Disappearing Staircase Mystery (4 page)

Soon the children were busy dragging heavy branches across the yard. As they worked, they noticed something curious going on.

Several times the Gardiners entered the garage with boxes and trash bags. Every now and then a car engine started up, then stopped.

“I overheard George telling Mabel that the two old cars in the garage won’t start,” Jessie whispered. “But it sounds as if someone is starting one of the cars.”

“I know,” Henry said. “Well, never mind the garage. Look who’s on the third-floor landing—the window on the right. Isn’t that Louella? Don’t all stare at once.”

The children took turns squinting at the window Henry was talking about.

“It sure looks like Louella!” Benny said in a loud whisper. “How’d she get there anyway?”

“Beats me,” Henry answered. “I saw her go into the garage with George. I’m almost positive she never came out again.”

“I wonder if there’s a way to get to the house from inside the garage,” Jessie said.

“What are we waiting for?” Henry asked. “Let’s see if she’s still in there.”

Jessie knocked on the garage door. “Louella? It’s the Aldens. We finished the yard work you told us to do.”

The children didn’t hear any noise inside.

Jessie waited a few moments and called again. “Hello?”

Suddenly, they heard someone moving around even though the garage had sounded empty a moment ago.

“Who’s there?” came Louella’s voice, a little impatiently. It was as if she hadn’t heard them before at all. “I’m coming.”

Louella slowly opened the door.

The children looked at her, then quickly looked up at the house again. The person in the window was gone.

After dinner that night, nearly all the House and Hands volunteers had left for the day. The Aldens were in charge of doing the dinner dishes.

“That chocolate pudding was yummy,” Benny said. He licked his spoon clean then dropped it into the soapy dishwater.

Mabel stuck her head in the kitchen door to say good night. “See you in the morning, children. I’m going off with the leaders to the building supply store. I’ll drop them back here by nine tonight.”

“’Bye, Mabel,” Jessie said. She sponged off the counter then poured out the dishpan. “Done. How about a game of checkers in the playhouse?” she asked the other children.

Henry had a different idea. “Instead of checkers, I’d like to check something else. We still haven’t found Violet’s missing music box. I don’t know about you, but I keep wondering about all the other treasures that people thought belonged in the auction.”

“A treasure hunt!” Benny said. “Let’s go.”

“Okay,” Jessie agreed. “First let’s stop by the playhouse for our jackets and flashlights.”

“It’s so dark, we need a flashlight to get to the flashlights,” Henry joked as everyone stepped into the darkness.

The children crossed the lawn. Soo Lee and Benny jumped every time they stepped on the crackly branches and pinecones scattered in the yard.

“I’m glad you’re staying in the playhouse with us tonight,” Jessie said, taking Soo Lee’s hand. “Come see how nice it is—just like our boxcar.”

She entered the playhouse first so she could turn on the camp lamp. The room filled with pretty yellow light. Violet had put up some old polka-dot curtains someone had thrown out and hung them over the small windows. Everything was as cozy as could be.

“Okay, everybody have a flashlight?” Henry asked before turning off the camp light.

When the children returned to the main house, they were glad for their flashlights.

“I just remembered,” Henry said. “Brian said there’s only electricity on the first floor. Do you want to stay down here while I search upstairs?” he asked the other children. “I won’t be gone long.”

“We want to come!” Benny said. “We’re not scared of the dark.” But he stayed close to Henry all the same.

With Henry leading the way and Jessie at the back, the five Aldens climbed the creaky steps. Their flashlights made shadows on the walls.

The children reached the second floor. They went up and down the hallway checking each door.

“Darn!” Henry said. “Most of the doors are locked. We won’t get much treasure hunting done tonight. Maybe we ought to play that game of checkers after all.”

“No way!” Benny said. He was feeling very brave and very curious. “Can we go to the garage? Grandfather said the two old cars in there are like the ones his family had when he was little.”

“Yes,” Jessie agreed. “I’d like to get in there. Maybe we can find a secret way from the garage to the house. It still seems strange that right after we saw Louella go into the garage we all thought we saw her in the house.”

The garage was another old topsy-turvy building on the Bugbee estate. Everything about it was crooked—from the roof to the doors barely hanging on their hinges.

The doors creaked when Henry opened them. He beamed his flashlight around inside. Seeing a lightbulb, he pulled a string to turn it on. It snapped right off in his hand! “I’ll prop up a couple of flashlights so we can see what we’re doing,” he said.

“Uh-oh!” Benny said. “Now we can sort of see what the spiders are doing, too.”

The children looked up at the garage ceiling. Huge cobwebs hung from every corner.

“Do you want to wait outside with Violet?” Jessie asked the younger children.

“I’m not scared of spiders,” Soo Lee said, but she took Violet’s hand.

With the other flashlights, the children checked every corner of the garage.

“I don’t see any doorways or hatchways that lead to the house,” Jessie said as she walked around the cars.

“There’s no other way to get outside except through the doors we opened,” Violet pointed out.

“Unless Louella climbed out that window,” Henry said. He walked over to the only window in the garage. It was old and cracked. “This window is nailed shut with some rusty nails,” Henry told the other children. “No one has opened it for a very long time. I give up.”

“Can we look in these neat old cars?” Benny asked after his eyes got used to the dim light.

“Sure,” Henry answered. “These cars are almost as old as Grandfather.”

“I know,” Violet said. “I saw a picture of Grandfather in a car like this. But it was clean and shiny.”

“I wish we could make these cars clean and shiny, too,” Jessie said, opening one of the car doors.

“Aaah!” the five children screamed all at once.

“A mouse!” Henry yelled. “There must be mice living in these cars. We’ve disturbed them.”

Suddenly a huge spotlight shone in the children’s faces. “And I’ve disturbed you snooping where you shouldn’t be,” a loud man’s voice said.

The Aldens couldn’t tell who was there.

Finally Jessie stepped away from the bright spotlight so she could get a better look. “Oh, Mr. Gardiner,” she said. “We were just looking at these nice old cars. Our grandfather used to have a car like this one.”

“That’s all well and good,” George Gardiner said in a growly voice. “But I’m sure Mr. Alden wouldn’t have wanted a bunch of kids to be climbing over a valuable automobile like you are all doing now.”

“Sorry,” Henry said when he stepped away from the beam of George’s huge flashlight. “We only opened the door to this old car. We didn’t go inside. We were just thinking that we could help you clean these up when work on the house is finished. I bet these cars are worth a lot of money. If you move them out to the driveway, we could run a hose from the house to wash them.”

This seemed to make George even more annoyed with the Aldens. “These cars haven’t been driven in years.”

This was too much for Benny. “But Henry heard you and Mrs. Gardiner start one of the cars today. And we saw her—” Benny stopped when Jessie lightly stepped on his toe so he wouldn’t say another word.

“There’ll be no driving of these cars anytime soon,” George said. “You kids have a playhouse. Now get yourselves there instead of snooping around where you don’t belong.”

The Aldens trooped out of the garage.

Back in the playhouse, the children began talking all at once as they got ready for bed.

“I know we heard one of those cars start,” Henry said. “But now George says the cars don’t run.”

“There’s something about that garage that he doesn’t want us to see,” Jessie said. “Well, all we can do is keep a close eye on the Gardiners whenever they’re in there.”

“We’ll sure need a lot of eyes,” Henry added. “We’ve got to watch the Gardiners, plus Brian. He’s always sending us away from the house, especially when we’re upstairs.”

“Right,” Jessie said. “And don’t forget Nan. Everyone’s always looking for her because she’s never where she’s supposed to be.”

Violet wondered about something, too. “Do you think all of them are working together somehow? I mean, trying to keep things secret from Mabel and the volunteers?”

By this time, the children were too tired after their busy day to come up with any answers.

“Is it time for bed?” Soo Lee asked.

Jessie answered by giving Soo Lee a big hug. “It sure is. Here’s your warm, cozy sleeping bag. Let’s tuck ourselves in and read the story of
The Little House
.”

By the time the rest of the grown-ups returned to the big house later on, the Aldens were fast asleep in their own little house.

“My muscles real strong now!” Benny said as he and the other Aldens climbed to the third floor of the Bugbee House the next day. Nan was following right behind, rushing as usual to get the Aldens working and out of her way.

After three days, the Aldens were used to climbing a lot of stairs.

“You go up and down these stairs even more than we do,” Jessie said to Nan.

Nan paused on the second-floor landing. “What do you mean? I work all over the house, not just up here.”

Jessie looked at Nan for a few seconds. “It’s … well, it’s just that we run into you and Brian up here more than anybody else.”

Nan disagreed. “I can’t speak for Brian. But I’m sure you’re quite mistaken about me. I’m hardly up here at all.”

The Aldens didn’t say anything else to Nan. Even after a few days, the children had a hard time figuring her out. She was a bit forgetful, always darting in and out of rooms and saying she left something behind. For someone who carried a notebook with her everywhere, she wasn’t very organized.

“Now, where did Mabel say the bucket was?” Nan tried several doors before she finally found the right closet on the second floor. “Here it is. Just fill this bucket with water from the third-floor bathroom and use it to paste the wallpaper,” she told the Aldens. “Some of the volunteers started papering the hallway up there, but they only finished a little of the job. Think you can do it?”

“We helped Uncle Joe wallpaper Soo Lee’s bedroom,” Jessie answered. “He taught us how to match up the paper and paste it up and everything.”

“Fine,” Nan said. “You’ll find rolls of wallpaper, brushes, sponges, and a stepladder up there. The job will keep you busy most of today. Now I have work to do, and I don’t want any interruptions. So long.”

The Aldens got their water bucket and brought it to the third floor. They could hear Nan banging one door after the other on the second floor, directly below them.

The children looked at one another.

“It never seems like she’s actually working,” Jessie said. “She’s always going off someplace with that notebook of hers.”

Henry agreed. “I’ve yet to see her pick up a broom or a tool, that’s for sure.”

“Here’s another strange thing,” Violet said when she came out of the bathroom with the bucket of water. “This hallway is already wallpapered. See? Somebody did most of the job already. I wonder why Nan told us it would take us all day to finish. I don’t even think she checked.”

Jessie walked to the far end of the hall. “Well, there’s still one roll that needs to be put up at this end. I guess we should get started.”

After the children lined up their equipment, Henry found a stepladder and climbed up. He measured the ceiling to the floor. “Cut ninety-two inches,” he told Violet and Jessie. “Remember what Uncle Joe said?”