A Catered Halloween (19 page)

Later, when Bernie recalled the event, she would say, “It was almost as if Bessie wanted us to open it,” but right now she was too excited to focus on anything but Brandon opening the box. She leaned in as he opened the lid. A smallish something lay wrapped in a paisley scarf.

“I guess we’re still standing,” Marvin said. “So much for the curse.”

Amber picked a leaf off the hem of her dress. “Well, there could still be one. Only we won’t know about it for a month or so.”

Amber was about to say more when Libby pointed. “That scarf looks just like the shawl I’m wearing,” she cried out.

Bernie looked up at her mom’s shawl, which was draped over the jacket Libby was wearing, and then back at the scarf in the box. “You’re right. It does,” she said.

Libby frowned. “That’s very weird.”

“It was probably a popular pattern back then,” Bernie said as she turned her attention back to Brandon while he slowly untied the knots that were holding the scarf together.

There were three of them.

“Three is a magic number,” Amber told everyone.

“We know,” Bernie said as Brandon untied the last of the knots. Then he carefully opened up the scarf.

A small leather journal lay in the center.

Bernie reached over and took it out of Brandon’s hand. It smelled of earth and mold. The brown leather cover was blank. She unwound the cord that bound the book together and gently opened the cover and read the title page. It was printed in a neat hand.

“This is Bessie Osgood’s journal,” Bernie read. Underneath the title, in larger letters, Bessie had written “Keep Out” and had underlined the sentence three times.

“Wow,” Libby said to Amber. “Maybe you were right, after all.”

And then it occurred to Libby that maybe this was what Bessie Osgood had meant when she’d asked Libby to find her. She certainly hoped it was, because
then Bessie would leave her alone. Even if Libby hadn’t found the diary, she was present when it was found. That had to count for something, right?

Bernie put her hand out. “I felt a raindrop.”

“Me too,” Konrad said.

Libby looked up. The sky was even darker than it had been. She could see the clouds overhead. A raindrop fell on her forehead and ran down her cheek.

“It’s going to pour,” she predicted.

A second later there was a clap of thunder, and the sky opened up. Everyone ran for their cars.

S
ean sighed as he looked at the tiles he’d just been about to put down on the Scrabble board. The word would have been a twenty-five pointer.

“Saved by the kids,” he told Clyde as his daughters, their boyfriends, Amber, Konrad, and Curtis came trooping into the living room. He didn’t know what this was about, but it was definitely something big, although getting a twenty-five-point word with three letters was pretty big, too.

Clyde snorted and finished the cream-cheese brownie he was eating. “You’ll use any excuse to keep from losing, won’t you? I bet you arranged this whole thing.”

Sean leaned forward and tapped the board with his index finger. “Believe what you want if it makes you feel better,” he told Clyde as Bernie came over and handed him a leather-bound journal.

He ran his hand over the cover while everyone crowded around him. They were close enough so that he could smell the damp and the night air on their clothes, which was way too close for him.

“What is this?” he asked Bernie. “You look like the cat that swallowed the canary.”

“It’s Bessie’s journal,” Bernie said. “We just dug it up.”

“Literally?” asked Sean.

“Yes,” Brandon said and showed Sean his hands. There was dirt underneath his fingernails.

Sean raised an eyebrow. “Did you now?” he asked Bernie. “Why don’t you fill me in.”

Bernie told him about the puzzle box, the map, and how they dug up the journal.

“You didn’t ask me to come?” Sean said.

Bernie gave an apologetic shrug. “We didn’t want to disturb your game.”

Right
, Sean thought as he turned to Amber, who was looking a little worried about what he was going to say. They just hadn’t wanted the old man along. Too much trouble.

But Sean didn’t say that, because that would have been whining. Instead, he told Amber she’d done a good job. But then he went and ruined it all by telling her that she should have come and told him first.

“But I…,” Amber protested.

Sean held up his hand. “No need to explain, and I really am very impressed. I couldn’t open the box, and heaven only knows I tried.”

Two dots of color appeared on Amber’s cheeks. She plucked at one of her braids. “It wasn’t anything.”

“No, it was,” Bernie told her.

Sean watched as Amber looked down at the floor and dug a little hole in the carpet fibers with her toe. “Is anything the matter?” he asked.

Amber paused for a moment.

“Tell us,” Sean urged.

Amber looked down and picked a wet leaf off her legging. She hesitated for another moment, and then she blurted, “The truth is, I didn’t figure it out. I got the solution off the Web site of the people who made the puzzle box. I guess I should have told you before, but I kind of liked you thinking I was this really smart person, and I figured that this way you’d let me come along.”

“Hey,” Bernie said. “You are really smart.”

Amber studied the toes of her boots. “No, I’m not. Everyone says that.”

“You were smart enough to go online. That was more than any of us did. And we wouldn’t have hired you if we didn’t think you were intelligent.”

Amber brightened. “Really?” she asked.

“Really,” Libby replied.

Amber was about to say something else when Sean interrupted. “Ladies, enough already with the confidence building.” He wanted to say “bullshit” but managed to restrain himself. “I want to know what the journal says.”

“We don’t know,” Bernie said.

“What do you mean you don’t know?” Clyde and Sean both said at the same time.

“Just what I said,” Bernie snapped.

“You haven’t read it?” Sean asked. He couldn’t believe it. That would have been the first thing he would have done.

“No, Dad,” Libby told him. “We haven’t. We wanted to wait till we could read it with you. We figured since you weren’t there when we found it, you’d want to be there when we read it.”

Sean ducked his head so no one would see how
touched he was by the gesture. “That’s ridiculous,” he barked. “You shouldn’t have waited for me.”

Bernie grinned. “I figured that’s what you would say.”

Never could fool her, Sean thought as he handed the journal back to Bernie.

“Why don’t you read it out loud?” Sean suggested.

“Good plan,” Konrad said. “Then we can play our tapes, too. I bet we got some really good stuff, like maybe Bessie telling us how mad she is that we’re reading her journal.”

Not if I can help it
, Sean thought as Marvin said, “Super.”

Sean glared at Marvin, but Marvin was too busy brushing the water out of his hair to notice.

“That’s what I’m worried about,” Amber cried out. “Maybe we should have an exorcism.”

“We’ll see,” Libby said as she guided Marvin to the sofa.

“Because I know an exorcist,” Amber said. “I can call him if you like.”

Libby stole a look at her dad. He didn’t look happy. She couldn’t imagine what he’d look like if they actually got an exorcist up here. He’d probably shoot him.

“Maybe later,” Libby told Amber.

Then Libby sat down next to her father, while Bernie sat in the armchair, and Brandon perched himself on one of its arms. Instead of sitting on one of the wooden spindle-back chairs, Amber plopped herself on the floor, and after a moment Konrad and Curtis sat down next to her.

“This is pretty exciting,” Marvin said. “I wonder what we’re going to find.”

“The treasure map to the Templar’s gold. I’m kid
ding,” Sean said quickly before Marvin could say anything else. He nodded toward Bernie. “Okay. Let’s see what this baby has to tell us.”

Everyone leaned forward as Bernie opened the book and began to read.

“D
ear Diary,” Bernie began. “Mommy gave this to me because she said it would make things easier. I can put down everything that I would say to her. That way I won’t be lonely. I don’t want to go to the Peabody School, but Mommy says that Rose says that’s a better place for me. She says I’m smart, and I should go to college and do all that stuff that she never had a chance to do. I think I’m going to miss everyone, but Mommy says I’ll make lots of new friends. She says that everyone there is really excited I’m coming. I’m taking my teddy with me just in case.”

Bernie stopped reading and looked up at her dad. “Do you think Rose is Mom?” she asked.

“Definitely,” Sean said immediately. Had to be. It would be too big a coincidence otherwise.

Libby thought back to the scarf the journal had been wrapped in. “I wonder if Mom gave Bessie that scarf?”

Clyde put down the brownie he’d been eating. “What scarf?”

“This scarf,” said Libby as she leaned over and took a scarf out of her backpack. “It has the same pattern as one of Mom’s shawls.”

Clyde turned to Sean. “Any idea on that?”

Sean shook his head. “I worked a lot in those days. Rose took care of the social end of stuff.”

“Did you ever meet Bessie Osgood?” asked Clyde.

“I met her mother once,” said Sean. “I remember Rose and she were having tea. But that was about it. I was coming back after pulling a fifteen-hour shift.” He turned to Clyde. “The Anson robbery.”

Clyde nodded. “I remember.”

“I went straight up to bed,” said Sean.

“No wonder Mom never talked about Bessie,” Bernie mused.

Libby sneezed. She was definitely going to get sick. “I don’t get what you’re saying.”

Bernie sighed. “I’m saying that considering what happened, I bet she felt guilty about being the one that convinced her mother to send her there.”

Libby bit her cuticle. “Well, I certainly would have.”

“Me too,” Bernie allowed.

Sean nodded at Bernie. “Read some more.”

Bernie turned back to the book. “The next entry is dated four days later.
Dear Diary, I want to go home
.” Bernie looked up. “The word
home
is underlined four times.”

She went back to reading. “No one here is very nice. The food sucks. We’ve had macaroni and cheese, pineapple, and peanuts four nights in a row. For dessert, we had Jell-O. I asked for ice cream, and the lady in charge of the food said that was a special occasion thing. At home I can have ice cream every night!

“I called Mom, and she promised to bring me some
lasagna and my favorite brownies. The ones she makes with walnuts and tiny marshmallows on top. The only good thing is I like my classes. I get to write stories in English, and we have a class in Greek mythology. I started reading the stories already. The assignment sheet said we should read the first one, but I went ahead and read the first four.

“My roommate says I’m stupid. But I think she’s pretty dumb. She never studies or anything. I guess she doesn’t want to be here, either. Amethyst says her mom made her come, too, so that means we have something in common. But I don’t think so. She was really mean to the cleaning lady when she came in to wash the floor this afternoon, during free time. I tried to tell her not to do that, but she wouldn’t listen to me. I should have told her my mom cleans houses. I don’t know why I didn’t.” Bernie looked up. “I didn’t realize they roomed together,” she said.

Sean ate the last of his brownie. “Me either. Go on,” he said.

Bernie continued on to the next page. “Not much here,” she said. “Bessie’s mom dropped by with some homemade brownies and promised she’d be back in two days. They’re reading
Macbeth
in English class, which Bessie loves. She’s already memorized act one, scene one.”

“I remember doing that,” Libby said.

“Me too,” replied Bernie. “I guess nothing much has changed. Anyway, she really doesn’t like her math teacher, and she has to write a report for social studies on the Revolutionary War. And she says, ‘Teddy is feeling very, very sad.’ Poor thing. But she doesn’t say why.”

Marvin flicked a drop of water off his sleeve. “I think I can guess.”

Bernie moved her finger down to the bottom of the page. “Listen. This is interesting. She says, ‘The kids say there are shadow people here.’”

“Shadow people?” Libby echoed.

“That’s another name for ghosts,” Konrad said.

Bernie continued. “I think I might have seen one, because I saw a lady walking down the hall. She was dressed in funny clothes. The lady that lives in the corner room said not to worry, that it’s fine, and that she won’t hurt me. I haven’t told anyone else, because I don’t want them to think I’m crazy.”

“She probably saw Esmeralda,” suggested Curtis.

“Bad enough to be in boarding school, let alone a haunted one,” Libby commented.

“I don’t know,” Bernie commented. “It could be kind of cool.”

“I’m not so sure about the boarding school part,” Amber said.

Libby watched enviously as Amber straightened her legs out, leaned over and grasped her shoes with her hands, pulled her body down to her knees for a moment, then let go.

“When my mom was sick, I had to go to my aunt’s for a month when I was in high school,” Amber said. “It sucked.”

Sean made a hurry-it-along motion with his hand to Bernie. “Does Bessie say anything else about Amethyst?”

Bernie started leafing through the pages. “Here’s something. I went home for the weekend. I didn’t want to leave, so Mom made my favorite cupcakes—white cupcakes with white buttercream frosting and sprinkles on top—to take with me. I put them in my cubby and went to give Mr. Marak, he’s the headmaster, the envelope my mom gave me. When I came back,
Amethyst and her retarded friends were eating the cupcakes.

“I told her that wasn’t nice, and she started to laugh. I started crying, and she told me she could do whatever she wanted, because no one cares about me. I hate her. Hate her. Hate her. I called my mom and told her, and she said to forget it. She said she’d bake me some new ones.

“I said I didn’t want to stay here anymore, and she said she’d speak to Mr. Marak about getting me another roommate, but I know that’s not going to happen, because I heard him say to someone that they were full up. I started crying on the phone and then Mom started crying and that made me feel worse. She said I’d have to make the best of things for now and that I could come home for good if I wanted at Christmas.”

Bernie looked up. “I wonder what was happening with her mom?”

Sean thought for a moment. “If I’m not mistaken, I think her dad lost his job. He worked for the power company. And he went to California to help someone he knew put up a house, which meant Bessie’s mom had to do more cleaning jobs. Did Bessie say anything to anyone about this?”

Bernie shook her head. “If she did, it doesn’t say so here. Here she says she read
The Catcher in the Rye
.” Bernie’s finger stopped moving. “Oh dear. Something happened to teddy.”

“What?” Marvin asked.

“He disappeared,” said Bernie. “Bessie says Amethyst told her the shadow woman took it, but she doesn’t believe her….”

“Go, Bessie,” Brandon cried.

“She thinks Amethyst did it, but she can’t prove it,” said Bernie. “She says she cried for hours, but she
doesn’t want to tell her mom, because she doesn’t want to upset her even more. Also, she thinks she’s fat, and all the other girls are making fun of her because of her clothes. She says, ‘Amethyst said I’m fat like a pig and that if I had a circle pin, I would have to wear it on the right side, because no boys want anything to do with me.’”

“That’s terrible,” Libby protested, thinking back to her own high school days. No one had said anything like that, but she’d always felt that they’d thought it.

“Don’t kids at boarding schools have to wear uniforms or something?” Brandon asked.

“Evidently not here,” Bernie told him. “And, anyway, you’re missing the point.”

“No, I’m not,” Brandon said. “I’m just asking a question.”

“You know,” Konrad interjected, “Bessie said something on tape about how she wanted a white blouse with a Peter Pan collar and a pleated skirt, and how the girls were being mean to her. You want to hear?”

“I think we need to finish reading the diary first,” Sean told him. “We don’t want to mix our media.”

Curtis frowned. “What does that mean?”

Sean nodded to Bernie. “She’ll explain.”

“It means,” Bernie said as she marked her place in Bessie’s journal with her thumb, “that we’re going to do one thing at a time, and when we’re done with this, we’ll listen to the tape.” She looked up and caught her father’s eye. “Tomorrow. Tomorrow we’ll listen. We’ll be too tired tonight to give it the attention it deserves.” She went back to reading the journal before Konrad and Curtis could protest.

“Okay. More trouble with Amethyst. She stole Bessie’s favorite pair of socks. They were pink and gray, and her mom had knitted them for her. But she
got an A on her math test. She guesses the math teacher isn’t so bad. She loves her mythology course and is excited that she’s going to take Latin next semester. Her teacher read one of her stories in class and told her she should submit it to the school magazine, which she’s going to do. So she’s doing well academically, but she still hasn’t made any friends, and she really wants to go home.”

Bernie turned the page. “Here’s something.” And she cleared her voice and began to read. “We have dance lessons tomorrow in the gym. They’re going to teach us all the steps because we have a mixer in two weeks. I don’t want to go, because no one is going to want to dance with me, because I’m fat. Amethyst says I’m too clumsy to learn how to dance, anyway. I told the housemother I don’t want to go, but she said I had to. Everyone has to. I told her I couldn’t learn the steps, and she told me that was ridiculous. Then I told her that no one would dance with me, and she said that that was just plain silly. Lots of the boys liked me, and anyway, everyone had to dance with everyone else. It was the rules. I’m going to run away.”

Bernie stopped reading. “We never had dance lessons.”

“I hated the dances,” Marvin said. “My hands used to get all sweaty. It was embarrassing.”

Brandon stood up and stretched. “Well, I liked them. I used to sneak out and have a smoke with Daisy Dixon.”

“Just a smoke?” Bernie demanded.

Brandon grinned. “No.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Bernie.

Sean cleared his throat. Everyone turned toward him. “Can we get back to the journal please?”

“No problem,” Bernie said and resumed reading. By now the wind had picked up, and the rain was splatter
ing the windows. “Let’s see.” She started running her finger down the pages as she scanned them. “More stuff about classes. She’s doing well in everything. More complaints about Amethyst and her friends.”

“Do we know who they are?” Clyde asked.

Bernie shook her head. “So far she hasn’t mentioned them by name.”

“Pity,” Clyde murmured as Bernie went back to the journal.

“Here’s another entry about the shadow lady. She says, ‘I saw her in the east wing near the kitchen. I’m never going to sneak food again.’ That would certainly cut down on midnight snacking,” Bernie noted as she went on. “Okay.” She continued turning pages. “Same old. Same old. Aha.” She stopped. “This is something new.”

Bernie continued reading. “Dear Diary, We had our first dancing lesson today. I knew I was going to hate it. All the other girls had pretty skirts and blouses on, and I just had my old stuff. Mrs. Richards practically had to push me into the room. And then I kept tripping over my own feet. Why do I have to learn to dance, anyway? No one is ever going to ask me. But the worst was when we had to dance with the boys. We formed two lines, and everyone had to rotate every five minutes or so. All the boys looked unhappy when they had to dance with me.”

“Poor thing,” Libby murmured.

“And then,” Bernie continued, “I danced with the headmaster’s son, Ken. He said he had heard a lot about me and that he had wanted to meet me. I thought he was just being polite, but when the dance ended, he said he’d meet me tomorrow by the maple tree outside the girls’ wing. He had something he wanted to show me.”

“Boy,” Brandon interjected. “If that isn’t a classic line, I don’t know what is.”

“Be quiet,” Bernie said to him. Then she coughed to clear her voice and went on. “I couldn’t sleep all night long. It’s probably nothing. His father probably told him to be nice to me. I mean, he’s so cute, so why should he pay attention to me?

“But I couldn’t help it, I put on my plaid gray kilt and my good red V-necked sweater and my Sunday loafers and my last pair of clean white kneesocks, anyway. I even used a little bit of Amethyst’s rouge on my cheeks. I hope she doesn’t find out, but I don’t see how she could, because it was just a little dab. Then I tried to get both sides of my hair to turn under the way the cool girls do, but one side kept flipping up. Good grief!

“I got there five minutes early even though I wanted to get there five minutes late. My mom says it’s always best to make the boys wait. Ken wasn’t there. I felt so silly standing there that I was going to leave, but then I looked up and saw Ken walking toward me. He was holding something out to me. A book. ‘I thought you’d like this,’ he said. It was a book of mythology, only this one was about the Celtic people.

“He said they had lots of stuff about Halloween in there, because that’s where it came from. I was so happy, I didn’t even say thank you. ‘Don’t you like it?’ Ken asked. I told him I loved it, that that was the best thing anyone had ever given me, and he smiled. He has a great smile. It turns out he likes books, too. He even likes fairy tales, which is fairly weird, but he’s going to give me some of the old ones. He says they’re different. Also, he said he can help me when I start Latin. We’re going to go for a walk tomorrow after dinner. I can hardly wait.”

“Looks like things are picking up for our Bessie,” Marvin said.

Bernie grunted as she kept reading. “Okay. Nothing about Amethyst or being homesick or schoolwork on the next five pages. They’re all about Ken. She says, ‘Ken gave me a book about Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table today. Ken and I went for a walk, and we found some bright red leaves on the ground. Ken and I held hands. Ken is the cutest guy in the whole school.’ Here’s one page with Bessie Marak written all over it. Here’s another page with little hearts and the initials KM & BO written in them. Looks like our girl is in love. Okay. Here’s something. She says, ‘Ken kissed me.’”