Mystery in the Mansion Read online

  “Who can believe it’s been so long since I last saw Ivy? Time is a fiend, children. It moves faster and faster the older you get.”

  I have no idea what she’s talking about.

  Eliza leans forward awkwardly and pats Guinevere’s hand.

  “But alas!” Guinevere LeCavalier says, snapping back to attention. “You aren’t here to listen to me ramble! You’re here to catch a potential killer. So what more do you need to know?”

  * * *

  TO ASK GUINEVERE WHO ELSE KNOWS ABOUT THE TREASURE, CLICK HERE.

  TO ASK GUINEVERE ABOUT THE DEATH THREATS, CLICK HERE.

  TO ASK GUINEVERE MORE ABOUT IVY, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  WE RUN THROUGH the maze, using our map as a guide. But we can’t seem to connect to Exit One. Most of the walls are ridiculously tall, but at last we pass a spot that seems to have crumbled a bit at the top, because we can climb over into another part of the maze, where Exit One is waiting for us.

  “YAYYYYYY!” Frank cheers.

  We walk through the exit, and it’s dark up ahead. Suddenly there’s a sound like a sword being unsheathed. I whip around—just in time to see bars slide down from the ceiling behind us, like a prison cell.

  “INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT!” blares an alarm.

  “What’s going on?” Eliza screams, holding her ears.

  We’re trapped! I feel around the cell until I find a note, which I can barely see in the dim light.

  My daughter, Ivy, is too smart to take the wrong exit. Therefore, you must be a thief after my treasure. And this jail cell is where you will remain forever.

  CASE CLOSED.

  “WHO ELSE MIGHT have a problem with Mrs. LeCavalier?” I ask.

  “You should ask Smythe,” Patty says with a snort.

  “Smythe!” I echo. “Why would you say that?”

  “Just . . . go talk to him about it.”

  “Nooooooooo!” Frank groans, from his spot on the floor. “Do we have to?”

  Eliza glares at him.

  “Let’s just say I know firsthand that Smythe has a very good reason to be angry with Guinevere. But you’ll have to ask him.”

  “Can’t you just tell us?”

  Patty shakes her head no. “I can’t. It’s not my juicy secret to tell.” She giggles, and I can tell she really loves dangling information above our heads.

  “Or,” Patty continues, “perhaps Guinevere’s daughter, Ivy, is the one sending the threats. They’ve had problems for years.”

  Guinevere had told us that Patty convinced Ivy and her husband to run away together, but sometimes in the detective biz, it’s good to play dumb. “What kind of problems?” I say, blinking innocently.

  Patty stares me for an uncomfortably long time. “Guinevere drove her daughter away. They fought constantly because Guinevere didn’t like Ivy’s boyfriend. Well, her husband now.”

  Eliza frowns. “Guinevere said you convinced Ivy to run away.”

  I smack my head. I wish I could tell her we were supposed to be playing dumb! But then . . . Eliza’s so smart that I bet she has no idea how to play dumb.

  “Oh, Guinevere says that, does she?” Patty cries. “Well, that’s a bald-faced lie! Ivy came to me in tears. She had just told her mother that she wanted to marry Walter, the love of her life. And do you know what Guinevere LeCavalier told her daughter?”

  Eliza and I shake our heads. Frank picks his nose.

  “Guinevere told Ivy that she’d never see a penny of her own inheritance and she’d be kicked out of the house. Ivy told me all about it, the poor dear. But I swear—she decided on her own that she wanted to run away with Walter.”

  “So,” Eliza says breathlessly, and I realize she’s figuring something out. “You’re saying Ivy got cheated out of her inheritance money? And got kicked out of the house?”

  “A LEAD!” I say, jumping up so fast that the dogs panic and dash out of the room. I sit back down again. I have to remain professional. Even though this is ONE. AWESOME. CLUE. “Too bad Ivy doesn’t fly in until tomorrow,” I add.

  “That’s all I know,” Patty says. “I swear it, by the snout of all my puppy-wuppies.” She grabs my hands. Her palms are moist and cold. “I’ve done nothing wrong. I’m allowed to despise my sworn enemy, but I would never do anything illegal.”

  I remove my hands from her clammy grasp. “There, there,” I say to Patty. I think for a moment, then continue, “It sounds like Guinevere bullied you. We understand why you hate her.”

  It’s exactly what Patty wants to hear. She puffs up. “Why, yes. I knew you’d understand.”

  I assure her a few more times that she’s a much better person than Guinevere, and each time I say it, she gets happier and happier. By the time she guides us to the door, she’s practically glowing.

  Once we’re back on Patty’s front lawn, I realize we had spent more time in there than I thought. Or maybe we didn’t get an early enough start. It’s late, and I’m going to have to go home soon and check on Mom.

  “Do you believe her?” Eliza asks me.

  I try to replay the conversation in my head. Patty seemed honest and open with us . . . except for one thing. “She’s obviously hiding something about Smythe,” I finally say, “but I am not sure she’s guilty.”

  “Well,” Eliza says, turning to stare back at Patty’s house. “We could snoop around when she’s not home. Maybe we’ll find something in her house.”

  “Or we could go talk to Smythe directly,” I suggest.

  * * *

  TO TALK TO SMYTHE, CLICK HERE.

  TO GO SNOOP THROUGH PATTY’S HOUSE, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  “WE SHOULD HEAD left, Eliza.”

  I eagerly pull her to the left path. We wander for what feels like days. Or weeks, even. Walking, walking, trudging, trudging. This treasure must be buried really deep beneath the house. When we get thirsty, we lick the wet walls of the cave. When we get hungry, we nibble on stray worms and roaches. But we keep on going.

  Finally the ground begins to slope up, and there’s a ladder to climb.

  “This must be it!”

  We climb up the ladder, open the hatch, and—

  “What the . . . what?”

  We’re at the base of a mountain. But how we got there—or where we are exactly—I have no clue. Because there aren’t any mountains close to town. We could be anywhere. And who knows how long it’ll take us to get back?

  I’ve been asking myself how far I’m willing to go to solve this case . . . but I think I went a million steps too far.

  CASE CLOSED.

  WE HEAD TO the basement.

  It’s dusty down here. There are hundreds of bottles of wine, and even a few round barrels. It’s like a pirate’s dream lair. The lighting is dim—I think some of the bulbs have blown out. It doesn’t seem like anyone has been down here for a while.

  We run around the perimeter of the room, searching for some entrance to a secret treasure tunnel. I put my hands on the cold cellar walls, looking for a draft or a breeze, but . . . nothing.

  “Eliza?”

  “I can’t find anything! Looks like this is a dead end.”

  “What about Frank?” Frank says.

  “Uh . . . what about him?” I reply.

  “Frank found something,” he says. “Frank is the best best BESTEST detective in the world, and you’re jealous.”

  “And Frank likes to talk about himself in the third person, apparently.”

  “Frank does not know what that means,” Frank says. “But Frank does not care, because Frank is awesome.”

  Eliza walks over to him. “What did you find, bud?”

  “Funny bottles!” Frank says, pointing to a bunch of neon-colored bottles on the bottom of a shelf, so low that you’d have to lie on your stomach to see them. Frank yanks on one of them, and one of the walls across the room rotates until it’s completely sideways.

  “You did it!” Eliza says.

  “I LOVE TO CRAW
L,” Frank says.

  I walk over to the open passageway and peer in. There’s a definite slope in the floor—we’ll be walking down, even deeper underground. It’s dark and cold in the tunnel, and I hear growling noises ahead.

  I swallow my fear and trudge forward.

  “Come on!” I whisper, grabbing Eliza’s and Frank’s hands. “We have to catch Otto! Everything depends on us!”

  We walk inside. At first, the dim lights from the basement illuminate the tunnel, but as soon as we get ten feet inside, the wall swivels shut behind us, and we’re stuck in the dark.

  There’s something snarling at the end of this tunnel, and it gets louder as we blindly—and carefully—walk forward.

  Be brave! I whisper to myself. Then I resolve to think about something safe . . . something that won’t eat me. Like a puppy or a kitten . . . but I guess a giant puppy or a killer kitten could eat me. So, how about a baseball? Yes, a baseball wouldn’t eat me—

  “What’s that?” Eliza says, pointing up ahead.

  A single spotlight shines down on a gray stone table.

  And on the table, there’s a chart marked one through one hundred.

  Color: 1, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 17, 20, 21, 24, 27, 30, 31, 34, 37, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 54, 60, 64, 70, 74, 80, 84, 90, 94, 100.

  A single pencil lies next to the chart.

  As I pick up the pencil, I realize that the loud snapping noises seem to be coming from right below us. I gulp.

  * * *

  ADD ONE HUNDRED TO THE ANSWER OF THE PUZZLE.

  IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 149, CLICK HERE.

  IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 118, CLICK HERE.

  TO ASK ELIZA FOR A HINT, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  TIME TO HAVE an honest chat with our two biggest suspects. “The jig is up!” I say. “We know about your affair!”

  Eliza and Frank pop out of their laundry baskets in surprise.

  Maddock’s black eyes grow wide, while Patty looks shiftily around the stairwell.

  “Y-you all know?” Patty says, her voice wobbling. But she isn’t looking at me or Eliza or Frank. She’s looking right at Maddock.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking, shmoopsie-poo?” Maddock says softly.

  Patty nods. “Get them!” she shrieks, lunging back toward the bedroom. Before I even have a chance to run, Maddock yanks me upside down by my ankles. Then he grabs Frank around the middle with the other arm, and Patty’s got Eliza in her grip.

  They drag all three of us outside.

  “Let gooooo,” Frank whines.

  “Where are you taking us?” I shout.

  They don’t answer, but soon I see where we’re going: in the backyard, where Patty’s pet Yorkies are.

  “Are you throwing us to the dogs?” Eliza whimpers.

  They shove us inside Waggie’s dog kennel—a small wooden shelter with chicken wire around some of the edges.

  “Bad kids!” Patty scolds through the fencing. “Think about what you’ve done!”

  I feel all around the ground, the chicken wire, and the walls, but we’re locked in, and there’s no way out.

  We’re in the doghouse . . . in more ways than one.

  CASE CLOSED.

  SUDDENLY, THE ANSWER of the upside-down books is staring me straight in the face. “One hundred!”

  As soon as I shout it out loud, a rumbling noise erupts from the library, and one of the bookshelves swings open, like an enormous twenty-foot door.

  “HOORAY!” Frank shouts. “A SECRET ROOM!”

  That’s promising, I think. The only reason people have secret password-protected rooms is to hide stuff, right? Maybe we’ll find something important behind the bookshelf.

  As if she’s reading my mind, Eliza says, “There must be something big back here!”

  Together, we slip into the room. Behind the door is a small, cramped space with a desk, a drippy candle, and a lighter. Eliza reaches for the candle and lights it. She pulls the bookshelf in behind her, so that anyone who walks by the study can’t tell that we’ve opened up this secret room. But she doesn’t want to close it completely, just in case, so she leaves it open a crack. A sliver of light from the other study room—the fake decoy room—sneaks into this secret real study room.

  But . . . this secret study is so small that it’s really more like a large closet. Eliza sits on top of the creaky desk, I lean against the peeling red wallpaper, and Frank plops on the carpet.

  “I have a good feeling about this,” Eliza says. She gives me a knowing smile. “We’ve got this. For your mom.”

  “For Las Pistas,” I add.

  “For me!” Frank says, pulling on a drawer. When it slides out, there’s a stack of letters.

  “Blahhhh, more paper?” Frank cries. “Boring!”

  Eliza pulls the letters out of the drawer, and underneath is a little black notebook.

  “Look!” I say. “A notebook!”

  Frank’s eyes light up, and he tries to wrench it from my hands, but I hold on tight.

  “No,” I say to him, even though he rarely understands the word.

  “What should we look at first?” Eliza asks.

  * * *

  TO LOOK AT THE LETTERS, CLICK HERE.

  TO LOOK AT THE NOTEBOOK, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  WE START BANGING on the door. Then we all shout at the top of our lungs.

  “HELLO! ANYONE THERE?”

  “WE’RE IN HERE!”

  “LET ME CRAWL!”

  Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

  We smack the door for what feels like hours. We throw shoes against the door. We throw ourselves against the door. We knock with our fists. My hands are raw and achy.

  “Eliza,” I finally say. “I don’t think anyone can hear us.”

  * * *

  TO LOOK FOR A VENT FOR FRANK TO CRAWL THROUGH, CLICK HERE.

  TO KEEP BANGING ON THE DOOR, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  THE TOOLSHED DOOR thinks it’s so clever . . . but I know how to get in!

  “Three,” I say aloud. “There are three flowers in the garden.”

  As soon as I say it, I hear a click from the lock, and the door swings open with a creeeaakkk.

  Smythe has to duck to fit in, and all of us squish inside the cramped space.

  “Is there a light?” Eliza asks.

  “Got it,” Smythe grunts, and he pulls down on a string dangling from a single bulb.

  In the flickering light, the first things I notice are the pictures. There are hundreds and hundreds of pictures of Guinevere LeCavalier tacked up all over the walls! There are photos of her with her eyes scratched out. Photos of her with darts in her face. Photos of her from the time she was very young to the present day. Photos of her from newspaper clippings. There’s even a portrait painting of her that looks like it was snatched from the house. And tucked in the corner are a few pictures of Ivy and Mr. LeCavalier, with devil horns on their foreheads and marker mustaches.

  I shudder. This is too creepy.

  “Yikes,” Eliza breathes, and Ivy lets out a curse word.

  Frank ducks down, I’m assuming to get away from those pictures of Guinevere. But then he starts crawling around the floor.

  “There’s no room to crawl!” I tell him.

  But he keeps going. “What’s this?” he says. “A worm! What’s this? A rope! What’s this? A secret door! What’s this? A dead flower!”

  “Wait, Frank!” Eliza says. “Go back to the secret door! Is that for real? Or are you playing make-believe?”

  “Oh, I make believe it’s real, all right,” he says.

  All of us rush forward to see what Frank’s looking at. Beneath a tiny skylight window, there’s something that looks like a wooden trapdoor built into the ground.

  “Open it!” I say.

  Frank flips open the top, and there’s a ladder, and a dark, dark hole that leads down.

  I gulp.

  “Dad had an entrance to his
treasure tunnels from the toolshed all along?” Ivy says.

  “We have to split up,” Eliza says, and I know she’s about to be very logical. “Ivy and Smythe, you two should wait at the house. When the police get here, send them down after us. Also, be alert. Guinevere and Otto could come out another exit and end up somewhere else in the house.”

  They both nod.

  “Be safe,” Ivy says, ruffling my hair.

  “Don’t die,” Smythe grunts. I think that’s the nicest thing he’s ever said to us.

  When they’re gone, Eliza searches in the drawers, riffling through all of Mr. LeCavalier’s gardening stuff.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “A flashlight,” she answers, slamming the last drawer shut. “But there aren’t any. Next time we take on a case, remind me to buy a tool belt.”

  If there’s a next time, I think miserably. I can almost feel this case slipping out of our grasp. One wrong move, and it’s over for Mom.

  “I’ll have to get used to living by flashlight, if we can’t afford to pay our electric bill,” I grumble under my breath.

  “What did you say?” Eliza says sharply.

  “Nothing,” I say. I can’t help it. Everything stinks.

  “You said you’d have to live by flashlight if you can’t pay your bills,” Eliza says. “What does that mean? What’s going on?”

  “Eliza, it’s nothing.”

  “It’s something,” she says. “This isn’t the first time you’ve been upset this week.”

  “We don’t have time for this—”

  “Then you better tell me quick,” she says. “Spit it out. What’s been bothering you?”