The mansion rose up over a long stretch of grassy lawn. Three stories tall, its graceful white columns held the roof high above the porch. Some sort of thick vine twisted round and round those columns. Bunches of purple flowers rather like grapes dangled from those vines to make bright flashes of color against the boring bricks of the house. Elaborate gardens with fountains and more brick walls stretched out on either side of Tangle Glen. A wood wrapped itself protectively around it all, blocking out the view of the Maumee River beyond. Somewhere on the other side of all those trees were neighborhoods and streets, but it was hard to believe, looking at them. Other than Tangle Glen and the grassy sweep of yard leading up to it, trees surrounded them.
Sloane and Amelia snapped their Chromebooks shut and pressed their faces against the car window.
A gravel drive looped around the front of the mansion. Amanda Poe yanked the car to a halt in a spray of loose stones. The Miller-Poes tumbled out of the van like Vikings having just pushed their longboats ashore, weapons raised and horned helmets atop their heads. Obviously, the Miller-Poes had neither weapons nor helmets, but they still managed to give the same impression of a crowd of tall, muscular people having arrived to storm the gates and pillage a community.
“What’s a petal guard?” Amanda Miller demanded, flinging a bag at the Judge as she began to unpack the trunk.
“It runs offense for the rest of the petals!” The Judge tossed the bag to his stepdaughter.
“Wrong!” Ashley shrieked, slinging the bag over her back like a sack of plunder. “It’s the outer petals that protect the inner petals.”
Aiden came to his dad’s defense as he caught his own bag. “That’s essentially the same thing!”
Still squabbling, the Miller-Poes stampeded across the tall, shaded porch and in through Tangle Glen’s double doors.
Once they’d gone and it was safe, Sloane and Amelia slid out too.
As Sloane got their bags out of the back of the van, Amelia snapped her phone onto a selfie stick, adjusted her bell-shaped hat (called a “cloche,” as she had informed Sloane) and breathlessly declared for her camera, “And so, the adventure begins!”
Still filming, Sloane and Amelia carried their bags into the entry hall.
Sloane looked around and whistled. “Swanky.”
A grand stairway swept up the left side of the entrance hall. Reaching the wall, it turned gracefully to the right to create a wide balcony before continuing its way up to the second level. A glittering chandelier drooped down from the ceiling high, high above. Sunlight danced in from the floor-to-ceiling windows on the back wall to spin through the chandelier’s crystal prisms and throw little rainbows up into the air like confetti. A fireplace sat between the windows, though of course it wasn’t being used this time of year. Leather chairs and velvet couches were scattered about the entrance hall in case anyone got tired crossing it and needed to sit down for a while to rest.
An enormous vase of peonies sat on a marble table directly underneath the chandelier. They filled the entry hall with the most amazing smell. Light and sweet, like you’d fallen into a meadow of wildflowers on the most perfect day of summer.
By now, both Sloane and everyone in the Miller-Poe family could recognize the big pom-pom-like flowers as peonies. However, neither Sloane nor Amelia had ever seen so many different colors and shapes. There had to be almost a hundred different blossoms in a vase so big it was practically the size of a barrel.
“This…” Amelia sighed. “This is exactly the sort of glamour our channel needs. I want to get our first video uploaded to YouTube tonight so our subscribers can follow along with our investigation.”
The rest of the Miller-Poes were talking to a man in an elegant green suit. He was tall, had a very rigid back, and long, rigid arms and legs. In spite of his stiffness, he had a way of leaning forward that reminded both Sloane and Amelia of a grasshopper. The dark green suit only made him look more like an insect. As did the round glasses he wore, which made his already-bulging eyes seem even bigger and rounder than was humanly possible.
He didn’t seem very impressed by the rest of the Miller-Poes.
“This isn’t a boxing match,” the grasshopper gasped, snapping a silk handkerchief out of his pocket with which to wipe his fingers, as though they were kicking up so much dust brawling that he was getting contact-dirt just being near them. “My name is Hayden Boening-Bradley the fifth. I’m the president of the Ohio Peony Enthusiasts Club, and I demand to know who you people are and what you’re doing here. This entire inn is reserved the next several days for our Annual Ohio Peony Enthusiasts Competition. Perhaps there’s a barn somewhere out in the countryside where you can stay.”
“I’m a judge!” The Judge gasped.
“Not just any judge,” Amanda Miller corrected. “He’s the judge.”
“Well, one of them, anyhow,” Ashley cut in.
Determined to be part of the conversation, Aiden added, “He’s here to replace Timothy Neikirk.”
Mr. Boening-Bradley’s lip curled back in disgust as he pulled three sets of keys out of his pocket. “Really? When Timothy Neikirk promised me an actual judge for our committee, I assumed I would be getting a man of class and breeding.”
“And that’s exactly what you got,” the Judge said smugly, while the rest of the Miller-Poes preened, clearly impressed with themselves.
Then Aiden snatched a key out of Mr. Boening-Bradley’s hand and shouted, “First one to our rooms!”
Challenge accepted, the Miller-Poes grabbed the two remaining sets of keys and pounded up the wide staircase that zigzagged around the entry hall, leaving behind a stunned Mr. Boening-Bradley. His mustache quivered with outrage, which looked not unlike the antennae on a bug if that bug was also outraged.
Turning around, he complained to Sloane and Amelia, “This is what comes of holding a respectable, dignified event like a peony contest in the—the—the den of a bootlegger! A—a—rumrunning hooligan! At a time when women were expected to be well-behaved, upright citizens, that Yaklin woman was little better than a pirate!” Finally seeming to realize he was speaking to two kids, he suddenly went stiff with outrage. “What are you doing in here? This isn’t a playground. Go away. Shoo! Shoo!”
He actually waved his hands at them like they were chickens.
(Given that chickens eat grasshoppers, maybe his dislike was understandable.)
“We’re with the Judge and his family,” Sloane said in a small voice, afraid that might make matters worse.
Amelia seemed to worry about the same thing, so she added, “We’re also girl detectives with a YouTube channel and almost a thousand subscribers.”
She waved her selfie stick at him to prove it.
“I don’t know what any of that means,” Mr. Boening-Bradley sneered dismissively. With that, he stormed out of the entry hall, legs moving in the same, slightly jerky fashion of a grasshopper bounding through the grass.
Watching him go, Sloane said, “Maybe don’t include all of that in the video.”
Amelia, however, had already moved on to other matters. She’d spotted a large, silver-framed picture over on the front desk at the back of the entry hall. “Hey, Sloane, look! It’s a picture of Bootleggin’ Ma Yaklin.”
Together, they went over to it. Of course, they’d seen other pictures of Jacqueline Yaklin online, but they hadn’t exactly been great. Most of them were blurry, grainy reproductions of old newspaper pictures. The only clear picture had been on a very short and pretty unhelpful Wikipedia page that showed Ma in handcuffs on her way to court. She’d understandably looked messy, unhappy, and in shock.
This picture showed a powerful and in-control woman maybe a little bit older than Amelia’s mom. She had dark hair tucked under a tight-fitting hat and wore dark lipstick. It was an up-close photograph, but they could see an elegant coat with a thick velvet collar. Ma cuddled a dog to her chest, and it wasn’t any dainty little teacup-sized dog, either. Instead, it was an enormous bloodhound with long, droopy ears and heavy jowls dangling from its jaws.
There was a placard next to the picture; Sloane read it aloud while Amelia adjusted her cloche, trying to angle it like Ma Yaklin’s. “ ‘Jacqueline Yaklin was a successful businesswoman who won the 1932 Annual Ohio Peony Enthusiasts Competition with a delicate herbaceous peony in distinguished tones of oyster shell and dusty pink. Alas, the exact breed has been lost and is much sought-after by fans of historical breeds. Pictured with her is Jacqueline’s dog, Eli, a prize-winning bloodhound whose keen nose could sniff out a peony even through a lead-lined box.’ Hm. That seems like an odd competition.”
Amelia had other thoughts on what they’d just read.
“ ‘Successful businesswoman,’ huh? Guess that sounds better than ‘criminal bootlegger.’ ” She chuckled. “I wonder what happened to Eli the prize-winning bloodhound after his successful businesswoman owner got sent to prison.”
“Probably ate all of those prize-winning peonies. That’s why the breed went extinct. Come on, Amelia. Let’s go find our room, and then we’d better get started. Two and a half days isn’t much time to solve a ninety-year-old mystery.”
“Yeah, but this mystery is, like, forty years younger than the last mystery we solved,” Amelia pointed out, encouraging as they carried their bags toward the stairway that zigzagged around the entryway and up to the second floor. “And we solved that one in a week.”
Hmm. Sloane supposed her friend had a point. Maybe they’d be able to solve this one by tonight, and she could go home.
They found their room on the second floor, across from Amelia’s parents’ room and just down the hall from the room Aiden and Ashley were sharing. Reaching it, Sloane pushed open the door.
“Wow,” Sloane and Amelia said together.
Large windows let in lots of emerald-and-gold light from the open lawn and woods surrounding Tangle Glen. A crystal chandelier hung from a ceiling frothy with swirly decorations. A huge wardrobe straight out of Narnia stood on one wall, while two beds with headboards that reached all the way up to the ceiling stuck out from the opposite wall. Delicate silver wallpaper covered the walls themselves, while a rug so expensive that Sloane was afraid to step on it was draped over the floor.
Amelia showed no such worry, tossing her armful of suitcases off to one side and dashing over to another door.
“Look, Sloane! It’s got one of those old-fashioned claw-foot tubs! I wonder if Ma Yaklin ever used it to brew up gin in it?”
(From 1920 to 1933, alcohol was illegal in the United States. Regular stores didn’t sell it. That’s where bootleggers stepped in. They either brought it in from Canada to sell to people or else they made it themselves. If they made it themselves, they frequently made it in bathtubs.
That’s right. People drank something made in the exact same place where they washed their feet and their butts. If anyone ever tells you that alcohol is good or something worth trying, keep that in mind. People who don’t mind drinking something made in the same place that their naked bottom had recently been scooting around in are not people to be trusted.)
Sloane joined Amelia in the bathroom doorway to peer at the tub. She made a face. “Let’s hope not.”
Amelia filmed their bedroom since it looked every bit as swanky as downstairs. She said it was important to add in lots of inside shots of Tangle Glen to their YouTube video. That way, their subscribers would find it easier to follow along with their investigation as she uploaded their videos to YouTube each night.
The goal was to post a video Friday and Saturday nights before revealing what had actually happened to Ma’s money on Sunday night.
Assuming they could figure that out between now and then.
“I think I saw a picture gallery off the entry hall downstairs,” Amelia said, peering into a heavy gilt mirror to adjust her checked cloak, cloche hat, and magnifying glass. “Let’s find out and then see if we can find the bootlegging tunnel. There’s got to be clues in a bootlegging tunnel.”
“Let’s just keep an eye out for that buggy Boening-Bradley guy. This is exactly the sort of place people get murdered in on TV shows. And he’s exactly the sort of guy to do the murdering!”
“On the bright side, we’re exactly the sort of super-smart detectives who solve the murders!” Amelia pointed out modestly as they headed back downstairs. “So, we’re unlikely to be murdered.”
Fortunately, Mr. Boening-Bradley was outside on Tangle Glen’s tall, columned front porch. A couple of expensive cars were speeding along the gravel driveway, and the cranky, grasshopper-like president of the Ohio Peony Enthusiasts Club had gone out to meet them.
As Sloane and Amelia reached the heavy marble table with the enormous vase full of peonies, Sloane’s phone buzzed. Taking it out of her pocket, she saw that Granny Kitty and Granny Pearl were FaceTiming her.
“Oh, don’t you look like the bee’s knees!” they cried in delight, taking in Amelia’s 1920s girl-detective outfit.
Amelia explained to Sloane, “ ‘The bee’s knees’ is a way of saying ‘great.’ ”
“We’re so glad we were able to help out Osburn and Miller-Poe Detective Agency,” Granny Kitty continued in a super-innocent way that made Sloane frown suspiciously.
“Yes, we’ve recommended it to all the bingo players in Nanna Tia’s living room,” Granny Pearl chirped. “Though, I have to admit that most of them are more excited that you’re going to the Annual Ohio Peony Enthusiasts Competition!”
“And speaking of…” Granny Kitty twinkled as though a thought had just occurred to her. “If you get the chance to grab us one or two cuttings, we wouldn’t mind a few new bushes for our yard! You know, just to say thank you to us for helping out!”
“Sure!” Amelia nodded like this would be the simplest favor in the world.
However, Sloane scrunched up her face uncertainly. “I’m not sure we can do that, grannies. I don’t think they let you take any of them home with you if they don’t belong to you.”
Granny Pearl and Granny Kitty both let out faintly hysterical laughs. Quickly, Granny Kitty said, “Oh, ha-ha-ha! We aren’t suggesting that you steal anything!”
“We would never suggest that!” Granny Pearl chirped. Then she glanced around shiftily and added, “It’s just that darn Millie Snyder is always bragging about her peonies. You know Millie, Sloane-y. She’s that Mackenzie Snyder’s grandma. You should see the braggy things she’s always posting on Instagram and Facebook about her garden.”
Ugh. Both Sloane and Amelia made faces. Mackenzie Snyder had made the end of seventh grade very difficult on Amelia. Then, when Sloane had gotten to know Amelia and started taking her side on things, Mackenzie tried to make life very hard on Sloane as well.
That hadn’t worked out so great for Mackenzie, but neither Sloane nor Amelia were fans of hers.
“Look at all of those beautiful peonies in that vase!” Granny Kitty sighed wistfully, clasping her hands together as though she’d fallen in love. “There have to be hundreds of them! Surely no one would notice if a stem or two went missing.”
Slyly, Granny Pearl added, “It would annoy Millie to no end if we got a few stems for our garden. You can start a bush from just a cutting or two, you know. Those Snyders all need to learn that they can’t make fun of other people.”
“Yeah!” Amelia enthused, nodding vigorously. “It’s like—it’s like they’re cruel, arrogant lords, and the rest of us are peasants they try to grind down into the dust. And by getting you peonies for your garden, we’ll be helping you overcome our oppressors!”
The grannies both blinked at this. They exchanged a confused look. Then, Granny Kitty shrugged and said, “Sure.”
Pushing Amelia out of view of the camera before she could commit to any felonies and end up in prison for tax evasion or something just like Bootleggin’ Ma Yaklin, Sloane said, “We’ll ask Mr. Boening-Bradley if we can have a couple of the flowers. But he doesn’t seem to like us very much, so don’t get your hopes up.”
“You’re such a good granddaughter, Sloane-y! Much better than that bratty Mackenzie!”
With that, the grannies signed off, and Sloane and Amelia crossed the entry hall to the double set of glass doors that led into the picture gallery Amelia had noticed earlier. The room had a high ceiling patterned all over with stylish geometric shapes. There were more crystal chandeliers and lots of velvet and gilt-trimmed furniture scattered about. Most of the couches and chairs seemed to be arranged so you could sit down and gaze at the startlingly large number of pictures hanging on the walls.
“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Sloane rubbed at her eyes.
Amelia slowly lifted her magnifying glass necklace up to one eye. “Are you seeing a whole lot of paintings of dogs? Like, a ridiculous number of paintings of dogs?”
“Yup.” Sloane dropped her hands from her eyes.
The paintings were all still there.
Sloane and Amelia swiveled their gaze all around the room.
“Guess Ma Yaklin liked dogs,” Amelia said finally.
Or at least, one dog. It was actually the same dog repeated over and over again in all the pictures. Eli, the adorably goofy-looking bloodhound from the picture out on the front desk. There was the dog’s face on top of Henry VIII’s body, those ears pooling onto the stiff, lacy collar. In another painting, a very talented artist had added the dog’s face to what was probably George Washington’s body, given the ax in one hand and the cherry tree still standing in the background, waiting to be chopped down. A powdered wig sat above the dog’s sad-yet-adorable face. The same artist had also done a version that transported the dog into Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. A lot of the other paintings seemed to be canine duplicates of famous paintings, but neither Sloane nor Amelia could come up with their names. Only that they seemed to be vaguely familiar.
Ma Yaklin herself leaned against a fancy dark green roadster. Tangle Glen loomed in the background, but it was almost entirely swallowed up by the woods around it. Ma Yaklin had one heeled foot perched on the car’s running board, elbow resting on her knee in a most unladylike fashion. She wore the same fitted hat and coat with the big velvet collar that she wore in the photograph out on the front desk. However, in this one, she wasn’t cuddling Eli. Instead, Eli stood next to her, sniffing a pale pink-and-white peony she held casually in one hand.
A gold plate fitted to the thick, ornate picture frame read: Et clavem intus est occultatum.
“Do you know what that means?” Amelia asked Sloane.
Sloane shook her head. “I mean, doesn’t ‘occult’ mean, like, witches and Ouija boards and stuff like that?”
“I think so. But I don’t see anything like that in the painting.” Amelia shrugged. “We could use Google to translate it.”
“Maybe later.” Sloane couldn’t imagine that it held any big clue to where the money might be hidden. “Let’s see if we can find the bootlegging tunnel first. The Tangle Glen website said it was down in the basement, but I don’t think guests are normally allowed to see it.”
“We must be stealthy, Sloane!” Amelia cried, immediately pressing her back against a wall like she could blend in with the paint.
“We might be stealthier if you put away your selfie stick.”
“No way. Creeping about an old mansion is going to look great in the video I post tonight.”
It took them a bit to find the entrance to the basement. Partly this was because Tangle Glen was large and had many rooms, and partly it was because they really did have to be stealthy. Mr. Boening-Bradley kept welcoming guests into Tangle Glen, sending them this way and that as they clutched crystal vases filled with peonies. All of them looked terribly snooty and very well dressed.
None of them seemed to like Sloane and Amelia any better than insect-like Mr. Boening-Bradley did.
Every time he spotted them, he curled up both his lips and nostrils as though smelling a particularly pungent fart. His bug eyes would bulge behind his glasses, and then he’d make shooing motions at them again with his hands.
Neither Sloane nor Amelia could remember if grasshoppers ate other bugs. Or people.
Either way, they agreed it was best to steer clear of the president of the Ohio Peony Enthusiasts Club.
“If we find the money, we’d better not tell him about it.” Sloane grimaced. “Because I think he really would murder us for it! He’d clamp those claws of his right around us and, SNIP! That would be the end of it.”
Finally, they found the basement door not far from what they assumed was the kitchen, given the nearby sounds of pots and pans banging and clanging about.
As basements went, it wasn’t a very sinister one. The ceiling was high, the walls were painted white, and there were plenty of big windows they could escape out of if they encountered anything horrifying (which is something you can never entirely rule out in old basements). Most of the space seemed to be given over to a washer, a dryer, and shelves for kitchen stuff like dishes and tablecloths. Farther back, there were stacks of chairs, probably for when Tangle Glen hosted something big like a wedding (or a peony competition).
Pushing aside towels and squeezing past shelving, they tapped the foundation walls, searching for the tunnel.
“Do you know what a bootlegger tunnel would sound like?” Amelia asked Sloane.
Sloane shook her head. “I’m hoping we know it when we hear it.”
If there was one, they didn’t. Eventually, they found a door and short set of stairs down into a murkier, dirtier basement. It had a cooler, damper feel to it, rather like what they both imagined the inside of an Egyptian tomb would feel like.
There were no longer any nice big windows they could crawl out of should they discover anything horrifying in there with them.
Amelia looked at Sloane uncertainly.
Sloane looked back at her just as uncertainly. Then, screwing up her courage, Sloane summoned Slayer Sloane, Ruler of the Seventh Grade Volleyball Court…
…and marched down the short flight of steps.
Finding a light switch at the bottom, she flicked it on. Dim, staticky bulbs hissed to life. They cast a sullen light onto old wooden crates filled with dusty bottles.
“No tunnel,” Sloane huffed into damp, mildewy air. “But there are lots of dusty old bottles and crates. I think they might be left from the bootlegging days!”
That caught Amelia’s imagination and swept away all worries about rats, ghosts, and rat-ghosts. She hurried down the steps to join her friend. “This seems like the perfect place for Ma to have hidden her millions. Like, there could be a secret compartment here just like there was at the Hoäl house in Wauseon.”
“Yeah, but if Ma had hidden her money down here, don’t you think people would have found it already?” Sloane objected, though she turned her phone’s flashlight on and used it to sweep the brick walls all the same. “The only reason no one found the secret compartment in the Hoäl house was because they didn’t know to look for it.”
“Hey, do you hear that?” Amelia asked, lowering her selfie stick so she could look around better.
Sloane followed her gaze toward an outside wall. An empty shelf leaned against it.
Yet it sounded very much like footsteps were coming toward them.
Through the stone.
“The bootlegger tunnel!” Sloane gasped, straightening up. “Amelia, and there’s someone in it!”
“Or a ghost!” Amelia cried shrilly, her imagination running away with her as she gripped her tripod for protection. “Sloane, don’t open it! It could be something coming for us!”
Before Sloane could answer, the shelving unit swung open, knocking over Sloane and Amelia.
As they fell backward into empty wooden crates, sending clouds of sawdust up into the air, they saw a long, dark tunnel open before them.
Out of which sprang Eli, Ma Yaklin’s bloodhound.
They hadn’t just found the bootlegger’s tunnel.
They’d released a demon ghost dog out into the world.