Sydney Mackenzie Knocks 'Em Dead Read online

  We were at the front of my house, and Nick drove Goog down the path into the graveyard. He stopped when we got to the farthest edge of the cemetery. He cut the engine. The town below looked like a Christmas-card village.

  “It’s a great view,” he said. “So what did you think of that?”

  “It was really cool. Thanks for taking me.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said. He looked around the graveyard. “This place is great.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Maybe it is.”

  “Do you mean that?”

  “I really do,” I said.

  “How does it feel not to pretend that you like it?”

  “Good.” I smiled at Nick and at the sense of relief I felt over not having to act all the time.

  He revved up Goog again, but I tapped him on the shoulder, signaling him to cut it off again.

  “What’s up?”

  “About John Hancock—”

  He interrupted, “I already know, but thanks for telling me.” He turned the ignition back on and brought me to the front door. I took off the ski mask and gave it back.

  “You can give me the coat later.”

  I nodded. “Seriously, Nick. Thanks for the ride, the boots, and taking me to the library.”

  “No problem, Mac.” He took my helmet. “I think maybe you’re starting to like Buttermilk River Cove.”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  I watched Goog’s headlights until I couldn’t see them any longer.

  We hadn’t made any progress on the locket, but I had made progress on my relationship with this town.

  * chapter thirty *

  PROBLEM SOLVED?

  AFTER I SHOWERED, I CLIMBED into bed with the locket. I’m not sure why, but I put it on and thought about Ivy.

  Who was she?

  Why was she haunting Lay to Rest?

  Why was she haunting me? And why now?

  I thought it had to do with the basement. She didn’t want the renovations to hide her locket forever.

  How could I figure all of this out?

  I snapped up from bed.

  Wait!

  “The cemetery records!” I exclaimed to no one.

  That’s when it happened. . . .

  Thud.

  The first of the night.

  “The records?” I asked Ivy.

  Thud.

  The thuds didn’t scare me. Ivy heard me.

  “Okay,” I replied. “I will.”

  Thud.

  * chapter thirty-one *

  OATMEAL

  I WOKE TO THE SOUND of hammering. Jim was on the roof—again.

  I slippered down the stairs looking for Elliott. Instead, I found Roz in the kitchen. Her back was to me, and she was at the stove.

  Uh-oh.

  “Whatcha making, Roz?” I asked hesitantly.

  She turned to me with a smile and held up a wooden spoon. “It’s oatmeal. You want a taste?”

  I was a little afraid, but then something registered in my brain that made my mouth water —it smelled good. I took a nibble. “Wow! How did you learn to do that?”

  “I went to culinary school,” Roz said proudly.

  “You found a culinary school in Buttermilk River Cove?”

  “Well, it wasn’t exactly a school. Elliott hooked me up with a woman named Jackie O’Flynn who is the best cook around. She has a son in your class.”

  “Travis?”

  “That’s him! Elliott talked to her, and she invited me over. She taught me how to make oatmeal, egg salad, and grilled cheese sandwiches. We’re having egg salad for lunch and grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner.”

  She dished out two bowls of oatmeal.

  “You know what?” I asked.

  “What, Sydney?”

  “I don’t remember the last time we had breakfast together.”

  She thought. “I guess it has been a long time.”

  I said, “If you ever told me that we would be sitting in the kitchen of a haunted Victorian house in the middle of a cemetery eating hot, delicious oatmeal, made by my mom, I wouldn’t have believed you.”

  “Well, I’d agree with you, Syd, except about the haunted part. I thought we decided you were going to drop that.”

  “Correction. You decided that,” I said.

  “So, what are you doing today?”

  “I was hoping Elliott could show me around the office. Would that be okay?”

  “Of course it’s okay. It’s fantastic. I’m so glad you want to learn more about the business. You know, some day, this could all be yours.” She looked out the back window at the gloomy sky and gray headstones.

  This was a far cry from my dream to be a movie star. “Super,” I said. My mom didn’t pick up on the sarcasm; maybe there wasn’t much there.

  “Joyce has the day off, but Elliott is outside. I’m sure he’ll show you whatever you want to learn,” she said. “So do you like things a little better now? It sounded like you and your new friends had a good time the other night.”

  “Yeah. We did.” I didn’t tell her about the séance.

  I stared out the window and savored my last buttery spoonful. “Do you think the sun will ever come out, Mom?”

  She paused when I called her Mom but didn’t say anything. “I sure hope so, Sydney.”

  It started to rain. Both the front and back doors flew open at the same time. My dad came in the front, Elliott in the back.

  My dad said, “This rain will test my handiwork on the roof, huh?”

  I glanced up, expecting water to start dripping from the ceiling, but it didn’t.

  “Do you want oatmeal?” Mom asked.

  “Heck yeah!” Jim said. He dished some out for himself and Elliott.

  Elliott took a taste and said, “This is wonderful. Did Joyce leave it?”

  “Mom made it,” I bragged.

  “Really?” Jim paused. I wasn’t sure if it was about the oatmeal, or that I’d called her Mom.

  The wind whistled through the nooks and crannies of the old house. Elliott went to the workroom and returned with plain white pillar candles. He lit a few. “Just in case we lose the electricity,” he said.

  “Have you had electrical issues for a long time?” I asked. What I really wanted to know was Have you been haunted before? because according to Johanna hauntings and electrical snafus traveled together.

  “Forever it seems. They come and go.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’ll have a few weeks when it all goes whacky. I’ll get Joe Wesley from the hardware store up here to check things, and it’s all fine. After a while, it goes away. It’s fine for a long time and then happens again.”

  “Weird,” I said, but I didn’t think it was. I think Elliott had just described a continual series of hauntings. Either the spirits had found what they wanted and left, or they got tired of asking for help and not getting it. I wasn’t going to let that happen to Ivy.

  “Since I can’t work outside, do you want to check out the attic?” my dad asked Mom. “I bet there’s some cool stuff up there.”

  A big gust of wind blew again; the lights flickered and went out. Out!

  Mom said, “Nope.”

  “Oh come on,” Dad said. “Where’s your sense of adventure? It’ll be fun. I’ll be right there with you the whole time. No ghosts are gonna get you.” He squeezed her in a tight hug. “It might even be a little romantic. Besides, what else are you going to do on an ugly day like this?”

  Dad pulled her out of the room.

  “I guess I’m going to the attic. Sydney, maybe Elliott can show you that stuff in the office now. Oh, and send a rescue squad if I’m not back to make egg salad.”

  They retired to the attic, each double-fisted with candles. I didn’t imagine my mom was going to last long up there.

  * chapter thirty-two *

  THE MAP

  “WHAT DO YOU WANT TO do in the office?” Elliott asked.

  “Can you show me how we keep records o
f the . . . the . . . souls?”

  He lit the last candle. “Sure . . . ,” he said hesitantly. “Do you want to tell me why you are suddenly interested in the souls?”

  “Can’t a girl change her mind?”

  “Sure a girl can. But I don’t think you have. What’s up?” he asked.

  “Seriously? You wanna know?”

  He nodded.

  “Promise you won’t laugh?”

  He made an X over his heart.

  I filled him in on the thuds, the séance, the tunnel, the oven, the brick, and the locket. He listened to the whole thing and didn’t laugh once. It felt good to get it out and tell someone the truth, that at first I had just wanted her to leave and not possess anyone, but now I wanted to help her.

  “Let me see it,” he said.

  I unhooked the locket from my neck. “I thought that if I could find Ivy in the Lay to Rest records, I could figure out who she was, and maybe what she wants me to do with the locket.”

  “Well, that sounds like a good plan. But we’ll have a lot to comb through with only the name Ivy. We have decades of records.”

  “The brick said 1825. So we only have to look at one year.”

  The excitement faded from his face. “Bad news, Syd. There was a big fire, around the turn of the century. All the records earlier than 1900 were destroyed.”

  Ugh. “I’ll have to think of something else. I guess I could check out every stinking tombstone in the place.”

  “Checking every headstone would work, but it would take a very long time.” He dropped his chin onto his fist like he was thinking hard. Then he snapped his head up. “I have an idea.” He took a candle and disappeared, leaving me all alone at the table with the wind punching against the house. A few days ago I would’ve been scared enough to pee myself, but I sat by candlelight without even a flinch.

  Elliott reappeared in the room. If I’d just met his pale face with its extra dabs of eyeliner and lipstick, his neck wrapped in a snug scarf like Freddy from Scooby-Doo, I’d run in fear. But he smiled, and his eyes filled with kindness and enthusiasm when he held up a giant scroll, like an architect’s plans. “This,” he said, “just might help.”

  He rolled a rubber band off one end and unrolled a huge grid. “This is all computerized now, but we can look at how Lay to Rest is organized and decipher where people were buried in 1825. That will narrow down the search.” He pointed to the plot in the first row, first column. “This is the first person buried in 1602. And as you move to the right you see the next several. For the first hundred and fifty years this was a family cemetery.” Then he pointed to an area with small words and dates. “In 1749 she officially opened for business. The graves are marked here with the last name and date of death.”

  I studied the paper. All the deaths were April through November. “Isn’t it weird that no one died in the winter?”

  “They did, but they weren’t buried because the ground was too frozen to dig.”

  “So they were . . . were . . .”

  “Cremated.”

  “Lovely,” I said.

  “It’s a fact of the business, Syd,” Elliott said.

  “I know. I get it. That doesn’t mean I like it.” I looked at the grid some more. “What’s this?” I pointed to a small area way off to the side of the cemetery.

  “That’s called a potter’s field. It’s a space where people without money to pay for a plot are buried. There are no headstones and no records of those people.”

  “So, if Ivy is a first name, this map won’t show her. If she died in the winter, this map won’t show her. And if she was too poor to afford a plot, this won’t show her.”

  “Right, but it will show us the section of the cemetery in which people were buried in 1825. And that’s right here.” He pointed a manicured finger to the spots dated 1825. “If she died in Buttermilk River Cove in the spring, and could afford a burial, we can look for her in that section.”

  It was our only lead. “What’s this?” I pointed to a square on the paper.

  “That’s a mausoleum. They don’t really follow the date pattern. They have spaces for generations of family members to be included.”

  “So if she’s in a mausoleum, we probably won’t find her.”

  “Only by going inside each one and looking at the plaques,” he said.

  “Fab! That sounds like hours of great fun.”

  * chapter thirty-three *

  THE MESSAGE

  I WORE THE LOCKET TO school the next day. I went to Johanna’s and Mel’s cubbies. “My idiot brother can bring us,” Johanna said. “He’s going anyway.”

  “Cool,” Mel said.

  “Wanna go, Mac?” Johanna asked.

  “Sure,” I said. Yay! “Where?”

  “The hockey game tonight. Our Bulldogs are playing the Hyenas. They’ll probably have glow sticks. I love glow sticks”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever had a glow stick. But I love the idea of them,” I said.

  Mel said, “Then you’re in for a real treat.” But I could tell she didn’t think glow sticks were a treat at all.

  “Hey.” Johanna eyed the locket. “Can I wear it for a while?”

  My hand immediately went to my neck.

  Johanna said, “I thought that since I was such a spiritual Magoo the other night”—I caught a glimpse of Mel rolling her eyes at Johanna’s use of Magoo—“Ivy might try to communicate with me through the locket. You know, since I have a gift and all.”

  I thought she totally made sense. “Be careful with it.”

  “You betcha, Macky Magoo.” She went to class sliding the locket around her neck with her thumb and index finger.

  * * *

  I was the first one at the lunch table. I sat all alone for a few minutes, but anyone who has ever sat alone at a lunch table knows that sitting alone feels like forever. I pretended to be very busy in my backpack looking for something important, very important.

  Ah, I found it.

  A pen!

  By then Travis had joined me.

  He unpacked a tuna salad on a hamburger roll and a bag of ranch-flavored chips, lifted off the bun, laid the chips on top of the tuna, put the top of the bun back on, and pushed till the chips crunched. “Did ya hear?”

  “Hear what?” I asked.

  “Ivy gave JoJo a message.” He took a big, crunchy bite. “It’s in code.”

  Nick sat next to me. “Did ya hear?”

  “Yeah. What’s the code? What does it mean?” I asked.

  “It was some random numbers. Johanna thinks it’s a combination to a lock,” Nick said. He unpacked his lunch: meat loaf sandwich, apple, pretzels, and container of cafeteria-bought chocolate milk.

  “Well, where is she?” I asked. “I have to see it.”

  Travis set down the last few bites of his sandwich and rested his fingers on his temples. He closed his eyes.

  “What are you doing?” Nick asked.

  “I’m summoning Johanna to come to the cafeteria and tell us about the code.”

  Mel walked in with Johanna on her heels. “Check it out,” Travis said. “She can read my mind.”

  “Amazing,” I said.

  Johanna and Mel sat. Our eyes were glued to Johanna.

  “What are you guys staring at?” Mel asked.

  “I called you with my mind,” Travis said. “And then you appeared.”

  “I did? My mind was telling me to go to the caf. Do you think I’m telephonic? It’s like I have mental Wi-Fi.”

  “Telepathic,” Nick corrected. “Or it was lunchtime, so you came to the place where we eat lunch.”

  “Watch this,” Johanna said. “I bet I can guess what’s in my lunchbox without looking.”

  “So can I,” Nick said. “Chicken spread on an English muffin.”

  She frowned at him. “I can’t be expected to crack this code when I’m around such negativity.”

  “What’s the code?” I asked. She handed me a little paper, folded up really tigh
t. “Where did this come from?”

  “I was fiddling with the locket and it opened. This was inside.”

  I unfolded it.

  “It’s a mystery,” she said as I read the paper. Johanna continued, “I’m sure I can solve it—”

  “I already have,” I said. They looked at me with surprise. “I know exactly where Ivy wants us to go. At least, I know where this paper is telling us to go. Meet me at my house. Six o’clock. Wear your sludge-kickers. It’s gonna be muddy in the graveyard.”

  * chapter thirty-four *

  36-14H

  IT WAS VERY MUDDY. AND cold. And then it started snowing. “The paper had numbers and a letter: 36-14H,” I told my friends as we went into the cemetery. “They’re coordinates to a specific location in this graveyard.” My feet were totally dry in the sludge-kickers Nick had gotten me. “Thirty-six is a row.” We approached the front tombstones. “This is row one, row two, row three.” I walked and counted until I got to thirty-six.

  “Now what?” Travis asked.

  I said, “Fourteen is the headstone number. We want the fourteenth from the edge.”

  We followed the tombstones down the row and counted. But there were only thirteen. The next thing in the row was something we all knew well: the Dolan mausoleum.

  Johanna said, “I just got déjà voodoo.”

  “Why would Ivy have a paper with the location number of this place?” Travis asked.

  Nick took the paper from me. “How would Ivy know the cemetery’s numbering system?”

  I shrugged, because I had no idea. Bravely I said, “We have to find crypt H.”

  Mel said, “What are you waiting for?”

  I leaned into the heavy door. Its bottom scraped on the cement floor. Mel nudged me forward. “Go on,” she said, and she aimed the flashlight in front of me.

  The walls were lined with rectangular slabs of stone, each with a small metal plaque on which there was a name, birth date, and death date. The first was BEATRICE DOLAN, APRIL 16, 1712–AUGUST 30, 1763. My friends were close behind me, also studying words in the flashlight’s beam. I shined it from one plaque to the next until I got to the one that must’ve been H.

  IVY SHAW