Sammy Keyes and the Dead Giveaway (25 page)

Casey agreed. “The golf course is way better, Billy.”

“What about me bones?” Billy asked, rattling his bucket.

“Bury 'em at the golf course.”

“Aye!” Billy said. “Eighteen holes to choose from!” Everyone groaned, “Bil-ly!” but we set sail for the golf course. The driver had napped in the Hummer while we'd been at the dance, so it had taken him a little while to liven up. But he got back into whistling the yoho song, so thanks to him and Billy Bonkers Pratt, it didn't take long before we were all in a good mood again, singing and
arg
ing and acting like swashbucklin' pirates.

When we got near the golf course, Danny guided the driver through Country Club Estates, down some back roads to the end of a dead-end street, where the Black Pearl could park and not be noticed.

The guys lugged the blocks of ice through a break in the fence while Marissa carried her gym bag and I squeezed through with Billy's flag, his hook, and his bucket o' bones.

It was dark on the golf course, but the houses from the neighborhood to our right cast enough light on the grass to make it seem like we had just entered some secret fantasy world with rolling hills of moss.

“This is cool!” I whispered.

“It is, huh,” Casey said as we walked along.

“Do you do this a lot?”

“We used to,” he whispered. “It's been a while.” He grinned at me. “And never with a girl.”

I hadn't even thought about that. And now, knowing that it had crossed
his
mind could have made me feel uncomfortable, but it didn't—it made me feel good. This wasn't something they did with girls.

This was something they did with
friends
.

But we'd barely gotten onto the greens when all of a sudden megawatt lights snap on, totally blinding us. We all just stand there, squinting and using an arm to block the light like we're watching some alien ship descend. It's not an alien ship, of course, it's floodlights mounted to the back fences of some of the country club homes.

Dogs start barking. Then some guy we can't see because
he's behind the lights shouts through a bullhorn, “This is a private facility. Get yourself and your stuff off the golf course!”

“We're not hurting anything!” Danny calls back. He hefts his bag. “It's just ice!”

“I said it's private! Get off the golf course or I'll call the police!”

“Great,” Danny grumbles, lowering the ice.

So we get out of there as fast as we can, and when we're back inside the Black Pearl, Billy says, “To the cemetery then?”

Casey and Danny are looking at each other like, I
guess
so…, but Marissa pipes up with, “How about the ball fields? You know, the ones on Miller? By the courthouse? There's a great hill—”

“Oh, by those trees!” Casey says. “That would be perfect.”

“Is there some place we can park?” Danny asks. “This thing isn't exactly inconspicuous, and that part of Miller's always crawlin' with cops.”

So I say, “We can park by the old railroad office.”

“That's right,” Marissa says. “There's a path that cuts behind it, clear through to Miller.”

“Is it dark?” Billy asks.

We nod.

“Deserted?”

We nod again, but this time Marissa and I look at each other like, Uh, maybe this isn't such a good idea after all…

“Perfect!” Billy pronounces, then adds, “Sounds like a bonny good place to bury me bones!”

“Stop with the bones already, would you?” Danny says.

“Arg!” Billy replies.

So I give the driver directions, and off we go. And on the ride over Danny asks, “Is this that same railroad office you were talking about before?”

“Right,” Marissa says.

“So this is the place you knocked those guys down with a shovel?”

She rolls her eyes a little. “Right again.”

“What were you
doing
over there, anyway?”

Marissa looks at me, so I tell them a little about Mrs. Willawago and my job walking Captain Patch. And I wasn't planning to say much more, but Marissa pipes up with, “Tell them the story about Goldie Danali.”

“Who?” Danny asks.

“Goldie Danali… it's a ghost story!”

All of a sudden Billy's way interested. “Do tell!” he says, leaning forward.

So I start to tell them about Goldie, but I get on this huge sidetrack about Mrs. Willawago and the houses on Hopper Street because, well, to me that's part of the story. So by the time I finish telling them about Goldie, and how her property got seized, and how now they can't rent the offices because people think they're haunted, Billy's shaking his head, going, “You done?”

I shrug like, Yeah.

“That is
not
how you tell a ghost story.” He drops his voice and gives it a spooky quiver as he says, “Goldie Danali. A simple soul. A quiet soul. Went to work each day in a golf cart …”

Everyone stifles a laugh, but just then the Black Pearl lurches to a stop, and when we turn to see why, we hear clanging and see lights flashing as the crossbars come down, blocking the railroad tracks.

We watch and wait, and finally Danny says, “What the heck?” 'cause with all that flashing and clanging and blocking the road, there's no train in sight.

Then the driver says, “I didn't think trains ran through Santa Martina.”

“They don't,” I tell him. “We just get the occasional locomotive.” He eyes me in his rearview mirror, so I shrug and say, “We don't understand it, either.”

The clanging and flashing continues for two minutes.

Three.

Then all at once it's quiet, the lights stop, and the bars lift.

The driver double-checks to make sure no locomotive's heading our way, then proceeds over the railroad tracks, muttering, “Must've been a ghost train.”

Now, I'm not one of these people who's all
wooooooo
, scared of ghosts. But something about being in that part of town in the dark and hearing him say
ghost train
sent shivers down my spine.

It did the same for Marissa, I could tell. And as the driver pulled to a stop alongside the abandoned railroad office, I started thinking that maybe we should find someplace
else
to go ice-blocking, but the guys are all, “Oh, dude, this is
perfect
. No one's gonna bug us here.”

So we haul the blocks of ice, the stupid bucket o' bones, and Marissa's duffel bag out of the Hummer and
hurry to the corridor of trees behind the Hopper Street properties.

Billy zips ahead, then ambushes us from behind a tree.
“Woooagh-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
he roars, practically scaring the punch out of Marissa and me.

He, of course, thinks he's funnier than a whoopee cushion in church, but Danny's getting kinda irritated. “Shhh!” he says. “I don't want to get kicked out of here, too!”

“Who's gonna care about here?” Billy says. “It's public property, right? And we're the public, right? And what are we hurtin', huh?”

“Well, if you're too
loud
, they'll call the cops on us for disturbing the peace. Besides,” Danny grumbles, “I'd like to get a few rides in before the ice melts.”

“It's not gonna melt. They're big!”

“Mine's dripping all over the place! And so's yours, look!”

Billy says, “Who cares? They work better when they're a little melted.”

So we walk along with the two of them arguing until all of a sudden I see something strange up ahead. I grab Billy's sleeve and hold him back. “Shhh!”

“What?” he whispers. Then he opens his eyes wide and peers around. “Is it a ghost ye see?”

The others have come to a stop, too, and are looking where I'm looking.

“What
is
that?” Casey whispers.

My heart's racing like it
is
seeing a ghost, but it's something much more real than that. “That's a shovel,” I whisper
back. We could see the handle going up and down, up and down in the corner of Mrs. Willawago's backyard.

“Who'd be digging at this time of night?” Casey whispers.

“Good question,” I say back.

Then Billy pipes up with, “Hey, is that the infamous, criminal-clonkin' shovel?”

“Yes! Now shush!” I whisper.

Up and down, up and down the shovel handle's going. We can't see hands or a head, and it's a weird sight because even though it's not reflective or anything, the handle seems very
white.

Very
eerie.

I've taken the lead now, moving closer, hugging Billy's stupid bucket o' bones with one arm as I sneak forward along the Stones' back fence.

Billy's doing an exaggerated tiptoe, chicken-walking his neck and high-stepping his legs like some cartoon character, and I can hear Danny whisper to Marissa, “What's the big deal?”

“Shhh!” Marissa whispers back.

Smack, smack, smack
, the shovel goes, hitting the ground. Then when we're about ten feet from the fence that divides the Stones and the Willawagos, the shovel stops.

I flatten against the fence with a finger to my lips. Every hair on my body feels like it's standing at attention. The air through my nose feels cold and hard, and even though I could just rush forward and pop my head over the fence to see who's working the shovel and why,
inside I can feel that there's something bigger here than I understand.

Something deeper and darker than I've imagined.

And, my goose bumps are telling me, a whole lot more dangerous.

The four of them are mouthing things to each other in the dark, but I've got my eye on a hole that's been dug under Mrs. Willawago's back fence. This one's right
at
the corner, not a few feet over like the other one had been.

I inch closer, wondering if Patch is already gone or if someone's digging him a way out. The others follow, hugging the fence. And then I feel something hard and cold being put in my hand.

A flashlight.

I smile at Marissa and nod a thanks, then put down Billy's bucket o' bones.

“What's that gross smell?” Danny asks.

“Mother Nature passing gas,” I whisper, and Marissa adds, “A compost heap.”

“That's brutal,” he says, his face all scrunched.

“Shhh!” I whisper.

Whoever's on the other side of the fence is using the shovel again. I can't see it, but I can hear it going
scraaaaape thump. Scraaaaape thump.

“What's the big deal?” Danny whispers, and Casey touches my arm and says, “Why are we doing this?”

We're close enough now, so in one swoop I spring forward and up, latching on to the fence as I look over.

“Aaah!” Mrs. Stone gasps, falling back on her fanny.

I flick on Marissa's flashlight and aim it straight down — straight at the place she's been digging.

And what do I see?

Cement.

“Sammy?” she asks, her eyes huge while she holds on to her heart.

I scan the flashlight over the whole area, and boy, I've got to tell you, I'm pretty embarrassed.

Casey and the others come up from their crouched positions, and when Mrs. Stone sees them, her eyes get even bigger. “What're you
doin'
here?” she asks, her voice gaspy and shaky.

“What are
you
doing?” I ask her, trying to sound like I've got a right to scare her half to death.

“I'm plugging these doggone holes,” she says.

“In the middle of the night?”

“Yes!” She stands up and dusts off her backside. “I heard a noise and came out here and found an enormous hole. So I set about fixin' it, just like you showed me.”

“In the middle of the night?” I ask again.

“I couldn't sleep,” she grumbles, picking up the shovel. “And what're
you
doin' here in the middle of the night?
Spyin'
on me?”

“No! We're going ice-blocking.”

“Ice-blocking? What's that?”

“It's sledding for the snowless,” Billy tells her.

She frowns and heaps some dirt on top of the cement
she's put in the hole. “Well, you scared the livin' daylights out of me.”

“Arg, the livin' nightlights!” Billy says.

She drives the shovel into the dirt with her foot and throws him a scowl, and that's when I notice that she's not wearing her usual Birkenstocks. She's got on her husband's work boots. But I tell myself that that makes sense—I mean, who'd pour cement in sandals, right? And it flashes through my mind that maybe she's out here plugging up a hole in the middle of the night because she doesn't want to get in a fight with her husband about who should fix the hole, and it's just, you know,
safer
to do it while he's asleep.

“Hey, can we get going?” Danny asks. “We're running out of Hummer time.”

“Sure,” I tell him, even though this whole thing with Mrs. Stone is feeling really disconnected. Really
odd
. And it's not just that she's out there in the middle of the night plugging a hole—which is plenty odd enough—it's more than that.

But I don't really have the time to put my finger on it 'cause everyone else wants to get ice-blocking. So I say, “See ya later,” to Mrs. Stone and tag along through the trees to where the ground dips down to the ball fields.

Danny picks out a spot and says, “This is perfect!” and starts ripping the thick plastic off his block of ice. “And you know what? I think these pine needles are going to make us go
fast
.”

Marissa pulls towels out of her duffel bag and hands them around while the guys get their blocks into position. And I'm starting to get the picture that this isn't just
riding a block of ice for the ridiculous fun of it—this is a competition.

“So what do you do?” Marissa asks.

“You put your block like this,” Danny says, moving his ice about four feet from Billy's so it's facing down the hill lengthwise, “then you get on, hold your legs up, and
go.
”

Then Casey adds, “First one down to the bottom without falling off wins.”

“We'll demonstrate for you,” Danny says. He puts a towel across his ice and gets on like he's mounting a mini ice bronco. Then he looks right and left at Casey and Billy, who've done the same, and says, “Blockers, on your marks …”

“Wait!” Marissa cries, grabbing the Jolly Roger flag. She hurries to the side of them and holds it in the air.