What's the big deal?”
“Shhh!” Marissa whispers back.
Smack, smack, smack, the shovel goes, hitting the ground. Then when we're about ten feet from the fence that divides the Stones and the Willawagos, the shovel stops.
I flatten against the fence with a finger to my lips. Every hair on my body feels like it's standing at attention. The air through my nose feels cold and hard, and even though I could just rush forward and pop my head over the fence to see who's working the shovel and why, inside I can feel that there's something bigger here than I understand.
Something deeper and darker than I've imagined.
And, my goose bumps are telling me, a whole lot more dangerous.
TWENTY-FOUR
The four of them are mouthing things to each other in the dark, but I've got my eye on a hole that's been dug under Mrs. Willawago's back fence. This one's right at the corner, not a few feet over like the other one had been.
I inch closer, wondering if Patch is already gone or if someone's digging him a way out. The others follow, hugging the fence. And then I feel something hard and cold being put in my hand.
A flashlight.
I smile at Marissa and nod a thanks, then put down Billy's bucket o' bones.
“What's that gross smell?” Danny asks.
“Mother Nature passing gas,” I whisper, and Marissa adds, “A compost heap.”
“That's brutal,” he says, his face all scrunched.
“Shhh!” I whisper.
Whoever's on the other side of the fence is using the shovel again. I can't see it, but I can hear it going scraaaaape thump. Scraaaaape thump.
“What's the big deal?” Danny whispers, and Casey touches my arm and says, “Why are we doing this?”
We're close enough now, so in one swoop I spring forward and up, latching on to the fence as I look over.
“Aaah!” Mrs. Stone gasps, falling back on her fanny.
I flick on Marissa's flashlight and aim it straight down — straight at the place she's been digging.
And what do I see?
Cement.
“Sammy?” she asks, her eyes huge while she holds on to her heart.
I scan the flashlight over the whole area, and boy, I've got to tell you, I'm pretty embarrassed.
Casey and the others come up from their crouched positions, and when Mrs. Stone sees them, her eyes get even bigger. “What're you doin' here?” she asks, her voice gaspy and shaky.
“What are you doing?” I ask her, trying to sound like I've got a right to scare her half to death.
“I'm plugging these doggone holes,” she says.
“In the middle of the night?”
“Yes!” She stands up and dusts off her backside. “I heard a noise and came out here and found an enormous hole. So I set about fixin' it, just like you showed me.”
“In the middle of the night?” I ask again.
“I couldn't sleep,” she grumbles, picking up the shovel. “And what're you doin' here in the middle of the night? Spyin' on me?”
“No! We're going ice-blocking.”
“Ice-blocking? What's that?”
“It's sledding for the snowless,” Billy tells her.
She frowns and heaps some dirt on top of the cement she's put in the hole. “Well, you scared the livin' daylights out of me.”
“Arg, the livin' nightlights!” Billy says.
She drives the shovel into the dirt with her foot and throws him a scowl, and that's when I notice that she's not wearing her usual Birkenstocks. She's got on her husband's work boots. But I tell myself that that makes sense—I mean, who'd pour cement in sandals, right? And it flashes through my mind that maybe she's out here plugging up a hole in the middle of the night because she doesn't want to get in a fight with her husband about who should fix the hole, and it's just, you know, safer to do it while he's asleep.
“Hey, can we get going?” Danny asks. “We're running out of Hummer time.”
“Sure,” I tell him, even though this whole thing with Mrs. Stone is feeling really disconnected. Really odd. And it's not just that she's out there in the middle of the night plugging a hole—which is plenty odd enough—it's more than that.
But I don't really have the time to put my finger on it 'cause everyone else wants to get ice-blocking. So I say, “See ya later,” to Mrs. Stone and tag along through the trees to where the ground dips down to the ball fields.
Danny picks out a spot and says, “This is perfect!” and starts ripping the thick plastic off his block of ice. “And you know what? I think these pine needles are going to make us go fast.”
Marissa pulls towels out of her duffel bag and hands them around while the guys get their blocks into position. And I'm starting to get the picture that this isn't just riding a block of ice for the ridiculous fun of it—this is a competition.
“So what do you do?” Marissa asks.
“You put your block like this,” Danny says, moving his ice about four feet from Billy's so it's facing down the hill lengthwise, “then you get on, hold your legs up, and go.”
Then Casey adds, “First one down to the bottom without falling off wins.”
“We'll demonstrate for you,” Danny says. He puts a towel across his ice and gets on like he's mounting a mini ice bronco. Then he looks right and left at Casey and Billy, who've done the same, and says, “Blockers, on your marks …”
“Wait!” Marissa cries, grabbing the Jolly Roger flag. She hurries to the side of them and holds it in the air.
“Arg!” Billy cries, pulling his eye patch back over his eye. “Pirates, take your marks!”
The other two pull their eye patches out of their pockets and put them on, too.
“Get set …,” Marissa says, then whisks the flag down as she cries, “GO!”
So the guys push off, stick their legs out, and slide down the hill. And it sure doesn't look like they're going very fast, but they're all shouting “Arg!” and stupid pirate stuff, and Billy's heading for Danny, trying to kick him off his block. So they're laughing and yelping, and then Casey's block catches on something, and he winds up going down sideways. And then Danny falls off his block, leaving Billy to slide in first.
“Shiver me timbers!” Billy says. “I've won the first round!”
So they push the blocks back up the hill, and now it's Marissa's and my turn to slide. But since there are three blocks, Billy decides to go again, and he positions himself right between the two of us.
A little too close to the two of us.
“Wenches!” he cries as he spins sideways and falls. “Black-hearted wenches!”
Marissa and I laugh, and boy! Even though I know we're not going that fast, it sure feels like it. I mean, there you are, on a fat block of frozen water, twisting and turning out of control, slipping downhill with nothing to hold on to.
It was way more fun than it looked.
And I think Marissa would've beat me, only she tried to pump the ground with her legs to get some speed and wound up catapulting instead.
“Shiver me tush!” I cried at the bottom of the hill. “I won me first round!”
The guys all laughed, then came down the hill to help us push the blocks back up to the top.
“Who goes now?” Billy asked.
“Sammy, Casey, and me!” Danny said.
The three of us saddled up our ice ponies, and I could tell from the way they'd positioned themselves on either side of me that I was on the menu. So when Marissa dropped the flag, I acted like I was pushing forward but didn't. Instead, I waited for them to get some speed and look back at me like, What happened? Then I pushed forward hard and tried to knock them both off at once—one with each foot.
Too bad for me, I fell off and my block slid down without me. Danny claimed victory, and when we had the blocks back up, Casey, Billy, and Marissa went, then Danny, Marissa, and me, and then the three guys again.
After that Danny said, “Do you want to double up?”
“We won't fit!” Marissa laughed.
“Sure we will.” So Danny and Marissa wedged onto one block, Billy and his parrot got one all to themselves, and Casey and I scrunched onto the third. By the time Billy tossed the flag into the air and started the race, we were laughing so hard from just trying to fit on the blocks that it was a miracle we went anywhere at all.
Doubles is definitely not the way to ice-block. Billy beat us by a mile. But since Casey and I beat Marissa and Danny, we declared a doubles victory, which of course made Danny and Marissa demand a reslide. So we tried it once more, but it was just as slow, so we went back to riding solo.
Sammy Keyes and the Dead Giveaway Page 19