Who Stole Halloween? by Martha Freeman Page B

bent down and tickled him under his chin. “You know what, Luau?” I said. “You’re lucky to be a cat.”
    Luau closed his eyes and purred, which meant,
And you’re lucky to be a kid
.

Chapter Twenty-six

    Apparently, the stir-fry did not kill my dad; he was standing in the kitchen.
    â€œHow did it taste?” I asked.
    He pointed at the garbage disposal. “Rest in peace,” he said. “But I’m pretty sure my culinary skills will improve when my eyes do. I took a double dose of the pills.”
    â€œIs that a good idea?” I asked. “What if you get X-ray vision?”
    Dad threw a dish towel over his shoulder like a cape. “
Super
dad!”
    I nodded. “Could come in handy solving crimes.”
    â€œWhich reminds me,” Dad said, “how goes the case of the missing cats?”
    â€œWell, so far today, Yasmeen and I have realized that we’re idiots,” I said.
    â€œThat’s not necessarily bad,” Dad said. “Often, the first step toward wisdom is to recognize one’s own foolishness.”
    â€œIs that from a fortune cookie?” I asked.
    Dad said it might be, or he might have made it up. “When you get to be my age, it’s not only your eyes that fail, it’s your memory, too.”
    â€œYou’re not old, Dad,” I said, which made him grin.
    â€œKeep picking up your cues, Alex. Otherwise I’ll have to hire a new sidekick.”
    I told Dad good night and took the old newspapers up to my room. Like the love letter, they were crinkly and yellow. It was weird to think how long they’d been around. Not a single person mentioned in them was still alive.
    The two newspapers on the top were from 1876.
    Then there was one from 1877. In them were articles about new buildings going up, streetsbeing laid out, businesses opening. Most of the stuff was pretty boring.
    And then I found it.
    Page one, November 3, 1879.
    H ARVEY R ITES T OMORROW
AT S T . B ERNARD ’ S
    I guess the newspaper reporters had already written about the murder itself because this article mostly talked about plans for the funeral and how important Mr. Harvey’s business was. Toward the end the article reviewed the “peculiar circumstances” under which the body was found. From what this said, it looked like Mr. Stone’s version of the story actually was right. The big black cat was found in the parlor with the body, the body had been so badly mauled it was “unrecognizable,” Marianne Harvey had been strangled in the same room only two days before.
    The last sentence read:
    So bizarre and bloody a tragedy has never yet been heard of in the brief history of our fair town nor yet for many miles around
.
    I flipped through the rest of the papers quickly, but there was nothing else from 1879. I was about to turn out my light when I spotted a little tiny article at the bottom of the front page, easy to miss because the headline was small—like nobody thought it was important at the time.
    And the way it turned out later, nobody in all the years since had thought it was important either.
    Not till I did. But first there was the case of the missing cats to solve.

Chapter Twenty-seven

    â€œStouthearted Floyd disappeared?” Yasmeen repeated. We were on our way to school the next morning, Halloween day. “Right after Gilmore Harvey’s body was found?”
    â€œThat’s what the old newspaper said: ‘One Floyd Anderson, an employee of Mr. Gilmore Harvey’s dry goods emporium, was reported missing by his friends and colleagues.’ ”
    Yasmeen thought for a minute. “Well, I suppose that might make sense,” she said. “Probably he was afraid people would find out about him and Marianne Harvey. Probably he wasafraid the police would suspect him of killing her husband, so he left town.”
    â€œMaybe,” I said, “or maybe he was just so sad about her being dead