Mary Anne and the Haunted Bookstore

by Ann M. Martin

  “No!” said Claudia. She’d spent the afternoon painting black ravens on the white walls in the front room. In the children’s corner, she’d painted a silhouette of Nancy Drew with her magnifying glass, just like the picture on the covers of the old books.

  “He said that no one knew where the body was buried,” Stacey continued.

  “Right. And he thinks there are still papers that belong to Gable hidden someplace in the house,” I said.

  “Maybe they’re buried with him,” said Mal.

  Everyone shuddered. I felt as if a cold wind had blown through the room.

  “I have a list of all the people who’ve been at the store when we’ve been there — and when strange things have happened or near the time they’ve happened,” I said, holding it up.

  “What kind of strange things?” asked Jessi.

  I’d forgotten that Jessi hadn’t had a chance to work at Poe and Co. yet.

  “Like the cat jumping on Ms. Spark when she opened the closet door,” said Stacey. “Probably Tom and Gillian were responsible for that.”

  “And the heartbeat I heard when Logan and I were there alone,” I said.

  “And finding a black cat trapped behind a wall,” Mal added.

  “Do you think the store might be,” Stacey paused and lowered her voice, “haunted?”

  “Or is all the talk about Edgar Allan Poe and his stories making us think it’s haunted?” Kristy asked.

  We were quiet for a while. Jessi finally broke the silence. “I can’t wait to go to the store now. I didn’t know there was a mystery. I thought you were working.”

  “We are working, but there are lots of interruptions,” said Mal.

  “Like Professor Kingsolver, and Alex, and keeping the kids from running Ms. Spark out,” said Stacey.

  “Remember how superstitious Professor Kingsolver acted on Saturday?” said Mal.

  I nodded.

  “And how she and Alex argued over what kind of relationship Poe and Gable had?” Mal continued. “If Alex thinks there are papers hidden someplace in the house, maybe he doesn’t want anybody else to find them — especially Professor Kingsolver. He could be trying to scare her away.”

  “I saw him coming up from the basement and looking around on Saturday. And today he was there before we found the cat,” I said.

  “I’d like to know how he rigged up something to sound like a beating heart,” said Abby. “That seems like a lot of work.”

  Kristy looked over my shoulder at the list of suspects. “So why would Professor Kingsolver want to scare anyone away?” she asked.

  “She’s obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe,” said Stacey. “But I can’t think of any reason she would want to scare us, or anyone else, away from Poe and Co.”

  “Maybe we need to find out a little more about Alex and Professor Kingsolver,” said Kristy. “He goes to Stoneybrook High, right?”

  “I guess so,” I answered.

  “I’ll ask my brothers if they know him.”

  “And I could ask Janine,” said Claudia.

  “Ask Janine about Professor Kingsolver, too,” I said. “She teaches at Stoneybrook University.”

  “We need to keep an open mind about other suspects,” Claudia said.

  “You know,” said Abby, “I’ve heard my mom talk about how competitive the bookstore business is now. Maybe someone doesn’t want the store to open at all.”

  “Or maybe Alex doesn’t want it to open in the Gable house,” said Stacey.

  “Maybe he’s hoping Mr. Cates will be so spooked, he’ll want to sell it back to the family,” said Jessi.

  “We need to pay close attention to all our suspects when we’re at Poe and Co.,” I said. “If we stay alert, we can figure this out.”

  “And stay clear of ghosts,” said Abby, grinning.

  “My turn to go tomorrow,” said Jessi.

  “What’s going on in there now?” Mal asked as she, Jessi, and I slogged through the mud to reach the front door of Poe and Co. The boards and brick had sunk, and mud was oozing over them, since it was still raining.

  The sound of shouting had reached us before we started up the steps to the porch. I recognized Ms. Spark’s voice.

  “Should we go in?” Jessi asked.

  “I guess so,” I replied. I opened the door. Ms. Spark was standing in front of a group of workmen, telling them in a very loud voice (okay, she was yelling) that they weren’t working fast enough. The opening was behind schedule and they were losing money every day.

  “We can’t control the weather, Cillia,” one of the men said. “The rain is making our job harder.”

  “That’s no excuse,” Ms. Spark snapped. “You were hired to do a job in a certain length of time.”

  The men moved toward the back of the house. I saw them stop in the hallway and talk. The one who had mentioned the weather kept looking at Ms. Spark.

  “Hi, girls. I certainly can count on you to be here and work hard, can’t I?” Ms. Spark said. “Now who’s this?”

  “This is Jessi Ramsey,” I said. “Jessi, this is Ms. Spark.”

  “I’m really excited about having a new bookstore in town,” said Jessi.

  “You may be one of the few,” replied Ms. Spark. Jessi and Mal glanced my way. Like me, they must have heard echoes of our BSC discussion in what she said. “Why don’t you come help me with the new books?” she said to Jessi.

  “Mary Anne, there are some things on the shelves in Benson Dalton Gable’s office that need to be boxed up. Would you mind?”

  “And I’ll baby-sit for Tom and Gillian,” offered Mal.

  “They’re upstairs,” said Ms. Spark. Mal headed that way.

  Ms. Spark led Jessi to the receiving room and I went into the small office. Two men were working to replace the drywall they’d had to remove the day before.

  “Hi, Mary Anne. Cillia said you would need some boxes,” said Mr. Cates, setting a few empties inside the door to the office.

  “Thanks.” I knelt on the floor and started pulling the old books off the lowest shelf and packing them into a box.

  “What does he think he’s doing, anyway?” I heard one of the workmen say. “Does this town really need another bookstore?”

  “I thought they were going to tear this place down and build some new houses,” said the other.

  “It would have been a lot easier to do that than to redo this place,” the first man answered.

  I felt strange eavesdropping. Maybe they didn’t realize I was still there. I cleared my throat. “Excuse me,” I said. (It’s hard for me to talk to people I don’t know.)

  “Hi. Didn’t know you were still there,” said the man who had helped Mr. Cates with the drywall.

  “I was wondering if anybody ever found a leak in the water pipes? I heard something when I was here on Saturday and told Mr. Cates about it,” I said. “It didn’t sound like a drip, but …”

  The man sighed loudly. “I guess I’d better check. Cates never said anything about a leak. I tell you, old houses are more trouble than they’re worth.” He stomped out. “When is Cates going to figure that out?” I heard him mumble as he went down the hall.

  This little conversation gave me something else to think about. How far would these guys be willing to go to stop the opening of the bookstore? Tearing the Gable house down and building new houses would mean steady work and a lot of money for them. I decided to add them to the list of suspects in the mystery notebook.

  As I removed another section of books, I felt some ridges on the bottom of the shelf. I ran my fingers over them. I scooted closer. I couldn’t stifle a gasp when I read what was carved into the shelf.

  “What’s the matter?” asked the man still working on the wall.

  “There’s something, a word, carved in the wood here,” I said. It was as if someone had pressed down hard and made the impression of the word in handwriting, then carved it deeper. The writing was old-style cursive — Edgar Allan Poe old.

  “That shelf
has been here forever. Some kid probably did it when his mom wasn’t looking.”

  How many kids used the word nevermore? The one place I’d seen the word recently was in an Edgar Allan Poe poem, “The Raven.” Alex had claimed that Poe’s inspiration for the poem came from the ravens carved in the fireplace mantel. Had Poe carved the word into the shelf? I wanted to show it to Mr. Cates.

  “Sorry to bother you again,” I said, sticking my head inside the open door to Mr. Cates’s office. “But I want to show you something. I found the word nevermore carved on one of the bookshelves.”

  “Let me find Cillia,” he said, standing up.

  I finished clearing the shelf while he went in search of Ms. Spark. When they came into the room, I moved out of the way. Ms. Spark looked at the carving, then began to quote, “ ‘Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,/Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore …’ ”

  “ ‘vainly I had sought to borrow/From my surcease of sorrow,’ ” Mr. Cates continued.

  Together they said, “ ‘Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.” ’ ”

  It was only bits and pieces of the poem, but they knew the words by heart.

  “This is wasted back here,” said Ms. Spark. “You should move it into the front room where the customers can see it. Authentic Edgar Allan Poe graffiti.”

  “If that’s what it is,” said Mr. Cates. “Anybody could have written it.”

  “But Poe was here. The ravens are here,” said Ms. Spark.

  Hopefully, the body isn’t here, I thought.

  “I’ll move it anyway,” said Mr. Cates. “You can’t have too many bookshelves in a bookstore. Come tell me when you’re finished,” he said to me.

  Sure enough, when I was done I found Mr. Cates hard at work at his desk.

  “Let’s see how you did,” he said. When he stepped away from the desk, a piece of paper floated behind him.

  I leaned down to pick it up. It was a note. Two words caught my eye: “Annabel Lee.” Here was something else that pointed to Edgar Allan Poe! A note signed by a character Poe created.

  “Mr. Cates! You dropped this.” I handed it to him.

  Mr. Cates looked at the note, then flushed a deep brick-red. “Don’t mention you saw this to Cillia, okay?” he said to me as he stuffed it into his pocket.

  “I won’t,” I promised. But I wondered what it meant.

  “Do you know what you’re going to do for your assignment?” Ms. Belcher asked me. I’d stayed after school to talk to her about my project — and about Professor Kingsolver.

  “I have a couple of ideas, but I wanted to talk to you.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I’ve been working at the Gable house.”

  “Benson Dalton Gable’s house?” said Ms. Belcher, looking surprised.

  “It’s being turned into a bookstore, a mystery bookstore, called Poe and Co.,” I told her.

  “I think I read about that in the paper. Fits right in,” murmured Ms. Belcher.

  “With my project?” I asked.

  “With that, and with the rumors about Poe having visited Gable there,” she said.

  “I wondered if I could work that into my project.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “I’m not sure. I thought about writing a story set in the house, with Poe and Gable as characters. I also thought about making a diorama of Benson Dalton Gable’s office and putting him and Poe in it,” I explained. “Or maybe making up a series of letters between them.”

  “Sounds interesting,” Ms. Belcher said, but she was looking out the window and drumming her fingers on her desk.

  “But? You don’t sound very sure about it.”

  “I took a course at Stoneybrook University with Professor Kingsolver, the woman who spoke to your class. She spent an entire session talking about Poe’s visits to Gable,” said Ms. Belcher.

  “I’ve seen her at Poe and Co. a couple of times,” I told Ms. Belcher.

  “Aha! So she’s convinced you that there’s something to her theory?”

  “I think it’s interesting that they may have had some kind of relationship, Poe and Gable,” I said.

  “But do you think Poe might have had an argument with Gable over a manuscript and killed him? No one has found a Poe manuscript there, have they?”

  I took in a quick breath. This was the most direct expression I’d heard yet that Poe might have killed Gable. Of course, Alex had hinted at it. “No manuscripts, and I don’t know about any murder,” I admitted. “It’s an interesting idea, and the house is weird — spooky, strange noises, odd happenings that could make you think the place is …”

  “Haunted?” asked Ms. Belcher.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “What an excellent site for a mystery bookstore!” Ms. Belcher said. “When does it open? I’d like to meet the ghost.” She smiled.

  “Soon,” I replied. “The rain has slowed some of the work.” I didn’t think I needed to be any more specific.

  “I’d think about a combination of your ideas. You know what the house looks like, and it would be interesting to see you reproduce it in a diorama. However, I’d also like the project to have a written component. Perhaps the letters? I’m certain Professor Kingsolver would be happy to talk with you.”

  “Okay. Thanks,” I said. “See you tomorrow.”

  I splashed my way to the bookstore, thinking about my project. I decided to set my diorama in the office with the big desk and place Poe on one side and Gable on the other. I’d show manuscript pages spread between them, and a bookcase with nevermore carved on one of the shelves. The letters would be the hard part of the project. What would Poe and Gable write to one another?

  Only three cars were parked outside the store when I arrived. I opened the door. The store was unusually quiet. No one yelling, no hammering, nothing.

  “Anybody here?” I called out.

  “We’re in my office,” Mr. Cates called.

  I hung up my raincoat and headed for the office. “Hi. Where is everybody?” I asked. Then I noticed that Mr. Cates and Ms. Spark weren’t alone. Professor Kingsolver was sitting in a chair beside Ms. Spark.

  Mr. Cates cleared his throat. “I sent the kids off with Kristy because of … what happened here this afternoon. Besides, they’re very tired of hanging around here all the time.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  He cleared his throat again, looked at the blotter on his desk, then looked back at me. “One of the workmen thinks he saw a ghost in the basement.”

  “A ghost!” I clutched the edge of the desk. The house was haunted.

  “Andy, the foreman, was in the basement working on the electrical wiring when he heard a noise, a rustling. He thought maybe it was a mouse or Pluto, but when he turned around, he saw a grayish shadowy shape behind him. It kept moving and shifting. He said he thought ‘ghost’ right away, but he knew that was silly. Instead, he decided the other men were playing a joke on him.

  “He ran upstairs. Everybody on the crew was moving bookshelves around. They all claimed they didn’t know anything about it.”

  “It’s Benson Dalton Gable, trying to tell you his secrets,” said Professor Kingsolver breathlessly.

  “Ramona, you’re being a little dramatic,” Ms. Spark said.

  “What secrets? That Edgar Allan Poe killed him?” I asked.

  “Where did you hear a thing like that?” Professor Kingsolver demanded.

  “From Alex Gable, and from my English teacher, Ms. Belcher. Alex said that Gable died soon after a visit from Poe, and that the family doesn’t know where the body is buried. Ms. Belcher said that Poe may have murdered him in a disagreement over a manuscript. At least, she said that’s what you told your class.”

  “I did say that.” Professor Kingsolver pressed her knuckles against her mouth. “I hope we haven’t bestirred evil best left at rest.”

  “At least we know where Gable’s buried now,” Mr. Cates said.
/>   I turned sharply. “What do you mean?”

  “Come with us. I was about to show Professor Kingsolver. You can see it too.” Mr. Cates beckoned for me to follow.

  I followed the grown-ups, looking behind me every few steps. Thunder rumbled when Mr. Cates opened the door to the basement.

  At the top of the stairs, everyone paused. I heard someone take a deep breath. I did the same thing.

  The steps creaked as we descended. I kept feeling a cold breath of air tickling the back of my neck. The air cooled with each step down.

  The door slammed closed behind us. It startled me so that I had to clutch the stair rail to keep from falling.

  “Just the wind catching the door,” Mr. Cates said. His voice sounded unnaturally loud in the silence of the basement.

  Then the light flickered. Mr. Cates, Ms. Spark, and Professor Kingsolver waited for me at the bottom of the steps. With one last look over my shoulder, I joined them.

  “After the work crew denied any knowledge of the ‘ghost,’ Andy went back downstairs and looked around to see how a ghost might have been rigged up. He moved some stuff around and found this.” Mr. Cates pointed at a gray slab that stood out from the rest of the stone floor.

  I leaned closer and read, “ ‘To-day I wear these chains, and am here. To-morrow I shall be fetterless — but where?’ ”

  “Poe again,” whispered Professor Kingsolver.

  “Do you think Mr. Gable is …” I pointed at the slab.

  “An old boiler used to sit on top of it. And it looks like a tombstone,” said Mr. Cates. “I’m sure we could find out, but I don’t know whether I want to. For one thing, you need all kinds of permits to dig up a grave and I don’t want anything more to delay the opening of the store.”

  “So you’re just going to leave it down here?” I asked.

  “For now,” said Ms. Spark.

  I shivered again. Poor Tom and Gillian! To live in a house with a grave in the basement — I didn’t even want to think about the kind of nightmares I might have.

  “Mr. Cates! Are you here?” A woman’s voice drifted down from upstairs.

  “Who’s that?” Ms. Sparks asked.