Part Two

A week later, Di was awakened in the early hours of the morning by Coco, who was standing on her chest and mewing. She turned bleary eyes on the clock, only to groan and gently move the kitten aside.

“It’s too early. Go back to sleep,” she urged.

Moments later, Coco was back in the same position, not only mewing, but also digging in her small, sharp claws.

“Ouch! Okay, you have my attention. What is the problem?”

The kitten turned to look at something, then turned back and mewed most pitifully. A moment later, she repeated the sequence.

A chill ran down Di’s spine and any thought of sleep fled.

“What is it?” she whispered.

The kitten made a soft noise and walked across the bed. Di heard twin bumps as Coco jumped onto the floor. She strained her eyes to see where she had gone and caught a glimpse of a tail near the door.

With a heavy sigh, Di got out of bed and began to follow. The kitten scraped a paw on the closed door and Di eased it open. At once, Coco slipped through the gap and was off. With some difficulty, Di traced her pet to the staircase.

“Now what?” she asked aloud.

Coco mewed once more and began to ascend to the unused floor above.

“Now, wait just a minute,” Di told the cat. “I’m not going up there, alone and in the middle of the night.”

A door opened behind her and Di turned to see who she had disturbed.

“What’s wrong?” Honey’s voice asked.

“I didn’t mean to wake anyone.” Di apologised. “Coco woke me up. She seems to want me to go upstairs with her.”

“Wait. Let me come, too.”

A moment later, a soft click sounded as Honey switched on the overhead lights. Di blinked once or twice, trying to acclimatise. Honey’s hair looked rumpled, but she seemed wide awake. A few steps up, Coco waited impatiently.

“Let’s go,” Honey suggested, setting her foot on the steps.

At once, Coco started ascending. Every few steps, she looked back to check that they were still following. At the top, they paused, while Honey fumbled for the next light switch. At length she found it and the topmost hallway was flooded with a dim light.

“It’s kind of creepy up here,” Di noted, shivering. “I kind of wish we’d renovated this floor, too.”

Honey shook her head. “What reason could we have given? Trixie is still sore about what we already did.”

Unable to answer this, Di turned to her cat. “Well, Coco? What did you bring us up here for?”

The kitten wound herself around Di’s legs, rubbed against a corner of the wall and then walked down the hall. Halfway along, she sat down and stared at something in mid-air.

“This is what she did before?” Honey asked in a low voice. “I mean, the first time you noticed something odd. I saw her do it the time with Trixie’s book.”

Di nodded. “What do you think she’s doing?”

Honey swallowed. “It looks like she’s looking at something that’s not there.”

“Or, something we can’t see,” Di added. “Isn’t this spot right above the other one?”

After a moment’s thought, Honey agreed. “As near as I can tell, yes.” She shuddered. “If Coco wants us to follow her into the attic, I’m not going.”

“Me, neither.” She frowned. “Do you think we should go and get Trixie?”

Honey was about to answer when Coco’s head moved. She seemed to track something across the hall and lost interest when her gaze rested on a closed door. Without a glance at the two young women, she walked past them and down the stairs.

“Let’s go,” Di urged, not bothering to turn off the light. “I’m not staying up here if she leaves.”

Honey agreed with the sentiment and they each returned to their own room. When Di reached hers, Coco was already making herself comfortable at the foot of the bed.

“What was that all about?” she demanded of the cat, only to be met with silence.

Grumbling under her breath, Di got back into bed and tried to sleep.

“Why were the lights on when I got up this morning?” Trixie asked, when the three met over dinner that night.

Honey and Di shared a glance, making a non-verbal agreement for Honey to field the question.

“We got woken by the cat and followed her on a wild goose chase.” Her eyes opened wider. “Oh! We never did turn them off, did we? Did you find the one upstairs, too?”

Trixie nodded, but did not seem satisfied with that answer. “What did the cat do?”

Reluctantly, Di repeated what had happened. When she had finished, Trixie asked which door the cat had looked at.

“Which door?” Di echoed, surprised. “I don’t know. I’ve hardly ever been up there before.”

“Can you show me, after we’ve finished eating, I mean?”

Honey nodded. “I guess so. Does it matter?”

Trixie shrugged and tried to change the subject to some sporting competition that interested neither of her friends. The ploy was doomed to failure.

“What is it you know, that you think there’s something significant about the behaviour of the cat?” Honey demanded.

“Know? I was just wondering if we had mice or something.” Trixie’s tone was nonchalant, but the faint tinge of pink in her cheeks gave her away.

“No, I think it’s time you told us,” Honey insisted. “Please, Trix. You’ve never left us out of a mystery before and I don’t think you should start now.”

The appeal worked. With a sigh, Trixie set her fork down and looked at each of her friends in turn.

“Promise you won’t freak out and leave and never come back?”

Honey and Di shared a glance.

“Are you serious?” Di blurted. “I’m not going to make a commitment like that! I might leave now, without hearing whatever it is you’ve uncovered, just in case.”

“We’re not going to do anything rash,” Honey put in, giving Di a quelling look. “Just tell us and we’ll do our best not to freak, okay?”

Trixie seemed uncertain, but nodded. “Well, I didn’t know this until the day we found my book open upstairs–”

Di broke in. “If you’re going to tell us that you discovered that this was the house where that bungled case happened, I’m going to–”

“React very calmly,” Honey interrupted, smiling. “Go on, Trixie.”

“Actually, I didn’t find that this was the same house. I kind of half-expected I might, because it looks eerily similar, but it’s not.” She made a helpless gesture. “I guess, maybe, when I was looking for a house to buy, I might have subconsciously connected this house with the picture in that book, but I didn’t consciously remember it.”

“It’s okay, Trixie,” Honey soothed. “So, what did you actually discover?”

Her friend took a deep breath. “A long time ago, a certain man came back from out west after like thirty years or something, only to find that the house he had grown up in had been torn down while he was away and an office building put up in its place. He was kind of mad about that, since he’d wanted to buy it back, so he got someone to draw plans for another, identical house. He had that house built in a different town and lived in it for a while.”

“Was that this house?” Di asked, frowning.

Trixie shook her head. “I’ll tell you when I get to this house. That first house wasn’t quite right, so he picked another town and had another house built with some alterations to the original design. It still wasn’t quite right, so he did that again. The fourth house he built was this one. He didn’t like it, either, so he tried one more time.”

“What was he doing with all the other houses?” Honey wondered. “Did he keep them all?”

Once again, Trixie shook her head. “I think he sold them. While he was living in the fifth house, the case that was outlined in that book occurred.”

Di’s eyes widened. “So, what you’re saying is that a murderer lived here? That he had this house built and lived here and went on to kill someone in the next house he built, which was just the same as this one?”

“I didn’t say he was a murderer,” Trixie clarified. “In fact, in the case in that book, he wasn’t.”

“How can you tell that?” Di asked.

“Because he was the victim?” Honey guessed.

It was clear from Trixie’s face that the guess was correct. “His killer never lived here. The man who built this place didn’t even meet him until he moved to the next house.”

“So, what’s wrong with this house, then?” Di wanted to know.

Trixie looked away. “You remember I told you that the police bungled the investigation by going off on wild tangents?”

Honey nodded. “Was one of them to do with this house?”

“It was. Not long before he left here, the man’s wife disappeared, never to be seen again.”

Di’s eyes widened. “So, he was a killer after all! He killed his wife here and went to live somewhere else. She’s probably buried in the back yard, or something.”

“That’s not what the police thought at the time,” Trixie answered. “They found a woman who they accused of being his runaway wife, and arrested her for his murder.”

“Yes, but you already said the police in this case were incompetent.” Di waved the matter away. “What would they know?”

“I never said they were incompetent – though, they might have been.” Trixie shrugged. “I don’t think that’s too important right now. Anyway, the case was reinvestigated later and they found her body buried in the cellar of the other house. There wasn’t anything to show whether her husband had murdered her, or if his murderer had killed her as well. But she’s definitely not in the back yard here.”

“Am I supposed to be relieved about that?” Di asked.

Trixie did not hesitate. “Yes.”

“Well, I’m relieved,” Honey added. “So, what else is there, Trixie?”

“Not much. Only that the house – this house, I mean – kind of got a bad reputation in connection with the house where the man’s murder took place.” She shrugged. “You can’t blame people for mixing them up; they look almost identical. I’m not certain, but I think the same problem happened with the other houses. Of the five, there’s only two still standing – this one and the first one he built.”

Di’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of bad reputation?”

Trixie made a vague gesture. “You know; weird stuff happening and that kind of thing.”

The other two shared a look.

“But, Trixie, weird stuff has been happening here.” Honey kept her voice gentle, but there was a hard edge underneath. “Maybe there’s something more to the reputation than just an association with a house where a murder happened.”

Di’s response was more blunt. “They say this house is haunted, don’t they? That’s what Coco’s been seeing, isn’t it? When she stops and stares at nothing, she’s looking at ghosts.”

“I don’t think so,” Trixie answered. “Why should she look at ghosts? And she’s not scared, so they can’t be bad ghosts, even if she is.”

“Let’s look at this logically,” Honey suggested. “We know that the man – actually, Trixie, what was his name?”

“Elmore B. Cooper.”

Honey frowned for a moment. “Okay, so Elmore Cooper had this house built and lived in it with his wife, right? Then, just as the new house is being finished, the wife disappears. Elmore moves into the new house, where he’s promptly murdered. Is that right?”

“Yes,” Trixie answered. “Though, I think he’d been living in the new house for a few months when he died.”

She waved that away. “Near enough. So, when did the reputation start? Was it right after he moved out, or right after the murder, or later?”

“How am I supposed to answer that?” Trixie asked. “It’s not the sort of thing you can pin down to an exact moment.”

“But, if it could be,” Honey argued, “we could tell whether we need to look at things that happened here later, of if we can put it all down to Elmore. If things started happening here as soon as he left – or, before he left, even – it would practically prove that it must be his wife’s ghost. What was her name, by the way?”

“Eleanor.” Trixie screwed up her nose. “Elmore and Eleanor.”

For the first time since the conversation began, Di giggled. “I think that’s a warning to us all – be careful of the names of men you think you might marry.”

“It would have been worse if it was his last name,” Trixie pointed out. “What if you end up as Diana Dyer?”

“How about Honey Hunter, or Trixie Trent?” Di added.

Trixie pulled a dreadful face. “Me, marry Paul Trent? You’ve got to be kidding!”

“He might have an attractive brother,” Di argued. “Or, maybe you could be Trixie Tricker. That would be a thousand times worse.”

“I’d keep my maiden name,” Trixie answered. “And so would either of you.”

“But, what if it is Eleanor’s ghost causing things to happen?” Honey asked, when they had finished laughing. “What are we going to do about it?”

“Leave,” Di suggested, at once. “She’s welcome to the place. I’m sure you can get a better price for it than you paid, because we’ve already done so much work.”

“But I love this house!” Trixie cried. “I don’t want to sell.”

“Then we need to solve this problem,” Honey decided. “Let’s assume that it’s really Eleanor. What is it that she wants?”

“Justice?” Trixie shook her head. “I can’t see how she can have it, now. Her murderer must be dead – both Elmore and his killer are, and it really can’t have been anyone else, can it?”

“I don’t know – you’re the one who told the story.” Di rolled her eyes. “How could we even prove which of them it was?”

“We can’t,” Trixie answered. “It was so many years before her body was found that there wasn’t really any evidence. They weren’t even sure how she died.”

“Maybe it’s something else she wants,” Honey suggested. “Maybe she has some unfinished business of some kind. If we could figure out what it is, maybe she could rest in peace.”

Diana nodded, thinking. “So, Trixie, why did you want to know which door Coco was looking at?”

“Oh! I nearly forgot that part.” She glanced from one friend to the other, looking a little worried. “See, I spoke to a lady next door, who told me about one of the rooms upstairs and I wondered if it was that one the cat was interested in.”

“What did she say?” Di asked, in a breathless voice.

Trixie hesitated. “Only that sometimes, people have thought they’d seen someone at the window, when there was actually no one here.”

“Eleanor,” Honey whispered. “I’ll bet it’s her.”

“She must be keeping watch over the house,” Di surmised. “I wonder what she’s looking for.”

“Well, I’m not going to eat another bite,” Honey announced, pushing away her plate. “Let’s go upstairs and see if we can find anything.”

The other two agreed and they were soon standing in the same place that Honey and Di had stood the night before.

“Which door was it?” Di asked, frowning. “I can’t decide if it was this one or that one.”

“The second one,” Honey answered. “That’s where she stopped, and we were thinking it was right above the place with the book.”

Trixie’s face lit up. “Oh! You’re right; I’m pretty sure it is.”

The three moved to the spot where the cat had been and began to look around. After a few moments, Trixie opened the door and peered into the room.

“I think this is the one.” She took a couple of steps inside. “If it is, we should be able to see…. Yes, look: I can see the neighbour’s house – the lady I told you about – from here.”

She unlatched the window and pushed it open. Leaning out, she tried to see any other windows on that side of the house.

“Don’t do that!” Di urged. “What if you fell out?”

Trixie looked down. “I’d bounce off that ledge and land on that bit of roof and slide down onto whatever it is below that, which I can’t see.”

“And go splat on the ground,” Di added with a shiver.

“Shut the window, Trixie,” Honey directed. “None of us want you to go splat.”

With a grumble, Trixie did as she was told. She frowned when the latch unhooked itself as soon as she took her hand off it.

“It’s loose. I guess I’ll have to put it on my list of things to fix,” she noted, with a shrug.

She made a second attempt, which secured the window.

“At least you won’t have to worry about burglars getting in that way.” Honey glanced out at the long way to the ground. “You’d have to be practically superhuman to climb all the way up here.”

Trixie took one last look around the room. “Well, there’s not much to see here. Let’s go up to the attic. Maybe there’s something above this that could tell us something.”

They made their way up the narrow flight of stairs that led to the attic, but the door at the top would not open. Trixie pushed and pulled, banged and rattled, but to no avail.

“It’s jammed fast,” she admitted, at last. “I can’t think how to open it, unless we go get a sledgehammer, or something.”

“I don’t think it’s that important, is it?” Di asked, alarmed. “Maybe it’s swollen or something and if we come back another day it will have unstuck.”

“It’s been dry lately,” Trixie argued, brow furrowed. “Why should it swell up? Unless there’s a water pipe leaking somewhere.”

Honey shook her head. “I don’t think there are any pipes up here to leak. There aren’t any fixtures on this level, are there?”

“In which case, it’s not important enough to break the door down,” Di finished, turning around and starting down the stairs.

Trixie glared at the door, then turned away. “Okay, I’ll leave it for now, but as soon as I can figure out what kind of tool I need, I’ll be back to have another try.”

“Let’s go back to that window and see if we can figure out what Eleanor’s watching over,” Di suggested, moving in that direction. “Maybe that will give us a clue.”

They had soon crowded around the window, looking this way and that.

“All I can see is a patch of the yard,” Honey noted, frowning. “And I can’t even figure out which part. Everything looks different from up here.”

Di shivered. “It’s getting too dark to tell. Let’s go down now and try again sometime in daylight.”

Trixie looked disappointed, but agreed. “It would be better if at least one of us was down there and one of us up here. That way, we could tell which part was which.”

They began to leave the room, but in the doorway Honey stopped short. In front of her was Coco, staring at a point in mid-air. She turned to them and mewed, then padded off down the hall.

“It’s okay, Eleanor,” Di whispered. “We’re leaving, now. You can have your window back.”

On the following Saturday morning, Trixie got everyone up early to continue the investigation. Honey volunteered to be the one in the upstairs room, while Trixie scrambled around in the garden below. Diana hesitated to choose between the two, but at length decided to go with Honey. In spite of the work that had been done, the yard was still in a rather wild state.

The two climbed the stairs together and went straight to the window. It opened easily and they both looked down to see if Trixie was in sight. At first, she was not, no matter what they did.

“Trixie?” Honey called. “Are you there?”

“Sorry!” Her voice floated up to them. “Wrong window.”

They could just make out the sound of thrashing in the undergrowth, then Trixie tumbled into – and out of – view.

“We saw you for a moment,” Honey yelled.

“Just a minute,” came the reply.

A few more moments passed, while the branches of a particularly unruly shrub were agitated. Then Trixie appeared.

“I see you! How’s this?”

“Can you go a bit more that way?” Honey suggested. “All we can see is your head.”

Trixie struggled a bit more, stumbling once or twice, and then arrived in the right spot.

“That’s it!” Honey cried.

Their friend looked down at the place she was standing, and her expression changed. “Come down and look!”

Honey reached out and closed the window and the two raced down the stairs. They emerged into the yard and picked their way through the garden to the place where Trixie waited, impatiently shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

“What is it?” Honey demanded. “What did you find?”

“This!” Trixie indicated something that neither of the others could even see among the undergrowth.

“What?” asked Di, not moving from her position. “I don’t see anything.”

Trixie struggled to push back one of the bushes, with limited success. “Come closer. You won’t be able to see from there.”

Honey and Di shared a look, then Honey went to examine their friend’s find.

“Oh! I think it might be the base of a bird-bath,” she announced, after a few moments’ frowning. “Maybe Eleanor liked birds.”

Trixie glanced from the broken concrete to the window and gasped. “Look! It’s her!”

Both of her friends turned startled gazes on the window. Honey covered her mouth with her hand and Di gave a little squeal.

“Oh! You’re right,” Honey whispered. “She’s watching us. What do we do?”

Di shook her head. “I think she’s gone, now. Maybe we should – I don’t know – go inside, or go out on the street, or get in the car and drive far, far away from here.”

“I’m not being driven out of my house by a bird-loving ghost,” Trixie answered, stamping her foot.

“Well, what are you going to do about her?” Diana demanded. “I don’t want to live here with her.”

Trixie’s expression altered. “I don’t know. I’m sure we’ll think of something, but right now I’m stumped. I’ve never had to deal with a mystery that’s impossible to solve before, or a problem that can only be solved by guessing. Maybe it’s that she hates birds and is making sure they don’t come back.”

“If you want me to come back,” Di suggested, only half-joking, “you’ll come up with a solution. I think I’ve had enough of this for today. I’m going shopping. Anyone want to come?”

Honey agreed, shooting Trixie an apologetic look. “See you later, Trix.”

“Fine. I’ll see what I can come up with,” Trixie offered. “I might do some digging and see what else I can find.”

Honey looked dubious. “I don’t know how much else there is to find about Eleanor. Why would anyone want to record whether she liked birds?”

“I meant literal digging,” Trixie answered, giggling. “In the garden.”

“Oops! That does make more sense,” Honey replied. “We’ll be back later to see what you unearth.”

Later in the afternoon, the pair had returned with their purchases and exchanged a few words with a dirty and weary Trixie. She was still in the garden, but had failed to find anything of interest. They avoided the topic of the ghost over dinner by mutual consent and at length each went to her own room.

Di was in the middle of getting ready for bed when she noticed Coco acting strangely, once again.

“What? No! Not again,” she muttered, making a little gesture of frustration.

The kitten mewed at her mistress and padded away down the hall. At the stairs, she glanced back to see if Di was still behind her, and then started up. Di followed, grumbling under her breath all the way. At the top, the little cat stopped short and began to sniff. A shiver ran up Di’s spine and she at once felt chilled. A whisper of sound reached her ears from somewhere down the darkened hallway. Coco sniffed some more and peered at something only she could see.

After a tense moment of waiting, an eerie creaking sound began. Di waited no longer. She scooped up her pet and raced down the stairs, along the hall and into her room, locking the door behind her. She set Coco down and did not even notice when the normally placid animal glared at her and stalked under the bed to hide. She snatched up her phone and made a call.

“Honey?” she asked, when it was answered. “There’s something weird happening upstairs. We’ve got to get out of here, right now.”

“What happened?” her friend demanded. “Tell me everything!”

Di repeated the sequence of events in a slightly less-than-coherent manner, but Honey seemed to have no trouble in following.

“Let’s get Trixie and check it out,” Honey suggested. “I think this might be the break we need.”

“I’m not going up there again, even if you can find a hundred people to come with us. Weren’t you listening? There’s a ghost up there!”

Honey paused only a moment. “Well, actually, from what you just said, I think that it’s not that there’s a ghost up there, but that there’s not a ghost up there.”

“I heard –”

“A door creaking,” Honey finished for her. “Di! Ghosts don’t use doors. They go straight through them.”

Di huffed. “Then, it’s not a ghost up there, but something that’s not a ghost, which is even worse.”

A tap sounded on the door, making her jump.

“That’s me outside your door, by the way,” Honey told her. “Let me in and we can talk face to face.”

Still gripped by irrational fear, Di hesitated for a few moments before disengaging the lock. Once Honey was inside, she locked it again and ended the phone call.

“What do we do, Honey? I feel like the woman in the floaty nightgown in an old horror movie. Any minute now, I’m going to start screaming my head off.”

Honey gave her a quick hug. “We’re going to be fine. First thing we need to do is call Trixie. I’ll do that now.”

In a few moments, Honey had invited Trixie to join them, warning her first of their theory. Almost before she had finished talking, Trixie was tapping on the door.

“It’s me,” she called.

Honey opened the door and admitted her, and then locked it once more.

“What’s going on?” Trixie wanted to know. “Tell me everything!”

“I thought it was a ghost,” Di began, “only Honey is sure that it’s not a ghost.”

“It was the cat who figured it out,” Honey added. “She could smell someone – and ghosts don’t go through doors. Wait, I mean, they go through doors, not through them, if you see what I mean. Let me try that again: they don’t open doors before they go through them, they just go through them without opening them first, while they’re still closed.”

Trixie stared from one to the other. “Can you please tell me what happened, in the order that it happened?”

The three burst into nervous giggles, then Di attempted to relate what had happened. The second retelling was more ordered than the first and soon Trixie had made the same deductions as Honey before her.

“What are we going to do about this, Trixie?” Honey wanted to know. “There must have been a reason why this person, whoever they are, managed to avoid being found by us whenever we looked. And are we safe here, while they’re roaming free about the house?”

“Could there be secret passages?” Di asked, giving the nearest wall a suspicious look.

Trixie shook her head at once. “No, I did a lot of measuring when I first bought the house. I’m sure there’s no unaccounted-for spaces.” She frowned. “Really, the only way would be –” She broke off, staring at the window.

“What is it?” Honey demanded, catching her friend’s arm. “What did you see?”

Their friend shook her head again. “I didn’t see anything, except in my mind. What’s the only real way that you could get around this house, without any of us seeing you?”

Di walked over to the window and looked out. Just below it was a small ledge, like those under many of the upper windows of the house. She turned back to the others.

“Trixie, if you’re going to tell me our intruder is a monkey, I’m still not going upstairs to find it.”

“I wasn’t thinking of an animal,” Trixie answered.

“Well, it can’t be a person,” Honey argued. “How could they be climbing around outside the house without falling to their death? I feel dizzy just thinking about it.”

“I don’t think they’ve done it all that often. Just whenever necessary to avoid us.”

“And they’ve been hiding in the attic,” Di added, as the thought occurred to her. “That’s why you couldn’t open the door, because they’d secured it from the other side. They were probably in there, while we were trying to get in.”

Trixie gave a grim nod. “But, if we call the police, will they think we’re just hysterical females, imagining noises?”

“Probably,” Honey admitted. “I would think that, if someone told me all this.”

“In that case, we just need to catch them for ourselves,” Trixie answered.

“But they could be dangerous!” Di cried. “We can’t go looking for them. Let’s just wait here until morning and then see if we can get some kind of help.”

In that moment, Trixie’s eyes widened and then she bolted for the door. It took her a few moments to unlock it and then she dashed out.

“Where are you going?” Di called after her.

“I saw him!” she answered, while running up the stairs.

Honey and Di shared a worried and incredulous look, before taking off after her. They heard a loud thump from one of the rooms and followed the sound inside. There, they found Trixie wrestling with someone on the floor. Honey turned the light on and both she and Di gasped in shock.

“But, it’s a child,” Di exclaimed.

The boy stopped his struggles. “I am not!”

Di raised an eyebrow at him. “Really? How old are you, then?”

“Fourteen,” he grumbled. At Di’s unbelieving expression, he added, “Nearly.”

“And what are you doing here?”

Her answer, that time, was a careless shrug.

“That’s easy enough,” Trixie answered for him. “He used to live in this house, before I bought it. When his mother and siblings left, he must have stayed – or come back.”

“Says who?” the boy grunted.

“I saw you one time, when I was here to look at the house.” She looked him over. “You were better fed back then.”

“What are you going to do with me?” he demanded, with a show of bravado. “You want to turn me in to Social Services, or something?”

The three young women shared glances.

“We have been known to assist runaway teenage boys in the past,” Trixie noted, in a soft voice.

“The teenage boys in question had real and pressing reasons for running away,” Honey pointed out.

Di looked at the boy and saw fear behind the tough exterior he was trying to show. “What is it that you want us to do?”

His brows furrowed for a moment, then he looked Di in the eyes for a long moment. He must have been satisfied with what he saw, for he blurted out, “Help me find where my mother went.”

“Well, that’s easy,” Trixie answered. “She left her number with me. She said something about a delivery she was afraid would go to the wrong address. I’m pretty sure I’ve still got it somewhere.”

Di and Honey both groaned at the word “somewhere.”

“Come down to the kitchen and we’ll get you something to eat while we wait,” Di offered. “It might take Trixie an hour or two to find it.”

Their friend rolled her eyes. “I’m sure it won’t. In fact, I think I put it in my phone so I wouldn’t lose it.”

She fished around in her pockets and pulled out the phone. In no time at all she was talking to someone. The other three listened to her side of the conversation.

“Oh, hello. This is Trixie – I bought the house where you were living and you left me this number… Yes, that’s right…. No, it’s not anything like that. It’s just that one time when I saw you at the house, I also saw – yes, he is…. Yes, of course.”

She handed the phone to the boy, saying, “She wants to talk to you.”

All three of the young women took a few steps back to give him a little space. In only a few minutes, he handed the phone back to Trixie.

“She’s coming to get me. She’ll be here in ten minutes.”

“That’s great,” Di told him, smiling. Then, her smile faded. “But, before you go, I need to know whether you’ve been teasing my cat.”

A guilty look crossed his face. “Teasing?”

“You have,” Di answered. “I just knew it.”

“And you had my book,” Trixie added. “What else did you take?”

“Nothing!” he cried. “I put everything back; honest!”

“I haven’t noticed anything missing. Except that time with your book, which you got back.” Honey shrugged. “Surely, we would have noticed.”

“I didn’t take anything. Not even food.”

Honey’s face clouded. “What have you been living on?”

He shrugged, seeming unwilling to answer.

The three women shared a look.

“Well, at least our mystery is solved,” Di noted. “I’m glad it wasn’t anything sinister.”

She led the way out of the room and the whole group started down the stairs. As they passed the next floor, none of them noticed Coco. She sat in the hallway, tracking something that, had they looked, none of them would have seen.

The End