Pioneer Poltergeist: An Alan Nearing Mystery

By H. Mel Malton

Something is haunting the Laingford Pioneer Village Park, a mysterious presence that seems determined to get Alan and his two friends in trouble. They are spending the tail-end of the summer working as costumed helpers at the historical site, and when things get weird, the Alan Nearing detective agency starts investigating. Is the poltergeist just a prankster, or are there sinister forces at work?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dundurn
• Release date: Sep 1, 2007
• ISBN: 9781459716636

H. Mel Malton

H. Mel Malton was born in England and emigrated with her family to Canada in the 1960s. She is a member of Crime Writers of Canada and her first mystery novel, Down in the Dumps was short-listed for an Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Crime Novel. Her first young adult series, The Alan Nearing Mysteries, began with The Drowned Violin, and was followed by Pioneer Poltergeist. She lives in Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia.

Book preview

good.

ONE

How can two goats and a donkey produce so much . . . manure?" Alan wanted to use a stronger word for the stuff, but he was saving it for when he was mad enough. He blew out a breath to get a flop of hair out of his eyes and took a better grip on his shovel.

It’s just grass and mulched veggies, Ziggy said. Think of it as backyard compost.

Still stinks.

It was their first day on the job as go-fers at the Kuskawa Pioneer Village Park.

Go-fer means you’re the one who goes-fer things, Alan’s mother had explained. Kind of a messenger and helper on the site. And you’ll be wearing pioneer costumes, like in a play. It’ll be fun.

It had sounded like a good idea at the time. They were going to be paid for the work, even though they were only eleven, and anything had to be better than mowing lawns, which is what they usually did to earn back-to-school money. So, Alan and his friends Ziggy and Josée were spending the last two weeks of August working at the park, before school started.

Their job, as explained when they had arrived that morning, was simple. Just make yourselves useful, the staff supervisor had said. She looked like someone’s saintly old grandma, in a long dress and shawl, but she obviously ruled the place. All the staff have jobs to do around here, she had said, and they’ll be glad of the help. They’ll send you back and forth with messages, too. We don’t use walkie-talkies here, except when there’s trouble. They ruin the atmosphere.

Alan and Ziggy had been given overalls, boots and straw hats. Josée was handed a long skirt and a sunbonnet.

Now, Alan was working himself up into a temper. I thought we would be doing things like chopping wood and carrying axes around, he said. Maybe grabbing a nap under a tree.

Josée got to sit in a shady courtyard, helping a lady make candles. Alan and Ziggy, however, were asked to muck out the animal pens with wooden-handled shovels—the old-fashioned way, to show the tourists how it used to be done. In the evening, when the park was closed, the maintenance guy, Sheldon, would clear out the pens properly with a MiniCat tractor, but the boys were to do as much as they could by hand, for show. And they weren’t allowed to go near the tractor.

This is my baby, Sheldon had said when he was showing them around the maintenance hut.

I can see that, Alan had said, and Ziggy had poked him. The machine was hidden under a blanket, like a horse. It was orange and chrome, gleaming with polish and oil, and Sheldon was patting the side of it. He kept the keys on a chain attached to his pants, so they knew he was serious about the No Touch rule. Alan figured they wouldn’t be getting tractor-driving lessons any time soon.

Instead, they were shovelling poo.

Think of the money, Alan, Ziggy said as they worked. Your mother promised that you wouldn’t have to put it into your college fund, right? You can spend it on anything you want.

If this is the kind of work we have to do for two weeks, I’ll be spending it all on deodorant, Alan said, wishing that Josée was there shovelling too. She’d be agreeing with him and cracking jokes, not trying to make him like it.

The animal pen and its manure pile were next to a log cabin, part of an old-fashioned homestead—one of many on the property. Along with the houses, the pioneer village included an inn, a blacksmith shop, a general store, church, school and meeting hall, all filled with staff and volunteers in costume, doing the kind of things people used to do back in the 1800s. The log cabin (called the Fergusson House on the village map) was where Josée was working. There was an open firepit in the courtyard, with a big kettle of wax suspended over it. A woman used a ladle to fill tall, thin cans with the hot wax, which she brought over to the table where Josée and several visitors were standing. You took a piece of string and dipped it, over and over, into the wax, and slowly, it became a candle. It looked like Josée was enjoying herself, chatting with the tourists and laughing. As the boys looked over at her, she looked up and gave them a wave. Then she said something to a couple of kids who were part of the tourist group, and they headed over to the boys.

This is where we’re supposed to pretend to be pioneers, Ziggy said. What do we say?

Alan, who had acted in a couple of school plays, said, Leave it to me.

The kids, a boy and girl of about seven, approached and leaned over the fence that separated them.

Aren’t you afraid of the animals? the girl said. Do they bite?

Fred the donkey was standing a few feet away, munching a mouthful of grass and gazing off into the distance. The two goats, Gertie and Alice, were lying in the shade, still as shadows. It was hot, the sun was blazing down, and nobody was moving who didn’t have to.

Nah, they’re totally tame, Alan said. Back in the old days, kids would ride the donkey to school, even.

Do you ride him? the boy asked.

I could, but we’ve got work to do here.

Isn’t that really gross, what you’re doing?

You get used to it, Ziggy said. People had to work a lot harder back then. They made you get up at, like, four a.m. and go and feed the chickens and milk the cows or goats or whatever, and then you had to walk ten kilometres to school in blizzards and sit in a freezing room with no internet.

Ew, the girl said. But you’d get to ride the donkey to school in the blizzard, right?

Not in the winter. Donkeys hibernate, Alan said.

They do not, the boy said.

This one does. He goes to a farm out in the country and sleeps in a barn all winter.

So, do you guys live here all the time? Do you sleep in that little house?

No, we live in town, Alan said. This is just a job, really. Both boys began shovelling again, to show the watching children what real old-fashioned work was like. Alan was beginning to feel a bit like something in a zoo, and he was hoping the kids would get bored and wander off, maybe go make some more candles over there in the shade.

Alan plunged the shovel down into the muck, and there was a weird clang as he struck something hard. A horseshoe, maybe? Or a donkey-shoe? He used the tip of the shovel to scrape the dirty straw away, then gasped. Ziggy, looking down too, whispered, Holy cow.

Before the children could see what he had uncovered, Alan quickly booted a bit of straw over it.

Hey kids, he said, turning back to them. We have to do some work, now, or we’ll get into trouble. You’d better go back to your parents. Both children looked surprised and hurt for a moment, then the boy shrugged.

When I grow up, I’m going to be a computer scientist, he said. I won’t have to get a dumb, stinky job like you have, anyway. C’mon, Lisa. They turned their backs on the boys and returned to the candle-making area.

That was smooth, Ziggy said, but they were both too excited to care much. He flipped the covering straw back, and they both stared at what was there. Unmistakable, which was why Alan had covered it up so quickly. Lying under the dirty straw they’d been shovelling was a very big, very dangerous-looking, no-way-it-was-old-fashioned handgun.

TWO

You’ve been there barely two hours, and there’s trouble already? Alan’s mother said. That’s got to be a record. Her voice came through sounding high and hollow, as if she were speaking down a tube. Alan was using the supervisor’s cell phone, a tiny one like a silver chocolate bar. Are you okay? she went on. Do you want to come home?"

Mom, we’re fine. Really, Alan said. It’s no big deal. Mrs. Tench made me call.

They were sitting in the staff lounge, up in the park’s main complex. There was a museum there, and a cafeteria, as well as the Pioneer Village offices.

Is that your mother? Let me speak to her, the supervisor said, making a hand-it-over gesture.

Mrs. Nearing? Mabel Tench here. I thought Alan should tell you what’s going on before you heard it somewhere else, but it’s really only a tiny spot of bother. No need to worry.

Alan, Ziggy and Josée looked sideways at each other. There were two police officers in the main office with the door shut right now, talking to the directors, and it sounded like they weren’t agreeing. A tiny spot of bother? Not that tiny.

Well, yes, they did find an old gun buried in the manure pile, dear, but the police have it now, and I expect that’s the last we’ll hear of it. Someone being careless, I expect. Or teenagers. It’s almost always young people, isn’t it? There was a pause, then Mrs. Tench laughed and shook her head. Oh, no, I didn’t mean these three. They’re not the sort of young people I’m talking about. As a matter of fact, they’re doing wonderfully, and I do hope you’ll let them stay. No, no, we’re not closing the park. Heavens, what a thought! The police will be gone shortly, and we’ll all be getting back to normal. After another minute or so, she handed the phone back to Alan. She wants a word, dear, she said and went to listen at the office door.

So, I take it you want to stay, Mary-Anne Nearing said. Alan didn’t need to look at the others to see what they thought. It was obvious. This was a brand new case for the unofficial Alan Nearing Detective agency, and they were a team.

Yes, Mom. It’s great here.

"But Mrs. Tench said you were shovelling manure as your first assignment. You liked that?"

Like you always say, a little work won’t hurt us, right? He heard her sigh—the kind of noise that meant okay, but watch it, and he knew he’d won.

We can stay, Mrs. Tench, he said, handing the phone back to her. The supervisor had just hurried back over to them, and moments later, the police and the three directors emerged from the office. One of the officers was Constable Mills, of the local Laingford detachment. They knew her already, from the missing violin incident earlier in the summer. She came right over to them.

Hi, you guys, she said. Remember me? This is déjà vu, eh?

Yeah, but this time it’s a gun that shows up instead of a violin disappearing, Alan said.

The officer grinned. And you’re involved again. Interesting.

Pure chance, though, Ziggy put in. Like last time. Coincidence.

Constable Mills gave him a sideways look.

Right, she said, and that last case magically solved itself, I seem to recall. But listen, we don’t want you three messing around with this one. A gun is serious business. If you see anything funny around the park, I want you to call me right away, okay?

What do you mean, something funny? said Alan. Do you know whose gun it is? Is there a plot to kidnap tourists? Should we look for clues?

Whoa! Slow down. Those are our questions, not yours. And we’ll be doing the investigating here, which is our job, understand? She waited until all three of them nodded and mumbled yes, then she went on, leaning down towards them and talking in a private voice. The thing is, she said, the directors don’t want to close the park, and we don’t want to make them, but we still have to ask questions and figure out where that gun came from. And the first people to interrogate are the ones who found it. That’s you. So, tell me how it happened.

Again, they described how they’d found the gun in the manure pile, how they’d called Josée over, and then how all three of them had run to find Sheldon, who was working nearby. Alan was getting tired of telling it. First there’d been Sheldon, then Mrs. Tench, then one of the directors, then his mother. It was hard to tell it again without adding stuff. Constable Mills wrote it all down then asked them all to sign it at the bottom.

That’s the second statement I’ve had to get from you three, she said. We’ll be needing to start a file on you guys soon.

Excellent. You’ll want our fingerprints, then, yes? Josée said. That was supposed to happen last time, but then it hadn’t, and they’d been kind of disappointed. Alan particularly wanted to get a look at the inside of the police headquarters, where the lock-up was. For research purposes. If he was going to be a private investigator one day, these were things he should know about.

Well, you’re not suspects this time, so it won’t be necessary, Constable Mills said. But you are all go-fers at the park, right? They nodded. So keep your eyes open. You may hear or see something out of the ordinary that others won’t see, because they’re too busy. If you do, call. They said they would, and she handed Alan a card with her number on it, then joined the other officer who had been talking to Mrs. Tench, and they left.

How can we see what’s out of the ordinary? Josée asked the others. "We only just got here. We don’t know what is ordinary, yet."

This is sweet, Alan said. We’re like, deputy officers.

But she said not to mess around with this one, didn’t she? Ziggy said.

She probably has to say that, Alan said. But she also said to keep our eyes open, right? We won’t need to snoop. Undercover officers just have to be there. We’ll have to be alert.

Be a lert, Ziggy said. The world needs more lerts.

Idiot, Josée said.

There would be no more manure shovelling that day, Sheldon said when they got back down to the Pioneer village site.

I’ll clean ’er out with the MiniCat, later. The cops put a lock on the pen door, so I don’t know where Fred and the girls are gonna sleep tonight.

Are the police in there now, doing forensics? Alan asked, craning his neck to see if he could catch a glimpse of any telltale white suits, the kind that forensics officers wore at TV crime scenes.

Forensics? Hah, Sheldon said. They took that gun away in a plastic bag, but I don’t envy the person who has to scrape ’er off, looking for fingerprints. She was pretty well covered in crap . . . oh, excuse me, ma’am, he added, with a wink at Josée. Nah, they just locked the door because they want to come back later when the park’s closed and snoop around in there, when everybody’s gone home.

Alan looked