Bryant put his hand on the wall to steady himself after taking a few steps.
So I wasn’t imagining it.
I was about to bring it to Shelby’s attention when out of nowhere the door to the apartment slammed shut.
Bryant screamed. At first I thought it was from the sound of the door.
But no.
How I wished it was only that.
Shelby could explain away feelings and sounds, but this—this was real. And it was absolutely terrifying.
There on the inside of the door were giant claw marks.
CHAPTER
10
Out! Out! Out!
I don’t mind admitting that I took off down the stairs so I could exit that crazy haunted building. And it wasn’t just me. Bryant went first. I followed him down with Mr. Barrymore close on my heels.
All I wanted to do was to breathe fresh air. This building was too much.
“What’s going on?” Ms. Lyons called after us.
“We’re not safe!” Bryant yelled as we fled through the front door.
Ms. Lyons and Kaitlin joined us in front of the building. The five of us were breathless and out of sorts.
Want to know who stayed in there?
Yep. Shelby.
Of course she did.
“What happened? What’s going on?” Ms. Lyons asked, her voice getting higher.
“I—I—I’m not sure,” Mr. Barrymore stuttered.
Neither was I. But I knew my eyes were not deceiving me. There were definitely claw marks on that door. Those of a big beast. A very, very big beast.
“Mr. Mortimer is still in there!” Bryant exclaimed.
We all looked around at each other, wondering who was going to be brave enough to go back in there and get him.
The front door swung open and out waltzed Shelby, as calm as could be. She even had a lollipop in her mouth.
“What was it?” Bryant asked her, a quiver in his voice.
Shelby removed the red lollipop and held it out to make a point. “It wasn’t from a giant beast, I can tell you that much.”
Nobody seemed to believe her. Including me.
“Giant beast?” Ms. Lyons exclaimed. “What giant beast? Did you see that . . . that thing we’ve been hearing?”
Everyone was focused on Shelby . . . except Kaitlin, who stared down at her phone. Shelby was right. She’d make a horrible witness.
“No, we did not see the imaginary beast,” said Shelby. “On the inside door there were fake claw marks.”
Shelby held up a piece of paper that had the claw marks outlined by rubbing a pencil over them.
“Fake?” I knew at this point that Shelby was careful with the words she used.
She handed me the piece of paper. “Yes. They weren’t from any animal.”
“How do you know?” Bryant asked.
“Watson?” Shelby said to me.
I looked at the straight, exact marks from the outline. Oh wow. I saw it. If I’d maybe stayed in the apartment instead of fleeing, I would’ve noticed it, too.
“These marks are too precise,” I replied. “Each mark is the exact same length and perfectly straight. Dogs’ paws, and their nails, aren’t straight, just like human hands.” I pulled in my pinkie and thumb to show them my three inside fingers. “If I was to scratch something, the middle finger would be higher.”
Shelby nodded in approval and it felt just as great as you could imagine.
Shelby crossed her arms. “Yes, I’ll have to experiment on Sir Arthur later tonight to confirm my suspicions. However, I do believe it was done with a handheld cultivator.”
“A what?”
Shelby sighed. “It is a basic garden tool.”
Everybody else was at a loss for words.
“Sir Arthur is Shelby’s English bulldog,” I explained. “We’ll have him claw something so we can see if we’re right.”
Shelby scoffed at my insinuation that we could be wrong. I mean, I get why she’d be annoyed, but I needed to explain to them what was going on.
Wait, so if someone left this with a garden tool that meant it wasn’t haunted.
But then why did I feel uneasy in that room?
“I’m texting Antonio to tell him I’m staying at his place tonight,” Kaitlin remarked as her fingers worked overtime.
“No, you will not!” Ms. Lyons exclaimed. “I’ll figure something else out.”
Kaitlin threw her head back and groaned. “You never listen to me!” she shouted before stomping down the street.
Ms. Lyons pinched the bridge of her nose. “I hate to say it, but Kaitlin has a point about wanting to stay somewhere else. And, John, I’m certain when your mother comes home she’ll feel the same way. It’s not safe until we know exactly what is happening. Noises are one thing, but claw marks are another.”
“No, please,” Mr. Barrymore said as he approached her cautiously. “I understand you’re upset, but this place has been my family’s home for decades. It’s safe. You’re safe.”
But he didn’t even seem to convince himself.
“You are safe,” Shelby confirmed. “As I believe Watson and I have proven, there were no claw marks. I need to do some research, but I’m certain I’ll have some answers tomorrow.”
“I’m going to call Thomas to fill him in on what’s happening,” Ms. Lyons said. “Maybe he’ll have some ideas.”
She walked off to the side and took out her phone.
“I guess I’ll go check in on Mr. Mortimer,” Mr. Barrymore said before heading back into the building.
“Interesting,” Shelby said as she studied Ms. Lyons, who was talking to her upstairs neighbor.
While Ms. Lyons had her back to us, it was clear she was fidgeting. She twirled her finger around her ponytail. She threw her head back in exaggerated laughter.
“What’s the deal with Ms. Lyons and Mr. Stapleton?” I asked Bryant because I’d seen that kind of behavior recently.
“Excellent question!” Shelby exclaimed, which, yeah, felt pretty good. Man, I was really on a roll today. Maybe I didn’t need Shelby after all. (Okay, I did. We all knew that.)
“They’re pretty close,” Bryant stated. “She waters his plants, gets his mail and stuff while he’s away.”
Shelby narrowed her eyes. “And what is their individual personal status?”
“Huh?” Bryant asked.
“We know Ms. Lyons is divorced, but what about Stapleton?” I clarified. “Is he dating anybody? Does she, you know, like him?”
I shuddered a bit. Not because I cared if Ms. Lyons and Mr. Stapleton got together, but this was hitting a little too close to home with my mom possibly having a secret new boyfriend.
Bryant shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. Maybe?”
“Interesting,” Shelby stated again.
I had no idea why that would be interesting. I mean grown-ups dated and stuff. It wouldn’t mean that they were haunting a building.
Right?
Mr. Barrymore exited the building and approached us. “Mr. Mortimer’s fine. Everybody else doing okay?”
Bryant nodded while Ms. Lyons finished her conversation. Hmm, her cheeks did seem a bit more flushed. But again, if adult dating caused hauntings, 221 Baker Street could be next.
Ugh.
“There she is!” Ms. Lyons said as Kaitlin dragged her feet back to us.
She held up a white envelope in the air. “I was hanging on the corner, and a girl asked me to give you this note, Mr. Barrymore.”
Shelby approached the envelope now in Mr. Barrymore’s hand with interest. “Please.”
He opened it up, and all of us leaned in. When he unfolded the piece of paper inside, his eyes got wide. His hands began shaking, and that’s when Shelby took it from him.
I looked over her shoulder and nearly gasped. There were letters cut out from a newspaper on pink paper.
“Quite curious,” Shelby remarked, and she began examining the note with great focus. “The person who s
ent this had money.”
“What?” Mr. Barrymore said, his jaw practically on the floor.
“The letters were taken from a financial newspaper, most likely the Financial Times. It has the salmon-pink print favored by financial newspapers. It all started in the UK in the early 1890s when the Financial Times wanted to—”
“Shelby,” I said. I didn’t think anybody here was interested in a history lesson right now. “But how do you know they have money? Anybody could’ve bought that paper.”
She handed me the letter. “You tell me.”
Oh man. She was letting me deduce something again. This meant Shelby trusted me and knew that I was doing better. Maybe the talk I had with her about being nice and friends helping friends really did rub off on her!
I took the letter from her and felt the weight of the paper in my hand. “This is heavy stock paper. Expensive.”
“Exactly. What else can you tell me?”
I got that rush I always had when I worked with Shelby. It almost made me forget about how freaked out I was. Almost.
I studied each letter. It was then that I noticed it. All the letters were cut in very clean lines. Usually if someone cut something with scissors you would see where they had to lift the scissor handles again. There’s usually a slight mark left behind. This had none. “They used an X-ACTO knife to cut it.”
“Good job!” Shelby said, and I felt pretty good about myself. “That is not something people generally have lying around their house. Usually it’s used by artists, architects, scrapbookers, et cetera. Or found at a school.”
Where was Shelby going with this?
She turned toward Kaitlin. “Can you describe the person who left this?”
Kaitlin tilted her head as she studied Shelby. “I guess. I mean, she was a girl with red, curly hair. Kind of like you. She gave me her name.”
The corner of Shelby’s mouth turned up. “She did?”
“Yeah, she said it like twelve times to make sure I’d remember it. I mean . . .” Kaitlin rolled her eyes and then went back to her phone.
“Would you care to share this piece of information?” Shelby said, while I held my breath.
“Shelby. Her name was Shelby Holmes.”
CHAPTER
11
What?!?!
Every head turned to look at Shelby, while Shelby did something I rarely saw her do.
The great Shelby Holmes burst into laughter. Like real, hilarious laughter. Because this was . . . funny?
“What?” Kaitlin asked. “Do you know Shelby Holmes?”
Yeah, okay. So Kaitlin was the worst witness. She didn’t remember our names when she was introduced to us only a half hour ago.
“Honey, that’s Shelby Holmes,” Ms. Lyons clarified as she pointed to Shelby.
“I don’t get it,” Kaitlin remarked before looking back down at her phone.
“Oh, how utterly delightful!” Shelby exclaimed with a huge smile on her face. “It seems we have a very worthy foe.”
Okay, so this was way worse than I thought.
WAY WORSE.
Shelby thought this was all DELIGHTFUL? Because I had other words I’d use. Like dreadful. Confusing. Scary.
“How can you laugh at any of this?” Ms. Lyons scolded Shelby.
Shelby replied by laughing even harder.
Great.
“Have you heard about this?” Bryant asked as he handed Ms. Lyons the New York Times article about Hugo Baskerville’s murder.
Ms. Lyons looked panicked as she read about the apartment unit across the hall from her. “I remember hearing that someone had died in the building decades ago, but I didn’t know there was a murder! And on my floor!”
“It’s true,” Kaitlin spoke as she held out her phone. “I googled it. There are a bunch of articles about it. It’s even featured on a blog about haunted Harlem.”
Shelby scoffed. “Well, yes, because if it’s on the internet, it must be true.”
I looked at Kaitlin’s phone and saw the search results all mentioned Hugo Baskerville’s murder and reported ghost sightings. An image search came back with a few sketches of a really big scary dog.
Shelby leaned in close to me and whispered, “Watson, remember that at one moment in time, the internet said we were up-and-coming pairs figure skaters.”
Fair enough. Shelby knew how to manipulate the internet, so others had to have the ability to add stories about Hugo Baskerville.
Man, I hoped this was all fake.
Oh, yeah, but let’s not forget the most important question: Why would someone go through all this trouble to make it seem like a building was haunted?
None of this made sense. None. Of. It.
Yeah, Kaitlin wanted to move to Brooklyn, but she didn’t seem like the kind of person to pull off something like this. It would require looking up from your phone for more than two seconds.
Or maybe that was all part of her ruse?
Who knew? Certainly not me.
“Mr. Barrymore, why would your tenants—many who have lived in the building long before you arrived—not be aware of this so-called haunted building they live in, especially one that’s allegedly so well known?” Shelby asked with a raised eyebrow.
“I—I—” Mr. Barrymore stuttered. He hung his head. “I think my uncle knew that if people were aware of the haunted history they wouldn’t want to live here. It’s not exactly something you’d advertise: close to the subway, eat-in kitchen, and occasional ghost sightings. None of it had been real before this weekend.”
“It’s not real,” Shelby stated flatly. “If the fake claw marks weren’t enough, that letter in your hand makes it quite clear something other than the paranormal is at play here.”
Shelby had a point. Someone handed Kaitlin that note to give to Mr. Barrymore. It wasn’t a ghost.
It was a person. What made that possibly more frightening than a ghost was that person knew about Shelby.
So yeah, this case could get worse.
Cool. Cool. Cool.
Unless Kaitlin was lying and she threw together that note in the few minutes she was gone. As I studied the note, I noticed that each letter was glued on. Kaitlin didn’t have enough time to put something so precise together.
So maybe it wasn’t Kaitlin?
“But who would do this?” Mr. Barrymore asked.
I looked around at Bryant’s neighbors. If Shelby was right, one of them was responsible. Yeah, there was Kaitlin, but what about Ms. Lyons? Mr. Mortimer? The mysteriously absent Mr. Stapleton? I guess even Mr. Barrymore had to be a suspect.
“That’s what Watson and I are going to figure out,” Shelby said with a flip of her hair as she began to walk away.
“Ah, I guess we’re heading out. Bryant, I’ll talk to you later.” I gave him a nudge on the shoulder. “It’s going to be okay, I promise.”
Bryant nodded at me, but he didn’t look convinced. Couldn’t blame him.
I didn’t want to make a promise to anybody, especially a friend, that I couldn’t keep, but if Shelby said it was nothing, it had to be nothing.
At least I hoped.
CHAPTER
12
“Where are we going?” I asked Shelby as we got on the subway to head downtown.
“To where all good detectives are raised.”
Yeah, so that answered nothing.
She closed her eyes and leaned her head back. I knew that meant she was trying to figure this case out.
Shelby wasn’t the only one. Okay, I needed to look at the motivation of each of the tenants, if, like Shelby believed, one of them was indeed responsible for faking this haunting.
Kaitlin wanted to move to Brooklyn.
Ms. Lyons had a crush on Mr. Stapleton. Not sure if that was relevant, but Shelby always said to never disregard even the tiniest fact.
Mr. Stapleton was nowhere to be found. He’d also already converted one unit to make his apartment bigger. Maybe he wanted the whole place to himself?
; Mr. Barrymore inherited a building that he might not have wanted.
Mr. Mortimer was a tough one. He didn’t like the noise coming from upstairs. Maybe he wanted fewer neighbors? He was watching one of those forensic shows, so maybe he’d learned a thing or two.
But how could you fake a haunting when there’s an article from a hundred years ago stating that Hugo Baskerville was murdered? The building was even featured on a tour of haunted buildings in Harlem.
I was stumped. I pulled out that old New York Times article and read it again. “Hey, Shelby, something doesn’t sit right with me with this article.”
She opened her eyes. “Why would you say that?”
“You know how in history Ms. Baumstein told us to either read or watch the news ten minutes a day?”
“I’m aware of that requirement. Continue.”
“So I’ve been reading the front page of my mom’s New York Times. I mean, it’s pretty scary, everything going on in the world.”
“That’s what happens when you put adults in charge,” Shelby said.
“Yeah, and well, that article read differently than the ones in the New York Times. I get that the article is like a hundred years old, but it asked the question: Did one of the tenants snap? Articles are supposed to report facts, not ask the reader questions. It’s more like a gossip site.”
“I didn’t study the article, as I assumed it was fake.” Shelby took the article and glanced at it for about four seconds before handing it back to me. “You make a good point. In addition, if you’ve ever read any of the pieces the Times printed in the early nineteen hundreds the rest would be rather obvious.”
I replied by staring blankly at Shelby. Yeah, because I read one-hundred-year-old articles for fun. Come. On.
Shelby sighed. “This article was allegedly published in 1919. First, the New York Times did not regularly publish bylines for their reporters until later. Second, it refers to the Harlem Renaissance, a term that wasn’t coined until 1925 by Alain Locke. Additionally, there were two words in this article that didn’t exist back in 1919. Trendsetter first was used in 1960, while scam first appeared in 1963. Scam’s origin is perhaps related to the nineteenth-century British word scamp.”
The Great Shelby Holmes and the Haunted Hound Page 6