Christmas Chiller Read online

  “Leave the lights off,” Abby said. “We can see better.”

  In the dark kitchen, we crowded around the window above the table in the kitchen. The only light came from the hall. Abby was right — we could see Mrs. Porter’s house clearly.

  “Here come the police,” Kristy reported, and a moment later red lights strobed across our faces as a patrol car pulled into Mrs. Porter’s driveway.

  The officers charged up the walk. I saw an upstairs window open and heard Mrs. Porter’s voice. “I’m in the bathroom. Here’s a key.”

  “It looks like they got there in plenty of time,” said Abby, sounding almost disappointed.

  The kitchen light went on and we all jumped. Mary Anne let out a muffled shriek.

  “Watson! Mom! It’s another break-in,” Kristy said.

  “So I gathered,” Watson said.

  “We’re still dressed. We could go look for clues,” suggested Abby.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Kristy’s mom said. “Let the police do their jobs. Tomorrow you can look for clues.”

  “But Mom —” Kristy began.

  “Tomorrow,” said her mother firmly.

  “Oh, all right.” Kristy sounded very much the way David Michael had sounded earlier.

  I leaned toward the window again. “Oh!” I said. “It’s beautiful.” You forget about things like that in California.

  “The burglar?” asked Jessi, half laughing.

  “No,” I said. “The snow. It’s beginning to fall.”

  “How about hot chocolate?” said Watson. “I could use some.”

  And that’s how we ended the evening — with hot chocolate and burglars.

  * * *

  Naturally, Kristy had us up and out of the house practically at sunrise the next day, even though we had stayed up late. We might have protested, but there was a mystery to be solved. So instead, we crunched sleepily behind her through the snow to Mrs. Porter’s big Victorian house.

  To some people, the house looks forbidding. (Kristy’s stepsister, Karen Brewer, is convinced that it’s a witch’s house, and that Mrs. Porter is a genuine witch whose real name is Morbidda Destiny.) I think it’s a cool old house and I wouldn’t mind being like Mrs. Porter, except that I would want pets (Mrs. Porter doesn’t, but that’s another story). Still, I admit I was a little worried about knocking on her door so early in the morning.

  I needn’t have worried. Mrs. Porter was up and dressed, in a long dark brown skirt and a big black-and-brown sweater. She was wearing wooden clogs and her iron-gray hair was pulled back with little frizzies escaping around her face. She opened the door and looked at us out of dark, sharp eyes. “Yes?”

  “We heard the alarm last night, Mrs. Porter,” said Kristy. “And we thought we’d come over and see if you were okay.”

  “Well, I’m not dead, am I?” said Mrs. Porter.

  “Did the burglars take anything?” Abby asked.

  Mrs. Porter surveyed Abby. Then she said, “Oh. You live on the other side of me. One of the twins.”

  “I’m Abby,” said Abby. “Did they steal anything?”

  The little scar at the corner of Mrs. Porter’s mouth twitched, as if she were about to smile. But of course she didn’t. Her tone wasn’t as forbidding, however, as she replied, “Are you the neighborhood detective agency?”

  “Not exactly,” said Kristy. “But we are part of the neighborhood watch, so we like to find out as much as we can about these things. We think it helps.”

  “Oh, you do, do you?” Again, the scar twitched. Mrs. Porter continued, “Well, the alarm went off at twelve o’clock. Someone tried to open the basement window near the back door…. I bet he got some surprise when he realized that this old house had a nice, modern alarm system.”

  “Did you hear anything? See anybody?” Jessi asked.

  “No and no. And I didn’t wait around to find out who it was. I have a house key and a portable phone by the bed. I took them both into the bathroom and locked the door until the police came.”

  “Did you find any notes?” asked Mallory. “That’s the thief’s m.o. He leaves notes.”

  “He didn’t leave me any notes,” said Mrs. Porter.

  “Do you mind if we look around?” I asked.

  “What for?”

  “Um, you know. Clues. Footprints.”

  “Be my guest,” said Mrs. Porter. She actually did smile this time. “But I don’t think you’re going to find any footprints.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “It’s been snowing since last night. Any footprints have been long since buried.” With that, she closed the door.

  “Thank you,” said Mary Anne politely to the closed door.

  Kristy thumped her fist into her palm. “Mrs. Porter’s right. Oh, if only it had snowed yesterday. We could have found great footprints.”

  “Let’s look anyway,” I said.

  We looked. Nothing, except our own footprints.

  Although it was early, we weren’t the only ones outside. In fact, most of the children in the neighborhood seemed to be playing in the snow. In the Kormans’ yard, I saw Bill and Melody building a wall of snow. Hannie and Linny Papadakis were with them, making snowballs. Mr. Korman was shoveling the front walk.

  “I don’t know why I’m doing this,” he said as we walked by and waved. “It’s like trying to empty the ocean with a teacup.”

  “Why don’t you wait?” asked Kristy.

  “You’re right.” He glanced at Bill and Melody. “Maybe I should consider going into the snow fort business.”

  Bill heard his father and shouted, “Yesss! Come on, Dad!”

  “Okay, if you insist,” said Mr. Korman, smiling. He tucked his shovel under his arm and walked back toward the open garage door. He reached it, then turned. He gestured vaguely toward the garage. “You’re sure that rake isn’t your family’s, Kristy?”

  “Definitely not,” said Kristy.

  “Abby, what about you?”

  “If we have a rake,” said Abby, “it hasn’t been outside since it snowed. So I don’t think it’s ours.”

  I said, “Mr. Korman? When did you find the rake?”

  “When? Oh, let’s see … Yes, of course. Last week. The night the Hsus’ house was broken into. Well, not that night, but that afternoon, before it happened.”

  “If we hear of anybody who has lost a rake, we’ll say you found it,” said Mary Anne.

  “Thanks,” said Mr. Korman.

  We walked toward Kristy’s house. Absently I brushed the snow away from my face. I was thinking about the rake. Why would someone leave a rake in the Kormans’ front yard? I mean, people didn’t generally just walk around carrying rakes. If you were hauling a rake, you had a reason: gardening, raking leaves …

  Gardening. Gardeners always had rakes. And a gardening service was probably bristling with them.

  Maybe, I thought, the rake had fallen from the local gardening service’s truck. I remembered that Mrs. Korman had mentioned seeing a pickup truck in the neighborhood that same afternoon.

  “Abby,” I said. “Who does your gardening?”

  “Haven’t we had this conversation before?” said Abby. She pushed open the back door and we began to shed our winter coats, hats, and boots. “We’re a one-gardener family, in spite of everyone’s saying we should switch to Gandy’s. Why?”

  “What does Gandy’s truck look like, do you know?”

  But when I heard Abby’s description of the bright green truck, I knew that the truck Mrs. Korman had seen hadn’t been Gandy’s. Unless Gandy’s service had an old, unpainted truck, too.

  Then I gasped. “Ohmigosh,” I said. “Ohmigosh!”

  “Dawn?” said Mary Anne. “Dawn, what is it?”

  I yanked off my other boot and practically threw it into the corner. “The telephone. Sergeant Johnson. We have to find him — now!”

  “Wow. This is a study in white,” said Claudia, peering out of the window to the street below. Not
that she could see much of it. Wind whipped the swirling snow in blinding sheets and spirals. The streetlights, which normally don’t come on until dark, were now blinking through the frozen haze.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “It’ll all turn gray and dirty in no time at all.”

  If I sounded a little cranky, it was because I was. Where was Ethan? Why hadn’t he called? Why hadn’t he returned my message, asking what he meant by the note he’d left?

  What was going on? Was my boyfriend a psycho? Was our apartment building haunted? Was I being stalked by a sick secret admirer? Claudia and I had talked about it, naturally. But we had no answers, only fears.

  And then the phone rang. I snatched it up. “Hello? Hello?” I said, completely tanking my cool.

  “Stacey? It’s Ethan.”

  “Oh. Ethan. Hi.” That was my attempt to regain my cool.

  Ethan said, “I don’t know anything about a note, but we need to talk.”

  I clutched the receiver tightly. Were we about to break up? Was he about to confess a history of serious derangement? “Okay,” I said, hanging onto my composure.

  “I’ll be right over.”

  “What? In this blizzard?” (Lost composure again.)

  Claudia looked away from the window toward me.

  “I’ll be fine,” Ethan replied. “Don’t go anywhere, okay?”

  “Where am I going to go in a blizzard?” I asked.

  “See you in a few,” Ethan said, and hung up.

  It was far more than a few minutes before the doorman announced Ethan’s arrival and he appeared outside the apartment door. I stepped back to let him in.

  “You look like the abominable snowman,” Claudia blurted out.

  It was true. He was coated in snow. His hair was frozen beneath his cap. He smiled, but only a little.

  “You must be freezing,” I said. “How about some cocoa? Or coffee or tea?”

  “Tea,” he said.

  I went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. Then I found the teapot and three mugs. Ethan, shorn of his snow-crusted overcoat, gloves, boots, and hat, looked less frozen, although the tip of his nose was red.

  The water came to a boil. I put the teabags in the pot and poured the boiling water over them. Claudia set honey and a lemon on the table.

  We sat down. Ethan cleared his throat. “So,” he began. “I have something I need to tell you.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Should I be here?” Claudia asked. “Listening? I mean, do you want privacy or something?”

  “No. You should hear it, too,” Ethan said. He took a deep breath, stopped, then said, “I used to date a girl in this building.”

  “Dark blonde hair, brown eyes, high-maintenance tan,” said Claudia. “Right?”

  Ethan gave her a wry look. “Right. The girl we saw in the elevator on Saturday.”

  “So that’s why the doorman knew you,” I said. “You’d been here to see her.”

  “Right again.” Ethan looked embarrassed. “I wanted to tell you, but I kept waiting for the right time, and somehow it never happened. And then, after we saw her, it seemed too weird that I hadn’t mentioned it before. I mean, I thought you’d think I was some kind of psycho.”

  What could I say to that?

  He reached across the table and touched my hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be dishonest.”

  I looked at Ethan and felt some of my doubts and fears begin to dissolve. But I wasn’t ready to trust him totally. I pulled my hand back and jumped up. I poured tea into the mugs.

  We sipped the hot tea in silence for a minute. Then I reached a decision. “Ethan,” I said, “some very strange things have been going on. It’s not just the jack-in-the-box and the fake blood.” I filled him in on all the incidents that had occurred — lights missing from the hallway, the elevator tampered with, the push in the crowded subway.

  When I mentioned that, Ethan paled. “I don’t believe this,” he said, almost to himself. “When I saw the jack-in-the-box, I thought maybe … But this …”

  “Ethan?”

  He lifted his gaze from the mug of tea. He took a big gulp of it. “She — Cybil, the girl in this building — she was always a little unstable. I mean, she’d laugh at a joke, or something I said, and pretend she thought it was funny, but she’d have this glittery expression in her eyes and you knew that she took it personally. And she was always asking me questions about where I’d been and who I’d seen. And she’d say things about my friends that were real putdowns. And she’d say them in this really sweet voice. I mean, it didn’t take me long to realize that she was bad news. So I broke up with her.”

  Claudia said, “How did she take it?”

  Ethan looked grim. “She laughed. Said it was no big deal. Pretended she’d never liked me anyway.”

  I reached into my pocket and took out the note. I pushed it across the table to Ethan. “You didn’t write this and leave it under the apartment door yesterday, did you?”

  “No. I wasn’t anywhere near here yesterday. I was in the seminar all day.”

  “Does Cybil know your handwriting? Could she copy it?” I asked.

  “Sure. I mean, she’s an art student, too. She could copy my handwriting pretty easily, I’d think.” He shook his head. “But I can’t believe she’s this twisted.”

  I couldn’t, either. But I didn’t like the alternative — that Ethan might be lying to me for some cowardly or twisted reasons of his own. What should I do? While I was floundering, Claudia stepped in.

  “Ethan, the stuff about Cybil doesn’t explain some of the things you’ve done since we’ve been here,” she said. “Like not letting us into your apartment and acting so secretive.”

  Then Ethan astonished me. He actually blushed. “It’s a, that’s because I … it’s a surprise.”

  “I don’t think I like surprises anymore,” I said.

  Ethan’s blush deepened. “I can see your point. Okay. I’ve been working on a Christmas present for you. It’s a sculpture. Of you, Stacey. That’s why I kept studying you. I was trying to be discreet and subtle, but I guess I wasn’t.”

  “Subtle? Nope,” I said. The explanation made sense. But did I believe him? The blush had practically convinced me.

  Then Claudia said, “Let’s do what the note says.”

  “What?” I exclaimed.

  “Let’s go to the basement and see what happens.”

  “Something bad,” I said, a chill creeping over me. “That’s what will happen.”

  “Not if we all go together. And don’t pull some dumb horror movie stunt like getting separated,” said Claudia.

  It sounded like a terrible idea to me. But it also sounded like the only way we could solve the mystery, once and for all. Slowly I nodded. “Okay,” I said. “But I’m going to leave a note behind saying where we went.”

  “Good idea,” said Ethan. He drained his mug of tea. “It’s almost five. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  I wrinkled my nose. Basements everywhere smell alike — damp and moldy and deserted. In this basement, the smell of a laundry room added to the mix didn’t improve it much. Doors to various storage areas, neatly labeled, lined the walls. Ladders and buckets filled the crevices. I spotted an ancient window air conditioner next to one door, plus a tricycle locked to a pipe, several garbage cans, two brooms, a ragged mop that looked as if it were having a terminal bad-hair day, and the skeleton of an umbrella hung on a door handle.

  No one was in the laundry room, no laundry in the spin cycle. It was just as deserted as it smelled.

  And it gave me the creeps. I would have been even more creeped out, but Ethan had insisted we stop by Cybil’s apartment (on the fifth floor) and see if she was at home. No one had answered the buzzer. And Carl had told us that she’d left with her family a couple of hours before.

  “They said they’d be back about now,” he added, glancing at his watch. “But in this weather, it’s not likely.”

  So Cybil (if Cy
bil was behind all the incidents that had plagued us since we arrived in New York) was out of the picture.

  But somehow I wasn’t reassured.

  Think about it: We were in the basement, in the middle of a blizzard, and we were looking for a lunatic.

  It was the sort of situation where things could easily get out of hand. I mean, one lunatic could ruin your whole day.

  “Ethan?” I said.

  He turned. He smiled.

  And then the lights went out.

  When I arrived at the Pikes’ for my babysitting job on Tuesday night, only Mallory, Claire, Mrs. Pike, and Mary were at home. They’d left the rehearsal early because Mrs. Pike wanted to hurry home and shift into high gear with her Christmas cooking. “Mr. Pike, the triplets, Vanessa, Nicky, and Margo,” Mrs. Pike told me, “should be home any minute now.” Our baby-sitting job was to keep the Pike pack entertained while Mr. and Mrs. Pike finished Christmas preparations.

  “I’m surprised you left rehearsal early,” I told Mallory.

  Mallory said, “Well, it’s too late to make any major script changes. And someone was being a cranky little shepherd,” she added in a lower voice, with a significant glance toward Claire.

  “Ah,” I said.

  With a grin, Mallory added, “I can’t believe you made it over to baby-sit. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s snowing.”

  “Sharon’s new Outback can go through snow, remember?” I said. “She was thrilled to have a chance to try out its ‘all-wheel-drive capacity in the snow.’ That’s what she kept talking about all the way over here.”

  We exchanged a grin. My stepmother is great, but she is definitely a bit of a flake sometimes.

  Mary bent over Claire and said, “Now. You want to sprinkle the chocolate chips into the batter a few at a time. Then I’ll stir, and then you can add more. We’ll keep doing that until we’ve used up all the chocolate chips, okay?”

  “Okay,” said Claire importantly.

  I sniffed, appreciating the delicious aroma. Whatever Mrs. Pike was cooking smelled great. All safe and cozy in the kitchen with the Pikes and Mary, I suddenly felt as if the blizzard were just a big overgrown bunch of snowflakes. No problem. No problem at all.