The Witch Lady Mystery. Carol Beach York
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Copyright © 1976 by Carol Beach York.
All rights reserved.
Published by Wildside Press LLC.
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Exciting News
Oliver was always bringing notices home from school. The notices were printed in pale blue ink and his teacher, Miss Lee, passed them out to the class just before the last bell rang. She would walk along the front of the room and place six notices on the first desk in each row. Oliver, who sat in a front desk, would keep one notice for himself and pass the others to the pupil in the desk behind him. All down the rows the notices would be passed back from desk to desk, while Miss Lee watched with gentle blue eyes to see that no one made too much noise during the procedure.
Usually the notices told what day milk money was due, or when the next P.T.A. meeting would be held. They were not of much interest to Oliver, but when he got home his mother always read them carefully and nodded her head.
But this afternoon Oliver had a notice of special importance, and he burst into the kitchen with his spelling book and his reader—and the notice.
“What have you got today?” His mother looked up from her ironing. She had brown hair, like Oliver, and long-lashed brown eyes.
Oliver could see that his glass of milk and two graham crackers with peanut butter and jam were already waiting on the kitchen table, but he wanted his mother to read the notice first.
“We’re going to have an auction!” Oliver put the notice on the ironing board so his mother could read it right away.
HELP . . . HELP !
read the top line in bold letters. Down below, the printing was smaller.
Help our school library!We need new books and more tables and chairs.Friday afternoon from three to six there will be astudent bake sale and auction.Please plan to attend!
“A bake sale and auction,” Mrs. Woodfield read aloud. She looked up at Oliver. His hair was windblown, and his dark eyes were shining. “Do you know what an auction is?”
Oliver nodded. “Miss Lee told us. We sell things and everybody comes and whoever offers the most money for something gets it.”
“That’s called ‘bidding.’ ” Oliver’s older sister Carrie came in the kitchen door. She was a slender, pretty girl with long brown hair, and she was bristling with importance because she was in the eighth grade and it was the eighth graders who had thought of the idea for the auction.
Carrie set her school books beside Oliver’s crumple-cornered spelling book. “Can I bake an angel cake, Mom, and maybe some chocolate-chip cookies for the bake sale?”
“That sounds fine,” Mrs. Woodfield said. She ironed the last pillowcase and folded it neatly. “Are you going to take anything for the auction?”
Carrie’s glass of milk and graham crackers were next to Oliver’s on the table. She sat down and smoothed back her silky hair.
“I’m not exactly going to take something. Some of the kids are going to auction their time, and I’m going to auction two evenings of baby-sitting. So is Mary Lou.” Carrie looked across the table. “How about you, Oliver?”
“Me baby-sit?”
“I didn’t mean that.” Carrie groaned. “I mean what are you going to do?”
Oliver chewed a graham cracker and thought about that. He wasn’t sure yet what he could do for the auction.
“A boy in my room is going to offer to wash a hundred windows,” Carrie said.
Oliver wrinkled his nose. Washing windows wasn’t any fun.
But it did give him an idea.
“I’ll rake leaves.”
Carrie sipped her milk. “Bob Louis in my room is going to do that too. He’s going to offer to keep somebody’s yard raked all fall.”
Then Carrie began to laugh. “Bob said he hoped Dr. Adams wouldn’t win the bidding. There must be a million trees in his yard.”
Oliver went to bed that night wondering if somebody with a million trees would bid for him at the auction. That would be a pretty big job. He didn’t like raking leaves all that much.
The next morning at breakfast he asked his mother how many trees Dr. Adams really had.
Mrs. Woodfield always looked very pretty at breakfast. She had on rose-colored lipstick and a green robe with a ruffle at the neckline. She was spreading marmalade on her toast, and she looked up when Oliver spoke.
“I don’t think anybody around here really has a million trees,” she said. “Carrie was exaggerating.”
“Okay,” Carrie said agreeably. “Dr. Adams probably has only half a million.”
Oliver’s father stirred cream into his coffee. His eyes twinkled. “If I see Dr. Adams today, shall I tell him to be sure not to miss the auction?”
Carrie grinned. “Think of the good side, Oliver. Maybe the old witch lady will bid for you. She’s got only a couple of trees in her backyard, and they’re pretty scraggly.”
“Boy, are they ever,” Oliver agreed.
“Carrie!” Mrs. Woodfield scolded. “I’ve told you not to call Mrs. Prichard an old witch lady.”
Carrie sighed. “Oh, Mom, all the kids call her that.”
“Well, they shouldn’t,” Mrs. Woodfield said firmly.
But we do, Oliver thought. He nudged Carrie’s foot under the table. All the kids called Mrs. Prichard the old witch lady, just as Carrie had said. Mrs. Prichard did weird things—everybody knew that. When she went out she wore a long black coat even on hot summer days, and she walked along the street mumbling to herself and picking twigs from bushes and chewing on them.
Oliver had seen her lots of times, moving along with her slow gait, shrouded in her black coat, chewing the twigs she plucked from the bushes. Light glinted on her spectacles, and an atmosphere of evil seemed to surround her.
And her house was spooky. After dark, when the other houses along the street were bright with light, Mrs. Prichard pulled her blinds down tight, and her windows had only thin streaks of light at the bottom. It was like a ghost house.
In the daytime a huge black cat prowled Mrs. Prichard’s yard, and sometimes children on their way to school would see the old witch lady watching from parted curtains. All the kids ran past her house before she could put a bad spell on them.
Oliver thought he would rather rake Dr. Adams’ half million trees than take care of the old witch lady’s yard.
The Auction
Carrie baked her angel cake and her chocolate-chip cookies. She tied on a big flowery apron and bustled around from cupboard to counter, measuring sugar, sifting flour, beating egg whites. Oliver got to eat a few cookies, but Carrie set aside the rest to take to the bake sale. Oliver tried to sneak a couple more from the plate, but Carrie caught him.
“Oliver, those are for school!” she shrieked.
Oliver thought she had the loudest voice of any girl he had ever heard.
Friday, at noontime, Oliver helped Carrie take the cake and cookies to school. Mrs. Woodfield had wrapped them carefully, and Oliver got all the way to school without dropping any cookies. Carrie, of course, had charge of the cake.
Halfway to school they met Oliver’s friend Freddy Miller, who struggled along with a large, old-fashioned combination clock-and-barometer.