The Mystery of the Masked Marauder (Nate and Basset, PI: Pet Investigators Book 1)

by Peter Cox

  That’s a lot of forest for a suburban village.

  We walked along the stream, and the gurgling, laughing water sounded really loud after the deep silence of the woods. Even this far in there wasn’t a single bird. Not a tweet.

  It took us another half hour to navigate the rest of the instructions, which were actually really accurate. Say what you want about the squirrels, but they stuck to their end of the bargain while trying to loophole us.

  While we walked, it finally gave Sam and I a chance to talk about something other than the investigation. We chatted about our favorite moments from books, which movie adaptations we liked and which ones we didn’t (she liked the Disney Chronicles of Narnia, but I forgave her for that), and what we hoped our favorite writers would do next.

  “So,” I said as we clambered over a massive boulder, “why won’t your parents let you have pets? You’re so good with them.”

  Sam sighed, a big, long sigh even bigger and longer than she was.

  “I guess I’ll have to tell you at some point.” She paused. But I waited. “I’ve always been big, even when I was younger. I’d try to play with the other kids, but I never fit in, sometimes literally. I couldn’t fit on the swing set, I bent a slide so none of the other kids could use it, and when I was three I got stuck in a tube on the jungle gym.”

  Another pause.

  “When I was five my parents bought me a hamster. I guess they thought I needed a friend since none of the other kids would talk to me anymore. I loved that little guy. I brought him everywhere with me, showed him all of my favorite spots in the woods and fed him all of my favorite treats. But one day when I was petting him, I guess I petted too hard. I killed him. I killed my first pet and my first friend.”

  There were tears in her eyes the size of pearls.

  I patted her on the back, and tried to look into her eyes, but she kept looking away.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I said. “You were little. Well…you know what I mean. You were younger. Accidents happen. I once peed my pants at a birthday party when I was six. Accidents happen.”

  “Peeing your pants rarely kills things,” she said.

  “True, but that’s not the point. If you did it on purpose, that would be something to be ashamed of, but you didn’t. It was an accident, and you can’t beat yourself up over that.”

  “Well my parents sure can,” she said, the tears somehow getting even bigger without falling. “My dad called me a clumsy idiot, a giant waste of space, and told me I could never touch another animal again. Not ever.” She sniffed. “I love animals, but I’m always scared I’ll hurt one again. That’s why I never stuck up for you. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  I nodded. “Look, I understand, okay? I really do. But….well I don’t know what to say.”

  I looked down at Basset, which is what I usually do when I’m confused.

  “Tell her I don’t blame her. It might mean more coming from an animal. Besides, we’re terrible at judging ourselves. We’re either too hard or not hard enough. We can’t see ourselves as clearly as others can. I see a girl who wants to take care of animals instead of hurting them. I see a girl who cares about others to the point that she doesn’t even think about herself. And I see a girl who made one mistake a long time ago and should learn from it instead of running from it. We dogs have a saying: ignore the squirrels you can’t catch, because barking at the squirrels in the trees will keep you from seeing the squirrels within reach. It means we shouldn’t focus on the things we can’t change. Instead, we should focus on the things we can. We can’t change the past, but the future is ours.”

  “Squirrels, huh?” I said.

  “Okay, so I made that saying up. But it’s true. Focus on the squirrels on the ground because you can’t reach the squirrels in the trees. The past is in the trees. The future is on the ground.”

  I told Sam everything Basset said, word for word.

  “He really thinks all that?”

  “He sure does. And I agree with him. You’re so good with animals. I’ve seen it. You treat them like you really care. You can’t let that one mistake define you.”

  She looked at me with a mix of hope and doubt.

  “I don’t know, but thanks anyway.”

  “Think about it,” Basset said, looking directly at Sam instead of at me. “Trust me.”

  Sam got the message. She nodded.

  We walked a bit further, past the “big rock.”

  “Your dad didn’t take that very well, did he? He doesn’t seem like the nicest guy.”

  Sam sighed again. “He’s not. He tries his best, but he gets angry a lot.” I gave her a worried look. “Oh, he never hits me or anything. Just with words. My mom barely even talks anymore because she doesn’t want to get him riled up.”

  “So that’s why you spend so much time out here.”

  “That’s why.”

  I didn’t have an answer for that one. A dad who’s mean; is that a squirrel in a tree, or on the ground? Or somewhere in between? I had no idea how to deal with that, and I don’t think Sam did either. And she’s a lot smarter than I am.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. Even that little bit seemed to help.

  “Thanks. Look, it’s not a big deal. It could be worse. I just have to live with it. We all have things that don’t go right. We just have to deal with them properly.”

  “You’re right.” I gave a little chuckle. “Take your own advice about that hamster.”

  Sam laughed out loud. “I will.”

  We finally made it to the end of the directions, and as we walked around the last boulder, the house came into view.

  It was different than I had imagined.

  It was even creepier.

  Chapter 21

  BASKERTONN MANOR

  The manor was a massive Victorian-style mansion with a tall tower that sagged to the left like a wilting weed. All the windows were broken out, looking like empty eye sockets staring at you as you approached.

  There were shadows in all the corners, and leaves choked all the doorways.

  “It’s real!” Sam said with an awed tone.

  “Apparently.”

  “So if that part of the story’s real…”

  “Oh, I doubt the rest of the stories are true. I think it’s more haunted than anyone says.” I tried to laugh bravely, but it came out like a choked squeak.

  Fine. I was scared.

  I kept reminding myself that no one in their right mind would attack my personal giant Sam, but anyone running around robbing pet stores in a Halloween mask probably isn’t in their right mind. And he could have friends.

  There was also the problem of ghosts.

  I don’t believe in them. Not in my head. But my heart and my stomach sure seemed to believe in them.

  “This is so cool!” Sam said. “Who knows what could be in there?”

  Yeah! Like spiders, rotting rats, and hidden bear traps!

  I forced myself to get excited. After all, I loved exploring places like this. I was just getting worked up over some spooky stories. Like a kid.

  “It’s old enough there could be jewelry or some works of art that are worth serious money!” I said. “I bet there’s all sorts of stuff in there!”

  I pushed the fear down inside and acted excited. “Fake it ‘til you make it,” my mom always said.

  We started to sneak towards the front door that gaped open like a hungry mouth, but the years and years of dead leaves made too much noise.

  “Can’t really creep up on this place,” Sam said. “Besides, if anything’s inside they’d have seen us by now.”

  I nodded, and we got up and strode straight for the house.

  When we walked in the first thing I noticed was all the broken glass. It was littered everywhere, glittering like diamonds on the dirt-covered floor. Sharp, skin-ripping diamonds.

  We’d have to be careful.

  We were in a foyer about the size of my parents’ entire house, with a wide staircase le
ading into darkness ahead of us. It was like those southern mansions you see in old movies like Gone With The Wind (don’t laugh, my mom made me watch it): even now, covered in dirt and leaves and glass, you could tell it had been really fancy.

  The carpet was deep red and looked extremely soft, and art did hang on the walls, but it wasn’t anything that would be worth money. The pictures were ripped and tattered, the giant fancy frames chipping.

  A chandelier about the size of my dining room table lay broken and shattered at the center of the entryway.

  “Thank goodness that fell before we got here,” Sam said.

  “Yeah, but who knows what else is waiting to fall. We have to be careful.”

  Sam nodded, and Basset said, “I can scout ahead if you want. I’m less likely to get stuck anywhere and I can sniff out danger.”

  “If you think that’s best, boy. But don’t go out of eyesight. We should stick together.”

  I couldn’t believe we were really inside the fabled Baskertonn Manor. Every single kid at school would be jealous if they knew Sam and I were the first ones in decades to explore it.

  We carefully stepped around the chandelier, and, with Basset’s nose leading us, we walked further in.

  “Looks like there’s a cellar door over there, and there’s probably a dining room, kitchen, and some sitting rooms on this level,” Sam said. “Bedrooms upstairs.”

  “Seems about right.” I hesitated. “Let’s save the basement for last.”

  “Good idea.”

  On this floor light filtered in through the broken windows, sending shafts of daylight onto the floor. There were shadows everywhere, but we could see well enough to walk without serious danger.

  We made our way to the dining room, where another chandelier hung from the ceiling. It looked like the only thing holding it up was thousands of cobwebs as thick as a blanket.

  There was more ruined artwork, but some of the paintings were in good enough shape that you could tell what they were.

  “Looks like this is a portrait of some ‘Indian shaman,’” Sam said. “I don’t know if that’s the right term, but that’s what the plaque says.”

  “This one’s just a bunch of horses,” I responded, while studying the painting. It was seven feet high and at least double that wide, and stretched from floor to ceiling. It was weird. Even in the gloom and even covered in dust you could tell the horses had way too many legs.

  “Looks like the artist got a little distracted while painting the horses,” I laughed. “Or didn’t learn how to count.”

  I counted eight horses in all, and each one had twice as many legs as it should.

  There were more paintings, but none of them were very interesting. There was a painting of an old man with wispy white hair who looked incredibly angry, but he almost made me laugh. His face looked like a little kid trying to look scary. He couldn’t pull it off.

  There was a painting of an old mansion called “Vale of Indescribable Indestructible Industry,” and another painting of a Greek goddess.

  “Looks like Athena,” Sam said.

  “Well someone actually paid attention in Mr. Grimley’s history class,” I laughed.

  “I think I was the only one.”

  So far standard mansion stuff: paintings of old white men, castles, and Greek goddesses.

  The table had eight chairs around it, and there were eight candelabras on the table, each one holding eight candles.

  Again, nothing interesting. Interior decorators like to keep things consistent. At least that’s what Mrs. Maplewood says.

  We looked behind the paintings for hidden safes or secret doors, we looked under the table and under the rugs for trapdoors, but found nothing.

  “I wish my dream had been more specific,” I said. “Not a super helpful phantom.”

  Sam laughed. “I’m not an expert in phantoms, so maybe that’s how they all are.”

  We made our way into the kitchen. More dust, more cobwebs, more nothing.

  The old stove was pretty cool: the size of a bus and loaded with old cooking tools that I had never seen. In an age when there wasn’t electricity, everything looked so different.

  It was all rusted, but there were hand mixers and some scales and other items that made me feel like I had stepped back in time.

  It was in the next room that we found the first really interesting item.

  We walked through a small door and into a much smaller dining room.

  “Probably for eating breakfast,” Sam said.

  Again we looked at the paintings (another Athena, a few more Native Americans), and checked behind them, not really expecting to find anything.

  But we did.

  Chapter 22

  HIDDEN PASSAGES

  I pulled on the Athena painting, and with a bone-shaking creak it swung out on hidden hinges.

  Behind it was a secret door.

  “No way,” I said breathlessly.

  Sam came rushing over. “I thought secret doors were made up by mystery movies.”

  “Me too. I just figured there could be a safe or something.”

  I tried pushing the door, and it swung in easily.

  An honest to God secret passage.

  Behind the door was a small room, not much larger than a walk-in closet. The light from the windows barely made it into the room, but as my eyes adjusted to the dim light my heart sank a little.

  This room was even more boring than the others.

  The floor was littered with old newspapers and pages from books, all shriveled with age. There was no art on the walls, no furniture, nothing.

  “I kinda got my hopes up I guess,” I said.

  “It’s not a total bust. Now we know there are secret doors in this house. Who knows what else is out there?”

  The only thing that was unusual was a framed needlepoint that read:

  “Follow the wrath

  When the world takes a bath

  And time removes its mask

  Then you shall know thy task”

  “Well that’s weird,” I said.

  We made our way next to a small sitting room, with a grand piano that knelt down on only two legs. There were couches and chairs with a flowery pattern, and two huge leather chairs facing a small fireplace.

  The mantle was made out of granite, and was intricately carved with all sorts of leaves and vines. At the top and center of the mantle was a carving of a human face, not much smaller than mine, with closed eyes and a peaceful, sleepy look on its face.

  I remembered something from an old Frankenstein movie, and pushed on the face.

  I guess there was no button to open up a secret compartment behind the fireplace.

  Dang.

  There were some old crystal decanters sitting on the side tables, all full of amber liquid.

  “Those are probably worth something,” I said, motioning to the crystal.

  “Probably, but I’d feel bad taking anything from here. It’s cool to explore, but I don’t want to steal, even if it is from the dead.”

  I nodded. Exploring was fun, stealing was wrong.

  But if there were some old baseball cards or something….well we’d cross that extremely unlikely bridge if we came to it.

  My dad probably would have been excited by what was IN the crystal. Who knows how old and fancy the liquor was? Rare scotch? Thousand dollar brandy?

  Personally, I had no interest. I don’t like setting my throat on fire, as odd as that may be.

  And old alcohol sitting in cobwebbed decanters for decades really didn’t sound appetizing.

  Sam and I moved on, the excitement from the secret door dulled somewhat by how little we’d found here.

  Real life so rarely lives up to your daydreams.

  We came to the last room on the first floor: a massive living room with a fireplace larger than my dad’s car.

  Everything in here looked expensive. Dusty, but expensive.

  It looked like a scene from that Downton Abbey show. Once
again, don’t laugh; I once walked in on my mom watching it. I almost fell asleep at the sight of it.

  More red leather chairs and couches, cracked like the ground in a desert. Another chandelier made entirely out of cobwebs. The smell of dust and age.

  I felt like an archaeologist. This room in particular felt untouched. Undiscovered. Unexplored.

  We walked around a bit, looking all over as much as we could.

  Two of the walls were taken up entirely by gigantic, 20-foot tall bookcases. Now this got me excited. Leather-bound books from classic writers like Dickens and Goethe and tons of others that sounded boring, but old books fascinated me. They were like a doorway to the past, a way to share something with a person from 100 years ago.

  Completely surrounding the fireplace, a massive tapestry covered the entire rest of the wall. It was the biggest work of art I had ever seen, fifty feet long and reaching all the way to the ornate ceiling.

  In the fading light I could see it was an ocean scene, with angry black waves pounding against two giants, who were standing on rocks rising out of the sea.

  On the far left stood a man with a trident (Poseidon, I guessed), and on the right yet another depiction of Athena.

  This didn’t look like a friendly god-meeting.

  Poseidon’s trident was raised like he was about to throw it, and Athena’s face looked like it was filled with hatred.

  Why you would want two extremely peeved 20 foot tall Greek gods glowering down at you while you got comfortable with a good book I couldn’t guess.

  Not my idea of relaxing atmosphere.

  Athena didn’t have a weapon, but she was pointing a finger at Poseidon. My mom has proven that a nasty glare and a strong point can be just as frightening to a man as a trident. Maybe more frightening.

  Someone had put a clock on the mantelpiece, though, right in front of Athena’s pointing finger so it looked like she was extremely angry at the decorator’s choice, instead of at Poseidon.

  Sam and I each had the exact same idea at the exact same time: we both rushed over to the tapestry, lifted up an edge, and looked behind.