Secret on the Thirteenth Floor Read online

  Grandfather thought this over. “I’m not sure,” he said. “That kind of work can be really difficult. Lots of dirt. Lots of heavy lifting.”

  “But Grandfather, you saw how much work we did in the front yard today,” Jessie said.

  “That’s right,” Henry added. “The Aldens don’t shy away from hard work. I think we could handle this job. And don’t forget, school is closed on Monday and Tuesday.”

  Grandfather smiled. “You know, you’re right. I would love to introduce you to Gwen, and she sure could use a few extra sets of hands. Let’s take a long weekend in Silver City.”

  Violet clapped her hands. She remembered that she had a book in her room about architecture. She wanted to look in the index to see if it said anything about the art deco style Grandfather had described. It sounded beautiful.

  Just then, a large clap of thunder interrupted the conversation, and fat drops began to plink against the window.

  “Oh no,” Benny said. “The bad sign! Just like Ms. Singleton said.”

  “Or,” Henry said, “it is just a coincidence.”

  The Curse

  On Saturday, Grandfather drove carefully through dense traffic into Silver City. He tried not to honk his horn too many times before he finally reached their destination and pulled into the driveway of the Bixby building. The Aldens got out and looked up at the slender structure, crowned at the top with a faded copper roof. The newer steel and glass buildings that surrounded it gleamed in the sun. In comparison, the Bixby’s small, antique windows and faded stone walls looked a little tired. Jessie noticed that some windows on the top floor were blackened with soot. That must have been where the fire had taken place.

  Grandfather and Henry grabbed the suitcases out of the trunk, and the Aldens went together into the lobby. It took a moment for their eyes to adjust from the bright sunshine to the dim space, which was lit by old-fashioned lamps. Violet was the first to notice the floor.

  “Look!” she said, crouching down to touch the tiles with her fingers. Tiny triangles and squares of different colors had been arranged into an abstract design. Violet had enjoyed learning about the ideas behind art deco design in her book at home. The artists and architects who embraced this style believed in using fine materials like ivory and colored glass. They wanted their designs to showcase beautiful work. “Don’t you love how these colors and shapes look?” she said.

  Benny shook his head. To him, the triangles didn’t make a pretty pattern. Instead, they reminded him of something scary, like a monster’s teeth, and the gloomy room didn’t help. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think they’re spooky.”

  Grandfather patted Benny on the shoulder. “Oh no, Benny,” he said. “There’s nothing spooky about this old place.”

  Just then the door behind the front desk opened and out stepped a woman with spiky silver hair and red glasses. She had a big, friendly smile.

  “I thought I heard someone come in!” she said.

  She crossed the lobby, and Grandfather gave her a hug. “You haven’t changed a bit,” he said.

  “Well, aren’t you kind?” the woman said. Then she pointed to her head. “But I don’t think I had gray hair back when we were teenagers.”

  “Children, this is my friend Gwen,” Grandfather said.

  The Aldens introduced themselves, and Gwen shook hands with each of them.

  Benny noticed the fireplace in the lobby was partly covered up with plywood. “Did something break?” he asked Gwen.

  “Oh,” Gwen said with a sigh, “that was just the first of many problems we’ve had around here. The marble tiles on the fireplace have cracks and are starting to fall apart. A chunk of marble fell when one of our former tenants was standing here, and it nearly broke his toe! He moved out the next week.”

  Benny’s eyes got very big, and he took a large step away from the fireplace.

  Gwen led them down a narrow hallway that Benny thought seemed even gloomier than the lobby. He leaned close to Jessie, so no one else could hear him. “This place is spooky,” he whispered. Jessie squeezed his hand.

  “People say they love the historical details of this old building,” Gwen was saying to Grandfather as they came to the elevators. “But I just don’t know. Even before the fire, we were having trouble renting out units on the thirteenth floor. It’s silly, but people say it’s cursed. Now thirteen has so much damage, we have to redo the entire floor. And there are so many new buildings around now. I’m afraid people would rather live in those instead. They have all the new features, like dishwashers and air conditioners and big, bright windows.”

  Violet thought this over as she looked at the elevators. Even they had fancy decorations. The doors were brass, and above them, a half-moon-shaped dial showed the numbers for the floors. On the dial, an arrow moved as the elevator went from floor to floor, sort of like the hand on a clock. “Those new buildings might be nice,” Violet said, “but they’re also a little boring, don’t you think? This place is one of a kind.”

  Gwen put her hand on Violet’s shoulder. She looked at Grandfather and grinned. “You told me your grandchildren are special, and you were right,” she said.

  “Why do people say the thirteenth floor is cursed?” Benny asked. He sounded worried.

  Grandfather waved his hand. “That’s just something people say. Traditionally, thirteen is said to be the most unlucky number of all,” he said. “But thirteen is just a number, like any other number. There’s nothing spooky about it.”

  They stood waiting for the old elevator and watched the half-moon dial as the arrow made its way to the L for lobby. When the door opened, a tall woman wearing bright-coral lipstick and big black sunglasses walked out. She was using a cane, which made a clicking sound on the tile floor. When the woman saw Gwen standing there, she stopped and put her hand on her hip. “There you are. I’ve been looking all over for you. You must do something about the construction noise on the thirteenth floor. I’ve been listening to the pounding through my ceiling all morning.”

  The elevator doors closed again with everyone still in the hallway. Gwen looked uneasy. “Mrs. Mason, these are my friends, the Aldens. They are here visiting from Greenfield.”

  The children smiled at Mrs. Mason and said hello. She raised her sunglasses to the top of her head, but she did not smile back. Instead, she narrowed her eyes. She turned back to Gwen. “I do not want a bunch of children running around and making noise,” Mrs. Mason said. “What I want is some peace and quiet!”

  “I’m very sorry the noise has been bothering you,” Gwen said. “I will make sure the workers finish up by dinnertime.”

  “See that you do,” Mrs. Mason said. Then she stormed off.

  Gwen had to push the button to call the elevator again, and after a moment, its doors opened. Gwen and the Aldens stepped inside, and everyone was quiet. Violet looked concerned. “I think we got off on the wrong foot with Mrs. Mason,” she said.

  Gwen shook her head. “Most days, I think there is no right foot with Mrs. Mason. She was very good friends with Sam, the former owner of the Bixby, and she has never gotten over him selling the building to me.”

  When the elevator reached the twelfth floor, the bell dinged, and the doors opened. Gwen led the Aldens to a door at the end of the hallway. As she unlocked it, Henry looked out the hallway’s window at the view of the city. The tops of the buildings made black and silver rectangles and triangles against the blue sky, and in some of the glass panels, he could see reflections of buildings nearby. To the east, they could see the banks of the Silver River. “Silver City looks amazing from up here!” Henry said.

  “I wonder how many people are on just this block right now, in all these buildings,” Benny said. “Probably a hundred.”

  “Oh, more than that,” Henry said. “Probably thousands.”

  “It is really strange that Gwen is having trouble renting out the apartments,” Jessie said quietly, so Gwen wouldn’t hear. “You would think people would be jumping at
the chance to live in a building that has such a cool history and such great views.”

  “The history might be cool, but this place still gives me the creeps,” said Benny. “If I was looking for a new apartment, I would keep looking.”

  Just then, Gwen swung open the apartment door. “Well,” she said, “this will be your home for the next few days. Last year, this apartment was sitting empty, so I decided to stop trying to rent it out and instead fix it up as a guest suite for visitors. I hope you like it.”

  The girls stepped inside first, followed by Henry and Benny, and then Grandfather, who carried in the bags.

  “Wow!” Violet said. The apartment’s living room was full of antique furniture and rugs. An old crystal chandelier, which looked like it belonged in a ballroom, hung from the ceiling over a sloping velvet sofa with gold ribbon edging. On the walls were framed advertisements from the 1920s. One was for a train station. Another showed a woman in a beautiful gown, spraying a crystal bottle of perfume. “I feel like I’m in a movie,” Violet said.

  “Or a museum,” Grandfather said with a laugh.

  “The Bixby Museum,” Gwen said, smiling. “I didn’t have to go out and buy a single piece of furniture or decoration for it. You wouldn’t believe the things people have left behind over the years, and I’ve kept them all. I know this probably sounds like something older people say all the time, but they really don’t make things like they used to.”

  Benny glanced around the living room, looking a little confused. “But where is the TV?”

  Jessie laughed. “Benny, TVs weren’t common when most of this furniture and artwork was made.”

  Benny’s eyes went wide. “Really?”

  “People listened to the radio,” Grandfather said. “They played cards and had dinner parties with music and dancing and conversation. I don’t think they missed TV at all.”

  Gwen put her hand over her heart and said dreamily, “Don’t you just wish you could go back in time?”

  She showed the children where to put their things in the bedroom and opened the antique refrigerator in the kitchen to show them that it only looked old on the outside. Inside, it looked like new, and the shelves were lined with cans of cream soda and lemonade, cups of yogurts, and a bowl of strawberries. “I put some snacks in here for you. Please help yourself,” Gwen said.

  “Maybe in a while,” Henry said. “Right now, we’d love to know how we can get to work helping you with the building repairs.”

  Benny’s face fell. He’d had his eye on the strawberries. But he knew Henry was right: work first, and then it would be time for snacks.

  Gwen sighed. “Ah, yes,” she said, “the repairs. Back to reality.”

  In the hallway, the Aldens waited once more for the elevator, but this time they only had to go up one floor. When the doors opened and they got inside, Benny went to press the button but then got confused. There was a button for each floor, including twelve, where they were now, but there was no button for the thirteenth floor. Even more confusing—at the top, there was a button for the fourteenth floor. He hadn’t noticed it the last time they were in the elevator.

  “Grandfather,” Benny said, “didn’t you tell us that the Bixby is thirteen stories tall?” Benny didn’t like the idea that there might be hidden parts of the building.

  “Oh, Benny, I apologize,” Gwen said. She pressed the button for fourteen. “I forgot to explain another funny thing about this building. Remember how I told you people are superstitious about the thirteenth floor? Well, the most superstitious person in the Bixby is Felix, our superintendent. He takes care of all the building maintenance and fixes things that break—which, around here, happens all the time. He thinks it’s bad luck to reference the number thirteen, so he changed the button for it to the fourteenth floor.”

  “That’s funny,” Jessie said. “It still says thirteen on the dial outside the elevator. But even if Felix changed that too, the floor is still in the same place. If thirteen is unlucky, wouldn’t it still be unlucky even when Felix calls it something else?”

  Gwen laughed. “That is a very sensible point, Jessie,” she said.

  “Anyway,” Jessie said, “I don’t believe there’s anything unlucky about it, whatever you call it. Good luck and bad luck can happen anyplace.”

  Just then, the elevator jolted to a stop. Jessie stumbled forward and bumped into Henry. Henry bumped into Benny, who grabbed the bar on the elevator wall to stay on his feet.

  “Whoa!” Grandfather said, putting his hands on Benny’s shoulders to steady him.

  “What’s happening?” Violet asked in a small voice.

  Gwen’s eyes went wide. “I think the elevator is stuck.”

  “So good or bad luck can happen anyplace,” Benny said. “But right now, it’s happening on the thirteenth floor!”

  Clue in the Ashes

  Gwen pressed the red emergency button at the bottom of the panel. An alarm bell began to ring. “Don’t worry,” she told the Aldens. “This happens from time to time. It will just be a minute.”

  Sure enough, they soon heard a man’s voice calling from outside the doors. “Hang on!” he said, and the doors opened just a crack. At the top, they saw two hands pulling the doors open, then a head and a pair of knees kneeling on the floor, which, strangely, was just above Grandfather’s head.

  “That’s Felix,” Gwen said to the Aldens.

  “You’re stuck between floors,” the man said in a gruff voice. “I’m going to move the elevator manually. It’ll just be a minute.”

  The doors closed again. “Well, this is an adventure!” Grandfather said.

  A moment later, the elevator began to move up very slowly. When it stopped, the doors opened, and the floor was in the right place. Felix, a man with a long gray beard and denim overalls, was standing outside. Everyone got out to join him in the hallway. “That’s a relief,” Jessie said, putting her hand to her forehead.

  “It nearly took longer to get to the thirteenth floor than it did to get to Silver City!” Grandfather said with a laugh.

  Gwen looked at him with wide eyes and shook her head, but it was too late—Felix had already heard Grandfather mention the number thirteen.

  “Please, sir, do not say that number aloud!” Felix said. “Here at the Bixby, it’s ‘fourteen’ and ‘fourteen’ only.” Felix pulled a silver chain from under the collar of his shirt. Hanging on it was something gray and furry. He closed his eyes and rubbed it between his fingers.

  “Felix, what’s that?” Violet asked.

  “Young lady, that is my rabbit’s foot,” Felix said. “A lot of people believe these can bring good luck, and we could use some around here. But you can’t just count on the rabbit’s foot. You have to stay away from all the things that bring bad luck.”

  Felix began to list some other things they should avoid. “Never break a mirror,” Felix said, “or you’ll have seven whole years of bad luck. Never let a black cat cross your path. Never walk under a ladder. And whatever you do, don’t say the number thir—well, you know!”

  “But why?” Jessie asked. “Why do people think those things are unlucky? And if they do have bad luck, how can they know the broken mirror or the black cat is the thing that’s causing it, and not something else?”

  “I really don’t know the answer to those questions,” Felix said. “All I know is that it’s my duty to keep bad luck away from the Bixby. We get enough of it as it is.”

  “Felix is in the business of keeping us safe,” Gwen said gently. “And we appreciate it.”

  Violet gave Jessie a confused look, and Jessie knew just what she was thinking: Did Gwen really believe in bad luck, or did she agree with Grandfather that it was just a coincidence when bad things happened? Why was Felix so upset? What did Gwen and Felix know that Grandfather didn’t? The children would have to wait until they were alone to talk things over.

  Grandfather told everyone he was going to lie down for a bit in the guest suite. “The drive tired me out,
” he said. “Plus, I have just two chapters left in my Patricia Dancy mystery novel, and I can’t wait to find out who stole the diamonds on the train!” Grandfather started to get back into the elevator, but then he thought better of it. “You know, I think I have tested my luck enough for one day. I’ll take the stairs.”

  “We’ll see you at dinner, James,” Gwen said to Grandfather with a smile as he waved and walked off. The girls thought this was a good sign because Gwen didn’t seem nervous at all.

  But Felix barely noticed that Grandfather had gone. He was still upset. “I’m telling you, Gwen, this problem with the elevator is another bad sign,” Felix said, wringing his hands. “This floor is cursed!”

  Gwen patted Felix’s shoulder. “Well, I think we have a good sign too: these children have come to help us with the cleanup. What are the workers doing today?”

  “Let’s go have a look,” Felix said. Gwen and the Aldens followed him past the closed doors of a few units that looked untouched. But at the end of the hallway was a door covered in black soot. The wallpaper surrounding it was also damaged with burn marks.

  “I know it looks pretty bad,” Gwen said. “But we’ve actually made a lot of progress inside the unit. Replacing this door will be the last part of the job.”

  Inside the apartment, a worker was installing new white cabinets in the kitchen, which was open to the living room. Two other men were hanging a light fixture, and another carefully carried a giant framed mirror across the living room and into one of the bedrooms.

  Violet noticed that the walls were painted white, and the countertops in the kitchen were modern white stone. “The style of this apartment is different from the rest of the building,” she said carefully. Violet didn’t want to sound like she was criticizing Gwen’s design choices, but she liked the antique look in the guest suite better.

  Gwen sighed. “I know. These are the kinds of kitchens people seem to want these days—everything white and shiny. Since the old kitchen was destroyed in the fire, we thought we might as well upgrade.”