Sunny and Sondra and I started talking about making posters that would let other beachgoers know why it was important not to litter. The kids thought that would be a great project, and before long we had planned a program of beach activities for the following week.
Alyssa joined us after awhile. “It’s getting near dinnertime,” she said. “Sunny and Dawn, would you two lay out those blankets so we can sit on them while we eat? Dean and Sondra and I will start the fire and get the food ready for the barbecue.”
“Sure,” I replied. Sunny and I set to work. Enticing smells were already drifting out of the beach club dining room, where the luau was under way. I was hungry, and the thought of a veggie burger hot off the fire kept me working fast. By the time Sunny and I had finished our job, the fire was ready to be lit.
“Stand back, everybody,” said Dean. He bent to light the fire, and the dry wood caught immediately.
“Ohh!” said the kids, as they watched the flames rising into the darkening sky.
“Pretty!” said Stephie. “And warm.” She held her hands out toward the fire. The sun was going down, and I noticed that there was a chill in the air. A thin white mist was beginning to rise over the ocean. Sunny and I got busy matching kids up with their sweaters and jackets and helping the younger ones button and zip.
Erick and Ryan and some of the other kids began a wild dance around the bonfire, yelling and throwing their hands in the air. Alyssa shook her head, smiling. “Might as well let them go to it,” she said. “They’ll burn off some energy.” The younger kids chose a blanket near the fire and sat quietly, watching the flames.
It wasn’t long before the fire had burnt down enough to cook on. Sunny and I skewered hot dogs on sticks and held them over the coals, while Dean set up a grill for burgers. As each round was finished, we passed the food out to the kids, who wolfed it down as fast as we could cook it. Finally, they had all been fed. Then we ate our own dinner, and I have to say that I’ve never had a veggie burger that tasted quite so good. The combination of a busy evening, the salt air coming off the ocean, and the warm, glowing bonfire seemed to make me incredibly hungry.
The kids settled into a quieter mood as we began toasting marshmallows for our s’mores. Some of the younger ones even dozed off. I saw Ruby sleeping with her head on Stephie’s lap. Sunny and I walked around the circle of kids, making sure everyone was warm and cozy. I put on my sweatpants and pulled a big sweater over my head. The moon was rising by then, and the beach had become eerie-looking and chilly.
“Time for ghost stories,” said Alyssa, her face alight in the glow of the fire. “Anybody know a good one?”
“I do! I do!” said Erick. “Can I go first?”
Alyssa nodded, and Erick began that old tale about the spook who’s walking up the stairs, step by step, slowly, slowly — until he gets you! The kids shrieked and giggled at the surprise ending. Then another boy named Justin began to tell a story about a swamp monster that glowed in the dark.
I smiled over at Sunny. I was pretty sure she was thinking what I was thinking — this was the perfect setting for ghost stories. Of course, the stories that the kids were telling were fairly tame, not like some I know. I think I’ve read every ghost story in the world, and I prefer the really scary ones. But no ghost story is as good as a real ghost. I thought about the ghost that might haunt my old farmhouse back in Stoneybrook. There’s a secret passage in that house — did I mention it? — and some people think the ghost of the crazy son of one of the previous owners may haunt it. His name is Jared Mulray, and he’s supposed to have died of a broken heart. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard him once or twice, but I haven’t had an actual sighting yet. If I do, it will be one of the best moments of my life — even if it scares the pants off me.
My thoughts were interrupted by a cry from Erick. “Look at that!” he said, pointing out toward the ocean. I turned to look, and caught a glimpse of a faraway movement, though it was hard to make out much through the mist.
Within seconds, everybody was on their feet. (Everybody except the little kids who were asleep, of course.) We stared out at the breakers, trying to figure out what we were seeing.
“It’s a surfer,” Sunny said under her breath.
“But why would anybody be surfing on this kind of night?” wondered Alyssa.
Alyssa was right. It was hardly an ideal night for surfing, with all that mist. And even with the moon shining, it was pretty dark.
I looked again, but I couldn’t see anything this time. Erick began to run, leading a group of kids along the beach toward the last place we had seen the figure. Sunny and I followed them. By the time we arrived at the edge of the water, nothing was to be seen out on the ocean.
“A ghost!” said Erick. “It was a ghost, I bet you anything.”
“A surfer ghost?” said Sunny.
“I bet it’s the ghost of Thrash,” I said quietly. I was hugging myself, trying to stay warm. Suddenly, I couldn’t stop shivering.
We herded the kids back to the bonfire, trying to calm them down so that they wouldn’t scare any younger kids who had woken up.
Soon after that, the beach party ended. Alyssa gave Sunny and me a ride home, and on the way we discussed the “surfer ghost.” Even though Sunny loves ghost stories, she doesn’t believe in real ghosts. She and Alyssa were positive there was a perfectly good explanation for whatever we’d seen. For example, Alyssa thought it might have been a dolphin.
But I wasn’t so sure.
Over the next week, the kids at the beach program were full of speculation about the surfer ghost. The story grew, and soon other people were reporting sightings. Even at school, it was all anybody talked about. I think a lot of people were just having fun with the story, but I took it seriously. I knew I had seen something that night. It looked like a ghost. And if it was a ghost that surfed, it could have been the ghost of Thrash. His spirit might be haunting our beach. This could be the best ghost story yet!
I was trying to write regularly to all my friends back home, even though telling them everything that was going on was becoming harder. Too much was happening to be able to write it in one letter. What I really needed was to sit down with my friends and go over the facts, which is what I would do if I were back in Stoneybrook. The BSC has a great record for solving mysteries. But this time, I was on my own. Oh, I had Sunny and the We ♥ Kids Club, but it just wasn’t the same. First of all, Sunny flat out refuses to believe in ghosts. And she and Maggie and Jill don’t seem to get as excited about mysteries as my Connecticut friends do.
No, if I were going to find out what had happened to Thrash, I would have to do it by myself. I had thought about it a lot since the day I heard he had vanished. The sighting of the surfer ghost, and the talk about it afterward, only added to my curiosity. Here’s what I was thinking: First of all, Thrash had disappeared without a trace. Second, I had seen his mangled surfboard. Third, I had read in the paper that the police believed the board might have been tampered with. And fourth, a ghostly surfer was now riding the very waves that Thrash had last ridden.
Conclusion? Don’t think I’m silly, but I had begun to believe that Thrash had been murdered and his spirit was going to haunt the beach until the murderer was caught. That’s a pretty common theme in ghost stories. Somebody gets stabbed, or poisoned, or whatever. The murderer thinks he has committed the perfect crime, and will never be found out. He goes on his merry way. But then, things begin to happen. He starts seeing images behind him in the mirror, or a hand appearing out of nowhere. Or he hears footsteps, and eerie wails. Books start to fall out of his bookshelves, all by themselves, and doors open even when nobody is around. Eventually, of course, the murderer is driven completely crazy by all this stuff, and he runs to the nearest police station and confesses everything. He’s arrested, and the ghost of the murdered person is finally at rest.
I figured that whoever murdered Thrash might be feeling tortured by the fact that a surfer ghost was riding the waves at the beac
h. But obviously, he (or she) wasn’t feeling tortured enough, because he hadn’t confessed yet. That left it to me to discover who the guilty party was, and to help matters along. After all, being a spirit wandering around waiting to be put to rest can’t be too much fun. Thrash might have been a surfer bum, but he deserved a better fate than that.
For more than a week after the beach party, I thought about the mystery every day. I thought about it as I was brushing my teeth in the morning, and as I sat in homeroom at school. I thought about it through my classes — and almost failed a math quiz! I thought about it while I was working at the beach program, but I made sure to watch closely over the kids I was responsible for at the same time. And at night, I dreamed about it. I dreamed about a surfer ghost, knifing through ghostly waves on a ghostly surfboard. One morning I woke up giggling because I had been wondering, in my dream, whether the ghost wore glow-in-the-dark jams when he surfed.
But all that thinking wasn’t getting me anywhere. It was time to take action. I decided that I should talk to the police and make sure I wasn’t missing any important information.
One afternoon, toward the end of our shift at the beach program, I told Sunny I was going to skip our surfing lesson that day.
“Why?” she asked. “You’re getting really good, and Buck says it’s important to keep practicing now, with the competition coming up soon.”
“I know,” I replied, “but I have to do something really important. I want to talk to the police about Thrash.”
“Oh, Thrash,” said Sunny, giving me an exasperated glance. She had decided I’d been madly in love with Thrash, and that I wasn’t “over” his death. “You have to let him go,” she said. “Get on with your life.”
I had given up on trying to tell Sunny that Thrash hadn’t been my type. I had also given up on trying to convince her to help me solve the mystery. She just didn’t seem all that interested. “I really need to do this,” I said firmly. “It’s important to me.”
Sunny shrugged. “Okay. Should I tell Buck you’ll be there tomorrow?”
“Sure,” I said, even though I wasn’t positive I would be. That would depend on what I found from the police.
When I was finished at the beach program, I walked to the police station, which is a few streets away from the beach. The station looked a lot different than the one in Stoneybrook. For one thing, among the regular patrol cars parked outside were several dune buggies painted in police colors. Around here, the police have to patrol the beach as well as the streets. And when I went inside, I noticed that the atmosphere was a little more informal than in Connecticut. The officers wore short-sleeved uniforms. They seemed pretty friendly, too.
“What can I do for you?” asked the officer at the front desk.
“I’m interested in the case of the surfer who disappeared,” I said. I had already decided that I wouldn’t say anything to the police about a surfing ghost. I didn’t want them to think I was a nut.
“Surfer, surfer,” muttered the officer. “Can you be more specific?”
“You know,” I said. “That guy whose board washed up on the beach. Thrash.”
“Oh,” said the officer, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands behind his head. “You mean that drifter.” He grinned. “What about him?”
I frowned. The officer didn’t seem to take the case very seriously. “I just wanted to know if there were any new leads.”
“Leads?” he repeated. He shook his head. “Usually these things just blow over. I don’t think anybody’s even filed a missing-person’s report on the guy.”
“But — but — he’s gone!” I said. “And his surfboard might have been tampered with. I wanted to find out what might have happened, like if there were high tides that night, or if there’s some way to trace the damage that was done to his board.”
By this time, another policeman had joined the first. He listened for awhile, shaking his head. The one at the desk was barely paying attention. He was filling out some kind of paperwork now, checking a file on his desk for information. I glanced down at the notebook I was carrying. I didn’t think I would be getting any information to write in it. And then I heard the second policeman mutter something to the first.
“If he washes up, he washes up,” was what I thought I heard him say. I looked at him, surprised, just in time to catch the two men grinning at each other.
Obviously, the police didn’t care what had happened to Thrash. I was mad, but I knew there was no point in yelling at them. Instead, I just said, “Thank you,” as frostily as I could, and left.
I didn’t take any surfing lessons for the rest of that week. I spent all my free time at the beach investigating the case on my own. I talked to the surf-fishermen and learned about the tides. I talked to Gonzo and the other surfers about how the waves broke on the shore. And I talked to the beach “regulars,” the brown-skinned older men and women who spend all day, every day, on the beach.
Soon, I had figured out that if Thrash’s body had washed up on the beach, it would have been down near the old pier, where big wooden pilings were still sticking out of the shallow water. I searched the area, hoping to find some sign of Thrash. I knew I would have heard if his body had washed up, and I certainly wasn’t expecting that it would now. But maybe I would find something.
One day, when she didn’t have a lesson, Sunny came with me on my tour of the beach. I told her what I was looking for.
“I don’t know what you’re trying to prove,” she said.
“I’m not sure myself,” I answered honestly. “I guess I’m trying to prove that Thrash really is dead, and that he was murdered. And I’d like to figure out who did it.”
Sunny shook her head. “Just like Nancy Drew!” she said. “Aren’t you afraid of getting mixed up with murderers?”
“I’ll go to the police when the time is right,” I said. “If and when I have any evidence. Meanwhile, nobody’s going to worry about some teenage girl who looks like she’s beachcombing.”
“That’s true,” said Sunny.
We walked along quietly for a while, without finding anything. We had made our way down to the old pier, and now we were working our way back to the spot where the surfers usually head into the water.
“Hey, look at this!” Sunny cried suddenly. She bent down to pick up something. “I almost stubbed my toe on it. Why do people dump all their junk on the beach? I don’t think those posters we made have helped at all.”
I took the object from her hand and examined it. I had known what it was from my first glance at it, but I wanted to be sure. “Do you know what this is?” I asked, holding up the small black-and-white can. “It’s Thrash’s wax. His personal, custom-made wax. Nobody else uses this.”
Sunny looked at me wide-eyed. “What are you trying to say?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe the ghost is using it.”
“Oooh!” said Sunny. “Scary! But unlikely. Maybe Thrash isn’t really dead, and he’s using it.”
“Not dead?” I said.
“Yeah, maybe he faked his own death, like Gonzo said. Or maybe he got hurt, and he has amnesia from bumping his head.”
“Right.” I grinned. “I think you may be watching too much TV. Anyway, this doesn’t prove anything. It’s a little dented and rusty. It could have been lying there in the sand since before Thrash disappeared.”
“That’s probably it,” said Sunny. “So, are we done being detectives for the day? I’m hot, and I could use a swim.”
We tore off our T-shirts and ran into the cool water. I tried to let the waves wash my brain clear of all the confusing clues — or non-clues — I had found, but I knew that I couldn’t forget about the mystery. I had to keep investigating. I had to find out what had happened to Thrash.
Jessi wrote me a long, funny letter about her experiences at the Arnold house that day. She knew, of course, about Carolyn’s accident and what Marilyn had said about “never leaving” her twin’s side. She had read
the entry in the club notebook. But she was still unprepared for what she saw that afternoon.
She arrived on time at the Arnolds’ and rang the bell. From inside, she heard Mrs. Arnold call, “Marilyn, would you let Jessi in? I’m busy getting ready to go.”
Jessi waited for what seemed like a long time. She was beginning to wonder if Marilyn had heard her mother. Maybe she was in the basement, practicing her gymnastics routine. But then, she heard noises in the front hallway — an uneven thumping sound, and a voice saying, “That’s right, just take it easy. Good! Good!” And then Marilyn opened the door.
“Hi, Jessi,” she said. Carolyn was standing beside her, leaning on her crutches and panting a little. “Hi,” she said, when she had caught her breath.
“Hi, you guys,” Jessi replied. “Thanks for letting me in. But you both didn’t have to come to the door.”
“Yes, we do,” said Marilyn. “Wherever I go, she goes. And wherever she goes, I go. We stick together. Anyway, the doctor said it was good for her to exercise a little and not just sit around all the time.”
Carolyn nodded. She looked tired, but she was smiling.
“How’s your ankle?” asked Jessi. She’s had a few sprains and other injuries herself, mostly from landing wrong in ballet class. And she knows how annoying they can be.
“It’s much better,” Marilyn answered for her sister. “The doctor says it’s healing just fine.”
Jessi grinned. “Thanks for the report, Nurse Marilyn. But I asked Carolyn. So, Carolyn, how is it?”
“Not too bad,” said Carolyn. “At first it was keeping me awake at night, but it doesn’t hurt so much anymore.”
“That’s good,” said Jessi. “You’ll be off those crutches in no time.”
“She’s getting really good at them,” said Marilyn. “And I can use them, too. Want to see?” Carolyn handed her a crutch, and the two of them hopped up and down the hall on one crutch each, giggling and shrieking as they went.