Cape Mermaid Mystery Read online

  “—when you were pretending to be her ghost. You really, really scared Michaela and Emma!” George spoke up.

  “No, no, that’s all wrong!” Mrs. Bishop said, holding up her hands. “I mean, yes, I was at the cottage. But I wasn’t pretending to be a ghost. You see, I’m trying to raise money to have my grandmother’s cottage fixed up and returned to its original condition. You saw what it was like. It’s very run-down. The cottage is an important part of Cape Mermaid history because of who my grandmother was. It should be restored, and there should be a placard—a sign—in front, telling visitors all about it and about her work as an artist.” She added, “I was at the cottage yesterday making a list of everything that has to be done to fix it up.”

  Nancy considered this. “So you weren’t trying to scare Michaela and Emma?”

  “Absolutely not! I saw those girls peeking through the front window, and the next thing I knew, they screamed their heads off and ran away,” Mrs. Bishop explained.

  Nancy realized that Michaela and Emma must have seen Mrs. Bishop through the window and thought she was a ghost. That made sense.

  She remembered that Mrs. Bishop was wearing white yesterday. With her long gray hair, she could have looked a little ghostly, especially through a dirty, hard-to-see-through window.

  But George had more questions for Mrs. Bishop.

  “Were you in the attic of the Mermaid Inn on Monday night, making spooky noises and writing a spooky message?” she said. “And have you been haunting the Cape Mermaid Public Library, too?”

  “Haunting the library? My goodness, no. And no, I wasn’t in the attic of the Mermaid Inn doing anything spooky.” Mrs. Bishop sighed and shook her head. “I don’t know what this ghost nonsense is about. But I would really like you girls to stop spreading stories about my grandmother’s so-called ghost haunting the four corners of Cape Mermaid. It’s been hurting my efforts to raise money for her cottage. Come, I’ll show you.”

  She gestured for Nancy, George, Bess, and Hannah to follow her into the Coral Room.

  She stopped in front of the Rowena Ellison exhibit and pointed to the photograph of the cottage.

  “See how beautiful it used to be?” she said brightly. “It was built by her husband as a wedding present for her. She used the cottage mostly as an artist’s studio. On rainy days she would paint inside. On sunny days she would paint outside, looking out toward the sea. She was most famous for her seascapes.”

  Nancy turned her gaze to Rowena Ellison’s sea paintings, which were mounted side by side on the wall. Then she noticed something she hadn’t seen before: Rowena Ellison’s tiny signature, in the lower right-hand corner of each of her paintings.

  Nancy leaned forward and studied the signatures intently.

  The handwriting looked like the handwriting of the HELP ME message in the attic. The letters were kind of block-y, and the two Ls in Ellison that were in caps were just like the letter L in the word HELP had been.

  “Hannah, do you have your digital camera with you?” Nancy asked her suddenly.

  Hannah dug into her purse. “Yes, of course.”

  “Can I borrow it? I need to take a picture,” Nancy replied.

  Hannah handed the camera to Nancy. “A picture of what?”

  “Of this.” Nancy pointed to Rowena Ellison’s signature. She took the camera and pressed various buttons. She zoomed in on the signature and clicked away.

  “Kids and their technology,” Hannah said to Mrs. Bishop with a chuckle. “She knows how to use that camera better than I do!”

  MICHAELA: Do I have chocolate on my face?

  EMMA: No, silly! Hey, Tessie, is the camera on?

  TESSIE: Yes, it’s on! Guys, come on, I’m ready to start!

  EMMA: Okay, okay! You don’t have to be so mean about it!

  It was Wednesday night. Nancy, George, Bess, Tessie, Michaela, and Emma were gathered around Tessie’s computer, watching the video footage of the ghost mystery so far. Tessie had a bunch of separate clips, from several weeks ago to now. This one was from the previous afternoon.

  TESSIE: Michaela and Emma, you saw Rowena’s ghost staring at you through the window of her cottage. Please tell us in your own words . . . what did she look like? Did she say anything to you?

  MICHAELA: She was superscary.

  EMMA: Yeah, super-superscary!

  Nancy spoke up. “Hey, Tessie? This is interesting, but . . . could you rewind or fast-forward or whatever to the stuff from Monday night? I want to compare the handwriting on the wall to Rowena’s signature from her paintings.”

  “Sure!” Tessie pressed the rewind button. A few seconds later she hit the pause button. The screen froze on the image of the words HELP ME scrawled on the dusty attic wall.

  Nancy scrolled through the photos on Hannah’s camera and found the ones she’d taken at the museum that afternoon of Rowena Ellison’s signature. Then she gazed at the computer screen. The handwriting did look similar.

  Tessie peered over Nancy’s shoulder. “They look exactly the same! See? That’s proof that Rowena Ellison’s ghost really exists. Right, guys?” She elbowed Michaela and Emma, who were sitting on either side of her.

  “Right!” Michaela and Emma said in unison.

  “But what about what Mrs. Bishop said?” George piped up. “She said there is no ghost of her grandmother.”

  “Well, she’s wrong,” Tessie insisted. “Hey, you guys want to see my interviews of Mrs. Yamada?” she added brightly.

  While Tessie pressed the fast-forward button, Nancy pulled the mermaid notebook out of her backpack and began flipping through the pages. She wanted to find the entry about the “Help me” message and read what she’d written.

  But Nancy accidentally turned too many pages at once and landed on a blank one. She started to turn back when she noticed something odd.

  There were faint, almost invisible marks all over this particular page. They looked like impressions or indentations from someone’s writing on the previous page.

  But that page had been ripped out.

  Nancy curled the notebook over so she could see just that single page against the light. Squinting, she could make out a single phrase, written over and over again:

  Help me

  Help me

  Help me

  Help me

  Help me

  Help me

  Nancy whirled around to Michaela. “You’re the ghost!” she cried out.

  Michaela began twirling a lock of her hair around and around her index finger. “Ha-ha, that’s superfunny,” she said nervously.

  “Nancy, what are you talking about?” George asked her.

  Nancy held the notebook page up to the light so that everyone could see. “Someone wrote the words ‘Help me’ over and over again on the page before this one, like they were trying to copy Rowena’s handwriting,” she said, pointing. “It had to be Michaela. She gave me this notebook yesterday. She tore some pages out first, though.”

  Bess put her hands on her hips. “Michaela, that’s awful!” she cried out. “Why have you been pretending to be Rowena’s ghost?”

  Michaela looked away. “I didn’t! I mean, I kind of did, but it’s only because Tessie said—”

  “Michaela, be quiet!” Tessie ordered her.

  “Tessie said what?” Nancy asked Michaela.

  “Tessie, we have to tell them the truth,” Emma spoke up.

  Tessie frowned at Emma and Michaela. Then she let out a heavy sigh. “Oh . . . fine,” she said finally.

  Tessie opened her desk drawer and pulled out a piece of light green paper. She slid it across the desk toward Nancy, George, and Bess.

  Nancy looked over it quickly. It was a flyer for a contest. It said:

  Nancy glanced up. “A filmmaker’s competition?”

  Tessie nodded, her blue eyes shining. “Yup! As soon as I saw this, I knew we had to enter the competition! I even came up with this awesome idea to make a short documentary about Rowena Ellison’s ghost and h
ow she was haunting Cape Mermaid.”

  “The problem was, there was no ghost. And a documentary is supposed to be a movie about the truth, about stuff that really happened,” Emma piped up. “So we decided to make up a ghost and pretend she was real.”

  “We saw the Rowena Ellison exhibit at the history museum on a school field trip last spring,” Michaela explained. “We thought Rowena would make a supercool ghost.”

  “Soooooo . . . the noises in the attic on Monday night? And the message on the wall?” Bess asked the three girls.

  “We came up with that plan right after spaghetti and meatballs,” Emma said sheepishly. “Later, after Michaela and I said good-bye to you guys and left Tessie’s room, we went up to the attic and, you know, did our ghost thing.”

  “We snuck back down the other stairs—the back stairs—and left through the kitchen,” Michaela continued. “No one saw us. And you were right, Nancy. I wrote the words ‘Help me’ on the wall. I practiced Rowena’s handwriting over and over again.”

  Nancy considered all this. “What about the video you recorded at Rowena’s cottage two weeks ago? How did you fake that?” she asked Tessie.

  “Easy! We found some shimmery white cloth in the attic,” Tessie replied. “We took it out to Rowena’s cottage one day. Emma held it up with a stick and Michaela shined a flashlight through it. The wind was kind of blowing it around too. It really looked like a ghost!”

  “It really did!” Bess agreed.

  “What about Mrs. Yamada’s stories?” George said. “Was she helping you guys pretend about Rowena’s ghost?”

  Tessie shook her head. “No way! She heard we were making a movie about the ghost, and she told us all that stuff. My mom always said Mrs. Yamada is very, um, imaginative.”

  “Yeah. Last year, Mrs. Yamada thought she saw a unicorn in the woods near the beach,” Michaela said, giggling.

  Nancy was silent for a moment. “Okay, so, now we know the whole truth,” she said finally. “Still, it wasn’t very nice of you guys to lie to us before.”

  “I know, and I’m so, so sorry!” Tessie apologized. “It’s just that . . . well . . . we were so psyched when you guys showed up and said you had a detective club called the Clue Crew. We thought that would make our movie even better if you tried to find Rowena’s ‘ghost.’”

  “I’m sorry too!” Michaela said.

  “I’m sorry three!” Emma added. “If we take you out for ice cream tomorrow, will you forgive us?”

  “Yes!” Bess said, raising her hand.

  Everyone laughed.

  On the last night of their vacation in Cape Mermaid, Nancy pulled out her mermaid notebook and wrote:

  Well, everyone knows the truth now. There is no ghost of Rowena Ellison.

  Tessie, Michaela, and Emma told their parents, Mrs. Bishop, Mrs. Yamada, and lots of other people the whole story. Plus, they said they were sorry.

  I think Tessie’s parents said she can’t watch TV or use her computer for the rest of the month because of what she did. (I think Michaela’s and Emma’s parents said the same thing.)

  Tessie’s parents also said that the girls should make a new movie, about Rowena Ellison and her cottage and how it needs to be fixed up. Tessie thought that was a great idea, so that’s what they’re going to do.

  Tessie said that if they win the movie contest, they’re going to give the prize money to Mrs. Bishop so she can use it for fixing up the cottage.

  Mystery solved!

  P.S. We’re driving back to River Heights tomorrow. I’ll be able to use my purple detective notebook again! I mean, you’re pretty cool, mermaid notebook. But I kind of miss my old one!

  P.P.S. I wonder if there will be a new mystery waiting for us when we get home????

  GET YOUR FEET READY FOR SUMMER

  WITH SOME FFFF’s (FANCY, FLUFFY

  FLIP-FLOPS!)

  Nancy, George, and Bess love to wear fancy, fluffy flip-flops to the beach or pool. You can make your own in just minutes with this simple do-it-yourself craft!

  YOU WILL NEED:

  A pair of flip-flops

  Scissors

  Pretty fabric and/or cloth ribbon.*

  *NOTE: The ribbon should be about one inch wide. You’ll need enough fabric or ribbon to make about twenty to thirty one-inch-by-eight-inch strips (See Step #1, below). You can choose a single color to match your flip-flops (like baby blue), or you can use lots of different colors and patterns. Go crazy!

  THEN FOLLOW THESE EASY STEPS:

  Cut the fabric into one-inch-by-eight-inch strips. If you’re using ribbon, cut it into eight-inch strips. If your scissors are supersharp, make sure to ask your parents for help!

  Aim for about twenty to thirty strips. The more strips you have, the fluffier your flip-flops will be!

  Tie the strips around the flip-flop straps. Use single knots, not bows.

  Push the knots close together as you go. Stop when your flip-flops are at their maximum fluffiness!

  OPTIONAL: For a different kind of fancy flip-flops, you could get some cute buttons or colorful feathers at a craft store and glue them onto your flip-flop straps with white glue.

  THEN STEP IN TO YOUR SWANKY NEW SHOES AND ENJOY THE SUN, SAND, AND SURF IN STYLE!