Kindred Spirits by Julia Watts

was still alive, though. He was always a sickly type, even as a
youngun. His ma used to come to my ma to get remedies for his breathing
troubles.”
    “How old would he have
been in nineteen thirty-four?” I ask.
    “Fifteen or sixteen,”
Granny says, “but weak as the little feller always was, I doubt he would’ve had
the strength to pull the trigger.”
    “So,”
I say, “I guess our main suspects are Eugene Portwood, Harold Buchanan, Bill
Bradley, and maybe Floyd Silcox if his health got better.”
    “Hm,” Adam says, “I
wonder if Bill Bradley and Harold Buchanan are listed in the phone book.”
    “Why?” Granny says. “So
you can call them up and ask them if they killed a couple of ladies in nineteen
and thirty-four?” She reaches out and grabs my hand, then Adam’s and holds them.
“Listen, younguns, I think this has gone far enough. There’s somebody out there
who don’t like you digging all this dirt back up I don’t know who it is, but I
know he don’t like it. And I know he ain’t somebody you’d want to cross. I know
finding out all this stuff has been exciting, and I know you feel like figuring
it out is gonna right a wrong that was done seventy years ago. But maybe it’s
too late to right that wrong.”
    “But maybe it’s not,” I
say. “What about clearing Charlie T’s name? That would mean a lot to his
family. And what about the spirits of the Jameson sisters? Maybe once Charlie T
is cleared, they can be at peace.”
    “That’s another thing
that worries me,” Granny says. “The spirits of the Jameson sisters. Have you
ever stopped to think that they might not be good spirits? Maybe getting
murdered turned them all bitter and mean...old Mildred was pretty bitter and
mean to start with. Maybe they’re just pretending to need your help so they can
lead you to danger.”
    “Man,” Adam says, “that’s
sure gonna make me feel safe in my bed tonight.”
    “Well, if safe is how you
want to feel,” Granny says, “then you ought to give up this whole business.”
She looks hard at Adam and me with her dark, sharp eyes that always remind me
of a crow’s.
    “Now I want you’uns to
promise you’ll think about what I said.”
    “I
promise,” I say.
    “I promise,” Adam says,
too.
    But as soon as we’ve
excused ourselves and gone outside, Adam whispers, “I’ll check to see
    if any of those guys are
in the phone book.”
    “Okay,” I say, “but don’t
call anybody without me.”
    I know that if Granny says we’re in danger, then we’re in
danger. But I also know that I can’t stop now. Giving up now would be like
getting woken up from a really exciting dream by the buzz of the alarm clock,
when you know it’s going to drive you crazy because you’ll never know how the
story ended.

    Right before the bell is
about to ring, I run up to Adam at his locker. His hair is sticking up funny,
and his eyes look puffy, but that’s not unusual for him in the morning. “Hey,”
I say, “did you find anybody’s name in the phone book?”
    “Yeah,” he says, but he
doesn’t sound excited like I thought he would. “Bill Bradley and Harold
Buchanan are both in the phone book. But that’s not the main thing on my mind
right now.”
    “Well, then, what is?”
    Adam opens his locker,
takes out an envelope, and hands it to me. “This is.”
    The envelope is addressed
to Mrs. Pat So. Mrs. So’s name and address have been typed, and there is no
return address. I take the paper out of the envelope. The letter is just one
typed sentence:  Mind your own business.

Chapter Eleven
    I don’t even bother
unwrapping my sandwich at lunch. I’m too upset to eat.
    “Mom won’t help us
anymore,” Adam says. “She says she has to think of Dad and his job and our
family that we have to find a way of fitting into this community. She says she
can’t afford to do anything that might make the people in Wilder turn against
us. I told her that in that case, we’d better figure out some