Читать книгу Pioneer Poltergeist - H. Mel Malton - Страница 7

Mrs. Creasor was pretty interested in Ziggy’s ghost-sighting, but not enough to investigate, much to Alan’s disappointment.

“It could have been a manifestation of some sort,” she said. “Some years back, before I started here, another woman insisted that there was a poltergeist in the inn. But more likely, it was a reflection of light you saw.”

“Couldn’t we go up and check it out?” Alan said.

“No, dear. You can’t get up into the attic without a ladder, and we’re not about to do that. I don’t believe anybody’s been up there for years. It’s not a very convenient place for storage, after all.”

“What’s a poltergeist?”

“Well, they say it’s a ghost or spirit that likes moving things around. They’re said to make pictures on the wall go crooked, or move furniture around—sometimes they even throw things. Now, I do admit I’ve sometimes felt a presence here, as I told you, but I won’t go as far as to believe in poltergeists, and you shouldn’t, either.”

“But what if it’s a raccoon or squirrel stuck up there?” Josée said. “Shouldn’t we rescue it?”

“Oh, I think we’d have heard a lot of scrabbling in the roof if that was the case,” Mrs. Creasor said. “Now let’s leave the ghost talk behind us and get on with the job at hand. I really shouldn’t have been talking that way at all—frightening you with silly stories. I just get carried away sometimes.”

“We’re not scared,” Ziggy declared. “We like it.”

There was a distant rumble of thunder, and it was getting darker outside by the moment. Mrs. Creasor set the boys to peeling apples and started making pastry, with Josée’s help. When the rain came, not long afterwards, a sudden rush of tourists came into the inn to get out of the downpour, and Alan, Ziggy and Josée were kept busy serving cups of cider and greeting visitors.

At one point, Alan managed to get away for a few minutes and took the opportunity to go upstairs to the hallway where the trapdoor to the attic was. A couple of tourists were looking at the bedrooms, talking in those hushed voices that people use in museums, but they went back downstairs soon after Alan arrived.

He stood directly under the trapdoor, looking up. Mrs. Creasor had said nobody had been up there for years. Was the attic really empty? Was it a ghost that Ziggy had seen? He looked down at his feet. There was some fine, white dust on the floor below the trapdoor. Couldn’t that mean that someone had been up there recently? The rest of the place was so clean. Why would there be dust just there and nowhere else? Somehow, he had to get the opportunity to investigate, if only to set his mind at rest. There was a mystery here, he was sure of it. Maybe there were more guns stashed up there, or stolen goods of some kind.

“Alan! Your mom’s up at the main building waiting for us,” Ziggy called up the stairs. Alan took a moment to peer out the hall window and saw that it was still raining—hard. He realized that the distant roaring sound he had been hearing, but not really registering, must be the sound of the rain pounding on the roof. They had been meaning to walk home after their first day on the job, but it wouldn’t be much fun right now. He pounded down the stairs and came into the kitchen.

“How do you know my mom’s here?” he said to Ziggy. “I thought there were no phones here.”

“We have walkie-talkies,” Mrs. Creasor said. “We have to keep them hidden, though. Mrs. Tench’s orders. Mine’s in the breadbox by the window, if you ever need to use it. Emergencies only, mind you. The message just came through.”

Six apple pies had just been taken out of the oven of the big woodstove, and they smelled amazing.

“It’s nice of Mary-Anne to come and pick you up,” Mrs. Creasor said, “but it’s too bad you can’t stay and have a piece, after all your work helping to make them. Tell you what—I’ll wrap one of these in a tea towel, and you can take it home with you.”

“Wow, thanks!” Ziggy said. “Can we stay for dinner, Alan?”

“Probably,” Alan said. “Let’s ask.”

“Don’t forget to bring the pie plate back tomorrow,” Mrs. Creasor said. “If you manage to eat it all, that is.”

“It’ll be empty, don’t worry,” Ziggy promised.

They made their way up the path to the main building, huddled together under a big umbrella that Mrs. Creasor gave them, Josée in the middle cradling the pie.

It didn’t take long to change out of their costumes. After a whole day on the grounds, pretending to be pioneers and doing pioneer work, it was a little strange to be back in “civvies”, as Greta the wardrobe lady called their regular clothes.

“It’s your responsibility to keep your site clothes in good order,” she said, when they’d returned from the changerooms. The wardrobe area was in the basement of the main complex, a low-ceilinged, narrow space with racks and racks of dresses, coats, hats and boots.

“Josée, I think your apron will have to be washed, and boys, your coveralls are definitely whiffy. I’ll wash them tonight, but after this, do try to keep them clean, okay? When you’re not in costume, your stuff goes here,” she said, pointing to where three coat hooks were already marked with their names.

“It looks like they’re not getting ready to fire us yet, if they’ve put up labels,” Ziggy whispered to the others.

“And the rule is that you never, ever wear or take your costume off-site,” Greta added. “Some people think they can borrow things, you see, for Hallowe’en parties and so on, and they never bring them back. So be warned.”

“That’s too bad,” Josée said as they went back upstairs to where Alan’s mom was sitting with Mrs. Tench. “I was thinking just that—that my skirt and bonnet would have been perfect for trick-or-treating.”

“Are we going to do that this year?” Ziggy asked. “After all, we’re almost twelve. What’s the cut-off date, do you think?”

“When you’re too old for free candy,” Alan said. “I plan to keep on trick-or-treating until I’m twenty-five.”

“Is there something going on with your Mom?” Ziggy asked later, digging his fork into his second piece of pie.

“I don’t know. Maybe she’s coming down with a cold or something, “Alan said.

His mother had nodded vaguely in agreement when they had asked if Ziggy and Josée could stay for supper, but she hadn’t been her usual, interested self, and she’d left half her pie.

“Have another piece if you want, you three,” she’d said. “And can you clean up for me, please?” Then she’d disappeared into the study.

They’d filled her in on all the activities of the day, but left some things out. She seemed to have forgotten about the gun, until Alan reminded her, and the three had already agreed not to mention Constable Mills’s making them deputies. They turned the paint fight into a kind of “nothing to do with us” thing, and Ziggy did a great impression of Ivor Smith, but she was only half listening. They didn’t mention the ghost either, but that was a no-brainer, as Mary-Anne Nearing was not the sort of person to believe in ghost stories.

“Maybe she’s worried about Candace—maybe she’s in trouble,” Josée said. Alan’s older sister, who was a serious violin student, was spending the month of August at a music camp in Banff, Alberta.

“Well, I know Mom misses her,” Alan said, “but even though she’s almost sixteen, Candace isn’t the type to mess up, I don’t think. She’ll probably come back with a bunch of trophies and awards.”

“Anyway, I was surprised that she didn’t ask more questions about today, that’s all,” Ziggy said.

“Which is probably a good thing,” Alan said. “After all, there are a couple of mysteries around the Village that we need to keep an eye on. We should start a case file.”

“What, so we can give it to Constable Mills when things start to get weird over there?” said Ziggy.

“Exactly. I mean, there are some weird things already, but nothing definite yet. But she’s relying on us, so we better do the thing right. Be right back.” Alan left the table and went up to his room to get something to write with. He thought for a moment about using the investigation notebook he’d started at the beginning of the summer, when the violin had disappeared and he and his friends had helped find it, but there were private notes in there—things that Constable Mills didn’t know about, and it was probably better to start a fresh one so he could just hand it over when they’d solved the case. He rummaged around in his desk and came up with a fresh notebook that he hadn’t started to write in yet, grabbed a couple of pens and came back down. Ziggy and Josée had cleared away most of the dinner dishes, and they stacked the dishwasher first before they began.

“If we were living in pioneer days,” Josée said, “we’d have to heat the water on the woodstove first, then do all this by hand. And they didn’t have dishwashing liquid then, either.”

“I would’ve just had a dog,” Ziggy said. “Put the dishes on the floor, and let him do the work.”

“Eww. Remind me not to come to your house for dinner when you’re a grown-up,” said Josée.

When they were ready, they sat around the coffee table in the living room (Ziggy brought a third slice of pie with him, in case he got hungry), and Alan opened up the new notebook.

Picasso, the family cat, was very interested in Ziggy’s pie, and was winding herself around and around his legs.

“Sorry, Picasso,” Ziggy said. “You don’t get to do the dishes yet. Maybe when I’m finished.”

Alan had written “The Alan Nearing Detective Agency: Case Notes” on the front cover, and Josée, who was good at art, drew a magnifying glass to go along with it.

On the opening page, he wrote “Case #2”. It was satisfying to be at number two already. Below that, he wrote Investigating officers: Alan Nearing, Ziggy Breuer and Josée Lejeune and they all signed their names to make it official. Below that was written Location: Kuskawa Pioneer Village Park and the date.

“Now, what are the weird things? Let’s write them down first,” Alan said. They agreed that at the top of the list was the handgun they’d found.

1. Gun found in a manure pile by Alan and Ziggy. Police called in.

“What kind of gun was it?” Josée asked. “Did anybody hear them say?”

“No, but I bet we could look it up on the net and find out. We all got a pretty good look at it, right?”

He wrote, in a column opposite the first entry, Questions, then Find out what kind of gun? and Who left it there?

“Remember that Constable Mills said the police would be asking those kind of questions, though, right?” Ziggy said, and Alan reluctantly wrote Police business in brackets.

“I know what else,” he said, and wrote Search animal pen for clues.

“Aren’t the police doing that tonight?” Josée said.

“Sure, but maybe they’ll miss something. And when they’re done there, it won’t be locked any more, so we’ll be able to get in there and check it out.”

For Number 2, they wrote Ziggy’s poltergeist—face or something seen in attic window of inn. Attic is locked—nobody goes there.

“Shouldn’t we tell Constable Mills about that right away?” Josée said.

“I’d rather not,” Ziggy said. “I mean, it was weird, and I’m sure I didn’t imagine it, but I guess it could have been a flash of lightning reflected in the window or something. I’d feel like an idiot telling her about it until we were sure.”

“I agree,” Alan said. In the questions column, he put Keep an eye on the attic window, then told the others about finding the dust below the trapdoor.

“That could have been anything,” Ziggy said. “But still, put down . . . ummm, debris found. Inconclusive.”

“Good one,” Alan said, and wrote it in.

“I found out some things about people, when you guys were picking apples,” Josée said. “Remember you asked me to because Madame Creasor liked talking? Well, she does.”

“What did she tell you?” Alan said. “Wait—let me start a ‘suspects’ column.”

“How can we have suspects when we don’t even know what the crime is?” Ziggy said.

“In my ‘How to be an Effective Operative’ handbook, they say that absolutely everybody is a suspect until you’ve ruled them out,” he said. “Anyway, it’s useful to have a list of people.”

They listed everybody they’d met that day, starting with Mrs. Tench. “Surely she can’t be a suspect—she runs the place,” Ziggy said.

“Well, actually, she’s the staff supervisor. The directors run the place, and we haven’t met them yet. Anyway, in books and movies, it’s often people in power who end up being the criminal mastermind,” Alan said.

“Just don’t let her get hold of the notebook by mistake, then,” Josée said. “We’d be fired for sure.”

Next to Mrs. Tench, they wrote her job title, and Ziggy suggested they include the fact that she was giving out coupons for free ice cream. “Maybe she’s not supposed to do that,” he said.

“I’m hoping she does it all the time,” Alan said, but wrote it down.

Next to Sheldon (they didn’t know his last name), they had a lot of information. He was the maintenance guy, he had keys to everything (“Mrs. Tench probably does, too,” Josée pointed out), he was jealous of anyone touching his MiniCat or trespassing in his shed, and he kept trying to get rid of them. The boys agreed that Sheldon was the most suspicious person they’d met so far. But Josée thought Ivor Smith’s assistant, Ellen, had more potential as a suspect.

“Remember how rude she was to Ziggy,” she said, “and she has her nose and eyebrow pierced, and all those earrings in her ears. Madame Creasor said that that was totally against the rules. People didn’t have pierced anything in pioneer days. She’s not supposed to wear that stuff on-site, but she does anyway. She’s très difficile, and not friendly to anybody except Ivor.”

“How come she doesn’t get fired, then?” Ziggy asked.

“Madame Creasor said that Ellen is Ivor’s niece or something, and that if she was fired, he’d leave. He’s really popular with the tourists, she said. And he doesn’t hear very well, so Ellen sort of translates for him.” Alan wrote all this down.

Ivor Smith was next, but none of them could think of anything suspicious about him. They’d all liked him a lot.

“Maybe we should just hang around the blacksmith shop a bit and see. If he’s deaf, maybe stuff goes on that he doesn’t notice,” Alan said. In the questions column, next to Ivor, he wrote Further investigation needed.

They added Mrs. Creasor to the list as well. “She says she believes in ghosts, that’s one thing,” Alan said.

“Yes, but that doesn’t make her suspicious, does it?” said Josée.

“Well, she did say no to us going up into the attic to check things out. Maybe she knows there’s something weird up there but was faking the ghost thing to scare us off. Like on purpose.”

“She didn’t seem that sneaky to me,” Ziggy said, but they wrote Possibly knows something about the attic and isn’t telling. Find out more.

Just to fill out the list, they added Greta, the costume lady (“she was strict about the costumes, but I think she spends all her time in the basement, so she’s probably not very suspicious,” Ziggy said) and Joan, the candle-lady, who, Josée said, had barely said two words to her the whole time they were making candles, except to tell her what to do next.

“We’ll probably meet more people tomorrow, but that’s a good start,” Alan said, closing the notebook.

“You’re not going to write down our other assignment, are you?” Ziggy said.

“What other assignment?”

“Our homework. Remember Mrs. Tench said to find out about The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and report back? I bet if we don’t . . .”

“We’ll get fired,” they all said together.

“Who’s getting fired?” said Alan’s mom, coming in from the kitchen.

“Oh, not us, Madame Nearing,” Josée said. “They like us there.”

“Well, so Mrs. Tench seems to think. She was very pleased with you all today, at any rate. In spite of the paint-wars. Now, it’s time you were getting home. Ziggy, your grandfather should be here any minute. And he’s giving Josée a ride home?”

“Yep. And thanks for dinner, Mrs. Nearing.”

“You’re quite welcome,” she said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t more animated, but there’s a lot on my plate at the moment. It’s just a blessing that you three have an interesting project to keep you occupied before school starts.”

“We don’t need to be occupied, you know, Mom,” Alan said.

“Yes, I know, but still.” A car pulled into the driveway—a cab, with its top light off. Ziggy’s grandfather drove a cab in Laingford, and often ferried Ziggy around. When Ziggy’s parents, who were entomologists (bug scientists) were away, as they often were, Ziggy stayed with him. They were due back soon from an extended journey up the Amazon river, and Ziggy was a little nervous about it. He hadn’t seen them for almost a year and a half. “Here’s your Vati, Ziggy,” Mrs. Nearing said.

They said their goodbyes, and Alan’s mom shooed him off to bed. “It’s getting late, and now that you’re a working man, you need your sleep,” she said. Working man. Alan rolled his eyes, but inside, he rather liked the sound of that.

Lying in bed with Picasso curled up at his feet, Alan thought about Ziggy and what it would be like for him to see his parents again, after such a long time. They stayed in touch via email and letters when they could, but still, a lot happened in a year. He could understand Ziggy’s worry. What if they were different? What if they’d changed so much, Ziggy didn’t even recognize them? And in the next thought, he wondered, as he often did, about his own father.

Michael Nearing, a prizewinning photojournalist, had disappeared in Haiti when Alan was two. Alan had a vague, foggy memory of riding on his dad’s shoulders, but that was it. There were pictures in an album, of course, and his mom kept a family photo of them all on the mantelpiece in the living room. In it, his mom, dad, six-year-old Candace and his two-year-old self were sitting on some rocks somewhere in Kuskawa: a family picnic. Candace said she remembered it, but he didn’t. There had never been any word, any confirmation of his father’s death, and his mom still held out the possibility that he was still alive, although she rarely talked about it. What would it be like if his father suddenly came home, after nine whole years? It would be definitely weird. Something to put in the notebook, for sure.

It would be nice, he thought, not to be the only working man in the family. And one day . . . one day he would be a professional private investigator, and would go down to Haiti himself and find out what had happened. One day.