Stacey and the Haunted Masquerade

  “It could be any one of them,” said Abby. “How are we going to find out which it is?”

  “We’d need to find out why each of them isn’t in the yearbook,” said Kristy. “Like, did she move, or was she expelled, or what?”

  “But how do we find that out?” I moaned. “This is just another dead end.” I was bummed out. We had come so far, and now we were stuck.

  “Um, no it’s not. Not exactly,” said Logan, clearing his throat nervously. “I think I know how we can find the information.”

  “You do?” Kristy asked him. She narrowed her eyes. “How?”

  “Well,” said Logan, glancing around to see if anyone else was listening, “it’s like this.” He waved us closer, and we bent our heads to listen as he whispered. “One time, Alan Gray and I were poking around in the basement —”

  “Logan!” Mary Anne hissed. “We’re not supposed to go down there!”

  “I know,” he said. “That’s why I’m whispering.”

  “Oh. Okay, go on.”

  “Anyway,” he continued, after shooting Mary Anne a grin, “we found this dusty old storage room, packed with ancient records.” He gave us a significant look, and we looked back blankly. I thought he was talking about old Bee Gees albums.

  Logan sighed. “Like, student records,” he explained, a little impatiently.

  “Ohhhh,” I said, finally understanding. “Wow! Really?”

  “So you mean we might be able to check the records on each of these three girls?” Claudia asked.

  “That’s exactly what I mean,” said Logan.

  “But we’re not allowed down there,” Mary Anne reminded us. “Shouldn’t we just ask somebody, like Mr. Kingbridge, or one of the teachers?”

  “Are you kidding?” Logan said. “If we did that, we’d never find out any answers. Nobody wants to talk about what happened at that dance. They’d never let us look through the records.”

  “I’m ready to go,” said Abby, standing up. Her eyes were gleaming. “Lead the way, Logan.”

  He checked his watch. “We don’t have time now,” he said. “Lunch period’s nearly over. How about if we meet here right after school?”

  We all agreed that we would, even Mary Anne. And later that day, less than five minutes after the last bell, we were standing outside the library door, ready to do some detective work. I’d told Jessi and Mal to come, too, and they were as excited as the rest of us.

  “I’ve never even been in the basement,” said Mal.

  “That’s because you’re a sixth-grader,” Logan joked. “You’re too young to be initiated into the deepest mysteries of SMS.”

  “But we can come with you now, can’t we?” asked Jessi.

  “You bet,” said Logan, grinning. He turned to face the rest of us. “Everybody ready?”

  “Ready,” I replied.

  “Definitely ready,” said Abby, rubbing her hands together in anticipation. “I want to really get to know my new school!”

  “Ready, I guess,” said Mary Anne hesitantly.

  “I’m better than ready, I’m prepared,” said Claud, holding up a bag of M&M’S. “I brought provisions, in case we end up lost down there in the deepest mysteries of SMS.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?” asked Kristy. “Lead the way, Logan.” She had a determined look in her eye, but I had the feeling that even Kristy might be the tiniest bit nervous about what we were going to do.

  The fact was, we were all nervous. Even Logan. Even Abby. But we tried to hide it as we followed Logan down the stairs marked “No Entry.” The stairwell was dimly lit, and our footsteps echoed as we descended into the ever-darker basement. Finally, at the bottom, Logan pushed open a heavy door and waved us through.

  Then the door slammed shut behind us.

  “Oh, my Lord!”

  “Is it locked?”

  “We’re trapped!”

  Everybody started to panic, but Logan raised his voice above the din. “Quiet, everybody,” he said. “It’s not locked. I made sure of that. Don’t worry, we’re fine.”

  By the time he’d finished talking, we had calmed down — a little. I looked around and saw that we were in a dark hallway with several doors opening off of it. All the doors looked the same, but Logan led us confidently to the third one on the right. He looked uncertain as he tried the knob, but then a grin lit up his face and he pushed the door open. “Here we are,” he said.

  It was a little lighter inside the room, because two small basement windows, high up in the walls, let in some sun. But it wasn’t exactly what you’d call bright. There was just enough light for us to see pile upon pile of cardboard file boxes, covered with layers of dust and festooned with cobwebs.

  “Nobody’s cleaned in here for a while,” joked Kristy.

  Abby sneezed three times in a row. “This dust!” she said. She reached into her backpack, pulled out a surgical mask, and put it on. “I should have dode,” she said in a stuffed-up voice.

  “How do we start?” I asked. “It would take months to look through every box.”

  “We don’t have to,” said Logan. “They’re pretty well labeled. All we have to do is find the one from that year.”

  Logan turned out to be right. It wasn’t hard to find the box we needed, and, fortunately, the records inside were neatly alphabetized. I had written down the names of the three girls listed in the yearbook, and it didn’t take long to pull out their records. I passed out the files, and everybody started to page through them. Then I riffled quickly through the box and grabbed one more file, just out of curiosity.

  “I have Julia Berkman’s file,” Kristy reported, “and it says here that she transferred in the following March, to a school for the performing arts.”

  “Lucky!” Jessi murmured.

  “She’s not the one we’re looking for,” said Claudia. “Keep checking.”

  “Here’s Susan Hsia’s file,” Mary Anne said. “It seems as if her family moved, and I’m trying to figure out when. Oh, here it is. They moved to Sioux Falls — is that in Iowa? — in December.”

  “It’s id South Dakota,” said Abby, still sniffing. “But I dod’t think we deed to go out there to track dowd Susad. She’s dot our girl, if she left school in Decebber.”

  Mal was looking through the third file. As I waited, I opened the file I’d grabbed. It was Michael Rothman’s. I scanned it quickly and discovered that he was on the football team, and that he had been an average student. There was nothing else very interesting, except for one mention, by a counselor, about “Michael’s extreme fear of heights.” Hmmm.

  “Hold on, hold on!” shouted Mal suddenly, interrupting my thoughts. “This is it! I’m positive!”

  We clustered around to look over her shoulder. “It’s Elizabeth Connor,” breathed Claudia.

  “All it says is that she left school in early November,” Mal said. “No further explanation.”

  “That’s our girl,” I said. “It has to be her.”

  “And check it out!” exclaimed Jessi. “Where it gives her address? That’s the Johanssens’ house, on Kimball Street.”

  “Wow!” said Mary Anne. “That’s a coincidence. And I have a sitting job there tonight.”

  “Too bad Elizabeth doesn’t still live there,” I said. “I’d love to interview her.”

  Suddenly, Mary Anne and I looked at each other, and I could tell we’d both had the same great idea.

  Just a few hours after the adventure in the SMS basement, I stood on the Johanssens’ front porch, waiting for Mary Anne to answer the door. With me were Matt and Haley Braddock. I was sitting for them that night, and they’d been enthusiastic when, after I’d given them an early dinner, I’d suggested a visit to Charlotte’s house. (The parents of all three kids had already okayed the idea.) At nine, Haley is a year older than Charlotte, while Matt is a year younger, but the kids are friends. That’s why the plan Mary Anne and I had devised seemed so perfect. We were hoping that if the kids kept each other busy, the two
of us would have some time to explore the Johanssens’ house, in search of any traces of Elizabeth Connor that still might exist.

  It was hard to imagine finding anything new in the Johanssens’ house, which is almost as familiar to me as my own. I’ve spent a lot of time there, since Charlotte is one of my favorite kids to sit for. Actually, she’s more than that. She’s like a younger sister to me. As only children, we have a special kind of bond.

  Also, besides sitting for Charlotte, I’ve done some sitting for her family’s house. Not too long ago, I spent two weeks house-sitting there while the family took a trip to France. I cared for their dog Carrot and kept an eye on the house. I thought it was going to be an easy job, but it turned out to be, well, challenging. The problem was, somebody else was spending time in the Johanssens’ house during those two weeks — and I had had to find out who it was. Believe me, it wasn’t an easy mystery to solve, but fortunately, everything turned out all right.

  Anyway, as I was saying, the Johanssens’ house is very familiar to me. Everything from the dried-flower wreath on the front door to the blue-tiled floor in the neat kitchen seems welcoming and homelike.

  I didn’t stand on the porch for long. Mary Anne, Charlotte, and Carrot answered the door together, and they were excited. Mary Anne was happy to see me, Charlotte was thrilled to have Matt and Haley for company on a school night, and Carrot was just generally keyed up. He’s a schnauzer: a gray dog with bushy eyebrows, a stubby tail, and a muscular body. I always think Carrot moves as if he has springs inside, and that night was no exception.

  “Okay, Carrot, okay,” I said, trying to calm him down. “Good dog.” (I’m not a huge pet lover, but I am fond of Carrot.) “Hi, Mary Anne. Hi, Charlotte. How are you two?”

  “We’re fine,” said Charlotte, giving me a quick hug. Then she turned to greet Haley and Matt. “Hey, you guys,” she said. “What do you want to do tonight?”

  Haley signed to Matt, translating. Matt is deaf, and communicates with American Sign Language. Everyone in the BSC has learned to sign at least a little bit, though Jessi’s the only one of us who is really any good. For the most part, we rely on Haley when we need to communicate anything complicated to Matt.

  Matt didn’t even wait for Haley to finish. He must have figured out what Charlotte had said without needing any translation. He signed back rapidly, and Haley nodded enthusiastically. She turned to Charlotte. “Want to play Ghostbusters?” she asked.

  “Definitely!” said Charlotte. “After school today I worked on my collection unit. It’s cool. I also made a ghost detector. We can ghostbust the whole house. Want to come upstairs? I’ll show you my stuff.”

  Two seconds later, the kids had thundered up the stairs, and Mary Anne and I were alone in the living room. “That was easy,” I said. “I was a little worried about how we were going to keep them occupied while we searched the house.”

  “We should have known,” said Mary Anne, laughing. “Ghostbuster fever strikes again!”

  “It’s perfect for us, too,” I said. “The kids will want to check out the whole house, and we can just follow them from room to room, doing our own detective work. Only we won’t be looking for ghosts — unless Elizabeth Connor happens to be one.” I thought for a second. “You know, as a matter of fact, we don’t know if she’s still alive or not. She really might be a ghost.”

  “Stop it,” said Mary Anne, grinning as she covered her ears. “I don’t even want to think about that possibility.”

  “I guess if she is a ghost,” I mused, “the kids will take care of her. She’ll end up in one of those collection units.”

  “Which would be right where she belongs,” said Mary Anne.

  “Where who belongs?” asked Haley, who had just come back downstairs, along with Charlotte and Matt.

  “Oh, nobody,” I said quickly. “Are you guys all set for ghostbusting?”

  “Can’t you tell?” asked Charlotte. She stood in front of us and twirled around so we could see the equipment that festooned her body. She wore a flashlight in a holster attached to a belt and a homemade contraption (it looked a lot like the one the Arnold twins had made) in a backpack-style sling. She had on what must have been her mother’s gardening gloves, which came up to her elbows, and her head was protected by a bike helmet.

  Matt and Haley were also suited up. Matt was wearing a colander on his head, while Haley wore a metal pot. Matt had on a pair of leather work gloves, and Haley wore two oven mitts. (The kids had obviously made a trip to the kitchen.) Both of them carried complicated-looking devices made from shoeboxes.

  “One, and two, and three,” Haley said, raising her arms as if conducting an orchestra. She and Charlotte sang in unison while Matt signed emphatically, three verses and two choruses of the Ghostbusters song, ending with a shouted “Who you gonna call? GHOSTBUSTERS!”

  Mary Anne and I applauded loudly. Then we looked at each other solemnly. “I guess they’re ready,” I said.

  “Sure looks like it,” Mary Anne agreed. “Okay, kids, where are you going to start?”

  Haley rolled her eyes, as if the question were a ridiculous one. “In the attic, of course,” she replied. “That’s the most likely spot for ghosts. Then we’ll work our way down through the house, checking in every closet and under every bed.”

  “If we find any slime, I’m all ready to take a sample,” said Charlotte.

  Matt signed something quickly, and Haley translated, “And Matt says he’s all set to take readings.”

  “Let’s go, then,” I said, leading the way toward the attic stairs. I gave Mary Anne a Look over the kids’ heads, one that said, “Don’t forget, we’re searching for signs of Elizabeth Connor.” She nodded, and I knew she’d understood.

  Up in the attic, a single bare bulb cast a little light in the center of the room, but the rest of the attic was in shadow. The kids went wild. They poked into every corner, shouting for any hidden ghosts to come out and face their fate. Charlotte aimed her flashlight into every nook and cranny, while Matt followed her with a serious look on his face and the ghost detector at the ready. Haley stood by, waiting to hear that somebody had found a ghost so she could collect it.

  Meanwhile, Mary Anne and I quickly searched the attic. I was checking for any boxes or trunks that might have been left behind by previous occupants, while Mary Anne peered into the spaces between the eaves, looking for, as she told me in a whisper, “letters or notes or anything Elizabeth might have left.”

  Unfortunately, the Johanssens’ attic is one of the neatest, tidiest attics I’ve ever seen. We didn’t find a thing.

  Apparently, the kids didn’t either. “I think we can declare this area free of ghosts,” said Haley, after they’d toured the entire attic. “Do you agree, Dr. Braddock?” She was looking at Matt, and she signed as she spoke. Matt nodded vehemently. “How about you, Dr. Johanssen?” she asked Charlotte.

  “The readings show no signs of ghosts,” agreed Charlotte. “And there’s no sign of any slime. I think we can move on.”

  Charlotte led the way down the stairs, and her two friends trooped behind her as she headed into her bedroom. “I’ve checked this area before,” she said, “but you can’t be too careful.” Her “colleagues” agreed. Again, the kids went over every square inch of the room.

  So did Mary Anne and I. Only we weren’t looking for ghosts. We were looking for — what? I wasn’t even sure. What kind of signs might Elizabeth have left behind? I puzzled over that problem as I poked around near Charlotte’s bookcase.

  “Psst!” I heard Mary Anne hiss, and I turned to see her waving me over to Charlotte’s closet door. “Check it out!” she said, pointing to the doorframe. Her eyes were bright and her cheeks were pink. Obviously she’d found something very interesting.

  “Check what out?” I asked.

  “The doorframe!” she said.

  “What about it?” I asked. I gave it a quick look, but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

  “Look closer,
” she said. “See the marks?”

  I bent to examine the wood more closely. Just then, somebody tapped me on the shoulder, and I jumped. But it was only Charlotte. “We’re moving on to the next room,” she said. “Meet you there?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Find any ghosts in here?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing so far. But we will. I’m sure of it.” She headed off, followed by Matt and Haley.

  I turned back to the doorframe and inspected it carefully. Then I saw what Mary Anne had been talking about. “Awesome,” I breathed. “So she really did live here.” There, on the wood, covered lightly with one coat of white paint, were height markings for “Elizabeth.” One for each year, from the time she was only tall enough to reach my belly button to the time she was just about the same height as Mary Anne is now.

  “We’re on the right track, anyway,” said Mary Anne, “even if this doesn’t tell us much about her.”

  “Let’s keep looking,” I said. “You never know what we might find.”

  After that, we trailed the kids through the house, always staying about one room behind as they checked for ghosts and we sought signs of Elizabeth Connor. As far as I could tell from what I overheard the kids saying, they weren’t finding much. Neither were we.

  The last place we all checked was the basement, and the kids swept through it quickly. Finally, Charlotte gave up. “I guess I’ve scared all the ghosts out of this house already,” she told Mary Anne. “Can we go to the kitchen and have some cookies? Mom said I could have two for dessert.”

  “Sure,” said Mary Anne. “Go on up. We’ll be there in a second.”

  The kids thundered up the stairs, leaving Mary Anne and me alone in the dimly lit basement. “This is our last chance,” she said. “Let’s look carefully.”

  Five minutes later, I was ready to give up, too. “There’s nothing here,” I said. “We’d better head upstairs and make sure the kids are all right.”

  “Hold on, hold on,” said Mary Anne, bending to look at a spot on the floor. “What’s this?” She brushed away some dirt and looked more closely. I joined her, and saw a place where the cement floor had been patched with a lighter-colored cement. Etched into the patched place were these letters, inside a heart: