Mandie Collection, The: 8 (6 page)

“Good idea,” Jonathan said.

“Yes, now where do you want us to put these papers?” Sallie asked.

“On that table by the door where the lamp is,” Mandie replied, going over to leave the ones she had.

Jonathan and Sallie followed. Just as all the papers were placed on the table, a loud crash on the far end of the room startled all three of them.

“What was that?” Sallie asked, looking around.

“That was whoever this diary belonged to. They don’t like it because we are going to read it,” Jonathan joked with a grin.

Mandie, drawing a deep breath, said, “Let’s just go and investigate.” She started in the direction where the sound had come from.

“It’s dark over that way. There’s no window on that side. Shouldn’t we light the lamp and carry it?” Jonathan asked.

“All right, if you say so,” Mandie agreed, turning back toward the lamp on the table. She wondered why she had not thought of that. She picked up a match from the box kept on the table and lit the lamp.

“I’ll carry it,” Jonathan offered as he reached for the lamp.

Mandie handed him the lamp and continued walking in the direction of the noise they had heard. Sallie followed them. Suddenly it dawned on Mandie that if someone else was in the attic, the lamplight would alert them of their pursuit.

“I don’t think—” Mandie started to say in a low whisper to Jonathan, but he suddenly hurried forward with the lamp.

“Look!” Jonathan called back to the girls as he held the lamp high.

Mandie and Sallie hurried to catch up with him. At that moment Snowball came rushing out of the shadows and raced toward the door.

“Snowball!” Mandie exclaimed, stomping her foot. “Snowball has been into something.”

“Yes, looks like an old tin bucket full of junk must have fallen from something,” Jonathan said, stooping to look at the stuff scattered on the floor by the overturned bucket.

“I should have known when Snowball disappeared he was into something,” Mandie said.

The three bent down to pick up the pieces of hardware, nails, and small tools and put them back into the bucket.

“Now let’s see if we can get some work done before we have to go downstairs,” Mandie told her friends as she started back toward the section she had been searching.

“If we could just go slam, bang, bang around the room, we’d soon get finished,” Jonathan suggested.

“What do you mean by that?” Mandie asked.

“You know, just open and close everything real fast instead of bothering to examine everything we find,” Jonathan said.

“All right, as long as you don’t miss looking into something,” Mandie agreed.

The three continued with their search for the turkey but moved at a faster pace. They went downstairs for the noon meal after washing up enough to be presentable. After they had eaten, they returned to the attic.

By the end of the day, they had more or less skimmed through everything in the attic and went back downstairs again. This time Mandie carried the diary with her. She insisted they should all get cleaned up and put on fresh clothes before the adults saw them. Afterward, they met in the parlor.

The three were gathered around the big open fireplace by the warm crackling fire, discussing their day’s work, when Jason Bond came into the room.

“I hear tell y’all been doing a little detective work in the attic today,” Mr. Bond said as he sat down nearby.

The three smiled at him, and Mandie said, “But we didn’t find the turkey.”

“No, I would imagine that turkey is long gone,” Mr. Bond said. “But tell me, did you find out who lost that scarf y’all found?”

“The scarf!” Mandie exclaimed. “I forgot all about the scarf! It disappeared!”

“Disappeared? Not the scarf, too!” Jonathan said.

“Yes, it did,” Mandie said. “You see, I had put it in my coat pocket when I hung up my coat last night. Then after I went to bed,
I remembered it was there. I came downstairs to get it, and it was gone!”

“Are you sure, Mandie?” Sallie asked.

“Maybe whoever it belonged to saw it and took it,” Mr. Bond suggested.

“I should have been looking for it today and trying to find out who it belonged to,” Mandie said with a deep sigh.

“There are so many things going on, there’s no way to keep up with everything,” Jonathan said.

“Are you going to ask everyone if they lost a scarf?” Sallie asked.

Before Mandie could answer, Jonathan said, “No, I don’t think you should ask anyone about the scarf. We should just listen and see if anyone mentions losing a scarf.”

Mandie looked at Jason Bond and asked, “Do you think that’s the best way to do it?”

“Maybe,” Mr. Bond replied. “If the scarf belonged to whoever took it out of your pocket, I imagine that person would mention to you that they took it.”

“Then that’s what I’ll do,” Mandie agreed. “We also found some kind of diary up in the attic. It’s old and dirty, so we’re waiting till after supper to try to read it.”

“A diary? In the attic?” Mr. Bond questioned.

Mandie explained how they had found it. “Do you have any idea as to who might have owned it?”

“Sorry, I don’t believe I can help you with that,” Mr. Bond said. “From what you say, it might have been up there an awfully long time.”

“It’s so old the writing is faded, and I doubt that we will be able to read much of it, or maybe none of it,” Jonathan said.

“And some of the pages are torn from being stuck behind the drawer,” Mandie added.

“I’ll take a look at it with y’all if you want,” Mr. Bond said.

“As soon as supper is finished, I’ll go up and get it. We’ll all meet here in the parlor,” Mandie said. “I know that my mother and Uncle John are taking Grandmother and Mr. Guyer to visit some friends after we eat.”

“Fine,” Mr. Bond agreed.

The three young people discussed the diary all through supper while the adults carried on their own conversation. Mandie was wishing the time away so they could get the papers and see if they could decipher any of the writing. All of a sudden she was getting involved in an awful lot of mysteries, and she needed to solve something or other.

CHAPTER FIVE

GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS

As soon as supper was over, the adults left to visit friends, and the young people gathered in the parlor with Mr. Bond. Mandie rushed up to her room, brought the old diary down, and spread the wrinkled and torn sheets of yellowed paper all over the carpet, since there was no table big enough to lay them all out on.

Mr. Bond sat on the floor with Mandie, Jonathan, and Sallie, and they inspected the pages of what had been a book of some kind.

“Let’s sort out the ones that don’t have anything written on them, and then we can try to read the ones with writing,” Mandie said. She began picking up the blank sheets and her friends helped.

“After we take out all the blank ones, there is not going to be much left,” Jonathan remarked, adding to the pile in front of Mandie.

“You are right,” Mandie agreed. She sat back on her heels and looked at the small stack of papers in front of her. “Now let’s divide these and see if we can read any of it.” She quickly took several pages off the top and handed them to Mr. Bond, then a few to Sallie, and a few more to Jonathan, leaving a few for herself.

“I need to get under a lamp,” Mr. Bond said, rising and going to sit in a chair next to a table with a lamp on it.

“Me too,” Jonathan said, and he, too, went to sit by another lamp.

Mandie stood up and said, “Come on, Sallie. We can sit on the settee.”

Sallie followed Mandie across the room, and the girls held the papers under the lamp by the settee as they squinted to read the handwriting.

“The only thing I can make out on this page is the word
pig
, and that’s in the middle of the scribbling,” Mr. Bond announced.

“Pig?” the three young people chorused, looking at the old man.

“That’s right, p-i-g,” Mr. Bond spelled the word out.

“I can see some numbers on this page,” Jonathan told them. He held up the yellowed sheet. “But it’s only a number here and there that’s legible.”

Mandie flipped through the pages she was holding and picked out another one to look at. “A-ha! I’ve found the word
turkey
at the top of this one,” she said excitedly, bending over to look closer.

“Sounds like a farm with pigs and turkeys,” Jonathan joked.

“You are right, Jonathan,” Sallie said. She looked up from the sheet she was examining. “I can see the word
farm
right in the middle of this one.”

“Well, of course, all this land around here used to be farmland and the Shaw family,” Mr. Bond told them. “That was many years ago, and these papers look like they were written many years ago.”

Mandie looked at him and asked, “Do you think this was some kind of record book for the farm then?”

“Maybe,” Jason Bond replied. “You might ask your uncle John to look at these papers. Perhaps he could figure out what they are.”

Mandie drew a deep breath and said, “Oh, shucks! I already need Uncle Ned to look at that quilt we found in the attic, and he’s gone for the night. Now I need Uncle John to look at these pages, or book, or whatever you call it, and he probably won’t be back with my mother and the others until we have gone to bed.”

“A quilt you found in the attic?” Jason Bond asked. “I know there must be dozens of quilts in trunks and drawers in the attic. Did y’all find a special one of some kind?”

“Yes, sir,” Mandie replied. “Sallie said it was a Cherokee quilt. It was in a trunk with a lot of other quilts, but it’s completely different, isn’t it, Sallie?” She looked at her friend.

“Yes, it has Cherokee symbols and tells a story, but I cannot read
it. My grandfather can interpret the meaning,” the Cherokee girl replied.

“Since your father’s mother was Cherokee, Amanda, and she lived here, there may be lots of things associated with her people stashed away in the attic,” Jason Bond told Mandie.

“So you think the quilt belonged to her?” Mandie asked.

“Could be,” Jason Bond replied. “But when you get Uncle Ned to translate the message on the quilt, you may know more about it, I’d say.”

Mandie sighed deeply. “We are finding so many mysteries and then not being able to follow through with anything. It’s frustrating.”

“Yes, and you may have run into one too many mysteries to solve,” Jonathan teased. “I believe I count four—the turkey, the scarf, the quilt, and the torn-up book. You do have to go back to school next week, and we do have to go home soon.”

“Oh, never you mind,” Mandie said with a shrug. “We’ll solve all four. You wait and see.” She was secretly wondering how they would ever be able to accomplish all this, but she would never let Jonathan know this.

The young people stayed up late that night. Mandie was hoping the adults would return before they went to bed, but no such luck. At the stroke of midnight, the three finally retired. They had not been able to read any more of the faded writing, and Mandie took the papers back to her room and put them on her bureau. First thing in the morning she would show them to her uncle John and ask if he knew what they were.

But the first event the next morning, which was Saturday, was a disappointment. When Mandie and Sallie went downstairs with Jonathan for breakfast, Aunt Lou, the housekeeper, was waiting to serve their breakfast. Otherwise the room was empty.

“Y’all chillun, jes’ git to de table now and I bring de food,” the old woman told them as she bustled about with dishes on the sideboard.

Mandie stopped to look at her and asked, “Where is everyone else? Are we late?”

“No, my chile,” Aunt Lou replied, setting a plate filled with ham on the table. “Ain’t nobody but y’all a-comin’ to eat dis mawnin’.”

“Why?” Mandie asked in surprise. She and her friends sat down at the linen-covered table.

“Well, fust of all, Mistuh John took dat Mistuh Guyer off some place to see ’bout buyin’ a mine or somethin’ like dat,” Aunt Lou explained.

Jonathan quickly interrupted, “My father is going to buy a mine? What kind of mine?”

“I don’t be knowin’,” Aunt Lou replied. She brought the coffeepot from the sideboard and filled their cups. “Alls I knows is whut Mistuh John say to me dis’ mawnin’ when dey leave. He say, ‘We’s gwine find a mine fo’ Mr. Guyer to buy and we may be gone a few days.’ “

“A few days?” Mandie repeated in disappointment. “I need to talk to him about something. Oh, shucks!”

“And den dis heah Injun man he come a-knockin’ at de back do’ soon as Mistuh John and Mistuh Guyer leaves and he say Uncle Ned and Mawnin’ Star send word dey don’t be comin’ back till mebbe Sunday night or mebbe Monday mawnin’,” the old woman explained. “And Miz ’Liz’beth and Miz Taft dey sleepin’ late ’cause dey out late last night. And Mr. Bond he dun went on a errand.”

“My grandfather had said we would go home Sunday,” Sallie remarked.

“My father and I are supposed to leave Monday,” Jonathan said.

“Oh well, y’all just get to stay a little longer,” Mandie reminded her friends.

“Y’all eat up now, you heahs?” Aunt Lou told the young people. She stood by the sideboard watching. “Dat white cat he be in de kitchen already eatin’ his breakfast.”

“That’s his favorite room in this house,” Mandie said as she began eating the bacon and eggs on her plate.

“So what are we going to do today?” Jonathan asked. He reached for a hot biscuit and buttered it.

“We still haven’t found the turkey,” Mandie reminded him.

Sallie took a sip of her coffee and said, “We have searched everywhere for the turkey. What do you plan to do about it now?”

“We still have the cellar to search,” Mandie reminded her friends with a mischievous grin on her face.

“That dark and spooky underground cavern,” Jonathan teased.

At that moment Mandie heard a loud knock at the front door. Before she could decide who it was, Liza, the young maid, came to the doorway of the dining room with Dr. Woodard and Joe.

“We’se got mo’ comp’ny,” Liza announced as the Woodards stepped inside the room.

Aunt Lou quickly took over. “Liza, get two mo’ plates,” she said. “And, Doctuh, y’all jes’ go ahead and sit down.”