New Horizons (18 page)

Mary Lou straightened up in her chair and said, “I sure hope it's not someone we think is a friend. That could be embarrassing.”

“I wonder what Mrs. Thomason will do about it if we do find out who is involved,” Mandie said.

“Well, I don't know what she will do, but I know what I would do,” Mary Lou said. “I'd contact the newspaper and have them print an embarrassing story about what a stupid trick they did.”

Mandie suddenly sat up straight and gasped. “Oh goodness! I hadn't even thought about it, but you know what might happen? Suppose Senator Morton mentioned to someone that we were looking for a ghost? The newspapers print everything he says because he's a politician. That would be absolutely terrible. I
wish we had not told him anything about this ghost business at all.”

Mary Lou laughed and said, “That might be fun, getting our names in the paper because we are chasing ghosts!”

“My grandmother wouldn't like that at all,” Mandie declared.

“I don't think I'd want my name in the newspaper connected with ghosts,” Celia said with a shiver.

“And just imagine what those fellows around the college would say if we solved the mystery of the haunted boardinghouse,” Mary Lou said.

Mandie laughed and said, “Then they wouldn't have anything to talk about!”

Mandie knew she would keep investigating the mystery until they discovered an answer—even if it took the whole year to do it.

chapter 13

The next afternoon Mandie and her friends went back to the flower shop and, with Mrs. Poinsett's permission, brought home three boxes of the papers. Mrs. Thomason had asked them to come over to her house with the papers after supper.

“Oh dear, these papers are a frightful mess, aren't they?” Mrs. Thomason said as she began sorting through them on the dining room table. Supper had already been served to her boarders, so the room was clear for the night.

“I believe these are diagrams of different houses and different streets, but there are no names indicating the streets or anyone's house,” Mr. Dunnigan said.

“I don't see what good these papers were to him,” Mrs. Dunnigan said, flipping through another stack of papers.

“He didn't even put the cost or the price charged on any of these,” Mandie said.

“Now that you mention it, when I got him to make my new lock and key, he didn't seem able to add up money. He just gave
me a rounded figure for what I owed him,” Mrs. Thomason told the others.

Mr. Dunnigan paused in his work and looked at the girls. “Are these all of the papers?”

Mandie shook her head. “No, Grace said that they had stored his papers in the attic and in the basement. We carried these up from the basement, so there are still papers left in the attic.”

“We'll have to look at those when we take these back,” Mary Lou said.

“Well, I'm finding that I can recognize quite a few of these houses, according to his diagrams,” Mrs. Thomason said. “But we don't even know what all of these houses mean.”

They searched all the papers but found nothing else, then declared it a night.

“Such a waste of time, both for Mr. Jacks and for anyone trying to find a particular record,” Mr. Dunnigan said about the locksmith's record-keeping.

“We can go back and look at the other papers tomorrow afternoon,” Mandie promised.

The next afternoon the three girls hurried back to the flower shop with the boxes of papers they had already looked through. Grace saw them coming and quickly met them at the door.

“Please come in,” she said anxiously. “The man has been here demanding his papers, and I had to tell him someone had borrowed some of them. I did not say who, but he took all of his boxes out of the attic.”

“Sol Jacks was back? But Mr. Dunnigan said he left as a crew
member on a ship before Christmas,” Mandie said.

“The ship must have already come back to port,” Mary Lou concluded.

“And why would he come back to the flower shop for papers that he left behind for garbage?” Celia asked. “They could have been long gone by now.”

“What did he look like?” Mary Lou asked. “My father has seen him before, so he would know if the man who came here and got the papers was really the locksmith.”

“Good point. We should ask your father about him,” Mandie said to Mary Lou. Then it was apparent another idea dawned on her. “But why would anyone else want all that garbage?”

“Mr. Jacks claimed he had intended coming back to get the papers, but he had to leave immediately on that ship or lose his job,” Grace said. “He was a small man, slender and not very tall, possibly in his fifties.”

“But his lease was up when he left, according to my father, so how could he expect to come back and get papers that he left in a place that he no longer paid rent on?” Mary Lou said.

“What did you tell him about the rest of his papers?” Celia asked Grace.

“I only said that they had been borrowed—I did not give him any information other than that. In fact, I was a little afraid of him, but thankfully some customers came in, so he quickly left, saying he would return for the balance of his papers.”

“You need someone to stay here with you. The man might be dangerous if he finds you alone,” Mandie said.

“When Mrs. Poinsett comes in I'll discuss it with her. She has a grandson who helps out now and then, so maybe he will stay here with me until all this commotion dies down,” Grace said.

“I'll talk to my father about this and see what he thinks,” Mary Lou told her. “I don't believe that man could have gone off on a ship and gotten back this fast. Besides, why did the papers become so important to him all of a sudden?”

Grace glanced at the boxes and shrugged. “Well, did y'all find any information about his work in those papers?”

“No, just some rough drawings of houses and streets,” Mary Lou replied. “Some we could understand, but most of it was just jumbled drawings.”

“It's too bad we didn't get a chance to go through the other boxes,” Mandie said. “They probably contained more information, maybe even names of clients.”

“Why doesn't one of us stay here with you until Mrs. Poinsett comes?” Mary Lou offered. “I'll wait here with you while Mandie and Celia go back to my house and let my parents know what we are doing.”

“Thank you, but I'll be all right. I'll ask Mr. Perry in the pottery shop next door to keep an eye out for me,” Grace replied.

“Why don't you keep the door locked until Mrs. Poinsett comes? You can see through the window if any customers are at the door, and if that man comes back, then don't open it,” Mandie suggested.

“That's a good idea. I will lock it when y'all leave,” Grace said.

“I hope we catch up with you in chapel tomorrow morning
and find out if anything else happened after we left,” Mary Lou told her.

“I'll look for y'all there,” Grace promised, following them to the door and smiling through the glass as she locked the door behind them.

When the girls got back to the Dunnigans' house, Mr. Dunnigan was already home, and the girls related the events to him and Mrs. Dunnigan.

“It sounds like Sol Jacks never got on the boat. It would be impossible for him to sail off like that and return so soon afterward,” Mr. Dunnigan said.

Mary Lou gave her father the description of the man that Grace had given them. “Do you think it was really the locksmith who came after the papers? Would that description fit him?”

“Yes, that does sound like what I remember of him,” Mr. Dunnigan replied. “But there is something very strange about all this. He left the shop in a big hurry all those months ago, and he left the papers in it—for garbage. Now he's returning to collect them when he doesn't even rent the shop anymore? I don't understand what is going on.”

The girls walked out to Mrs. Thomason's boardinghouse and told her about the episode concerning the man. She also agreed that the desciption fit the man. Mrs. Thomason warned the girls to stay out of trouble.

The next morning the girls found Grace in the chapel early enough to talk for a few minutes.

“Did he come back?” Mandie asked Grace as they sat down next to her.

“He did, but he didn't get any more papers,” Grace replied with a big smile. “Mrs. Poinsett was so upset with this that she gave all the remaining papers to Mr. Perry next door and told him to hide them away somewhere, that the man had no right to come back and demand the papers he left for garbage—in a shop he no longer rented.”

“What a smart woman,” Mary Lou said, amazed at the older woman's ferocity.

“So what happened when she refused to give him the papers?” Celia asked.

“She didn't tell him she had given the papers to Mr. Perry. She just said everything he had left there had been thrown out and there was nothing belonging to him left, and not to come back anymore,” Grace explained.

“I don't imagine he liked that,” Mandie said.

“No, but when Mrs. Poinsett told him she would ask the law to take him to jail, he left in a hurry,” Grace explained.

“So now we'll never know whether someone had him duplicate a key to Mrs. Thomason's house,” Mandie said with a sigh.

“No, we'll just have to think up another angle,” Mary Lou said.

No one had uncovered any more information about the so-called ghost in the boardinghouse or about Sol Jacks, and
suddenly it was time for the spring holidays. Mandie, Celia, and Mary Lou were excited to be spending the time together at Mandie's house. The Shaws' house was full once again as several people met there for this holiday, including Jonathan Guyer and his father, Lindall Guyer, who had once been in love with Mandie's grandmother; Senator Morton, who seemed to currently consider Mrs. Taft the apple of his eye; Joe Woodard, who was on his spring break from his college in New Orleans, and his parents, Dr. and Mrs. Woodard; Uncle Ned and his wife, Morningstar, and their granddaughter, Sallie; Mandie's grandmother; and Celia's mother, Jane Hamilton. At the last minute, Celia's old friend Robert, from Mr. Chadwick's School for Boys in Asheville, North Carolina, came.

The twin babies, Carol and Carl, were growing and alert to all the attention bestowed on them.

Although everyone was kept busy with little time to eat and sleep, the days flew by and they soon had to return to their various places.

Back at their college, Mandie, Celia, and Mary Lou learned that Grace had worked most of the holiday, alongside Mrs. Poinsett's grandson, Matthew, who was also on holiday from the College of Charleston. Mandie remarked to Celia and Mary Lou that Matthew seemed infatuated with Grace and was using the excuse of tending shop in order to be around her.

“That could be an interesting matter,” Mary Lou said to Mandie and Celia after they had visited the shop one afternoon.

“Yes, I noticed the way his attention stayed with Grace
instead of with the customers,” Celia said.

“I can't tell whether it's mutual or not,” Mandie said. “I noticed that Grace did not talk to him very much.”

“Maybe she's just shy around boys,” Celia said.

“Or it could be that Grace wants to go ahead with her career and not get sidetracked,” Mandie said.

On Monday morning, when the girls came down for breakfast before leaving for school, Mr. and Mrs. Dunnigan were discussing something in the morning newspaper.

“If it's not one of those houses, then it's awfully close to it,” Mr. Dunnigan was saying. Looking up as the girls came into the room, he told them, “There was a burglary in a house not far from here over the weekend, and I'd say it seems to be a house that Sol Jacks drew on one of his papers.” He handed Mary Lou the newspaper to look at the picture of the house involved.

“Why, it does seem to be one of those houses,” Mary Lou said in surprise. “Do you suppose the locksmith is involved in this?”

“That's what I've been asking myself,” her father replied. “There's something about that man that doesn't ring true. And you will notice the article says it was not a forced entry. Whoever did it had a key to get in.”

“Will you be talking to the law authorities about this?” Mrs. Dunnigan asked her husband.

“Well, I suppose I should,” he replied thoughtfully. “Of course, we don't have any of those papers left to show them and explain.”

“But, Papa, Mrs. Poinsett does have some of the papers,” Mary
Lou reminded him. “Remember, Grace said Mrs. Poinsett gave the papers to Mr. Perry in the shop next door to keep for her?”

“You are right,” Mr. Dunnigan said with a smile. “I'll go down there today and look over whatever Mr. Perry is keeping. Then I'll know whether it would be worthwhile to mention this to the law enforcement officers.

When the girls came home from their classes that day, Mr. Dunnigan was excited to tell them what he had discovered that morning.

“Y'all were right about those papers. I spoke with Mrs. Poinsett this morning, and she had already considered Sol Jacks's connection to the burglary. So we got the papers from the pottery shop owner and went over them. We believe we found a diagram of the house that was burglarized.”

“What did you do with it?” Mary Lou asked excitedly.

“With Mrs. Poinsett's permission, I took it to the law enforcement office. They were so impressed with the drawing, they asked to see the rest of the papers. They've now set up surveillance on the other houses in the diagrams,” Mr. Dunnigan explained. “I believe we have helped prevent other burglaries.”

“I do hope so,” Mrs. Dunnigan said.

“Do you know whether one of the houses in the drawings was Mrs. Thomason's boardinghouse?” Mandie asked.

“We don't think so,” Mr. Dunnigan said. “More than likely her house is on the other papers we haven't been able to see. I plan to change the locks on this house and my office as soon as another locksmith can get to it. In the meantime I will leave lights
burning at night when I close up.”