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night.”
    â€œI’ve heard cats in College Springs often get catnapped around Halloween,” I said. “And sometimes whoever it is blames the ghost. This year there are five missing cats already.”
    â€œReally?” said Mr. Stone. “That’s a shame. It would seem the Harvey ghost is not entirely rational. Having been killed by his wife’s cat, he seeks revenge on
all
cats.”
    Yasmeen looked disgusted. “You don’t really believe in ghosts, do you, Mr. Stone?”
    â€œThe older I get, the more I find the world to be mysterious,” Mr. Stone said.
    â€œIn the story, what happened to the poor cat? Marianne Harvey’s cat?” I asked.
    â€œThe ‘poor cat’?” Mr. Stone said. “The ‘poor cat’ was a bloodthirsty killer!”
    â€œBut it doesn’t sound like his victim, Mr. Harvey, was a very nice man,” Yasmeen said.
    â€œ
Or
a very nice ghost,” I said.
    â€œWe don’t know for certain what kind of man Mr. Harvey was,” Mr. Stone said.
    Yasmeen disagreed. “The cat knew,” she said.
    I looked at Yasmeen. “It seems kind ofstrange that you’re totally ready to accept a cat witnessing a murder and getting revenge, but you’re totally rejecting the idea of ghosts.”
    â€œWhat’s so strange about it?” Yasmeen said. “I don’t believe in ghosts. I do believe in cats.”
    Mr. Stone didn’t give me time to puzzle that one out. “As the story goes,” he said, “Marianne Harvey’s cat suffered the sorry fate that is common to unwanted felines—he was put in a sack with a great number of rocks and thrown into a pool of water, in this case the Harveys’ well. People said his howling was enough to freeze your blood.”
    Yasmeen and I both felt better when we left Mr. Stone’s house. It couldn’t have been the gory ghost story that cheered us up. It must have been the hot chocolate and marshmallows.
    â€œLet’s go back to St. Bernard’s,” I suggested, “to see where Marianne Harvey is buried.”
    â€œI can’t,” Yasmeen said. “I’m going over to see the Lees’ new baby. My whole family has to. But—I know, Alex—why don’t you go over tothe cemetery? Maybe what’s going on
is
a Halloween prank, and somebody’s eventually going to blame the whole thing on the ghost. You might notice something new at the cemetery.”
    This time it was me who opened my mouth and closed it again. I never thought of going to the cemetery
alone
. But Yasmeen already had plenty of reasons to call me a wimp. If I refused to go, she’d have plenty plus one.
    â€œNo problem,” I said, trying to sound like I meant it. “I’ll call you after dinner.” Then I turned around and started walking toward St. Bernard’s, all the time thinking, “Provided the ghosts don’t get me first.”

Chapter Eighteen

    The last time I had paid a visit to my local graveyard, my cat had paused to do a little personal grooming beside a statue of a grumpy angel. As it turned out, that angel was Marianne Harvey’s grave marker.
    Actually, the angel was pretty close to the gate, but that day I turned right when I walked in, and I wound around searching among a lot of other headstones before I came to it. By the time I did, the light was almost gone, and I had to stare to read the inscription:
    M ARIANNE M C C LELLAN H ARVEY
B ORN J ULY 2, 1854
D IED O CTOBER 28, 1879
I N DEATH , THE ETERNAL WIFE .
    It was dark and cold. I was in a cemetery. The leafless trees looked sharp and thorny against the rising moon. Can you blame me for feeling creeped out?
    And that inscription didn’t help. It was like it condemned poor Marianne to be stuck with her murderous husband forever.
    Mr. Stone had said Mr. Harvey was buried next to Marianne, but searching still took me a few minutes. In the end, I had