The Scavenger Hunt

By Kristine D Henning

Janie is thirteen today and a special party has been planned. During the party, Janie discovers that something unusual had occurred in her new house during the 1800's. She longs to find out the truth about the disappearance of young JenneMae. This leads her on a new scavenger hunt to search out as many clues as she can to solve the mystery surro

• Language: English
• Publisher: Books by Kristine Henning Haboran
• Release date: Feb 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781641336710

Kristine D Henning

Kristine is the second eldest of seven children. During her childhood she would often make up stories to tell her younger siblings at bedtime. This talent has grown through the years, and in addition to making her brothers and sisters smile she has decided to share it with others.

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Copyright © 2022 by Kristine D. Henning

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, 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 author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents in this book are either the product 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.

ISBN 978-1-64133-671-0 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021924490

Drama | Mystery

MainSpring Books

5901 W. Century Blvd

Suite 750

Los Angeles, CA, US, 90045

www.mainspringbooks.com

This book is dedicated

to my sister Kate Teresa

to lift her spirits

when she is feeling down.

Chapter 1

Janie was thirteen today. She was so excited about having a birthday scavenger hunt. She had been planning this party with her mother for almost two weeks now. Janie helped her mom purchase the items that everyone would look for. Tim and Rita (Janie’s Parents) were the ones that would hide the items. All her best friends were invited to the party, Alison, Mary, Tammy, Sarah and Jennie Louise.

Rita insisted upon inviting some of the neighborhood children, so Carine and Andrea were also to attend. Janie wasn’t thrilled about this, for she rarely played with the neighborhood kids. Her mother was adamant, and what Rita wanted Rita would have, much to Janie’s chagrin.

In truth, this would be exciting for a few reasons. Although Janie had lived all her life in the town of paper Falls, this house was still new to her, as was this neighborhood. Janie had grown up in a tiny house on Ramshackle Road which was on the other side of town, by the town square. Two months before Tim had received a promotion at work, and he and Rita had gone right out to buy the house of their dreams. They found the old Fincol’s house and immediately fell in love and set about purchasing it.

Janie was not fully thrilled with this move, because she loved her old home. Her parents told her she would learn to love this house almost as much as the old one. The Fincol’s house was much larger than what Janie was used to. It was twice the size of her old house and a little spooky. Much of the old furniture came with the house, which also lent and air to its spooky atmosphere. It always seemed to be stuck in the shade, though few trees surrounded it. The house was made of old stone and mortar, unlike the newer development’s that used siding. It had a carport that was covered in some sort of vines which her mother said would bloom in the spring. Janie was told pretty roses would bloom and add to the beauty of the carport, as well as give it a lovely scent. The house was three-stories with many large and imposing rooms, just perfect for a scavenger hunt.

The inside was not much different from the outside. When you walked through the foyer, it was almost as if you were taken back to the century before. The woodwork and the furnishing seemed outdated, but in good condition. Although Janie’s family things were brought into the home it did not seem it, because the rooms were so large and so abundant that her family’s furniture was not seen upon entering the house. Their things were in the rooms that they used most right now. The first floor consisted up of the kitchen, a pantry, the formal dining area, a little dining room, a sitting room, the living room, and her father’s favorite room, the library. It had a gloomy old cellar, and Janie hoped her parents hadn’t been silly enough to hide anything down there. Not that there was anything down there except shadows and cobwebs, but it frightened Janie none the less and she often avoided the doorway that led to the cellar just on principle.

The second floor Janie liked much better than the first. It could be because her bedroom was on this floor, and she adored how her parents had decorated it for her. Her room was painted in a lovely shade of purple, Janie’s favorite color. The bed was an old-fashioned bed, which had come with the house. It was the old-style canopy bed with curtains on all four sides. The curtains closed completely, making the bed seem like a room on its own. Her mother had redone the curtains and they now were bright white with lacy frills running along the borders. Her bed spread and pillows were a lighter shade of purple, again with little lacy borders to keep with the motif of the bed. Her mother had gone all out to decorate it to make Janie feel comfortable with it, and in truth she had succeeded for Janie loved her new room. Tim had the bookshelves that were imbedded in the walls, stained anew giving the room a homey type of glow. Janie didn’t like to read much, so she mostly used the shelves to hold her treasures. She collected lovely glass birds. The rug they picked out was an emerald green. Green was not Janie’s favorite color, but she had to admit her mother had excellent taste, and the green set the purple of the room off just right.

Janie’s room was very large. There was the bedroom area and then a tiny sitting area that was in an oval shape with windows along the whole oval. Janie hadn’t decided what she would use that part of the room for, but in the meantime, she had two beautiful white cloth chairs with purple roses running along the fabric. Just sitting there next to one another. Her lamps were floor to ceiling standing lamps with purple glass rose shaped domes, which gave off the prettiest designs along the wall when lit. There were eight old-fashioned gas lamps that were part of the house’s original fixtures, which added to light in the room. Her mother was searching the garage sales to see if she could find domes in the right shade of either purple dusk or green to also highlight the room. Her closet was the most fascinating part of the room. One wouldn’t know it was a closet, for it was a hidden section in the wall. The only way one would know that It wasn’t a blank wall, was because of the cute ceramic knobs that her mother had painted over in different shades of green. One need only push on these knobs and the wall panel would open and you would see a walk-in closet full of Janie’s clothes. To ensure that the room didn’t look unbalanced Janie had put many throw pillows along that wall this also prevented it from looking bare and looked like an area where she could just sit and idle away her time while doing homework or reading a book for school. The only time Janie liked to read for pleasure was when she was lounging in a bath.

Janie’s room was located at the top of the stairwell, next to the bathroom door. Her parent’s room was located directly across from the banister. There were also three other bedrooms on this floor and another door that led to the third-floor nursery. Janie didn’t understand why her parents didn’t just call it an attic. Though the old wallpaper up there was juvenile which lent truth that it truly was a nursey at one point in time. Not to mention, there was a pull-down step that led to the actual attic.

Janie had, upon seeing the three other bedrooms, started naming them. They weren’t in the house long enough to decorate or change the schemes of the rooms, so she got her names from the main colors of the walls. There was the blue room, the red room and a cute little yellow room. Besides her bedroom, Janie liked the blue room the best. It had two large floor to ceiling windows that overlooked the backyard. She liked to sit idly by the windows on the few rainy days they had, daydreaming about the pond she saw back there. Her yard was nice. They had a pond, and an old-fashioned carriage house that needed much work. She hadn’t yet explored the carriage house because her father had waned her to stay out until he had done the necessary repairs to the structure.

The bed in the blue room was also a canopy bed. Not as intricate as her own bed, but just as pretty. Janie fancied that this room must have been a lady’s bedroom at one time. The blue of the room was the color of the sky on a clear day. Faded flowers of some sort were in the border of the wallpaper. The room had a standing oval mirror. Janie enjoyed gazing into the glass and making up stories about how the lady of the house would gaze into it and see how lovely her gown looked.

She didn’t remember wandering into the blue room, but here she was, like in one of her daydreams, standing before the mirror. The white dress with the little peach ribbons at the hem and the collar set off the blond in her hair. Janie had inherited the very pale blond hair of her mother, but unlike her mother’s blue eyes, Janie had gotten her father’s deep brown eyes. Unlike some girls, Janie was not unhappy about not having blue eyes. She thought the deep brown eyes and the pale blonde hair a beautiful contrast. She stood there, gazing into the mirror and playing with her hair and imagining going off to a beautiful dance.

Her mother’s voice broke into her revelry. Rita called Janie to come back downstairs and finish with the preparations for the party. Janie hadn’t realized how long she had been lost in thought. The rooms still did that too her. She would walk up the stairs and gaze at the different rooms and wonder about all the people who had lived here before. Just like many children on the cusp of teenagerhood she spent much of her time romanticizing life.

The Fincol’s had been an older couple, no kids that she knew of. She couldn’t imagine two little old people wandering among all these rooms. Sighing she headed back downstairs to help her mom.

Tim had just finished printing the final touches on everyone’s sheet for the hunt. So that no confusion happened, Tim had printed the girl’s names on the individual pieces of paper. There were three items that the girls must find. Each of course had three different items. The object of this scavenger hunt was to find the three items, bring them together and then piece together a story that Tim and Rita had selected. Rita was a history teacher, and no matter what day it was she always managed to make all activities somehow included learning a piece of history. Janie really didn’t mind as her parent’s always made things very interesting, and none of her friends seemed to mind. They also tended to learn something and sometimes even use the information they gathered through fun to somehow help them in their studies at school. Since there were eight girls coming, Tim decided to pair the girls in twos. He chose the partnerships so that no arguments would take place on who helped whom. The papers were done in grey old-fashioned paper, with bold gold lettering. Mary and