The Secret of the Sand Castle (2 page)

BOOK: The Secret of the Sand Castle
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“I had a hunch it was bad news, but this time my hunch was wrong,” she announced to Peter. “Roxy’s letter is all about a legacy. It’s in the form of property owned by her stepmother’s mother. Roxy 4

knows very little about it, and so she wants us to have a look at it the next time we visit Dale and Irene. We are going for little Judy’s birthday party, aren’t we? It isn’t every day we get invited to a studio party.”

“A studio party? I thought it was just a kid’s birthday party. Little Judy is only three years old,” Peter pointed out.

“I know, but she’s been on television, and Irene is a star, so they’re giving a party at the studio with all the children eating a huge frosted cake. It’s to adver-tise a cake mix, of course, but who cares? It will be fun and everybody at the party will be on television.”

“I’ll watch,” Peter promised, “but I can’t leave right now. I’ve been given an assignment that will keep me here until the subject makes a move. Then I have to move, too. And fast! I wish I could tell you about it, but you know how secret these investiga-tions have to be.”

“Yes, I know. My duties as the wife of an FBI agent were made quite clear to me when we were in Washington. I’m supposed to be a good housewife, with home and family my chief concern. I can keep pets and raise flowers and conduct myself like a model citizen, but never, no never, may I get myself involved in any of your assignments. Anyway,” Judy finished airily, “I have my own mystery to 5

solve. This letter tells all about it. Shall I read it to you?”

“If you like.”

Peter was concentrating on his own mail and only half listening until Judy came to the part about the lawyer:

“Today we received a letter from Walter Brand
with offices in Bayshore, Long Island, stating that he
had been retained to foreclose on the property . . .”

“I know Walter Brand by reputation,” Peter said.

“He’s been retained by some big wheels in the crime syndicate, but I didn’t know he was interested in real estate. Who hired him?”

“Roxy doesn’t know. That’s one of the things she wants to find out. She says the property is on Fire Island, off the Long Island shore. Dale and Irene rented a cottage there last summer. They called it the Sand Castle and I gather it’s part of the estate Roxy mentions. The street name is the same. There may be three or four cottages on the land. I could go there with Irene and find out—”

“At this time of year?”

“What’s the matter with November?” Judy demanded. “I’m not planning on swimming in the ocean. I’d just like to go over there and look at this property so I can tell Roxy if it’s worth anything.

6

The estate can’t be settled until it’s sold. According to her stepmother’s will, Roxy shares equally with her half brother and her two half sisters.”

“That means she gets a fourth?”

“No, she gets a fourth of a sixth because her stepmother was one of six children. There are two brothers and two of the four sisters to be located before they can clear the title. Two of the sisters are dead ‘or supposed to be’ and I’m quoting. Their heirs would receive their portion. It gets rather complicated,” Judy admitted. “If none of the heirs wants to buy the shares owned by the others and pay off the tax liens, then this lawyer, Walter Brand, intends to foreclose.”

“I see.” Peter remained thoughtful for a moment.

“You seem to understand the situation pretty well, but watch Walter Brand,” he warned her. “He could have paid the taxes himself with the intention of cheating Roxy’s relatives out of their inheritance.

He’s been known to pull some pretty shady tricks.”

“I’ll watch him.” Secretly Judy enjoyed the chal-lenge in Peter’s words. “I would like to find out what he’s up to. You’re always having adventures—

—”

“Not always. There are plenty of days when I’m just plain bored,” Peter admitted. “So much of my work is routine questioning. It would be more of an adventure going off hunting mysteries with you.” 7

“I wish you could. I don’t suppose Dale can get away from his writing, either. Irene will find time.

She always does. We can take little Judy along, too.”

“You’ll have to wrap her up good and warm. It’s going to be cold on Fire Island in November. Cold and deserted,” Peter added. “One twenty-fourth of an estate is hardly worth the trouble.” Judy didn’t see it that way. A legacy, any legacy, was exciting. She thought of the house where she and Peter were living. It had been her legacy from her grandmother Smeed. The old lady had been Roxy’s grandmother, too, but they had found out they were cousins too late for Roxy to share in the inheritance. Besides Judy’s mother, Judy and her brother Horace had been the only known heirs. She decided to call Horace at the office of the
Farringdon Daily Herald
where he worked as a reporter.

“Horace,” she began excitedly over the telephone,

“I have a letter from Roxy and she wants me to investigate some property on Fire Island. It was a legacy from her grandmother, but the title isn’t clear—”

“Hold on a minute,” Horace stopped her. “You aren’t being very clear yourself. Is this legacy from her grandmother Zoller?”

“No, the name is—oh dear, I can’t find it,” Judy 8

admitted after she had searched through the letter,

“but it was her stepmother’s mother. I think Roxy said her stepmother’s name was Edith Terry before she was married. Anyway, Roxy gets a share.”

“A share of
what’?”
Horace asked bluntly.

“The Terry estate. It’s a piece of property on Fire Island. I’m going over there to look at it and see if it’s worth anything.”

He laughed. “Now you’re appraising property.

What next?”

“But you don’t understand. It isn’t just land. I know there’s at least one house on it because—”

“A haunted house, no doubt,” Horace interrupted, recalling some of the other mysteries Judy had solved.

“I was going to say because Irene and Dale rented it last summer. They didn’t report seeing any ghosts,” Judy added teasingly.

Horace chuckled. “Maybe they’re saving them for you.”

“Well, if they are, I’ll give you the story for your paper. Bye, now. I have to pack,” Judy told her brother as she hung up the telephone.

9

CHAPTER II
Hurricane Judy

BY evening everything was ready for the trip. Peter seemed almost too eager for Judy to leave.

“Take your warmest coat,” he advised her, “and be sure and check the weather before you attempt the boat trip to Fire Island. The hurricane season isn’t over yet.”

Judy laughed. “It would take more than a hurricane to blow me out of your life. Take care, Peter. I just have a feeling you’re involved in something dangerous.”

“I’ll be doing my own cooking for a spell. Maybe that’s it.”

Judy knew he was teasing her and had her usual quick answer for him.

“You’ll survive. I don’t know about Blackberry.

If he won’t eat your cooking you can always garnish his portion with canned cat food.” Judy wrote down the trade names of the foods 10

Blackberry liked, took care of a few more details, and then closed her suitcase.

“I’m ready,” she announced.

“Okay,” said Peter. “I’ll drive you to the bus stop unless you want to change your mind and take the Beetle.”

But Judy had no intention of taking the shiny black car they called the Beetle. To reach Long Island she would have to drive through New York traffic which might be heavy even on Sunday. With Peter at her side she could do it very well, and she and Peter’s sister Honey had made the trip once with only a few mishaps, but alone . . .

“It’s too late,” she told him. “I’ve already telephoned Irene. Anyway, the bus is safer. You know what they say in the ads, ‘Leave the driving to us.’

Besides, you may need the Beetle.”

“I may at that,” he agreed as he helped her into it.

Neither she nor Peter had much to say to each other on the way to the bus stop. There Judy kissed him and told him to hurry off to his work, whatever it was. Just watching a subject, waiting for him to make a move, hardly seemed like work at all, he reassured her. Who the man was or why Peter or some other agent must watch him around the clock were things Judy felt she would never know. The adventure that lay ahead of her promised more excitement, she decided as she climbed into the bus and found a 11

seat. Maybe the Sand Castle was haunted as Horace had suggested. He was just teasing her, she knew, but the suggestion and the one sentence in Roxy’s letter,
supposed to be dead,
were enough to make little goosebumps stand out on Judy’s arm.

“Are you cold? Why don’t you put on that warm coat you’re carrying?” a voice spoke at her side.

Judy turned to see a bright-eyed older woman with graying blond hair and glasses that gave her an owlish appearance. She was sitting next to the window, but now her interest was centered, not on the dark scenery outside, but on the people within the bus, especially Judy.

“I’m not cold now,” Judy explained. “I’m only taking the coat because it will be cold on Fire Island when—”

“You’re not going there at this time of year, are you?” the woman interrupted. “The hurricane season isn’t over yet.”

“I know. I was warned to check the weather,” Judy replied, a little annoyed at the stranger for wanting to mother her. Peter had used exactly the same words.

The woman shrugged her rather ample shoulders.

“When I was a young girl like you, I wouldn’t take advice either, but when it’s something like a hurricane—”

“We don’t usually have them this late, do we?” 12

Judy interrupted to ask. “I don’t remember any bad hurricanes in November, do you?”

“I remember some bad ones,” the woman replied without answering Judy’s question directly. “Things were different when I was young,” she continued reminiscently. “They didn’t name hurricanes then.

Now they give them girls’ names, you know. Don’t ask me why. But they start off with Anna, Betty, Carol—like that. There’ve been bad ones up as far as Hazel and there could be an Irene or a Judy—” The look Judy gave her made the woman stop speaking. “Did I say something wrong?” she asked in an apologetic voice.

“No, you just startled me,” Judy admitted. “You don’t know my name, do you?”

The woman appeared puzzled. “Not yet, but perhaps we should introduce ourselves. We’ll be sharing this seat all the way to Scranton. I think we change there for New York.”

“Yes, we do,” Judy agreed. If the woman was going to talk all the way, she hoped they changed seat partners, too. She had planned to sleep at least part of the night. The motion of the bus usually made her sleepy. “You see,” she explained, “although I never thought of it as the name of a hurricane, my name is Judy and Irene is the friend I’m on my way to visit.” The woman’s laugh rang out. She could be fun, Judy decided. After a moment in which they shared 13

“Did I say something wrong?” she asked
14

the joke, she exclaimed, “Well, if that isn’t a coincidence! My name is Hazel and that was quite a hurricane, too. Hazel Barton.”

“That’s rather like Bolton, isn’t it? My name was Judy Bolton before I married. Perhaps you know my father. He’s a doctor in Farringdon. Now I’m Mrs.

Peter Dobbs.”

“You say it as if you’re very fond of your Peter.”

“I am,” Judy said, and a little silence fell between them.

“I was fond of my Henry, too,” Hazel Barton said after a moment.

The way she spoke of him told Judy that Henry Barton must be recently dead. She wanted to sym-pathize, but didn’t know how. It was hard to imagine herself in her late sixties, as this woman must be, with her married life behind her. Judy’s married life was just beginning. AH her hopes and dreams were for the future. How sad to have them all in the past!

“I’m sorry,” she finally managed to say.

“You needn’t be.” Hazel Barton smiled. “We had more than forty years together. They were good years in spite of our losses. We could forget the hurricane.”

“What hurricane was it?” Judy questioned, feeling herself on safe ground again.

“It was the worst of them. You can call it hurricane Judy, if you like. As I told you, they didn’t 15

name hurricanes then. People didn’t realize how much damage they could do. Why, the whole island was swept clean except for a few houses. I’ll never forget the sight of it.”

BOOK: The Secret of the Sand Castle
3.46Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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