The Key in the Wall Mystery: The Middlebury Mystery Series, #2

By Holly Yoder DeHerrera

A bad back laid up energetic Aendi Hannah, who's likely going stir crazy. Poppy and Sadie fix up the rooms for guests staying at the Aendi Hannah's bed and breakfast in Middlebury, Indiana. While cleaning, Poppy and Sadie discover a key behind a broken baseboard in the guesthouse. Who hid the key that looks like a skeleton's bony finger, and why? 

 

Their crazy quilt clues—an old cast iron key, 70-year-old letters promising a great treasure, a lost, buried time capsule, and a hidden, secret room—lay out no real pattern or direction. The trail grows cold, like the back burner on Aendi Hannah's big, old gas stove.

 

Twelve-year-old, amateur sleuth Poppy worries: Will their snoopery discover any new leads to follow? And how will the Old Order Mennonite, junior detectives find time to solve this mystery while attending school, cooking meals, and taking care of a household, plus guests? 

 

Are the mystifying lock and treasure lost forever? Or are Poppy and Sadie on a wild goose chase in this cozy mystery in the children's Middlebury Mystery series?

 

The Middlebury Mystery series includes: 

• Middlebury Mystery Book Club Questions: Talk about each book, or even more fun: Start a book club and read the Middlebury Mystery series with three or four of your friends.
• A closed Facebook group, Middlebury Mystery Series Book Club, to provide homeschoolers, teachers, tutors, parents, and grandparents with ideas to inspire great conversations about this mystery series and to explore important life-application principles. 
• 3-D Reading Activities for Homeschoolers and Creative Parents
• Old-Timey Mennonite recipes in The Root Cellar Mystery

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blackside Publishing
• Release date: Feb 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781683550143

Holly Yoder DeHerrera

Holly DeHerrera grew up travelling the world as an Air Force brat. Her midwestern, Amish and Mennonite salt-of-the- earth heritage colors her point of view. Holly married a Colorado man and they enjoy adventures with their five home-schooled kids. Holly won the 2018 Writer of the Year award from Good Catch Publishing. She teaches creative writing for a Homeschool Academic Program in a public school district in Colorado Springs. In Holly’s free time, you’ll find her watching cooking shows, or writing at a local coffee shop with a white mocha and a smile.

Book preview

1.png

The Key in the Wall Mystery

The Middlebury Mystery Series, Volume 2

Holly Yoder DeHerrera

Published by Blackside Publishing, 2021.

While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

THE KEY IN THE WALL MYSTERY

First edition. February 11, 2021.

Copyright © 2021 Holly Yoder DeHerrera.

ISBN: 978-1683550143

Written by Holly Yoder DeHerrera.

For those I love,

little and big,

young and old.

It’s never too early

and never too late

to live brave.

The Key in the Wall Mystery

Book 2 in The Middlebury Mystery Series

The Key in the Wall Mystery

Holly Yoder DeHerrera

The Middlebury Mystery Series: Book 2

Blackside Publishing Colorado springs, CO

Copyright © 2019 by Holly Yoder DeHerrera

Connect with Holly:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/AuthorHollyYoderDeherrera/

Blog/Website: https://hollyyoderdeherrera.wordpress.com

Closed Facebook Book Club: Middlebury Mystery Series Book Club

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, distributed, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except for brief quotations embodied in printed reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

For permission requests, email to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, [e-mail]

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

URL: www.blacksidepublishing.com

Ordering Information:
Amazon and Ingram

Cover and book design by: Scoti Domeij

Front Cover Photography: Key of an ancient warded lock, Pethrus

Printed in the United States of America

The Key in the Wall Mystery/Holly DeHerrera

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019919679

ISBN: 978-1-68355-013-6 ; ISBN: 1-68355-013-7 The Key in the Wall Mystery (Trade Paper)

ISBN: 978-1-68355-014-3; ISBN: 1-68355-014-5 The Key in the Wall Mystery (Ebook)

First Edition

Printed in the United States of America

For those I love,

little and big,

young and old.

It’s never too early

and never too late

to live brave.

Table of Mysterious Contents

1. Aendi Hannah’s Laid Up

2. Finding a Hidden Key

3. The Mother Hen

4. Looking for the Mysterious Keyhole

5. Who Wrote the 70-Year-Old Letters?

6. Who’s Clara?

7. Who Does the Mysterious Key Belong To?

8. Where Does the Key Fit?

9. What Does Grossdaadi Know?

10. The Hunt for Treasure

11. A Sweet Legacy

12. The Mystery of Great Grossmammi’s Poems

13. The Secret Hiding Place

14. The Daddy-long-legs Creeps

15. Don’t Tell Aendi Hannah

16. Aendi Hannah Suspects

17. What Does the Mysterious Key Unlock?

18. Where’s Fred?

19. Maam Catches the Mystery-Solving Bug

20. The Mystery Remains Hidden

21. A Strange Dream

22. Only a Wild Goose Chase?

23. Digging for Treasure

25. Great Grossmammi’s Blessing

26. Sharing the Legacy

Acknowledgements

About Holly

Middlebury Mystery Book Club Questions

3-D Reading Activities

Other Books by Holly

CHAPTER 1

Aendi Hannah’s Laid Up

I stand and stretch my back after hours of sitting on the weathered pine bench at the roadside stand near my house. It’s my job to sell tasty garden treats to the occasional customer slow-driving the soothing, rural back roads of Middlebury. I meet all sorts of folks from all over tarnation at our farm stand, one of my most favorite places on earth.

My Aendi Hannah’s glittery amber, magenta, and blue-black jellies and pink crab apple butter surround me, not to mention the colorful, fresh-from-our-farm fruits and veggies. I find it easy to get lost in fantasies of cooking in my own home for the twelve children I plan to have when I grow up.

Except for the occasional, curious tourist cruising around ‘Amish country,’ or a neighbor clip-clopping to Miller’s Grocery store in Middlebury, the gravel road where we live stretches for a zillion miles and stays quiet. This place, a mixture of old and new, weaves together like a blanket. And that’s how I imagine the farmland looks from a birds-eye-view: Lines stretch this way and that and criss-cross all over the place like a patchwork quilt.

I pick up a jar of green, sweet pickles and make up a recipe in my mind. Hmm . . . maybe chopped super small, served over a buttery steak with pepper-cheese.

I set the long table in my day-dream house. My kids file in one-by-one to eat my creation, when Sadie, my best friend and cousin who lives closest to me, whizzes

up on her gray scooter and yells, "Hey, Poppy. I made it here in just fifteen

minutes this time. I beat my old time by a whole minute."

She glides toward me like a bird, her kapp strings, thin gauzy wings, flying to the side. I giggle as she steers right up to the stand and clumps her black-booted foot on the gravel beside her scooter’s large, back wheel. Her low bun has come loose of its tight hold on the drive over and blonde fringes float like dandelion fluff around her face.

She takes a sec to catch her breath before adding, Maam needs you. She’s not feeling so good today and is laid up. She has folks coming to the bed and breakfast tomorrow morning. Can you come help fix up the rooms, so they’re all ready to go?

A little knot twists in my stomach thinking how Aendi Hannah must not be well at all to be in bed in the middle of the afternoon. That’s not like her one iota. Especially with visitors scheduled to arrive tomorrow.

I glance over my shoulder toward my

house, a boxy white clapboard place

with black shutters. The garden in front looks like a splashy painting with fat blobs of blue, pink, purple, and red set against the soft, black dirt.

I’ll need to ask Maam. I have to stay here for a little longer, in case anyone else needs something. You know how people count on us staying open until three.

Still panting softly, Sadie says, ‘Kay. Come on over when you can. She shoves her front wheel around in the gravel in a half circle to leave. "Bet you can’t get there as fast as I got