The Ghost in the Third Row (11 page)

And with that she threw herself at Pop, scratching and clawing and hitting as if she had gone out of her mind.

They fought for a moment at the edge of the balcony. Then Lydia took a wild swing at Pop, missed, and lost her balance. She fell against the railing. He reached out to help her, she grabbed his hand, and they went over the edge together.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Curtain Call

With the mystery of who was trying to sabotage the show solved,
The Woman in White
went on to become a smashing success. We replaced Lydia with Marilyn. The cast pulled together to make up for the time we lost. And the publicity brought us a full house on opening night. “There's lots of bad news,” said Gwendolyn smugly. “But very little bad publicity.”

I guess she was right, because tickets started going like crazy as soon as the story hit the papers.

Opening night was incredible. I suppose it might have had something to do with what we had all been through together. Whatever the reason, the cast seemed to catch fire that night, and the show came to life in a way I had never thought possible. It was as though we were all actually
living
the story. I'll never forget standing in front of that audience at the end and feeling the love from all those hundreds of shouting, stamping, applauding people who were thanking us for making them laugh, for making them cry.

It was an incredible experience.

But one other experience in the old Grand Theater that summer burned even more deeply into my heart. It happened the night after Pop died trying to save my life.

I had sneaked into the balcony again, to be alone, to think about what had happened to him, and to me. I thought about all the years of sorrow and anger that had ended that night, years I had figured out through the research Sam the librarian did for me the day of that final disaster.

Sam explained his techniques to me later—how he used the names and information I had given him to comb through old newspapers and county records to put together the picture that finally made sense of it all.

It was Sam who gave me the big picture. But the details came from Lydia herself. She had survived the fall from the balcony, although not without several broken bones. When the police came to the hospital to question her about the accident, she broke down and confessed everything.

It was fairly simple, really. In 1935 Andrew Heron was convicted of the murder of Lily Larkin. Twenty-six years later, in 1961, he was released from prison on parole. A year later he married a younger woman whom he had convinced of his innocence. Together they had a baby: Lydia Heron.

Lydia and her father were similar in both temperament and appearance. Which was why Andrew looked so familiar to me when I saw his picture that time; he was like a male version of his daughter. Lydia had also inherited Andrew's talent, and he taught her everything he knew about theater and acting. But at the same time he was filling her with stories about the great injustice that he felt had been done to him. He gave her both his talent, and his enormous bitterness toward Edward Parker, the man who had won Lily Larkin's affections.

Mistakenly believing her father was innocent, it became Lydia's goal to clear his name. She wanted to eliminate anything that connected him to the crime—which was why she stole the microfilm from the library. Unfortunately for her, she didn't think of that until after the announcement had gone out that the Grand Theater was mounting a play based on the Lily Larkin story.

When Lydia heard about the play, she knew she had to stop it. With her theatrical training, it was easy enough to get a part, although she had been somewhat surprised when she landed the lead. Once she was in the play, her plan to force it to a halt by making it look like the ghost was disrupting things just seemed to come naturally, and she went at it from every angle she could think of. The day Chris and I spotted her going into the Brass Elephant with Alan, she had been trying to convince the poor guy that he should give up on his script because the Woman in White was so opposed to the show.

What Lydia hadn't counted on was that the Woman in White herself would take over.

And Pop? On the night Lily Larkin died in his arms, Edward Parker vowed to give up his acting career and stay at the Grand Theater until he and Lily were reunited. In time people forgot who he was, and why he was there, and just started calling him “Pop.” Occasionally a famous performer who remembered Edward Parker from his acting days would come to town with a show and go down to Pop's little office to share a few beers and some memories. That was where all those autographed pictures had come from.

For fifty years Pop stayed at the Grand, waiting to be reunited with Lily. I thought about the night we had seen him sitting in the third row, crying. I wondered if it was because we could see the ghost and he couldn't.

Now, as I sat there staring at the stage, I heard a familiar strain of music—a waltz filled with sweetness and unbearable longing. It was the song the Woman in White always danced to: “The Heart That Stays True.”

Looking down on the stage, I saw her for the last time. She was dancing in slow, sweeping circles, her empty arms held out before her. Again that feeling of sadness swept over me, and I could feel the tears start to run down my cheeks.

But a moment later everything changed. The music picked up speed, becoming livelier and sweeter.

And then a man stepped onto the stage, tall and handsome and filled with life, even though he was obviously a ghost, too.

It was a man I had seen before, in a picture in a newspaper fifty years old.

It was Pop—Edward Parker—the way he had looked on the day Lily died.

Crossing to the Woman in White, he took her in his arms, and they began to dance together. He whirled her around the floor, and her dress swept out behind her. The music began to swell, louder and faster and sweeter than ever. It seemed their feet were barely touching the floor.

I thought I was going to go out of my skin with the joy of it all.

And then, almost before it had begun, it was over. Still whirling around and around the stage, they began to fade slowly from my sight. A moment later they were gone. Only one note of music was left, a sweet pure note that hung in the air after they had vanished.

And then it, too, was gone, and there was nothing but an empty stage.

I sat there with tears streaming down my face, happier than I had ever thought possible.

Turn the page to continue reading from The Nina Tanleven Mysteries

CHAPTER ONE

The Quackadoodle

“Sigh.”

That was me, Nina Tanleven.

“I know. Double sigh.”

That was my best friend, Chris Gurley. We were lying on the floor of Chris's bedroom, looking at magazines and being depressed.

“Does everyone feel like this when a play ends?” I asked. Chris and I had been acting in a show being done at one of the local theaters that summer. Now that it was over, life seemed incredibly boring.

“I don't know,” said Chris. She rolled a strand of reddish blond hair through her fingers and pulled it over her nose. “I'd look it up, but I'm too depressed.”

“I wish we could do another one,” I said wistfully. “I wouldn't even complain about rehearsals.”

“You have to complain about rehearsals. It's traditional. Anyway, what I really miss are the people.”

I knew what she meant. While we were working on
The Woman in White
the rest of the cast had become like a second family. Now there was no reason for us to get together anymore.

Except for Chris and me. When we met at the auditions, the two of us had become friends almost instantly. We moved from “just friends” to “best friends” when we teamed up to solve the mystery behind the ghost haunting the Grand Theater where the play was being produced. Despite the fact that we go to different schools, we plan to be best friends forever.

We were still lying there feeling sorry for ourselves when Chris's mother poked her head into the room. “Come on, Nine. I'll drive you home.”

I sighed again and got up. “See you later,” I said to Chris.

She flopped her hand listlessly. “See you later.”

We both sighed.

You'd think that when someone is that depressed, the people around them would have the good manners to be a little depressed, too. Not
my
father. When Mrs. Gurley dropped me off, I dragged myself into the house, only to find Dad dancing around the kitchen, playing a tune on the pots and pans. Now Dad's a little weird, even at his best. But when I saw this act, I began to wonder if he had finally flipped for real.

“This is it, kid!” he yelled when he spotted me in the doorway. Making a lunge in my direction, he swooped me up and began swinging me around in a huge circle.

“What's going on?” I shrieked.

“I got the commission! This is it—the big break!”

“Dad, that's fantastic!”

“I know,” he said smugly.

My father is a preservation architect, which means he takes crummy old buildings that used to be beautiful and tries to make them beautiful again. He works for one of the best firms in Syracuse, New York. But for a long time he's been wanting to go out on his own. “Oh, Nine,” he would moan when we were having supper. “I want to burst the bonds of employment, shatter the shackles of salary, dump the daily drudge—”

“Yeah, I know,” I would say. “You want to be a bum.”

Actually, I only said that to tease him. My father works very hard. But he'd much rather be working for himself. For one thing, he has his own ideas about how to do things. They sound great to me. But when you're working for someone else, you usually have to do things their way.

That's why I plan on owning my own business when I grow up.

“So you got the job,” I said when he finally put me down. “Is it being too nosy if I ask which one?”

“THE job,” said Dad. “The plum I've been trying to pluck for months now. The assignment that will get my name in major design magazines across the country.”

“Oh, that job,” I said.

He smiled.

“Well, which one is it?” I finally shouted.

“The Quackadoodle.”

“Say that again?”

“The Quackadoodle,” he repeated.

“What's a Quackadoodle do?” I asked.

“Very funny, twit,” he said. “It doesn't do anything. It just sits there.”

“Sort of like Sidney?” I asked.

Sidney is our cat. He's big, orange, and lazy. If you see him from the wrong angle, it's easy to get confused and think he's a pillow.

“No, not like Sidney,” said Dad. “The Quackadoodle is an inn. A very old inn, located in the Catskill Mountains. A very
run-down
old inn that is going to be incredibly beautiful when I get done with it!”

A sudden thought struck me.

“When did you get this news?” I asked.

“About three hours ago.”

“And have you done anything I ought to know about since then?”

He looked at me, the picture of wounded innocence. “Me?” he asked sweetly.

Ever since my mother left two years ago, I've kind of felt it was my job to keep my father from doing things without thinking. But sometimes he moves pretty fast. I had a feeling this was one of those times.

I looked him straight in the eye. “Dad?”

“Yes?” he said, acting as if this were a brand-new conversation.

“Should I be nervous?”

“Are you kidding?” he said. “When you're living with Henry Tanleven, the number one free-lance preservation architect in Syracuse?”

“I knew it!” I yelled. “I knew it. You quit your job. We'll be living on the street and eating bread crusts within three months.”

Actually, I didn't believe that for a minute. In fact, I was secretly very happy. My father is really talented. He
should
be working for himself. But I didn't want him to take this too lightly.

“Nine,” he said. “You wound me. Anyway, I took this job partly for you.”

I looked at him suspiciously—which is the best tactic to take anytime adults tell you they're doing something for your sake. “What do you mean?”

My father smiled. “I just thought Syracuse's number one ghost buster might enjoy spending the rest of the summer at a haunted inn.”

CHAPTER TWO

Patience

“Will you come to my funeral?” asked Chris.

We were leaning against a monument in Oakwood Cemetery, which is this enormous graveyard about a mile from my house. It's a good place for being alone. We were at our favorite spot, a huge tree we duck under for shelter when the sun gets too hot.

“When are you having it?” I asked, popping the head off a dandelion. “I don't like to make plans more than fifty years in advance, you know.”

Chris bounced an acorn off a nearby tombstone. “Probably about a week and a half from now.”