Spooky Skeleton Read online

  A haunt hunter was what I wanted to be. They were the family members who went out and recruited new supernaturals to come to Haunted Bluff. Usually it meant convincing ghosts, le-haunts, skeletons, vampires, and the like to stop causing trouble wherever they were causing it, and come to Shimmerfield. Kip especially was very good at this job.

  To my great frustration, My mom had always refused to allow me to become a haunt hunter. My solution had been to become an investigator.

  Kip had no idea that Lizzie had feelings for him. In other words, Kip was oblivious, and Lizzie was silly. Just recently I had stopped her from making a love potion that she had hoped would ensnare him.

  Lizzie was pretty and proper. She wanted Kip to be the one to ask her out, except when she was attempting to gather ingredients to brew love potions.

  Kip owed me his life, even if he didn’t know it.

  “Morning!” a voice yelled from the shadows as I reached the bottom of the stairs.

  I turned to look. At first I didn’t see anything, then a topcoat became visible.

  “Peter!” I cried. The skeleton from Down Below wasn’t supposed to be up here, but when he motioned me toward him I went, however reluctantly.

  “You’ve come out of hiding, I see?” I whispered.

  “Yes,” he said, sounding depressed. “I hope you don’t believe everything I said about you.”

  I frowned. “Said about me where?”

  He looked at me in surprise. “Nowhere.”

  “Did you write about me in your diary?” I demanded.

  “I might have. Didn’t realize you didn’t know. You aren’t mad, are you?” he said.

  “I don’t know what you said, but I suppose I shouldn’t be, given that it was stolen from you and it’s private,” I said.

  Peter looked relieved.

  “What do you want up here, anyway? Why didn’t you send a note through the mailbox? I would have come to you!” I said.

  “I know you would have. You always do. Sorry. I didn’t want anyone else to know I was up here. I mean, I told Jefferson in a panic, but he’s trustworthy,” he rambled.

  Jefferson Judge was the moral leader of Down Below, the only one who had ever demonstrated any commitment to honesty or legality. The other residents of Haunted Bluff’s underground viewed the law as a system of foolish guidelines that smart supernaturals chose not to follow. How Jefferson had lasted for so long down there I would never know.

  “What do you want?” I demanded.

  “Something is wrong Down Below!” he whispered.

  “Was there a fight?” I said. This would be something I’d have to take care of.

  “No,” he replied.

  “Something stolen?” I tried again.

  “No, nothing like that,” he replied.

  “Murder? Vandalism?” I was running out of criminal acts.

  “Not that I know of,” he replied.

  I blinked several times. “You’re worried about vandalism?”

  “No, I didn’t say that. It happens too often for it to be something I’m worried about,” he explained.

  I shook my head. He wasn’t making any sense.

  “Then how do you know something is wrong?” I said.

  “It’s too quiet,” he whispered. “That’s the whole point. Usually there are several crimes being planned at any given time, and right now there isn’t a one! Instead, everyone appears to be waiting for something!”

  I scoffed. I couldn’t help it. “Your imagination is running away with you.”

  Peter frowned at me. Clearly he hadn’t expected that I wouldn’t take him seriously.

  “Come back and talk to me when you have something concrete. If there’s another jewelry heist or the skeletons attack the ghosts again, let me know,” I said.

  I hurried on toward the kitchen. When I glanced back over my shoulder, Peter had already faded into the shadows.

  I pushed the skeleton from my mind immediately. There had been a murder in Shimmerfield, which meant that I had more important things to deal with than pretend problems Down Below.

  As I scuttled away, I stopped by the mailbox—the usual means of communication between the house and Down Below—to pick up a copy of this morning’s Spooky Times. The headlines sent a stab of anxiety ran through me, though I wasn’t sure why.

  “All’s quiet at the Spooky Times,” was the latest headline. Instead of blow-up articles about the Garbo family (Cookie had put a stop to that), there were articles about plumbing and sewage. The articles practically screamed, “There is nothing of note going on here!”

  At least my mom was no longer reading the Times and becoming furious about what was written there. She had done that for a while, and the whole family had started to worry in response to her anger. Now that I was in charge of relations with Down Below, my mom couldn’t really do anything in that realm without my say-so, so she had stopped paying quite so much attention.

  I made my way to the kitchen, hoping that my cousins Lark and Pep would be there. If there had been a murder, we needed to get into Shimmerfield as quickly as possible.

  Lark was the easier of the two to spot. Her hair was the color of a red fire engine in bright sunlight. Not only that, but when left untended the curls frizzed high in the air and formed cascades of color, with one brightly dyed white streak. To keep that pile-up from happening, Lark liked to keep her hair in a fishtail braid.

  When I got to the kitchen I found Lark in fine form and Pep, as usual, dressed in a much quieter sweater and collared shirt.

  “It’s not your place to go down there,” Meg was fuming as I walked in.

  Lark and Pep were already sitting in front of their mother, both looking downcast. Audrey was pretending to ignore the drama while she made yet more pancakes. Having seen Kip and crew leaving, I knew Audrey had to replenish the breakfast stock. Those guys ate a lot.

  As I had walked toward the door to the kitchen, I hadn’t even noticed that I still had my shadow. Rose was taking advantage of the drama, I mean family breakfast, to sneak in around my ankles.

  After briefly saying good morning in my direction, the three of them kept arguing.

  “We just want to go into town. We do that from time to time,” said Lark.

  “Not the day after a murder you don’t. Haven’t you heard that the killer hasn’t been caught? You could be in danger,” said Meg.

  “We’re witches. I hardly think a mere human killer would stand a chance against us,” insisted Pep.

  “Be that as it may,” said Meg through gritted teeth.

  “How are we supposed to find out anything if we don’t go?” Pep complained.

  “Wait! Patience!” said Meg.

  “By then it won’t be interesting,” Lark grumbled.

  Finally Meg turned to me. “What do you think?”

  “About what?” I asked.

  “Shimmerfield!” cried all three of them.

  “Of course I want to know about the murder. I’m a detective, after all. I’m sure we’ll find out about it soon enough, though,” I added. “We have a lot of work to do here today. Mom wouldn’t like it if we left Haunted Bluff either.”

  “Exactly. Your mother left a list of cleaning that needs to be taken care of. After that’s all done, maybe we can talk about you three going on a field trip,” said Meg.

  “We’ll tend to the greenhouses,” I assured Meg, knowing that this would be one of the things on Mom’s list. “By the time that’s finished, maybe there will be more news about the murder. It wasn’t a friend of ours, was it?”

  Meg shook her head. “We don’t know who the victim was yet. I talked to Mrs. Gray, and she didn’t know either. She and her husband are fine. She’s spoken with most of her friends, and they’re fine too. It’s a mystery.”

  Before she got any other ideas, I grabbed a muffin and we left the kitchen with a hurried goodbye. Rose followed us out. Luckily, Audrey didn’t notice the white cat rushing between our shins. Meg was already preoccupied w
ith a piece of paper she was reading and barely waved goodbye.

  “I don’t know what’s been distracting her recently. Have you noticed a difference in her behavior?” Lark asked as we headed toward the greenhouse.

  “I definitely have. She isn’t as focused as usual. We’ve been able to get away with more,” Pep mused.

  “Usually she never would have believed we were going to the greenhouse and not straight downtown,” I agreed.

  “How are we going to get into town without her knowing?” Lark asked.

  “I think we just have to risk taking the car,” I said. Flying was even riskier, so that was out of the question.

  We had recently found out that the greenhouse had a secret entrance. In truth, it was more than that; the greenhouse had several secret entrances. The Fudge, the master of Down Below, knew all about them. Now we did as well.

  One of those secret entrances led to the middle of the driveway on the other side of the house. Turns out, my grandmother Cookie had strategically placed her cauldron in front of the secret entrance. We had thought she was just busy being a crazy old lady pretending to stir cauldron goop and scare people who came to the haunted house. Turned out, she was regularly sneaking away through the secret entrance for drinks.

  Chapter Three

  We made our way into the greenhouse, and we did actually spend about ten minutes tidying up the place. While I was sweeping, I wondered what Grant was doing.

  His Majesty of Magic, our neighbor, had been busy lately, as usual. Although he had mentioned our third date to me, we had yet to go on it. And there was no plan in place.

  I was a big fan of plans. The only trouble was, when you were trying to date the most famous warlock in the world, planning could be difficult. Grant was constantly in demand from one side of the country to the other, and because he had been in even more demand than usual lately, I hadn’t seen him much. He had left me a note saying he’d been called away on a case, something very difficult to solve in Arizona. Arizona seemed to be a particularly active location for him, but at least he had friends there to visit.

  “Have we pretended to clean for long enough yet?” Lark asked, breaking into my thoughts.

  Pep was usually the responsible one, but this time even she was impatient to get to town. “I say we go.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” I said with relief.

  The three of us put away our cleaning tools and went into the back room, which was supposedly where seeds were stored. But was also a secret entrance into a tunnel that led into the depths of the grounds. One of the passages led to the cliff. Another led to Down Below.

  “Here we were thinking that there was no way in or out of Down Below except through the mansion,” Pep said.

  “We were clearly naïve. I’m sure Cookie would agree,” I said.

  We made our way into the tunnels, which we had spent a lot of time exploring recently. I figured that with Grant out of town, it was as good a time as any to make mischief. If he caught us in one of the tunnels he’d want to know all about them, and I definitely I didn’t want that.

  In no time at all we were at the driveway. Then it was just a matter of sneaking to the car.

  The breeze was fresh and crisp after the dankness of the tunny. The tip of my nose was already cold as we walked.

  “I can’t believe we were so lucky as to miss Cookie this morning,” said Lark gleefully when we emerged next to our grandmother’s cauldron. My heart had been racing, because I had expected her to be sitting there, and then we would have had to explain why we were going to town.

  Instead, she was nowhere to be seen. She also hadn’t been at breakfast that morning.

  “We should just count our blessings that she finally decided to sleep in,” I said.

  “This must be our lucky day,” said Pep happily.

  The three of us headed for the old, beat-up car that was shared by our entire family. We spent most of our time at the haunted house, so the family really didn’t need more than one vehicle. The only problems arose was when we all needed to go somewhere together. But those times were rare, and when they did happen, some of us ended up flying. It always worked out in the end.

  As we approached the car, a strange sight met my eyes. There was Cookie, sitting in the front passenger seat and staring straight ahead.

  I opened the driver’s side door. “Meditating?” I asked mildly.

  “If that’s what you want to call waiting around until you show up, then sure,” said my grandmother.

  Behind me Lark and Pep heard her voice and gasped.

  “What are you talking about?” Pep asked, coming alongside me.

  “I’m going with you into town,” said Cookie.

  “How do you know where we’re going?” Lark asked suspiciously.

  “Where else would you be going with the car?” said Cookie.

  “For what?” I asked.

  “To investigate this murder business,” she said. “I came out here a while ago. It took you longer than I thought it would to sneak away. Maybe you’re losing your edge. I’ve been saying that for years, though. Come on, time’s a’wastin’. We probably only have today before your handsome boyfriend returns to take on this investigation himself.”

  I nearly choked. “He isn’t my boyfriend.”

  “You need to lock that down,” she told me.

  When my grandmother started acting hip, I became uncomfortable. To put it mildly.

  The blush on my face must have been bright red, because even Lark looked at me with pity.

  But there was no sense arguing with Cookie. She was always right, after all. So the three of us piled into the car and took off.

  The drive to town was quick. Despite the early hour, the whole place was abuzz with activity. There were cars lining the side of the road as we pulled up on the side of the tree-lined street, and a small but expanding gathering of people. Shimmerfield wasn’t very large, and this side road was very near the main one. Beyond the crowd was a barrier of police tape.

  Cookie encouraged me to park on a little side street behind a clump of trees. I didn’t have the energy to argue, so I did as she ordered and the four of us got out of the car and headed toward the crowd that had gathered on a side street off the main road.

  In front of us was a wall of gawking people. I had never seen so many necks stretched so long before, all of them attached to people who had been stopped by a line of yellow tape.

  Beyond the tape was the mechanic’s shop, which I had only passed a few times before. It wasn’t the kind of place you were likely to run across unless you had somewhere specific to go that was nearby. I couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone outside the place on the rare occasions when I had seen it at all.

  Most of the folk standing around us were Shimmerfield residents I recognized. Wallis Franklin was the town busybody and know-it-all, which were unpaid positions facilitated by her paid position as town secretary. In short, she was as annoying as all get-out, especially for my purposes, because I was sure that if anyone ever discovered the Garbo family’s secret, it would be Wallis.

  There was also a man in the crowd whom I had never seen before. He stood out, with wild brown hair and a beard. His eyes landed on us for a split second before he faced forward again. I turned to say something to my companions, and when I looked again he was gone.

  On the other hand, she was great in a situation like the present one, where there was information to be discovered, and she was only too willing to pass it on.

  My grandmother stumped right up to her. “What do you know?”

  “My, my, if it isn’t Crescent Garbo come down from the family perch,” said Wallis, looking remarkably pleased. I wasn’t surprised. She loved attention and was happy to have a chance to show off the fact that she knew us.

  Cookie was unfazed and looked at her levelly. “It isn’t often that there’s a murder in Shimmerfield.”

  “True, this is the first in over a hundred years,” said Wallis. “I gu
ess back in the day a woman tired of her husband’s complaining, so she blasted him. Rumor had it she wasn’t convicted of anything, because the men at the time didn’t believe any woman knew how to use a gun.”

  “That’s quite the story,” said my grandmother. I couldn’t tell what she really thought if it; since other people were listening in, I knew that some of her responses would be purely for show.

  “Yes, isn’t it?” said Wallis. “You should read the town history sometime. The Historical Society has a wealth of information.”

  “I’m sure it does,” said Cookie.

  The strain of the conversation was starting to get to me. Wallis clearly wanted something in return for the information she could dispense, which was why she was dispensing it in such useless drops. She knew that she knew more than anyone else in the crowd, and she wasn’t going to spend her status carelessly.

  Cookie leaned over and whispered in Wallis’s ear. For a split second the woman’s expression stayed exactly the same. Then she lit up like the sun rising at midnight.

  “Oh, you don’t say?”

  Cookie looked very serious and put a finger to her lips. Wallis nodded in discreet understanding.

  “Very well. Here’s the deal,” she said softly. “It’s the mechanic who was murdered, they think sometime in the middle of the night. He was found at the end of the shop driveway by a motorist driving past. Otherwise I don’t think he would ever have been discovered.”

  “Why not?” I couldn’t help but ask.

  Wallis gave me a look as if to say I hadn’t paid the fee, but then she glanced at Cookie and appeared to think better of it. “Because the mechanic was always strange. Didn’t you know Elton?” She said it as if they were old knitting buddies.

  “Can’t say that I did,” I told her.

  “He didn’t like people and was rarely seen. You’d drop your car off and leave a note about what was wrong. Next day you’d go back and it was always fixed,” she said.