The Pinstripe Ghost (4 page)

“Hey, it’s the ghost detectives,” Bud said, taking a break from filling popcorn buckets. “If you’re so smart, maybe you can answer a question. What do ghosts serve for dessert?”

“Wait—I know this one,” Kate said. “Boo-berries?”

Bud smiled. “Nope, but nice try,” he said. “How about you, Mike?”

“I don’t know,” Mike said. “What do ghosts serve for dessert?”

“Ice
scream
!” Bud slapped the counter and laughed. “So, what can I get you two?”

They bought two hot dogs each. Kate put mustard and relish on hers. Mike loaded his up with ketchup and pulled the bottle of red PowerPunch from his sweatshirt pocket.

Mike bit into his hot dog and took a gulp of PowerPunch. In between bites, he stopped and listened for the ghost. But all he could hear was the rustle of the crowd. In the background, the ballpark announcer called out the starting lineup.

“It’s getting near game time. Maybe the ghost isn’t coming tonight,” Mike said to Kate. “Let’s go to our seats. We can wait for it tomorrow instead.”

“Just hang on a minute more,” Kate begged.

They watched a customer order popcorn and a soda.

“Some nights it’s popcorn. Some nights it’s hot dogs,” Bud said as the woman walked
away. “You never can tell.” He mopped his brow.

There was a rush of cool air. Kate and Mike felt the hair on their arms tingle.

“Here it comes,” Bud said. “The ghost of Babe Ruth is in the house!”

KRRRRTT. SWWWWSSSSH. KRRRRTT
.

Above them—or somewhere behind the stand—they heard muffled scraping and rustling sounds. For a minute or two, the sounds got louder, and then they got softer.

“That didn’t sound like Babe Ruth walking by,” Mike said. “It sounded more like Babe Ruth with a broken leg dragging his bat and a duffel bag across the roof of a car.”

Bud nodded. “Well, it sounds a little bit different each time. But that’s the ghost.”

“Let’s go see if we can find it,” Kate said. She tossed her napkin in the trash. “Thanks for the help, Bud!”

“No problem,” Bud said. “Good luck. If you find Babe, get me an autograph!”

By the edge of the hot dog stand, Mike and Kate peered around the corner into the low light of the service hallway.

“It sounded like that noise came from down there!” Kate said. Her forehead wrinkled. “I don’t see anything except those storage closets at the end of the hallway.”

“We never got a good look inside them,” Mike pointed out. “Maybe we can find a clue to the ghost if we check them out.”

Kate nodded, and they tiptoed down the hallway to the end.

Mike pulled open the large metal door on the right. Inside stood a broom, a dustpan, and a mop.

“It’s just a closet. No ghost,” Mike said. “Try the other one.”

Kate was about to turn the handle when they heard voices on the other side of the door. With a small creak, it cracked open an inch.

Kate took a quick step back. There was no time for them to hide!

A second later, the door swept open. The bottom edge missed hitting Kate’s foot by inches.

Three people popped out of the room. The door slammed shut.

Kate and Mike stood still. Maybe in the darkness, the people wouldn’t see them. The three figures started walking down the hallway.

Mike relaxed. He leaned against the wall. As he did, his baseball slid out of the front pocket of his sweatshirt. It dropped to the ground.

CLUNK!

Mike froze. Shocked, Kate stared at the baseball lying on the floor. They were busted!

The three figures stopped. They spun around.

“Hey, it’s Mickey Mantle,” said the first
person. “What are you doing here? This area is for employees only.”

Mike knew the voice right away. It was Sammy, the redheaded teenager he had met the day before. Sammy still had his Yankees cap on. But instead of the blue
ACE AIR-CONDITIONING
shirt, he was wearing a pin-striped Yankees replica jersey. In his left hand, he carried a small flashlight.

“Uh, we were just looking around,” Kate said from over Mike’s shoulder.

“Well, there’s nothing here except storerooms,” Sammy said. He looked at Kate suspiciously. “We were putting some stuff away for my father’s air-conditioning company.”

Sammy’s two friends shrugged and continued down the hall. “We’re going to find seats, Sammy,” the shorter boy said. “Meet us in the usual place—section two-twenty-six.”

“You two probably shouldn’t be here,” Sammy said to Kate and Mike. “You might get in trouble.”

“Uh, okay, thanks,” Mike said. He picked up the baseball and tucked it back into his pocket. Then he gave Kate’s arm a tug. “Come on.”

Sammy watched them leave.

Mike and Kate turned the corner.

“Who was that? How do you know him?” Kate asked. “And why did he call you Mickey Mantle?”

“That’s Sammy. I saw him yesterday after the press conference, when you were getting Aunt Laura,” Mike said. “I dropped my baseball. He picked it up and threw it back to me. He was calling me Mickey Mantle just to give me a hard time.”

“What’s he doing here?” Kate asked. “Do
you think he has something to do with Mr. Williams?”

“I don’t know,” Mike said. He looked over his shoulder to see if Sammy was around. There was no sign of him or his friends. “It’s probably not safe to go in there now, in case he comes back. But I really want to see what’s in that room. I have a feeling it’s the key to Babe Ruth’s ghost!”

Seventh-Inning Stretch

By now, it was getting dark outside. But the stadium’s bright lights lit up the field as if it were noon. It was a perfect, cool spring night for a baseball game, but not for the Seattle Mariners. After three innings, the Yankees were ahead by two runs. And after six innings, they were beating the Mariners by five.

Halfway through the next inning came the seventh-inning stretch. The grounds crew
hustled out to rake the baselines. The fans stood up to stretch. The organ music for “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” started. As soon as people began to sing along, Mike and Kate left their seats. Mike figured it was a good time to check out the storage room.

The food area was filling up with fans. In the background, the stadium’s organ played. Mike and Kate could hear the fans singing,
“Take me out to the ball game. Take me out with the crowd.…”

“Hurry!” Mike said. The only thing in the service hallway was still the black trash cart.

When they got to the doors at the end, Kate gave a quick glance back toward Bud’s. “No one is watching,” she said.

Mike turned the knob and gave the door a push. It didn’t budge. He pushed harder, but the door didn’t move.

Kate checked again. The coast was still clear. “Let me try it,” she said. She turned the knob in the other direction and pushed. It wouldn’t move.

“How about pulling it?” Mike asked.

Kate smiled and pulled on the door. It swung open easily. The room was dark. “Yup, pull instead of push,” she said. “I should have remembered that.”

“All right!” Mike whispered. “You go first!”

Kate tiptoed in.

“Hit the light switch,” Mike said.

Kate fumbled along the wall with her right hand. No light switch. All she could feel was a metal shelf. “It’s got to be here,” she said. She tried a little bit lower. Finally, her hand found a switch. She flipped it up.

The room was empty except for an old chair and a pile of cardboard boxes against
the back wall. A small light hung from the ceiling. A set of metal shelves stood to the left of the door in front of the light switch.

“Nothing here but some boxes,” Mike said. He walked over to the pile and peeked inside the top box. “I think we’ve found a ghost!”

Kate rushed over.

Inside the box was Mr. Williams’s book on baseball ghosts.

Kate smirked. “Ha-ha,” she said.

They searched the room for other clues. Something on the floor caught Kate’s eye. She bent over. “Mike, take a look at this,” she said.

Small specks of brown littered the chair and the floor. There was a thin trail of it leading from the chair to the door. Kate picked up a pinch and smelled it.

“What is it?” asked Mike.

“Dirt,” she said. “And something that
looks like wood chips. But what’s dirt doing here?”

“I don’t know …,” Mike said. “Hmmm … let’s think. Maybe because it’s a ballpark and the whole field is made of dirt and grass?”

Kate crossed her arms. “I think it’s a clue,” she said.

“Someone forgot to wipe their feet,” Mike said. “My mom’s always yelling at me about that. Maybe real baseball players have the same problem.”

Kate shook her head. She pointed to the wall behind the chair. There was a line of small scratches and scuffs in the gray paint of the wall below a vent. “What about these scratches?” she asked. “What are they from?”

Mike leaned in and studied the marks. “Maybe someone was trying to scratch their way out!”

Kate rolled her eyes. “Get real! Stop joking around!”

“Okay, okay,” Mike said. “They don’t look like much to me. I’ll bet someone was just using this room to change his shoes or store
equipment or something.” He shrugged. “Let’s go. There’s nothing else here.”

Mike took a sip of his PowerPunch and slid the bottle back into his sweatshirt pocket. At the same time, he pulled out his baseball and started tossing it in the air.

“Can’t you ever stop tossing that baseball?” asked Kate.

“It helps me think,” Mike said. He looked over at Kate and made a face. But as he did, the ball went flying out of his hand.

It sailed toward the back wall.

“Uh-oh!” Mike cried. He covered his eyes with his hands.

SLAM!

The ball clanged against the air vent cover in the back wall. It dropped with a clunk onto the concrete floor.

Mike was afraid to look. It wouldn’t be the
first time he had broken something with a baseball.

“You can open your eyes now,” Kate said. Mike did. Kate was frowning at him. “Hopefully, no one heard that,” she went on. “Sammy is right. You
do
need to work on your catching.”

Mike picked up his ball. It seemed okay. “Well, at least it didn’t do any damage,” he said.

“Um, maybe not to the ball, knucklehead, but what about that?” Kate asked.

She pointed to the corner of the air vent, where the ball had hit it. The bottom edge of the large square metal grate stuck out from the wall.

“Oops,” Mike said. He leaned in. Luckily, the ball hadn’t dented the grate. It had just knocked it loose. He started to push it back in, but Kate stopped him.

“Wait! I have an idea,” she said.

Kate moved Mike aside. She stood in front of the air vent and grabbed its lower corners. She wiggled the bottom edge away from the wall. With a snap, it swung open. “Ta-da!” she said. “Pretty good, eh?”

“Wow, how’d you do that?” Mike asked.

“When you were pushing on the grate, I noticed the hinge along the top,” Kate said. “So I figured it would swing up for cleaning.”

Mike pushed the chair under the vent while Kate held it open. Then they both hopped up on the chair to have a look. As they did, the bottle of PowerPunch in Mike’s sweatshirt pocket banged against the wall.