by Ron Roy
“I like the black one with the bulgy eyes,” the boy said. “It looks like a space alien!”
“And I like the orange one with the fluffy tail,” his sister said. “It looks like a mermaid.”
“Why don’t you take both fish?” Leonard asked. “That way, they wouldn’t be lonely. They’d be pals, like you guys are.”
Their parents let the kids buy both fish. The kids left the store happy, already choosing names for their new pets.
“Hi, Leonard,” Josh said. “Is your aunt around?”
Leonard waved a big hand. “She’s in the back room,” he said. “I think she’s counting bags of dog chow for her next order.” He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. “I’ll text her you’re here.”
Ruth Rose looked around the shop. “Do you still have pigeons?” she asked.
“A few,” he said, “over there next to the parakeets.”
While Leonard texted, the kids crossed the shop. They saw cages of canaries, parakeets, and lovebirds. They were all twittering and flapping their wings.
They stopped in front of the pigeon cage. The birds were making soft cooing noises.
“I should get a pigeon,” Josh said. “I could train him to clean my room. He could eat the cookie crumbs off my bed!”
“These are homing pigeons,” Ruth Rose said, reading the small sign attached to the cage front. “It says here you can train them to fly away and then come back home to their nest.”
“Like the ones your grandfather told you about,” Dink said.
There were three pigeons in the cage. One was white, one was dark gray, and the third was brown with white tips on its wing feathers. All three had round red eyes and pinky-red feet.
“These are so cool!” Josh said. “If we each bought one, we could send messages to each other!”
“You have to train them to do that,” Ruth Rose said. “My grandpa said they can fly more than forty miles an hour!”
Mrs. Wong walked up behind the kids. “You’re right, Ruth Rose,” she said. “Some people race these pigeons, and they have been known to fly more than a thousand miles back to their coops!”
“How long does it take to train them to carry messages to people?” Josh asked.
“Gosh, I don’t really know,” Mrs. Wong said. “Why, are you tired of cell phones and email?”
“We’re following clues to solve a Valentine’s Day mystery,” Dink said.
Ruth Rose showed Mrs. Wong the Valentine’s Day card and the cardboard that said WHERE DO PIGEONS FLY IN AND OUT?
“From your sekret admirer,” Mrs. Wong read. “What fun! But whoever wrote this misspelled a word.” She grinned. “Find a person who doesn’t know how to spell very well, and you’ll know who your secret admirer is, Ruth Rose.”
Ruth Rose blushed.
“We figured you might know someone who keeps pigeons as pets,” Dink said. “Pigeons fly in and out of coops, right?”
“Yes, they do,” Mrs. Wong said. “My uncle in China had dozens of pigeons living in coops he built on the top of his house. The pigeons flew in and out all day long!”
“In China?” Josh said. “Do you know anyone here, in Green Lawn?”
“Let me think,” Mrs. Wong said. “Most people buy these little beauties to keep in cages. They don’t train them to fly in and out, as it says in your note.”
Then Mrs. Wong snapped her fingers. “Oh, I do know someone who used to have homing pigeons!” she said. “Mr. and Mrs. Spivets had a coop in the Shangri-la Hotel attic! They bought some pigeons from me a few years back.”
“We know them, sort of,” Dink said. “They’re Mr. Linkletter’s aunt and uncle.”
“Right, and they own the Shangri-la Hotel,” Ruth Rose said.
Mrs. Wong nodded. “Mr. Spivets built a coop up there some years ago,” she said. “I think he had a cousin in Vermont who also had pigeons, and they’d send each other notes.”
“Do you think Mr. Spivets still has his pigeons?” Ruth Rose asked.
“He might,” Mrs. Wong said. “Some pigeons live twenty years or more!”
The kids headed down Main Street toward the Shangri-la Hotel. Snowflakes covered their hats and shoulders. The Green Lawn Savings Bank had a red heart in the window. A message read: TO ALL OUR CUSTOMERS, A BIG VALENTINE’S DAY THANK-YOU!
The kids reached the hotel and shoved open the thick glass door. Inside, it was warm and smelled good.
A fire crackled in the fireplace. In front of it, a man and woman sat reading. They each held a cup of tea. A plate of cookies sat on the table between their chairs.
Josh sniffed the air, the way Pal did when he was hungry.
“Peanut butter cookies!” Josh whispered. “My favorite food in the world!”
“Josh, you just had cookies at my house!” Ruth Rose said.
“But that was a half hour ago,” Josh said, putting his hand to his forehead again. “Do you want me to starve?”
“Quit faking,” Dink told his friend.
They walked up to the counter, where Mr. Linkletter stood watching them. He was a tall man with a thin mustache. His eyes looked sad, but the kids knew he was happy inside.
“Young people,” Mr. Linkletter said. “What brings you out on such a snowy Sunday?”
They told him about the notes and cards they’d been finding. “We want to figure out who our secret admirer is!” Ruth Rose said.
“The last note asked where pigeons fly in and out,” Josh said.
“So we went to Mrs. Wong, and she told us your aunt and uncle used to have pigeons,” Ruth Rose added.
“So we came to see them!” Dink said.
Mr. Linkletter shook his head. “There are no more pigeons, and my aunt and uncle are in Florida on vacation.” He looked at a small calendar on his desk. “They’ll be back on Tuesday.”
“But is the coop still up there?” Dink asked.
Mr. Linkletter looked toward the ceiling, as if he could see through it, all the way to the roof. “I believe so,” he said. “But the pigeons stopped coming back some years ago.”
“Could we see the coop, though?” Dink asked. “Because the note said where do pigeons fly in and out, and they flew in and out of the coop, right?”
Mr. Linkletter sighed. He picked up his desk calendar and gave it a quick polish with his sleeve. He straightened his tie and looked around the quiet lobby. Finally, he said, “I’ll take you up.”
He put out a small sign that said BACK IN FIVE MINUTES and motioned for the kids to follow him. They crowded into the elevator, and Mr. Linkletter pushed a button that took them to the top floor.
The elevator car opened into a dark, dusty hallway. There were no guest rooms, just some old furniture and cobwebs. It was cold, and Dink shivered.
Halfway down the hallway, Mr. Linkletter stopped and opened a door. He pointed up. “At the top of these stairs, you’ll find another door,” he said. “That door lets you into the attic. I believe the coop is next to the windows on the south wall.”
Josh peeked up the stairs. “It’s pretty dark up there,” he said. He looked hopefully at Mr. Linkletter. “Are you coming with us?”
“No, sir,” Mr. Linkletter said. “I don’t want to get my suit dirty, and, well, I don’t like spiders.”
“You’re afraid of spiders?” Josh asked.
“I am not afraid of spiders, young man,” Mr. Linkletter said. “I just don’t like all their creepy eyes and hairy legs.”
“Well, we love dirty places and spiders!” Ruth Rose said. “Come on, guys, follow me!”
“Maybe you love spiders, Ruth Rose Hathaway,” Josh mumbled under his breath. “But Josh Pinto doesn’t!”
Ruth Rose scooted through the door and began climbing the stairs. Josh gulped, then followed her. Dink was behind Josh. The stairs were so narrow that his shoulders brushed against the walls on both sides. He felt cobwebs on his face and hair. There was almost no light, just a little from the hallway below them.
Dink felt a cool
draft on his face and hands, almost like a breeze. He smelled something unpleasant, like the cleaning stuff under the kitchen sink.
“There’s about a million stairs!” Josh muttered.
“Keep going!” Dink said. “Your secret admirer is waiting to study your brain!”
“Very funny,” Josh mumbled.
“I found the door!” Ruth Rose cried from the top of the stairs.
By the time Dink and Josh reached her, Ruth Rose had shoved open a little door. They followed her into the attic, ducking low so they wouldn’t bump their heads. Dim light came through two windows on the south wall. The windows were dirty and partly blocked with furniture.
Now Dink felt the cool breeze even more. One of the windows was open an inch at the bottom. Snowflakes had gathered on the floor, a little pile of white against the black.
“There better be a light up here,” Josh said, “or I’m going back down!”
“Josh, don’t be a—” Ruth Rose started to say.
Suddenly they all heard a deep voice. It was coming up the narrow, dark stairs they’d just climbed. “Children,” the voice said. “Chiiiiillldren!”
“Oh gosh, I knew this was a mistake,” Josh moaned. “This hotel is about a zillion years old, and it’s filled with ghosts!”
“Josh, last year we thought this place was haunted, remember?” Dink asked. “And we proved it isn’t.”
Josh shivered and pulled his coat collar up around his ears. “It still feels haunted to me!” he said.
Dink returned to the doorway and stuck his head through the opening. His heart was beating way too fast, even though he absolutely did not believe in ghosts.
“Children,” the voice echoed, “I have something for you….”
Dink gulped. He saw dark legs at the bottom of the steps. Then he noticed a glow around the legs. The feet moved slowly toward the stairs.
Dink could feel the tiny hairs on his arms stand up straight.
A familiar face looked up toward him. It was Mr. Linkletter, standing in the hallway. The glow came from a flashlight he was holding.
Mr. Linkletter aimed the flashlight up the stairs. “Dink, is that you?” he asked.
“Yup. I’ll be right down!” Dink said. Now he felt silly thinking he’d seen a glowing ghost.
Dink scampered down the stairs.
“What’s up there?” Mr. Linkletter whispered. “Any spiders?”
“I think so,” Dink said. “Lots of cobwebs, anyway.” He grinned. “Josh is scared practically out of his pants!”
Mr. Linkletter hardly ever smiled, but now his mustache twitched and his eyes crinkled. That was almost a smile.
“I thought you could use this,” Mr. Linkletter said. He handed the flashlight to Dink.
“Thanks a lot,” Dink said. “It’ll make Josh feel better.”
“I’ll see you in the lobby,” Mr. Linkletter said as he hurried down the hall.
Dink watched the tall, thin man disappear in the gloom. Then he climbed back up to the attic. “It was just Mr. Linkletter with this,” Dink said, waving the flashlight.
Josh grabbed the light and shone it into his own face. “I knew it wasn’t a ghost,” he said. “I was just trying to scare you guys.”
“Sure,” Dink said. He made a goofy ghost face at Josh.
“The only one you scared was yourself,” Ruth Rose said. She took the flashlight from Josh’s hand and aimed its beam around the dim space. They were in an attic, all right. They saw a pile of mattresses, a few broken chairs, and a lot of old-timey stuff, all covered in thick dust.
A string hung over their heads. It was attached to an electric light cord. But the lightbulb socket was empty.
Ruth Rose turned the flashlight above their heads. Cobwebs dripped from the ceiling, clung to walls, and covered all the old abandoned furniture.
“If I see one creepy eye or hairy leg, I’m going to throw up,” Josh said.
Dink giggled. “Don’t let the spiders know you’re afraid of them,” he said. “If they hear you, they’ll crawl up inside your pants and—”
“There’s the coop!” Ruth Rose said.
She had aimed the flashlight toward the south wall. What Dink had thought was furniture in front of the windows was a cage. It was about two feet square and built of a wood frame covered in wire screening.
“Mr. Linkletter and Mrs. Wong were right!” Dink said. The kids walked closer. The pigeon coop held small compartments, where Dink could see old nests. There were empty food and water dishes and old straw on the floor.
The coop stood on legs. Because it was positioned in front of the windows, the pigeons would have been able to fly from outside right into the coop.
On one side of the coop, there were small latched doors. Dink figured this was where the pigeons’ owners could reach inside to get the pigeons or fill their dishes. But there were no pigeons now. Just a few feathers and pigeon waste.
Dink picked up a feather. When Josh turned away, Dink placed the feather on the back of his friend’s neck. “Oh, Josh, there’s a spider on you!” he whispered. “It has twelve creepy eyes and eight hairy legs!”
Josh jumped and whirled around in time to see Dink holding the feather. “Very mature, Dink,” Josh said.
“This could be where pigeons fly in and out,” Ruth Rose said. “Like the clue said. Or they used to fly in and out, anyway.”
“So let’s look around for a red envelope,” Josh said. “And then get out of here!”
“But how would anyone get up here to leave an envelope?” Dink asked.
“The same way we did,” Josh said. “Just ask Mr. Linkletter.”
“But wouldn’t Mr. Linkletter have told us if anyone else came up here?” Dink asked.
Josh thought about that. “Maybe Mr. Linkletter is in on this whole secret admirer thing,” he said. “If he’s part of it, he wouldn’t let us know if he brought anyone else up here.”
Dink smiled, thinking about Mr. Linkletter’s wiggly mustache and eyebrows. “You think Mr. Linkletter is our secret admirer?” he asked Josh. “You think he snuck into your house and hid a card under Pal’s orange sweater?”
Josh smiled. “No, I doubt it,” he said.
“Let’s split up and look around for a red envelope,” Ruth Rose suggested.
“Okay, but I get the flashlight!” Josh said, plucking it from Ruth Rose’s fingers.
The kids looked in and under some old dressers. They undid the flaps on cardboard boxes and found old books and papers. They peeled back the mattresses and unrolled an old carpet. They even checked out each little pigeon compartment in the coop.
After twenty minutes of searching, all they had was cobwebs in their hair and dust all over their clothes and hands.
Josh sneezed. “When I get outside, I’m going to roll in the snow!” he said. He wiped his hands down the sides of his pant legs.
Dink was on his knees, opening another box. “Hey, look at this!” he said. Josh and Ruth Rose joined him. Josh shone the flashlight on the thin book Dink was holding. The front cover showed a brown-and-white pigeon flying into a coop.
“It’s called How to Train Homing Pigeons,” Dink said.
Josh held the flashlight over the book as Dink opened to the first page. On the inside cover, someone had written: FOR EB SPIVETS, FROM HIS LOVING COUSIN, LUCAS SPIVETS.
Dink turned more pages. They saw pictures of pigeons flying into coops, flying out of coops, and nesting in coops like the one in front of the attic windows. In one picture, a mother pigeon was feeding two babies in a nest.
Josh swiped at a cobweb that was tickling his cheek. When he moved his hand, the flashlight beam shone on something shiny on the bottom of the box.
Dink reached into the box and picked up three small silvery tubes. Each tube was about an inch long, and as thin as a pencil. The tubes had tiny caps so if you put something inside one of them, it couldn’t fall out.
“What’re those things?” Josh asked.
“Wait,
I saw something like this in the book,” Ruth Rose said. She flipped back a few pages. “There—that pigeon has one tied to its leg!”
She pointed to a drawing of a pigeon’s leg and foot. Tied to the leg with a string was a tube like the ones Dink held in his hand.
“You’re right. These are message tubes!” Dink said, reading the words under the picture. “It says you write a message, roll it up, and stick it in a tube. Then the pigeon takes it to wherever it’s supposed to go!”
“Like my grandfather told me,” Ruth Rose said.
Dink opened all the little caps. Inside one tube he found a rolled-up piece of paper. He flattened it on his knee. The letters were faded, but written in beautiful handwriting: TO MY DEAR EB—HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY. MY ANSWER IS YES! FROM YOUR SECRET ADMIRER. There was a date: FEBRUARY 14, 1950.
“Wow,” Dink said. “This message was written on Valentine’s Day sixty-five years ago!”
“At least someone can spell secret,” Ruth Rose commented.
“So who’s My Dear Eb?” Josh asked.
“I think Mr. Spivets’s first name is Ebenezer,” Dink said. “I’ll bet this note is from his girlfriend back in 1950.”
“That is so cool!” Josh said. “But why didn’t she just call him on the phone?”
“Josh, it was Valentine’s Day,” Ruth Rose said. “Maybe they thought having a pigeon deliver their messages was more romantic than making phone calls!”
Dink slipped the note into its tube and put the three tubes in his pocket. “I’ll give them to Mr. Linkletter,” he said. “I’ll bet his uncle will be really happy to get this note back after sixty-five years!”
The kids finished looking through the book. On the back cover they saw a picture of a tall building in the snow, with trees showing over the roof. Pigeons were flying in through an open window.
“Yuck! Do pigeons live in people’s houses?” Josh asked. “That would be smelly!”