“Frank wouldn’t say it because Frank didn’t say it!” Frank says. “Or did he? Mwahahahahahahahahahaha!”
“Okay, that’s enough,” I say. “There’s probably some scary haunting in the library waiting for us, but we just have to get under the piano lid, get the key, and go.”
We tiptoe into the library and shut the door. The temperature in here is about zero degrees. I think I can feel my nose freezing from the inside out.
“GHOST!” Frank shouts, pointing his flashlight at a rocking chair in the corner of the library. I just noticed a quiet creaking sound that fills the room. The chair is rocking back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth.
But there is no one in the chair.
Eliza and I grab on to each other, our arms encircling Frank. I close my eyes. I’m following the old, trusted principle of “If I can’t see it, it can’t see me.”
Frank wriggles to get out of our hug. “Get off me! I want to poke it!”
The rocking chair stops. There is silence in the air, and I can see my breath in the flashlight beam.
“Piano lid,” I whisper, peeling the lid up. Tucked into the wires is a skeleton key, big and brass, and I think I know exactly where this key goes.
“I bet this is the key someone stole from Sunny,” I say. “The one that opens all the rooms!”
Eliza frowns. “Why would they leave it under the lid of a piano, where anyone could find it?”
“I don’t know—how often do you usually look under the lids of pianos?”
“ALL THE TIME,” Frank says.
“Fair enough,” Eliza says.
“We can test it out, and if it’s the master key, then we can return it to Harris!”
We slowly back into the fire den, where the flames have switched back to a normal comforting color. There is no more clawing or scratching at the door, and I open it very slowly to find . . . nothing. The lobby is empty, and the lights are back on.
We walk up the stairs, and everything is so normal that it’s freaking me out. I swear I can feel the mounted animal heads looking at me, following me as I walk up the stairs, but when I turn around again, everything is where it should be.
Paranoid. I am just being paranoid.
“Okay,” I say, stopping in front of room 237. “Let’s open the door to our room.” I put the key in, but it doesn’t turn. “Is it jammed?”
“Let me try!” Frank says, pushing me out of the way. He takes the key out and spits in the keyhole.
“Okay, what are you doing?”
“Loosening it up!” Frank says. “Now try!”
I try again, but the door still won’t unlock. This is not the master key. I turn the key over in my hands until I find two letters carved into it: DR.
“DR . . . doctor?” I say.
“Drew?” Frank says.
“Dead Room,” Eliza whispers. The moment she says it, something yowls downstairs.
“Oooooooooooooooooo!”
“I ain’t afraid of no ghosts!” Frank shouts down the hall.
I don’t want to admit it, but I think Eliza is right. I walk down the hall, careful not to look downstairs, where the howling is only getting louder and closer. . . . And I round the corner to the hallway of staff rooms, where the Dead Room is waiting.
I get about halfway to the Dead Room when I see a shadow in front of me. From something big standing behind me—behind us. I don’t want to turn around. . . . Eliza grabs my wrist.
It’s the beast.
The lights flicker—and then die. With my back facing the Dead Room now, I slowly step away from the beast, but it keeps trying to close the gap between us. Its fangs glow in the darkness.
Then, from behind us—
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Something is knocking from the inside of the Dead Room.
What do I do—what do I do? We either have to run past the beast in front of us . . . or use our key to go into the Dead Room behind us.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
A bead of sweat trickles down my face. There’s no guarantee we’d all be able to run past this monster. But if we do go into the Dead Room, we’d be running straight into whatever’s knocking on the door . . . is the monster we know better than the monster we don’t?
* * *
TO RUN PAST THE BEAST, CLICK HERE.
TO GO INTO THE DEAD ROOM, CLICK HERE.
* * *
I PULL THE apple lever.
Suddenly a shelf from the freezer tips over, and a whole barrel of apples drops from the highest ledge.
“DUCK AND COVER!” I shout as the apples come raining down on us like hail. Just when I think the barrage is over, more come flooding. They bury me up to my eyes.
“An apple a day keep da doctah away!” Frank says, with his tongue still stuck on the pole. And, as the shortest one, with his head submerged under the apples.
Eliza groans. “I think I’m bruised all over.”
“The only way out is through,” Mom says grimly. “Start eating!”
We’ve hard-core ended our case with some hard cores.
CASE CLOSED.
I DECIDE TO trust January. But mostly out of convenience . . . because we need her help.
“Okay, January. You can help us.”
“Yes!” she says, and she high-fives Frank.
“You have to distract and delay Fernando as much as possible,” I say. “Whatever you do, keep him away from the kitchen.”
“Got it,” she says. “This is fun already!” She walks over to Cricket’s concierge desk, and we peek around the wall. From our angle, we can see January clearly, but not Cricket.
January rings the concierge bell. “I need Fernando di Cannoli, and I need him now.”
Cricket is so flustered by January’s tone that she picks up the phone and drops it.
“Give me that!” January snaps. She dials four numbers. “Fernando? This is January, and I need a selection of your finest cheeses, breads, and grapes for a party I’m throwing for my parents ASAP. This is your top priority. If you’re not in the dining hall in two minutes, I will end you.” She slams the phone down before she even hears a response. Then she winks at us and waves goodbye.
You know . . . it’s kind of fun to have an ally.
Fernando comes running out of the kitchen with a tray of breads, fruits, and cheeses. He is frantic and nearly trips over his own feet as he races to please January.
“Let’s go!” I say when he passes by us.
Back in the kitchen, I know we don’t have much time. I pull the picture frame out from the wall, and it swings open, like a door on a hinge.
And of course there’s some sort of lock that needs to be cracked before we can get to Fernando’s big secret.
I groan.
“I mean, if he’s going through all this trouble to hide something, you knew it wouldn’t be unlocked, Carlos.”
“Hey, a kid can dream.”
“We got this!” Eliza says. “You, me, and Frank—Frank? Where are you?”
Frank is face-first in a cookie jar.
“Leave him!” I say. “We don’t have time to get him to cooperate—we have a code to crack.” I squint at the lock . . . which is of course in the shape of a pizza.
“Seems like something’s missing out of each pie slice,” Eliza says, more to herself than me.
“What do you mean, something’s missing?”
“It looks like each slice is supposed to spell a different pizza topping. But each wedge has just one letter missing.”
“So I have to figure out what the missing letter is in each wedge?”
Eliza nods. “We should keep track of all the missing letters. I bet they will tell us what number to enter on the lock behind the picture.”
* * *
IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 20, CLICK HERE.
IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 30, CLICK HERE.
OR TO ASK ELIZA FOR HELP, CLICK HERE.
* * *
“SO, DO YOU think the ghost is real?”
I ask the Winters family.
Eliza tries not to roll her eyes at my question, which results in a rapid blink spasm.
Reese doesn’t notice. She’s looking at her husband, who puts a thick, protective arm around her. “These hauntings have been scaring me silly.”
“That’s not the question, though,” Eliza says. And even though she doesn’t like this line of questioning, I’m thankful she always has my back.
“I don’t know if it’s real or not. . . . It seems so real.” Reese shudders. “It can’t be real, though. Can it?”
Eliza and I look at each other. We both have a different answer for Reese . . . but neither of us says anything.
To my surprise, Frank pops in with a question. “But have you seen it? Up close? With your eyeballs? You can’t see it till you believe it!”
Reese and Harris both mumble, “No.”
But January nods.
“You have?” Eliza says, astonished.
“There was one in my room one night. It was freaky. I saw one in the hall once too.”
“What did it look like?”
“Um . . . like a ghost?”
Reese reaches for her daughter. “You never told me this, honey.”
“Well, it’s true.” January glares at us, as though daring us to call her a liar. “It was hovering above my bed! It was all white and wispy and drooling. The one in the hallway was headed toward our suite, Mom.”
Reese yelps and nearly jumps out of her chair.
* * *
TO ASK WHO MIGHT WANT REESE GONE, CLICK HERE.
* * *
I’M SO MAD, I can’t even take it. I pick up Byron’s computer off his lap and smash it down to the ground.
The screen shatters into a spiderweb of broken glass. Instantly my temper dissolves, but I can’t undo what I just did.
Byron Bookbinder’s mouth opens and closes like a fish. For the first time, this writer is totally speechless.
But then his face turns purple and a vein pops out of his forehead. He grabs a decorative sword off the fireplace mantel.
“They say the pen is mightier than the sword. BUT LET’S SEE, SHALL WE?”
I bolt, and Byron chases me out of the hotel, down the mountain, into the town in the valley. He chases me across state lines until he can’t run anymore. I get away—but I am miles from the case.
Unlike Byron, I’m not a writer . . . I don’t get writer’s block. But in that moment, I definitely was a blockhead.
CASE CLOSED.
“WHAT’S THE DEAL with your book?” I ask Byron. “Why would your editor ask you to put fictional stories in a nonfiction book?”
“That’s not right,” Eliza says, with serious disapproval in her voice.
“And if you’re not right, you’re left!” Frank says.
“No, you’re wrong!” I correct.
“You’re wrong!”
I look at Byron. “Sorry about that. Continue.”
“My manuscript was due six months ago,” Byron says meekly. “If I don’t have a draft of it by the end of this month, I’ll have to pay back my publisher. And the thing is . . . I already spent the money. I can’t afford to pay it back. So you see, it was out of desperation—not deceitfulness—that I went forward with my editor’s suggestion.”
“It was desperate and deceitful,” Eliza says. “Those aren’t mutually exclusive terms.”
My head is spinning. Eliza and Byron having a conversation is like listening to a thesaurus battle a dictionary. I don’t know half the words they’re using, but I get the general point: Byron thinks he has an excuse, because he wasn’t able to afford to pay his publisher back. Eliza thinks it’s just dishonest and nothing can justify it.
I’m with Eliza on this one. “I can’t believe your editor would ask you to lie,” I say.
“I don’t think she expects to get caught. Frankly, they’re looking for a return on their investment, and they don’t care how they get it.”
“But what I don’t understand,” I say, “is why you didn’t have your book ready to go six months ago. Why didn’t you write it last year?”
“After my first book was released four years ago, I found it nearly impossible to put pen to paper. The fear has paralyzed me.”
“What fear?” Eliza asks.
“I can’t write a single sentence without doubting every syllable. Perhaps you won’t understand this, but I feel this immense pressure to be perfect.”
Weirdly enough, I understand it a lot. I think that’s what I feel whenever I’m trying to impress Mom on a case. It’s what I’ve felt since coming to the Sugarcrest—and it also makes me overthink every decision.
* * *
TO ASK WHERE HE WAS DURING THE HAUNTING, CLICK HERE.
TO ASK IF HE HAS ANY IDEAS ON WHERE MOM COULD BE, CLICK HERE.
* * *
“YOU MADE IT sound like you and Harris hired Las Pistas Detective Agency together,” I say to Reese. “But Harris told us that you weren’t the one to hire us. In fact, you actively opposed hiring a detective, right?”
She nods. Just once.
“Why wouldn’t you want us helping you?” I ask. “I don’t understand.”
“The ghosts aren’t going to go away, no matter what you do.”
Eliza scrunches her eyebrows together. “Why not? If we find the culprit—”
“There is no culprit,” Reese whispers. “They’re very real. And they are with me for as long as I stay at the Sugarcrest Park Lodge. They are the punishment for all my failings, and no one can help me.”
Someone has clearly done a number on Reese. She’s haunted by ghosts. And clearly by a secret that she fears will get out. I don’t understand what she’s hiding yet, but I am going to find out.
“What are you so afraid of?” I ask.
“Rats, heights, ghosts, I suppose . . .”
“No,” I say. “I mean . . . what are you so afraid we’d find? So scared that you didn’t even want to hire us?”
Reese shakes her head. “I can’t. She doesn’t even know.”
She? But I don’t ask. I stay silent and wait for Reese to fill in the blanks.
“I . . . I am a horrible sister,” she says.
“Okay?”
“I can’t tell you what I did. She can’t ever know.”
“But Mrs. Winters. We don’t even know your sister,” I say. “So we couldn’t tell her even if we wanted to.”
Reese covers her mouth and shakes her head. “The lodge should have been hers. I took it away. She never knew, but she suspected. I stabbed her in the back, and I fear she is so angry, and it’s my fault. It’s all my fault.”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “We’ll get the ghost—we promise.”
Reese doesn’t even seem to hear me. “Our parents. I wonder if they have regrets about me, the daughter they chose to carry out their legacy.”
The grandfather clock in the lobby starts chiming. We have to meet Mom and Frank.
“We’ll be back,” I say. “Are you going to be all right, Mrs. Winters?”
She doesn’t answer. Her face is in shadow, and I can tell her mind is clouded by darkness. Whatever the ghosts are doing to Reese doesn’t seem nearly as bad as the guilt that’s eating her up.
It feels like ages ago when Mom told us that sometimes the biggest ghosts are secrets. Looking at Reese’s gaunt, haunted face, I finally think I know what she means.
* * *
MEET MOM AND FRANK ON CLICK HERE.
* * *
“WE HAVE TO talk to Luther about this letter to Reese,” I say, walking back toward the hotel lobby. “We can go right to the source.”
Eliza shakes her head. “Let’s say you’re right, and Luther really is working with someone else in the hotel. You think he’ll just tell us? No chance he’d let that slip!”
The lobby is still empty; Cricket is nowhere to be found. I head to the double doors, open them wide, and stop dead in my tracks. The blizzard is raging outside—the wind howls violently,
and the snow is coming down so thick it looks like someone took an eraser and scrubbed out the landscape.
“Wow, that’s worse than I realized,” Eliza says.
“New plan,” I say, going to the landline phone on Cricket’s desk. I breathe a sigh of relief when I hear the dial tone. We have an operator connect us to the Super Hotel Express.
“Hello, this is Tyler at the Super Hotel Express. How may I help you?”
I pause. Eliza and Frank nudge me to talk, but something is stopping me. Something Eliza said, actually: “You think he’ll just tell us? No chance he’d let that slip!”
Getting information out of Luther won’t be easy or straightforward. We have to trick it out of him. But how?
* * *
TO PRETEND TO BE REESE CALLING ABOUT THE LETTER, CLICK HERE.
TO PRETEND TO BE A REALTOR MAKING HIM A COUNTEROFFER ON THE SUGARCREST PARK LODGE, CLICK HERE.
* * *
I’M STARING BETWEEN the tapestry poem and the tapestry symbols, and all I can think is, We’re running out of time to sneak into Reese’s quarters.
“Eliza, do we go in order of the symbols, or in order of the poem?”
She hums thoughtfully. “That’s a good question,” she says. Because she’s my best friend, I know she’s about to do what she always does when she encounters a particularly difficult problem: talk it out. “I wonder if one of them is a decoy.”
“A decoy!”
“Well,” she says, shining a flashlight across the tapestry, “if it were me, I wouldn’t want people knowing the passcode to my suite. So I’d maybe make a big flashy decoy and a smaller, more forgettable real clue.”
“The poem must be the real clue, then!” I pause. “But how do we know what order to press things?”
Haunting at the Hotel Page 22
