Paper Treasure (5 page)

In the movie he’d watched at Billy’s, the little boy was the only one who could see the ghost. Joey lay perfectly still, waiting for another sign. Nothing. He kicked off the covers and hopped out of bed.

His bare feet made scarcely a sound as he crossed the bedroom floor. He opened the door a crack and peeked out, then he slipped into the hallway. He was halfway to his grandfather’s study when he heard a creak on the stairs. As he turned, a shadow flickered into view and was gone.

Joey dashed into his brother’s room.

“Psst, Charlie, wake up.” He grabbed Charlie’s shoulder and shook him.

“What?” Charlie stirred in his sleep. He could have sworn he’d heard Joey. His mother was right; junk food wrecked your sleep and gave you nightmares. He drifted off again.

“Charlie!” Joey grew more insistent.

Charlie struggled to the surface. He wasn’t dreaming. He was hallucinating. Joey was standing at the side of his bed shrouded in moonlight. He was wearing his Batman pyjamas with the cape attached.

Charlie’s focus shifted to the clock by his bedside. Two-fifteen. He pulled the sheet over his face. “Go away.”

“Charlie. This is serious.”

“Fine,” mumbled Charlie. “Just make sure you lift the lid before you barf. And don’t wake up Mom.”

“I’m not sick,” screeched Joey.

“Then what are you doing in here?” Charlie lowered the sheet and glared at his brother. “It’s two o’clock in the morning.”

“It’s Grampa,” said Joey in an urgent whisper. “I think he’s here in the house.”

“Grampa’s dead, you idiot.”

“Then who’s walking around downstairs?”

No sooner did he ask the question than there was a loud click from the floor below – the sound of a door closing.

Charlie could feel the hairs on the back of his neck prickle.

It was probably just the wind.

On the other hand, said his conscience, what if someone
is
in the house? Your father’s in Toronto, your mother’s asleep. Are you going to lie in bed like a wimp?

“All right, all right,” he muttered. He swung his legs to the side and rolled off the bed. The moonlight gave his bare skin a waxy sheen.

“Does Mom know you sleep in your underwear?”

Charlie gritted his teeth and picked his jeans up off the floor. “Stay here, okay?”

“Aren’t you going to get Mom?”

Charlie fastened his jeans. “No. There’s probably a logical explanation.” Besides, thirteen-year-old boys didn’t go running to their mothers in the middle of the night. Not cool.

He eased his way down the dark hallway to the top of the stairs.

A patch of light shone through the window of the front door, creating a crazy quilt of shadows on the carpet below. The walking sticks and umbrellas stood at attention in the eerie half-light. He swallowed nervously. Being “the man of the house” wasn’t good for the heart.

Avoiding the squeaky middle boards, Charlie moved to the inside of the stairs, his left shoulder hugging the wall as he went down. He was two steps from the bottom when a hand reached out and touched his bare right shoulder.

He whipped around in a panic.

“It’s only me,” hissed Joey.

Charlie grabbed the front of his brother’s pyjamas and pulled him close. “You scared me half to death, you little twerp. I told you to wait upstairs.”

Joey blinked back at him. Charlie could see tears in the corners of his brother’s eyes. “All right,” he whispered, “you can come with me.” Having Joey at his side was better than being alone anyway.

The two boys crept down the remaining few stairs and into the front hall. Charlie felt a draft of fresh air around his ankles. It was coming from the kitchen. He padded towards the back of the house in his bare feet, Joey tight beside him. The draft grew stronger.

They paused inside the kitchen doorway. It was like looking at one of those puzzles in a kid’s magazine:
“What’s Wrong With This Picture?”

The basement door was shut.

He could have sworn it had been open when he’d gone up to bed around midnight.

Joey followed him across the room.

Cool air swirled out from under the cellar door.

Charlie willed himself to reach for the handle.

The worst of all the dark and scaries were always in the basement waiting…

“Open it,” hissed Joey.

Charlie closed his eyes and his hand touched the cold metal of the door handle. He took a deep breath, cranked the knob to the right and yanked open the door.

A gentle knocking sound was coming from somewhere down below.

“What’s that?”

“I don’t know,” answered Charlie. He hesitated at the top of the stairs. “Do you think I should turn on the light?”

“How should I know?” demanded Joey. “I’m just a kid.”

Charlie reached for the light switch. He flicked it on and the stairs leapt before him, stretching way down into the cellar.

“You wait here,” he whispered to Joey. “And this time, I really mean it.”

Charlie placed his foot on the top step.

The knocking grew louder as he crept down the stairs. It was coming from the furnace room.

The basement window was open, banging a tattoo against the window frame. There was a chair beneath the window. As Charlie moved close to inspect it, the light suddenly snapped off behind him, plunging the room into total darkness.

“Charlie, Charlie, are you all right?”

For the second time that night, Charlie opened his eyes to find Joey in his face.

“What? What happened?” Charlie struggled to his knees. The palms of his hands were red and tender from where he’d hit the hard cement floor of the furnace room. He remembered the light going out and then…somebody had pushed him from behind…he’d fallen headlong to the floor!

The chair by the window.

Whoever had been in the house must have been hiding in the room when he’d come down the stairs. The chair was now lying on its side. Charlie shivered in the dank air. Thanks goodness he’d told Joey to stay in the kitchen.

His brother was staring at him, his eyes as big as saucers. “If it wasn’t Grampa’s ghost, then who turned out the light?”

“I did,” liked Charlie. “I must have knocked the switch when I tripped and fell.”

Joey was all set to argue the point when Charlie shooed him up the stairs.

“I’m not going anywhere without you,” said Joey defiantly.

“Okay, okay.” Charlie crossed the room to the open window and latched it shut. Whoever had been roaming around inside the house was gone. For now. He would decide what to do about it in the morning, but right now all he wanted to do was get back in bed and pull the covers over his head.

Chapter Seven

Essie and the Second Clue

Weirdo almost had a heart attack when the phone rang on the table beside his bed. It was barely seven o’clock in the morning. He manoeuvred himself into a sitting position and snagged the receiver on the fourth ring.

“Hello?” he shouted into the mouthpiece. “Speak up, I can’t hear you.”

“It’s Charlie, Mr. Weir. Remember me, I came to see you yesterday.”

“Of course, I remember you. I’m old, not stupid. Why are you whispering?”

“I don’t want my mom to hear me.”

“And why are you calling me so early?”

“Our friend was in the house last night,” began Charlie, “looking for paper treasure.”

“Did he find it?”

“I don’t think he was here long enough. My brother Joey heard him moving around upstairs in the study.”

“Did you see who it was?” asked Weirdo.

“No,” answered Charlie. “He got away. Through the basement window.”

Weirdo snorted. “Who else knows about this?”

“Nobody. But I should probably tell my mother. She promised to call the police if anything else happened around here.”

“Not yet, there’s too much at stake,” barked Weirdo. “We need to know more about what’s going on before we tell anybody about the gold.”

Charlie sat down on the kitchen stool and rubbed his eyes. He’d stayed with Joey until he’d fallen asleep then gone back to his own room. He’d lain awake for hours, puzzling over the trail of evidence leading to the Treasure Creek Gold Mine.

“Mr. Weir? I think this could be the same guy who came to see you the other day.”

He could hear Weirdo breathing on the other end of the line. “How did you know about that?” asked Weirdo.

“The receptionist.”

“I told you they were all Nosey Parkers in this place.”

Charlie told him that his mother had no idea where her father’s shares were hidden or if they even still existed.

“Well the odds are this guy doesn’t have them,” reasoned Weirdo, “or he wouldn’t have risked breaking in a second time.”

“You’re the only other shareholder living in Colville, aren’t you? I mean, if this guy was after you and Grampa, wouldn’t he try to track down the others?”

“Oh my word,” said Weirdo. “Essie. You have to warn Essie.”

“Who’s Essie?”

“Herb Lovell’s widow.”

“It’s gotta be that one over there.”

They crossed the street and checked the number. “One-twenty-three,” read Charlie. “That’s it.”

Joey pounded up the porch steps ahead of them and rang the buzzer.

They waited. Nothing happened.

“Try it again,” suggested Charlie. “Weirdo said she was kind of deaf.”

About a minute later, the front door was unlatched. Essie peered at them from behind the screen door. “Yes?”

“Mrs. Lovell?”

“Yes?” Essie Lovell’s white hair was secured with a clip. Her face was soft and round, framed by a pair of half-moon glasses. Lisa could just make out the flesh-toned hearing aid in the woman’s left ear.

Charlie introduced himself and his companions.

“Your husband knew my grandfather, Malcolm Rossitor,” he began.

“Yes, yes,” said Essie. “Mr. Rossitor. From the bank.”

“We came to talk to you about some old mining shares.”

The woman’s expression suddenly changed.

“Mrs. Lovell?” said Charlie. “Are you all right?”

“There was a man here yesterday morning asking me about those old shares.”

“Yesterday morning?” squeaked Lisa.

Essie nodded. “He said he was an antique dealer.”

Lisa and Charlie exchanged a glance.

“Did you give them to him?” asked Charlie.

“What’s this all about?” Essie’s voice was anxious. She kept her hand firmly gripped on the door handle beside her.

“Someone is very interested in the Treasure Creek Gold Mine,” said Charlie. “We think he’s trying to get hold of the shares any way he can.”

Charlie looked around for Joey to see if he was listening, but he was too busy trying to climb the lower limbs of the giant chestnut tree.

Charlie moved closer to the screen. “We think whoever it was broke into my grandfather’s house as well,” he confided, “and Mr. Weir is worried he might come after you.”

Essie raised her right hand to her cheek. “Oh, dear,” she said and opened the screen door. “You’d better come in.”

Charlie gestured to Joey to come with them.

“Is it okay if I stay out here?” called Joey from his perch on the bottom limb.

“Just don’t fall, okay?” said Charlie and went inside.

Essie Lovell’s parlour was crammed full of furniture. Charlie and Lisa picked their way through the maze of needlepoint chairs and curio tables to a pair of over-stuffed armchairs by the fireplace.

While Essie perched anxiously on the edge of a Victorian love seat, Charlie filled her in on the events of the last few days.

“Poor old Jack,” she said, “he always believed in that mine. I’m afraid my husband thought it was a bit of a flyer.”

“Do you still have your shares?” asked Lisa.

Essie nodded. “Locked in the safety deposit box at the bank.” She told them about her visitor the day before. “He said he was an antique dealer and that people buy old stock certificates as collectors’ items. So what is he after?”

“Weirdo – I mean Mr. Weir – thinks the mine must still be worth something,” said Charlie. He leaned forward. “Otherwise, this guy wouldn’t be tracking down all the old partners.”

“You can’t trust anyone. My friend Dorothy gave a man a ten-thousand-dollar down payment for a condo in South Carolina. She had her bags all packed when the police called to tell her she’d been conned. There were no condos. Just pine trees and sand dunes. She never did see her money again.”

The screen door creaked open and Joey found his way into the cluttered living room.

“Wow,” he said. “Do you live here? It’s like an old-time museum we went to in Toronto…”

“Joey!” said Lisa.

Essie laughed. “My son keeps trying to talk me into an apartment, but I’ve got too much stuff.”

She was interrupted by the plaintive wail of a cat from somewhere in the house. Lisa shifted uneasily. After what happened to Charlie the night before, she was on edge. Her mother would say it was a sign.

Essie didn’t take any notice.

The cat’s cries grew louder and louder until Lisa couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Mrs. Lovell, is that your cat?”

“What, dear? Oh yes, that’s Benjamin Bunny.”

Joey stopped fiddling with the carved elephant he’d found on the curio chest in the corner.

“He sounds upset,” said Charlie.

“He’s in the bathroom,” said Essie matter-of-factly.

Lisa caught Charlie’s eye. He shrugged. Maybe the cat was toilet-trained.

“I’ll let him out,’ said Joey, and he scooted from the room before anyone could stop him.

Charlie was asking Essie Lovell if she could describe her visitor when Joey let out a bloodcurdling scream.

Charlie jumped out of his chair and bounded across the room.

Joey tore down the hallway towards him, Benjamin Bunny in hot pursuit. Foam was coming from the cat’s mouth and his grey fur was spiked with fear. Charlie lunged for the cat.

“Don’t touch it, Charlie!” screamed Lisa. “It’s rabid!”

Charlie stopped in his tracks and stared as the cat began to chase its tail in circles, working up a head of steam like a tiny twister.

Lisa and Joey edged beside Charlie as they watched Benjamin Bunny wrestle his tail to the ground and lick it ferociously. The more he licked, the more he foamed. When he looked up at his audience, gobs of white frothed from the sides of his mouth and hung on his whiskers.