“She’s scary for sure,” Violet agreed. “But how are we going to find out if there’s a ghost or a thief without going back into the cemetery?”
Henry pointed to a tree outside the property. “Benny, can you climb up there and see if the candlesticks are still at the mausoleum?” he asked. Then to Violet, “Maybe we can investigate from here.”
“I feel safer out here.” Benny quickly climbed the tree and surveyed the graveyard with Henry’s binoculars. “Uh-oh. There’s trouble,” he reported. “You know how Marcus was the only one who left a gift today?”
“Yes,” Jessie said, encouraging him to go on.
“Well, people must have been waiting till they were done with work—” Benny slid down the tree trunk. “Lots and lots of people are coming toward the cemetery now. And they’re all carrying boxes.”
Violet looked past Benny with the binoculars. “I see Vita. She’s hiding in the bushes with her video camera.” She handed the binoculars to Henry, saying, “If Mrs. Radcliffe spots her, she’ll be chased out here with us.”
Jessie shook her head. “Mrs. Radcliffe will never be able to chase everyone out of the cemetery.”
“Let me see.” Henry climbed up the tree to the branch where Benny had been. “There are a lot of people. I see Vita. There’s the mausoleum. And—”
He put down the binoculars with a surprised look on his face.
“Marcus Michelson’s candlesticks are gone!”
Chapter 5
Spooky Suspects and Creepy Clues
“How about this?” Benny held up one of Jessie’s dolls from the toy bin in the boxcar clubhouse. She was dirty, had matted hair and a missing an arm, and wore only one shoe.
“I don’t think you should give Beautiful Betsy to the ghost.” Violet frowned. “She’s not so beautiful anymore. That doll looks like she’s had a lot of bad luck.”
“There was no bad luck. Betsy was my favorite.” Jessie defended her doll. “Grandfather gave her to me when we first came to live here. I used to take her everywhere with me.”
“Still…Violet’s right,” Benny said with a frown. “The ghost would want something nicer.” Benny put Betsy back in the toy box and searched around for something else. “How about this?” He held up one of Henry’s old baseball gloves. It smelled bad. “Maybe not,” he said, plugging his nose and tossing the glove back in the bin.
“You’re not going to need a gift,” Jessie assured Benny. “There’s no ghost.”
Jessie was at her desk, staring at the computer screen as a web page loaded.
Henry was standing over her shoulder. “There,” he said. “Click on Jacqueline LaFonte’s name.” He scanned the source. “This is what the local newspaper said about her after she died.”
Jessie read the page silently to herself then described what it said. “The whole article is about how Jacqueline was a kind woman who loved Greenfield.” Jessie pinched her lips together. “I don’t think Jacqueline LaFonte would haunt this town. It says here that she gave a lot of money to charity.”
“Nice ghosts can be scary,” Benny said.
“Jacqueline gave her money away,” Henry said. “She didn’t take anything from others.” He glanced at the shiny plastic bead necklaces Benny was now holding. “It doesn’t sound like she was the kind of person who’d want other people’s jewelry and candlesticks.”
“Then why do people leave gifts for her?” Violet asked. “There must be a reason.”
“I don’t know how it started,” Jessie said as she flipped through a few more web sites. “I can’t find anything about the beginning, but it says here that after her death people avoided her family because of the bad luck rumors. No one went to their businesses. The dress shop had to close. People were scared of the ghost and that made them scared of the LaFontes.” She shook her head. “The family was run out of town. It’s a shame.”
Henry was using the Internet on his cell phone to help Jessie find out more information. “Hey, look here,” he said, turning the phone screen around toward the others. “There’s an old house on the hill behind the cemetery. It used to be their family home. No one’s lived there for a long time. It’s all run down now.” Henry marked the web site photo. “We should check it out.”
“I’ll need a whole lot of snacks if I’m going to be brave enough to visit an abandoned house,” Benny said, stretching as far as he could into the toy bin.
Violet gave him a playful push. Benny fell forward, toppling into the box. He was laughing as he dug himself out. “Maybe I should share my snacks with the ghost instead of giving her our old toys.” He quickly changed his mind. “Nah.” Benny ducked back into the bin. “I want the food. The ghost can have some toys.”
Jessie opened her notebook and wrote a note to visit the old LaFonte house. Then she turned to a fresh page.
“Let’s imagine we are catching a gift thief,” she said. “Who are the suspects?”
“The ghost,” Benny’s muffled voice came from the bottom of the toy chest. “The ghost is the first suspect.”
Jessie didn’t argue. She wrote it down.
“Marcus Michelson.” Violet said. “He’s new to town and has a black coat. We’ve seen him near the cemetery a couple times, which means he could be the one stealing the gifts. When we saw him at the café, he looked just like the spooky figure we’d seen near the mausoleum.”
Jessie wrote his name down, along with all of Violet’s reasons.
“But we also saw him putting his own gift out for the ghost,” Henry said.
“Maybe I’m wrong,” Violet admitted. “Until we know more, he should be a suspect.”
“Okay. Let’s find out what we can about Marcus,” Jessie said, turning in her chair. She was rubbing her chin. Jessie did that when she was thinking really hard. “He could easily have set the flower on the café window.”
Benny popped up. “That means the ghost was in the café! Yikes.”
“The person pretending to be the ghost was in the café,” Henry corrected. He nodded toward Jessie’s list. “Marcus Michelson is a suspect. But then, so is Miss Wolfson.”
Jessie wrote down the historian’s name, saying, “She was closest to the window when the lights went out. She had a black coat hanging on a hook. And it was wet. And she knows the most about the LaFonte ghost.”
“Put Mrs. Radcliffe on the list too,” Benny said, crawling out of the toy box with a handful of possible gifts.
“But she wasn’t in the café,” Violet argued.
“It doesn’t matter if she was there or not. I think she’s creepy,” Benny replied, shaking his head.
“That’s not a good reason to think someone is a thief,” Henry said. “We can’t just put her on the list because she looks like a witch and yells at children—”
“What if…” Jessie interrupted. “What if Mrs. Radcliffe invented the ghost to keep people out of the cemetery?”
“Her cloak is black,” Violet said.
“She could have turned off the café lights, sneaked in, placed the flower, and left before anyone noticed,” Henry added.
“If she wants to scare people away, her plan’s not working,” Benny said, reminding them of the big crowd that was going to the cemetery with gifts.
“Let’s put her on the suspect list,” Henry told Jessie. “Just in case.”
“Okay.” Jessie wrote down Mrs. Radcliffe’s name. “We have three possible gift-stealing thieves.”
“And one ghost,” Benny added. “Don’t forget there is still the possibility the ghost is real.”
“Right.” Jessie checked the list. “Anyone else to consider?”
The room fell silent as everyone thought about who they’d seen lurking around the cemetery.
“Vita, maybe,” Violet said. “Maybe she invented the ghost. She decided really fast to make a movie about it.
An exciting scary movie could make her famous, right?”
“It’s possible,” Jessie said. “And she was inside the café—”
“Wait!” Henry suddenly interrupted. “We have a problem.” He breathed a heavy sigh and said, “A big problem.”
“What?” everyone asked at the same time.
“The ghost was first spotted a year after Madame LaFonte died,” Henry said. “That means whoever has been taking the gifts from the cemetery has been doing it for seventy-four years! No one on our list is old enough to have been there at the beginning.”
“Oh.” Jessie leaned back in her chair. “That is a problem,” she admitted.
“A big problem,” Violet echoed, tapping her foot.
“There’s only one answer then.” Benny found a roll of wrapping paper and began to wrap the toys he’d selected. “The LaFonte ghost is real!” He shuddered and added, “Yikes!”
Chapter 6
Patty Wilson
“We need to talk to the people on our suspect list,” Jessie said.
Henry agreed. “Even though no one has been around for more than seventy-four years, maybe one of them still holds a clue to this ghost-thief mystery.”
He called Vita Gupta.
Vita told him that she was headed to the cemetery to film Miss Wolfson talking about the legend of Jacqueline’s ghost. Vita said they could meet there.
“I couldn’t sleep last night,” Jessie told the others as they walked to the cemetery.
“What did you do?” Benny asked. “Read? Watch TV? Din-eakfast?” He grinned at his new word. “That’s the meal between dinner and breakfast.”
“None of those,” Jessie said with a small giggle. “I went to the boxcar and did some research. I found out what happened to Patty Wilson.”
“Really?” Violet stepped up next to Jessie. “What’d you learn? I’m curious.”
“So did she leave town on her own?” Henry asked. He dropped his voice to a spooky growl. “Or did the ghost get her?” Sneaking behind Violet, he tapped her on the shoulder.
“Augh!” Violet jumped.
They all laughed.
“This whole ghost thing still scares me a little,” Violet admitted.
“And me a lot,” Benny said, reaching into his jean pocket. He pulled out a squished granola bar in a crinkled plastic bag. “Want a snack for bravery?” He held the bar out to Violet.
“No, thanks,” she said, eyeing the flattened honey-coated nut mixture.
“I’ll eat it then.” Benny peeled a piece of the bar away from the plastic. He tapped his other pocket. “I have another one in case I get scared later.” Benny looked at Violet. “You can share it if you feel nervous.”
Violet ruffled his brown hair and winked. “You’re a good little brother.”
Changing the subject back to Jessie’s research, Henry asked, “What did you find out?”
Jessie handed Henry a page she’d printed from the Internet. It was an old newspaper article.
“Patty’s sister was sick. She left town to help the family,” Jessie said as Benny tugged hard on the cemetery gate to open it. “In those days, small newspapers used to run brief news articles about people in town. I’m guessing that no one thought to search other towns around Greenfield for information about her. I checked old newspaper records and found something from the town of Beacon Crest.”
“I’ve never heard of Beacon Crest,” Henry said.
“It doesn’t exist now,” Jessie told him. “When Silver Spring grew bigger, Beacon Crest became part of it. But seventy-five years ago, it was its own town.”
“Clever, Jessie,” Violet complimented her.
Jessie smiled. “Thanks.”
Henry read the short newspaper notice out loud: “Mrs. Laura Thompson was visited this week by her sister, Miss Patricia Wilson of Greenfield. Mrs. Thompson is at home, resting from her illness.
“I knew it,” Henry said as he led the way toward the mausoleum. “No ghostly bad luck.”
“Or maybe it was the ghost’s bad luck that got her sister sick,” Benny suggested. “I mean, if she didn’t leave Jacqueline LaFonte a gift, it’s possible.”
“Good point.” Henry shrugged. “I guess I’m going to have to work harder to show you that the ghost doesn’t exist.”
“Try your best,” Benny said. “Until you prove it to me, I’m going to eat granola bars. Just in case you’re wrong.”
Violet wrapped her clean fingers around Benny’s sticky ones. “We’re protecting each other,” she said with a wink.
“Yes, we are,” Benny replied.
There was a big crowd at the LaFonte mausoleum. Miss Wolfson was in the center of the group, standing on a small step stool, talking in a loud voice.
“It all began one year after Jacqueline LaFonte died…” Miss Wolfson was saying.
“Looks like we didn’t miss much,” Henry whispered.
Marcus Michelson was near the front, hands in his black jacket pockets, listening intently.
Vita was there too. Her camera scanned the crowd and then focused on Miss Wolfson.
The Aldens stayed near the back of the crowd to listen.
“On the first anniversary of Madame LaFonte’s death, Patricia Wilson found a lily near the LaFonte dress shop window. Frightened, Patty ran down the street and found my mother at the bakery, working behind the counter. Patty was the assistant to Jacqueline at the dress shop. Patty said that before she died, Jacqueline announced that she planned to ‘return’ on her anniversary and that people should bring gifts to her grave or she’d bring bad luck.”
A man near Marcus put his arm around his wife. She was holding a bouquet of flowers and a box of chocolates. Together they stepped forward and set the items on the steps of the mausoleum.
“My mother immediately left a gift. Patty meant to, she said she would, but she forgot.” Miss Wolfson squinted her eyes and peered slowly across the faces of the audience. “Patricia Wilson disappeared before the three days passed.”
“That’s not exactly true,” Jessie blurted out. All eyes turned to face her. She blushed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Jessie told Miss Wolfson. She reached into her coat pocket and took out the article. “Last night I discovered that Patty Wilson had been visiting her sick sister.” She held up the page. “Exactly seventy-four years ago this time of year. Which means she left on her own. It wasn’t a ghost that got her. She didn’t really disappear.”
Vita turned her camera on the Aldens.
Henry stood tall and said, “Maybe Patricia Wilson didn’t tell anyone she was leaving. We think it was an emergency. Then she probably stayed in Beacon Crest and didn’t come back.”
“Look. There’s more.” Jessie held up a second sheet of paper and said, “I found more newspaper items about Patricia. She married and became Patricia Haverford and then she died in Silver City. Here’s her death notice. Patty Wilson lived to be ninety-two years old. She had children and grandchildren.”
People began to mutter and whisper to each other. It was as if no one had listened to Jessie.
“I heard about a man whose business went bankrupt,” a lady reported. “And a girl who broke her arm.”
“Well, I heard about a boy who got food poisoning. And one time, a man didn’t leave a gift and a big storm came. A tree fell on the man’s car.”
Everyone had a bad luck story to tell about what had happened to someone who hadn’t left Jacqueline LaFonte’s ghost a present.
“That’s all normal stuff,” Henry said in a loud voice. “Bad stuff happens to everyone, but so does good stuff.” That was exactly what Grandfather had told the children at the café when they saw the lily appear.
“It’s the ghost’s curse,” someone said from deep inside the crowd.
Violet stood on her tiptoes but couldn’t see who said
it.
A nervous hush came over the people at the mausoleum. A little boy quickly walked to the pillars and set down a box of crayons near the name plaque. Three young girls put down home baked treats. A man set out candles and a woman carefully set down a pretty potted plant.
As the gifts piled up, Jessie turned to Henry, Violet, and Benny. She waved the articles. “I don’t understand,” she said. “I have proof that Patricia Wilson didn’t disappear, but no one believes it.”
Henry frowned. “Let’s go talk to Miss Wolfson. She’s a historian. She has to believe the facts.”
Because he was the smallest, Benny got through the crowd first.
Miss Wolfson was talking to Marcus Michelson. Vita was recording their conversation.
“I’ve changed my mind,” Vita was telling Miss Wolfson. “Instead of the historical society film, I’m making a ghost documentary,” Vita said. “I’m going to show the entire town coming out to leave gifts for the ghost. I’ve already talked to a big-time producer about making a spooky cemetery movie. She thinks I might become a famous director.”
Miss Wolfson smiled and waved to the camera. “Hello, Hollywood,” she said with a grin. Then Miss Wolfson sneezed. “Excuse me,” she told Vita. “I think I might be getting a cold.”
Violet reached forward and handed Miss Wolfson a tissue. “Me too,” she said with a sneeze.
Miss Wolfson took the tissue. “Thank you,” she said. Then turned, “Jessie, can I see your pages?”
Jessie handed her the pages. Miss Wolfson took a quick glance before handing them back. “Good luck,” she told Jessie.
“With what?” Violet asked. Miss Wolfson was acting strange.
“With convincing people that there is no ghost,” Miss Wolfson said, putting her hands on her hips. “People believe what they want to believe. Remember my mom in the old school picture? Now, she’s ninety-five years old. Just yesterday, she told me that even if Patty Wilson herself walked into the cemetery right now and declared she hadn’t been cursed, no one would believe her. The ghost and the gifts and the story about bad luck are part of Greenfield’s history. Nothing you do will change that.” She added, “We all might as well make the best of it.”