A half hour later, the popcorn the Aldens made was still selling well. So well, in fact, that they were running out of containers to serve it in. Violet looked at the crowd in the snack bar and began to worry.
“Shouldn’t Dan Brinker be here by now, Jessie? You said he was bringing more buckets for us to use,” she said.
Jessie looked at her watch. “I guess something came up at his store,” she said. “I’ll go to Duke’s Dogs and see if I can get some spare bags.” She was sure that Mr. Duke would be helpful, now that he and Uncle Flick were friendly again. She hurried out the door and ran across the lot.
Not too long after she left, Uncle Flick turned to the other children. “Why don’t you get a soda, kids? Joey and I can take it from here. You’ve done plenty.”
Henry, Violet, and Benny were glad to have a break. They walked out to the theater lot with their sodas. There was a small playground at the front of the theater near the screen, and they sat on the swings and watched the sun set.
“Why does everyone have to wait until dark to watch the movie?” Benny asked. “At home we don’t need to turn out the lights to watch TV”
“Watching a movie in a theater isn’t the same as TV,” Henry explained. “The projector throws flickering light on a screen. The darkness makes this easier to see. But if the sun was out—or if the lights were on—it would be much harder to see the movie.”
Violet was thinking about this. “That’s sort of like the ghost!” she said. “Remember how we couldn’t see it when Uncle Flick turned on the lights out here in the theater?”
“You’re right,” said Henry. “Maybe this ghost is just … made of light somehow. We’ll have to get closer next time we see it.”
“And we won’t turn on the lights and scare it away!” said Benny.
Meanwhile, Jessie was at Duke’s Dogs, hoping Mr. Duke had some spare bags that they could use for popcorn.
“Of course I’ve got extra bags,” Mr. Duke told her. “Let me get them.”
Jessie looked around the hot dog stand while she waited. There were plenty of customers eating at picnic tables. One of them looked familiar. It was Dan Brinker. He had three empty hot dog wrappers and a half-eaten tray of fries in front of him. He was reading a magazine. It looked like he’d been sitting and eating for a long time. Why hadn’t he brought over the buckets like he’d said he would?
Maybe he forgot, Jessie thought. Or maybe he made a mistake and didn’t have any after all. She wondered if she should ask him. But then Dan had started to talk to a young woman in a Duke’s Dogs uniform. He laughed and joked with her as she picked up the wrappers from his table. Just then, Mr. Duke brought out a bundle of paper bags for Jessie.
“Thank you, Mr. Duke,” she told him.
As she hurried out she overheard just a little bit of Dan Brinker’s conversation with the young woman. “If you ask me,” he was saying, “I think that Flick is up to no good.”
After all the popcorn-making, the Alden children were tired. They went back to the Fletcher house. Grandfather brought them sandwiches on the porch, and they sat on the steps with Watch. They all ate and looked out over the theater filled with cars. Tonight, the first movie was Pirate Spy. They could see it on the giant screen in the distance.
“It almost doesn’t matter that we can’t hear the movie from here,” Henry said. “We’ve seen it twice already!”
“And we know the story,” said Violet. “I wish we could say the same for this mystery. So many things are happening! I’m sure it all fits together somehow—but how?”
Jessie nodded. “I know what you mean. It’s like when we watched this movie for the first time,” she said, pointing towards the screen. “We didn’t know why the pirate captain was acting so strangely. We didn’t know it was because he wanted to steal the diamond ring for himself.”
“But then, the second time we saw the movie, we knew he never took off his boots for a reason,” said Henry. “He’d hidden the ring there! It made sense once we knew what he wanted.”
Jessie had an idea just then. She took out her notebook and opened it to a new page.
“What does everyone want?” she asked. “Everyone involved in this mystery, that is. Maybe if we thought about that, it would help.”
“I think you’re right, Jessie,” said Henry.
So Jessie wrote WHAT EVERYONE WANTS at the top of the page.
“Let’s start with Amy,” she said.
“She seems worried about the theater. She wants … to keep her job, I guess,” said Violet. “And she wants us to stay away from that shed.”
Benny wanted very much to say something about the shed. Should he? he wondered. But he took another big bite of sandwich instead.
“What about Joey?” asked Violet.
“I think Joey wants to help Uncle Flick,” Henry said. “Even if Uncle Flick doesn’t think so.”
Jessie wrote that down, too. She bit her pencil as she thought. “What if Joey wants to make trouble for Mr. Duke? Maybe he thinks that would help Uncle Flick,” she said.
“I guess that’s possible,” said Henry. “But we don’t know for sure. So write it down with a question mark.”
So Jessie did. Next she wrote DAN BRINKER on the page. “What does he want?”
“To sell cars!” Benny said. “And put ads up all over town!”
Violet giggled. “He wants ‘speedy deals!’” she said.
“And he wants to run the theater, too,” Henry added.
Jessie wrote it all down. Soon she had a list:
WHAT EVERYONE WANTS
AMY—Wants to keep her job.
Wants us to stay away from shed.
JOEY—Wants to help Uncle Flick.
Wants to make trouble for Mr. Duke???
DAN BRINKER—Wants to sell cars.
Wants “speedy deals.”
Wants to put ads all over town.
Wants to run the theater.
MR. DUKE: Wants to stay in business.
Wants theater to stay open, too.
UNCLE FLICK: Wants to sell the theater.
“Dan Brinker wants to do lots of things,” Violet said, looking at the list.
“Dan Brinker says lots of things, too,” Jessie said. She told her sister and brothers what she’d overheard at Duke’s Dogs. “He said he thought Uncle Flick was up to no good.”
“Wait a minute,” said Henry. “He told us the same thing about Mr. Duke last night, remember? So whose side is he on?”
“I would think he’d have to be on both their sides,” said Violet. “He wants to buy the theater from Uncle Flick. And he needs to get along with Mr. Duke next door.”
“Well, maybe he didn’t really mean what he said,” Jessie said. “Maybe he says things that he thinks other people want to hear. He seems very good at that.”
“But he’s not good at watching movies!” Benny said suddenly. The other children turned and looked at him. What on Earth did he mean?
Benny pointed to the movie screen. It showed the scene in Pirate Spy when the captain found the buried treasure chest. The captain grinned as he dug it out of the sand.
“Remember when I told Dan Brinker that this was my favorite scene?” Benny asked. “Then he said he liked it too. He said he liked when the captain opened up the chest and found the gold! But that’s not what really happened in the movie. Look!”
The children watched the movie as the captain opened the treasure chest. His smile vanished. The chest was empty!
“That’s right!” Henry exclaimed. “We all thought there would be gold in the chest—but there wasn’t! Dan must have forgotten about that part of the movie.”
“But it’s a really important part of the movie,” said Jessie. “It changes the whole story. And Dan Brinker has seen the movie more than once—just like us!”
“Maybe he didn’t really watch it closely,” said Violet. “Maybe he was busy doing something else.”
Jessie wrote that down in her notebook, too. Then she looked at the list again. “Now we know what everyone wants, but we still don’t know what’s going on! Or what this has to do with the ghost!”
“Maybe it’ll all make sense later,” said Henry. “And as for the ghost, I think we should go look for it tonight.” |