The Black Heart Crypt (15 page)

That was when George’s three aunts bustled through the kitchen, making a beeline for the back door.

“Good morning, Judy,” chirped Aunt Ginny as she bobbled by.

Aunt Hannah and Aunt Sophie were right behind her.

“Good morning, ladies,” said Judy. “Hey, I was wondering—should we talk some more about last night and all these Icklebys?”

“We were wondering the same thing,” huffed Aunt Hannah. “Sisters? Outside. Now!”

“Can I come with you?”

“Sorry, dear,” said Aunt Sophie. “It’s not a good idea.”

“Huh?”

“Enjoy your coffee, dear,” said Aunt Ginny. “We really don’t have anything to talk about besides this lovely weather.…”

“Oh, yes we do, Virginia!” said Hannah.

The three sisters, trailed by their three cats, scuttled out the back door.

Judy gave the ladies a few seconds and then slipped over to the sink so she could spy on them through the curtains.

The three of them were standing in a circle around the kettle-shaped barbecue grill.

“Perhaps we should eat breakfast first?” said Aunt Sophie.

“No,” fumed Aunt Hannah. “Virginia, you did this, didn’t you?”

“I did not!” said Ginny. “But now that they’re out, we need to act swiftly. I think we should—”

Suddenly, Ginny glanced at the kitchen window.

Judy hurriedly retreated from the sink, returned to the breakfast nook, and snapped on the countertop TV so she could pretend that was what she’d been doing all along if Aunt Ginny came back in.

“And in local news,” said the television anchorwoman, “police suspect foul play in the Haddam Hill Cemetery outside North Chester, where, late last night, some local teenagers discovered the body of Ms. Jenny Ballard. Dressed in what the police described as a ‘witch’s robe,’ the young girl may have been murdered in what authorities speculate was a bizarre Halloween ritual.”

The TV showed the crime scene marked off by police tape in front of a mausoleum. A name was chiseled over the door:

ICKLEBY

Ickleby!

Who were these people?

Judy gulped one last swig of coffee. “Zip, guard the house. I need to run to the library—now.”

Crazy Izzy
Ickleby walked up the main drag of North Chester inside Norman Ickes’s body.

His new skin suit didn’t quite fit right, so his feet kept slip-sliding sideways, like he was walking around in socks on a just-waxed wood floor. Izzy didn’t care if he looked like a loose-limbed palooka. He had a body. He was breathing again. He was alive!

And he had a job to do for the big cheese, Barnabas.

He needed to get hold of a gun and some money.

Fortunately, while shoving Norman’s soul out of the driver’s seat, Izzy was able to tap into the sap’s memory banks. He now knew everything Norman had ever known, including all sorts of useless bunk about solving puzzles and the different sizes of crescent wrenches.

He also knew where Norman’s coworker, Stephen Snertz, stashed his heater—a six-shot Smith & Wesson.

Izzy walked Norman up the sidewalk to the hardware
store. Some jingle-brained mug was on a ladder, painting over “Son” in the Ickes & Son Hardware sign.

“That’s Snertz! Stephen Snertz!”
said whatever bit of Norman was still awake inside his brain.
“Kill him! Kill Snertz!”

“Later,”
Crazy Izzy thought back.
“I promise.”

“Hiya, Steve,” he had Norman say out loud, just to sound sociable-like.

“Norman? What are you doing here, you idiot? You’re fired.”

“Yeah. Thanks for reminding me, pal.”

Izzy gave the ladder a swift kick.

Snertz and his paint bucket went
splat
all over the concrete. The big lug wasn’t dead, just conked out. Of course, he wouldn’t be dancing no time soon, neither.

“Ooh, that felt good!”
sighed the Norman inside Izzy’s head.
“Real good.”

“Don’t worry, kid,”
Izzy thought back.
“That’s just the start of what we’re gonna do to that big lug.”

Whistling nonchalantly, he had Norman amble into the hardware store, hop over the counter, and grab Snertz’s pistol, which was stashed on a shelf with a box of bullets. Since no one was looking, Izzy popped open the cash register and pocketed a couple hundred clams, too.

“Can we go shoot Snertz now?”
asked the Norman voice.

“Not yet, kid. First we need to stash the black heart stone, hide it someplace safe where no one can find it.”

Fortunately, the raven had told Barnabas exactly where Izzy should squirrel the rock. And if anybody tried to tag along to see where he ditched the stone, he’d drill ’em full of lead.

Because, thanks to Norman, trigger-happy Izzy had a brand-new trigger finger.

Most sixth
graders would probably consider a class field trip to the town library kind of dull, but Zack couldn’t have been more excited.

He wanted to ask the town librarian, Mrs. Jeanette Emerson, a few questions about this Ickleby clan—the family who seemed to have some kind of feud going against the Jennings family.

Zack, Malik, and Azalea climbed aboard the big yellow bus waiting for them in the parking lot of Pettimore Middle School.

“Hello, again!” said the smiling lady behind the big steering wheel. “How are my three musketeers?”

“Just fine, Ms. Tiedeman,” said Zack.

The bus driver, Ms. A. J. Tiedeman, picked up Zack, Azalea, and Malik at their bus stops every morning and brought them home every afternoon. She always drove the school bus safely but she also knew how to make all sorts of tire-screeching evasive moves in case she had to—like
she was a stunt double in an action movie. Fortunately, she was also one of the first owner-drivers to install three-point seat belts on her bus. One rumor had it that before moving to North Chester, Ms. Tiedeman had raced tweaked-out trucks around mud tracks in Mississippi. Another said she was the original driver of Bigfoot’s Panic Attack, the top truck from the Monster Jam that played big-city arenas all across the country.

Whatever her background, A. J. Tiedeman—who always wore leather driving gloves, wraparound shades, and a jumpsuit with flames on the shoulders and a sequined “A. J.” splashed across the back—was the coolest school bus driver Zack had ever met.

She cranked shut the door after the substitute history teacher, Mrs. Chang, climbed aboard.

“Buckle up, everybody,” she said to her huge horizontal rearview mirror as she goosed the gas pedal a few times, making the bus rumble and roar. Zack often wondered if A. J. Tiedeman had replaced the original school bus motor with the engine from Bigfoot’s Panic Attack.

“Good morning, everybody,” said the librarian, Mrs. Emerson, when Zack’s history class entered the quaint old building. “My assistant, Ms. Sharon Rawlins, will give you a tour of our historic facility. But remember: A library is not a shrine for the worship of books. It’s a place where history and ideas come to life!”

While the rest of the class followed Ms. Rawlins over to a big stained glass window, Zack slipped away from the
pack to talk to Mrs. Emerson, who had wiry white hair and wore purple reading glasses—not to mention funky sweaters with junk like pumpkins or autumn leaves knit all over them—and was always saying stuff like that thing about libraries. It was why Zack and Judy both thought she was pretty cool.

“Mrs. Emerson?”

“Yes, Zack?”

“I need your help.”

“Well, dear, that’s why I’m here.”

“I need to learn about the Ickleby family.”

“The ones up in the Haddam Hill Cemetery?”

“Yeah. Those guys.”

“Right this way. I’ve already pulled everything we have on the subject.”

Wow
. Mrs. Emerson was some kind of super librarian. She knew the answers to Zack’s questions before he even asked them!

“Mrs. Chang?” she called out to Zack’s teacher. “Zachary and I will be in my office working on a history project.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Chang. “But he’ll miss the tour.”

“That’s okay,” said Zack. “I’m a regular here.”

Mrs. Emerson led Zack around a cluster of reading tables.

“Quite the crime family, these Icklebys,” said Mrs. Emerson. “One was a bank robber and another was a miner who stole other miners’ gold. There was even a gangster whom Al Capone himself nicknamed Crazy Izzy Ickleby.”

“Wow.”

“On the other hand, the very first Ickleby to come to America, Squire Barnabas Ickleby, was revered as a pillar of his community. He even helped the early colonists erect a lovely church in the Berkshire Mountains.”

“So Barnabas was a good guy?”

“Apparently so. But his son, Lucius? Robbed his neighbors and killed their cows. You can read all about his trial for capital crimes in the Boston newspapers from the 1760s.”

“Mrs. Emerson?”

“Yes, Zack?”

“Boston and the Berkshires are both in Massachusetts, right?”

“Indeed they are.”

“So the Icklebys aren’t from North Chester or even Connecticut?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, why isn’t the family crypt back in the Berkshires at that church the good guy helped build? Didn’t they have a graveyard?”

“Aha. You Jenningses all think alike.”

“Huh?”

Mrs. Emerson pushed open the door to her office.

Judy was seated at the desk.

“Your stepmother just asked me the very same question!”

“Shouldn’t you
be out there with the rest of your class?” Judy asked Zack.

“Why should he be out there when the answers he seeks are in here?” said Mrs. Emerson.

Judy smiled. “You’re right. Come on, Zack. Let’s figure this thing out.”

Judy swiveled around to clack a computer keyboard.

“I was just doing an Internet search on ‘Ickleby family crypt.’ I think I found the connection.”

“The connection to what, dear?” asked Mrs. Emerson, peering over her reading glasses at the computer screen.

“How the Jenningses and the Icklebys are related.”

“Oh, my. Your husband’s family is related to these nefarious miscreants?”

“No. Look at this: In 1979, right after the funeral for Edward Ickleby …”

Judy scrolled down through the newspaper article. A picture popped up of a nasty-looking man with a mullet haircut.

“That’s him!” said Zack. “Eddie Boy! The guy Aunt Ginny and I had to, you know, take care of on Halloween night.”

“I take it this Eddie Boy was a ghost?” said Mrs. Emerson.

“Yeah,” said Zack. Mrs. Emerson was a big believer in supernatural stuff, so it was okay to tell her the truth. “He looked just like that picture until Aunt Ginny stunned him with the sage stink bomb and started chanting at him. Then he disappeared.”

“Interesting. The Native Americans often used white sage in a sacred smoke bowl blessing to dispel evil spirits from their midst. I see that the Jennings sisters are still dabbling in spiritual herbology.”

“Did you know them?” asked Judy. “When they lived here in North Chester?”

“Not very well. They are, after all, several years older than me. But one did hear stories.”

“What kind?” said Zack.