Who Stole Halloween? Read online

  I went back to studying the receipt. Flour, salt, and food coloring. What could a person do with that? I knew some animals—like cows and horses—need extra salt, but I never heard of cats needing it. And anyway, it didn’t explain the flour or the food coloring.

  Professor Popp’s voice interrupted my thinking. “Wash your hands for dinner, children. Alex? Would you care to join us?”

  I remembered Dad’s stir-fry. “Yes!” I said. “Yes, I would!”

  I was afraid Dad would argue when I phoned to ask permission, but he said actually it might be better if I ate at Yasmeen’s house. “That way if my stir-fry turns out to be lethal, you can say nice things at the funeral,” he said.

  “I’m sure your stir-fry will be delicious,” I lied. “Is it okay if I’m home by eight? Yasmeen and I have some stuff to do after dinner.”

  “See you then,” Dad said.

  Dinner at the Popps’ house was ham, mashed potatoes, and unidentifiable mushy green stuff. I cleaned my plate.

  Mrs. Popp smiled at me. “It’s a pleasure to feed such an appreciative guest.”

  “It’s a pleasure to be here,” I said sincerely.

  Meanwhile, Jeremiah was trying the oldest trick in the book, talking to avoid eating. “Are you sure this is human food?” He poked the green stuff with his fork. “Because it looks like the food Miss Deirdre feeds Arnold.”

  “Jeremiah?” Mrs. Popp said, warning him.

  “Arnold is our class pet,” Jeremiah explained to me.

  “I believe he is a hamster,” Professor Popp added.

  “Uh-oh,” Jeremiah said. “Did this ham come from a hamster?”

  Professor Popp shook his head. “No hamsters were harmed in the making of this meal. So please finish your dinner, Jeremiah. It’s good for you. Your body converts food to energy so you can play and jump and run around.”

  “Arnold runs around,” Jeremiah said. “He has one of those running wheels. Squeak! Squeak! Squeak! Miss Deirdre has to take him home after school because he bothers the other people in the building.”

  “Vegetables are good for Arnold, too,” Mrs. Popp said. “They’re good for all God’s creatures.”

  “What about ghosts?” Jeremiah asked. “Are vegetables good for ghosts?”

  “There are no such things,” Mrs. Popp said.

  “Daddy believes in them,” Jeremiah said.

  “Do you, Daddy?” Yasmeen asked.

  “I have studied the matter a little,” he said, “and while I am skeptical, I am not necessarily an unbeliever.”

  “Oh, piffle!” said Mrs. Popp, and she stood up to clear the table.

  “Can I ask you something,” I said to Professor Popp, “since you’ve studied about ghosts?”

  “You may.” Professor Popp nodded.

  “Why do they come back?” I asked. “I mean, not everybody who dies becomes a ghost, right? If they did, we’d be bumping into ghosts every minute.”

  “Most cultures believe that the shade, or ghost, has some unfinished work to attend to,” Professor Popp said. “Often the deceased person has been accused of something unfairly, and its ghost seeks justice.”

  I thought about that. “So if a ghost was haunting somebody, then maybe the somebody should help the ghost out,” I said.

  Professor Popp wanted to know if I had something particular in mind, so I explained about Mr. Blanco and the Harvey house.

  “Have you noticed a pattern to the ghostly appearances?” Professor Popp asked me.

  “Come to think of it,” I said, “it kind of seems like they happen when people are talking about the ghost story.”

  “Then perhaps,” Professor Popp said, “there’s something in the story that the ghost doesn’t like.”

  Yasmeen stacked my plate on top of her plate and Jeremiah’s plate on top of mine. “So if that’s true, it means Mr. Harvey didn’t murder his wife,” she said. “And his ghost won’t settle down until he’s proved innocent.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts,” I said.

  “Of course I don’t,” Yasmeen said. “But if there were ghosts, which there aren’t, that would be the logical conclusion.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  After Yasmeen and I were done in the kitchen, there was time to take a look at the old black book and the newspapers from Mr. Blanco. In the family room Professor Popp was sitting on the sofa reading a yellow sheet of writing paper.

  “I hope you don’t mind.” He looked up at us. “I was curious and opened this old ledger book. When I did, the stationery fluttered out. The handwriting is faded, but it seems to be a page from a billet-doux.”

  “A what?” I said.

  “Oh, Daddy, how romantic!” Yasmeen said. “Let me see!”

  Professor Popp handed her the paper. “Billet-doux is French for ‘sweet note,’ ” he told me. “In English, a love letter. Where did you get all this?”

  I told him, and he nodded. “It’s a ledger book, quite a useful document for a historian.” I didn’t understand, so he explained that a careful man like Mr. Harvey would have written an entry for everything he bought and everything he earned in a ledger book. Professor Popp flipped through several pages. There were entries for lots of different purchases—big amounts for stuff like bricks and lumber, small amounts for flour, lamp oil, and ink.

  “Are you sure this was Mr. Harvey’s book?” I asked.

  Professor Popp turned to the inside front cover. There, in spidery black writing, were the words: “Gilmore Samuel Harvey, July 1, 1877–”

  “There’s no ending date,” I said.

  “I noticed that, too,” said Professor Popp. “Apparently his work was interrupted.”

  “What’s the last entry?” I asked.

  We paged through till we found it: On October 28, 1879, Samuel Harvey had purchased a “traveling portmanteau” from R. J. McClanahan’s store for 3.50.

  “What’s a portmanteau?” I asked.

  “Suitcase,” Yasmeen said, without looking up from the page she was reading.

  “I guess he never got to use it,” I said. “He died on October thirty-first—I’ve seen his grave.”

  Yasmeen sighed a huge sigh, and when I looked at her face, it had this gross, dreamy expression. Usually I can forget that Yasmeen’s a girl, but sometimes it is hard.

  “This is so romantic!” she said. “Should I read it to you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Oh, come on,” she said, “please.”

  “Give it over, and I’ll read it myself,” I said.

  “It’s only a piece of a longer letter,” Professor Popp said. “I looked for more, but this is all that’s here.”

  Frowning, Yasmeen handed me the sheet of stationery. It was so old it crinkled like it might shatter into confetti. I don’t know how, exactly, but I could see right away that the writing was feminine. The letters were large and round, much different from Mr. Harvey’s spidery black scrawl.

  This must have been a middle page because it started midsentence:

  . . . be with you always, dearest Floyd, but you know our circumstances make it impossible. We are star-crossed like the tragic lovers of yore. If only I had I met you sooner, if only my parents had been less bent on marrying off their old-maid daughter to a wealthy man, if only I had been a woman of some means of my own—were any of these “if onlys” satisfied, then I might have been your own Marianne. Alas, this will never . . .

  I looked up at Yasmeen. She still had the dreamy expression. “Listen, Yasmeen, this is really important, right? It confirms part of the story.”

  Yasmeen nodded. “It’s from Marianne Harvey to stouthearted Floyd. It must be.”

  “Who?” Professor Popp said. “What?”

  We explained that Mrs. Harvey was beautiful, that people said she had a sweetheart, and the sweetheart was the same guy who found her body, Floyd. Professor Popp nodded. “This would seem to confirm that there was a romance, and further, it would seem that she was calling an end
to it. But I believe there may also be something more.”

  “What?” Yasmeen said.

  “Consider where I found the letter,” said Professor Popp. “It was tucked in the pages of Gilmore Harvey’s ledger book. I haven’t had a chance to look closely, but as far as I can tell, his is the only writing in the book. Do you see what I’m getting at?”

  I nodded. “Gilmore Harvey was never supposed to see this letter—but he did, and that means he knew his wife had a sweetheart. And if he knew—well, then I guess it’s the way the rumors said. That could be a reason to kill her.”

  “But now I’m not so sure he did kill her,” Yasmeen said. “I mean—if Dad’s right that ghosts come back seeking justice, what justice is his ghost seeking now?”

  “Then there’s the cat,” I said. “Marianne’s smart black cat, who supposedly killed Gilmore Harvey.”

  “It was a cat that killed Mr. Harvey?” Mr. Popp said.

  “That’s how the story goes,” Yasmeen said. “Killed him in revenge after Mr. Harvey killed Marianne. And after that the cat was killed, too—drowned in the Harveys’ well.”

  Mr. Popp shook his head. “Quite a gothic tale,” he said. “But whatever the truth may be, you’re not going to learn it on a school night.”

  I picked up the book and the newspapers. “Thanks for dinner,” I said, “and for helping us.”

  On the short walk back home, my head was spinning. I was thinking about the receipt. I was thinking about the ledger book. But most of all I was thinking about that love letter.

  Of course, knowing what happened to her, I felt totally terrible for beautiful Marianne Harvey. I mean, there she was, stuck with an old, ugly, mean husband and in love with a young guy who worked for him. I guess she must have been really unhappy. At the same time, though, hadn’t she been unfair to her husband? I mean, once you get married, you aren’t supposed to have sweethearts anymore.

  But from the letter, it sounded like she was calling off the romance. So maybe she was trying to be good after all.

  Luau met me at the front door and side-rubbed my leg, which meant, Greetings, Alex. Believe it or not, my food bowl is empty! I bent down and tickled him under his chin. “You know what, Luau?” I said. “You’re lucky to be a cat.”

  Luau closed his eyes and purred, which meant, And you’re lucky to be a kid.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Apparently, the stir-fry did not kill my dad; he was standing in the kitchen.

  “How did it taste?” I asked.

  He pointed at the garbage disposal. “Rest in peace,” he said. “But I’m pretty sure my culinary skills will improve when my eyes do. I took a double dose of the pills.”

  “Is that a good idea?” I asked. “What if you get X-ray vision?”

  Dad threw a dish towel over his shoulder like a cape. “Superdad!”

  I nodded. “Could come in handy solving crimes.”

  “Which reminds me,” Dad said, “how goes the case of the missing cats?”

  “Well, so far today, Yasmeen and I have realized that we’re idiots,” I said.

  “That’s not necessarily bad,” Dad said. “Often, the first step toward wisdom is to recognize one’s own foolishness.”

  “Is that from a fortune cookie?” I asked.

  Dad said it might be, or he might have made it up. “When you get to be my age, it’s not only your eyes that fail, it’s your memory, too.”

  “You’re not old, Dad,” I said, which made him grin.

  “Keep picking up your cues, Alex. Otherwise I’ll have to hire a new sidekick.”

  I told Dad good night and took the old newspapers up to my room. Like the love letter, they were crinkly and yellow. It was weird to think how long they’d been around. Not a single person mentioned in them was still alive.

  The two newspapers on the top were from 1876.

  Then there was one from 1877. In them were articles about new buildings going up, streets being laid out, businesses opening. Most of the stuff was pretty boring.

  And then I found it.

  Page one, November 3, 1879.

  HARVEY RITES TOMORROW

  AT ST. BERNARD’S

  I guess the newspaper reporters had already written about the murder itself because this article mostly talked about plans for the funeral and how important Mr. Harvey’s business was. Toward the end the article reviewed the “peculiar circumstances” under which the body was found. From what this said, it looked like Mr. Stone’s version of the story actually was right. The big black cat was found in the parlor with the body, the body had been so badly mauled it was “unrecognizable,” Marianne Harvey had been strangled in the same room only two days before.

  The last sentence read:

  So bizarre and bloody a tragedy has never yet been heard of in the brief history of our fair town nor yet for many miles around.

  I flipped through the rest of the papers quickly, but there was nothing else from 1879. I was about to turn out my light when I spotted a little tiny article at the bottom of the front page, easy to miss because the headline was small—like nobody thought it was important at the time.

  And the way it turned out later, nobody in all the years since had thought it was important either.

  Not till I did. But first there was the case of the missing cats to solve.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  “Stouthearted Floyd disappeared?” Yasmeen repeated. We were on our way to school the next morning, Halloween day. “Right after Gilmore Harvey’s body was found?”

  “That’s what the old newspaper said: ‘One Floyd Anderson, an employee of Mr. Gilmore Harvey’s dry goods emporium, was reported missing by his friends and colleagues.’ ”

  Yasmeen thought for a minute. “Well, I suppose that might make sense,” she said. “Probably he was afraid people would find out about him and Marianne Harvey. Probably he was afraid the police would suspect him of killing her husband, so he left town.”

  “Maybe,” I said, “or maybe he was just so sad about her being dead that he ran away.”

  Sometimes, I swear, I can hear the wheels whirring in Yasmeen’s head. This was one of those times. “What does it mean?” she muttered.

  “I know,” I said. “It’s like the explanation is dangling right above us, but we can’t jump high enough to reach it.”

  “It’s been bad enough trying to find Halloween,” Yasmeen said, “then you had to go and introduce a whole separate mystery.”

  “That is so unfair,” I said. “You’re the one who likes detecting. I never told Kyle we’d find his cat for him.”

  “Well, that, at least, we are going to do,” she said. “Tonight—with a little help from Luau and Sophie.”

  Halloween used to be a fun day at school. We would have a costume parade and a class party. The teachers would read Halloween stories. But that all ended a couple of years ago when some parents complained that Halloween celebrates wickedness. Since then, October 31 has been a regular day like every other regular day. And this year it was worse than that, at least for Alex Parakeet, notorious abuser of his own cat. Only a person who has been hated by everyone in his entire school knows how bad that day was for me, knows how much I’d like to just forget it.

  The only reason I even survived is I knew Monday would be better. Once Kyle’s cat was home, Yasmeen would tell Billy Jensen the truth, Billy Jensen would tell the entire population of our town, and my life would go back to normal.

  The three-o’clock bell finally rang, and I shot down the hallway and out the front doors. It was a few minutes before Sophie and Yasmeen came out to meet me. Sophie had something to show us: the radio collar for the undercover kitty. She smiled a huge smile when she pulled it out of her backpack.

  “Try it out,” she said, and handed me a receiver the size of a cell phone. Then she ran ahead a little ways and stopped. “Switch it on!” she called. I pushed the button on the side. There were crackles and hisses, then Sophie’s voice, kind of scratchy but plenty loud
: “Can you hear me?”

  “I can’t believe it.” I looked at Yasmeen. “She is a genius!”

  Sophie was running back toward us by now and heard me. “Duh,” she said.

  It annoys Yasmeen to discuss somebody else’s genius, so she changed the subject. “What about the batteries?” she asked. “How long will they last?”

  “Yeah, that might be a problem,” Sophie said. “The one in the collar won’t last that long. There’s no way for a cat to switch it off, plus it’s small. The ones in the receiver will probably go quite a while, but you might as well turn it off till we need it.”

  “If we need it,” I said.

  “Which we won’t,” Yasmeen said.

  For once, Mom was home when I got there. She was in the family room, taking a break before going out on her Halloween patrol. I asked her whether any more cats were missing, and I was really glad when she said no.

  “How was school today?” she asked.

  The truthful answer would have been, “Terrible.” But I didn’t want to say that, because I didn’t want her asking a bunch of questions. So I tried to think of something good and said, “I finished my map finally.”

  Mom smiled. “School hasn’t changed in some ways,” she said. “We made relief maps, too. I remember the dough left your hands all dried out.”

  I nodded. “Because there’s so much salt in it. Salt, and flour, and . . . Oh, my gosh.”

  I guess my face must have gone funny because Mom said, “Alex, are you okay?”

  I nodded. I stood up. I said, “Kind of, Mom. I’m kind of okay. But I’ve got to call Yasmeen right now. I think I’ve just figured the whole thing out: I think I know the identity of the catnapper!”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  At the time I was ticked off at Mom for not taking my bright idea more seriously. But now I see it was probably good that she didn’t—at least not right then. Instead of letting me call Yasmeen and instead of phoning dispatch and having Officer Krichels go arrest my new prime suspect, she sat me back down and made me explain what I had figured out.