Chapter Two
The Dead Don’t Talk
Meeting with the agency’s co-founder, Twist
Top-secret hideout
Thursday, 10:30 a.m.
Oliver Twistleton (a.k.a. Twist), an associate at the Deadwood Detective Agency, was waiting for Seth and me in our tree house—sorry, our top-secret hideout—complete with its three-legged desk and secondhand chairs. Against one wall was a shelf stacked with bins of hardware—tiny screws, bolts, fuses, gears and enough silicone to fill a basin. Next to the door was a poster of a dashing special agent dangling from a ladder, deep brown eyes wide with fear, urging us to hang in there. In the corner sat the hollowed canister of a 1950s Electrolux vacuum cleaner that Twist had scavenged. We now use it as a wastebasket. One of my jobs …show more content…
“Everything was going as planned until the bear’s severed fist punched a judge in the nose.” He held up a trophy. “Still won second place.”
“That’s cool,” I said. “Guess what we saw at Willaston Place?”
“What?”
“The ghost of Captain McBride.”
Twist nearly dropped his cup. He was terrified of millipedes, and even the whisper of a ghost rattled him. His fear had something to do with the movie, Attack of the Homicidal Creepy-Crawlers, and a seventy-two-hour spook-a-thon.
“Then we heard this.” I set my voice recorder on the desk and fast-forwarded to the creepy shrieks. “The rest is just us talking to the men we met at the house.”
Twist’s shocked expression was replaced by intrigue. That was how he always was once the panic died down. He was curious about the case. “The screams sound eerie, but not ghostly.”
“Precisely.” I paused, choosing my words carefully. “I’ve read stories about people who were allegedly dead, but awoke years later. Maybe the captain fell down the stairs and when he came to, he thought he’d lost his body. He’s been searching for it ever since, similar to the headless horseman in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow who was searching for his …show more content…
“I searched the web this morning and found a site that gave some details about the captain’s life.”
“And?” I stretched across a beanbag chair, my pink Converse sneakers hanging off the ends of my toes.
“I guess the captain and his new bride—a Chinese princess—left the Far East in a hurry. They stayed with his sister Abigail for a while on the outskirts of Bitter Springs. Some stories suggested that McBride and Abigail squabbled. Others claimed he feared retaliation from his wife’s family after they fled, so he built Willaston here in Whodunit Hill to hide. Look at this.”
Twist flipped the newspaper over and pointed to a picture of the captain standing next to a mansion.
I could read the caption and article below the picture because it was reverse-printed dark gray text on an off-white background, a good combination for my dyslexic
The Dead Don’t Talk
Meeting with the agency’s co-founder, Twist
Top-secret hideout
Thursday, 10:30 a.m.
Oliver Twistleton (a.k.a. Twist), an associate at the Deadwood Detective Agency, was waiting for Seth and me in our tree house—sorry, our top-secret hideout—complete with its three-legged desk and secondhand chairs. Against one wall was a shelf stacked with bins of hardware—tiny screws, bolts, fuses, gears and enough silicone to fill a basin. Next to the door was a poster of a dashing special agent dangling from a ladder, deep brown eyes wide with fear, urging us to hang in there. In the corner sat the hollowed canister of a 1950s Electrolux vacuum cleaner that Twist had scavenged. We now use it as a wastebasket. One of my jobs …show more content…
“Everything was going as planned until the bear’s severed fist punched a judge in the nose.” He held up a trophy. “Still won second place.”
“That’s cool,” I said. “Guess what we saw at Willaston Place?”
“What?”
“The ghost of Captain McBride.”
Twist nearly dropped his cup. He was terrified of millipedes, and even the whisper of a ghost rattled him. His fear had something to do with the movie, Attack of the Homicidal Creepy-Crawlers, and a seventy-two-hour spook-a-thon.
“Then we heard this.” I set my voice recorder on the desk and fast-forwarded to the creepy shrieks. “The rest is just us talking to the men we met at the house.”
Twist’s shocked expression was replaced by intrigue. That was how he always was once the panic died down. He was curious about the case. “The screams sound eerie, but not ghostly.”
“Precisely.” I paused, choosing my words carefully. “I’ve read stories about people who were allegedly dead, but awoke years later. Maybe the captain fell down the stairs and when he came to, he thought he’d lost his body. He’s been searching for it ever since, similar to the headless horseman in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow who was searching for his …show more content…
“I searched the web this morning and found a site that gave some details about the captain’s life.”
“And?” I stretched across a beanbag chair, my pink Converse sneakers hanging off the ends of my toes.
“I guess the captain and his new bride—a Chinese princess—left the Far East in a hurry. They stayed with his sister Abigail for a while on the outskirts of Bitter Springs. Some stories suggested that McBride and Abigail squabbled. Others claimed he feared retaliation from his wife’s family after they fled, so he built Willaston here in Whodunit Hill to hide. Look at this.”
Twist flipped the newspaper over and pointed to a picture of the captain standing next to a mansion.
I could read the caption and article below the picture because it was reverse-printed dark gray text on an off-white background, a good combination for my dyslexic