Sydney Mackenzie Knocks 'Em Dead

by Cindy Callaghan

  “What kind of cases?”

  “Let’s see, there was a big bank heist, a ring of forgeries, something about gold bars . . . there was even an old baby-switching case.”

  “So that must keep him busy,” I said.

  “It does. He says it’s good we don’t have much new crime. Only old stuff.”

  I avoided the puddles in my short, black leather boots with a little chunky heel.

  “Any visits from Ivy last night?” he asked.

  “Yeah, thuds. I thought maybe finding the locket would make it stop. I talked to Johanna this morning. She says there’s probably something I have to do with the locket before Ivy will go away.”

  “Well, JoJo would know.” Nick walked fast through the slush. “She’s read books, ya know?”

  “I guess.” Between my shoes and backpack, which contained a notebook and laptop, I had trouble keeping up with Nick’s pace.

  “I’ll take that.” He took my pack. I still had trouble navigating the messy sidewalk. “So, has your dad, er . . . Jim started working in the basement?”

  “Soon,” I said. “You know, I was thinking, if he had done that work before the roof, we would never have ever found the locket,” I said.

  We arrived at the army-navy store. “Then it’s a good thing we found it when we did.” A buzzer indicated that a customer had arrived.

  “This isn’t the library,” I said.

  “It’ll only take a minute.”

  I was surprised to see Travis walk out from the back of the store. “Hey hey hey! What up, guys?”

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I work here. This is my cousin Woody’s store.”

  “Is it me, or do everyone’s relatives live and work in this town?”

  “It isn’t you,” Travis said. “All my relatives live here. Pretty much everyone is related somehow to someone else.”

  “Except for Mrs. Dolan,” Nick said. “Her kids moved to Philadelphia.”

  “Can you blame them? If everyone thought I was cursed, I’d leave town too,” Travis said.

  “Why are they cursed?” I asked.

  “Does there have to be a reason?” Travis asked.

  “I think so,” I said. “You aren’t just born that way, are you?”

  “Maybe it’s because she’s a witch,” Travis said.

  “What does she do that’s witchy?” I asked.

  They looked at each other and shrugged.

  “You guys don’t seem to know much about this Dolan curse,” I said.

  “Look,” Nick said. “I just know I was always told they were cursed. It has something to do with their ancestors.”

  “And they just inherited the curse? That doesn’t make sense,” I said.

  “It seems perfectly logical to me,” Travis said.

  “Her kids come home for the Tomato Ball; maybe you can ask them then,” Nick said.

  Travis said, “Oh, that will go over really well. . . . ‘Hi there. You don’t know me, but why is your family cursed?’ ”

  “What’s the Tomato Ball?” I asked.

  “At the end of the summer we gather up all the extra tomatoes, and we have a contest to see who can catapult one the farthest across Cattail Field. We all get dressed up—”

  Travis interrupted. “Fancy, like a ball.”

  Nick said, “And we throw tomatoes—”

  “Like balls. You know, footballs, baseballs, softballs, and golf balls.” Travis finished Nick’s sentences the way Roz did for Jim.

  “And usually folks make tomato pie, tomato soup, tomato casserole, tomato sauces, and tomato salads. Mayor Margreither dresses up like a tomato. There’s a DJ and a dance floor—”

  “Like a ball,” I said.

  “It’s like the ending to the summer,” Nick said.

  “It’s one of the many highlights of Buttermilk River Cove.” Travis smiled proudly. “And now we even have our very own ghost. I’m glad you made it through the night okay after we disturbed it.”

  “Yeah. Here I am,” I said. “Tired, but here in the flesh and blood, although I almost lost an arm.” I held up the hand that I had shoved into the brick hole.

  “Don’t ask,” Nick said.

  “I won’t,” he said. “So what’s your plan?”

  “We’re gonna look through the town’s old records and see if there was anyone named Ivy who lived around here in 1825,” Nick said, and told him about the date on the brick.

  “Mrs. Schuldner should know. She was probably alive then,” Travis said. “What are you gonna do if you find Ivy in the records?”

  I explained Johanna’s theory that since Ivy was still hanging around, she probably wanted me to do something with the locket. “And maybe if we can find out who she is, we can figure out what we have to do.”

  “Well, good luck.”

  I thought we were going to leave, but Nick said, “Hey, we need a pair of sludge-kickers, size . . . What are you, Mac, a seven?”

  I liked it when he called me Mac. “Six and a half.”

  Travis said, “You got it.” He disappeared.

  Nick motioned for me to sit down. “Take off your boots.”

  I was a little unsure what we were doing, but I unzipped the sides of my boots and took them off. The bottom of my skinny jeans and my socks (both pairs) were wet.

  Travis reappeared and gave Nick a box. “Shazam! It looks like you need some insulated socks, too.” He snatched a pair and handed them to me.

  While I slid them on, the boys started a WWE routine of some kind. The socks were navy blue and downright ugly. Then I put on the boots and tied them. In only a few seconds my feet were warm and cozy and dry. I walked around. They felt good. But the look? Yuck!

  I went to the cash register and reached into my backpack, then I remembered that I didn’t have any money. I sat back down and started taking the boots off. The boys stopped wrestling.

  Nick said, “I thought you liked the boots.”

  “You know, not so much after all.”

  Nick looked at my old wet socks and leather boots. “Just keep those on. I’d feel really bad if your feet got frostbite and had to be amputated.”

  “But I don’t have any—”

  “Trav, can you put them on the squad’s account? We are officially on an unofficial investigation regarding the haunting of Lay to Rest Cemetery and the case of Ivy’s locket.”

  “Okey dokey, Smokey.” He tossed my old boots and socks in a bag and gave it to me.

  “Now,” Nick said to me, “we can walk to the library.”

  “Say hello to your girlfriend for me,” Travis said.

  Girlfriend? Nick had a girlfriend?

  * chapter twenty-eight *

  THE LIBRARY

  I STEPPED ONTO THE STREET, and I hated to admit it, but it felt nice to be in warm, dry shoes.

  “Thanks,” I said to Nick as we walked down the street to the library.

  “You’re welcome,” Nick said. “Do you like them?”

  “Yeah,” I said. Maybe they weren’t as bad as I originally thought.

  “You could really use a heavier coat, hat, gloves, and scarf, too.”

  “I have some warmer stuff.” My teeth chattered.

  “We’re here.”

  “This is the library?”

  The plaque on the side of the building did, in fact, say BUTTERMILK RIVER COVE LIBRARY, but it was little more than a log cabin.

  It was incredibly warm inside, heated by a potbelly stove. There was a table in the center of the house, and except for the three windows, the walls were lined floor to ceiling with bookshelves. The farthest window looked at the hill. On the top was Lay to Rest. I hadn’t noticed before, but with a white candle lit in each window, the Victorian looked nice.

  Nick took off his puffy jacket. Under it he wore a navy henley tucked into jeans that were worn in all the right places. Nick caught me examining the faded back pockets, and a dimple appeared on his cheek. I looked at the floor.

&
nbsp; Among a fortress of books was an old woman sitting at a desk. Nick approached her.

  She jumped with a start when Nick said hi and put on glasses that magnified her eyes to the size of California navel oranges.

  “Oh, Nicholas, is that you? How are you, dear?”

  “I’m fine, Mrs. Schuldner.”

  “You look just like your daddy, you know that? I can remember him coming in here doing his homework after school too. You look just like him, you know that?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What’s that?” She couldn’t hear him.

  More loudly Nick said, “Yes, ma’am, I know that I look like my father.”

  “Yes, you do. I remember when he used to come in after school and do his homework too.”

  I didn’t have the heart to tell her it was a Saturday.

  Nick kept his volume loud. “We’re looking for local history.”

  “Doing your homework after school, just like your father. You look like a good student—are you? Do you work hard on your studies like your father?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Where can we find information about people who used to live here, like a long time ago, like a list of people?”

  “Lists? I don’t think we have lists, but maybe old high school yearbooks would help.” I didn’t think yearbooks existed in 1825. “And then there are birth and death records, phone books, and I suppose the motor vehicle people would have lists of everyone who had a driver’s license. Who are you looking for? Your father’s old pal Lefty Short? He was a character, right handed and tall. Now, he wasn’t a good student. He didn’t do his homework after school the way your father did.”

  “No. It’s not Lefty. It’s someone who we think lived here a long time ago.”

  “Well, did he have a phone?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “For a good student, you don’t know much. How about voting? You might be able to find voting records.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you even know who you’re looking for, son?”

  “Someone named Ivy,” he said. “From 1825.”

  “1825! Holy Toledo! That was a long time ago.” She grumbled, “1825.” With a little grunt and a lot of effort, she stood up. She moved herself to a metal walker and used it to shuffle to a bookcase. A bony finger pointed to the spines of the books. “Can you read those?”

  Nick said, “1800 to 1825, 1826 to 1850.”

  “Yes. That’s them. Those are all the men who were registered to vote for those times. You could look through them to see if you find someone named Ivy. What a strange name. Did you ask your father? He might know. He’s a very smart man. He got that way because he worked real hard in school. Do you work hard in school?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I spoke up for the first time. “What if Ivy is a woman?”

  She looked toward my voice like she hadn’t even realized there was another person in the room. She tried to focus her orange-size eyes on me. “Well, women didn’t vote until 1920. So you’d have to start with the volume for 1920. You must not work hard at your studies or you’d know that.”

  I bowed my head like I’d just been punished.

  Nick took the first volume off the shelf. “Thank you, Mrs. Schuldner.”

  I whispered to him, “Ask her about the tunnel.”

  She shouted at me, “Did you say TUNNELS?” Even though I’d whispered, she heard me. Bizarre.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  “Oh my, well, let’s see. There were some old mining tunnels, but that was a long time ago. The iron mines were closed up ages ago.”

  “Like when?” Nick asked.

  “What’s that?” she snapped, because now she was suddenly deaf again.

  “WHEN?” Nick yelled to her.

  “Before I was born, I suppose. That was 1932, and the mines were already closed up. The big business back in my day was railroads. Can you imagine, now we’re going to the moon. Did you know that?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Nick said.

  “Of course you do. You’re a good student. Like your father.”

  We sat side by side at the table and thumbed through the book. “Do you think Ivy could be a woman?” I asked.

  “The locket kinda makes me think so.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  In a second Mrs. Schuldner was back in her chair, asleep.

  “Sorry that my girlfriend was a little mean to you, but it’s only because you don’t work hard at your studies.”

  I punched him in the arm, and he pretended that it hurt. “She’s your girlfriend?” I looked at her snoring. “I don’t think I care if she doesn’t like me.”

  We sat there scanning the voting log. There was no Ivy.

  “I don’t think this is going to help,” I said.

  “Me either. Let’s come back when we have a better idea what we’re looking for.”

  “Okay.”

  He quietly put the book back where we’d gotten it from, careful not to wake his girlfriend from her nap.

  “Thanks for helping me with this,” I said as we put on our coats and returned to the cold street.

  “Sure,” Nick said.

  I said, “If you were a cop around here, you could investigate all the time. Probably be the sheriff one day and live in Buttermilk River Cove forever.”

  Maybe it was the way I said it that made him ask, “Would that be so bad? You know, you might like it here, if you gave it a chance.”

  “I have been giving it a chance.”

  “I can see that you’re scared and hate creepy stuff, but you’re acting a certain way so that we’ll all like you,” he said.

  “What’s wrong with wanting people to like me?”

  “Nothing. I want people to like me, too. But did you ever think that maybe you don’t have to act here?” Then he added, “Did you ever think that we’ll like you the way you normally act?”

  I hadn’t considered this at all.

  “Maybe you had to pretend in California, but you don’t need to here.”

  “You really think that?”

  “Well, there’s one thing you need to do in order to fit in,” Nick said.

  “What?”

  He looked at me thoughtfully. “Nah. Never mind. You wouldn’t be able to handle it.”

  “Like heck.” I pushed him at the shoulder, a little harder than I meant to, and he slipped on some ice and fell down. I put my hand over my mouth. “Nick, I’m sorry.” I bent down and offered him my hand. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. My butt is wet, but I’m fine.” He took my hand and tried to pull himself up. Instead, I slipped on the same patch of ice, and I fell on top of him.

  “Ooof,” he said, “Umm, could you . . .”

  And I immediately got myself up and helped him up, for real this time.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again.

  “It’s okay. You know what? I don’t care if you can’t handle it. We’re going. But first I need some dry pants.”

  “Where are we going to go?”

  “To my house. I live right over here,” he said. “That’s where I keep my pants.”

  * chapter twenty-nine *

  GOOG

  A FEW FLURRIES FLOATED IN the air as we headed to Nick’s house.

  Nick explained, “One of the great things about Buttermilk is that you can walk pretty much everywhere quickly because everything is close together.”

  We arrived at his house and went inside to find his mom taking down the Christmas tree.

  “Hi, Ma,” he said.

  “Hello, dear.” She put down her shoe box of red shimmery balls and came over to me. “And hello to you. I don’t think I know you.”

  Nick said, “Ma, Sydney. Sydney, Ma.” He was around the corner and down a hallway, but I heard him yell the intros. “I had an accident with some slush. I’m gonna put on some dry pants.”

  She shook my hand. “Are you from Dover?”

  “No, Mrs. Wesley, I’m from
California. My parents inherited Lay to Rest.”

  “Oh, that’s nice,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I awkwardly added. “It’s nice.”

  Nick returned. “Ready?”

  “I guess so.”

  Mrs. Wesley said, “She can’t go like that.” How did she know where I was going when I didn’t?

  “You’re right.” He looked at me, opened the hall closet, and took out a ski mask and pulled it over my head. Then he unzipped my coat and exchanged it for a purple ski jacket that was probably his mom’s. He wrapped a scarf around my neck like ten times and finally slid my hands into Hulk-size gloves.

  He and his mom tilted their heads to the side and examined me. “Better,” he said.

  Mrs. Wesley nodded. “Her legs will still be cold, so don’t stay out long.”

  “I won’t. I’m just going to bring her down the street then home.”

  “Okay. Then come right back,” she said, and took a satiny red ball off the tree and put it into a shoe box. “Nice meeting you, Sydney.”

  “You too, Mrs. Wesley.”

  The coat was so puffy I had to pull my arms in to fit through the front door.

  We approached the snowmobile.

  “We’re going on Goog?” I asked. But through the scarf and ski mask, Nick didn’t hear me.

  Nick got on. He put on a helmet and patted his hand on the seat behind him for me to sit. I did. Then he strapped a second helmet on my head over the ski mask. “Hold on.”

  “To what?” I asked, but he still didn’t hear me.

  He twisted the handles. As we zipped away, I wrapped my arms around his stomach. And off we went into the dusk. The chilled air made my eyes water. I had never been so grateful for an ugly ski mask.

  Nick cruised around the main street, which was coated with just enough snow for Goog, pointing to things as we passed them, but I couldn’t hear what he said.

  We passed the library log cabin. All the lights were out. The police station was lit up. I saw only one uniformed guy inside. Nick pointed out houses and said things that I couldn’t decipher in the wind.

  He started up the hill. Its steepness caused me to slide off the back of Goog, so I had to hold on to Nick even tighter than I was already.