by Barrie Summy
“Do you see the broken rhinestone dotting the i?” Mom asks.
I run a finger over its rough edge.
“Marilyn wanted a diamond inlaid in her signature,” Mom explains.
“Of course, because …”
“Diamonds are a girl’s best friend,” we say in unison.
“Sid Grauman wouldn’t go for a diamond, but he did have a rhinestone put in,” Mom continues. “It took only three days for someone to try to dig it out.”
I trace Marilyn’s loopy signature.
We find stones for lots of other celebrities. It’s like Christmas morning for us. I take a couple of photos with my phone and send them to Brianna. She texts me back:
From the gift shop, I buy a ticket for the Chinese Theatre tour. At the end of the tour, I ask the guide to take a phone picture of me in front of the theater’s wooden doors. My mother’s floating next to me.
The photo’s kind of grainy because my phone’s camera isn’t the best. But if I squint hard, there’s a little part of my shoulder that’s missing, where my mother might have her arm around me.
I send the photo to The Ruler’s phone for Sam. My brother won’t notice where my mother’s hand might be resting on my shoulder. He doesn’t know about my mother’s life at the Academy of Spirits or about the contact I have with her. He can’t smell her coffee scent or talk to her the way I do. But when she’s around him, he feels safe and good like he did when she was still alive. I want him to have this photo.
“Hard to believe the theater’s over seventy years old,” my mother says.
“That’s old.” My phone rings. “Hey, Dad.”
“Hi. Just touching base. I’m still with my client. What are you and Junie up to?”
I fill him in. We make plans to meet up later.
I hold my phone against my ear, take a deep breath and ask my mom a question that’s been on my mind for a while. “Mom, is it sad for you to see Dad? I mean, he’s remarried and he’s kind of got the same life you two used to have. But now you’re not part of it.”
“Hmmm …” And I can just imagine my mother sitting the way she always did, one leg crossed over the other, her foot drawing little circles in the air while she considers her answer. “It doesn’t feel uncomfortable or sad. Not at all. Perhaps because I’m completely changed. As a ghost, my old life is so unavailable to me that I can’t even miss it.” She pauses and I’m sure her foot is still drawing circles. “Mostly, I feel grateful. Grateful that your dad figured out a way to keep life good for you and Sam. Paula’s been an amazing addition to the family. So, no, it’s not sad.”
Listening to my mom talk about this makes me realize how far away from being a grown-up I am. It would drive me crazy if Josh started dating someone else. Luckily, he’s not interested in dating. He’s just interested in hours and hours of water polo time.
“Do you think your dad is happy and content?” Mom asks.
I shrug. “I really don’t know because we don’t have these kinds of conversations. But based on the way he avoids talking about you, I bet he’s not so cool with everything.”
As my mother flies off and the smell of coffee gets fainter and fainter, a little idea begins to bud in my mind.
chapter
nineteen
Dad, Junie and I go out for pizza and then to the movies. I even manage to talk Dad into a little video arcade fun. Finally, when Junie and I are lying in bed, talking over our exciting day, I get a chance to fill her in on Leah.
The next morning, Junie and I laze around our hotel room in our jammies. Junie’s reading the paper, which lands each morning in the hall outside our door. I’m watching YouTube on her laptop. My dad drops off breakfast stuff before leaving to visit another client. I could get used to this lifestyle.
“Sparkling Pool a little later?” I say, smearing cream cheese on half a bagel.
“How far away is it?” Junie asks, pulling out her phone.
I wish I had a fancy phone like hers, instead of the dinosaur relic I own. Junie can hook up to the Internet no matter where she is.
I root around in my purse for my notebook, then read the address to her.
Humming “You Disturb Me,” a song by one of Nick’s favorite bands, Junie thumb-taps the address into her phone. “We can walk there. It’s only a few blocks away.”
“We have to get out of here without Leah knowing,” I say. “She’ll be a hindrance in the detecting department, and I can’t take a chance of not cracking this case before we head back to Phoenix.”
“You know I won’t be any help at avoiding her,” Junie says. “I can’t hear, see or smell her.”
I sigh. Leah is my loose cannon.
We finish eating, watch a little TV, then head to the bathroom. Junie flips on the lights. I haul out the makeup.
“We better put on a truckload,” I say. “Like some of everything I brought. Foundation, blush, eye shadow, eyeliner, mascara, concealer. And no skimping. The more the better.”
“I agree. We gotta do what we gotta do to look sixteen.” Junie sets her glasses on the counter. “Did you bring your eyelash curler by any chance?”
“I brought everything.” I plug in my flat iron. “We better do our hair too.” I dig through some packages in my cosmetics bag. “And apply fake nails.”
When our transformation is complete, we could easily pass for sixteen. Maybe eighteen in dim light. Twenty in the pitch black.
Flipping my hair back, I prance in front of the mirror. “We look so grown up, our parents would have to check our birth certificates to verify our true ages.”
“I don’t know about that.” Junie bats her curled and heavily mascaraed eyelashes. “But this is as good as it gets. Any more gunk on my eyelids and I won’t be able to hold them open.”
Careful not to smudge our makeup, we pull two layers of tank tops over our heads and complete our outfits with skirts and sandals. My flip-flops are more comfortable, but when you’re going undercover, you have to sacrifice comfort for disguise. And my sandals have more heel, which easily adds a few months to my age.
“Too bad we don’t have flashier jewelry,” I say, brushing on a final layer of eye shadow just below Junie’s eyebrows. Really, she needs major plucking, but Junie doesn’t get the pain-for-beauty thing yet. Maybe next year.
Junie holds her phone at arm’s length and clicks our picture. She forwards it to Brianna with a text: <2 awesome older chicks in la!>
Brianna texts back:
Junie and I paste on tough sixteen-year-old scowls and whip our purses over our shoulders. Then, legs in sync and arms around each other, we sashay down the hall to the elevators.
“Hey, girlfriend,” I drawl in older teen speak, “did you get an eyeful of that hottie?” Amber sprinkles “hottie” into her conversation the way I sprinkle salt onto my fries.
“AP classes are sooo old-school,” Junie says.
I’m just congratulating us on our undercover talents when the scent of Lippy’s Root Beer Gloss breezes by.
“Sherry!” Leah says. “I’ve been waiting for you!”
I fake–Hollywood smile, and feel a little crack in my foundation.
“Leah,” I say to Junie out of the side of my thickly outlined and lipsticked mouth.
“Who’s that girl?” Leah asks.
“My friend Junie. From home,” I say. “She can’t hear you, though.”
“Where are you two going? Not detecting, right?” Leah says. “Because I’m your partner, remember? To help me get over Michael. You’re my therapy. And we need a detective meeting where you bring me up to speed on the case.”
We arrive at the front door.
“Or are you two trying to get into an R-rated movie? In which case, I don’t want to be included. Movies totally depress me. Because I won’t be in one ever again.”
I fling open the door.
Junie sails through.
“Leah, I’ll catch up with you later.”
On the sidewalk, I wipe the sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand. “I feel so bad. Leah is überneedy, but I only have three more days to solve this mystery.”
“Sherry, your life is out of control.” Junie stares at her phone screen, getting her bearings. “It’s this way.” She grabs my arm.
It feels like more than a few blocks, especially in my chic sandals. We trudge uphill, pass a purple hotel, a few restaurants and a bike shop. We keep up the older teen speak, tossing around words like “varsity,” “SAT scores” and “social networking.”
Located next to a sushi restaurant, Sparkling Pool is the end store in a narrow strip mall. Outside the pool store, there’s a tall box of Styrofoam noodles.
I pull open the door and a bell rings. Junie and I saunter in.
A man calls to us from the middle of the store where he’s stacking containers of chlorine tablets. “What can I help you with, ladies?”
“Ladies!” Junie whispers out of the side of her mouth. “We went overboard with the makeup. We bypassed teen and went straight to grandma.”
“We look perfect,” I assure her. “Maybe seventeen instead of sixteen.” We bump knuckles for luck.
“Just browsing,” I say, walking past a display of floating candles toward the male voice.
Like the Whac-A-Mole game at our local video arcade, the man’s head pops up from behind a row of white plastic tubs. A head with large ears and close-set eyes. It’s Derek Rizzo, the manager!
“Check out the sale merchandise in the far back corner,” Rizzo says. “I put a bunch of pool toys on red-tag special this morning.”
“Uh, okay, thank you,” I say, patting my purse like it’s an expensive Gucci, not a Target knockoff. And while I’m taking a second to regroup and figure out how to move the conversation around to me interviewing him, Junie jumps in.
“You provide a pool cleaning and repair service as well as running this store, right?” she says in a lower, adult voice. Although she may be dipping a little too low, because she sounds like my dad.
“Correct.” Rizzo points to the counter. “Take a business card.”
“Does your company clean pools all over Los Angeles?” I ask.
“Depends where you are.” He hoists up a few tubs to start a new top row. “Where do you live?”
“In the hugest, fanciest mansion right in the middle of Beverly Hills,” I say.
“Beverly Hills is our bread and butter.” Rizzo comes to the front of his chlorine display and rotates a couple of tubs so the label faces out. “We probably clean eighty percent of the pools there.”
“Do you hire girls?” Junie says.
“Sure.” He shrugs. “We hire anyone who can do the job.”
“Our neighbors, Melanie Grace and Jocelyn Dixon, are really happy with their pool cleaners,” I say, using the same victims’ names we tried on Cameron Williams.
“They’re our customers.” Rizzo smiles. “José’s route, I believe.”
“José?” I slap my hand to my chest in fake surprise. “They told us their pool cleaners were Lorraine and Stef.”
Rizzo shakes his head. “No Lorraine or Stef on our roster.”
“Maybe I got their names wrong,” I say. When planning this part of the investigation, Junie and I talked about how Lorraine and Stef could’ve given us fake names.
Rizzo pulls a rag from his back pocket and begins dusting the lids of the containers. “I don’t have any females cleaning or repairing pools.”
Junie frowns. “But you said you hire girls.”
“I have a couple of girls who work in here”—he opens his arms and gestures around the store—“on the weekend. Selling, manning the register, that sort of thing.”
Lorraine and Stef, or whatever their names are, could work in the store and get info for heists from a guy out in the field, cleaning pools.
“I thought you were looking for a pool service.” Rizzo squints his too-close eyes at us. “If you’re looking for jobs, don’t bother filling out an application for me. I’ll tell you right up front I don’t hire anyone under eighteen. With my clientele, I need mature staff.”
Junie thanks him quickly for his time, then gets behind me and practically pushes me out the door.
“What’s the rush?” I ask her when we get to the sidewalk. “I wanted to check out the merchandise in the back corner. You know how I love to shop the sales.”
She counts off on her fingers. “We could use something to drink. I’m ready for some R and R. You don’t have a pool.”
“All true,” I admit.
Junie snaps oversized sunglasses on top of her glasses, then takes off speed-walking to the hotel. She doesn’t say a word the whole way back, just walks faster and faster, her arms out like a chicken’s wings. When Junie is hungry or thirsty or tired, there’s no talking to her. Of the two of us, I’m the easygoing friend.
We hit our room to change into bikinis, then it’s down to the shimmering aqua pool. The blue sky is cloudless, with a white shining sun. A light breeze keeps the temperature perfect.
The pool area is crowded, but Junie snags the last two chaise longues. We’re next to a couple with tattoos up and down their arms. On the other side, there’s a mother and a little girl playing Go Fish. While Junie lays out towels, I skip over to the tiki drink station and order us tropical juices in coconut-shaped cups with bendy straws and mini umbrellas.
I’m slathering Junie’s back with sunscreen carefully, because with her redheaded-freckly complexion, she burns faster than you can say “SPF 50.”
“Lorraine and Stef have nothing to do with the pool company.” Junie’s lying on her stomach and her voice is muffled. “Well, at least not directly. I suppose they could be connected to an employee.”
“Whatever way you slice it, we have no leads.” I slouch. “Sure, we know the lengths Lorraine and Stef went to for the tickets. From your photos, we know they ripped off the purse. We know they’re involved in the celebrity break-ins because Lorraine’s bracelet is stolen property.” I crunch an ice cube. “We know Detective Garcia is totally on the wrong track with both her suspects. Cameron Williams was at Dave and Buster’s the night of the Hollywood Girl dinner.”
Junie flips over and fishes her copy of Rebecca from her beach bag. “Well, we don’t know why a few Beverly Hills residents thought he looked familiar.”
I try to snap my fingers, but they’re too slippery with leftover sunscreen. “At some point, we need to visit Taco Magnifico. See if we can rule out Cameron Williams for sure. After that, we’re in a bind.” I frown. “How are we supposed to find Lorraine and Stef in a ginormous city like Los Angeles?”
“Ginormous is right.” Junie opens her book. “L.A. has a population of over ten million.”
“I’m all tangled up in this mystery. I have no idea how to proceed.” I bury my head in my hands. “And I can’t even talk to my mom for ideas.”
Junie’s phone pings with a text.
I sit up.
She reads it, then taps back a reply. The twinkle in her eyes tells me it’s Nick.
To anyone passing by, we look like a couple of best friends catching a few rays together by the pool of an upscale Hollywood hotel. But really, we’re on different planets. Junie’s on the Planet of Nick. I’m on the Planet of the Beverly Hills Bandits.
Junie’s texting back and forth with Nick. Nonstop.
I get up and walk into the dim lobby. I flop on a cool leather chair and close my eyes. Maybe a little time alone will clear my mind. Like the letter cubes in a game of Boggle, I’m shaking up all the facts of the case, flipping them over, bumping them against each other, hoping for some patterns.
Then I smell it.
And my stomach drops.
chapter
twenty
“Sherry!” Leah squeals. “When did you get back? I’ve been waiting for you. Did you look for me? I was hanging out at 25 Degrees. I thought you’d check there since that’s where we first met.”
&
nbsp; Underneath her excited high pitch, I sense Leah’s feelings are hurt that I’m not all best friends forever and wanting to hang with her every second.
And it suddenly hits me how überlonely she must be. What if our situations were reversed and I was a ghost while my mother was still alive? What if I’d been stuck in a hotel, no matter how fancy-pants, for a whole year after a nasty breakup, with no friends and no family to vent to?
“I have an idea,” I say. “Let’s try getting you outside.”
“Seriously?” Leah barely breathes out the question.
“I don’t know how my mother learned to cross thresholds. It was part of her classes at the Academy of Spirits.” I open my beach bag. “But I’m wondering what would happen if I just walked out with you.”
There’s a quick breeze, then my beach bag gives a shake.
I pull the drawstrings tight, and stand. I square my shoulders and march to the door that leads to the pool. Who knows what’s in store for us. But I’m hitting it straight on.
I step through. My bag shudders. And keeps on shuddering. I gather it against my chest. The shuddering slows, then stops. I untie the drawstrings. “Are you okay?” I ask softly.
“I feel kinda sick.” A root beer scent wafts by my head. “But look! We made it!” The scent swirls and whirls. “A tree! A flower! Dirt!”
I’m meandering around the deck, heading toward Junie. Every few steps, Leah squeals about something. “How did I live a whole year without all this? Sherry, you are so the best!”
Junie’s still texting. She’ll probably end up with thumb blisters. I drop into my chaise longue and stretch out. Reaching under the chair, I retrieve my drink and take a long sip.
“I feel brand-new,” Leah says.
“Cool beans,” I say.
“What?” Junie looks up from her phone screen. She finally notices there’s a whole world out here that doesn’t revolve around Nick and a little screen and even littler keys.
“Leah,” I say.
She nods and goes back to her phone.
“Got any fives?” the young girl near me asks her mom.