Asia munched on a tuna-fish sandwich and watched her grandmother through the kitchen window, picking dead flowers off a bed of daisies. The day was flying by, and soon it would be too late to go back to Cormorant Cottage.
“What are we going to do next?” said Sierra. Purple juice stained her mouth, and her freckles were vivid against her pale skin.
“Nothing.” Asia fought back a pang of sympathy and hardened her voice. “I have to go out for awhile.”
“Can I come?”
“No.”
Sierra frowned. “Why not?”
“Because I have to ride my bike to get there.”
“We could walk over to my house and get my bike.”
Asia’s heart sank. This was going to be harder than she thought. Sierra looked stubborn and, anyway, Beth probably expected Asia to entertain her for the rest of the day.
She sighed. She had no idea what Mary Wintergreen would say if she brought her cousin.
“Are you allowed to ride on the road?” she said finally.
“I would be if I was with you.”
Asia hesitated. She could tell Beth they were going to the library to return her books. They could do that first, and then it wouldn’t be a lie. She studied Sierra’s hopeful face.
“Can you keep a secret?”
“From Grandma again?”
Asia felt her cheeks redden. “Yes.”
“I promise I won’t tell.”
Asia gave in. “Okay, you can come.”
Beth looked at Sierra doubtfully when Asia told her that they were going to hang around the library for awhile and read books, but after a quick phone call to Valerie she said that Sierra could go. Asia understood the look on Beth’s face better when they got to the library. While she picked out a new stack of mysteries, Sierra rearranged the pillows in the little kids’ reading corner and then played on one of the computers.
“I hate reading,” she told Asia when they were back outside with their bikes.
“Well I love reading,” said Asia. She slid the books into her backpack. “We’re going somewhere else now, anyway. Stay right behind me and be careful around the cars.”
They rode back along Marine Drive and then turned up
Bellevue Avenue, Sierra clanging her bike bell every few minutes. Asia felt a moment of panic that the little blue door in the fence would be locked again, but it opened with a soft creak. They leaned their bikes against the inside of the fence and walked through the shady overgrown yard and around the side of the cottage to the ocean. The tide was in and the waves pounded against the stone wall. Asia looked for the big black cormorant, but it wasn’t there today.
Mary Wintergreen was sitting on the porch, the tray with the rosebud teapot and teacups on the wicker table beside her, the gray cat asleep in her lap.
“Hello!” said Asia. “This is my cousin, Sierra. I brought her because she’s good at finding things.” She had no idea if that was true, but the old woman was watching them so intently.
Sierra had been silent ever since they walked through the little blue door. She stood very close to Asia. The cat jumped down and rubbed against her legs.
“Its name is Monty,” said Asia.
“Would you like tea, Sierra?” said Mary Wintergreen, leaning forward and staring at her face.
“No thank you,” whispered Sierra.
“Then it’s time to get started.” Mary Wintergreen’s voice shook. “I thought you weren’t coming back. We’ll go into the parlor, and I’ll tell you what I want you to do.”
Sierra was frozen to the porch, and Asia swallowed her own nervousness and said firmly, “Come on, Sierra.” They followed the old woman into the cottage. An oil lamp on a small shelf cast a dim light down a narrow hallway covered with pale mauve flowered wallpaper. As they walked down the hall, Asia caught glimpses through half open doorways of a dark kitchen with a big stone sink and a cracked linoleum floor, and a bathroom with a huge claw-foot bathtub.
The parlor was at the end of the hall, at what she supposed was really the front of the cottage. It was a small room filled with an odd assortment of chairs, a stiff couch, a table with fancy curved legs and a big black piano. Heavy crimson curtains covered the windows. Asia and Sierra sat on the couch, and Mary Wintergreen sat opposite them on a green velvet chair.
Asia glanced around the room hopefully. Her heart sank as she eyed the tall shelves that covered three of the walls, shelves filled with a jumble of books, ornaments, glass bottles, shells and other bits and pieces of clutter. The cat probably went everywhere. There were hundreds of places her Saint Christopher medal could be in all this mess.
“I want you to find a diary,” said Mary Wintergreen.
A diary? This was the odd job, looking for some old diary? What a weird thing to put up a notice about. “Whose diary is it?” said Asia.
“Your young eyes are much sharper than my old ones,” said Mary Wintergreen, ignoring Asia. “And I must find it.”
“We could start with those books,” said Asia doubtfully.
“Maybe it’s tucked in among them somewhere.”
Mary Wintergreen frowned. “No, no, no. In here? No, no.” She closed her eyes, and Asia was afraid she was going to fall asleep again. “The attic,” she muttered. “I think she might have put it in the attic.”
She opened her eyes. “There are a lot of old boxes in the attic,” she said clearly. And there’s the old steamer chest and the trunks. You could start there.”
Asia thought that this was beginning to sound like a lot of work. Mary Wintergreen stood up quickly, and the girls followed her back into the hall to a door with a funny glass doorknob. Mary Wintergreen opened it, and Asia peered up a steep flight of stairs.
“Do you have a flashlight?” she said.
Behind her, Sierra whispered, “She’s gone.”
Asia glanced back down the empty hallway. Far away, the flame in the oil lamp flickered. She looked at Sierra’s frightened eyes and swallowed. “We’ll just go up and have a look around,” she whispered. “We don’t have to stay if we don’t want to.”
They climbed the stairs slowly to a landing with a locked door on either side and a third door that opened onto yet another flight of stairs. A dim light shone at the top. These stairs were narrower and steeper and ended at a small room with a low slanted ceiling. The light came from a wide-open round window, made of tiny panes of leaded glass. It was the little window that the cat had slipped through when he took her medal. The window where the old lady had appeared.
Sierra ran to look. “You can see our bikes!” Asia gazed over Sierra’s shoulder into the shady yard with the enormous evergreen trees.
Vines had grown around the windowsill so thickly that it was like looking through a leafy green wreath. Their bikes, leaning against the old fence, looked very out of place.
The cat could have dropped her medal somewhere in this little room. She thought about telling Sierra and then changed her mind. The little girl would think she was crazy. Asia’s sense of helplessness grew as she scanned the floor with its accumulation of old cardboard boxes, broken kitchen chairs, a lamp, a rolled-up carpet, a big wooden crate that might be the steamer chest, two trunks with curved tops and a tall dresser with narrow drawers. Cobwebs hung in the corners, and a thin sheet of dust coated everything.
Asia sighed. It would look odd if they didn’t at least pretend to look for the diary. “Let’s start with the cardboard boxes.” She slid a big box with dented corners and a sagging top into the middle of the room. She knelt in front of it and tugged back the flaps. “Oh!” she gasped.
A pale white face and two glassy black eyes stared up at them.
Sierra screamed.