Baby-Sitters' Fright Night

  “My jewelry,” she said faintly. But a few minutes later she said in a puzzled voice, “It’s all here. What about you, Abby? Are you missing anything?”

  “Not that I can tell,” I said. I travel pretty light, so unless the thief was interested in long underwear or sweats or something, he was out of luck.

  Except for my money! My money! I’d left most of it in the room, in the bedside table. I hadn’t taken it with me because I didn’t want it to be stolen, foresight for which I had congratulated myself after my waist pack was snatched.

  But it was still there, too, beneath the over-turned drawer on the floor next to the bed.

  “Whoa,” said Kristy’s voice from the doorway. “What’s the deal here?”

  “Oh, no!” Mary Anne’s voice chimed in.

  “I don’t know,” I said as Kristy stepped forward and helped me wrestle the mattress back into place, while Mary Anne did the same for Stacey. “But it doesn’t look like a robbery. As far as we can tell, nothing is missing. No money, no jewelry.”

  “Why would someone do this?” Kristy frowned and put her hand up to rub at the two red “fang” marks on her neck.

  “Not Alan,” said Mary Anne. “Or Cary, either.”

  “Cokie and company?” I guessed.

  Kristy shook her head. “No, not even Cokie. Besides, she has someone else to pick on right now.”

  “Plus,” Stacey pointed out, “she couldn’t get into this room. I mean, she’s not a professional lock picker that I know of.”

  “Cary can get into locked things,” said Kristy darkly.

  Stacey said, “These rooms have electronically coded door locks, remember? Not even Cary could pick those.”

  “Yeah,” Kristy conceded. “Besides, this isn’t Cary’s style. It’s too, too …”

  “Unsubtle,” I suggested.

  “And, much as I hate to admit it, it’s too mean,” said Kristy.

  Mal looked in, sized up the situation, said, “Don’t anybody move!” and disappeared. She reappeared a moment later holding the mystery notebook and a pen. Uprighting the desk chair, she sat down and began to take notes.

  “You don’t think this has something to do with the Witch’s Eye, do you?” asked Mary Anne, shocked.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. We can’t take any chances of missing any clues.”

  “Well,” I said, “Salem is certainly an interesting city. Purse snatchings. Room ransackings …” My voice trailed off. “Purse snatchings,” I repeated. Naturally, I’d told everybody all about what had happened immediately, and we’d all kept a ghostwatch. But we hadn’t been approached again by any ghosts, suspicious or otherwise.

  “My room key was in my waist pack,” I said.

  “But it wasn’t labeled, was it?” Stacey asked. “Those card keys all look the same.”

  “It didn’t need to be, if someone knew who I was and where I was staying.”

  “But how would they know, Abby?” asked Mary Anne.

  “They could have seen it on the guest register,” I said, thinking hard.

  Mal looked up from the notebook. “Or they could be staying right next door.”

  “What? Mal, what are you talking about?” I demanded.

  “Harvey Hapgood,” she said simply. “I saw him just now. Coming out of the room next to yours.”

  By we, I mean the five of us plus Eileen. I went back to my room and invited her. I expected her to say no, but she didn’t. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that we had been buddies in the parade. When she said yes, I wasn’t sure I was entirely happy about it. Did being nice to her mean I was going to be teased by Cokie now, too?

  I tried not to think about that, first because it was cowardly to care what someone like Cokie Mason said, and second because I had more important things to think about, such as the mystery of the Witch’s Eye.

  Mary Anne made a brief detour, to say good night to Nidia Garcia as she had promised. She also reported the break-in to Mrs. Garcia, who made sure the hotel changed the key code on the door.

  Downstairs by the fire, we found Martha Kempner. She waved us over and said, “Great hot chocolate. Just what I needed after all that Halloween madness.”

  “Did you go to the parade?” asked Eileen. She was leaning forward, her face almost animated. I realized that in school, she often spoke up. But on this trip, Cokie’s teasing had silenced her.

  “Yes,” replied Ms. Kempner. “I considered it part of my research, as well as a lot of fun.”

  “Are you still going to write your article on the Witch’s Eye?” I asked. “I mean, now that it’s missing?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry, of course, that it is gone, but in a way, it will make this an even better story. After all, it certainly ties in with the curse.”

  Eileen spoke again. “The curse? There’s a curse on the diamond?”

  “Yes. It has a history of bad luck, of causing dire misfortune — even death — to all who encounter it.”

  “Just like my pumpkin,” I heard Abby mutter.

  Martha glanced her way, looking amused.

  “Will you tell me about it? The curse?” I asked.

  The amused look deepened. Ms. Kempner leaned forward, her mug of hot chocolate cradled in her hands, and stared into the fireplace at the leaping flames.

  “Once upon a time, in Europe, long ago, a beautiful young woman was burned at the stake, put to death as a witch. Some say she was accused because she rejected the attentions of a rich and jealous suitor, preferring to stay single. Others said it was because of her eyes, which were an unusual pale golden brown. At any rate, when the fire was lit (they say) she called out a terrible curse. The fire roared up then, so brightly that no one could look at it. Then it died away. The stunned onlookers found that not a stick of wood had burned, and there was no sign of the woman at all.

  “But lying among the strangely warm branches was a single large stone, a jewel such as none of the villagers had ever seen before.

  “The rich suitor — a prince, perhaps — who had witnessed the affair, seized the jewel.

  “Within days, his castle had burned to the ground, and everything in it was destroyed. The only thing that survived the terrible inferno was this single, blazing yellow stone. That was when the people began to call it the Witch’s Eye, and to say that it was cursed.

  “But as so often happens, greed overcame fear, and the prince’s heirs claimed the stone. Soon after that, the family fortunes changed. The prince’s heirs fell out of favor with the king, and lost nearly all they owned. They sold the diamond just in time, some said, or they might have lost their heads as well.

  “After that, the diamond disappeared from sight, although it resurfaced from time to time, always in connection with some tragedy. Then a great uncle of Mrs. Moorehouse’s discovered it when he bought a collection of costume jewelry in a dusty secondhand store in England just after World War One. It was the talk of the town. Some said the owner of the store went mad when he realized that he had sold a treasure for the price of a fake. It was written up in all the papers, but Mrs. Moorehouse’s uncle knew its dark history and was taking no chances. He donated it to a museum for his lifetime, and there it stayed, doing no harm. Then he died not too long ago, and Mrs. Moorehouse inherited it.”

  “How much bad luck has she had?” Kristy asked. “Aside from having the diamond stolen, I mean.”

  “So far, none that I know of, aside from the theft,” Ms. Kempner answered. She turned her gaze from the fire to the rest of us. “But no one knows what the exact nature of the curse was. Perhaps good people are exempt.”

  “Not like my pet pumpkin,” said Abby.

  Wow, I thought. I was impressed. The story was as good as one of Martha’s mysteries. Even better, because it was true.

  Martha leaned back and stretched. Then she looked at Abby. “That’s your pet?” she asked, pointing to the pumpkin that dangled from the key chain clip attached to Abby’s belt loop.

  “Yeah. I have to keep it
on a short leash,” Abby joked.

  “My goddaughter would love it, and I haven’t really found her a souvenir of Salem yet. I always try to take her something from all my research trips. You wouldn’t be interested in selling it, would you?”

  “Sell my pet? How could I?” Folding her hands over her heart, Abby looked dramatically toward the ceiling. Then she returned to her, well, not normal but more usual mode and said, “But I bought it in the gift shop. I bet you could find another one there.”

  During Martha’s telling of the story of the Witch’s Eye, we’d all been so enthralled that we had barely noticed other people coming in for the hot chocolate, which was set up on a table across the room. Maybe simply talking about the Witch’s Eye brings bad luck, too. Who knows?

  At any rate, Alan struck again, this time with Cokie’s help. And the target wasn’t Kristy, but Eileen.

  She suddenly jumped and cried, “Owww!”

  She held up her hand. I could see a red mark on it. Another voice said, “A rat. It was a rat. A rat just bit Eileen.”

  Naturally, everyone screamed. Eileen leaped to her feet, her eyes wild.

  Then Cokie’s familiar, nasty voice said, “No. It was a cat. I saw it. A black cat. Isn’t that funny? A witch, bitten by a black cat. I wonder if that will kill the cat.”

  “Alan!” exclaimed Kristy in disgust, her hand going to the two red marks on her neck.

  “Of Transylvania,” he said and gave one of his weird, stupid laughs. He was, as you have probably figured out, still in full vampire costume. He swooped his cloak up over his face and made a dramatic exit.

  Eileen just stood there, her face white and her eyes still wide and shocked. She had placed one hand over the other. Now that we weren’t all panicking, it was easy to see that the blood was fake.

  Cokie just kept laughing. “You should see your face,” she gasped. “You don’t look like a witch, you look like a ghost.”

  “You, you,” stammered Eileen. “I — you … why?” The last word ended in a wail, and she charged out of the room, almost knocking over Mary Anne, who was just coming in.

  “Did you catch that look on her face?” Cokie said.

  As an audience, we were not responsive. Then Kristy stood up. She looked positively menacing, even for the shortest person in the eighth grade. Kristy put her face up close to Cokie’s and Cokie stopped laughing with a sharp little intake of breath.

  “This time,” said Kristy, “you’ve gone too far.”

  I suddenly found myself on my feet, too. “Leave Eileen alone, Cokie,” I heard myself say.

  Cokie switched her gaze from Kristy to me. She tried to sneer, but she didn’t do her usual professional job of it. “Oh, yeah,” she scoffed. “Says who?”

  “Says me,” I shot back.

  “And me.” Mary Anne stepped forward from where she had stood frozen by the door.

  “And me,” chorused Abby and Stacey, leaping to their feet at almost the same instant.

  No one spoke. The fire crackled in the dimly lit room and I had a sudden vision of the people who had been charged with witchcraft facing their tormentors in just such dimly lit rooms long ago. What if someone had stood up then and said, “Stop”? The Salem Witch Trials might never have happened.

  Cokie took one step back, and then another. Then she raised her chin and, trying to act dignified (but failing), left.

  We all stood in a sort of tableau for a moment longer. Then Abby said, “Well. This calls for some more hot chocolate. Mary Anne, you want some?”

  We settled down and talked with Martha Kempner for a little while longer. She told us about other famous jewels that were said to be cursed, such as the Hope Diamond. Then she excused herself, saying she had more research to do. We watched as she tapped to the door on those amazing heels.

  Mary Anne, who had grabbed the pillow next to me, sighed. “Wow, this has been some night,” she said softly.

  “You can say that again,” I whispered back.

  “Yeah, and on top of everything else, I think you were being spied on.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  And she did, as we were going up to our rooms. “Sean Knowles — the suspicious man with the newspaper we saw our first day here — and Harvey Hapgood were standing outside the open library door together when I came back from saying good night to Nidia,” Mary Anne explained. “They were whispering. They might have been eavesdropping, but I’m not sure. Anyway, Sean Knowles looked into the library, and then said something that I didn’t hear. When they turned to leave, I ducked into the alcove beneath the stairs there. I don’t think they saw me.”

  “Do you really think they were spying on us? Why?” asked Kristy. “Too bad you couldn’t hear what they said.”

  “I know,” said Mary Anne.

  The mystery was growing more mysterious every moment. I went back to my room to write down this new clue — if it was a new clue. In a mystery like this one, who knew? Eileen was already in her nightgown and bathrobe. She ducked her head when I came in.

  I suddenly wondered if that was what she had been doing since the beginning of the trip — ducking, trying to stay away from Cokie, planning every move she made in the hope of avoiding teasing and torment.

  I said, “Cool story about the Witch’s Eye, huh?”

  Eileen glanced up warily. “Yes,” she replied. “But I don’t really believe in curses, even though one of my ancestors was accused of being a witch. She wasn’t a witch, you know. She was innocent, like all the rest. And she didn’t get hanged in the end.”

  “She outlasted the madness,” I said, remembering what we had learned: that by 1693, less than a year after it had begun, the hysteria about witches had died down. Suddenly everyone was ashamed of what had happened. A few years after that, the young girl who had been the first to accuse others of witchcraft stood up in church and recanted.

  “You don’t believe the Witch’s Eye is bad luck, do you?” asked Eileen.

  “Well, it sounds as if it is,” I answered. I remembered Jordan and his book of spells. “My brother Jordan would tell you that it had cast a spell on everyone. When I left Stoneybrook, he was going around pretending that he had found a real book of spells. He was casting them on everybody.”

  “He sounds funny. My little brother is funny, too, but that’s because he is a baby, and babies can’t help but be cute and funny.”

  We started talking about our families, and I realized that Eileen really wasn’t all that weird. She was just a social klutz. And that was what made her such an easy target for Cokie and Grace, and even Alan. It was human nature to go after anyone who was different, and to protect oneself by hiding in the middle of a crowd, going along with everyone else.

  The Salem Witch Trials were just one example of that pattern in history.

  “Hey, it’s getting late,” I said at last. “And I have some work to do.” (I let Eileen think it was for my trip project. I didn’t tell her it was writing down new clues.) “But I’ll wake you up to go to breakfast with us tomorrow, okay?”

  “You sure?” asked Eileen.

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  News of the parade spread among our clients like wildfire, as I found out when I reached the Rodowskys’ for my sitting job. Not a single Rodowsky appeared to say hello when I rang the doorbell (that is, not a single kid — Mr. Rodowsky answered the door).

  The Rodowsky adults passed along the usual information (phone numbers where they could be reached, estimated time of return, emergency contacts), and then headed out.

  Still no sign of the junior Rodowskys.

  “Mr. Rodowsky,” I called out, just before he closed the front door behind him.

  “Yes, Logan?”

  “Where is everybody?”

  He laughed. “In one of the boys’ rooms.”

  “Working on a house-wide mess,” added Mrs. Rodowsky with a smile. “A really scary one.”

  That made both the Rodowskys laugh,
as if Mrs. Rodowsky had said something very witty.

  Closing the door behind them, I went on a Rodowsky hunt and soon unraveled the mini-mystery, and the Rodowsky seniors’ source of merriment.

  The Rodowsky boys were making Halloween costumes. When I walked in, they had reached the papier-mâché stage.

  By that, I don’t mean they were actually working with papier-mâché — they were only talking about it.

  “We did it in school for Christmas,” Shea was saying. He’s nine. “To make a piñata. That’s made of papier-mâché. In Mexico, they make a hollow one, fill it with candy, and then hit it with a stick to break it, so that the candy comes out.”

  “A Halloween piñata?” asked seven-year-old Jackie.

  “Yeah!” exclaimed Shea, his eyes lighting up.

  “Piñatas?” I said. “I thought you were working on costumes.”

  “We finished our costumes,” explained Jackie. “But we want something really, really special for the parade.”

  Okay, I should have seen it coming. Not for nothing is Jackie called the Walking Disaster. I should have known that Jackie and the newspaper strips, water, flour, and salt that are the ingredients of papier-mâché would be a volatile combination. But I was too busy being impressed by the idea.

  “A Halloween piñata sounds pretty special,” I said. “Good idea.” (Yes, I actually said that!) “Let’s go down to the kitchen and make sure we have all the supplies.”

  Soon we had gathered around the kitchen table, a stack of newspapers from the recycling bin on one side, a bowl of water and flour and salt mixed into a paste on the other.

  Cutting the newspaper into strips went without incident. Jackie and Shea had made piñatas before. “If we blow up a balloon, we could put papier-mâché on it …” Jackie frowned, thinking hard, trying to figure out how to say what he envisioned.

  Shea caught on instantly. “And then pop the balloon, and stick the candy inside.”

  “We have balloons! Left over from birthday parties,” said Jackie.

  We studied the balloon collection for awhile. In the end, the long, skinny balloon won out. Why? Because the Rodowskys wanted to make a piñata that looked like their dog, Bo.