Who Stole Halloween? Read online

  WHO

  STOLE

  HALLOWEEN?

  MARTHA FREEMAN

  Copyright © 2005 by Martha Freeman

  All Rights Reserved

  HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  www.holidayhouse.com

  ISBN 978-0-8234-2438-2 (ebook)w

  ISBN 978-0-8234-2681-2 (ebook)r

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Freeman, Martha, 1956–

  Who stole Halloween?/ by Martha Freeman

  p. cm.

  Summary: When eleven-year-old Alex and his friend Yasmeen investigate

  the disappearance of cats in their neighborhood, they stumble onto

  a larger mystery involving a haunted house and a ghostly cat.

  ISBN 0-8234-1962-2 (hardcover)

  [1. Cats—Fiction. 2. Kidnapping—Fiction. 3. Ghosts—Fiction.

  4. Haunted houses—Fiction. 5. Halloween—Fiction.

  6. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Title.

  PZ7.F87496Wj 2005 [Fic]–dc22 2004060560

  ISBN 978-0-8234-1962-3 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-0-8234-2170-1 (paperback)

  For my neighbors

  in State College, Pennsylvania.

  You are always an inspiration.

  Chapter One

  Cats make excellent friends—except for one thing. They are bad explainers. Yasmeen says this is because a cat’s whole vocabulary is only meow, purr, and hiss. She says meow, purr, and hiss are inadequate for good explanations.

  Yasmeen is my best friend who happens to be a girl. She is smarter than me, but this time she’s wrong. When he feels like it, my cat can tell me a lot with only a lazy blink or a quick swish of his tail. The trouble is that most of the time he doesn’t feel like it.

  The real reason cats are bad explainers is simple: They are too impatient. The way a cat figures, if he understands something, you should understand it, too. And if you don’t, then you are not worth his trouble.

  I was thinking these thoughts on a gray and spooky October afternoon, the kind when the trees look sort of like skeletons and the shadows look like ghosts. Yasmeen and I were running side by side, chasing my cat, Luau.

  So far, Luau had not bothered to explain where he was going or why, or whether we were supposed to follow him or what.

  “What’s your theory?” Yasmeen asked me. “What’s he up to?”

  Yasmeen is tall, skinny, and fast, while I am none of the above. I was struggling to keep up, gasping for breath. “I only hope . . . it’s not over . . . to St. Bernard’s,” I said. “That place . . . gives me the creeps.”

  St. Bernard’s is an old church near my street. Behind it is a just-as-old cemetery. I had hardly finished saying “the creeps” when Luau made a right turn and loped through the cemetery gate.

  I swear, sometimes my cat has a nasty sense of humor.

  Yasmeen laughed. “He’s going to St. Bernard’s all right.” Then she ran ahead of me through the gate, warbling like some soprano werewolf, waving her arms over her head.

  Being cool the way I am, I ignored her behavior. Unfortunately, I was so busy ignoring her behavior that I didn’t see a broken headstone and I tripped.

  “Oh! Oh, shoot—Alex, are you okay? Oh my gosh, you’re bleeding!” Yasmeen had run back and knelt next to me. “I have Band-Aids,” she said.

  My hands hurt, but surprise stifled my tears. “You have Band-Aids?”

  “I started keeping them in my pocket for emergencies,” she said. “It’s a crazy world, Alex. Anything might happen.”

  Yasmeen dabbed my scratches with antiseptic wipes—she had those, too—and smoothed on three Band-Aids. I expected Luau to be gone by the time she was done, but when I stood up, I spotted him sitting by a statue of a grumpy-looking angel, washing his face.

  “I don’t get your feline,” Yasmeen said.

  “You don’t think maybe he’s doing his ace-detective thing again?” I asked.

  Yasmeen grinned. “I hope so.”

  Luau seemed to be totally focused on personal hygiene, so, all sneaky, we crept toward him. We were about ten feet away when he looked up at us, which meant, Oh, come on, guys—as if I didn’t see you stalking me! I’m a cat! We invented stalking!

  Then he took one more swipe at his ear and bounded away.

  Where was he going? It wasn’t so long ago that my ace-detective cat had helped Yasmeen and me solve a mystery. Now he was so stuck-up he expected us to follow him anywhere, even into a deep, dark cemetery.

  The wind made the dry leaves dance and rearranged the clouds. It also gave me goose bumps. Or was it being in a cemetery a week before Halloween that did that? Sometimes my imagination gets carried away. Everywhere Yasmeen and I ran, we were stomping on dead people, weren’t we? And where there are dead people, there are ghosts and ghouls and zombies.

  “There!” Yasmeen said. She stopped under an oak tree and pointed at Luau. By now, he had doubled back and was sitting next to a big, elaborate headstone beside the grumpy angel. It wasn’t the stone that caught my attention, though. What I noticed was what was stuck to the back of it—some kind of flyer with a picture. Why would somebody attach a flyer to a headstone, anyway?

  Luau stretched and swished his tail and looked at us, which meant, Why don’t you read me what it says?

  If I had been by myself, I would have called Luau to come, then turned around and gone home. But Yasmeen was never going to let me get away with that. She just loves a mystery, the stranger the better. And guess what? The flyer on the gravestone was the start of another big mystery, one that would get me, and Yasmeen, and especially Luau into grave, grave trouble.

  Chapter Two

  Yasmeen was disappointed.

  “A flyer posted on a gravestone—that would have been mysterious,” she said. “But I guess it was only the wind holding it there. It must’ve blown through the fence or something.”

  She held the paper up. Under a photocopied picture of a sleek black cat were the words:

  Please bring back Halloween!

  Beloved pet, last seen October 22.

  Call Kyle Richmond.

  No questions asked!

  Then there was a phone number and an address on Groundhog Drive.

  “Isn’t that near Ari’s house?” Yasmeen asked me.

  “Yeah,” I said, “and I think I know Kyle from school—who he is anyway. Uh, can we go now?” The sun had sunk behind Mt. Lyon, and the light was fading fast. You can imagine how eager I was to be in a graveyard in the dark. “Come on, Luau. You ready?”

  Luau side-rubbed my leg and looked up at me, which meant, Can I have a ride, please? All that running has left me exhausted. I picked him up and heaved him over my shoulder, which isn’t as easy as it sounds. Luau is one of those big-shouldered, muscley cats. He’s not fat, but he weighs a ton.

  We started walking. Luau purred. Yasmeen lectured: “There’s no such thing as ghosts, you know. They are merely figments of a vivid imagination.”

  Yasmeen talks like that a lot. Her mom is a librarian, and her dad is an English professor. Her family lives next door to mine, so we’ve been friends since we were babies. It’s only because I’ve had so much practice that I, a regular kid, can even understand her.

  “That’s your opinion,” I said. “But plenty of people have seen ghosts. Plus there’s that house on Main Street; everyone knows it’s haunted.”

  By now we were walking back through the cemetery gate. The moon had come out, and three bats flitted overhead.

  “The Harvey house?” Yasmeen shook her head. “Mr. and Mrs. Blanco bought that, did you know? I bet they never have seen any ghosts there—and neither have I.”

  Mr
. and Mrs. Blanco live on the same street as Yasmeen and me, Chickadee Court. “Are the Blancos moving?” I asked.

  “Uh-uh,” Yasmeen said. “They didn’t buy the house to live in. They’re opening some kind of fancy store. My dad calls it a health boutique.”

  I laughed. “Makes perfect sense. A boo-tique!”

  Yasmeen didn’t laugh.

  “It’s a joke,” I explained. “Ghosts? Boo?”

  “I get it,” Yasmeen said.

  “Then you should have laughed,” I said, “to be polite.”

  “Ha-ha,” Yasmeen said.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Luau shifted his weight, and his whiskers tickled my ear. Only two blocks and we’d be home. My arms looked forward to putting him down. But Yasmeen had another idea. “Let’s do some detecting,” she said.

  “No.”

  “Oh, come on,” she said. “Just a teensy-weensy bit of detecting. Harmless detecting. I promise.”

  This was not a promise I could trust. And I definitely did not want to get involved in another mystery.

  Still, I couldn’t help but wonder what Yasmeen was thinking. So I asked her, and she answered with a question: “Didn’t you notice something unusual about the flyer? Aside from its being on the gravestone, I mean. Here, look.”

  I studied the paper for a few seconds. “Well, the wording is kind of weird,” I said. “What kind of kid says ‘beloved’? Oh—and it doesn’t say ‘LOST.’ Most flyers like this say ‘LOST’ at the top in big letters.”

  Yasmeen nodded. “Let’s stop off at the address on the flyer—at Kyle’s house,” she said. “It’s not that far. Let’s ask him if there was something strange about the cat’s disappearance. I don’t know why exactly, but I have this funny feeling.”

  “What did you have for lunch?” I asked her.

  “Ha-ha,” she said.

  Chapter Three

  At Kyle’s front door I shifted Luau on my shoulder and used my elbow to ring the bell. After a minute we heard footsteps inside, and then a boy older than Yasmeen and me answered. I recognized him from school, but Yasmeen asked, “Are you Kyle? From the flyer about the cat?”

  The boy nodded. He was as tall and thin as Yasmeen, and he had brown eyes like hers, but his skin was as paper-pale as hers is cocoa-dark. He looked sad, and I wondered if he was sad about his cat or just sad in general.

  “Halloween is a black cat,” he said, “not an orange tiger like this guy. But thanks for trying.”

  It took a second before I realized Kyle thought we had found Luau and mistaken him for his own missing cat, Halloween. “We know this one’s not yours,” I said, “because he’s mine. But my friend here—her name’s Yasmeen—wants to ask you a couple of questions.”

  “We’re detecting,” Yasmeen said.

  “She is detecting,” I corrected. “I am holding the cat.”

  “Don’t you go to my school?” Kyle asked.

  “I’m Alex,” I said, “in Mrs. Timmons’ class. We live over on Chickadee.”

  “What do you want to know?” Kyle asked.

  Yasmeen got right to the point. “You didn’t put ‘LOST’ on the flyer. Was there a reason?”

  Kyle nodded. “Halloween isn’t lost. Someone stole her.”

  “That’s terrible!” Yasmeen said.

  Without thinking, I clutched Luau tighter. Then I forgot I wasn’t detecting, and I asked, “How do you know?”

  Before Kyle could answer, a little girl came running down the stairs behind him, only stopping when she crashed into his knees. “Pow! Got you!” she said to Kyle, then she looked up at us. “Who are . . . ? Hey, wait! I’ve seen you before. At school!”

  “Not me,” I said, but Yasmeen was nodding.

  “Yup, I know you, too,” she said. “You’re Cammie. You go to preschool with my little brother.”

  Cammie smiled. “His name is Jeremiah. He is really weird.”

  Yasmeen nodded again. “Got that right.”

  “Why are you here?” Cammie asked.

  “About Kyle’s cat,” Yasmeen said, “Halloween.”

  Cammie scowled. “Kyle is an old foo-foo head. He was so mean—”

  “Mom!” Kyle hollered before Cammie could finish. When nobody answered, he said, “Excuse me a sec.” Then he scooped up Cammie, who was wiggling and yelling, and carried her away.

  “I’m sorry,” he said when he came back. “She’s, well . . . you know. Little kids.”

  Yasmeen said, “I know,” but I didn’t say anything because, actually, I don’t know. Except for Luau, I’m an only child, and cats never act crazy the way kids do. “Anyway,” Yasmeen returned to being a detective, “are you sure somebody stole Halloween?”

  “I’m sure,” Kyle said, “because I saw it happen. It was late at night. Something woke me, and I looked out the window. I saw Halloween out here on the porch. There was a moon, but no other light. I couldn’t see very well, but I definitely saw someone stroke Halloween and then grab her.”

  “Did you run after him?” I asked.

  Kyle shook his head. “I wish I had, but I was so surprised and—I guess—scared.”

  “Was it a grown-up?” Yasmeen asked.

  “I think so,” Kyle said. “But I don’t know for sure if it was a man or a woman or . . .”

  Like I said, Kyle was pale in the first place. But now—was it my imagination? Or did he get even paler?

  “Or what?” I asked.

  Kyle smiled, but it was a sick, embarrassed smile. “You’ll think I’m crazy,” he said.

  “Try us,” Yasmeen said.

  Kyle took a breath. “Or a ghost,” he said.

  Yasmeen and I looked at each other because, of course, we did think he was crazy. Kyle laughed a nervous laugh, then he shrugged and said, “It was dark.”

  “Whatever it was,” Yasmeen said, “which way did, uh . . . it run with your cat?”

  “Toward the cemetery, but I don’t know after that. He was fast. Even if I had tried, I couldn’t have caught him.”

  “Did you tell your parents?” Yasmeen asked.

  Kyle nodded. “I woke them up, but they thought I was dreaming. They said, ‘You just wait, she’ll be home in the morning.’ ”

  “Sounds like parents,” I said. “Did you call the police?”

  “My parents did,” Kyle said. “A guy came. I don’t remember his name exactly. Pickles or something.”

  “Officer Krichels,” I said. I know all the police officers because my mom’s one, too, a detective.

  “That’s it,” said Kyle. “He wrote everything down, but it’s not like he expected it to do any good. You could tell.”

  “That was Friday—yesterday?” Yasmeen said.

  Kyle nodded. “Halloween’s been missing since Thursday night.”

  “Has anyone phoned you?” I asked. “Anyone who saw the flyer, I mean?”

  “No.” Kyle looked sadder than ever. “Poor cat. She’s a good one, too. She never hunts birds, only mice, and she always comes when I call. Plus she’s funny. Her meow is all gruff and squeaky—like a rusty old hinge.”

  Kyle sighed, and for a second we stood there feeling sad together. Then out of nowhere Yasmeen said, “Don’t worry, Kyle. We’ll find your cat.”

  Kyle looked at us. “You will?”

  I looked at Yasmeen. “We will?”

  “Why did you tell him that?” I asked Yasmeen as soon as we were on the sidewalk.

  “I couldn’t help it, Alex,” she said. “He looked so miserable.”

  “Not as miserable as he’s gonna look when we don’t find his cat!” I said.

  “So we’ll find his cat,” Yasmeen said. “How hard can it be? We have a witness.”

  “Some witness,” I said. “He thinks he saw a ghost! Besides, by now, how do we know the poor cat’s even”—I put a hand over Luau’s ears so he couldn’t hear—“alive?”

  Chapter Four

  My shoulder was half-numb by the time I set Luau down at home. But did Lu
au even mrrrf his chauffeur a thank-you? He did not. Instead, tail in the air, he went to the kitchen to check out the action in his food dish.

  Meanwhile, I could hear my parents upstairs. What were they laughing at, anyway?

  “Hello?” I called.

  More laughter. Then my dad answered, “Come on up, Alex. Get a load of your mom.”

  Luau followed me up the stairs to their bedroom. When I saw them, I thought they both had gone crazy. Mom was wearing what looked like black-and-white striped pajamas with a matching hat. Dad had on a police uniform that was too big for him. But the totally weirdest part was they were attached to each other with handcuffs.

  “For once I’m the cop in the family,” Dad said. “And she’s my prisoner. Get it?”

  “It was his idea,” Mom said.

  There is something freaky about seeing your parents in costume—like you want to ask, what happened to my real parents?

  “You better go get ready, too,” Dad said.

  “Ready for . . . ? Oh!” Then I remembered the party. It made me feel better to realize why they were dressed up.

  “The world’s first-ever costume baby shower.” Mom shook her head. “Leave it to Marjie Lee to come up with a harebrained idea—”

  “Was it Marjie’s idea?” Dad said. “I thought the hostess was that goofy friend of hers, the one that lives around the corner—what’s her name?”

  “You’re probably right,” Mom said. “Everybody calls her ‘Miss’ Deirdre because she teaches preschool. She’s eccentric, but she’s supposed to be a wonderful teacher. Anita Popp told me there’s a waiting list to get into that school.”

  “I’ve never been to a baby shower,” I said.

  “They used to be women-only,” Dad said. “But here in the new millennium, men and children have to go, too.”

  “Have to?” Mom repeated.

  “Get to,” Dad said quickly. “I meant get to.”

  “You mean just like here in the new millennium, women get to have careers?” Mom said.