The Mystery Sisters series Box Set

by Karen Musser Nortman

  “What a beautiful place!” Lil said as they pulled in the driveway.

  “It is nice,” Max agreed in a grudging tone. She rolled down her window to get the food smells out of the car while she unloaded the luggage.

  The front door of the house opened and a whirling dervish with red Orphan Annie curls exploded down the steps. “Granny Lil!” shouted the dervish as she ran into Lil’s arms.

  “Ren! I can’t believe how you’ve grown.” Lil, kissed the little girl on the cheek. She and Max had had a lengthy discussion in the car about Ren’s name. Max: “What the hell kind of name is Ren anyway?” Lil: “It’s short for Rendall.” Max: “What the hell kind of name is Rendall anyway?” And so on.

  But regardless of what Max thought of the name, Ren was a beauty, and one of those children interested in everything. At six years old, she loved toads, took tap dancing lessons, and planned to be an Olympic gymnast. However, she told Lil on the phone that she didn’t need to take gymnastics lessons. She already knew how to do a cartwheel.

  Now she hugged Rosie and allowed the huge dog to lick her face, giggling at the sensation. Then she grabbed Lil’s hand and tugged her toward the house. “Come and see my new turtle! And Rival got in trouble for tearing a hole in his closet ceiling!”

  Lil held back. “What? Wait—you can show and tell me everything later. I need to help Aunt Max with our suitcases.” She walked back behind the car for her roll-behind suitcase and matching tote.

  A deep voice boomed behind Lil. “I’ll get those, Mom.”

  She turned and looked up at her handsome, now middle-aged son. He was a little thicker through the middle and thinner on top, but his eyes had the same ornery twinkle.

  “Terry! So great to be here.” She almost teared up.

  He laughed. “It’s about time. Aunt Max, how are you?”

  Max hefted the strap of her old duffel bag over her shoulder. “Fine, Terry. Glad to have arrived.” She gave Lil a sideways glance.

  “I’ll take that, too.” He moved the duffel to his own shoulder, and pulling Lil’s suitcase behind, started up the sidewalk. “Follow me.”

  His wife, Melody, held the door for them. “Welcome! The kids have been beside themselves all day. They have so much to tell you.”

  “Ren already informed me.” Lil laughed and then caught sight of the wide and long staircase leading up from the entry. Her dismay must have shown on her face because Terry said, “Don’t worry, Mom. You chicks have a room on this floor. But I’m afraid the kids will drag you upstairs sometime for their show-and-tell.”

  Max raised her eyebrows. “Chicks?”

  Lil tapped her on the arm. “We need to take compliments where we can get them. Lead on, Terry.”

  He headed through a wide door on the right of the hall into a living room that stretched from the front to the back of the house. A large brick fireplace with a white mantle centered the opposite wall, flanked by bookcases. Transom windows above the bookcases, as well as tall windows in the front and French doors in the back, let plenty of daylight into the room. Terry led them to a door in the far back corner at the end of the bookcases.

  As he flung open the door, he said, “I hope you don’t mind sharing quarters.”

  Lil had expected this, but Max looked a little surprised at the suggestion. Noticing her expression, Terry added, “If not, we do have extra rooms upstairs, but we thought you’d both prefer to be down here.”

  Ren danced and whirled around the room, nearly knocking Max over. Max caught herself, surveyed the room, and gave him a bright smile. “This will be fine.” She pointed at the twin Jenny Lind beds on the far wall. “Those are Grandma Bruns’ beds and the Trip Around the World quilts, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “They are,” Terry said. “Mom passed them on to us.”

  Ren stopped and looked at the beds. “Who is Grandma Bruns?”

  Lil pointed at herself and Max. “Our grandmother. Your dad’s great-grandmother. Your great-great-grandmother. She made those quilts—they must be over a hundred years old.”

  “Wow.” Ren skipped over and ran her hand reverently over one of the coverlets, tracing the rows as she talked.. “She must have been really great. I like these because the little squares are very light blue in the center and then around the outside they get darker and darker and darker…”

  “Okay, we get it.” Her dad laughed. “Would you like to show Granny Lil and Aunt Max the bathroom and the closet and how the TV works?”

  “Sure!” She grabbed Lil’s hand.

  “When you’re done, come out on the porch. Melody has some spiced cider and gingersnaps for you.”

  “Thank you, Terry,” Max said. “This is really wonderful.” After her sister’s surliness earlier, Lil was relieved at her apparent change of heart.

  Ren led them to the en suite bath complete with a blue and white tiled walk-in shower, and slid open the closet doors with a flourish. She showed them the sitting area and the remote for the TV.

  “And these doors go out to the back yard and our swings, and those go to the scream porch.”

  Max raised her eyebrows. “Scream porch?”

  Ren nodded. “Yeah, they call it that because it’s all covered with scream. It keeps the bugs out.”

  “I see. That’s good to know. You want to take us there for cider and cookies?”

  “Okay!”

  Rosie had done her own reconnoiter of the room and, apparently satisfied, waited eagerly by the doors. Max pulled an old blanket out of a tote to keep her off the furniture.

  The second set of French doors, as pointed out by Ren, led onto the wide porch that extended across the back of the house from the guest suite to another wing, also accessed with French doors.

  “That’s my mom and dad’s bedroom.”

  “How nice,” Lil said. “That way your mom doesn’t have to go up steps.”

  Ren pulled a chair away from a round stone-topped table and plopped down in it. “She doesn’t have to anyway. There’s an elevator in the lawn-dree room. I’ll give you a ride later.” Max chuckled at the girl’s seriousness and pronunciations.

  Melody Garrett had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis about five years earlier, which limited some of her activity. Lil never ceased to be amazed, though, at the way that she coped.

  “Where’s your brother?” Lil asked.

  Ren lowered her voice to a whisper. “He’s doing something speshal up in his room. It’s a surprise for you.”

  “Okay, then.”

  Lil took the moment to check out the rest of the porch. Beside the doors from the bedroom wings, two other sets of French doors gave access from the living room and apparently the kitchen. The flagstone floor and the beamed ceiling gave a rustic feel, accented by the patio furniture in natural colors.

  Terry and Melody came out bearing a tray of glasses, a pitcher and a plate of cookies. They had each gotten their cider and a cookie, when another whirling dervish came through the living room doors. This time it was red-headed, freckled Rival, two years older than his sister and every bit as exuberant. He carried a package wrapped in construction paper, secured by what appeared to be several rolls of cellophane tape. Lil hoped Max didn’t feel compelled to comment on what the hell kind of name Rival was.

  Chapter Two

  Lil

  Rival slapped the package on the table in front of Lil, nearly upsetting her cider.

  “This is for you, Granny Lil!”

  Lil hugged him. “Thank you!” Before she opened the package, she sat back and looked him up and down. “You have gotten so tall. How do you like your new house?”

  “It’s cool. Open your present.”

  “Okay, okay. Did you make this?” She carefully pulled at the ends, trying not to tear the paper. Who knew what work of art she might ruin if she did? Inside, was a handmade booklet held together with staples and paper clips. The cover, orange construction paper, displayed the title Halloween, enhanced with stickers of ghosts, pumpkins, and witch
hats.

  “It’s a book, and I made it myself, and it’s about Halloween!”

  “We never would have guessed,” Max said drily, earning a frown from her sister.

  Rival appeared oblivious to any undercurrents. “And guess what? My dad works for the bank, and they have a haunted house, and he’s in charge of it this year!” He took a breath.

  “How exciting!” Lil looked at Terry. “I hope the bank isn’t haunted?”

  Terry grinned. “Not that we know of. The haunted house is a fund raiser for a new school auditorium. Several community groups will help staff it. It opens tomorrow, as a matter of fact.”

  Melody said, “It has taken all of his spare time for the last several weeks. It’s pretty spectacular.”

  “We should take them over to see it today!” Rival said.

  Ren, who had been coloring, looked up. “Yeah, Dad, can we?”

  “I guess we could.” He winked at Lil. “Not every mother has a son with a key to a haunted house. But it will really be better with the people playing the parts once it opens.”

  “Some of the stuff goes by itself, though,” Ren said. “We helped put up cobwebs.”

  Max laughed. “When your grandma and I were kids, we always had to take the cobwebs down.”

  Ren frowned. “Take them down? Why?”

  “Our mother didn’t like cobwebs.”

  “That’s weird,” Ren said.

  In the end, they decided to check out the haunted house before supper. Max put Rosie in their room with her blanket. She flopped down, rested her head on her paws, and sighed. She gazed up at Max with sad, brown eyes.

  On the drive to the haunted house, Terry explained its origins. “It’s known as the Kell house. The last owner died several years ago, but had been in a nursing home for a long time so the house really fell into disrepair. The bank is the executor of the estate, but hasn’t been able to sell the house. This fall we got the idea to use it as a haunted house for a fundraiser.”

  He turned off the main road and headed out of town. The house, a large Victorian bereft of paint, stood at the end of a lane overhung with trees. Hand-painted signs along the lane denoting hours of operation and sponsors did not offset the natural spookiness of the setting. However, once they passed the signs and reached the front porch, the isolation descended.

  Lil felt an almost physical sense of gloom. She shuddered and then smiled down at her grandchildren. “It is spooky!”

  “Just wait ’til you get inside.” Rival insisted. He jiggled up and down as his dad fiddled with the door key. Finally, Terry used a shoulder against the side of the door and it inched open, protesting loudly.

  Lil peered around him into the entry hall, and Max crowded behind her. Even though it was still daylight, the trees around the house and the lack of windows in the entry hall cast a twilight dimness over everything.

  Terry pushed a switch, and a bare bulb suspended from the ceiling created a harsh glare. An open staircase to their right led up and disappeared into a dark hallway. Pocket doors on the left were closed, as was a single door straight ahead.

  “There’ll be a lovely witch here to welcome victims—I mean, guests.” Terry rubbed his hands together and cackled.

  Ren pulled on Lil’s hand and motioned her to bend down. “The witch is my mommy,” Ren whispered.

  “Oh, my! She will be a lovely witch.”

  Melody looked embarrassed, but smiled at Ren. “Don’t give away all of the secrets.”

  Rival pointed up at a mass of white fuzz in the corner of the staircase. “I put that cobweb up.”

  “You did a good job. But we need to pull it apart a little more. It’s too bunched up,” Terry said. “Let’s check out the living room.” He pulled the pocket door open.

  Amorphous shapes shrouded in sheets appeared in the gloom. Terry pressed a button on a device hidden on a shelf. Blue lights near the floor tucked behind furniture added an eerie glow to the room, casting elongated shadows on the walls. Mist or smoke wafted from the fireplace and an ugly chandelier swayed slightly creating an occasional brassy tinkle. More cobwebs hung from the beams.

  As her eyes became accustomed to the dim light, Lil picked out a person—no, not a real person—standing behind a draped wingback chair. Claw-like fingers rested on the wings and a leering face leaned over the back, inviting her to sit.

  Rival noticed the expression on her face. “Scared you, didn’t it, Grandma?” He had a satisfied smirk on his face.

  “It certainly did!”

  Max laughed. “She always was a scaredy-cat.” But she jumped when the lid on a wooden box on an end table beside her creaked open, and a gray hand emerged.

  Terry smiled at his mother, waggling the remote in his hand along his side where Max couldn’t see it.

  The dining room, separated from the living room with an archway and oak pillars, held a long table with a variety of Adams family-styled dummies propped in the chairs. Zombie-type faces with stark make-up leered at one another across the table. A chandelier matching the one in the living room dripped cobwebs over the table. Formal china and crystal completed the setting.

  “Is that our mother’s soup tureen?” Max pointed at a large Haviland footed tureen with gold trim.

  Terry grimaced. “Um, yeah. But we will have volunteers in every room making sure nothing gets touched.”

  “I certainly hope so. That is quite valuable.”

  “Oh, Max,” Lil said. “It’ll be fine. You never wanted any of her china.”

  “That doesn’t mean I thought it should be treated carelessly.”

  Melody held up her hands. “Aunt Max, we can certainly replace it. We didn’t mean to offend. We’ll take it home with us and pick up something at the local thrift shop.”

  Max waved her hand. “Don’t worry about it. I guess it’s not my decision to make.”

  “I guess not,” Lil muttered.

  “No, I’m sorry,” Terry insisted. “I wasn’t thinking. We’ll take it when we leave.”

  Rival and Ren watched this exchange with some impatience, hopping up and down and trying to pinch each other.

  “The kitchen! The kitchen!” Ren insisted, as she led the way through a swinging door. It emitted appropriate creaks.

  Gray light from the cloud-obscured sun and more windows made the kitchen slightly brighter than the other rooms.

  Max pointed at a menu taped to the wall. In block letters, it said ‘Finger Foods’, ‘Arm Roast’, ‘Liver’, and ‘Blood Pudding’ “Very clever,” she said.

  On the counter lay a butcher knife dripping with ‘blood’ and part of a leg—plastic, Lil hoped. Bones of various sizes were piled on a platter on the kitchen table.

  At the old cookstove, a skeleton, suspended with fishing line and dressed in a bright, red-checked apron tied around its bony middle, grinned garishly as she (he?) waved a spatula over a skillet. Just the air currents in the room were apparently enough to provide the life-like movement.

  Melody pointed out a huge hairy spider on the ceiling. “I know it isn’t real, but that thing gives me the creeps every time.”

  Rival took Lil’s hand and pulled her back toward the entry hall. “The best stuff is upstairs. Wait ‘till you see the playroom.”

  They tromped up the wooden steps with Terry in the lead, so that he could turn on the lights.

  Several closed doors led off a long hallway at the top. Large black and white photographs of stern Victorians with stiff collars and rigid hairdos hung on the walls in ornate frames.

  Terry opened the first door on the left. A sparse bedroom held only an iron bed, a tall dresser, and a wooden chair. The faded quilt on the bed provided little color, and light from the windows filtered through dusty brown shades.

  Lashed to the chair was a dummy of a woman dressed in a high-necked, long white dress, her mouth contorted in a silent scream. Blood dripped down her face, the result of a small axe buried in the top of her head.

  “Oh, ick!” Lil covered her m
outh. “She looks so life-like!’

  “For a dead person,” Max added.

  “She’s pretty gruesome,” Terry agreed. “The woman who did all of the manikins is a window dresser over in Pittsburgh. She did a great job, but some of them are a little over the top.”

  Melody said, “I think it’s a bit much for children.”

  “Maybe I should have her tone it down,” Terry said.

  “Even if you just removed the axe…” Lil suggested.

  Terry nodded. “I think you’re right. Let’s move on.”

  In the bathroom, a witch stirred an empty claw-footed tub with a long paddle. “We’ll put dry ice in there for the public showings,” Terry said.

  An open casket on a stand was the only thing in the next room. Terry pushed a button on a remote by the door, and a vampire-like creature sat up, turned his head, and said “good evening” in a voice from the grave.

  Rival doubled over. “I love that!”

  Max laughed at the boy’s expression. Lil felt as if the tension between Max and her family was somewhat eased.

  Terry smiled. “But next is Rival’s favorite: the playroom.”

  “Make Grandma and Aunt Max go in first!” Rival shouted.

  Lil stopped and looked at Terry. “This sounds suspicious.”

  “It is.” He opened the next door and, with a sweeping gesture, ushered them into the room.

  Max stepped in first, determined not to be frightened by a haunted house for children. Lil followed right behind her.

  A large box, four or five feet tall and painted in a red and yellow diamond pattern, stood to the left of the door. The two women examined it, and Max said to her sister, “It reminds me of—” just as the top slammed open and a grotesque figure popped up swaying on springs and leering down at them. A pointed hat with bells, a long sharp nose, a ruff around the neck, and a striped costume completed the picture.

  Lil put her hand on her heart. “A Jack-in-the-Box?”

  Max gasped. “Yes, I think that’s it.”