He backed away from Shelby. It seemed like he might run depending on what her answer was.
Shelby snorted. “It should go without saying that it is not a ghost.”
That dismissive answer from Shelby didn’t relax Bryant. To be honest, it didn’t convince me, either.
“So now what?” I asked. How were we going to solve a case that we couldn’t see?
Because as much as I wanted to abandon Baskerville Estates—again, MURDER—I’d never do that to Bryant. But, well, I was too embarrassed to admit to Shelby that I was scared. So yeah, I was not feeling really great about myself then.
Shelby smirked. “Bryant, it’s time I meet your neighbors.”
“My neighbors? Why?”
“This is clearly an inside job.”
CHAPTER
9
“What?” Bryant exclaimed. “what do you mean, ‘inside job’? You think a neighbor is responsible for this?”
“Absolutely,” Shelby replied in a way that made it seem like she was shocked that neither Bryant nor I had thought of it first. “To even enter this building requires two keys for two different locks: one for the first door, a second for the door after the mailboxes. The lock on the inside door is a Complex Key Lock X14, which is very difficult to pick. It takes me nearly two minutes to crack, and I’m quite fast when it comes to picking locks.”
Bryant made the wise decision to sit down on his couch at this point. He’d never been that impressed whenever I’d talk about the cases Shelby and I worked on. Now, as he saw Shelby in action, he knew she was something else.
Shelby continued, “It would take someone picking locks too long to enter the building, especially with your landlord living on the first floor, with his door only four and a half feet away from the main door.”
“Wait.” Bryant put his hands on his head. “How do you know how far away it is?”
“I observe. I presume you’ve never noticed.”
Bryant fell back on the couch.
“You’ve at least had to observe the person in your building who smokes.”
Bryant perked back up. “What? Smoking isn’t allowed in our apartments. Mr. Barrymore is very strict about that. No smoking and no pets.”
“That doesn’t mean someone in this building doesn’t smoke. She simply chooses to do it outside. It’s a young woman. Who fits that description?”
Bryant shook his head. “I don’t under—” He took a deep breath. “How do you know this?”
“Since you were unaware of the distance between doors, I’ll assume that you haven’t observed the discarded cigarette butts in the nook adjacent to your building. The ones with traces of lipstick.”
Bryant’s jaw was open. “That could be anybody.”
“Since it’s a location in which one exiting the building wouldn’t be seen, it is an excellent hiding space. Therefore, I deduce it’s a teenage girl. Her parents or parent aren’t aware she does it.”
“You can’t mean Kaitlin?” He shook his head. “Kaitlin is a junior in high school and lives with her mom upstairs. She doesn’t smoke.”
“I believe I have proven she does. I would like to get a word with her. While I do not approve of such a filthy habit, it does mean she spends a lot of time outside the building. She should make a good witness.”
“I don’t smell cigarette smoke on her.”
“Fabric spray, mints, mouthwash, holding the cigarette away from you to not have the smoke linger on your person. It’s fairly easy to hide it from people who aren’t observant, especially if her mother is anything like the rest of the tenants in this building.”
Shelby let that insult hang in the air.
As much as I wanted to scold her for being so rude, Shelby did have a point. (It was always so irritating when she was right.)
“Shall we?” Shelby said as she extended her arm to the door.
“Well, I guess we’ll start with Mr. Mortimer across the hall,” Bryant suggested. “Ms. Lyons and Kaitlin won’t be home for a little while. Ms. Lyons is a teacher down in the Upper West Side, so she gets home closer to four. Mr. Mortimer is usually home.”
We walked across the hall and knocked on apartment 2. I could hear the sound of a TV through the door.
The door opened, and Mr. Mortimer looked at the three of us. “Who are your friends, John?”
Bryant pointed to me. “This is John Watson and his friend, Shelby Holmes.”
If Bryant refusing to refer to Shelby as his friend bothered her, she didn’t show it. Shelby didn’t get upset about being left out of things. She wanted to sit alone at lunch. Things like friends were an inconvenience to her.
Sigh . . .
“Do you mind if we ask you some questions?” Shelby asked before her attention went to the TV. It was some true crime show. The narrator’s voice boomed, “How can this case be solved only by a letter?”
Shelby rolled her eyes. “A letter is a perfect way to solve a case. There’s ample DNA on an envelope that’s licked. Fairly straightforward.” She turned to me. “Do people really watch these mundane programs?”
Mr. Mortimer adjusted his glasses before chuckling. “You seem pretty smart, young lady.”
“Smart is an understatement,” Shelby replied in her oh-so-modest way. “Can you tell us about any weird feelings or occurrences you’ve experienced in the last few days? Any weird noises.”
“My hearing isn’t what it used to be.” He tapped on his hearing aid. “But I’ve heard that dang dog barking up a storm at night. Lived in this building forty years. Never had a problem. Neighbors aren’t like they used to be. No respect. All that incessant babbling, walking up and down the stairs. Don’t get me started on the racket when the ladies above me insist on wearing those high-heeled shoes.”
“Any strange sensations?” Shelby pressed.
“Young lady, when you get to be my age, they’re all strange sensations.” He chuckled some more before he began to cough. A lot. “This dang cough is going to be the death of me.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cough drop.
“Did you know that in Germany, thyme is an officially approved cough treatment, even for upper respiratory infections? Steep two teaspoons in a cup of boiling water. If you don’t have any thyme, Bryant has some in his kitchen in the far upper-right cabinet.”
Mr. Mortimer looked impressed. “Is there anything you don’t know?”
“I know everything of importance,” Shelby said, which made him laugh—and cough—more.
We heard footsteps coming up the stairs. A white woman in her late forties walked up the stairs with a teenage girl behind her. Both had auburn hair. The infamous Kaitlin and her mom, I presumed?
“Hey, Ms. Lyons,” Bryant said with a nod. “Do you think we can talk to you guys for a minute about all the stuff happening in the building? These are my friends. And well, they know a lot of things and can help us.”
Got to admit, my chest puffed up a bit with that comment. Sure, I didn’t know as much as Shelby, but I could hold my own. Hadn’t done it so far with this case, but it seemed that I had plenty of time to figure something out. Anything.
“Please, come on up,” Ms. Lyons replied.
“Thanks, Mr. Mortimer. Feel better,” I said with a small wave.
“I hope you guys find that blasted dog!” he commented before closing his door.
“Watson,” Shelby said as we climbed the stairs to the third floor. “I need you to distract Ms. Lyons so I can question Kaitlin alone. I don’t have the time or the patience to play around with how I have knowledge that she’s the one who spends time outside the building. So I must be blunt and get straight to it.”
“Yeah, but how do I—”
“We’ve lived here five years,” Ms. Lyons started as she opened up her apartment for us. The five of us crowded around the small kitchen table. “It’s been a good home, but lately . . .”
“Yeah, maybe we’ll finally move now,” Kaitlin said as she typed on her phone. “I’ve been
begging to move to Brooklyn for forever so I can be closer to my friends.”
“And as I keep telling you: Brooklyn is too far of a commute for me. We’re not moving so you can be closer to some boy.”
“You mean it’s too far away from Thomas.” Kaitlin pretended to gag.
“We’re not having this conversation again,” Ms. Lyons snapped at Kaitlin before turning her attention to us. “Thomas Stapleton is our upstairs neighbor and a dear, dear friend. As I was saying, we’ve had no issues, but now . . . it’s surreal. And a little unsettling.” She rubbed her tired face.
I glanced over at Shelby, who was glaring at me. So I guess she meant it that she didn’t want to waste any time, even to be polite.
Oh, right, Shelby Holmes didn’t do polite. My bad.
Okay, I needed to get Ms. Lyons talking about something to get her distracted so Shelby could pull Kaitlin aside. And . . . I was drawing a blank.
Then Shelby’s most often quoted piece of advice sprang in my head: Don’t simply see, observe.
I looked around the apartment. Every wall surface was covered with framed posters of Broadway shows.
Bingo!
I walked up to one of the posters and said, “My mom and I moved here a few months ago and we haven’t seen any Broadway shows. Is this one good?”
Ms. Lyons walked over to me. “You must go immediately! There is nothing like live theater. I prefer musicals. I see everything when it comes out, everything. I even saw Hamilton with its original cast.”
“Impressive,” I replied, since her tone indicated that should be the reply. See, Shelby wasn’t the only one who could make deductions! “So it’s good?”
Well, that did it. Ms. Lyons started talking excitedly about the show. She gave me a wink when she told me that a black actor played George Washington. Which I had to admit was pretty cool. Then, she, ah, um . . . rapped. Why this woman was rapping to me about not throwing away her shot, I have no idea. Got to admit, she wasn’t that bad. For a white woman. At this point, the dreaded hound could start howling and she wouldn’t have noticed.
Mission accomplished. Hey, I hadn’t been hanging out with Shelby Holmes for nothing.
After I’d heard about Ms. Lyons’s top-ten musicals of all time and then the three shows Mom and I must see immediately, Shelby approached to thank her for having us over. She didn’t look that excited or smug, so I deduced that Kaitlin didn’t have any useful intel.
Once the door closed behind us, Shelby groaned. “You know the problem, well, one, with young people these days? They are always on their phones. Staring at a screen instead of observing anything around them.”
“Are you referring to Kaitlin?” I asked. You know, the “young person” who was probably six or seven years older than Shelby.
Shelby replied by grimacing. So that was that, I guessed.
“Although she could be lying as she has a very powerful motive.”
“Wait,” I said as I started to put it together. “You think she’s doing this so they’ll move?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“Kaitlin?” Bryant looked shocked. “I don’t think she’d do that.”
“You also didn’t think she smoked,” Shelby fired back.
Point to Shelby.
Shelby looked up the flight of stairs. “And this Thomas Stapleton Ms. Lyons mentioned lives above them on the top floor?”
“Yeah,” Bryant answered. “But he’s hardly around. He travels a lot for work. He left for a business trip the day before the noise started.”
“And in the other apartment?”
“Oh, no. There’s only one apartment upstairs. It used to be two, but Stapleton converted it when the last tenant left a couple years ago. Mr. Barrymore’s uncle was more than happy for him to do it since Stapleton paid for the conversion himself.”
“And why would your landlord’s uncle have an opinion on the matter?”
“Oh.” Bryant’s shoulders slumped for a moment. “The first Mr. Barrymore—the uncle—was our landlord before he passed away. His nephew, Jay, inherited the apartment building.”
“I see,” Shelby said as she looked down the stairs. “How long ago was that?”
“About two years.”
Shelby nodded. “Well, I guess we must talk to the current Mr. Barrymore. It is also imperative we see this apartment.” She pointed to the door across from the Lyonses’. The one where the noise was coming from.
Hmm, I wondered if I could get out of that tour.
We walked down to the first floor. I focused on the space between Barrymore’s door and the front one. I couldn’t tell you if it was in fact four and a half feet, but I knew if I had a ruler it would be an exact match.
Barrymore opened the door. It made sense he inherited the building. He looked too young to be a landlord. I’d guess midtwenties. “Hey, John, how’s everything? The apartment okay?”
“Yeah, but we have some questions for you.”
After Bryant made the introductions since Mr. Barrymore was too busy last night trying to figure out the noise to meet me, he welcomed us into his apartment. Even though it was bigger than Bryant’s above, as it took up the entire first floor, it was cluttered with boxes. Instead of a couch in the living room, there was an old wooden desk next to several metal file cabinets.
“Do you live here?” Shelby asked.
“Yeah, I use the second bedroom as a living room. It was easier to clean all that out instead of this—” He gestured to what had to be decades’ worth of paperwork.
“And how long has this building been in your family?”
Mr. Barrymore rubbed his chin. “Since the forties, I think. My grandfather bought it, and then my uncle Randall took it over. And when Uncle Randall passed away . . . well, I was the only family member still in the area. I spent so much time here as a kid. I even lived in apartment six when I was in grade school.”
“So you’re a landlord on top of being a grad student at Columbia and interning?”
Barrymore wasn’t the only one who did a double take. I scanned the apartment to see if I could piece together how Shelby knew this. A few business textbooks and a Columbia Business School MBA coffee mug sat on the desk. I made a mental note to start observing the second I walked into an apartment so I could beat Shelby at her own game, just once.
“Yes,” Mr. Barrymore said. “It was really great for Uncle Randall to leave me the apartment building in his will, because it’s helped pay for grad school and allowed me to get an internship. The landlord gig wasn’t something that took up too much time, until recently.”
Hmm. There was something off when Mr. Barrymore talked. He kept shifting his feet and looking around the apartment instead of making eye contact. Maybe the inheritance wasn’t so fortunate after all.
But then again, he could’ve just sold the building if he didn’t want it. And everybody needed a place to live.
So maybe he was a possible suspect, but who knew at this point? I guess all signs pointed to Kaitlin? Although Shelby said never to guess.
“Do you recall who your family bought the building from?”
Barrymore nodded. “Yeah. When all the stuff started happening, I looked up the history. Franklin Baskerville sold it to my grandfather. The guy who built this building was his uncle, Hugo.”
“I’m sensing a theme,” Shelby said with a snort.
“I just . . .” Barrymore sighed. “This building hasn’t had so much as a pipe burst in the time I’ve been here, and now all of a sudden . . . I’d heard the stories about this building being cursed when I was little, but I’d assumed it was just a way to scare me.”
Shelby scoffed. “Cursed? Are you referring to this nonsense about Hugo Baskerville’s ghost?”
Barrymore nodded solemnly. “Whenever something would go bump in the night, my dad would joke about the Baskerville curse. He’d tell me about freaky things happening around Halloween, but I didn’t believe it until this past weekend.”
> Shelby pinched her lips together like she was getting ready to laugh.
I was totally lost if this was some kind of joke. Because there was nothing funny about murder and curses.
MURDER AND CURSES!
As much as Shelby said this was an inside job, there was no denying that Hugo Baskerville was a real person and his ghost was famous.
What were we even still doing in this building?
“May we see apartment five?” Shelby asked.
It was like she could read my mind. Because of course she wanted us to go into the apartment that was haunted.
My stomach dropped. It didn’t matter what Shelby said. She wasn’t here last night. She didn’t hear the noise.
So yeah, it was quiet now. I didn’t have that same dreaded feeling, either. Maybe it was because it was still light out. Barely. Were we going to be in that apartment when it got dark?
Because no thank you if we were. I planned to stay near the door and bolt if anything happened. There was no shame in wanting to protect yourself. None.
As we started to climb back up the stairs, Mr. Barrymore explained that the new tenant kept pushing back his move-in date. “But he keeps paying rent, so no complaints from me!”
Bryant was standing behind me as Barrymore began unlocking the door. It took two locks with two different keys to open. So if someone was coming in and picking locks, there’d be four locks in total. Shelby was onto something. It had to be someone here. One of the neighbors could have made copies of the keys to this apartment. The Holmeses have a set of our keys in case we got locked out and our landlady, Mrs. Hudson, wasn’t around. Not like Shelby couldn’t simply pick our lock. (Which she did once, but I can’t even get into that story. She was truly unbelievable. Truly.)
The door opened to the apartment, and it was . . . empty.
I felt myself relax a bit. There was nothing scary at all. It was exactly like Bryant’s apartment. It somehow looked smaller without furniture in it. Shelby got on all fours and started examining every crevice while I walked around.
Huh. As I walked, I felt off. It was hard to describe. I simply didn’t feel balanced.
Maybe it was the power of suggestion. Or maybe it was something else.
The Great Shelby Holmes and the Haunted Hound Page 5