The Ghost in the Big Brass Bed (4 page)

“Blackmail. Ms. Bond and Mr. Bassett have got something on Phoebe, and they're taking her for all she's worth. That's why she's selling off the furniture—so she can pay them to keep quiet.”

I laughed. “That is the dumbest theory you've come up with yet. What secrets could a sweet little old lady like Phoebe have?”

“Maybe she's a drug dealer.”

“You watch too much TV,” I said.

“Well, you can't trust anyone these days.”

I picked up a chair. “Let's get these upstairs before Norma realizes she's not alone.”

We started back toward the stairway. But halfway along the hall we heard a horrible racket in the parlor. Then someone began to scream.

We dropped the chairs.

“Come on!” Chris shouted. Grabbing me by the arm, she rushed toward the parlor. Bursting through the door, we found Phoebe, Ms. Bond and Mr. Bassett standing in a half circle, staring at the windows.

The noise was louder in here, almost unbearable.

It took me a moment to figure out what was causing it.

Once I did, I felt a chill crawl down my spine.

CHAPTER SIX

Panic in the Parlor

The shutters that covered the center window were flapping back and forth, as if outside a pair of giant hands kept yanking them open and slamming them shut.

For a moment I thought it must be the wind. But the shutters on the other windows weren't moving at all. Through those windows you could see that the evening was clear and still; not a hint of a breeze stirred the leaves of the big oak outside. Yet the shutters on the center window continued their wild slamming until Phoebe suddenly pressed her hands against her ears and screamed, “Stop!”

Immediately the banging stopped. For a moment everything was silent.

Phoebe was the first to speak. “He doesn't want me to do it,” she moaned. “He doesn't want me to do it!”

“Skip the act, Phoebe!” snapped Carla Bond. “If you didn't want to go through with the deal, you didn't have to set up this show. A simple no would have been sufficient.”

I expected Mr. Bassett to defend Phoebe. But before he could speak, Norma came running into the room.

“What's going on down here?” she demanded. Without waiting for anyone to answer, she took in the scene, the looks on everyone's faces, and said, “Forget I asked that. I don't think I want to know.”

“It's all right, Norma,” Phoebe said softly. “You're not doing anything wrong.”

This sentence seemed to worry Norma enormously. “I changed my mind again,” she said. “Tell me what's going on.”

“We were working on a contract,” Mr. Bassett explained, his brown eyes wide, his voice husky. “Phoebe was about to sign it. But when she picked up the pen, the shutters began to slam back and forth.” He swallowed, his eyes opening even wider as he remembered the scene. “They just began to slam,” he repeated. “Back and forth, back and …”

His voice trailed off.

“I knew I shouldn't do this.” Phoebe moaned.

“Do what?” Norma asked.

“It's a private deal,” said Carla Bond, who seemed calmer now. “And nobody is forcing her. I'm disappointed in you, Phoebe. I'm going to go now. If you change your mind and want to do this without the dramatics, let me know.”

Looking very upset, she turned and left the room. The odor of peaches lingered behind her.

“Does she really think I set this up?” asked Phoebe, still staring at the window.

“I don't know what she thinks,” said Mr. Bassett. “I don't know what
I
think, Phoebe. It's not that I don't trust you. But this kind of thing just doesn't happen. It's probably easier for someone like Carla to think you set it up than to believe—well, to believe whatever just happened here.” He sank into his chair. “Look at
me
!”

He lifted his hands, which were trembling violently. “What am
I
supposed to believe? That there's a ghost opposed to our deal?”

“I know what I believe,” Norma said. “I believe it's time we got out of here!”

“Don't go!” cried Phoebe. “Please, Norma. It's not the wardrobe. You can take that. Really. It's fine, as long as you don't take the bed.”

Norma's eyes got even wider, which I wouldn't have thought was possible. “What do you mean, ‘Don't take the bed'?”

Phoebe shook her head. “Just don't take the bed,” she whispered.

“Well, I wasn't going to,” Norma said. “You wouldn't sell it to me, in case you forgot.”

Chris nudged me in the ribs. “Can you sense a ghost here?” she whispered.

I shook my head.

“Me neither. Whatever was banging those shutters is gone—at least for now.”

“Maybe it was never here,” I replied.

Chris looked puzzled.

“Maybe it was outside all along,” I said softly.

She nodded her agreement.

“… better sit down,” Mr. Bassett was saying. “You look awfully pale.”

Phoebe nodded vaguely. “I guess you're right,” she said. She sank into her chair, then dropped her head into her hands. “Oh, what am I going to do?”

“Don't worry,” Mr. Bassett said. “If you really want to—”

He stopped and looked in our direction. “Norma, I need some time to speak with my client. Would you mind?”

“I don't mind.” Norma paused, then looked right at Mr. Bassett and added fiercely, “Not so long as you treat her right.”

Phoebe gave us a thin smile. “Don't worry, Norma. Stephen takes good care of me. I don't know what I'd do without him.” She reached out and patted the lawyer's hand. “Now, you ladies had best go get that wardrobe.”

Norma nodded, and Chris and I followed her out of the room. “Do you suppose it would be too wicked to stand out here and listen?” she whispered once we had closed the parlor door behind us.

I had been wondering the same thing myself. After all, if Phoebe was in trouble, we had to know what it was before we could help her. But Norma quickly thought better of that idea. “Fine example I am,” she muttered. “Your father would have my hide if he knew I was teaching you to be an eavesdropper.”

“Actually, my father can be
very
nosy,” I said encouragingly.

For a second Norma seemed to be wavering. But then she said firmly, “Come on. Pick up those chairs, and let's go do our job.”

She made it up three steps before she turned around and said, “What am I doing? Let's leave!”

“What about the wardrobe?” asked Chris. She set the chair down.

“Forget the wardrobe!”

“Phoebe really wants us to take it,” I said, setting my chair down as well.

Norma took a deep breath. She looked from Chris to me, then back again. “All right. You two are the experts. Tell it to me straight. Is it safe up there?”

“As far as we can tell,” I said.

“Safe enough that
we
don't mind going up,” Chris added. “We'll even go first if you want.”

Norma shook her head. “I'm the leader of this expedition,” she muttered. Taking another deep breath, she started up the stairs again.

Even though we had decided not to eavesdrop, Norma's hesitation had left me in the hall long enough to hear Mr. Bassett say, “Phoebe, if you would just sell that picture, you could keep the house.”

I picked up the chair again, then followed Norma and Chris up the stairs, thinking about what I had heard. Why couldn't Phoebe keep her house? Because she was broke, probably. But why would selling a picture take care of the problem? Could she really have a picture worth that much? And what picture was the lawyer talking about? The one over the fireplace?

I shivered at the memory of the grisly images and wondered why anyone would paint such a thing to begin with. Could a painting like that possibly be worth enough to let Phoebe stay in her house? If it was, then why didn't she sell it? I would have been glad to trade something like that for my house. Heck, I'd have
given
it away, rather than have to look at it every day.

I was so wrapped up in my thoughts that I forgot what we were there for until Norma said, “Well, child, are you going to put down that chair or not?”

“Don't mind her, Norma,” said Chris, who was already standing on the chair she had carried up. “She gets that way when she's thinking.”

I made a face at her and set the chair on the floor. Norma climbed up. Working together, she and Chris lifted the top off the wardrobe.

Even in pieces the wardrobe was heavy, and it took all three of us to carry some of the sections down the stairs. After we had most of it on the porch, Norma went to open the back of the truck. Chris and I went upstairs to get the top, which was the last and smallest piece.

As we were carrying the top out of the room, I heard someone start to cry. I turned back to look and almost lost my grip on the wood when I saw a little girl sitting in the bed.

“Chris!” I hissed. “Do you see?”

“I see,” she whispered.

The little girl continued her quiet weeping. I wanted to comfort her. But what could I do? Put my arms around her? Pat her on the shoulder? If I tried to touch her, my hand would go right through her.

Before I could decide what to do, the form in the bed faded away. But her voice lingered in the air after her image was gone, the way the smell of peaches had remained in the room after Carla Bond left.

“Daddy?” she whispered softly and sadly. “Oh, Daddy, when are you coming back?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Lost Masterpiece

“What are we going to do?” Chris asked, looking up at me. I was sitting on a branch of the apple tree in her backyard. Before I could answer, she swung one leg over the branch and pulled herself up to sit beside me.

“I'm not sure,” I said, moving over to make room for her.

We were sitting in Chris's apple tree instead of her house because finding a quiet spot to talk
in
the Gurley house is about as likely as finding a giraffe in your bathtub. That's because Chris has more brothers than a bug has legs. I keep trying to count them—her brothers, not a bug's legs—but they're never all around at the same time. Whenever I ask Chris how many there are, she just shrugs and says, “About five more than I need.” (But she won't tell me how many she thinks she needs.)

Anyway, if you want to talk quietly, it's easier to go outside—especially on a night when the air is cool and crisp and filled with the smells of October. I felt good. I was upset by what had happened that day, but I was also excited about the fact that we had landed in the middle of a new mystery. I love mysteries. Solving them makes me feel really alive.

“Well, we've got to do something,” Chris said.

“I agree. It gives me the creeps to think of that poor little girl, waiting there for her father.”

“She's probably been waiting for years,” said Chris sourly. “Another few weeks won't kill her.”

“That's not funny!” I slid along the branch and reached for an apple.

“So it was a bad joke. But I mean it about waiting. Much as I'd like to help that little kid, Phoebe's the one I'm really worried about.”

The apple was wormy. I threw it on the ground.

“You're right,” I said. “I hate the thought of her losing her home. Of course, if she wasn't so stubborn about that hideous picture, she wouldn't have to.”

“That's assuming you believe what Mr. Bassett said,” replied Chris. “My father says you shouldn't believe anything you hear from a lawyer.”

“I thought your uncle was a lawyer.”

Chris laughed. “He's the reason my dad says that!”

That night I dreamed I was sleeping in a bed where someone had died. I woke with a shout. It took me a long time to get back to sleep.

Chris's mother had some errands to do on our side of town the next afternoon, so she drove me home. I almost fell over when I walked through our front door. The stairway looked like a disaster area.

Actually, our stairway has always looked like a disaster area—mostly because it's covered with a truly hideous wallpaper. At least, it used to be. At the moment that wallpaper, which had been there for as long as I could remember, was half gone. It lay in soggy piles on the steps. It hung in long, wet strips from the wall. Scraps of it still clung here and there. In the middle of all this stood my father, belting out “The Stripper” and shaking his hips as he ran a blade up the wall.

“Dad! What's going on?”

“The cobbler's children are getting new shoes!” he replied happily.

I thought about that remark for several seconds before I decided there was no way I was going to make any sense out of it. “What are you talking about?” I asked.

“It's an old saying: ‘The shoemaker's children go barefoot.'”

“Kind of a dumb saying, isn't it?”

“Not really. It means the guy who makes shoes is usually so busy making them for everyone else, he never gets around to making them for his own kids. Therefore, the shoemaker's children go barefoot. This weekend I realized you were a shoemaker's child.”

“My feet are fine,” I said, pointing to my sneakers. “Though I would like a nice pair of leather boots, and—”

“Wrong idea!” said Dad. He pointed the scraper blade at me and asked, “What do I do for a living?”

Before I could point out that the answer to
that
question had been up in the air since he quit his job to go freelance, he answered it himself.

“I restore old buildings. But have I ever restored
this
place? It is to laugh! I have been too busy. I finally decided it was time to do something about this joint.”

“But
you
don't do this kind of stuff,” I said, stepping over a pile of soggy wallpaper. “You plan it, then have other people do the work.”