Dawn and the Halloween Mystery Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Acknowledgment

  About the Author

  Also Available

  Copyright

  “Huge muscles,” said Jeff. “I mean, really huge. Like, this big!” He held his hands apart to show me. “And a totally gruesome mask.”

  “And all in red, right?” I asked, grinning. “Or did you change that to purple?”

  “I think I’ve decided on green,” said Jeff, after deliberating for a second. “Green is the most monsterish.”

  My younger brother Jeff is ten, and if anybody knows what makes a monster monsterish, it’s him. He and I were sitting at the kitchen table that October afternoon, eating the nachos our housekeeper, Mrs. Bruen, had prepared for an after-school snack, and talking about Jeff’s Halloween costume. He had a sketchpad in front of him, and he was drawing costume ideas with his markers.

  My name’s Dawn Schafer. I’m a little old for trick-or-treating — I’m thirteen and in the eighth grade — but Jeff still gets really excited about it. He loves to create elaborate costumes, and he and his friends spend hours making game plans about which neighborhoods to visit for the best “booty.” When the trick-or-treating is over, Jeff carefully counts and organizes his loot, and then he hoards it, eating only a little bit each day in order to make it last.

  Sometimes, when he’s feeling extra generous, he offers me a Snickers bar or a pack of Sweet-Tarts, but I always turn him down. I can’t stand junk food, candy included. I don’t mind if he eats it once in a while. That’s his business. (He usually eats pretty healthy stuff.) But I hate the idea of putting refined sugars and weird chemicals in my body.

  “What was the best Halloween costume you ever had?” Jeff asked, helping himself to a nacho. A long string of cheese stretched between the nacho and the plate, and Jeff carefully reeled it in and piled it on top of his chip.

  I thought for a minute. “I guess it would have to be Pippi Longstocking,” I said, smiling at the memory. “I must have been about seven or eight. Mom braided my hair and put wires in it so it stuck straight out, and we painted freckles all over my nose. And I wore this hilarious-looking pair of Dad’s shoes. You know how Pippi always wears those big shoes?”

  “What was I that year?” Jeff asked.

  “You were a mouse,” I said.

  Jeff made a face. “A mouse? How nerdy.”

  “No, you were cute,” I said. “You were a totally adorable little mouse. Don’t you remember? You’ve seen the pictures. Mom must have shot a whole roll of us in those costumes.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Jeff.

  Then, all of a sudden, we both stopped talking. The only noise in the house came from the living room, where Mrs. Bruen was vacuuming. I could guess what Jeff was thinking about, because it was probably pretty close to what I was thinking about. We were both “seeing” those pictures: a young Dawn, with the same long, pale blonde hair and blue eyes, and an even younger Jeff, with matching blue eyes and that familiar, funny cowlick in his hair.

  Our eyes and hair are still the same, but everything else has changed since those pictures were taken.

  “That was a long time ago, Jeff,” I said gently.

  “It sure was,” said Jeff, looking sad. “Sometimes it’s hard to remember what it was like when Mom and Dad were still together.”

  Our parents are divorced. For now, Jeff and I are both living with my dad in the town where we grew up: Palo City, California. That’s outside of Anaheim, where Disneyland is. My mom lives in Stoneybrook, Connecticut, which is where she grew up, and where our grandparents, Granny and Pop-Pop, still live. Jeff and I both moved out to Connecticut with Mom after the divorce, but Jeff never adjusted to life in the East. He ended up coming back here to live with our dad.

  I adjusted to Connecticut just fine. I made tons of friends, partly because I joined this cool club called the BSC (or Baby-sitters Club), which I’ll explain more about later, and one best friend. Her name’s Mary Anne Spier, and now she’s my stepsister, too, because my mom married her dad!

  Anyway, while I did love living in Connecticut, I also found that I missed Jeff and my dad tremendously. That’s why I decided to come back out here and live with them for a while.

  Now, being in California again has been pretty wonderful. I belong to a club here, too: it’s called the We ♥ Kids Club, and all my best California friends are in it, including my oldest best friend, Sunny Winslow. She and I grew up together. I love our house out here: it’s all on one floor, built around a courtyard, and it has these long, cool, tiled halls and skylights in every room. Sunny calls it Casa Schafer. (That just means “Schafer House” in Spanish.) Mrs. Bruen keeps the house spotless, and she’s also a wonderful cook. My school is great. And I’ve even grown to like Carol, this woman my dad is engaged to. (We had our ups and downs at first, to put it mildly.)

  But.

  You knew there was a “but” coming, didn’t you?

  Here it is: But even though I love California, I am not totally, totally happy here. I miss my mom like crazy, and I hate being away from Mary Anne and my other friends in the BSC. So, I know it won’t be long before I go back to Connecticut to live. And of course, when I do, I’ll miss everybody out here!

  Being a divorced kid is never easy. For me, it means my life is always like a puzzle with one lost piece. It means I’m always missing somebody or someplace.

  I don’t mean to complain. The truth is, there’s a good side to my bi-coastal life. I have two sets of wonderful friends, two great houses to live in (the one in Stoneybrook is an old, old farmhouse that’s probably haunted!), and two parents who are probably happier now than they were when they were together. That’s a whole lot more than some people have!

  “Papier-mâché?” Jeff asked, interrupting my thoughts.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Do you think I should build the muscles out of papier-mâché?” He showed me the sketch he’d been making.

  “Foam rubber might be easier,” I said, turning the sketch to look at it. “You could stuff your costume with it.”

  “Great idea!” Jeff said. He took the sketch back and started to draw some nasty-looking fangs on the mask he was planning.

  Mrs. Bruen bustled into the kitchen. “Hi, kids,” she said. “How are the nachos?”

  “Terrific,” I said. “Thanks!”

  “Glad you like them.” She reached into a closet, pulled out a sweater, and threw it over her shoulders. “I’ll see you both tomorrow,” she said.

  “How’s Nicholas?” I asked. Nicholas is Mrs. Bruen’s newest grandson. She’s spending a lot of time at her daughter’s house lately, helping to take care of him.

  “Oh, he’s a little charmer,” she answered. “Did I tell you he’s cutting his first tooth?” She shook her head. “They grow up so fast,” she murmured. Then she smiled at me, waved, and headed out the door.

  Mrs. Bruen’s been working at our house less lately, partly because of her grandson but partly because we don’t need her help as much these days. Why? Because Carol’s around all the time, and she helps out a lot with the cooking and cleaning up.

  Carol. I should tell you more about her, because she’s becoming a pretty important person in my life. In fact, soon she’ll be my st
epmother! That’s kind of hard to imagine, because Carol really isn’t a motherly type. In fact, even though she’s a grown-up, I think she may be cooler than me. She has cool clothes and a cool haircut and she drives a cool red sports car, and she knows all about the coolest new groups, since she loves to watch MTV.

  At first I wasn’t thrilled by my dad’s hip girlfriend. I think I felt a little jealous of Carol. Okay, I felt a lot jealous. Ready for a confession? When Dad and Carol got engaged the first time, I freaked out. I went so bananas that I actually bought myself a plane ticket and flew back to Connecticut without telling a soul!

  That didn’t go over too well with either of my parents.

  I was back in California before I’d even gone through jet lag, and I did a lot of thinking during the zillions of hours of baby-sitting it took to earn enough money to pay my dad back for that plane ticket. Ever since then I’ve tried to be more accepting of my dad’s relationship with Carol. Lately it’s been easier, because I’ve discovered that I actually like her. Especially compared to some of the other women my dad dated during a time when he and Carol were on the outs.

  Anyway, by now Carol has become a regular at Casa Schafer. She’s here for dinner, oh, probably four nights a week. She and my dad cook together a lot, and Jeff and I get stuck with the dishes (which I really don’t mind all that much). She helps Jeff with his math homework, and sometimes she shows me things I can do with my hair, such as make these awesome braids I’d always wanted. When we watch movies on the VCR, Carol always sits on the green couch, next to my dad. That’s, like, her spot now. She’s definitely becoming part of the family.

  Lately, Carol and my dad have been talking a lot about wedding plans. They haven’t made too many decisions yet, even though they’re getting married in December, but I do know that I’m going to be a bridesmaid and Jeff will be the best man. We’re both pretty psyched about it.

  That night, Carol came over just as my dad arrived home from work. Jeff showed them the plans for his costume. “Whoa!” said Carol, pretending to be scared.

  “Love it,” said Dad. Then he turned to me. “How about you, Sunshine? What are you going to be?” Sunshine is his pet name for me.

  “Oh, Dad,” I said. “I’m too old for that stuff.”

  He sighed. “I remember when you used to get so excited about Halloween,” he said. “I guess my little girl is growing up. Do you remember when you dressed up like that book character? Pippa Longsocks?”

  “Pippi Longstocking,” I said, laughing. “I do remember. I was just telling Jeff about that.”

  Dad looked at both of us fondly, and I could tell he was conjuring up that same batch of pictures we’d been thinking about earlier. “You guys are a treat to come home to,” he said, sounding a little choked up. Then he smiled. “And speaking of treats, look what I brought home for dessert!” He showed us a white bag with red writing.

  “Apple-raisin turnovers?” I said. “From the Natural Baker?” He nodded. “All right!”

  * * *

  That night, after a dinner of Carol’s favorite vegetable chimichangas (she cooked) and those outrageous turnovers for dessert, I wrote a short letter to Mary Anne:

  “So then, right as class was ending, I finally figured out what Tom Swanson’s eyebrows have always reminded me of,” said Sunny, giggling. “You know how dark and bristly they are? Well, I guess I was staring at them, and then all of a sudden it came to me and I started to crack up. Caterpillars! They look just like a couple of wiggly caterpillars sitting there on his forehead!”

  We all cracked up. Tom Swanson is somebody I’ve known since first grade, and now that Sunny mentioned it, I could see exactly what she meant about his eyebrows.

  It was Wednesday afternoon, and my friends — Sunny, Maggie, and Jill — and I were hanging out at Sunny’s house, eating five-grain tortilla chips with freshly made organic salsa. Every once in a while the phone would ring, and one of us would answer it. For example, it rang in the middle of our laughing fit about Tom Swanson, and since I was the first one to catch my breath, I grabbed it. After listening for a moment, I put my hand over the receiver. “It’s Mrs. DeWitt. I mean, Cynthia. Anybody want to sit for Erick and Ryan on Sunday?”

  Maggie reached for the record book. “It’s hard to tell, with all these crossouts,” she said, “but it looks like you’re the only one free, Dawn.”

  “Okay,” I said. I took my hand off the receiver and told Mrs. DeWitt (lately she’s insisted on being called Cynthia, but I keep forgetting) that I’d be there at four.

  That’s how we arrange baby-sitting jobs in the We ♥ Kids Club. I guess you could call our get-together a meeting, but it wasn’t much like the meetings we have in my other baby-sitting club back in Connecticut, the BSC.

  When I first returned to California and the We ♥ Kids Club invited me to be a temporary member, I was shocked at how laid-back they were about running meetings. But now I’m not only used to it — I like it. I just hope I don’t act this casual back in Stoneybrook during a BSC meeting. Kristy would have a cow.

  Kristy Thomas, that is. She’s the president of the BSC, and the one who thought up the idea for it. And since the California club is based (sort of) on the Connecticut club, maybe I should explain a little about the BSC first.

  The BSC grew out of an idea of Kristy’s. She guessed that parents would love being able to call one number to arrange for a responsible sitter. Her guess was right, and the club has been successful from the start. Here’s how it works: the BSC meets three afternoons a week, from five-thirty to six, and parents can call during those times to set up jobs. The club secretary keeps track of everyone’s schedules in a record book, so when calls come in she can check to see who’s available. Kristy also dreamed up the club notebook, where members record their sitting experiences for everyone to read, so that they know what’s going on with the regular clients. The club treasurer keeps track of how much money everyone earns, and also collects dues to help pay for things such as the phone bill (the phone belongs to the vice-president, and the club meets in her room).

  It’s all very organized — unlike the We ♥ Kids Club, which has no officers, no treasury, and no club notebook. The We ♥ Kids Club recently began keeping a record book and having one regular meeting a week, but only because we got really, really busy after a local TV station did a story on us. (Kristy was pretty jealous about our brush with fame!)

  Kristy makes a terrific club president because she’s full of energy and great ideas. She’s also used to dealing with groups of people, since she has a large — and complicated — family. She and her three brothers (two older and one younger) grew up with only their mom to take care of them, after their dad walked out on the family. Then, her mom got married again, to this humongously rich guy who has two kids, a boy and a girl, from his first marriage. (They live at Kristy’s house part-time.) Once they were married, Kristy’s mom and stepdad decided to adopt a little girl together. Then Kristy’s grandmother moved in, too. Now they all live happily in a gigantic mansion, along with an assortment of pets.

  The club secretary is Mary Anne Spier, my best friend (and stepsister). Mary Anne is also Kristy’s best friend, and while the two of them look a little alike (they’re both on the short side, with brown eyes and brown hair), they have very different personalities. Mary Anne is shy and sensitive, and more of a listener than a talker. (She is also completely lovable, and the best sister I could have asked for.) Her mom died not long after Mary Anne was born, and her dad brought her up on his own. Until, that is, he got back together with my mom, whom he had dated when they were both in high school. (As Mary Anne would say with a sigh, “It’s such a romantic story!”)

  Mary Anne has a boyfriend named Logan Bruno, who manages to be both a regular kind of guy and the sweetest person in the world. He’s an associate member of the BSC, which means he helps out when things are busy, but he doesn’t attend meetings regularly.

  The vice-president of the club is Claudia Kishi
. Claud is Japanese-American and drop-dead gorgeous, with long, shiny black hair and almond-shaped eyes. Claud may not do as well in school as her older sister, who’s a certified genius, but she has her own talents as an artist. She’s about the most creative person I know, and not just when it comes to drawing or painting. She’s also creative about her appearance: for Claud, every outfit and every hairstyle is like a piece of art. As vice-president, Claud doesn’t have many duties, except for answering the phone during non-meeting times. But she’s taken on Snack Provision as her unofficial duty, and she puts her heart into making sure there’s plenty to munch on at every meeting. (The We ♥ Kids Club members, who are natural-food lovers like me, would die on the spot if they saw how much junk food Claud can put away in a day. She should be in the Guinness Book of World Records for Most Cheetos consumed.)

  Claudia’s best friend and shopping partner is Stacey McGill. Stacey is the club treasurer, a job that’s tailor-made for a math whiz like her. She’s an only child who grew up in New York City, and she’s way more sophisticated than anyone else I know in Stoneybrook. She has stunning blue eyes and blonde hair that’s usually permed into wild curls. Stacey’s parents are divorced, and her dad still lives in New York. She visits him often, making sure to pop into Bloomingdale’s to check out the latest fashions while she’s there.

  When I’m in Stoneybrook, I’m the alternate officer of the BSC. That means that I can fill in for any officer who can’t make it to a meeting. While I’m here in California, my job is being covered by Shannon Kilbourne, who’s usually an associate member. Shannon lives in Kristy’s new neighborhood. She’s one of the best students at her private school. (She’s one of those kids who not only gets all A’s but also belongs to every single club.)

  Everybody I’ve mentioned so far, including the members of the We ♥ Kids Club, is thirteen and in the eighth grade. But there are two BSC members who are eleven and in the sixth grade: Jessi Ramsey and Mallory Pike. They’re junior officers, and while they’re both great sitters, they’re not allowed to sit alone at night yet (unless it’s for their own families). They take care of a lot of the afternoon jobs. Jessi and Mal are best friends, and they stick together like glue. Jessi is African American, and she’s a serious ballet student. She has a younger sister and a baby brother, and an aunt who lives with her family. Mal, who has reddish-brown hair, glasses, and braces, comes from a gigantic family: she has seven younger brothers and sisters. She wants to be a writer when she grows up.