Haunting at the Hotel Read online

  The man smiles. “My name is Fernando di Cannoli, the greatest chef in all of Italy.” He looks like he could be Italian, with his tan skin and dark hair. But his accent is way off.

  “This looks delicious, Fernando, thank you,” Reese says, and Fernando leaves the room. Harris, January, and Frank start eating the food.

  But I’m too busy watching Mom, who opens her case notebook. If I know her, she’ll skip the snacks and get straight to business. But to my surprise, she looks at me. Like she’s waiting for me to ask a question.

  Maybe I should. . . .

  * * *

  TO ASK ABOUT THE DETAILS OF THE RECENT HAUNTINGS, CLICK HERE.

  TO ASK WHEN AND HOW THE HAUNTINGS FIRST STARTED, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  “YOU MUST HAVE observed some tension between the Winters family and the hotel staff,” I say. “Have you noticed any fights?”

  “Indeed,” Byron says. “As an outside observer to all the trouble at the Sugarcrest Park Lodge, I’m constantly surprised how often people don’t care if they fight in front of me. As a transient fixture in this moment in time, I am the perfect fly on the wall.”

  The way Byron speaks drives me nuts. He has this snobby, self-important way about him.

  “Okay,” I say, trying to shake off my annoyance, “but what did you hear?”

  “What didn’t I hear?” he says with a chuckle. “An uproar between all three members of the Winters family. A phone quarrel between Cricket and a mystery person. A squabble between Reese and Luther. A spat between January and Sunny.”

  “A spit?” Frank says.

  “A spat,” Eliza corrects.

  But it’s too late—Frank is already dribbling a string of spit. Then he sucks it back in his mouth with a loud slurp.

  I roll my eyes. “What were they all fighting about?” I ask Byron.

  “I distinctly heard the words ‘You don’t understand me at all!’ bellowed from the youngest Winters to her parents—typical adolescent behavior. I believe that Reese and Luther were having their usual dispute about selling the Sugarcrest Park Lodge. And January and Sunny were speaking in hushed tones. Much too soft to hear. But their facial expressions indicated antagonism. Yes, they were very angry with each other. And of course I only heard one side of Cricket’s telephone conversation, but she sounded rather distressed.”

  I wonder what that could be about. Who could Cricket have been talking to? Would January and Sunny even have a reason to interact outside of common pleasantries? Luther and Reese’s beef, we already knew about. But how far would Luther go to get the Sugarcrest Park Lodge in his clutches?

  I look at Byron, who is puffing on his glasses and cleaning the lenses with a handkerchief. “Mr. Bookbinder, do you think any of them could be the ghost?”

  “Absolutely not!” he says, outraged. “The ghosts are the six hikers I’ve been telling you about—the ones who perished in this very room. If you are truly after the mystery of these spectral beings, then you must follow the history! The history will lead you right!”

  * * *

  TO ASK BYRON ABOUT THE HISTORY OF THE HIKERS, CLICK HERE.

  TO END THE CONVERSATION, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  “WE HAVE TO go looking for that dog,” I say. “Before it attacks someone else.”

  January nods and cautiously opens the door. The lobby is empty and cold. The front double doors are still open, with wind flinging snow inside. Snowbanks are piled high inside the lodge. January runs across the lobby, toward the right staircase.

  “Come on!” she calls to us, but Eliza and I are taking it slower, elbows linked.

  The lights flicker. For an instant, I see nothing.

  Then—

  There.

  Right behind January. The ghost has no features on its face—just a round black circle where a mouth would be, and two round black circles for eyes. Empty, soulless black pits. Its body is bent in the wrong shape. Clawed hands reach out—

  “January, look behind—”

  It grabs her, and she shrieks. The thing drags her backward, up the stairs, as January cries, “Help! Please!”

  We run after her.

  When we get to the top of the stairs, the monstrous ghost thing is halfway down the hall with January. It’s crawling backward, arms and legs spiderlike. January reaches out to us.

  Behind January, behind the ghost, the door to the Dead Room is wide open. My blood runs cold. Kicking and struggling, January is being dragged inside.

  * * *

  TO FOLLOW THEM INTO THE DEAD ROOM, CLICK HERE.

  TO RUN AWAY, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  I DECIDE TO confront Harris first about the glowing footprints. From our interview with the whole Winters family yesterday, it was clear to me that he was hiding something.

  We check Harris’s office first, but he’s not there. So instead I go upstairs to his room. I can tell right away which door belongs to Reese and Harris. It’s much fancier than the others, and it seems to have a special passcode system that involves symbols instead of numbers. I raise my fist to knock, but Frank steps between the door and me.

  “Allow me!” Then he starts hammering the door—his fists are like mallets, and the poor door is like a whack-a-mole game.

  “All right already! I beg you, please stop!” we hear from the other side of the door. Harris opens it, looking haggard. His beard is tangled, and his blue eyes are bloodshot. He’s wearing lumberjack-plaid pajamas. “I was trying to take a nap,” he says. “I don’t do three a.m. as well as I used to in my younger years. Is this really that urgent?”

  “Yes,” I insist. “May we come in?”

  He sighs and stands aside, and we file in.

  “What’s this about?” Harris demands.

  “This is going to sound like a weird request,” I say. “But we really need to see your shoes.”

  “My . . . shoes?” He scrunches up his face for a second. “Is this relevant to the case? Or just a weird kid thing?”

  “Case relevant,” Eliza and I say together while Frank says, “Weird kid thing.”

  “Okay,” Harris says, still confused. He leads us to his closet, where he has six pairs of shoes. Eliza and I start checking the bottoms of them, while Frank hangs a pair of flip-flops on his ears.

  “Is this it?” Eliza asks Harris.

  “Everything but my loafers. They went missing a few weeks ago. I keep forgetting to order a new pair—that’s what I should do today.”

  Could these missing shoes be the pair we’re looking for? But if Harris says he lost them . . . then who has them?

  “Feels like we’ve hit a wall,” Eliza says. “It seems silly to look for a pair of shoes that went missing weeks ago when we have lots of ghost-haunting clues to examine. Especially since we don’t know for certain that those shoes are the ones that made the glowing prints.”

  “Still, it wouldn’t hurt to check on Fernando di Cannoli or Byron Bookbinder in the meantime. Just in case their shoes are the ones that made the prints.”

  “Fair. You pick, Carlos,” Eliza says. “What does your gut tell you?”

  * * *

  TO CHECK OUT FERNANDO’S SHOES, CLICK HERE.

  TO CHECK OUT BYRON’S SHOES, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  “I’M SORRY, CRICKET,” I say. “But we have to tell Reese what you and Luther were up to. She’s the one who hired us, and it’s our job to tell her whatever we find.”

  “WAIT!” Cricket says, a layer of sweat forming on her forehead. “Wait! Please! Before you do, I just want to show you something important,” she says, gesturing behind her to a door under the stairwell. “A secret tunnel that twists throughout the house,” she says, opening the door.

  “In here?” Frank says, crawling in. “Really?”

  Eliza and I stand at the entrance to the door. “Why are you showing us thi—ahhhhh!”

  Hands have suddenly shoved me from behind. I tumble forward, with Eliza. The door locks behind us.r />
  “Hey!” I shout. “This is just a closet!” A mothball-smelling, dust-filled closet. “Let us out of here!”

  “Not until you learn to butt out of other people’s business,” Cricket says.

  “Butt.” Frank giggles.

  “And learn some manners!”

  THANK YOU for locking me in this closet.

  Now PLEASE may I have a do-over?

  CASE CLOSED.

  WE MOVE TO the monitor.

  “Where’s the popcorn?” Frank asks.

  I ignore him and lean closer to the screen. Apparently there are hidden cameras in almost every room in the lodge, all livestreaming back to this command center. The monitor is split into nine squares, and I can see Cricket in the lobby from two different angles, Byron and Harris in the fire den, Sunny in the guest hallway, and Fernando in the kitchen. I can also look into the empty library, an unoccupied dining room, a bare hallway of employee housing, and the hallway where Reese and Harris have their professional offices.

  “This is the boringest movie EVER,” Frank complains. “Nothing’s happening!”

  “Do you see Mom?” I ask, looking for any signs of her lurking just out of view.

  “No . . . she’s not in any of these shots.”

  “Come on, she has to be! Where is she?”

  “She has to be in someone’s room,” Eliza says. “It’s the only logical answer.”

  “Well, what about these spaces between the walls? Clearly there are a lot of secrets about this house we don’t understand yet.”

  “Or,” Eliza continues, like she didn’t even hear me, “she could have gone down the hill to interview Luther Covington. And maybe she got trapped down there when the storm came. You heard Harris—the landlines and cell towers are out.”

  “I wish we could rewind these cameras. Then we could see what happened to her when she disappeared from right behind us!”

  “Maybe she’s sledding,” Frank says.

  Eliza and I look at him.

  “Sledding? Really?”

  He shrugs. “That’s what I would do.”

  I squint at all the people moving around on the monitor. I still don’t have a clue who might be behind the hauntings. Maybe I should look at the table.

  * * *

  TO LOOK AT THE PAPERS ON THE TABLE, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  “THIS WAY!” I say, pulling Mom over to the mud at the bottom of the slide. The ghost, I can see, is following us carefully, slipping in between the cloths quicker than a breeze.

  My shoes sink in the mud, and still the ghost person follows us. I can hear the squelch of its shoes in the mud . . . just a little bit farther, and we’ve got ’em.

  Splat.

  A mudball hits me in the face. I didn’t even have enough warning to close my eyes, let alone my mouth, and now I’m spitting out mud. My eyes are stinging—I can’t see a thing. More mudballs come flying our way; Mom gets hit with them too. And that provides the ghost with the perfect cover to escape.

  When Reese and the cops come to the basement, it is ghostless, and we are empty-handed.

  Reese makes sure to tell the press all about our failure in solving her case. She’s forced to sell her hotel to Luther Covington, and we are out of business. Back at square one, with Mom’s agency’s reputation in tatters.

  When I signed up to be a detective, I thought I’d be doing the mudslinging at suspects . . . and not the other way around.

  CASE CLOSED.

  THE LODGE ISN’T that big—we should be able to find Byron, Cricket, and January somewhere inside.

  “Thank you,” I say to the group. “Stay here. We just have to . . . check something out.”

  Sunny raises her eyebrows, and Fernando squints at us. But they don’t follow.

  “What are you doing, Carlos?” Eliza whispers when we’re in the hall.

  “I’m thinking we should find the missing suspects. If we’re quick enough, we might be able to catch our ghost.”

  “So,” Eliza says, “you’re looking for Byron and January? I must admit, Byron leaving his computer behind does seem like he left in an urgent hurry. He wouldn’t leave that behind if he was headed up to his room.”

  “And Cricket,” I say, gesturing to Cricket’s empty desk. “Didn’t Cricket say that Reese now makes her work nearly all night because guests have been checking out at three in the morning? Well, she’s not at her post. So where is she?”

  “I don’t know, and I DON’T CARE!” Frank says.

  Thump!

  What was that? The ghost again? I look up the stairs, toward the second floor of the hotel. That’s where the sound came from. “Maybe we should go see what that noise was,” I say.

  “No, Carlos, don’t you see? We can’t leave yet. This is an amazing opportunity! We can actually search Cricket’s desk while she’s not here. Don’t you want to see if . . .” Eliza trails off. Her eyes go out of focus as she stares at Cricket’s desk. That’s the second time she’s stared into space at the desk. The first was when we had just met Cricket.

  “Okay, what is it?” I ask.

  “Yeah!” Frank says. “You’re being weird!”

  “I think,” Eliza says, her eyes bright, “I see a clue in plain sight on Cricket’s desk.”

  Thump.

  That sound again.

  I can’t be in two places at once, so I have to choose.

  * * *

  TO CONTINUE SNOOPING THROUGH CRICKET’S DESK, CLICK HERE.

  TO FOLLOW THE SOUND UPSTAIRS, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  I PULL THE grape lever, and I hear a click.

  But it isn’t the freezer door releasing. It’s the sound of the levers getting locked in place. I try to tug and pull, but they’re all frozen, right where they are.

  “Bad news,” I say. “It wasn’t the grape lever.”

  Frank groans. “I gon’ be tuck here fowever, awen’t I?” he says, with his tongue still trapped on the pole.

  I don’t have the heart to answer him. Because yes, we’ll be stuck here until Fernando di Cannoli needs something out of the freezer. And who knows how long that will be?

  Man, I regret pulling the grape lever. Our investigation ended up being really unfruitful.

  CASE CLOSED.

  I TURN THE lock on Fernando’s safe to thirty, and it clicks open. We can finally see what he was so desperate to hide when we walked in before. I’m thinking money or jewels or ghost-haunting materials, like glow-stick liquid.

  Instead, there is a letter.

  Dear Mr. di Marco,

  Thank you for letting me know about your claim. I will gladly provide witness testimony regarding the irresponsible actions of the owners of the Sugarcrest Park Lodge. I understand you want compensation only, but I strongly urge you—for the well-being of any future employees that may stray across Reese’s perilous path— to shut down her business for good. I will help you in any way you deem necessary.

  Luther Covington

  “Covington!” I say.

  “Reese’s perilous path?” Eliza says. “Shut down their business for good? This all sounds like a ghost-haunting plan in the hatching.”

  “I knew Luther was a snake! Who is Mr. di Marco, though?” I ask, and Eliza shrugs.

  We’re about to close the safe when Frank cries out. “Wait! Look at THIS!” He sticks his arm all the way in, reaching into the very back, a spot in the shadows I could barely see. He pulls out a driver’s license. It has Fernando di Cannoli’s picture, but someone else’s name: Stefano di Marco.

  “Mystery solved!” I say. “Kind of. Our chef has a real name and a fake identity. But which is which?”

  Eliza raises her eyebrows at me. “You think Fernando di Cannoli sounds more real than Stefano di Marco?”

  “You never know.” Mom taught me not to assume. And if I want to impress her on this case, I need to take all her advice into account. And speaking of Mom, I want to hear what she has to say about all this.

  “Mom!” I s
ay into the walkie-talkie. “Code red. We need you to come to the kitchen ASAP. Alone. Repeat: code red. Over.”

  “Ten-four,” she says to me. Radio speak for “Got it.”

  She’s there within minutes, out of breath.

  “Did you run here?” I ask her.

  “You said code red! That’s an emergency code!” she says. “I was outside, digging through—”

  “We don’t have time,” I interrupt, glancing at the clock on the wall. Ten minutes have come and gone. How much longer can January delay Fernando? I hand Luther’s letter and the driver’s license to Mom. “We found Fernando hiding these.”

  Mom frowns as she looks at both our clues. “Well, this is interesting.”

  And she doesn’t say anything more. But Eliza, I can tell, is eager to talk about this some more. “Yes, we thought it was interesting too,” Eliza prods. “Why would Fernando go by a false name? And why is he corresponding with Luther?”

  “Does this give Fernando motive or means?” I add, hoping I’m impressing Mom as much as Eliza no doubt is.

  “Fernando already had means, just by working at the lodge,” Mom says. “I do feel like this letter might contain clues to Fernando’s potential motive.”

  Footsteps! I can hear them coming down to the kitchen.

  Eliza, Frank, and I freeze in panic. But Mom, a true professional, doesn’t skip a beat. She hastily shuts the painting closed to conceal the storage space behind it. “We have to hide.”

  “But where?” Eliza says.

  We all look to Frank, who is by far the best at hide-and-go-seek.

  “There!” he says, pointing to four industrial-sized trash cans on the other side of the kitchen. “Or there!” he says, pointing to the big metal door that leads to the walk-in freezer.