Who Stole Halloween? (12 page)

“Let's take another look,” I said. “We can check out Mr. Blanco's stuff later. The ghost has been around for more than one hundred years—he isn't going anywhere.”

Upstairs, Yasmeen retrieved the bag from a
shelf. “Besides the can, there's a gum wrapper and some kind of receipt.”

“That was it.” I took the bag from her. “A grocery receipt.”

We looked at each other.

“A grocery receipt!”
Yasmeen conked her head with her fist. “We must be the
stupidest
smart kids yet!”

The receipt was from the Smartt Mart on Northernmost Parkway. Unfortunately, it didn't have a credit card number or a name. But there was a list of what had been purchased and the date, October 22, the same day Halloween disappeared.

“What kind of recipe uses ten boxes of salt and twenty pounds of flour?” I asked Yasmeen.

“I don't know.” Yasmeen made a face. “But I wouldn't want to eat it.”

“Besides that, there're five packages of food coloring—”

“Assorted colors,” Yasmeen cut in. She was looking over my shoulder.

“
And
ten twenty-pound bags of cat food.”

Yasmeen moaned. “We've had this for four days, and we never even looked at it.”

“Yup, we're idiots, all right,” I said. “We were totally focused on catnip, and this was right in front of our faces.”

Looking at the receipt, Yasmeen asked, “Is that a good brand of cat food?”

“The kind the vet likes.” I nodded.

“So it looks like we're right about that, at least,” Yasmeen said. “The catnapper
likes
cats; he probably sees himself as a cat rescue squad.”

I went back to studying the receipt. Flour, salt, and food coloring. What could a person do with that? I knew some animals—like cows and horses—need extra salt, but I never heard of cats needing it. And anyway, it didn't explain the flour or the food coloring.

Professor Popp's voice interrupted my thinking. “Wash your hands for dinner, children. Alex? Would you care to join us?”

I remembered Dad's stir-fry. “Yes!” I said. “Yes, I would!”

I was afraid Dad would argue when I phoned
to ask permission, but he said actually it might be better if I ate at Yasmeen's house. “That way if my stir-fry turns out to be lethal, you can say nice things at the funeral,” he said.

“I'm sure your stir-fry will be delicious,” I lied. “Is it okay if I'm home by eight? Yasmeen and I have some stuff to do after dinner.”

“See you then,” Dad said.

Dinner at the Popps' house was ham, mashed potatoes, and unidentifiable mushy green stuff. I cleaned my plate.

Mrs. Popp smiled at me. “It's a pleasure to feed such an appreciative guest.”

“It's a pleasure to be here,” I said sincerely.

Meanwhile, Jeremiah was trying the oldest trick in the book, talking to avoid eating. “Are you sure this is human food?” He poked the green stuff with his fork. “Because it looks like the food Miss Deirdre feeds Arnold.”

“Jere
mi
ah?” Mrs. Popp said, warning him.

“Arnold is our class pet,” Jeremiah explained to me.

“I believe he is a hamster,” Professor Popp added.

“Uh-oh,” Jeremiah said. “Did this ham come from a hamster?”

Professor Popp shook his head. “No hamsters were harmed in the making of this meal. So please finish your dinner, Jeremiah. It's good for you. Your body converts food to energy so you can play and jump and run around.”

“Arnold runs around,” Jeremiah said. “He has one of those running wheels.
Squeak! Squeak! Squeak!
Miss Deirdre has to take him home after school because he bothers the other people in the building.”

“Vegetables are good for Arnold, too,” Mrs. Popp said. “They're good for all God's creatures.”

“What about ghosts?” Jeremiah asked. “Are vegetables good for ghosts?”

“There are no such things,” Mrs. Popp said.

“Daddy believes in them,” Jeremiah said.

“Do you, Daddy?” Yasmeen asked.

“I have studied the matter a little,” he said, “and while I am skeptical, I am not necessarily an unbeliever.”

“Oh, piffle!” said Mrs. Popp, and she stood up to clear the table.

“Can I ask you something,” I said to Professor Popp, “since you've studied about ghosts?”

“You
may
.” Professor Popp nodded.

“Why do they come back?” I asked. “I mean, not everybody who dies becomes a ghost, right? If they did, we'd be bumping into ghosts every minute.”

“Most cultures believe that the shade, or ghost, has some unfinished work to attend to,” Professor Popp said. “Often the deceased person has been accused of something unfairly, and its ghost seeks justice.”

I thought about that. “So if a ghost was haunting somebody, then maybe the somebody should help the ghost out,” I said.

Professor Popp wanted to know if I had something particular in mind, so I explained about Mr. Blanco and the Harvey house.

“Have you noticed a pattern to the ghostly appearances?” Professor Popp asked me.

“Come to think of it,” I said, “it kind of
seems like they happen when people are talking about the ghost story.”

“Then perhaps,” Professor Popp said, “there's something in the story that the ghost doesn't like.”

Yasmeen stacked my plate on top of her plate and Jeremiah's plate on top of mine. “So if that's true, it means Mr. Harvey
didn't
murder his wife,” she said. “And his ghost won't settle down until he's proved innocent.”

“I thought you didn't believe in ghosts,” I said.

“Of course I don't,” Yasmeen said. “But if there were ghosts, which there aren't, that would be the logical conclusion.”

After Yasmeen and I were done in the kitchen, there was time to take a look at the old black book and the newspapers from Mr. Blanco. In the family room Professor Popp was sitting on the sofa reading a yellow sheet of writing paper.

“I hope you don't mind.” He looked up at us. “I was curious and opened this old ledger book. When I did, the stationery fluttered out. The handwriting is faded, but it seems to be a page from a
billet-doux
.”

“A what?” I said.

“Oh, Daddy, how
romantic
!” Yasmeen said. “Let me see!”

Professor Popp handed her the paper. “
Billet-doux
is French for ‘sweet note,' ” he told me. “In English, a love letter. Where did you get all this?”

I told him, and he nodded. “It's a ledger book, quite a useful document for a historian.” I didn't understand, so he explained that a careful man like Mr. Harvey would have written an entry for everything he bought and everything he earned in a ledger book. Professor Popp flipped through several pages. There were entries for lots of different purchases—big amounts for stuff like bricks and lumber, small amounts for flour, lamp oil, and ink.

“Are you sure this was Mr. Harvey's book?” I asked.

Professor Popp turned to the inside front cover. There, in spidery black writing, were the words: “Gilmore Samuel Harvey, July 1, 1877–”

“There's no ending date,” I said.

“I noticed that, too,” said Professor Popp. “Apparently his work was interrupted.”

“What's the last entry?” I asked.

We paged through till we found it: On October
28, 1879, Samuel Harvey had purchased a “traveling portmanteau” from R. J. McClanahan's store for
3.50.

“What's a portmanteau?” I asked.

“Suitcase,” Yasmeen said, without looking up from the page she was reading.

“I guess he never got to use it,” I said. “He died on October thirty-first—I've seen his grave.”

Yasmeen sighed a huge sigh, and when I looked at her face, it had this gross, dreamy expression. Usually I can forget that Yasmeen's a girl, but sometimes it is hard.

“This is so romantic!” she said. “Should I read it to you?”

“No,” I said.

“Oh, come on,” she said,
“please.”

“Give it over, and I'll read it myself,” I said.

“It's only a piece of a longer letter,” Professor Popp said. “I looked for more, but this is all that's here.”

Frowning, Yasmeen handed me the sheet of stationery. It was so old it crinkled like it might shatter into confetti. I don't know how, exactly,
but I could see right away that the writing was feminine. The letters were large and round, much different from Mr. Harvey's spidery black scrawl.

This must have been a middle page because it started midsentence:

. . . 
be with you always, dearest Floyd, but you know our circumstances make it impossible. We are star-crossed like the tragic lovers of yore. If only I had I met you sooner, if only my parents had been less bent on marrying off their old-maid daughter to a wealthy man, if only I had been a woman of some means of my own—were any of these “if onlys” satisfied, then I might have been your own Marianne. Alas, this will never
 . . .

I looked up at Yasmeen. She still had the dreamy expression. “Listen, Yasmeen, this is really important, right? It confirms part of the story.”

Yasmeen nodded. “It's from Marianne Harvey to stouthearted Floyd. It must be.”

“Who?” Professor Popp said. “What?”

We explained that Mrs. Harvey was beautiful, that people said she had a sweetheart, and the sweetheart was the same guy who found her body, Floyd. Professor Popp nodded. “This would seem to confirm that there was a romance, and further, it would seem that she was calling an end to it. But I believe there may also be something more.”

“What?” Yasmeen said.

“Consider
where
I found the letter,” said Professor Popp. “It was tucked in the pages of Gilmore Harvey's ledger book. I haven't had a chance to look closely, but as far as I can tell, his is the only writing in the book. Do you see what I'm getting at?”

I nodded. “Gilmore Harvey was never supposed to see this letter—but he did, and that means he knew his wife had a sweetheart. And if he knew—well, then I guess it's the way the rumors said. That could be a reason to kill her.”

“But now I'm not so sure he
did
kill her,” Yasmeen said. “I mean—if Dad's right that ghosts
come back seeking justice, what justice is his ghost seeking now?”

“Then there's the cat,” I said. “Marianne's smart black cat, who supposedly killed Gilmore Harvey.”

“It was a
cat
that killed Mr. Harvey?” Mr. Popp said.

“That's how the story goes,” Yasmeen said. “Killed him in revenge after Mr. Harvey killed Marianne. And after that the cat was killed, too—drowned in the Harveys' well.”

Mr. Popp shook his head. “Quite a gothic tale,” he said. “But whatever the truth may be, you're not going to learn it on a school night.”

I picked up the book and the newspapers. “Thanks for dinner,” I said, “and for helping us.”

On the short walk back home, my head was spinning. I was thinking about the receipt. I was thinking about the ledger book. But most of all I was thinking about that love letter.

Of course, knowing what happened to her, I felt totally terrible for beautiful Marianne Harvey. I mean, there she was, stuck with an old,
ugly, mean husband and in love with a young guy who worked for him. I guess she must have been really unhappy. At the same time, though, hadn't she been unfair to her husband? I mean, once you get married, you aren't supposed to have sweethearts anymore.

But from the letter, it sounded like she was calling off the romance. So maybe she was trying to be good after all.

Luau met me at the front door and side-rubbed my leg, which meant,
Greetings, Alex. Believe it or not, my food bowl is empty!
I bent down and tickled him under his chin. “You know what, Luau?” I said. “You're lucky to be a cat.”