The Ghost Wore Gray

by Bruce Coville

  “Why isn’t the inn doing well?” I asked, thinking Porter might know something useful.

  Before he could answer, Mona Curtis came sailing into the room. “Oh, there you are, Nine,” she said. “I was just looking for you! Could you come and talk to me a minute?”

  “Good grief!” whispered Chris. “Do you suppose she proposed to your father already?”

  I glared at Chris, then tried to get my face back under control before I went to talk to Mona. I don’t think I quite managed it, because when I got to her table the first thing she said was, “For heaven’s sakes, don’t look so apprehensive. This is a business talk. It has nothing to do with your father.”

  Before I could decide how to answer that comment, she asked me to wait while she got some coffee. I watched unhappily as she crossed the room; little as I liked to admit it, Mona was a very attractive woman. That morning she was wearing a peach and yellow cotton sweater. I had seen one something like it in a magazine a few weeks before. Very expensive! Her dark hair brushed across her face as she bent to examine the pastry tray. Her long fingers hovered over the goodies before reaching out to pluck up a cheese danish. My mind changed the image to a vision of a giant Mona, reaching out to snatch up my father.

  I began pressing my fingertips against the white linen tablecloth, to see how red I could get them. That may sound stupid, but it gave me something to think about.

  “I can’t have a serious conversation without my morning coffee,” said Mona, slipping back into her chair. She poured some cream into her steaming cup and stirred it. I wondered if she would realize I was faking if I sneezed and knocked the coffee into her lap.

  She tapped her spoon against the edge of her cup a couple of times and then set it down. It was the closest thing I had seen to a nervous gesture on her part.

  “Well, let’s get right down to business,” she said.

  “OK,” I answered. I was dying to know what this was all about.

  Mona smiled. Vulture, I thought.

  Then she struck. “I was wondering,” she said, stirring her coffee again, “if you might like to write a book for me.”

  I fell off my chair.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Deadly Wildflower Bandits

  I heard Chris snort when I hit the floor. It would have made me angry, except I knew I probably would have done the same thing. Porter jumped to his feet, but sat back down again when he saw that I wasn’t hurt. Mona just raised one eyebrow. “Are you all right?” she asked after I had climbed back into my chair.

  “Fine,” I said. “Only I think my ears have gone bad. I thought I heard you ask if I wanted to write a book.”

  Mona nodded. “Your ears are fine,” she said. “Your father told me you had a very interesting experience with a ghost earlier this summer. He also told me you kept a journal about it. I asked him to let me read a few pages. I think it’s pretty good.”

  Now this was a complicated situation! The idea that my father had shown this woman the journal I had let him take made me angry. But how angry could I really get, when the result was so interesting?

  Mona stirred her coffee. “I’m not making any promises,” she said. “But the fact is, I edit kids’ books for a living, and your adventure in the Grand Theater sounds interesting. If you’d be willing to let me read the rest of the journal, I’ll give it serious consideration. If I think it can work, I’ll tell you what you would have to do to turn it into a book.”

  “I need time to think,” I said, sliding out of my seat.

  Mona shrugged. “No hurry,” she said. “I’ll be here through Sunday.”

  “Well,” said Chris, when I got back to the table, “what was that all about?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” I said.

  I was a little nervous, because in the time it had taken me to walk back to my table, I had realized I wasn’t sure how Chris was going to react to this news. I mean, if it were the other way around, I would have had two feelings. I’d be glad for Chris, of course. After all, she is my best friend. But I’d also be so jealous I’d probably explode.

  I wished I could figure out a way to discuss Mona’s offer with my father before I had to explain it to Chris. But she was sitting right there, and she wasn’t about to let me get away without telling her what the woman had wanted. I wouldn’t have, either, if it had been the other way around.

  Porter Markson slid away from the table. “I guess I’d better get moving,” he said. “I’m going for a little hike today. I’ll see you girls at dinner.”

  “OK, Nine,” said Chris when Porter had left the dining room. “Now will you tell me what this is all about?”

  “Let’s go outside,” I said.

  We went to stand on the little bridge that crossed the stream. I told Chris what Mona had offered to do.

  “That’s great!” she said.

  Then she got real quiet.

  I tapped a finger on the side of her head. “Yoo-hoo. Anybody home?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were keeping a diary?” she asked. She sounded hurt.

  “What was to tell?” I said and threw a twig into the water. I watched the stream carry it away from us.

  “I was just keeping a record of what we did while we solved that mystery. My father asked if he could read some of it, and I let him. I had no idea he was going to show it to some editor and tell her it might make a good book.”

  Chris was quiet for a moment. She tilted her head to the left, then to the right, then back again. It looked as if she had a slow motion Ping-Pong game going on in her mind. Finally she stopped, and nodded, as if she had come to some kind of decision.

  She looked at me and threw her hands into the air. “I think it’s wonderful!” She threw her arms around me. We started jumping up and down.

  Let me tell you, it’s as important to have a friend when you want to be happy as it is to have one when you’re feeling lousy. But it’s hard to focus on things when you’re jumping up and down, so I stopped when I noticed some people coming out of the woods.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Chris.

  “Nothing,” I said. “We’ve just got company.”

  I could see now that it was Arnie and Meg Coleman. They were strolling down the path that led to the bridge, holding hands like a couple of kids. They looked sweet. I thought about my parents, and wondered why some people have to split up and others are able to stay in love all their lives.

  “Howdy, youngsters!” said Arnie as he and his wife stepped on to the bridge. “Glorious morning, eh?”

  I recognized that “eh.” All the Canadians I’ve ever met tack it on to at least half their sentences.

  Arnie was carrying, of all things, a shovel. And they both had buckets filled with dirt and plants.

  Meg giggled. “We dug up a few wildflowers for my rock garden. I know we’re not supposed to, but we didn’t take anything that’s endangered. You won’t turn us in, will you?”

  She actually seemed worried that we might be going to call the police on her.

  “Your secret is safe with us,” said Chris, though how she managed to keep her voice serious was beyond me.

  Meg reached out a plump hand and patted Chris on the cheek. “I knew I could count on you, dear,” she said with a wink. “Come on, Arnie. Let’s get these back to the room before someone else catches us!”

  We waited until they were out of sight. Then we broke out giggling. From that point on we referred to Arnie and Meg as The Deadly Wildflower Bandits.

  We walked back to the inn to find out if there was any place nearby where we could go swimming. The lobby was empty when we entered. We could hear someone yelling in the distance. At first I thought it had to be Gloria. Then I figured it was probably Dieter.

  It was a real shock when I finally figured out it was my father.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  A Hole in the Wall

  “Is he upset, or just excited?” asked Chris, when it dawned on her who was doing the shouting.
r />   “I’m not sure,” I said. “Let’s go find out.”

  The sound had come from the right. We ran through the hall into the dining room. It was empty, but I could hear my father’s voice more clearly now. It was coming from the kitchen. Now I realized that Deiter was yelling, too.

  As we got closer to the kitchen, I could tell that Dad was happy. But Dieter was obviously very upset. I wondered what could make one of them so happy, and one of them so mad.

  I didn’t have to wonder long. As soon as we went through the kitchen door I could see what had upset Dieter: my father had made a mess in his kitchen. I decided right then that Dad was either braver or dumber than I had ever realized.

  The little German cook was standing by the stove, waving a spoon over his head and cursing. His face was bright red. Martha and Isabella, who must have rushed in when the commotion began, stood a safe distance away from him. All three of them were looking at my father, who was standing next to a hole in the wall and wearing a big grin. The hole was about a foot wide. A pile of dusty plaster lay on the floor at Dad’s feet.

  “What is going on here?” asked a new voice.

  It was Baltimore who had just come in through the back way. He had a very worried expression on his face as he surveyed the scene.

  “This man—this man is ruining my kitchen!” cried Dieter. “There is dust in the air! Dust!”

  “‘This man’ is just doing his job,” said my father. “I was checking at the back side of the fireplace to make sure the wall was solid and look what I found!”

  He pointed toward the hole in the wall with his flashlight. Everyone, including me, stepped forward to peek. To my surprise, I could see a tiny room inside. It was barely the size of a small closet. I could see a shelf and a small chair.

  “What kind of a room is that?” asked Chris.

  “I think I can answer that question,” said Isabella.

  Everyone turned their attention from the hole in the wall to the pretty waitress. “Well, I’m not certain,” she said. “But it looks to me like the kind of room that would have been used on the Underground Railroad.”

  “Of course!” cried my father. “That makes perfect sense.”

  It may have made sense to him, but it didn’t to me. I said so.

  My father looked at me in astonishment. “What do they teach you in that school?” he asked.

  “Well ex-cuuu-se me for not knowing everything!” I said.

  The level of crankiness in this conversation was getting out of hand. So I was relieved when Isabella jumped in with some information.

  “The Underground Railroad wasn’t really a railroad,” she said. “It was a system for helping escaped slaves make it north to freedom.”

  “Well, if they didn’t go by train, how did they go?” asked Chris.

  Isabella shrugged. “By foot, by mule, by boat—any way that would get them north. Sometimes they actually did travel by train, though usually that involved a lot of disguises and plotting.” She smiled. “One man actually had himself nailed into a crate and shipped to Boston. But most people needed places to hide and places to find food. Those were the stops on the Underground Railroad. And the people who led the slaves north, took them from stop to stop, were called conductors.”

  Suddenly everything clicked into place. “You mean like Harriet Tubman?” I asked.

  Isabella smiled. “That’s right. Harriet Tubman is the most famous. But there were a lot of others. A very successful conductor named Samson Carter had his base of operations right around here.”

  “I didn’t know that!” exclaimed my father. “Samson Carter is one of my heroes.”

  Now I didn’t feel so stupid. We had read about Harriet Tubman’s daring efforts to help runaway slaves last year in social studies. I had just forgotten about them for a while.

  “But I don’t understand why the Underground Railroad would need a stop in New York,” said Chris. “This wasn’t a slave state.”

  “That’s true,” said Isabella. “But a national law called the Fugitive Slave Act said runaway slaves were the property of their owners, no matter where they were. So a black could make it all the way to New York, and still get sent back to slavery. Some slave owners offered big rewards for their slaves. There was always someone willing to turn a man in for the money on his head. Runaways weren’t really safe until they made it to Canada.”

  I shook my head. It all sounded pretty ugly. “How come you know all this stuff?” I said.

  Isabella’s eyes flashed. “Everyone should know it,” she said. “It’s part of the blood history of this country.”

  I thought she was going to pick up where my father had left off, and finish the lecture on being undereducated. But the moment passed. “Anyway,” she said softly, “I suppose I’m more interested than most people would be, since I come from slave blood myself.”

  I looked at her in surprise.

  “I’m one quarter black,” she said. “That makes me what they used to call a quadroon—plenty black enough to have been a slave myself.”

  I swallowed uneasily.

  Chris took over. “If there were rewards, why would the people who owned this place have helped runaways hide here?” she asked.

  “Because some people think what’s right is more important than what’s profitable,” said Isabella. “More important than what’s comfortable, too, since it was illegal to hide a runaway slave. Anyone who did it, black or white, was risking trouble with the law. They could face the kind of fines that would bankrupt them, or even be thrown in jail. But that didn’t stop people who believed in freedom. They helped the runaways in spite of the law.”

  I walked over to the hole my father had made and peered into the little room. It was about two feet wide and three feet long. I thought about the people who might have hidden there, the black women and men risking their lives to get to Canada so they could be free.

  I thought about being closed up in there, in the dark. It was such a small space! I wondered how long people had to stay in there. I didn’t think I could have done it.

  “Why was it sealed up like that?” asked Chris, who had come over to stand beside me.

  This time my father answered. “Since it was used as a place for people to hide, I would guess that the door itself was disguised, somehow made to blend in with the rest of the wall. Probably years after the room was last used, someone covered the door without even knowing it was here.” He turned to Baltimore. “I’d suggest that we restore the space to its original condition. It will make the Quackadoodle a little more special, give people something to tell their friends about after they’ve stayed here.”

  Isabella’s eyes flashed, and she started to say something. My father cut her off.

  “Yes, I know. That sounds ‘commercial.’ But it works two ways. At the same time that it brings in extra customers for Baltimore, it teaches people about something you think is pretty important.”

  “I do not care important!” cried Dieter. “I care my kitchen! I don’t want people tramping through here to look in a little hole while I am trying to cook!”

  “Maybe we should talk about this later,” my father said to Baltimore.

  The innkeeper nodded.

  Dieter figured Dad was just trying to get around him and started to yell again.

  I was trying to think of some way to keep everyone happy when I felt Chris grab my elbow. I turned and saw that she was looking through the hole. She yanked on my arm, indicating I should come and look, too. Something about the way she was standing, the way she held my elbow, let me know this was important.

  I glanced around. The grown-ups were busy yelling at one another, so I squeezed up against Chris and peered into the opening.

  The ghost was sitting there, looking back.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  And With a Crook of His Finger, He Beckoned Us On

  Between the argument behind us and the ghost in front of us, I was finding it hard to think. I was sure he wanted something
from us, but I didn’t know what.

  Finally I just decided to ask. “What do you want?” I whispered.

  I didn’t really think he could answer me. It was just that I didn’t know what else to do.

  To my surprise, Captain Gray stood up and pointed to the wall in front of him. But before I could see what he was pointing at, I heard Baltimore shout, “Watch out!”

  An instant later I heard a loud crash.

  I spun around in time to see the next plate go flying through the air. It hit the wall and spattered into hundreds of pieces. Another one followed it, and then another.

  “You want a messy kitchen?” cried Dieter. “I’ll show you a messy kitchen!” He grabbed a fifth plate and flung it across the room. He didn’t seem to be throwing them at anyone in particular. Even so, I was a little worried about what might happen if he ran out of plates and started on the knives.

  Chris was feeling the same way. “Come on,” she said. “It’s time to beat feet.”

  “But the ghost—”

  “He’s gone,” said Chris. “He took off when the fireworks started.”

  “But I can’t leave my father with this maniac!”

  “Your father’s the one who started this. He ought to know better than to poke holes in crazy people’s walls!”

  I was about to answer when Gloria walked into the room. She took one look at what was going on, and put an end to it.

  “Dieter, stop acting so silly.”

  That was all she said. But her tone of voice probably would have brought a rampaging rhinoceros to a halt. Dieter stopped. I wasn’t surprised.

  She turned to Baltimore. “Why do you let him do that?” she asked.

  Before he could answer, she turned and waved her hands at the rest of us. “Everybody out of here!” she said. “This man has work to do.”

  Chris was right. It was time to beat feet.