Free The Ghost of Grey Fox Inn by Carolyn Keene Page A

mouse or something.”
    Little did Tucker know how right he was!
    Meanwhile, the mouse had made it up to Bess’s shoulder, where it was eagerly sniffing at the beads of her necklace. “Get it off!” she whispered fiercely.
    George looked back and forth between us, making a who, me? gesture. Bess and I both nodded vigorously. George rolled her eyes and reached out to lift the tiny mouse by its tail off Bess’s shoulder and onto one of the wooden beams that lined the walls of the passage. “Happy trails,” she whispered, as the mouse scampered away. She turned back to us. “Both of you are utterly hopeless,” she muttered.
    â€œSorry!” Bess whispered.
    â€œIt’s okay,” I said, though I was sorely disappointedthat Tucker had changed the subject and wasn’t saying any more about who had planted the knife at the rehearsal dinner. But even without that information, Tucker was quickly becoming my prime suspect. I said as much to Bess and George once we were out of earshot of his room.
    â€œHe seemed a little too happy about all of Parker and Charlotte’s misfortunes over the past couple of days,” George murmured with a nod. “And not only that, it sounds like he has a theory about who’s behind it! And who better to know than if he did it all himself?”
    â€œI don’t know, though,” Bess whispered. “There’s something about the pranks that just doesn’t seem like Tucker’s style. Changing the flower color? A knife in a fancy, gift-wrapped box? It all feels so . . . subtle. And Tucker doesn’t strike me as the subtle type.”
    I had to agree. “You’re right, it doesn’t quite fit—but he’s our best guess right now, and you can’t ignore what we just overheard. Maybe he did those types of pranks just to throw people off his scent. Let’s checkout the rest of this passage before we head back to my room.”
    What we found at the end of the hallway was a hole in the floor with a ladder leading down to the first floor. The three of us descended the ladder as quietly as we could and found another peephole leading to Parker’s room. “There you have it,” I said, wiping a cluster of cobwebs from my hair. “Anyone with access to this passage could have gotten into Parker’s room and stolen the wedding rings.”
    â€œSo that narrows it down to the people in the rooms who have entrances,” Bess mused. “But that still includes everyone who we already suspected—so not a lot of help.”
    â€œBetter than nothing,” George said. “At least we know we’re on the right track.”
    The passage on the first floor was much smaller than the one on the second, so there wasn’t a lot to see. At the end of the hall, I inspected the panel where another entrance would normally have been—they usually appeared at regular intervals. But this paneldidn’t have a peephole. I knocked on it lightly and found it hollow. “Where do you think this one leads to?” I wondered aloud. I took a couple of steps forward to inspect the edge of the panel and tripped over something at my feet.
    â€œYou okay, Nancy?” Bess asked.
    â€œYeah,” I murmured, regaining my footing, and shone the smartphone light down at the floor. What I saw was a crumpled-up grocery bag, and its contents had spilled out onto the floor when I stumbled over it. I caught a glimpse of blue fabric and quickly snatched it up. “Look!” I exclaimed.
    â€œWhat is it?” George said.
    â€œThis is the uniform the so-called ghost was wearing when he snuck into my room!” I pulled the whole bundle out of the bag and saw that it was some kind of old military costume. “It looks Civil War–era,” I mused.
    â€œSounds like someone’s trying to impersonate a ghost,” George said. “But why?”
    â€œI don’t know,” I