Mystery at Skeleton Point (5 page)

When Violet and Benny stopped for a drink from their water bottles, Jessie pulled Henry aside. “I didn’t want to scare Violet and Benny, but I saw something moving up ahead. It could have been a deer, I suppose. Whatever it was, it ran off in the direction we’re going.”

“Uh-oh,” Henry said. “Here comes Benny. I wonder if he saw it, too.”

“There’s a big skull up there — a real one! See?” Benny pointed to a horse skull stuck in the notch of a tree right by the footpath.

“Somebody’s playing a trick,” Jessie said so the younger children wouldn’t get too scared. “Let’s leave it there so no one knows we saw it.”

Benny liked this idea. “Nobody can scare us away right, Jessie?”

“Right.”

Benny and Violet finished drinking their water. They stayed close to Henry and Jessie. Soon the trail crossed the main path between the beach and the house.

“Let’s pick it up on the other side,” Henry suggested. “Hilda and William won’t expect us from that direction.”

“This leads to the garden where the Clover Dodge statue is,” Violet said.

But Violet was mistaken. “The statue is gone!” she said when she came to the rock where it had been anchored. “Should we go tell Hilda and William?”

Jessie and Henry exchanged glances.

“Let’s see if they tell us first,” Jessie suggested. “Maybe they had a good reason to take it. And if they didn’t, I don’t want them to know right away that we know it’s missing. I’d also like to find out who made these fresh footprints.”

The children looked down at the ground where the statue had been.

“Whoever was here had on work boots or hiking boots with thick treads on the soles.” Henry checked his watch. “We’ve been gone a long time. Hilda and William will be looking for us. Let’s look for them first.”

The children hiked through the surrounding woods so they could watch the house without being seen. No one seemed to be around until they approached the empty reflecting pool.

Jessie put her finger to her lips. “Shhh. Stop here. Don’t breathe.”

They watched Hilda Stone go from statue to statue with a sketch pad and a measuring tape. At every statue, she stopped, measured parts of the statues, then marked something down. When she was done, she returned to the house.

The children backtracked to the steps. They’d gone partway up when Benny stopped suddenly.

There was a fall-sized seated skeleton in front of them on the steps. “The Walking Skeleton!” Benny said.

Henry chuckled. “No, I guess you’d have to call it the Sitting Skeleton. It’s just sitting there as if it stopped to take a rest.”

“I’m not afraid of Halloween tricks even when it’s not Halloween.” Benny scurried past the skeleton.

Henry looked very serious. “Now I know someone is trying to scare us away from Skeleton Point again,” he said.

“You’re probably right, Henry,” said Jessie. “But who could it be?”

“William Mason and Hilda Stone,” said Benny, almost immediately. “They’re mean to us, and they don’t want us around.”

“You’re right, Benny. Remember that man in town said William Mason wanted to buy Skeleton Point for himself? Maybe he’s mad at Charlotte for buying it first.”

Jessie looked thoughtful. “What about Greeny?” she asked. “We know he doesn’t want us around, either — and we know he’s taking things from the house. Maybe he wants to scare us away so we won’t figure out what he’s up to. We should still keep an eye on him.”

Henry agreed. “In fact, we should keep an eye on all of them.”

When they returned to the house, the Aldens found that William had joined Hilda outside.

Jessie waved. “Hi!” she called out, as if she had come straight from her errand across the lake. “Sorry we took so long. The hardware store was out of those light switches.”

Hilda and William kept working. It seemed neither of them wanted to say anything.

Finally Hilda spoke up. “Oh, it turns out we don’t need them after all.”

William pushed back the brim of his red hat and checked his watch. “Half the day’s gone. I don’t see much use for you kids sticking around here. Hilda and I are doing some technical work Charlotte asked us to do — not something suitable for children.”

“We know how to measure, too” Benny said. “I learned in kindergarten.”

Hilda hesitated. “What we’re doing is a little more complicated than what you do in school. Now, why don’t you children go for a bike ride. Or a swim,” she suggested before going into the house.

Henry turned to William. “We already went for a swim,” he said. “An unplanned one.”

William didn’t say anything about untying the Aldens’ boat, but he looked away and cleared his throat. “Well, then, go for a planned one this afternoon. Take tomorrow off, too. Everything’s under control here.”

Before William turned to go into the house, the Aldens looked down. Just as they suspected, William was wearing heavy work boots that left deep prints just like the ones near the statue.

After breakfast the next morning, the Aldens made their lunches in Cousin Charlotte’s kitchen. While they were bagging their lunches, the phone rang.

Jessie ran for it, and the other children listened in. “Cousin Charlotte! We’re fine. We just got our lunches and extra food ready before we leave for town. Then we’re riding to Skeleton Point. We’re even going to spend the night since you said it was okay.” Jessie handed the phone to Henry.

“No, William and Hilda haven’t told us what we’ll be doing next,” Henry said. “All we did yesterday was run an errand, then we hiked home.

Charlotte told them all about her trip with Grandfather. Then she added something surprising. “Before we left yesterday, we came across a plastic skeleton — right by the car!”

“You came across a skeleton yesterday, too? So did we!” Henry said.

After that, the younger children took turns speaking with Cousin Charlotte and Grandfather about some of their adventures the day before. By the time they hung up, they were nearly out of breath.

Henry handed the other children their lunches. “Cousin Charlotte’s going to tell William to let us into Dr. Tibbs’s study this afternoon. She wants us to count everything so she knows exactly what’s there before she sends it to the medical school.”

“What about the missing statue?” Violet asked. “Did you mention it to her?”

Henry’s face grew serious. “I didn’t have the heart to tell her about that yet. I was thinking we could bike to town and visit Hilda’s studio. Without William around, maybe she’ll tell us what she knows about the statues. So what do you say guys? Everybody ready?”

Ten minutes later, the children headed into town, biking carefully now that their bikes were loaded down with their sleeping bags and overnight things. They parked their bikes in front of the drugstore to pick up film for Benny.

Benny unzipped his bike bag to get his camera. “Hey, my pictures aren’t in here with my camera. They were in my bike bag yesterday.”

“Are you sure?” Jessie asked Benny. “Did you leave it unzipped? I hope the pictures didn’t fall out while we were biking.”

Benny shook his head. “No way. I zipped everything up. Remember? I left the bike bag on the porch when we went out in the boat and picked it up when we got back.”

Jessie had a suggestion. “Then the pictures must be out at Skeleton Point. We’ll look around when we go there this afternoon.”

While Jessie ran into the drugstore to get the film, Henry took out the map Charlotte had given him. “Hilda’s studio is the next block over,” he said when Jessie came out again. “Let’s go see if she’s there.”

When the children rang Hilda’s bell, no one answered. A sign with an arrow pointing to the back of the house read, STUDIO. The children walked along quietly, looking in the windows of the house to see if anyone was around. A sign on the garage door read, STUDIO CLOSED.

Jessie cupped her hands over the tall windows of the studio. Then she waved for the other children to come over and look inside, too.

“The Clover Dodge statue!” Violet whispered when she peeked in.

Hilda was seated at a cluttered worktable facing away from the Aldens. The statue stood in the middle of the table. Also on the table were a life-sized skull and a skeleton of a hand. Hilda was bent over a large drawing pad, sketching a large stone arm that looked familiar to the Aldens.

The children tiptoed away.

“We have to decide what to do next,” Jessie said.

“A book I noticed on a shelf in the studio gave me an idea,” Violet said. “The title was,
Sculptures of Clover Dodge.
It must be the name of the sculptor who made the statue. My idea is to go to the library and see if we can find out more about Clover Dodge.”

“Good thinking,” Henry said. “One other thing. I didn’t get a real good look, but the stone arm Hilda had in there looked like the missing one from the angel statue.”

Jessie checked her watch. “I know. Well, let’s get to the library like Violet suggested. It’s just down the street.”

“Can Henry and I wait for you outside?” Benny asked when the children came to the town library.

“Sure,” Violet said, setting off with Jessie. “We’ll be back in a while.”

When the girls found the librarian, they handed him the piece of paper with the title of the art book they wanted. “My sister and I are interested in this book about a sculptor named Clover Dodge. The book isn’t on the shelf. Do you know when it’s due back?”

“Clover Dodge?” the librarian asked. “Isn’t it funny how some books aren’t checked out for ages, then suddenly everybody wants them at the same time? Clover Dodge was a well-known sculptor at the turn of the last century. But her work disappeared, and people forgot about her.” The man checked the library computer. “I see one of our local artists, Hilda Stone, checked it out. It’s reserved for William Mason next, but I can reserve it for you after he brings it back.”

“Hmm, no,” Jessie said. “Thank you anyway.”

Minutes later, the girls met their brothers outside and told them what they had discovered.

“Wow! So William is interested in Clover Dodge, too,” Jessie said. “I wonder if he and Hilda are up to something together with the statues.”

“Let’s go back to the studio and find out what Hilda has to say,” said Jessie.

The rest of the Aldens nodded in agreement. They were always ready for an investigation.

Henry led the way. “While we’re walking, Benny can tell you what we discovered while you and Violet were in the library.”

Benny couldn’t keep his secret another minute. “The scary rock with the door is called Dead Man’s Cave, only there aren’t any dead people in it,” he announced.

Jessie’s and Violet’s eyebrows shot up.

Henry grinned at the two girls. “Benny and I went to check old maps in the town hall. There are a couple small caves, not very deep ones, on Skeleton Point. One of them is called Dead Man’s Cave. The man we met at the general store works in the land records department. He said that a long time ago kids used to hike up there. He’d heard they’d turned the cave into a hideout or a clubhouse. They called it Dead Man’s Cave to scare other kids away.”

“But we’re not scared,” Benny said. “We can go there this afternoon, right, Henry?”

“You bet,” Henry said. “But first let’s see what Hilda is doing with all those skeletons and statue parts from Skeleton Point.”

When the children returned to the studio, the STUDIO CLOSED sign was still on the door. This didn’t stop the Aldens.

“Hi, Hilda! It’s the Aldens,” Jessie yelled as she rapped on the window.

Hilda whirled around, startled to see four pairs of eyes staring at her. She opened the door slightly. “What are you doing here? My studio is closed right now.”

Violet looked past Hilda. “Oh, so you have the Clover Dodge statue,” she said before the young woman could block her view. “Are you fixing it? I’d love to see how.”

Hilda stared at Violet. “I’m not here to teach art classes, Violet. I’m here to... well, I haven’t time to explain.”

Henry, who was taller than Hilda, peered right over her shoulder. “Are you fixing the arm from the angel statue, too? Charlotte will be glad you got started on that.”