Once Upon a Midnight Eerie: Book #2 (Misadventures of Edgar/Allan) (9 page)

The next morning, plan B worked like this:

With Uncle Jack and Aunt Judith breakfasting with Em and Milly’s parents back at the hotel, the Poe and Dickinson twins stood near the front of the line as the New Orleans Pirate Museum opened its doors. Once inside, they browsed the centuries-old skull-and-crossbones flags, the rusty swords, and the weathered treasure chests, trying to look like ordinary tourists.

But, of course, the Poe and Dickinson twins were in no way “ordinary.”

“Ready?” Milly asked the boys.

Edgar and Allan looked around the museum. The crowd had thickened, this being the opening day of the show.

Allan nodded. “It’s time.”

The quartet moved from the first room to the larger, windowless room where the wax figures of the Lafitte brothers stood.

“Time for you to get yours,” Edgar muttered to Pierre’s wax figure.

Nearby stood a glass case containing personal items that had once belonged to the murderous Pierre: comb, razor, compass, hat, sword.

“You think that’s the sword he used to run through our friends?” Em asked.

“Could be,” answered Allan.

Edgar turned to Milly. “Ready?”

She nodded briskly and produced her phone. Then she tapped on the keyboard, entering a string of Internet commands to reach the control panel of the museum’s power and security system. Next, she bypassed the password, which she’d cracked the night before while the boys were occupied in the cemetery.

“The password is, ‘Ahoy Matey,’” she whispered, disgruntled that it had been so easy. “An amateur could have broken in. I feel kind of insulted.”

“How long will we have?” Allan asked.

“We’ll have fifteen seconds between the time the power goes down and the backup generator kicks in, so we’ll have to act fast,” Em said. “Everybody ready?”

Milly showed the phone to Edgar and Allan. “How does this algorithm look to you?”

“Great,” the boys said.

She grinned and pushed the button.

Later that afternoon, the Poe and Dickinson twins sat in the otherwise unoccupied lobby of the Pepper Tree Inn, watching local news on an old console TV.

“What’s so important on the tube?” Uncle Jack inquired as he came downstairs from a nap.

“Current events,” they muttered.

“Hi, kids,” Aunt Judith said, walking into the lobby with the Dickinson twins’ parents, Blossom and Claude, who were philosophy professors at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

“So, is everyone well?” inquired Mrs. Dickinson, who the boys had noticed upon first meeting had a cool Phoenician symbol tattooed on her neck.

The two sets of twins answered with nods, their attention still on the TV.

Mr. Dickinson, who was bearded and wore a black turtleneck sweater, said, “Now, you girls know we allow
no television
.”

The Poe family had no such rules.

Just then the TV news show cut to a big graphic that read:

Instead of turning off the TV, the Poe twins turned it up.

A serious-looking newsman announced:

“This is Ryan Holborn with new details about this morning’s shocking invasion of the New Orleans Pirate Museum. According to New Orleans police, intruders vandalized a wax figure and broke into a glass case during a momentary power outage.”

The TV cut to a shot of the figure of Pierre Lafitte, dressed not in his pirate garb but instead in the striped outfit of a jailed convict (bought the night before by the Dickinson twins at a costume shop near the Pepper Tree Inn).

“But the wax figure is not what makes this story so shocking,” continued the news anchor. “It’s that the unknown suspects took nothing from the museum, but instead
left behind
a valuable, pirate-related artifact, which has been authenticated over the past few hours. Live with us now is the New Orleans Pirate Museum’s curator, Ellen Payne. Thank you for joining us, Miss Payne.”

The news feed cut to a live shot of a blonde woman in a red scarf standing outside the museum.

“Miss Payne, can you tell us anything about the historical item left behind in the broken glass case?” asked the newsman.

For someone whose museum had just been invaded, she seemed remarkably happy. “It is the handwritten diary of Pierre Lafitte!”

The two sets of twins leaned toward the TV.

“And that diary is financially valuable?” the reporter queried.

“Oh, yes,” Miss Payne answered brightly. “And, better yet, the diary sheds new historical light on some of the most important figures of the period. For example, we found it open to a page upon which Lafitte confessed in his own hand to the cold-blooded killing of a local couple named . . .” She glanced down at the old leather diary in her hand.

“Say it, say it. . . .” muttered the Poe twins, anxiously.

“Let’s see,” Miss Payne continued, her eyes scanning the small, ornate handwriting.

“Come on!” the Dickinson twins shouted at the TV. “Say their names!”

“What’s going on here, kids?” Aunt Judith asked.

“His victims’ name was Du Valier,” the museum curator said at last. “Clarence and Genevieve, whom he murdered in cold blood outside their own pub in 1814.”

At these words, Edgar, Allan, Em, and Milly looked at each other, then stood and cheered, thrusting their fists in the air, victorious.

Their guardians watched them as if they were insane.

“What’s this all about?” Uncle Jack asked.

Aunt Judith and Mr. and Mrs. Dickinson looked just as confused.

“Justice!” the four twins answered as one.

WHAT THE POE TWINS DID NOT KNOW  .  .  .

CELL PHONE TEXT MESSAGES BETWEEN NATASHA PERRY AND CASSANDRA PERRY:

THAT’S A WRAP!

THAT
evening, before leaving the hotel room for
A Tale of Poe
’s wrap party, Allan and Edgar tuned the TV to the Wild Animal Channel, which was broadcasting its annual Bird Week Marathon. While the boys preferred Predator Week, nothing appealed more to Roderick than watching parakeets flutter from branch to branch. He watched it the way gourmets watch the Food Channel. Additionally, Bird Week allowed the cat to perfect his many vocal impressions, which he sometimes used to lure tasty between-meal snacks in the tree branches outside the Poes’ house.

“Your dish is filled with sparkling water,” Allan told Roderick, who preferred it to still.

“And your food bowl is over here,” Edgar said, indicating the Cajun tuna tartare they’d ordered up from the room service menu.

Roderick nodded, though his eyes remained on the TV.

The Poe twins had felt bad when Cassie informed them that pets were not allowed in the fancy restaurant Mr. Wender had rented for the festivities.

At first, the boys considered skipping the party.

But Roderick had curled up on the bed and looked like he could use a quiet night anyway.

“We ordered special sheets,” Edgar told him.

“Egyptian cotton with a thread count of a thousand!” Allan added.

Roderick turned to them and then chirped like a parakeet.

“So you’ll be OK while we’re out?” the Poe twins inquired.

Roderick answered by cawing like a crow.

“Good,” the boys said.

They closed the window and double-checked the lock on the door after them.

The wrap party was going strong by the time the Poe family arrived at the restaurant. The Dixieland jazz playing inside, rollicking and free and fun, lured tourists from all over the French Quarter. But five burly security guards saw to it that only invited guests got in.

“Yes, here you are,” a security guard said to the Poe family as he checked a list at the door. “VIPs.”

The prop crew had redecorated the restaurant with some of the Poe-oriented props used in the movie. A stuffed raven perched at the end of the bar. Mannequins in medieval masquerade garb stood scattered around the room. A giant silhouette of a black cat served as the backdrop to the band playing on a makeshift stage.

In the soft red light it all might have come off as spooky.

But the music kept it upbeat.

“Ah, my Poe family!” Mr. Wender said, approaching them with his arms open wide. “Welcome!”

Uncle Jack shook his hand.

“Help yourselves to our buffet,” the director directed.

“You’re the boss!” Uncle Jack answered gleefully.

The Dickinson family approached the Poes from across the room.

Em wore her usual long frock with a high, lacy collar. She always looked nice, if a little out-of-date. The surprise was that Milly also wore a dress (more modern). This was the first time the boys had seen her in anything besides either her movie costume or jeans and a T-shirt.

“It’s kind of a special occasion,” Milly explained.

“You mean finishing the movie?” Edgar asked her. “The wrap party?”

“No,” she said, looking away. “I mean it’s our last night all together.”

“Oh, yeah,” Allan said, suddenly shy.

Then the music stopped and Mr. Wender joined the band on the stage, holding up one hand to quiet the room.

The din of conversation ceased.

In his other hand, the director held a glass of champagne. “I want to toast everyone here tonight,” he said. “You’re a top-notch crew and cast. And I particularly want to thank my baby Poes, Edgar and Allan, for helping me to devise a perfect ending for our film.” He raised his glass higher.
“Prost!”

German for “cheers.”

“Prost!”
called those in the room with drinks.

Edgar and Allan smiled graciously.

“And I want to thank my dedicated new assistant, Cassie Kilmer, who was such a help to me the last few days here in New Orleans. Cassie?”

Everyone looked around the room.

“Should I say ‘Cassandra Perry’?” Mr. Wender continued lightly. “Oh, what a complication you’ve been to our accountants, my dear. But, by any name, I want to toast you as a girl who understands the value of punctuality. Where are you, Cassie?”

She wasn’t there.

The Poe twins looked at each other, possessed by a sudden, terrible thought.

Cassandra
Perry
?

Like Professor
Perry
?

Meantime, Mr. Wender gestured for the band to start playing again.

The Dixieland jazz kicked in.

Then the Poe twins spotted the makeup lady cradling her Chihuahua and, across the room, the script supervisor holding her Cavalier King Charles spaniel, and they realized that pets
weren’t
forbidden here after all. It had been a lie.

Roderick was alone!

Edgar and Allan darted out of the restaurant, into the crowded streets of the French Quarter, and back toward their hotel.

The Poe twins threw open the door.

Their hotel room looked like it had been tossed into a giant dryer and run through the spin cycle.

“Roderick?” they called in unison.

The two mattresses and all the bedding had been stripped and scattered, shredded by what appeared to have been sharp and furious cat claws. The flowered wallpaper was newly decorated with vertical stripes that bore the signature of a violently frantic feline putting up a good fight. The latest volumes in the boys’ favorite book series, True Stories of Horror, lay scattered about the room, looking as if they’d been run through a paper shredder.

But no Roderick.

The boys glanced into the bathroom. It, too, was a mess, but absent any living thing.

Then they noticed the TV. They’d left it tuned to the Bird Week Marathon, but that’s not what occupied the screen now.

Instead, they saw Cassie’s face. “Hello, boys,” she said, sweet as pralines.

They’d been played for fools!

“By now, you’ve realized I have your little friend Roderick.”

The twins drew nearer to the TV, despite the sinking feeling they felt in their guts.

“You may have questions,” Cassandra Perry continued. “For example, what could I possibly have against you two? But we can leave all that for when we’re together in person.” She paused, then flashed her cover girl smile, which this time seemed to take up half the TV screen. “Oh, yes, we will meet soon. And in the meantime, you’ll do exactly as I say. That is, if you ever want to see your cat again, alive.”

Edgar and Allan resolved never to let Roderick out of their sight from that moment on.

“You will return to the cemetery,” she continued, her blue eyes boring into them. “Not tomorrow morning—not in an hour—but
now
. And don’t pretend you don’t know which cemetery. The one I followed you to. Oh, I wasn’t about to let you sneak out of the hotel unattended two nights in a row. But in the fog I lost track of you, though I heard mention of a treasure in a tomb. Which one?”

The boys thought, as one,
We have a bargaining chip. We can trade the crypt’s location for Roderick.

“And don’t contact the police—or your aunt and uncle, unless you want to put them six feet underground,” she continued. “Nor anyone else, like that other set of twins I’ve had to put up with the last couple days.” She stopped. After a moment, she softened her voice, which served only to make it more sinister. “I’ll see you soon, boys. Unless, of course, you choose to let your cat friend die.”

The video froze, then hissed, smoked, and self-destructed, as in spy movies.

It seemed there was more to Cassie than the boys had imagined.

For the third time in three nights, Edgar and Allan climbed through the crack in the wall of the silent Saint Louis Cemetery. By the light of a full moon, the place looked the same, though it had never felt lonelier. Now there was no Roderick for companionship (though the boys trusted he was nearby), and no Dickinson sisters for conversation. Even the Du Valiers had likely moved on. And when the last of the dead leave a cemetery, it becomes a lonely place indeed.

And, tonight, a dangerous one too.

The Poe twins carried the rusted antique swords they had taken from the tomb of Lance de Tremblement the night before. Two centuries had dulled the blades, but any weapons were better than none.