Cape Mermaid Mystery

  Still, Nancy felt that there had to be a human explanation. Last night she, George, and Bess had checked out the second set of stairs leading down from the attic. The stairs were carpeted, which meant that if someone had used them to escape downstairs, their footsteps would have been muffled and hard to hear.

  Nancy had also learned from Claire and Leo that there was no one in the kitchen—or anywhere on the first floor—at that time, which meant that the person could have left the house unseen. The Katzes apparently kept the front and back doors unlocked until ten p.m.

  Nancy and her group finally arrived at the history museum. Tucked between an antique store and a bakery called Muffin Madness, it was housed in a small brick building with plum shutters and a sign that said CAPE MERMAID HISTORY MUSEUM in big gold letters.

  They all went inside. Nancy glanced around. The front lobby was filled with black-and-white photographs of Cape Mermaid, mermaid statues, and model ships in glass cases, among other things.

  There was a young man at the front desk. The name tag on his Cape Mermaid T-shirt said “Brandon.” “Admission is free, so just go right on in,” he said pleasantly. “You might be interested in the special exhibit on the history of whaling.”

  “Thanks! We’re here to see the exhibit on Rowena Ellison, though,” Nancy explained.

  “Yeah, that exhibit’s been especially popular lately. It’s in the Coral Room, to your right,” Brandon said.

  Nancy and the others headed into the Coral Room. The Rowena Ellison exhibit took up one wall. There were various photographs of her at different stages of her life—from when she was a baby all the way to when she was a grandmother. There was also a photograph of her old beach cottage, which Nancy recognized from Tessie’s video footage.

  There was a big plaque with some details about her life. It said that she was born in Cape Mermaid, where she lived all her life except for a brief period when she attended art school in Philadelphia. It also said that she especially liked to paint seascapes and other local scenery, although she was often hired to paint portraits as well. She was married to an architect and had three children and six grandchildren. She died at the age of eighty-two.

  There were four paintings on the wall: two seascapes, a portrait of a young girl, and one boardwalk scene. Nancy didn’t know a lot about art, but she thought the paintings were really good. Rowena Ellison seemed to like playing around with colors. She used surprising, unexpected shades, like a single brushstroke of bright orange in an ocean wave.

  “Please let me know if you have any questions,” someone called out.

  Nancy turned around. A woman was standing in the doorways holding a clipboard. She wore gray slacks and a white cotton sweater, and her silvery hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail. Her name tag read: MRS. BISHOP. Nancy remembered Tessie saying that she was the director of the museum.

  “Oh, hi, Mrs. Bishop! I have a question!” Tessie clicked on her KidCam and pointed it at her. “Can you tell us if you’ve seen the ghost of Rowena Ellison around the museum?” she said in her serious-sounding reporter voice.

  Mrs. Bishop’s face turned bright red. “Don’t you and your friends have better things to do than stir up trouble?” she demanded angrily.

  Tessie’s face turned bright red too. “We are not stirring up trouble!” she said huffily. “We have proof that Rowena’s ghost is haunting Cape Mermaid! She’s been terrifying local citizens!”

  “Yes, well, I don’t have time for you little kids and your make-believe games. Excuse me.” Mrs. Bishop turned on her heels and left the room.

  Michaela gasped. “Seriously? Did she just call us little kids?”

  “Yeah, doesn’t she know we’re ten? We’re practically teenagers!” Emma added.

  “I don’t know about that,” Hannah said, chuckling. “I don’t think she liked the camera too much—and I do know that we should all be careful what we say to people about this so-called ghost. Maybe Mrs. Bishop is afraid that visitors will stay away from the history museum if they think it’s haunted.”

  “Or maybe twice as many visitors will come here because it’s haunted,” Tessie said. “Ghosts are supercool!”

  “More like superterrifying,” Bess muttered under her breath.

  As Nancy listened to the discussion, she wondered about Mrs. Bishop. Why did she get so mad when Tessie brought up the ghost? Tessie had mentioned before that Mrs. Bishop was kind of cranky. Was she just being cranky now? Or was it something else?

  “Yes, I have personally encountered the ghost of Rowena Ellison,” Mrs. Yamada said dramatically. The librarian put the back of her hand on her forehead and fluttered her eyelids, as though she was about to faint. “I have many stories to share! Is your video camera on?” she asked Tessie, who nodded from behind her KidCam.

  “Shhhh!” several people whispered from nearby tables.

  “Oh my goodness, I’m sorry! I just get so carried away on this subject that I forget we’re in a library! Please, let us continue this very important conversation in my office,” Mrs. Yamada said in a low voice to Tessie and the others.

  Tessie, Nancy, George, Bess, Hannah, Michaela, and Emma had stopped by the Cape Mermaid Public Library as part of the “ghost tour,” to interview Mrs. Yamada and also to check out a biography of Rowena Ellison. Nancy thought it was kind of funny that the patrons were reminding the librarian to be quiet, and not the other way around.

  Nancy had flipped quickly through the Rowena Ellison book. In the “Family Tree” section in back, she saw that Rowena had three daughters, who eventually married and had children of their own. One of the daughters even named her own daughter Rowena.

  They all followed Mrs. Yamada out of the main reading room and down the hall into her office. “So, Mrs. Yamada. Tell us about the ghost,” Tessie said once they were settled. “You said you saw her, right?”

  “Several times,” Mrs. Yamada said. “Oh my goodness, where do I begin? Last Wednesday I was closing up here, alone, when I heard a terrifying ghostly noise. It sounded like a fierce wind whistling through tree branches!”

  “Well . . . could it have been a fierce wind blowing through tree branches?” George asked her.

  “Yeah. Wasn’t last Wednesday that big storm?” Emma added.

  Tessie glared at Emma. “I think we should let Mrs. Yamada talk, don’t you? Go on, Mrs. Yamada,” she prompted her.

  Mrs. Yamada sniffed. “Yes, well, I’m one hundred percent sure it was the ghost of Rowena Ellison! And then, on Friday, I felt a cold hand on the back of my shoulder. When I turned around, there was no one there!”

  “Maybe somebody with cold hands brushed up against you by accident? And they were gone by the time you turned around?” Nancy pointed out.

  “Absolutely not! It was a supernatural presence, I assure you!” Mrs. Yamada insisted. “And then there was the time several weeks ago when I saw a mysterious message scribbled on the ladies’ room wall. It said, and I quote, ‘Nora W. was here.’” She paused. “Don’t you all get it? ‘Nora W.’ is an anagram of Rowena!”

  Nancy knew about anagrams from school. They were words that shared the same letters, except scrambled around.

  “N, o, r, a, w . . . no, it’s not,” Michaela said, twirling a lock of her hair. “You’re missing an E. Plus, I bet that was Nora Waxman. She got in big, fat trouble once for writing her name all over the girls’ bathroom at school.”

  “Michaela!” Tessie said irritably. “Why are you and Emma being so lame? Reporters aren’t supposed tell their sources they’re wrong!”

  “Uh, sorry,” Emma grumbled. She crumpled her baseball cap in her hands.

  Mrs. Yamada spent the next half hour elaborating on her stories. As Nancy listened, she began to think that maybe, just maybe, the librarian might be exaggerating a little about these “ghostly encounters.” In any case, they didn’t sound very ghostly to her.

  “This is the perfect place to talk about our mystery!” Bess said eagerly. She sat back in the pink vinyl boot
h and broke off a piece of chocolate-pecan bark. “Who wants some?”

  The group had stopped by the Candygram Shoppe, just around the corner from the library. George, Tessie, Michaela, and Emma all raised their hands. Hannah was up at the counter paying for everyone’s candy. As the other girls chatted, Nancy searched through her backpack. With a frown she realized that she had forgotten to bring her special detective notebook from home. She always recorded the details of the Clue Crew’s cases in it, such as clues and suspects.

  “Does anyone have some paper and a pen I could use?” Nancy asked. “I think I left my detective notebook back in River Heights.”

  “Here!” Michaela reached into her bag and pulled out a slender notebook. She leafed through it quickly and tore out several pages, which she folded and put back in her backpack. Then she handed the notebook to Nancy, along with a pen. “You can keep them.”

  Nancy glanced at the cover of the notebook. It had a picture of a mermaid on it. “Thanks, Michaela. Are you sure?”

  “Sure! I have more at home,” Michaela replied.

  “Great! I want to start writing down everything we’ve learned about Rowena’s, um, ghost,” Nancy said. “Let’s start with clues.”

  Nancy opened the notebook to a clean page. Just then, she felt a cold, clammy hand on her bare shoulder. “I . . . am . . . Rowena’s . . . ghost,” said an eerie voice.

  Nancy whirled around. Two boys were standing behind her, cracking up.

  “Julio! Henry! Not funny,” Tessie fumed.

  One of the boys had short black hair. The other boy had sun-streaked blond hair and freckles. They were wearing T-shirts, bathing suits, and flip-flops.

  “Julio did it,” the blond boy said, munching on a long red licorice string.

  “It was Henry’s idea. He said I should stick my hand in this and prank you guys.” Julio held up a cup of crushed ice.

  “We heard you talking about what’s-her-name’s ghost,” Henry went on.

  “Well, you were eavesdropping. Cut it out, or I’m totally telling your parents!” Tessie said angrily.

  Julio grinned. “Go ahead. They’ll think you’re crazy for believing in ghosts!”

  After they left, Tessie sighed loudly. “They are so immature,” she muttered under her breath.

  “Julio’s in my ballet class. He’s a really awesome dancer,” Michaela volunteered.

  “And Henry’s supergood at soccer,” Emma added. “Hey, speaking of soccer . . . my parents just bought me the coolest new cleats. They’re purple with pink stripes!”

  “No way, really?” Michaela said eagerly.

  Tessie rolled her eyes. “Girls! Focus! Otherwise we’re never going to solve this case!”

  Nancy picked up Michaela’s pen and opened the mermaid notebook to the first page. “Tessie’s right. Come on, everyone . . . let’s get to work,” she said.

  “I love the beach!” George said, dipping her toes in the surf.

  “Me too!” Tessie said.

  “Me three!” Tessie’s little sister Amanda added. She dug her plastic shovel into the sand. “Who wants to build a sandcastle with me?”

  Hannah had brought Nancy, George, Bess, Tessie, and Amanda to Ducksbill Beach, near the Mermaid Inn. Even though it was after four o’clock, it was still hot outside, and the beach was supercrowded.

  “I’ll build a sandcastle with you in a minute,” Nancy told Amanda as she began leafing through the mermaid notebook. “As soon as we finish going over these clues and suspects one more time.”

  Amanda made a face. “Clues and specks? What are those?”

  “The girls are busy with their ghost mystery. Come on, Amanda, I’ll build a sandcastle with you,” Hannah offered. “How about over there, by those big rocks?”

  “Yay!” Amanda said excitedly.

  Hannah and Amanda wandered off with a big bucket of beach toys. Nancy sat up on the blanket and turned to Tessie, George, and Bess. Tessie had her KidCam on the ON position, recording the conversation.

  “Okay. So here are the clues we wrote down at the candy shop earlier. There’s the writing on the attic wall, plus the spooky noises, plus your video from two weeks ago, Tessie, ” Nancy said, trailing her finger down the clues page. “Oh, and I wrote down everything Mrs. Yamada told us too.”

  “I’m not sure Mrs. Yamada really saw a ghost, though,” George said. “Her stories were kind of weird.”

  “I know what you mean,” Nancy agreed.

  “Well, I think she definitely saw a ghost!” Tessie said firmly.

  Bess held up her hand. “Me too!”

  “Okay, well . . . moving on.” Nancy flipped to the next page, which was the suspects page. “We haven’t listed any suspects yet. What about those boys, Julio and Henry? Do you think they might be running around Cape Mermaid pretending to be Rowena’s ghost?” The girls had passed Julio and Henry leaving the beach about twenty minutes ago.

  Tessie peered out from behind her KidCam. “No! Besides, why do we need a list of suspects? There can’t be any suspects in this case, because the ghost is real!”

  “Tessie! You guys! Oh my gosh!”

  Nancy looked up. Emma and Michaela were running through the sand toward them. They stopped at the edge of the beach blanket, breathless, looking really upset.

  “What’s wrong?” Tessie demanded.

  “We . . . Michaela, you tell them!” Emma stammered.

  “You’ll never believe it. We just saw Rowena’s ghost!” Michaela blurted out.

  Tessie looked confused. “Y-you saw Rowena’s ghost? Where?”

  “At her cottage, just now,” Michaela said, pointing toward the other end of the beach. “After we left you guys at the Candygram Shoppe, I had a ballet class, and Emma had baseball practice. Then we met up at my house, and I was like, ‘It’s hot, do you want to go swimming?’ And Emma was like, ‘I don’t know, do you?’ And—”

  “Get to the ghost part!” Tessie said impatiently. She held up her KidCam and began recording the conversation.

  “Okay, okay!” Michaela said. “So we decided to come here, and we took the shortcut that goes past Rowena’s cottage. We were walking by when we saw her face in a window!”

  “She was so scary-looking!” Emma added, shivering. Next to her, Bess shivered too.

  “What did she look like?” Nancy asked the girls curiously.

  Emma and Michaela exchanged a glance. “You know . . . like a ghost,” Emma said after a moment.

  “Yeah. She was wearing white, and she had long, wispy, spooky hair.” Michaela paused. “She was staring right at us. Maybe she was trying to warn us!”

  “Warn you about what?” George asked.

  “To stop looking for her,” Emma said in a low voice. Michaela nodded in agreement.

  Nancy thought for a moment. “Did she look the same as that other time?” she said finally.

  Michaela frowned. “What other time?”

  “You know . . . when you guys saw her at Rowena’s cottage two weeks ago?” Nancy reminded her. “Tessie showed George and Bess and me the video this morning.”

  “Oh, that time.” Emma dropped her gaze and shrugged. “I guess she looked the same, yeah.”

  “She looked way scarier this time,” Michaela added.

  “Why don’t we all go over to the cottage right now?” George suggested. “Maybe the ghost or whatever is still there.”

  “Good idea!” Nancy said.

  “Bad idea,” Bess said immediately. “You guys go along without me. I can just stay here and, uh, guard our stuff.”

  Nancy tugged on Bess’s hand, laughing. “Come on. I promise we’ll be safe. Besides, this is our big chance. Maybe we’ll find out the real story behind our ghost!”

  “Why are we visiting some dumb old house?” Amanda complained, dragging her feet on the path. “Miss Hannah and I aren’t done with our princess sandcastle yet!”

  “It’ll be superquick and then we can go right back to the beach,” Nancy promised her.

>   “Yeah, Amanda, and if you keep whining, I’m telling mom and dad!” Tessie threatened her sister.

  “I hate you!” Amanda cried out.

  “I hate you more!” Tessie shot back.

  “Amanda, Tessie, let’s calm down,” Hannah interjected. “Nancy . . . girls . . . I want to emphasize again that we absolutely can’t go inside this cottage. Even if it’s abandoned, it belongs to somebody. Which means that we can’t trespass.”

  “We know, Hannah,” George said, nodding. “We’ll be supercareful and stay outside the whole time.”

  “Way outside,” Bess said emphatically.

  Nancy continued leading the way down the sandy path, which wound through gentle, sloping dunes and scraggly beach plum bushes. She glanced over her shoulder at Ducksbill Beach in the distance.

  She noticed that Tessie had dropped behind George, Bess, Hannah, and Amanda and joined Michaela and Emma in the rear. The three friends were whispering with their heads huddled together. Nancy wondered what they were talking about.

  The group soon reached Rowena’s cottage. Nancy recognized it from the photograph they’d seen that morning at the history museum, and also from Tessie’s video. The cottage was small and box-shaped, with brown cedar shingles and sea-green shutters. The brown shingles were weathered and faded, and the paint on the shutters was badly chipped.

  Nancy made her way to the front stoop through an overgrown garden of weeds and wildflowers. She saw that there were two windows in front of the cottage, both caked with salt and dirt and splintered with cracks.

  “She was looking at us through that one.” Michaela caught up to Nancy and pointed to the window on the right. She began twirling her hair nervously.

  Nancy went up the window and peered through it. Inside was a small living room with furniture covered with light-colored sheets. Just beyond the living room was a tiny kitchen. Everything seemed incredibly dusty and cobwebby. Nancy tried to make out footprints on the floors, but it was too hard to see.