Haunting at the Hotel
Page 4
“Ghost! Ghost! Ghost!” Frank says, like a blaring alarm. But we don’t need his warning: we all see it. Gliding toward us. In my flashlight beam, all I can see is one yellow eye peeking out from behind long, tangled hair.
I shudder.
Frank nudges me gently, and I look down. He’s shining his flashlight on his pockets, which are packed with snowballs. Should I throw one at the ghost?
Or should I take away the ghost’s source of light? If I turn off the flashlights, the ghost can’t see us . . . and then it can’t hurt us.
* * *
TO THROW A SNOWBALL AT THE GHOST, CLICK HERE.
TO TURN OFF THE FLASHLIGHTS, CLICK HERE.
* * *
“WE’RE GOING TO talk to January,” I tell Eliza.
We walk into the dining room. January has her thick headphones on and doesn’t seem to notice us until we’re right next to her. She hits pause on her music and looks up at us with an expression of pure boredom. “Can I help you?”
“What are you listening to?” Eliza asks.
“A mix I made.”
“I thought you wanted to learn video editing, not sound editing?”
“Where did you hear that?” she says, kicking her feet up on the table.
“Your dad.”
“Yeah, I’m into both. Which Dad would know if he ever paid attention to my interests instead of this dumb hotel.”
Dumb hotel? It’s not news that she’s pretty unhappy. But is January actively bringing about the hotel’s demise, or is she just practicing a normal level of disrespect? I remember suddenly what Harris said about January going through her tween angst, fighting with her mom. Maybe I should ask about that. Or I can skip right to an accusation, just to see how she’ll react.
* * *
TO ASK JANUARY WHY SHE’S FIGHTING WITH HER MOM, CLICK HERE.
TO ACCUSE JANUARY OF HAUNTING THE LODGE, CLICK HERE.
* * *
I ENTER MOON, leaf, house, star, sun, lightning, flower, heart, snowflake into Reese’s alarm pad. It blinks so brightly that it looks like a bolt of lightning is going through the screen. And then it goes dead.
I try the door, but it’s locked. “What happened?” I ask as I jiggle the door handle with more force.
“It’s not opening?” Eliza says.
“OPEN SESAME!” Frank yells.
I slam my shoulder against the door, but it doesn’t budge. “I think that was the wrong code—should we try again?”
Eliza taps the screen pad. “The power’s shut off to the lock. I wonder if it’s an emergency fail-safe—”
“What are you doing?” cries a voice from down the hallway. We look over, and Harris is storming toward us, his face as red as his ginger hair. “Is this what I’m paying for—to have you break and enter while we’re preoccupied with the haunting?”
“We’re not breaking and entering!” I say.
“We broke the lock, and we are trying to enter,” Eliza whispers.
“When a false passcode is put in, it triggers the police automatically. They are on their way,” Harris says.
“The police!” I say. “Call them off!”
“No way,” Harris says firmly. “I caught you red-handed. Now stay here until—”
“RUN!” Frank cries, and we make a break for it. We sprint down the hall, slide down the banister, and run out the door into the cold, blustery storm. In a shed outside, we find a sled; we grab it and go before the police arrive.
But as we speed down the mountain slope—on the lam, with the case behind us, and Mom still missing—I can’t help but think it’s all downhill from here.
CASE CLOSED.
I POINT TO the letter addressed to Byron. “Let’s see what our resident author is hiding.”
Eliza nods and pulls a paper out of the envelope.
October 15
Dear Byron,
You promised me a draft of your book six months ago. We are now running behind schedule.
I know you are rather meticulous about your research. But seeing as we cannot push your book to a later season or delay the production schedule any longer, we don’t mind if you bend the truth a little. If that’s what it takes to get this book done.
Like, say, six hikers were climbing the mountain. And they stopped in an abandoned house there. They got trapped, they died. Yada yada, and voilà! Six ghosts with a compelling origin story. (Feel free to use that, if it speaks to you.)
If you don’t get this draft to me by the start of the new year, we’re going to have to talk about canceling your book contract, and you will be obligated to pay back the entire advance we gave you two years ago for this book.
Cordially,
Rita Tome
Publisher
I look up. “He lied?” I know it’s silly for someone used to detective work to be so shocked by this. But Byron is a nonfiction author.
“Liar liar, pants on fire!” Frank says. “Hey—let’s throw his pants in the fire!”
“Hold on there, Mr. Good Ideas,” Eliza says. “We’re definitely not going to do that.”
“Aw,” Frank says. “Then what’s even the point?”
I can’t get over this letter. “So he’s going to print false information in his nonfiction book . . . and his editor is cool with it.”
Eliza grabs my hand, and her gray eyes are bright. “But what if Byron is creating the hauntings he’s writing about? He can make up a history for the hauntings and make up hauntings themselves, but then he’d carry out hauntings in a place of his choosing, so they would still be ‘real,’ in a sense. He’d have witnesses to the hauntings. Other guests of the hotel to validate his story when the book gets published.”
“Yeah. It might explain why the hauntings only started six weeks ago. Especially when those fake hikers were supposed to have died, like, seventy years ago.”
“Look at all this motive,” Eliza says. “If he doesn’t finish a draft of the book by the beginning of the year, he has to give all the money back.”
“It’s December. He doesn’t have much time to finish his book, does he?”
“Maybe Santa will give him a time machine!” Frank says.
“Or a winning lottery ticket,” I say.
“Or a publisher with integrity,” Eliza says.
“We should talk to Byron,” I say. “Or should we read the other letter?”
“Hey, where is the other letter?” Eliza says. She frantically pulls the sheets off the bed, and Frank crawls under the bed for good measure.
“Not here!” Frank says. “But look! A toenail clipping!”
“It’s gone!” Eliza says. “I can’t believe we lost such an important clue! It was just here!”
“It’s okay,” I say. “We already have a lead to go on. We can look for the other letter later.”
We find Byron in the fire den with his computer, typing away on a book we now know is a lie. My blood is boiling, just looking at him.
I have to tell him I know he’s faking his facts. But with Mom missing and the threatening mirror message, I’m so angry that he jerked us around. I am tempted to smash his computer—and all his stupid lies—to smithereens. And I wouldn’t even feel bad about it.
* * *
TO ACCUSE BYRON OF MAKING UP THE GHOST STORY, CLICK HERE.
TO SMASH BYRON’S COMPUTER, CLICK HERE.
* * *
BY THE TIME Eliza and I get back to our room, Mom and Frank are there waiting for us.
“We just had the weirdest conversation with Ree—” But I stop short at the excited look on Mom’s face.
“We found something!” she says breathlessly.
“Found what?”
“A clue! Frank was amazing!”
“YOU HEAR THAT? I’m amazing!”
“What did we hear in the Dead Room, Frank?”
“Tick, tick, tick, tick.”
“Exactly! There is some sort of clock beneath the floor. And twice while I was trapped there, I heard it go off.”
“No, I’m certain it wasn’t, because I heard lots of noises in the halls. And right before it went off, it sounded like someone was winding the clock. So . . .”
“So you think the grandfather clock downstairs could be a way into the walls of the house?”
Mom nods. “So Frank and I went to the library and found a book on restoring old clocks. Inside was this.” She pulls out a piece of paper with a handwritten message.
At midday, you said you had five hours to go until the party, but your guest was going to be one hour early. The zipper of her dress broke, which tied you up for three hours, but you still arrived two hours before the cake, which was there six hours after the floral arrangement.
“What is this?” Eliza says. “Who is the message for?”
“I don’t know, but let’s set the clock,” I say. I’m certain that something is about to happen.
The lobby is empty—with Cricket mysteriously missing. But that’s good. Now we don’t have to make up an excuse for why we’re playing around with the grandfather clock.
“You read the clue again, Eliza, and I’ll move the clock hands.”
* * *
IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 4, CLICK HERE.
IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 3, CLICK HERE.
OR TO ASK ELIZA FOR A HINT, CLICK HERE.
* * *
“ELIZA, I CAN’T figure this phone code out.”
“Sure you can!” Eliza says, pulling the paper closer to her.
968 46 843 56229. 63 46 843 4255.
9428 8463?
84733. 36 668 438 228448.
4 63837 36.
“Just start with the easy ones first, Carlos. Like the last row. There’s a lone four. It can be G, H, or I. Which of those stands alone?”
“I, obviously.”
“Okay, now let’s look for two-letter words. We have a lot of forty-sixes, thirty-sixes, and one sixty-three. What could they be?”
“Four six could be go,” I say.
“It could also be in,” Eliza says. And she’s right.
“Ugh, this is impossible!”
“Well, let’s move on to thirty-six.”
“Do,” I say. “That’s the only possible word. And sixty-three is me or of.”
“And eight four three? It appears twice.”
“T-H-E.”
“Excellent,” Eliza says. “I think for the longer words, the trick is to think about the vowels. Since the vowels are all on different numbers, it really limits your word options.”
“You’re starting to lose me.”
“Yeah!” Frank shouts from across the room. “You guys sound like NERDS.”
“We are nerds,” Eliza says proudly. Then she turns back to me. “What if I filled in some more words I see?”
“Eliza, you are a lifesaver!”
YOU GO/IN THE LOBBY, ME/OF GO/IN THE HALL.
968 46 843 56229. 63 46 843 4255.
____ TIME?
9428 8463?
_____. DO ___ ___ CAUGHT.
84733. 36 668 438 228448.
I _____ DO.
4 63837 36.
She hands the pen back to me. “Can you help me with the last few words, Carlos? I’m having a brain fart.”
“Ha! Fart,” Frank giggles.
* * *
IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 8, CLICK HERE.
IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 3, CLICK HERE.
* * *
“IS THERE SOMEONE who would want you to abandon the hotel?” I ask Reese.
“Abandon . . . what do you mean?”
“Maybe someone is faking the ghost hauntings to get you to leave. Do you have any enemies we should know about?”
Eliza is gloating beside me, with a huge grin. It gets me a little annoyed, but I have to shake it off. It’s important, in detective work, to explore all possible theories. And yes, I believe in ghosts. But I also believe that people can, possibly, fake a haunting too. So I have to explore all the options and keep an open mind, as Mom said outside.
Reese hums. “Well, Luther Covington is a natural enemy.”
“Who’s Luther Covington?” Eliza asks.
Reese sighs. “Luther owns the hotel down the hill. The Super Hotel Express.”
“Oh!” I say. “We passed that hotel on our way here!”
“Yes. Even though Luther has three times more guest rooms than we have, he’s been trying to buy the Sugarcrest Park Lodge for two years.”
“Is this lodge for sale?” Mom asks.
“No. It is not. That’s why he’s such a thorn in my side. He’s even worse now that the hauntings have started. When guests flee my hotel in the middle of the night, they go to his hotel. My lodge is sinking, while his hotel is booming.”
“Motive,” Eliza says softly, and I have to agree.
“Anyone else who’s mad at you?” I ask. “Anyone we should investigate?”
“I wouldn’t presume to tell you how to do your job,” Harris says, in the tone of someone who absolutely is about to tell us how to do our job. “But I think you should investigate everyone at and around the hotel.”
“Except us,” Reese says.
“Including us,” Harris corrects. “We have nothing to hide.”
“WE’LL SEE ABOUT THAT!” Frank shouts.
Reese shifts uncomfortably, and January looks at her with a sideways glance.
I make a mental note to discuss that with Mom, Eliza, and Frank later.
“So,” I say. “Besides Luther Covington, you can’t think of any reason why someone might want you gone?”
Reese Winters looks away. “No.”
A lie.
“Mr. Winters? Any reason why someone might want Reese to leave the hotel?”
Harris Winters looks away. “No.”
Another lie.
“January? Can you think of anything?”
January looks straight into my eyes. “No,” she says firmly. And even though she keeps eye contact, I have this gut feeling that she’s lying too.
We have a lot of uncovering to do.
Suddenly we hear loud footsteps, and the door to the dining room swings open.
“No, Mr. Covington! You can’t go in there!” Cricket cries weakly behind him.
“You’ve rejected my offer!” the man shouts, slamming his hands on the table.
“It’s very rude to interrupt a meeting, Luther,” Reese says.
Luther Covington towers over Reese. He is nearly twice her height, with a bald head, dark brown skin, and eyes that flash dangerously. Reese has this warm energy about her, and this guy just radiates an icy chill. “Look, my offer is the best one you’re going to get. Now that you’ve run your property into the ground with all this ghost stuff, it’s not worth as much as it was six months ago.”
“We have nothing more to say to you!” Reese says furiously. “Go back to your own hotel. Leave us be.”
“I will be the owner of the Sugarcrest one day soon.”
“Don’t you have your own hotel to run?” Reese snaps as she escorts Luther out. Harris and January quickly follow. The door closes behind them, leaving just us Las Pistas detectives in the dining room.
“Hey!” I say. “What if we wanted to talk to Luther?”
“We can always find him later,” Mom says. “We have a lot to start with.”
“It seems like they lied to us . . . a lot,” I say. “They’re all hiding something. Did you notice how they wouldn’t meet our eyes?”
“Sometimes,” Mom says, “the biggest ghosts are secrets.”
“No,” Frank says. “The biggest ghosts are bigger ghosts.”
“What do you mean by that?” Eliza asks Mom.
“Just that . . . a secret can haunt you and plague you even more than a ghost might.”
“A ghost mite?” Frank says. “What’s a ghost mite?”
Mom ignores him as she peeks out the door to make sure that the Winters family isn’t coming back. Then she turns to face us,
her dark eyes twinkling. “So where do we start?”
“You’re asking us?”
Mom grins. “I thought three expert junior detectives who’ve gone sneaking around behind my back twice would have a lot more opinions!”
I smile, but my stomach also does a jump at the words junior detective. I hope I’m worthy of the title. “I think,” I say, “Reese has enemies she’s not telling us about.”
“And why wouldn’t she tell us about them?”
“She’s hiding something.”
“Possibly. Or?”
I hesitate, and Eliza comes to my aid with an answer. “Or she’s protecting someone.” Eliza consults her notebook. “We can interview Sunny, the housekeeper, or Chef Fernando di Cannoli, since we didn’t get to talk to them at all yet.”
“Good. Do you have your backpack?” Mom says.
I point to Eliza’s bag. “Three flashlights, loaded with batteries. And one fully charged walkie-talkie.”
“I expect you to keep that with you.”
“You’re not coming with us?”
Mom shakes her head. “While you are interrogating, I will check our rooms for any bugs.”
“Cool!” Frank says. “I love bugs!”
“Bugs?” Eliza squeaks, a sickened expression on her face. “Isn’t this a reputable hotel?”
Mom laughs. “Not those kinds of bugs. I want to see if anyone has left recording or listening devices in our room. If so, I want to disable them before anyone hears too much about our findings. Meet me back in the room when you’re done?”
Without waiting for our response, she leaves through the dining-room doors.
Eliza sighs in relief, then turns to me. “What do you think, Carlos? Should we start with Sunny or Fernando?”
* * *