The Mystery of the Uninvited Ghost

bottom of the jumble she found a boy’s bathing suit—knitted, knee-length, black and white trunks. The wearer would look like an escaped convict.
    Hallie saw them and reddened. “May I use the telephone?”
    Barely able to control her curiosity, Trixie told her, “The extension is in the hall by the dormer window seat. The phone book has a cretonne cover.”
    “I know my own number.” Hallie’s flat brown cheeks glowed with embarrassment. “I think I’ve solved the mystery of the bag mix-up. I’ll let you know for sure after I’ve talked to Mom. I promised to call her anyway.”
    Hallie’s call to Idaho was brief. She came back to Bobby’s room to find her older Belden cousins sitting on the bed, waiting for her.
    “My bag will be delivered at the airport,” she announced. “There were two bags in our hall—the one Cap brought back from camp and the one I borrowed from Knut because it held more junk than mine. I grabbed the wrong one.”
    Trixie felt like a balloon slowly losing its air. She had been all set to call the airport. Now there was no reason for her to get involved. There was no mystery.
    “I feel like an idiot,” Hallie confessed. “When I remembered dropping my ticket, I suspected the worst. I didn’t even really look at Cap’s grubbies. I do that sometimes—I overlook the obvious.”
    “Me, too,” Trixie said weakly.
    Bobby appeared at the door with the binoculars and a message. “Moms says Trixie will please come set the table, and Mart and Brian can shuck the com ’cause it’s time to cook it.” He waited for Brian to reach the door, then walked tall with the weight of Brian’s arm on his shoulders. “I’ll pull off the com hair you miss,” he promised Brian. That was Bobby’s thank-you for not getting a scolding.
    At Crabapple Farm, the kitchen was the center of the household. The large room was bright with polished maple, braided rugs, and gleaming copper. Treasured china waited on plate racks and cup hooks. All the kitchen niches smelled of good food and held echoes of cheerful voices.
    Mr. Belden came to the porch with two dozen ears of the first garden com. Brian, Mart, and Bobby met him with a dishpan. Trixie and Hallie took their orders from Mrs. Belden, who was queen of her kitchen. Hallie set the table with the china and utensils that Trixie took from racks and drawers. Mr. Belden decided that Bobby would be more useful elsewhere and sent his youngest son in to work with Hallie. Bobby set the milk glasses in place. On the porch, the older boys raced to remove pale green husks while their father checked for brown silk threads still clinging to milky kernels.
    Mrs. Belden called from the kitchen, “The water’s boiling. Hurry!”
    In rushed the cornhuskers. As fast as Mrs. Belden could rinse the ears in the sink, Brian popped the com into the huge canning kettle. Over his shoulder, he said to Hallie, “Lucky you, to be here for the first corn of the season!”
    “Do you grow com in your garden?” Bobby asked. Hallie whooped. “Are you kidding? I five in a mining town. Our crop is silver.”
    “Wow!” Bobby picked up a shining spoon and stared at his reflection. “This kind?”
    “You betcha,” Hallie said proudly.
    Trixie didn’t talk much while she sliced great red tomatoes. Thinking deeply, she tried to make sense of her violent reaction to Hallie’s arrival. If she’d been working on a case, the days of Hallie’s visit might have seemed less difficult to face. When Trixie was involved in tracking down clues, time always flew.
    With or without company, just keeping her balance during the coming three weeks was going to be almost more than Trixie could manage. For the first time, the Bob-Whites of the Glen were to take part in a wedding. Trixie was to be maid of honor when Jim’s cousin, Juliana Maasden, married Hans Vorwald, a young attorney from Amsterdam.
    Each time she thought of walking down the aisle, Trixie shivered nervously. Hallie couldn’t have chosen a more inconvenient time to visit.
    Trixie moved from one task to the next. She gave Mart the tomatoes to carry to the maple drop-leaf table. She reached for a silver tray and began arranging green onions, cucumbers, lettuce chunks, and tiny carrots. While she rummaged in the refrigerator for the radishes Bobby liked, something clicked in her mind. She popped a radish into her mouth and chewed noisily. “Bobby,” she began, “what did you say about the mailbox?”
    Warily he