Baby-Sitters' Fright Night

  Abby asked a few questions, listened, then hung up. “No new check-ins since we arrived. And no check-outs.”

  “I need the notebook to write all this down,” sighed Mal. Then she brightened. “I know — I’ll call Jessi and Shannon. They’re baby-sitting at my house this afternoon. They can send the notebook to me with Mr. Wu and Mrs. Blake.”

  “Good idea, Mallory,” I said absently. Then I said, “What about your newspaper spy? You know, that guy Stacey saw, who came into the room where the Witch’s Eye had been and flashed some kind of ID? Where does he fit in?”

  That distracted Mallory for a moment. “I don’t know. But if the police let him in, he couldn’t be the criminal.”

  “Unless he’s in disguise,” suggested Abby. “Maybe he, um, killed the real guy and then stole his identity. Happens all the time.”

  “Yeah, right, Abby,” I said.

  “Well, if the police let him in, he can’t be high on our list of suspects,” Mallory mused. “But I’ll leave him on it, just as soon as I make the list of suspects.”

  “How about that guy who tried to buy the diamond?” said Stacey. “Harvey Hapgood? Maybe he’s so desperate for it that he stole it.”

  “Yeah. Harvey Hapgood. Sure! He’s obsessed with it,” said Abby, going off on another roll. “It haunts him day and night. He can’t live without it. It’s gotta be. Happens —”

  “All the time,” the rest of us chorused.

  “Or the old double-cross,” Abby went on.

  “I can’t wait,” I muttered.

  “Mrs. Moorehouse stole the diamond,” Abby said.

  “Not if she didn’t have insurance,” countered Mary Anne. “And from what I overheard, she doesn’t. Besides, she’s in a wheelchair. Even in a maintenance worker’s uniform, she’d be noticeable.”

  “She’s just faking!” persisted Abby. “How do we know she really can’t walk? Her nurse knows, because she’s not really a nurse. They’re in it together.”

  We were all silent. It could be a possibility — except for that insurance thing.

  Unless Mrs. Moorehouse wasn’t telling the truth about the insurance. Maybe it wasn’t Mrs. Moorehouse and Ms. Furusawa. Maybe it was Mrs. Moorehouse and someone else.

  We talked over the theft until it was time to go down to lunch, and then we talked it over some more. Because naturally, that was what everyone was talking about — the theft of the Witch’s Eye.

  When the whole SMS group had been seated for lunch, Mr. Blake made an announcement about the theft. He said he knew we’d all heard about it, and that he didn’t think it would interfere too much with our trip, though the Trove House Museum, unfortunately, would have to remain closed for a while. “If this presents a problem for any of you, in terms of your history projects, please let me know. Otherwise, let’s all try to carry on normally,” he said.

  Of course, the room was abuzz before he even sat down. It’s amazing how fast rumors can spread. Long before lunch was over, we’d been told that a partial fingerprint had been found, a roadblock had been set up, and the police had sent the maintenance uniform to the FBI for analysis. How much of it was true? Who knew? Sitting in the dining room was like playing telephone — you know, that game in which you whisper something quickly in a person’s ear, and they pass it along the same way, and at the end of the chain, the last person says what she or he has heard. It usually has no resemblance to the original sentence.

  I kept a sharp eye on Alan, but he was as caught up in the excitement as everybody else. The dining room of the inn remained a prank-free zone, at least for the moment.

  It did not, however, remain cruelty-free. And I’m not talking about the fact that meat was served (sorry, Dawn). I’m talking about Cokie and Grace and their ongoing torment of Eileen.

  Eileen was sitting silently, almost alone at her table. Before the trip, she’d been one of those quiet kids who sits with the other quiet kids. But now the other quiet kids were melting away, unwilling to be lumped in with her and included in Cokie’s nasty jibes.

  Eileen kept her head down when Cokie and Grace and their latest herd of sheep stopped at her table. “Who do you think stole the Witch’s Eye, Eileen?” asked Cokie in a loud voice.

  Staring at her almost untouched plate of food, Eileen shrugged.

  “You don’t know? I thought maybe you were riding over the museum on your broomstick when the theft occurred, and saw whoever did it sneaking out.” Cokie swept out of the room on a wave of evil laughter.

  “Cokie should be buried at a crossroads with a stake in her heart,” muttered Abby.

  “If you’re implying that Cokie is a witch, forget it,” I said. “I think you’re insulting witchkind.”

  “Well, calling her human is insulting humankind,” said Mary Anne unexpectedly. We all looked at her in mild shock. Mary Anne almost never says anything nasty about anyone, because she always believes the best of people, even people like Cokie, who has done her utmost to make Mary Anne feel rotten.

  Mal said slowly, “It is too bad that Eileen is so weird. It makes her an easy target.” She stopped talking abruptly as Eileen rose from her table and walked past us out of the dining room. Then Ms. Garcia came over to our table. She was holding her five-year-old daughter’s hand. “Mary Anne, I want to call on your baby-sitting skills this afternoon if I may. Since the whole group is going to walk along the Essex pedestrian mall and participate in some of the Haunted Happenings activities, will you take charge of Nidia for me?”

  “Sure,” replied Mary Anne. “Now?”

  “If it is not too much trouble. We’re going to be assembling in the lobby in just a few minutes and I’m going to need to keep my attention focused on maintaining order.”

  Mary Anne smiled at Nidia. “Hi, Nidia. Want to stay with me for a while?” Nidia nodded and transferred her hand from her mother’s to Mary Anne’s without hesitation.

  “Wow,” I said. “Most kids are kind of shy with strangers.”

  “Not Nidia,” said Ms. Garcia. “Since there are just the two of us, she’s learned to be more self-reliant than most five-year-olds. And she’s just naturally friendly, too, like her father was.” She ran her hands lightly over Nidia’s short curls and said, “I won’t be far away, Nidia, okay?”

  “Okay,” agreed Nidia.

  With Nidia in tow, we went out to cruise the bewitching streets of Salem. All kinds of amazing things were going on. Storytellers were telling tales of Old Salem; fortune-tellers were reading palms and tarot cards. And we saw several people wearing “Ask a Witch” buttons. They weren’t really witches, of course, but people who could give answers to questions about the history of Salem, particularly the part pertaining to the famous witch trials. A lot of SMS kids stopped to question the “witches.” Watching them, I suddenly remembered that I — like everyone else on this trip — was supposed to be pulling together a history project. I’d been so caught up in stewing about the Witch’s Eye that I hadn’t given my schoolwork much thought.

  Hoping for inspiration, I ducked into a bookstore that appeared to be overflowing with books. Mal came along. She wanted to check for blank notebooks, “just in case,” and she ended up adding two more books about Salem to her collection. She also bought a copy of The House of the Seven Gables. It was at the front of the store, in a display of books about Salem — the witch trials and the town in general.

  “Look,” I said to Mallory. “They have copies of The Crucible.” I picked one up and flipped through it. The play was being staged as part of the Salem Halloween celebration. Our group was going to see it that night. I looked at the man behind the counter. “This is a great bookstore,” I said.

  “Thanks,” he replied. As he made change for Mallory, he continued, “You know, some people come in and see our books about the witch trials and tell me how awful it is that I’m selling ‘books like that.’ I’ve actually had people say to me, ‘Where I come from, you wouldn’t be allowed to sell such evil books.’ ”

  I was
outraged. “That’s censorship. Or something.”

  He nodded. “I know. But I just tell them that I’m glad they live wherever they live, and not here.”

  Mal and I both laughed. We said good-bye and went out to find the others. We located Stacey, Mary Anne, and Nidia at a face-painting booth. Nidia was having her face painted like a cat’s. “I’m going to be a cat at the parade tomorrow night,” she announced.

  “I thought the parade was in the afternoon,” said Stacey in surprise. “The children’s costume parade.” She nodded toward a sign listing all the events for the Haunted Happenings.

  Just then, Abby appeared. “Nidia’s right,” she said. “There’s another parade — for grownups, I guess — tomorrow evening.”

  “I’m there,” I declared.

  “Me, too,” said Abby.

  “Do you think it will be okay with Mrs. Bernhardt and the others?” Mary Anne asked anxiously.

  “We can ask, but I bet they’ll say yes. As long as we promise it won’t interfere with our projects,” Mal said.

  Stacey bought a shirt that said “Boo” on it (for Claudia, she said), and Abby bought a little gold key chain with a clip for her pet pumpkin. We had to go back to the inn much too soon. But the play started at seven, and the inn was preparing a special New England boiled dinner for us beforehand. Plus, we were supposed to take some time to do research. Mal dashed into her room and called her house, to ask Jessi and Shannon to send the mystery notebook. Mary Anne and I read for a while, and then we all dressed up (sort of — I put on corduroys and my best oxford shirt and a sweater vest). Naturally, we started talking about the mystery again while we were getting ready. Everybody agreed that we’d have to keep our eyes and ears open for clues, especially during dinner, when the dining room would be full of potential suspects.

  Nothing unusual happened, though. And the New England boiled dinner was just that — everything boiled. But I bravely refrained from making the sort of comments I usually make over food at our school cafeteria. After a brief talk about the play, which was written by Arthur Miller, Mr. Baker handed out our theater tickets and then, since everything in Salem seems to be within walking distance, we walked to the theater.

  I hate to admit this, but at the theater, Alan got me again, and I still haven’t figured out how he did it. All I know is that everyone else handed their tickets over to ushers and went to sit down. But when the usher started escorting me to my seat, we ended up in the back corner of the theater. She frowned down at the ticket. “If we go any further,” she muttered, “we’ll be out in the parking lot.” She trained a flashlight on my ticket, peered at it intently, and then said, “Someone’s tampered with this.”

  She looked at me, and I felt my face turn red. “Alan,” I gasped. “Oh, is he ever going to pay. What a major rat.”

  The usher laughed. “There’s one in every school,” she said. She studied the ticket a moment longer, then said, “I see where you are really supposed to be.”

  We walked back down the aisle, and she pointed me toward a seat by Abby.

  “Good grief,” I muttered, after thanking the usher and sliding into my seat (I only had to crawl over about a dozen people, since I was so late). As the lights went down, I heard Alan’s familiar snicker somewhere over my right shoulder. I turned to make sure he wasn’t too close. He made a face, and I made one back in spite of myself. But at least I knew he was six rows back and out of mischief-making distance.

  Once the play began, I didn’t think about Alan, or the Witch’s Eye, or anything else. It was totally absorbing. The Crucible is all about the Salem Witch Trials, and how innocent people were convicted of things they didn’t do, many of them because they wouldn’t lie and confess or go along with the crowd in condemning others who were different.

  Mary Anne cried.

  Stacey said soberly, as we headed toward the lobby, “Wow. I’m never going to make jokes about witches again. That whole thing was so awful. I never realized.”

  “What an amazing play,” Mal put in. “Arthur Miller is such a talented writer.”

  “It really makes you think, about all kinds of prejudice,” Mary Anne said, between sniffs.

  We drifted out to the front of the theater, talking in hushed voices. Suddenly Abby careened dramatically out of the door of the ladies room. I hadn’t even noticed that she wasn’t with us.

  “Abby?” said Mallory. “What’s wrong?”

  Abby stopped staggering. She straightened up and grinned. “Nothing,” she said. “Except that someone gave me a full body block, coming out of the bathroom. Good thing I’m a soccer player. I slammed her back.”

  “Did you see who it was?” I asked.

  Abby shrugged. “Nah.” She held up her ceramic pumpkin. “Maybe she didn’t think I should be allowed to take pets into the bathroom.”

  “Or maybe you just bought yourself a bad-luck pumpkin.”

  “Shhh.” Abby cupped her hand around the pumpkin. “Cornucopia might hear you.”

  “Cornucopia?” asked Mallory.

  “That’s what I call my new pet,” explained Abby.

  I groaned and rolled my eyes. Sometimes, Abby can be so weird.

  When Stacey called on Friday night, I was hunched over my homework, brooding deeply. Homework! On a Friday night! Okay, so it was homework I was doing over, and I suppose I should have been glad that my teacher was letting me rethink some of my answers in math. But gratitude was not what I was feeling.

  “Stacey!” I gasped when I heard her voice. “You’ve saved my life.” Before she could say anything else, I’d launched into some of the more puzzling aspects of my recycled math homework.

  Stacey listened. She made suggestions. She explained. The appearance (and correctness) of my homework improved considerably.

  I wrote the answer to the last question and sighed with relief. Then I remembered what Jessi and Shannon had told me, about their phone call from Mal.

  “STACEY!” I shrieked. “What’s happening? Tell me everything!”

  “What?” said Stacey. “I can’t hear you. I think you blew out my eardrum.”

  I took the hint and softened my voice. “New clues? New suspects?”

  “Not yet,” said Stacey. She told me that they thought the thief must be someone who was still in the hotel, since no one had checked out. That made sense. No arrests had been made, but Stacey had heard that the police didn’t want any of the guests leaving Salem yet.

  I was beginning to feel deeply envious that they were in Salem having all the excitement when Stacey told me about the Halloween parade.

  “We need costume suggestions, Claud,” she concluded.

  I immediately felt better. And less left out. “Costumes,” I said. “Wow. We’ll have to work around what you guys took with you. Describe your traveling wardrobes, please.”

  We spent a very satisfying half hour going over the possibilities. We came up with some decent costume ideas which would require only face paint, makeup, and paper bags, augmented (see, I learn my vocabulary words even if I can’t spell them) by a few small purchases from the local stores.

  “Be sure to take a photo,” I said. “Take many. Maybe I will make a Salem collage after all.”

  “I will,” promised Stacey.

  “And call me instantly if you find any new clues or solve the mystery.”

  “Done,” Stacey vowed. She said good-bye and we hung up. I stared down at my homework for a moment. For tonight, at least, I’d fought my homework and I’d won. But it had seemed extra-hard. And I’d really needed Stacey’s help. I hoped this didn’t mean I had more school troubles ahead.

  School. I made a face. It was the weekend, I told myself. My math homework was done, at least. I wasn’t going to think about school anymore that night. I decided to read a Nancy Drew book and do some junk food munching — two things that go together perfectly, if you ask me.

  * * *

  On Saturday morning, Logan and I were sitting for a combined Brewer/Thomas/Pa
padakis group, all assembled at Kristy’s house. Since the day was gray, we were gathered indoors. “I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow,” said Karen anxiously. “Tomorrow is Halloween.”

  “It’s not going to rain,” said Hannie Papadakis. She is one of Karen’s best friends. They are the same age and go to school together at Stoneybrook Academy.

  “Good,” said Karen. “Because if it does, and you bump into a real ghost on Halloween while it is, then you will melt.”

  Her brother Andrew, who is four and somewhat sensitive, immediately looked frightened.

  “That’s not true,” said Logan firmly.

  “It could be true,” suggested Karen.

  “Not on this planet,” insisted Logan.

  That made Andrew smile.

  “So we’re stuck inside today, right?” asked Linny Papadakis. Linny is nine and a good friend of Kristy’s seven-year-old brother David Michael.

  “Yup,” said Logan cheerfully.

  “We could play hide-and-seek,” suggested Linny.

  “Yes!” Karen’s eyes widened behind her glasses and she held up her hands like claws. “And to make it exciting, we can jump out and go ‘boo’! That will make it Halloween Hide-and-Seek.”

  “Uh, no,” I said firmly, seeing Andrew hunch his shoulders. I thought for a moment and then asked, “Does everyone have a costume for Halloween?”

  Of course, everybody did. For the next few minutes Logan and I were swamped with descriptions of who was wearing what.

  “Whoa,” I said. “I wish I had known all this when I talked to Stacey last night.”

  “Stacey is in Salem, Massachusetts,” Karen explained importantly. “For a school trip. They traveled on a bus, and they are staying overnight in an inn. An inn is an old house that is like a hotel, except probably haunted.”

  “The Salem Gables Inn is not haunted,” I interrupted, trying not to laugh.

  “But it could be,” said Karen.

  Logan and I exchanged glances, and made a mutual decision to let that go.

  “Because if I’d known what great costumes you all had,” I continued, “it would have helped me come up with ideas for costumes for Kristy and Stacey and Mallory and Abby.”