Midnight Mystery: 4 (Winnie the Horse Gentler) (8 page)

I take the best care of my horse! I buy her the most expensive saddles, bridles, and halters. I even put Margaret on the same expensive feed my uncle gives his racehorses. And how does my mare thank me? By acting fussy and high-strung (and she’s not!). Even sunlight spooks my horse now!

—High-strung Harriet

I knew right away what the problem was:

Dear Harriet,

Stop feeding racehorse food to your horse! It’s high-energy and guaranteed to make any horse nervous. Use regular grain. Add a little oil to calm her until she’s back to normal.

—Winnie the Horse Gentler

I’d started biking home when Catman whistled from his bike. I turned to see him pointing in the direction of
his
home. My home, too, now. I turned around and followed him.

“No lawn ornaments?” I asked as we wheeled our bikes through the tall, dead grass of the Coolidge yard. The only thing Mr. Coolidge mowed was a strip in front of the porch, used year-round for plastic lawn ornaments. Normally Halloween pumpkins would stay out until the Thanksgiving turkeys went up.

“The Colonel hates lawn ornaments,” Catman explained.

We parked our bikes on the porch and walked in.

I’ll never get used to the difference between the inside and the outside of Coolidge Castle. Outside, all three stories needed painting. A couple of windows had boards nailed across them in
X
s. Inside, polished staircases wound from wood floors to high ceilings of shiny rafters and glittering chandeliers. The red velvet furniture could have been in a fancy museum, showing how rich people lived a hundred years ago.

Mrs. Coolidge came swooping down the stairs in a lime-green bathrobe and matching fuzzy slippers. Her hair was in pin curls under bobby-pin
X
s. Claire Coolidge works in a beauty parlor. “Calvin and Winifred!” she squealed.

Between Mrs. Coolidge and us, a dozen cats appeared. They swarmed Catman, hissing for position.

“Hi, Mrs. Coolidge!” I called.

She shuffled over and ran her fingers through my tangled hair. “What I wouldn’t give for this head of hair!”

Lizzy came from the kitchen, holding a half-eaten tomato. Her hair looked as perfect as when she’d left for school, ten times better than my hair ever looked. “Hi, you two! Look, Winnie!” Lizzy pointed to the tomato. “After-school snack! Isn’t that a great idea? Mrs. Coolidge says it’s the forgotten fruit.”

“Yours is in the kitchen!” Mrs. Coolidge assured me. “Calvin, show our guests to their quarters! Winnie, the west wing, second floor. Lizzy, east wing on third.”

Lizzy and I exchanged looks of terror as we followed Catman up the winding staircase, dodging cats that darted underfoot.

“We’re used to staying in the same room, Catman,” Lizzy confided.

Catman changed directions and led us down a long hall to a wooden door. It creaked when he pulled it open.

The room smelled minty, and everything in it was green, including the largest canopy bed I’d ever seen. I sat on it, and my feet didn’t touch the floor. A small black cat with huge white paws pounced up and climbed into my lap.

“This cat has six toes!” I exclaimed, petting him.

“Six in front. Seven in back,” Catman said. “Name’s Bumby.”

“Brumby? You named her after our English teacher?” Ms. Brumby would have a cow if she found out. And she would have hated that her namesake was two-colored. Ms. Brumby dressed in only one color from head to foot.

“Not Brumby.
Bumby,”
Catman corrected. “In honor of Ernest Hemingway’s famous six-toed Cuban cat. Hemingway’s first son was also nicknamed Bumby.”

Lizzy ran to a corner of the room and pointed to a spiderweb. “Sweet!”

Catman grinned. “Thought you’d like that.”

A phone rang downstairs. Seconds later Mrs. Coolidge shouted up the stairs, “Calvin! Girls! Help!”

We hurried to the top of the stairs.

“What’s wrong?” Lizzy asked.

Mrs. Coolidge threw her hands in the air. “The Colonel just called! He’s coming to dinner!”

Catman slid down the banister, and Lizzy and I took the stairs.

For the next hour Mrs. Coolidge buzzed around the kitchen like an Arabian in a snake pit. “Winnie, Kool-Aid! Lizzy, potatoes—the Colonel likes them undercooked. Thank goodness I have green Jell-O!”

The phone rang, and Mrs. Coolidge dropped a box of rigatoni. She lifted the receiver and knelt for the box. “Yes? They’re right here! Just a moment!” She held the phone out to me.

I couldn’t move. Something must have happened to Dad. I knew it.

Lizzy grabbed the phone. “Dad? Great! How’s Chicago?”

I exhaled.
Thank you, God! Thank you!
Dad was okay. He was all right.

But as quickly as relief had come, it vanished. After all, Dad was in Chicago. Who knew what went on at the Invention Convention? And he’d still have to fly back.

Lizzy hadn’t stopped chattering. “. . . bed the size of our living room! And our own bathroom! And Colonel Coolidge is coming to dinner!” She held the phone out to me. I shook my head. Lizzy kept talking. “What? Winnie? She’s fine! She’s . . . busy helping with dinner. . . . I’ll tell her. Okay! Love you too! Bye!”

Lizzy hung up and raised her eyebrows at me. “Dad says hello and he loves you.”

I joined Mrs. Coolidge. “Where’s that Kool-Aid?”

Catman and I set the long dining table with good silver and two forks for everybody.

“I wish Bart would get home!” Mrs. Coolidge exclaimed, dumping a load of rigatoni into a pot of boiling water. “We’ll have to finish dinner in time for the Colonel to make tonight’s performance—in West Salem, isn’t it?”

Catman set down tall wooden salt and pepper shakers and announced, “The Colonel’s here.”

I ran to the window in time to see a big circus truck pull up.

The doorbell rang. Mrs. Coolidge raced toward the door until Lizzy stopped her. “Your robe?” Lizzy asked.

Mrs. Coolidge screamed, then darted up the staircase.

The doorbell rang again, hard and fast this time. Lizzy opened the door.

“And who might you be?” bellowed the Colonel.

Lizzy smiled. “Lizzy Willis. Pleased to meet you. Mrs. Coolidge will be right down. You know my sister, Winnie?” She nodded my way. She motioned him in and talked to him as if he were an old friend.

The cats stayed clear of the Colonel. Only the big, flat-faced Churchill tried to rub up against the Colonel’s gray pant cuffs.

The Colonel shook him off. “Scat!”

“Churchill,” Catman said. I didn’t know if he was calling the cat or introducing him.

“Churchill?” Colonel Coolidge scoffed. “You named your cat after Winston Churchill? The man was born in a ladies’ room during a dance! What’s wrong with
Eisenhower
for a name?”

Lizzy linked her arm through the Colonel’s and moved him along. “So, Colonel, where was the circus last month?”

“Maine. Wonderful state, Maine! The only one-syllable state.”

“Colonel!” Mrs. Coolidge called from the top of the staircase. She’d changed into a pink formal. Three-inch heels had replaced her slippers, and her hair had been freed from the bobby pins and now fell into dozens of ringlets.

The Colonel met her at the foot of the stairs, took her hand, and bowed. “Madame, you look stunning!”

She giggled.

He turned to us. “This lovely lady could have made an outstanding circus performer! I can’t say the same of her husband. He lacked the discipline. Refused the Coolidge tradition of shining his boots every night!”

“Where
is
Bart?” she asked. “He should be home by now.”

“Not a problem!” declared the Colonel. “Let’s eat!”

We sat at the long table, with Catman and his mother at the ends. “Lizzy can pray,” Catman suggested.

It would have been okay if we hadn’t prayed. Lizzy and I know how to talk to God inside. I was pretty sure the Coolidges didn’t pray before meals. But Catman knew we did, and it was cool of him to mention it.

Lizzy thanked God for the food, the circus, everybody at the table, and a lot of people—including Dad—who weren’t.

She said, “Amen,” and I opened my eyes in time to see salt and pepper shakers flying toward Mrs. Coolidge. She reached out and caught one in each hand.

“Sweet!” Lizzy exclaimed. “How did you do that?”

“The woman is a born performer!” the Colonel insisted. “Juggle, please!”

“But we shouldn’t—,” Mrs. Coolidge began.

“Proceed!” he demanded.

Mrs. Coolidge blew out one of the silver candles, grabbed the candlestick, and juggled it with the shakers. Then she tossed one after the other down the table to Catman. He juggled too, then fired them back to his mom. They kept it going, juggling back and forth without spilling a grain of salt.

Lizzy and I applauded.

Catman caught all three objects, set them down, and began to pass the food.

“How’s that lovely young man Raymond?” Mrs. Coolidge asked.

“That boy takes all my time and half my energy!” roared the Colonel. “And his act is in disarray!”

I was thinking there must be more to Colonel Coolidge than met the eye. All these years he’d taken care of an orphan who wasn’t really his relation.

By the time we got to dessert, Oreo cookies, the Colonel had told us half a dozen army stories. Some made me want to cry—like how Private Ayers lost one thumb to a land mine and his other thumb in a kitchen accident. Others made us laugh, like Lieutenant Daley, who married an army nurse three days before getting shipped to Germany. When she got assigned to a French base, Lieutenant Daley had gone AWOL, absent without leave, to see her. Private Ayers answered roll call for him, Sergeant Alden covered his duties, and Second Lieutenant House loaned him a prisoner of war as his driver. “I should have put Daley in the brig for desertion!” barked the Colonel.

“Instead,” Mrs. Coolidge added, eyes glimmering, “you let Lieutenant Daley use your Jeep!”

“Turns out the woman was well worth it,” Colonel Coolidge put in. A cloud seemed to pass over his face. “Grand fellows. With the passing of Lieutenant Daley, we’re down to the last four soldiers of the Fighting 44th.”

I thought about how sad old people must get when most people their age have already died. The Colonel inspected his grape Kool-Aid, then chugged it.

“I’ve got the Kool-Aid for your canteen toast,” Mrs. Coolidge said softly.

“Soldiers drink grape Kool-Aid from canteens?” Lizzy asked. “They don’t teach us that in history books!”

“We of the Fighting 44th use it to toast our comrades who have gone before us,” the Colonel explained.

“The Colonel kept his men’s canteens,” Mrs. Coolidge continued. “He only brings them out every five years. If a soldier has died since the last reunion, the others turn over his canteen and toast him.”

Colonel Coolidge leaned back in his chair. “Only four upright canteens remain.”

Mrs. Coolidge jumped up from the table and dashed to a small box that looked like a short video player. She popped in a square black thing.

“Eight-track tape,” Catman whispered. “Before cassettes and CDs.”

Mrs. Coolidge sat down and locked gazes with the Colonel. I knew a song filled with meaning was about to come on, maybe from World War II.

Then the music burst from the box:

Hang on Sloopy, Sloopy hang on

(Da-dum, Da-dum, Da-dum, Da-dum)

Hang on Sloopy, Sloopy hang on

The silly rock and roll wasn’t what I’d expected. But Mrs. Coolidge and the Colonel listened solemnly, while Catman bobbed his head to the beat.

Lizzy and I made faces at each other. She obviously didn’t get it either.

When the song ended, after a million
Sloopy hang on
s, the Colonel dabbed the corner of his eye with his napkin. “Bart’s daddy, my son Carter, God rest his soul, loved that song.”

“Calvin,” commanded his mother, “tell them how Carter Coolidge made ‘Hang On Sloopy’ the official state rock song of Ohio.”

Catman swallowed the last Oreo whole, then recited: “House Resolution No. 16, the 116th General Assembly of Ohio, 1985: ‘Whereas “Hang On Sloopy” is of particular relevance to members of the Baby Boom Generation, who were once dismissed as a bunch of longhaired, crazy kids, but who now are old enough and vote in sufficient numbers to be taken quite seriously—’”

Colonel Coolidge held up his hand, as if he couldn’t bear to hear more.

And I hadn’t even known Ohio had a state rock song.

Just then Bart Coolidge burst through the door, panting. “Colonel! Sorry I’m late! It took some doing to get that trailer you asked for, but we had one on the back lot.”

Usually Bart Coolidge is jolly, ready with a corny used-car joke. And when he comes home, he rushes to his wife and kisses her as if they haven’t seen each other for years. But now he just glanced sheepishly at her. Apparently the Colonel didn’t like mushy stuff any better than he liked lawn ornaments. I thought of Romeo and Juliet.

“I’m starved!” Bart announced.

The Colonel threw his napkin onto his plate. “Let’s go!”

“Go?” Bart repeated. “But I haven’t eaten.”

“Gluttony is a sin! That extra weight may have kept you off the high wire!” Colonel Coolidge slipped his jacket back on and strode to the door.

“Good luck at the circus tonight!” I called.

The Colonel wheeled around. “Don’t just sit there! And
you—
” he pointed at Bart—“take this girl to her horse! They shall perform this very night!”