Hard Hat (6 page)

Their first stop was at the stable’s good-luck horseshoe, where they showed Maxi how to touch it for luck. They each gave it a swipe, too, since the little girl’s safety was more in their hands than in her own. Maxi seemed oblivious to any possible dangers of riding. She held the reins as if she knew exactly what she was doing and waited for the girls to get Penny moving.

It didn’t take long. Carole led the pony at a gentle walk while Lisa walked next to the saddle, being sure at every step that Maxi was secure in it. She needn’t have worried. Maxi behaved as if she’d been born to be in a saddle, which seemed about right when Lisa thought about it.

They’d gone around the ring five times at a sedate walk and Maxi was showing no signs of wanting to stop when Deborah’s car pulled into the driveway.

Neither Carole nor Lisa saw the car, but Maxi did.

“Mommy!” she cried out.

Lisa’s heart sank as she realized that she and Carole were letting Deborah’s daughter do something that Deborah might very well not approve of. Deborah wasn’t horse-crazy. She didn’t exactly hate horses, and she wasn’t as afraid of them as she had been when she first met Max, but she’d never
really learned to love horses the way Max and Mrs. Reg did. Maybe it would have been a good idea for Lisa and Carole to get her permission before putting Maxi on Penny.

Lisa and Carole looked over at Deborah. She stood by the open door of her car. Her face was pale with worry. Lisa was about to say something. She wasn’t sure exactly what she was going to say, but she was about to open her mouth when Maxi spoke for all of them.

“Look at me!” she cried with delight.

Deborah closed her mouth and sighed. She walked over to the young equestrienne.

“Are you having a good time?” she asked.

Maxi’s smile was all the answer anyone needed. The little girl kicked gently at the pony’s belly, getting her to move along at her easy walk.

Deborah looked at Lisa and Carole. “Thanks, girls,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” Lisa told her.

“We’re being careful,” Carole added.

“I can see that,” said Deborah. She picked up her computer and briefcase and headed for the house. “I’ll see you later, Maxi!” she told her daughter, but the
little girl’s attention was already totally turned to the job at hand, which was riding Penny. She seemed to have completely forgotten about her mother.

“It’s in the genes,” Carole said.

“A
ND HOW WAS
the museum?” Mrs. Lake asked Stevie. It took her more than a minute to figure out that her mother was asking about the natural history museum. It seemed like an awfully long time ago that she and Regina had been there—at least one near disaster ago!

“It was great!” Stevie said. “Dinosaurs, you know.”

“I know,” said her mother.

“And elephants. I liked the elephants.”

The two girls and their mothers were all sitting at dinner in the Evanses’ dining room. Like the dining room at the old house, it was on the ground floor and looked out on the backyard.

“How was your day, Mom?” Stevie asked.

“Dinosaurs and elephants would have been an improvement,” she said. “A big one. Well, it wasn’t that bad, actually, but I just wish these people would be more reasonable.”

“You mean like they should see it your way?” Stevie teased.

“Exactly,” said her mother. “I mean, we’re going to finish our business, but they’re making it take so long!”

“Sounds like good news to me,” Regina said. “The longer they take, the longer Stevie can stay here, right?”

“As long as you two don’t get into any major trouble,” said Mrs. Evans.

“Whatever would make you think something like that?” Regina asked. Her mother just gave her a look that pretty much said it all. Stevie was beginning to think that Regina spent more time in hot water than she did, and after this afternoon she thought she knew why.

“So, what’s everybody up to this evening?” Mrs. Evans asked.

“A hot bath and bed,” said Stevie’s mother. Being a lawyer was hard work sometimes, Stevie knew, though
her mother often said that being a mother was even harder.

“Girls?” Mrs. Evans asked.

“We’re going over to Ann and Peter’s. We’re going to meet the gang there. Stevie claims to know some really good ghost stories.”

Mrs. Lake laughed. “She does. She sometimes tries to tell them at dinner and freak out her brothers. Alex and Chad never seem to mind, but Michael has been known to run from the table.”

“That’s why ghost stories have been outlawed from the dinner table,” Stevie explained. “But that’s okay. It’s better if I tell them in the car, when Michael can’t run anywhere!”

“Well,” said Mrs. Evans, “it’s okay to go to Peter’s, but don’t be late, okay? Catherine and I are really tired and we’re likely to be asleep before you get home, but the curfew is still ten
P.M
. sharp.”

“That’s okay, Mom. We’ll be home by then, won’t we, Stevie?”

“Oh, sure,” Stevie said, but at that moment her mother’s plan was feeling like a better one than Regina’s. Bath and bed versus breaking and entering. “By ten, easy,” she promised.

After dinner the girls cleared the table, then
Mrs. Evans told them it was okay to go on over to Peter’s. Regina had lots to do before they could leave, and she got Stevie to help her fill her school backpack. They needed candles, a flashlight for each of them, and lots of snacks, including marshmallows, chocolate milk, cheese crackers, and diet soda.

The mothers surveyed the girls’ snack choices with raised eyebrows. Mrs. Evans handed Regina a stack of paper cups so that they wouldn’t have to use Peter’s mother’s glasses.

“Good idea,” said Regina. “She’ll be really grateful for that.”

“She’ll be grateful if you don’t make nuisances of yourselves in her home,” said Mrs. Evans.

Stevie wished they were planning to make nuisances of themselves in Peter’s home instead of in the old house. There was no turning Regina back, though. She considered her plan a done deal. Stevie was beginning to see it as her job to keep Regina from doing something really ridiculous, like breaking into the locked storage closet.

“We’re out of here. G’night, Mom,” said Regina, giving her mother a quick peck on the cheek.

“At ten o’clock sharp I want you to come in and tell
me you’re home safe and sound, even if you have to wake me up. Understand, Regina?”

“I understand, Mom. Of course I will. I promise.”

“Have fun, girls,” said Stevie’s mother.

“We will,” said Stevie.

With that, the two of them went out the garden door. Mrs. Evans turned on the garden light for them, and it would stay on until they got home and turned it off themselves. Both Mrs. Evans’s room and the room where Stevie’s mother was staying were on the front side of the house. They would not be bothered by the light in the backyard.

The girls climbed up onto the fence and then looked back to wave to their mothers, but the two women had already left the kitchen, presumably headed for their hot baths.

“This way!” Regina said, leading Stevie along the brick wall.

When they got to the old house, Peter was just ahead of them at the basement window.

“Good evening, ladies,” he said, greeting them as if he were a doorman. He held the boards to the side while they lowered themselves in, then he followed and replaced the boards. The dim ceiling light
was turned on, so they knew someone else was already there.

“Hello!” Regina called, just above a whisper.

Gordon appeared from the other side of the closet.

“We were just checking this out,” said Gordon. “There’s no way in at all. We couldn’t even see through the cracks with a flashlight.” He held up a flashlight as if to show that they’d tried.

“We’ll work on it later,” said Regina. “First we need to tell some good ghost stories. Where’s the best place for that?”

“We could stay here,” Stevie suggested, comforted by the idea that as long as they were in the basement, they were only a few short steps from escape.

“Too dirty,” said Peter.

“Too ugly,” said Ann.

“Okay, where?” Regina asked again.

“I like the parlor floor,” Peter said. “I like the tall ceilings and the big marble fireplace. Maybe we could even light a fire in it.”

“I’m sure it’s been closed off for years,” Regina said.

“Well, then maybe we could put some candles in it and pretend we’ve got a fire. You brought candles, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did,” Regina said. “And Stevie packed some marshmallows that we can cook over them.”

“Cool!” said Gordon. “Just like camp!”

“All we need are graham crackers and chocolate bars,” Peter said.

“I brought raisins,” said Ann.

“Where’s Liza?” Peter asked.

“Beats me,” said Regina.

“She was kind of freaked this afternoon,” Ann told the group. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she doesn’t come tonight. She said something about having to go somewhere with her mother, but I don’t know if that’s true.”

“That’s okay,” said Regina. “It’s no fun if someone’s really scared. She’ll be back with us another time.”

Two thoughts entered Stevie’s head. The first was that it was nice of Regina to respect the fact that Liza was nervous, and that she didn’t seem to think less of her for it. The second was that she wished she’d told Regina how freaked she was so that
she
could have stayed home! Well, it was too late for that now.

“Do you know really scary stories?” Gordon asked Stevie.

“The scariest,” Regina answered for her. “Even her mother says so.”

“Let’s go, then,” Peter said, heading for the stairs.

The house looked very different at night. There was no light at all coming through the cracks in the boards over the windows. As the flashlight beams crisscrossed on the stairs and in the hallway, Stevie found herself staring at the dancing shadows they cast on the walls and floors. It was pure inspiration for a ghost story expert like Stevie Lake. She was getting ready to scare the daylights out of all of them. And they’d love every minute of it. Things were looking up. A little.

It took a few minutes to set up their story circle. They pulled boxes back around the fireplace, set some candles in it, then set even more in a semicircle around the hearth. Stevie took the seat of honor, facing the fireplace.

A great deal of food was produced. Regina set out some of their goodies, including the marshmallows, but she kept the cheese crackers and chocolate milk until later.

Ann passed around her big bag of raisins, which
everybody enjoyed. Gordon offered them all a drink of his blue fruit punch. They all said no thank you to that, favoring instead Peter’s apple juice.

“Ah, thirteen candles!” Stevie began. “A perfect number for a night like tonight, for it was exactly the number of candles that Lady Griselda lit on her husband’s bier the night her head fell off.”

She paused for dramatic effect. In the moment of silence, she heard two truck doors slam right in front of the house.

“Did you bring the key?” a too-familiar voice demanded from the street, just on the other side of the boarded-up windows. It was the same man who had been there in the afternoon: Frank.

“What kind of idiot do you think I am?” said the other man.

“You don’t want me to answer that, Maurice,” Frank said.

He clearly hadn’t said it to be funny. These guys were mean and they weren’t going to be pleased to find the
kids
back again.

“Hide!” Regina said.

Good idea, but where?
thought Stevie. As fast as they could, the group blew out all the candles. They
couldn’t go up higher in the house because the staircase to the next floor didn’t have any stairs on it. It would be treacherous in broad daylight and deadly in the dark.

The group clustered behind a stack of wooden planks and did everything they could to stop breathing, or at least to stop sounding as if they were breathing. Stevie wondered if the pounding in her chest could be heard downstairs. She suspected that it could.

Next to her, Stevie could feel that Gordon’s knees were shaking and he was shivering. Once again she saw Peter take the little boy’s shoulders and hold them for comfort. She was just beginning to wonder where her own comfort was going to come from when she felt Regina grab her around the waist. It didn’t exactly make her feel better, but it let her know that Regina did, in fact, have some nerves after all. There was some comfort in that. She put her own arm around Ann’s shoulders.

“Come on! Bring that stuff down here!” Frank bellowed.

Maurice hauled something into the house and, mercifully, downstairs instead of up.

“Hey, the light’s on!” Maurice said.

The kids looked around at one another. Had they really left it on?

“I left it on,” Peter whispered. “So we could find our way out.”

Stevie could have sworn her knees were knocking. It turned out to be Gordon’s knee knocking against hers.

“Yeah, well, you must have left it on last time!” said Frank. “Remember who’s paying the electricity bill!”

“Sure, for this twenty-five-watt bulb. Big deal,” said Maurice.

He made two more trips down to the basement while Frank grumbled about how slow he was.