A/N: Well, I met my goal and updated again this month. Hopefully I can meet it again! But for now, enjoy!

The First Piece of the Puzzle

"All right, children!" Miss Pateer announced over the railing of the staircase. "I hope you had a goodnight's rest because the mystery must be solved by tonight! You're leaving for home first thing in the morning."

Down near the bookcase, next to the dining room opening, Ren and Tawny exchanged uneasy looks.

"I thought we weren't leaving until late afternoon," Tawny said.

"Same here," Ren replied, "and I should know because I'm the High School Helper."

"So what's with that?" Tawny asked.

They looked in Miss Pateer's direction simultaneously. She gave them a strange smile and then walked up the stairs.

"You know what this means, don't you?" Tawny asked, facing the rest of the group, who stood behind her.

"Well, of course!" Tom said. Tawny raised her eyebrows at him. "Well, no…not really."

Tawny sighed. "It means we have to figure out what Miss Pateer's up to and stop her by tonight! The only reason she may have cut the trip short is to stop us from figuring her out."

"How can you be so sure?" Ren asked.

"Think about it," Tawny said. "The permission slip we filled out in the first place specifically said that the time of day we left Stevenson House was, under no circumstances, subject to change."

"How do you remember that?" Louis asked unbelievably.

"That's not important right now!" Tawny said. "Miss Pateer is probably emailing our parents as we speak."

"How do you know that?" Twitty asked, trying to sound detective-like.

Tawny rolled her eyes at him. "Because there are no phones on the upper floors, but there's a computer in her bedroom."

"Oh." Twitty casually looked at his feet.

"Now what?" Allison asked Tawny.

Tawny lowered her voice. "Let's go back upstairs and look at our clues."

No one had something to say to oppose this suggestion. As unsuspicious as possible, they made their way up the stairs and into Allison and Tawny's room. For the first time all week, Tawny looked around the room and thought about how much she would miss meeting here to discuss Miss Pateer's actions. But she couldn't let that distract her now.

"Okay," she said, shutting the door. "It's too bad there's no lock on the door. We could really use some security around here, especially now."

She joined the rest of the group, who had situated themselves into a circle on the floor. They waited for a moment as Allison retrieved the note from the mouse hole, Twitty took the photo album out of the dresser, and Louis brought the obscure needle to the middle of the circle.

Tawny carefully lined up the three items, being careful not to loose sight of the needle. "Now we need to start piecing together our clues."

For a few minutes they sat in silence, staring at the three objects in front of them. Not one person came up with an idea. Tawny eyed each thing carefully, occasionally bringing up suggestions, but in the end, they proved to hold no significance. Louis picked up the needle and began fidgeting with it. No one seemed to notice.

Suddenly, Tawny's head shot up. "Wait a minute!"

After making everyone jump at the sound of her sudden yelp, she began furiously turning the pages of the album, paying less attention to the condition of the pages than she ever had. Her eyes quickly scanned each page until she stopped at one and pointed at a dark picture. "The seamstress!"

Everyone leaned in anxiously, nearly crashing their heads together. Everyone, but Ren of course, vaguely remembered seeing the picture of the Negro seamstress that looked no happier than everyone else. But why had Tawny become so eager to look at it again?

"The asterisk," Tawny said. "Why didn't I see it before? I know now for a fact that Henry and Clarice themselves didn't hire people to make the albums. Their relatives and descendents did. How else could the pictures go up to the 1940's? The star next to the label means there's a clue in the picture."

"A clue?" Louis leaned in further to a take a closer look. "But what's the clue?"

"Take a look at what's in your hand, Louis," Tawny said, smiling slowly.

Louis looked down at the needle he had forgotten he was holding. "I get it now! The needle really is something out of the ordinary!"

Allison quickly took the needle away from Louis and studied its tip again. "So what is it? What does it look like to you guys?"

No one spoke.

"I don't know," Tawny finally said.

"Well—" Ren started.

Just as sudden as she had grabbed for the album, Tawny stood up. "I need to go see something real quick. You guys stay here."

"Where are you going?" Louis asked her as she opened the door.

"Don't worry, I'll be right back."

"Wait! Someone should go with you!" Louis nearly yelled to her as she disappeared out of sight.

"You guys just keep looking for more asterisks!" She called from somewhere down the hallway.

>>>>

Tawny slowly made her way down the hall of the third floor. Nearly every step she made was accompanied by a rather loud creak. No one seemed to be on this floor at the moment; they were probably still in the parlor. Although this thought stayed put in Tawny's mind, she still made sure that she was as quiet and careful as possible.

After trying a few doors in the middle of the hallway, she finally found the narrow staircase that led up to Eleanor's room. She had to find out: if Miss Pateer was right about Jacob Schemer finding a secret passageway into the baby's room, she hadto find it. She was even more encouraged when she remembered how she had found Louis and Twitty in the wall.

The steps were no better than the floor. Each creak made Tawny cower and almost cover her ears, hoping no one would hear her. She found that if she moved faster, she didn't put as much weight on the step, therefore making it creak less. She finally reached the top of the stairs and pushed open the door to Eleanor's room.

The sun shone brightly through the dusty curtains, illuminating almost everything in the room. As beautiful as the bedroom seemed, its dark history made Tawny shudder. Although she had held many conversations with Louis and Twitty since their arrival at Stevenson House, she had never thought once to ask them where they had actually found the secret passageway.

Tawny started in the far corner of the room, near the crib. She could almost swear she heard baby Eleanor crying in her mind. She shook it out of her head and continued looking, even underneath the crib. She nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw the outline of a small figure right at the foot of Eleanor's bed.

Must be for the murder mystery, she reasoned.

Next, Tawny moved to the other corner of the room. Although the sun was shining, she still couldn't see into this far side of the room. Then, she caught sight of the vent. Her heart nearly skipped a beat as she slowly crept to it. As she fit her fingers around it, she suddenly heard a noise come from the stairway: footsteps.

Her heart beating at an amazing speed, she frantically scanned the room for a hiding place. There wouldn't be enough time to get in the vent—and it would be too noisy anyway. She spotted a thick blanket in the corner and grabbed it, wasting no time before diving under the crib and covering herself with it. She did all of this just in time for Sophie and the butler, Francis, to appear in the doorway.

"These old steps," Sophie mumbled as she secured her foot on the wooden floor of the room. "I've just about had enough of this house. But then again, Patty's the one who had to come back here after all of that."

"Wait just one moment," Francis said, staring back at the doorway they had just come through. "I could have sworn we closed this door the last time we were in here. She must have been in here again."

"Well, let's just do what we came here for and make sure it's done right!" Sophie snapped, making her way slowly to the vent.

Tawny didn't dare peek out from under the blanket. She held her breath as she heard Sophie pass by. Contrary to stopping at the vent, she walked around the crib and closed the curtains. Tawny was sure of this; the room grew much darker.

"Hold on," Francis said. It was quiet for a moment. "Sophie, dear, I believe I left my screwdriver behind the counter of the gift shop. I guess we'll need to go back down and get it."

Tawny heard him quickly leave the room and march down the stairs. Tawny waited for Sophie to follow, and then heard her slowly walk across the floor to the steps and descend the staircase, probably following the light from the hallway below. Tawny waited for about five more minutes after the footsteps disappeared, until she threw off the blanket, gasping for air. Now she could barely see anything. The curtains Sophie had closed must have been thicker than the blanket! If she tried to open them, it would raise even more suspicions that the open door had.

Tawny stood up quickly and felt around for the door to the stairs. Apparently either Sophie or Francis had turned off the hall light, making it nearly impossible to see a thing. It seemed like ten minutes before she had successfully made her way across the room to the door. But now there was something eerie about the atmosphere of the room. It almost seemed like there were…ghosts.

Tawny felt for the doorway, closing her eyes in hopes that it would help her see better. She thought she had her foot on the first step when someone grabbed her shoulder.

"You're dead now," they said in a hushed whisper. "Lay on the floor. Go on. Someone will find you eventually. Just wait."

Tawny didn't know what to say. All she could do was lie on the floor where she was and hope that the person was right. She tried to identify the voice, but she had no idea who it could be. She listened to the person leave the room, closing the door behind them.

Then, she could have sworn that she heard a soft click.

A/N: The story's almost over! I'm sure there are at least a couple chapters left; just wait. Thanks for reading!