The Haunting on Heliotrope Lane

  “Do you see anything?” George asked. “Isn’t there a smaller room down here? Willa said she found Izzy in a smaller room. . . .”

  “The room where Mrs. Furstenberg’s body was found,” I added. “Yeah. That’s what I thought. But I don’t see anything.”

  George’s brows furrowed as she shined her light along the ceiling. Her beam made a straight line across the wall where the washing machine was, then made a sharp right, then moved along the following wall, then . . .

  “There!” I said. “See? The wall comes in, but it doesn’t extend all the way to the end of the house. There’s a room or a closet or something over there.”

  George nodded. “You’re right.”

  Slowly, holding my flashlight beam in front of me, I led the way over to the place where the wall seemed to be hiding something. It was a small space, less than eight feet long.

  When I got closer, I shined my flashlight along one wall—then around the corner . . .

  “There!” said George.

  A heavy metal door painted black led into the cornered-off space.

  A chill ran down my spine. “That has to be where they found her body,” I whispered.

  “But who closed it?” George asked. “If Willa found Izzy in there . . . and no one lives here . . .”

  I shivered. I didn’t like thinking about this. Either someone who was trespassing in the house had reason to close it, or . . . someone who’s not alive is keeping us out? “Unless there’s another room?” I asked, quickly scanning the walls again with my flashlight.

  “There’s not,” George said. “This has to be it.”

  I sighed, then looked at my friend. “So I guess . . .”

  “. . . we should at least try the door,” George said, though she looked about as eager as I felt, which is to say: not very.

  I was shaking now. I tried to hide it, to hold my flashlight still, but every nerve in my body seemed to be warning me not to try to open this door. Instead I wanted to flee. I wanted to go screaming up the stairs and grab Bess and all of us plow back through the broken window to run across the lawn and away from this house.

  That’s when I thought . . . What if Mrs. Furstenberg’s ghost just wishes we would all go away and leave her alone? Maybe she’s mad her house has become a sort of tourist attraction. Maybe whatever she did to Izzy was a warning . . . and if we open this door, we’ll become part of that warning too.

  “Come on, Nancy,” George said, placing her hand firmly around the doorknob. “Put your hand over mine.”

  I held out my shaking hand. I did what I’d been told, even though I really didn’t want to.

  “Okay,” George said. “One . . . two . . . three . . .”

  Together, we tried to twist the doorknob. But nothing happened. The door wouldn’t budge.

  George and I looked at each other in surprise. “What’s—” I began.

  And a woman’s horrific scream cut through the air.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Intruders

  I SUPPOSE IT DOESN’T MAKE a ton of sense to scream when you hear a scream, but that’s what we did.

  “AUUUUUUUUUGHHHH!”

  George and I were so stunned, so freaked out, that it took us a moment to realize that the door was still closed and we were still alone in the basement.

  The scream was coming from upstairs.

  “Bess!” George cried, her dark eyes wide with worry. “Did something happen to her?”

  “Let’s go,” I said, but by that time George was already across the basement and mounting the narrow staircase. I bolted behind her, and we ran up to the kitchen as fast as we possibly could.

  “Bess?” George shouted when we emerged into the kitchen. “What happened? Are you okay?!”

  “I’m in here.” Bess’s voice floated in from the living room. After the intensity of her scream, she sounded eerily calm. I couldn’t help thinking of what Willa had told us about Izzy—how quiet she was after Willa found her in the basement.

  My breath caught in my chest. What’s going on?

  We rushed into the living room, where Bess was standing straight and calm. I was so relieved to see her that it took me a moment to realize she wasn’t the only person in the room. She was facing off with three teenage boys.

  “Hey!” George cried, frowning at one of the three new intruders. “We know you!”

  “Owen!” I cried, because I realized who he was. Owen. Willa’s brother, who we’d met at the movie theater. Owen, who hadn’t really wanted to be there—but did back up his sister’s claims about Izzy.

  “What are you doing here, Owen?” George demanded. “What did you do to freak out my cousin?”

  Owen’s scowl looked less than apologetic, but then he seemed to undergo a change, standing up straight and softening his features. “Look, I’m sorry we scared you,” he said to Bess. “I forgot that we met before, and I didn’t know anyone was in here. This is Dev and Wyatt, my friends.”

  Bess, George, and I all nodded at the boys. “Hi,” I said. “And what exactly are you all doing here?”

  The boys looked a little embarrassed—especially Owen. “Well, ah, I guess rumors are going around school now about what happened to Izzy,” he said. “A lot of people—including my friends—wanted to check out the haunted house.”

  Bess was frowning. “That’s interesting, isn’t it?” she asked, a skeptical look on her face.

  “What do you mean?” Owen asked.

  She shrugged. “Just that word is spreading around your school about what happened to your sister’s friend . . . and aren’t you the only one at your school who knows Izzy? Isn’t she in middle school?”

  Good point. I shot Bess an appreciative glance, silently thanking her for her quick thinking.

  Dev and Wyatt chuckled nervously, and Wyatt glanced sideways at Owen and coughed over the word “Busted!”

  Owen grinned sheepishly and looked down at the floor. “I mean . . . okay. I might have said something to my friends about Izzy.” He looked up, glancing from Bess, to George, to me. “There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? It’s super weird. I don’t believe in ghosts personally, but Dev watches all those real-life ghost hunter docs. So I brought him and Wyatt to check it out.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “You don’t believe in ghosts personally, so you hire us to check out the haunted house and then turn it into a tourist attraction?”

  Wyatt laughed loudly. “Dude,” he said, cuffing Owen on the arm. “I don’t know what you did to this girl, but she’s mad.”

  But Owen was looking less amused, even defensive now. “There’s nothing wrong with my bringing friends here,” he said. “Not any more wrong than you being here already. And besides, Willa hired you—not me.”

  Hmmmm. “Okay. But you were there.”

  He looked up at me, hostility flashing in his eyes. “I didn’t hire you. I wouldn’t have.”

  “Is that so?” I asked evenly. “You don’t have a lot of faith in my abilities, huh?”

  He shook his head. “That’s not it. I don’t know anything about you.” He paused, looking around the trashed living room. “I just don’t think there’s a mystery to solve here.”

  George placed a hand on her hip. “But you just said you don’t believe in ghosts,” she pointed out.

  “That’s right,” Owen said.

  Bess let out a frustrated sigh. “So if it’s not ghosts . . . what do you think is happening with Izzy?”

  Owen lifted his chin and shrugged. “Isn’t it obvious?” he asked. “She’s playing my sister. None of this is real.”

  That surprised me, but I tried to keep my face neutral as I asked, “Why would she do that?” When Owen looked surprised by the question, I added, “They’re best friends, right? And it’s obviously making Willa really upset.”

  Owen kept his chin high, almost challenging. “I don’t know,” he said, finally looking away, toward his friends. “I just know she’s faking.”

  I’d been paying s
o much attention to Owen that I didn’t notice that Wyatt and Dev had started moving around the room, checking out all the furniture and decorations. “Oops!” Wyatt called now, followed by a huge crash! I turned around and saw that he’d knocked an old framed art print off the wall, and the glass had shattered in the frame.

  “Hey!” George yelled, frowning.

  “What’s the big deal?” Dev asked, holding his arms wide. “This place is trashed anyway. It’s not like anyone lives here—well, not anyone alive.” He snickered.

  Bess looked from his face down to the level of his waist. “Is that spray paint?” she asked.

  Sure enough. When Dev had spread his arms, his jacket had parted to reveal cans of spray paint in each of his pants pockets. “Uh . . . ,” he stammered, quickly pulling his jacket to cover them.

  I fished my phone out of my pocket and held it up. “All right,” I said. “Look, it’s been fun, guys, but the fact is, we’re all trespassing here. And I think we should all leave now—or else I’ll call the cops.”

  Wyatt and Dev immediately started whining, but Owen looked right at me with a look of barely contained fury.

  “Who put you in charge?” he asked.

  “I guess no one did,” I said, irritated, “but I have a phone with a 911 button and a pretty good relationship with the River Heights PD. If I call and they show up, who do you think they’re going to believe—me or you?”

  Owen scowled at me but turned, shook his head, and finally said to his friends, “We’d better go, guys. Sorry.” He turned back and glared at me again. “We can come back another time, when Princess Narc isn’t here.”

  I couldn’t help smirking at that. “Princess Narc,” I said, nodding my approval. “Most people just call me Narc, or Miss Narc, or Narcypants. Thanks for the promotion.”

  Owen grunted and turned back toward the broken window. He climbed out, followed by his friends. Bess and George looked at me.

  “Are we really done here?” George asked, looking around with an almost wistful expression.

  “For now,” I said. “I think we saw everything there is to see.”

  “Except the locked room,” she said in a low voice.

  I nodded. “Except that. But now isn’t the time.”

  We all climbed back through the window, then circled around to the front of the house, where the boys had collected near an old Honda Civic. There was an awkward moment where they just watched us watching them.

  “Aren’t you going to go?” I asked finally.

  Owen scowled again. “Come on, guys,” he said, pulling out a set of car keys and walking around to the driver’s-side door of the Civic. I heard the click of the doors unlocking, and then Wyatt and Dev reluctantly got into the front passenger seat and back seat, respectively. Three petulant faces watched me as Owen started up the ignition. After a few minutes, the car pulled into the street.

  Bess, George, and I all watched as Owen drove to the end of Heliotrope Lane and then turned onto Elm Street. George started to say something, but I held up my hand to stop her as I listened to the engine noise dwindling in the distance.

  After a minute or so, when the car didn’t reappear, I nodded. “Shall we go?”

  “Please,” Bess said. “I think I’m good on haunted houses for the night.”

  George raised an eyebrow at me. “Did you learn anything useful, Nancy?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t . . . think so. I was freaked out in there, I’ll admit, but I don’t think we found any evidence that the place is haunted. Unsettling, yes. Being torn apart by curious trespassers, yes.”

  George agreed. “If I were Mrs. Furstenberg and I saw what was happening to my house, I might be mad enough to haunt it. But I don’t think we saw a ghost in there.”

  Bess shuddered. “Thank heavens.”

  We walked over to our parked cars, and just as I pulled out my key fob and pushed the unlock button, I heard Bess’s gasp.

  “Oh no!”

  I turned around and saw Bess holding her hand in front of her face, looking crestfallen.

  “What happened?” asked George. “Did you get a cut or something?”

  Bess shook her head. “Worse,” she said. “My charm bracelet is gone.”

  George groaned. “The one your dad gave you?” she asked. Bess nodded. “You wore it tonight?” George asked.

  “I wear it all the time,” Bess said innocently. “I just didn’t think to take it off. Anyway, it must have fallen off in the house, guys. I can’t leave without it. But I think it might be in one of the bedrooms—I sort of remember hearing a clink, but there were so many weird noises, I didn’t think much about it.”

  I took in a breath, glancing back at the dark, creepy house. I don’t want to go back in there. My stomach clenched at the very thought.

  But I also knew I was being a wuss. We hadn’t found any evidence of ghosts in the house. And I couldn’t exactly ask Bess to give up a beloved gift just because she’d dropped it in a scary place. She was my friend, and I owed it to her to help find it.

  “Okay,” I said, locking my car again. “Let’s go back in.”

  The living room of the house was just as we’d left it—except it seemed even darker now after being outside. I looked at the broken art print on the floor and cringed. How long before everything in here is completely wrecked?

  Bess hesitantly walked down the hall to the bedrooms, peeking her head into the first. George and I followed a few steps behind.

  “Look out,” George said. “Spoiler: there’s a rat in there.”

  Bess suddenly let out a gasp and sprinted into the room, grabbing something from the floor near the mattress. “Here it is, guys,” she said. She wrapped the chain around her wrist and quickly clasped it. “Thank goodness. Okay, now we can go.”

  But as we all went back to the living room, I heard it.

  “Hold on,” I whispered, holding up my hand for everyone to stop and be quiet.

  A low sound—almost like a rumbling.

  It was coming from the basement.

  I could hear my friends’ ragged breath as we all struggled to make out the sound. At first there was silence—and I wondered if I was hearing things, getting tired and loopy—but then I heard it again.

  Not rumbling. Moaning.

  “Ohhhhhhhhh . . .”

  Ice prickled in my veins as I turned to face my friends, who looked just as horrified as I was.

  Is somebody down there? Or . . . something that used to be somebody?

  Then, suddenly, we were all knocked off our feet by a sudden, much larger sound—WOOWOOWOOWOOWOO!

  Police sirens!

  “Oh no,” George groaned, as flashing lights reflected off the walls.

  A voice began speaking through a megaphone. “We know you’re in there. You’re trespassing on private property. Come out with your hands up. . . .”

  My friends and I all did as the police said. Soon we were lined up on the front lawn, blinded by high-powered flashlights as two officers looked us up and down, their lips pursed with disgust.

  One of them was Officer Faith Fernandez. “We’ve gotten reports of kids running around the abandoned house,” she said. “But—Nancy Drew? Is that you?”

  I nodded. “Uh,” I said, not sure where to start. “Maybe it won’t surprise you, but . . .”

  “. . . you’re working on a case?” Officer Hernandez’s partner, Officer Collins, filled in. He didn’t exactly look impressed.

  “Yeah,” I admitted.

  Officer Fernandez sighed. “Honestly . . . ,” she muttered, looking behind us at the abandoned house. “Well, listen, ladies. I think you’d better come with us.”

  She unclipped a pair of handcuffs from her belt and held them up, glinting, in the light.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Who Knows You Best?

  “I’M STARVING,” BESS MURMURED, SQUIRMING in a hard plastic chair at the River Heights Police Station.

  George frowned at her. “Bess,” she said, ??
?that is literally the least of our problems right now.”

  “On the bright side, we’re not being charged with anything,” I piped up, feeling sincerely grateful for the officers’ mercy. Though they had given us quite a lecture about the dangers of trespassing, the stupidity of the whole fascination with the Furstenberg house, and the fact that there was nothing wrong with Izzy besides being a teenager, which was the worst (chortle).

  When I tried to press Officers Fernandez and Collins about what happened to Mrs. Furstenberg, they said it was probably just an accident, “but people do love being morbid.” For some reason, that wasn’t much comfort. They confirmed that they had spent a year looking for Mrs. Furstenberg’s son, Henry, but that they hadn’t had much luck, and now that the estate had been passed on to a cousin, the case was considered closed.

  As Bess continued to moan about her hunger, I heard a familiar voice from the reception desk. “. . . my daughter, Nancy?”

  “Shhhh,” I hissed at Bess.

  “Of course, Mr. Drew,” the receptionist said smoothly. “You’ll just need to sign these papers. I’ll go get her.”

  I shot an apologetic smile at Bess and George for being the first one picked up, but they just smiled back and waved me on. When the receptionist came in, I stood and followed her, as instructed, to the lobby. My dad was standing there, straight and tall, holding his coat with an unreadable expression.

  “Hey,” I said nervously, hoping for a smile.

  “Hey,” he replied, his serious face dissolving as he smiled back.

  “Look, I’m not foolish enough to think that you’d stop investigating a case just because the police picked you up,” Dad was saying as we turned onto Elm Street, “but I want you to be careful. I know you have a good head on your shoulders, but I don’t want you taking any unnecessary risks.”