The Mystery of the Uninvited Ghost

club, the Bob-Whites of the Glen. They should accept her judgment without question. So there!
    At that moment the back door opened, and Mrs. Belden stepped onto the porch. She was followed by a tall, lean, sunbrowned girl with eyes the color of ripe blackberries. The nails of her bare feet were painted green, and her black hair was long and smooth. She wore cutoff jeans and a tank top.
    “Children,” Mrs. Belden said brightly, “we have company!”
    “Remember me?” the girl drawled. “I’m Hallie.”
    Both Brian and Mart hurried up the steps, hands outstretched. Trixie lagged behind. This summer of her fourteenth year had been going so well. What had she done to deserve a visit from a cousin who’d outgrown her by three inches? Merely by looking through a veil of long black lashes, Hallie reduced two teen-age boys to pulp. If she did this to Brian and Mart, who were her cousins and therefore somewhat immune, what would she do to Dan Mangan— and—
    The thought was so prickly that Trixie tried not to finish the sentence, but her stubbornly logical mind whispered, and to Jim Frayne!
    In the commotion of “How are you?”
    “Wow! Look at you, all grown-up!” and “Did you have a good trip?” no one noticed that Trixie hadn’t climbed the steps. Reddy sensed her mood and rose from his comfortable spot on the grass. He pushed his nose into her palm and wiggled his head to fit her scratching fingers to his itches.
    Hallie made the first move. She stepped past her grinning male cousins to speak directly to Trixie. “Hi, Trix. So, you’re a detective now!”
    Trixie stammered, “H-How—”
    “I’ve been catching Hallie up on news,” Mrs. Belden said.
    Trixie climbed the wooden steps and stood on tiptoe, prepared to kiss Hallie’s brown cheek if it killed her.
    Hallie sidestepped and stuck out a tanned hand for shaking. “No kissy-kissy stuff,” she said crisply.
    “Fine,” Trixie said, just as crisply. “No kissy-kissy.” Knowing that the others were watching and listening, she felt her ears burning.
    “Dad is going to Switzerland to a mining conference,” Hallie announced. “Mom wanted to tag along, so I just said, ‘Blessings, kids. I’ll give Trix a hand at whatever she’s up to.’” Hallie slid a sidelong glance at Brian and Mart and grinned. “I hope it’s fun.”
    Trixie was glad Hallie’s grin didn’t include dimples. Her mouth was wide and thin-lipped. With relief at having found a flaw, Trixie began to relax. Then an imp inside her head whispered, Does everybody like dimples, or do you think so just because you have them?
    “Honey Wheeler and I just finished a case,” Trixie told Hallie.
    “They managed to get all of us Bob-Whites involved,” Mart put in.
    “Don’t they always?” Brian teased.
    “Bob-Whites,” Hallie repeated. She rolled her eyes and said, “Now I’ve heard everything. I’m a cousin to bird-watchers.”
    Trixie floundered for an answer. Practicing to become a full-fledged detective and sharing the chairmanship of the Bob-Whites with Jim Frayne were the two most important interests in her whole life. When her father said, “Write to Hallie,” Trixie wrote. Certainly she’d written about the club, of service given to the needy, and of mysteries solved. Didn’t Hallie Belden read her own mail? And quite often the Bob-Whites had been written up in newspapers outside the Hudson River valley. Hallie must read newspapers in that mining town in Idaho!
    Brian knew Trixie had been edgy for days. Her well-known hair-trigger temper was set to go off, so he decided to respond to Hallie. “You haven’t been here for a couple of years, so maybe you don’t know about our little club.”
    “Little!” Trixie flared.
    Brian ignored her and riveted his attention on Hallie. Mart, too, turned to Hallie. “Some of us live too far from Sleepyside to take part in after-school activities, so we’ve organized our own club,” Brian explained. “We fixed up the old gatehouse on the Wheeler property for a clubhouse, and we even have our own station wagon, donated by Mr. Wheeler.”
    “Well, lah-di-dah!” Hallie drawled.
    Trixie flushed. “We work!” she loudly defended their club. “We work hard, and we earn the money to pay our dues. Even Jim works—and he’s inherited piles of money—and Honey works—and her family owns half this valley. What they don’t own, Di’s folks do-”
    “Hey,” Mart said, “don’t leave out the Beldens. We own some of