Skylar Robbins: The Mystery of the Hidden Jewels - Carrie Cross (most popular novels of all time TXT) 📗

on the estate. Whoever is smart and brave enough to follow her clues inherits the jewels.

Find the dumbwaiter.

Locating the dumbwaiter would be my next goal. Running down the stairs, I decided to start searching on the first floor. The kitchen was the most logical place from which to lift meals, so that’s where I began.

Both of my parents wanted to keep the antique fixtures, and except for a new dishwasher, garbage disposal, and refrigerator, the kitchen remained as it was a hundred years ago. Thin strips of wood called crown molding decorated the walls where they met the ceiling. A swirling design was carved into the wood, and the crown molding was stained with age. Faded wallpaper with delicate stripes had yellowed so much you could barely see the pattern. The sinks in the kitchen and the butler’s pantry had old metal faucets with wing-shaped handles that squeaked when you turned them. All of the cupboards were narrow and had skinny doors. The mismatched handles were pitted with rust and dulled by tarnish. One of the handles was bolted in crooked, and my parents decided to leave it that way.

Shining my penlight into one corner of the kitchen, I got down on my hands and knees and peeked behind the cast iron stove. I ran my fingertips across the baseboards all around the room, searching for anything that was loose or strange in any way.

Nothing.

The room dimmed for a split second as if a shadow had passed by the small window. A chill crept through me. I felt like I was being watched. Had one of Smack’s boys sneaked back into our yard to spy on me? One of them was so skinny his pants couldn’t stay up. He had wispy yellow hair and pointy cheekbones that poked out of his face like wedges. More than once I’d turned around to find him right behind me. Smack had barked his name in front of me: Dusty. Judging by his sloppy clothes, greasy forehead, and grimy fingernails, his name should have been Dirty.

I twitched and looked up. The window was clear.

Shaking off the creepy feeling, I shined my light up at the ceiling, hoping for another hidden panel like the one I had found in the turret room cupboard. There wasn’t one. The ceiling was solid. I let out a long hot breath.

I felt along the wall behind the oven, past the antique telephone that didn’t work, and around the corner into the butler’s pantry. That’s where I stopped. Turning on my big flashlight, I shot the beam past the deep sink and the dishwasher, focusing on the locked door at the end of the room. That had to be where the dumbwaiter was. An idea hit me and I sprinted up the stairs to my parents’ bedroom.

My mom was in the closet taking shoes out of a carton. “Hey, Mom? I searched all over the bottom floor and I can’t find the dumbwaiter. Have you seen it up here?” On the far side of their bed was a sitting room. I wandered into it and looked around.

“It probably stops in the formal dining room. But I doubt if it works.” She stuck her head back into the closet and started to unpack another box.

I ran down the hall and went into the big dining room, and sure enough there was a narrow cupboard in one wall. The door squeaked when I opened it. Sweet. There was a metal contraption inside that looked like a rectangular box, open on the side that faced the door. On one edge a sticker read: WEIGHT LIMIT: 150 POUNDS.

Thick clamps were attached to the top and bottom of the box, with cables threaded through them that led to pulleys. A row of buttons next to the dumbwaiter was numbered 1, 2, 3, and 4.

This house does have four floors, I thought. One of them is a hidden floor!

“Can I see if it works?” I called.

“Sure, I guess,” she said, bending over to open another box of shoes.

I pushed the button marked 3 and raced upstairs. Way ahead of Smack’s gang on this one.

Ducking into the library down the hall from my bedroom, I ran up to the wall where I figured I would find the dumbwaiter. Sure enough, I spotted a narrow cupboard door. I heard a squeaking noise behind it and opened it up. Moments later the dumbwaiter creaked into view, stopping directly in front of the opening.

“Yes!”

Just like in the dining room, there was a row of buttons next to the dumbwaiter.

1, 2, 3, 4.

I looked up at the ceiling. I thought about the house. My bedroom was on the third floor, and the turret room above it was the highest point on my side of the house. The little attic we used for storage was on the opposite end of the mansion. I remembered noticing the multilevel roof the first time we drove up the hill with Victoria Knight.

“Wait a minute!” I snatched the crumpled clue from my pocket and stared at it, remembering what my agents had posted: You need to go up 4 levels for the jewels.

Suddenly the equation made perfect sense. U + + 4. “You plus up plus four,” I breathed. I knew what I had to do. “I have to go up to four.”

Racing into my bedroom, I grabbed my Porta-detective kit and ran back to the library. Ripping my penlight out of the kit, I stuck my head into the dumbwaiter and shined the beam all around. I couldn’t see anything up or down the shaft past the metal sides of the box. Holding still, I listened hard until I was sure I didn’t hear any footsteps on the stairs. My mom wasn’t coming. The coast was clear.

I climbed into the dumbwaiter.

Nestling into the metal box, I pulled my feet inside and squirmed around until I was sitting cross-legged in the narrow space. No one much bigger than me would have been able to fit inside the dumbwaiter. Ms. Knight’s words rang in my head: “Too small for a person to ride.”

Unless that person was a skinny thirteen-year-old.

For a second I got very nervous, imagining all sorts of things that could go wrong. The metal cables holding the dumbwaiter up were old and might be rusty. They could snap in the middle of my ride and I would plunge down three stories, landing in a broken heap at the bottom of the elevator shaft. We could have a power failure and I could get stuck in the little metal box, trapped inside the wall. No one would know where I was or be able to find me. I could starve to death or die of thirst. While I starved to death, the rats that had nibbled the corners of the yellowed envelope could crawl inside the dumbwaiter and feast on me.

I took a deep breath and swallowed my fears. Finding another clue was way too important to chicken out. Reaching my arm outside of the little box, I hit the button marked 4 and ducked my head back inside.

The dumbwaiter started to rise.

Soon I was in pitch black, moving darkness, and my heart began to race. The dumbwaiter screeched and whined carrying my weight, and I started to panic. Turning on my penlight, I gritted my teeth to keep myself from crying out, when suddenly the little elevator slowed and stopped. A narrow door faced me, and I pushed it open and crawled through it.

The carpeted floor creaked beneath my feet as I took a careful step forward. The room was gloomy and painted with tall shadows. It stretched out ahead of me and disappeared around a bend. A little light came in through an air vent on one wall. Looking around with my heart hammering, my eyes finally adjusted to the dimness.

I was on the hidden floor!

I shined my penlight through the shadows. A soft throw rug lay at the foot of an elegant chair that was covered in midnight blue velvet. An old-fashioned floor lamp stood next to it and I turned the switch. It made a loud pop, and I flinched as the bulb lit briefly and burned out. A full-length mirror stood in front of me on a brass stand and my reflection startled me in the flash of light.

Turning around in a slow circle, I shined the narrow penlight beam across the floor. “This was Xandra Collins’s secret hideaway,” I whispered. Could her jewelry box be hidden up here? I didn’t have much time before my mom would notice I was missing. Or before Smack and the smelly boys figured out another way to get up here, right behind me.

The wall closest to me had a shelf bolted to it, full of books sandwiched between decorative bookends. I walked up to the shelf and shined my light on the spines so I could read some of the titles. The Fine Art of Disguise and Other Parlor Tricks. Evading the Media. Into Thin Air. I pulled the books forward and searched the area behind them. Nothing was hidden back there.

There was a brick fireplace in front of the elegant chair. I picked up the poker and dug through half-burned logs and ashes, hoping to find something buried beneath them, but there was nothing but soot. I turned to face the open part of the room, wishing I’d brought my jumbo flashlight with me.

There have to be clues up here!

Hurrying across the room, I aimed my penlight beam up and down the walls and over big oil paintings in heavy gold frames. Xandra Collins liked seascapes and moonlit forests. I peeked behind each painting, hoping to find a safe or a secret hiding spot. The walls behind them were solid. Blank. Empty.

Next I walked around a corner into another part of the floor. A sewing machine sat on a table with a little stool in front of it. Colorful bolts of fabric leaned against the wall. I ran my hand over a roll of purple velvet, sending a puff of dust into the air that made me sneeze. In the far end of the sewing area I saw a big pile of boxes, and shined my light on them.

I stared at the pile and a creepy feeling started to come over me.

Something familiar about all those boxes.

I counted them.

There were nine on the bottom row.

 

14

Trapped

My eyes widened. On top of the nine, there were more boxes. I nodded and quickly counted out loud. “One, two, three, four-five-six!” On top of the six boxes, there was another four. A big smile spread across my face. A final box rested on the top.

9 6 4 1. Now the symbol made sense, too.

9 6 4 1 = 20 boxes. Stacked on the hidden floor.

I aimed my penlight’s thin beam at the highest carton. Maybe Xandra Collins’s jewelry box was hidden inside! Careful not to tumble the pile, I reached up and pulled down the box from the top of the stack. It was awfully light. Too light. I yanked the cardboard flaps apart.

White cotton stuffing filled the whole carton. I opened the box below it and found rolls of rickrack, bags of buttons and snaps, chalk for marking fabric, and a fat red pincushion. Would all of the boxes be full of sewing supplies? This stomped my enthusiasm for a minute, but then the detective in me took over and I remembered my Grandpa’s words: Look for clues in unexpected places. They won’t be sitting right under your nose, waiting for you to find them. I pawed through one box after another like a dog trying to dig up a bone.

One box was full of newspaper clippings. I skimmed a few headlines but didn’t read anything interesting. If only I had more time! The next carton contained an assortment of wigs, stage makeup, false beards and moustaches, and masks. Other boxes held a variety of costumes. Some were neatly folded and others were crumpled into balls and jammed into the boxes like they’d been hidden away in a hurry.

The second-to-last box was empty but it had something stuck to the bottom of it. I turned it upside down and banged on the cardboard. A warped photograph fluttered to the floor. I picked it up and shined my penlight on it. The picture was of a beautiful lady with slightly tilted, almond-shaped eyes and a small smile on her face. She looked happy