Old Hewitt confessed to two crimes: the accidental killing of Madame Valentin decades ago, when he and Donahue were kids and had set the dogs on her, and the recent murder of Donahue during a terrible fight on his boat.
They had been visited by Madame Valentin’s ghost every night since Frank Goolz started playing with the Stone of the Dead. Donahue had been losing his mind over it, and was starting to think that the only way to stop her from haunting them was to confess. Old Hewitt disagreed, and they’d fought. It ended when Hewitt bashed in Donahue’s skull with the plank of wood and dropped his body in the crab tank.
Old Hewitt led the police to an abandoned clay mine, where they found the perfectly mummified remains of Madame Valentin. They also found Alex and Peter there, trapped with her body at the bottom of a deep pit.
“Oh, that must have been so uncomfortable,” Suzie said, smiling. “Serves them right. Ha! Bullies!”
We were back in the tiny meeting room in the Newton police station. Officer Miller said that Mum was on the way, then he practically ran out of the room.
“She didn’t want to kill them,” Frank Goolz told us when we were alone. “She wanted people to look for the boys, and find her body in the process. Very clever!”
He also said that Madame Valentin, the Stone of the Dead, and I were connected in an unusual way. “I believe you are a very special boy, Harold,” he said. “You have a marvelous gift for the ghostly. A talent for seeing past the shadows. It’s a blessing.”
He smiled, put his hand on my shoulder, and squeezed until it hurt. Somehow, though, it made me feel a little better about losing the Stone and all its magic.
“You’ll be fine,” Ilona told me, and I knew everything would be okay. That is, until I heard a tornado come into the station shouting my name. Mum had arrived.
“Mum!” I called. “Please?”
“No,” she said from downstairs, where she was working on her next savory pie. Mum had reinstated the Goolz embargo and even said she would press charges if they dragged me into danger again.
“This is ridiculous,” I told her, playing with the stair lift to annoy her with the noise. “The Goolz are heroes! You should want me to spend more time with them. Those two idiots would have died in that cave without them.”
“You said they weren’t idiots anymore.”
Mum was right. After the dust had settled, Peter and Alex paid me a visit at home. But not to drag me to the beach and abandon me to the tide like they used to. They came to make peace and to thank me for playing a part in their rescue. They sat at our kitchen table, ate some of Mum’s cheesecake, and listened to her jokes without mocking her accent. They even shook my hand before they left.
“You’re awesome, English boy,” Alex said. “Always thought so.”
Spending time with a mummified cadaver had changed them deeply. Or maybe, now that the sins of their fathers had been brought to justice, in this world and the next, a magical grudge had been lifted from their shoulders, and they could become who they were really meant to be. Whatever it was, they were bullies no more.
“Please, Mum?” I said later, watching her weed the vegetable garden.
“No,” she said.
I was on the porch. Ilona was sitting on the floor of her own porch on the other side of the bridge. We exchanged nods and brief waves when Mum wasn’t looking.
“This sucks,” I mouthed, hoping Ilona could read my lips.
She smiled and mouthed back, “I know!”
Her father had even built a ramp for me, waving and smiling at Mum as she stared at him incredulously.
When I turned back to Mum, she was on her knees, holding a bunch of vivid orange carrots, and watching our silent conversation.
“Why do you have to make me play the bad guy?” she asked.
“Please, Mum.”
She briefly closed her eyes, then sighed and put her hands on her hips, trying to look all stern and authoritarian, which didn’t really work when she was holding a bunch of carrots. “No more dangerous adventures!” she yelled.
My heart started to beat faster. I knew she was finally giving in.
“No more dangerous adventures!” I agreed, my voice coming out about two octaves too high.
She shook her head in disbelief and dropped the carrots into her vegetable basket. “I’m going to regret this.”
“No, you won’t,” I said.
“Go on, then.”
She didn’t have to tell me twice. I was already flying down the path to the bridge.
“And Harold!” Mum called. “You go no farther than their house or yard, do you hear me?”
But I wasn’t listening anymore. Ilona jumped off her porch and ran to the other side of the bridge. I crossed it without anyone’s help and stopped in front of her, my wheels sinking into the sand.
“Your mum is watching us,” she said, but she leaned over me and gave me a wonderful hug anyway. “I missed you, Harold Bell.”
“I missed you, Ilona Goolz.”
Mum was standing in the middle of our garden, holding her basket of vegetables. She wasn’t angry anymore. She was sad. Or happy. Whatever she was, I knew she was trying not to cry at seeing me so happy to be back with Ilona. Mum and I gave each other a little nod. Then she turned her back and went into the house because she’d started to cry and didn’t want me to see.
“Should we try the ramp?” Ilona asked. “Dad built it, so it might collapse.”
It didn’t.
Frank Goolz and Suzie were in the kitchen enjoying watery cocoa and horrible cookies when we came in.
“There’s Harold!” Frank Goolz said. “Would you like some cocoa?”
I nodded, and Suzie made me a cup. Ilona handed me a cookie, and everything was right again.
“I was just on the phone with Officer Miller,” Frank Goolz said. “Hewitt is talking like he’s unloading a weight he’s had on his shoulders for years.”
Ilona sat beside me, then did something I didn’t expect. She took my hand, right in front of her dad and sister. I looked at her. She smiled. Frank Goolz didn’t seem to notice or care. He just wanted to tell his story. “Killing Madame Valentin was sort of an accident, just like he told us,” he said.
She had come to talk to Old Hewitt’s parents because he and Donahue had beaten up a kid at school that day. But his parents weren’t at home, and the boys unchained the dogs when they saw Madame Valentin walking down the road from the cemetery. They only wanted to scare her off. The dogs saw it differently and … well, you know what happened next. Then the boys got really scared and carried her body in a trolley to an abandoned mine in the marsh. They hid her body in a box deep in the mine and hoped they would get away with it.
“And they did,” Frank Goolz said, “until we started using the Stone of the Dead, opening doors between this world and the next.”
I was about to drink some of my bad cocoa when someone knocked on the open door. I turned around and saw two girls about Suzie’s age standing on the porch. It was the Farrell twins, the daughters of a family that lived on the far edge of Bay Harbor. You could see their parents’ farm from the road, right beside the Mallow Marsh. The Farrells were strange people. They homeschooled their daughters and were members of some kind of cult. The girls were dressed like they had just escaped a Gothic novel set in a time before hot water and electricity. One of them was carrying a shoebox.
“Can I help you?” Frank Goolz asked, standing up and walking to the door.
“We heard you found the missing boys,” one of the sisters said.
“Our mother is missing. She’s been missing a week,” the other one continued.
Suzie, Ilona, and I joined them at the door.
“Missing? Is that right?” He frowned, but his eyes lit up.
“Isn’t this something your dad should report to the police?” Ilona asked.
“Dad doesn’t want to go to the police,” one of them said.
“And we found this in the high grass by the marsh,” said the other one, opening the box so we could all see what was in it. Inside the shoebox was a human foot severed at the ankle.
“Cheese! It stinks!” Ilona covered her nose.
“I don’t like the sight of blood,” Suzie said, turning pale.
“I just promised Mum we’re not going on any more dangerous adventures!”
“Well, girls,” Frank Goolz said, “let me get my satchel.”