That was bad.
Okay, retilt the head, try again. I angled Angie’s chin back, then clamped my mouth over hers and breathed out.
Her chest didn’t rise.
That was very bad.
“They’re on the way,” Frank said, dropping down next to me. “What’s happening?”
“The air’s not getting to her,” I answered.
Frank kept staring at me.
“The air’s not getting to her,” I repeated, sure he hadn’t heard me.
“No, it’s not that. I just realized that stuff that was on your shirt. He reached out and swiped his finger over the skin by the side of my mouth. It came away tan and bumpy. “This came off Angie’s face. It’s not acne. It’s makeup.”
I stared back down at Angie—who I’d thought was Angie. There were patches of clear skin on her face now. My eyes flicked from them to the padding strewn over the floor. Suddenly my heart began to race as it hit me—I couldn’t believe I hadn’t put it together before now. “This isn’t Angie. I don’t know if there even is an Angie. I think it’s Savannah.”
“I think you’re right,” Frank agreed. “But right now, let’s just get her breathing.” He leaned closer to—the girl. “The angle on her head is good. But Joe, look how swollen her tongue is. That’s why she can’t get air.”
Frank was right. Her tongue hardly fit in her mouth anymore. “Let me try her nose.” I covered the girl’s nose with my lips, getting a mouth full of makeup. Then I breathed out slowly.
Her chest didn’t rise.
“What’s going on? The swollen tongue shouldn’t be keeping the air from getting to her lungs now.” Frustration and fear raced through me.
Frank picked a leaf out of the salad on the floor and rubbed it between his fingers.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
“This is elephant ear. It’s poisonous,” Frank said. “In extreme cases it can cause the throat to swell.”
That was it, then. Her throat was too swollen to let the air travel through. “We have no idea how long she’s been oxygen-deprived,” I said. “I don’t know if we can risk waiting for the EMTs to get here.”
“We know the procedure,” Frank noted, his face grim. “We’ve practiced it dozens of times.”
On dummies. I didn’t speak the thought out loud.
“I’ll see if there’s any disinfectant in the bathroom.” I shoved myself to my feet and hurried in there. I didn’t see any disinfectant, but I spotted some astringent. Better than nothing. I grabbed the bottle, and all the clean hand towels.
When I ran back to the girl’s side, I saw that Frank had removed a short brown wig from the girl. Long, sweat-soaked blond hair now tumbled around her face.
“It’s definitely Savannah Harris,” said Frank as I swabbed her neck with the astringent. “She’s wearing colored contacts—brown ones.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Her eyes were blue in the pictures. She’s been disguising herself as Angie.”
“We’ll have to deal with it later. Do you have your Swiss army knife?” Frank asked.
I took it out of my pocket and wiped the largest blade down with the astringent. “What are we going to use for a tube?” I asked. I kept glancing at the door. All I wanted was to see the EMTs running in. All I wanted was for us not to have to do this.
“Straw from the sports bottle!” exclaimed Frank. He reached up and grabbed a lime green sports bottle off the dresser. He pulled the large, hard plastic straw out and disinfected it with the astringent. Then he poured some of the astringent over both our hands. “Do you remember how to find the trachea?”
EMTs, EMTs, where are they? I shot a look at the door, then returned all my attention to Angie’s throat. I kept thinking of her as Angie, even though we’d figured out that Angie had just been a disguise of Savannah’s.
“I feel for where the collarbones meet,” I said, pressing my fingers against Angie’s neck as I talked. “Then above that I’ll feel the trachea.”
“Right, now you just need a cut about a half an inch across it,” Frank coached.
I didn’t look for the EMTs. I didn’t let my eyes waver from the spot I’d identified as Angie’s trachea. Carefully, but quickly, I made the cut. Frank slid his finger in it to keep it open. Then he moved the hard plastic straw into the hole.
Moment-of-truth time.
I leaned down and breathed two puffs of air into the straw. Frank and I stared at Angie’s chest.
It rose.
Frank and I grinned at each other. “She’s breathing,” I said. I knew he could see that she was. But I wanted to say it.
I looked down at Angie. “You’re going to be okay, Angie. Savannah, I mean.” She was still unconscious, but I wanted to say that, too. I touched her shoulder. “More padding,” I told Frank. “She really went all out for the disguise.”
“She was good, too. Not even a trace of her Southern accent came through,” Frank added.
I just watched her breathe then. I felt like I could watch that for a very long time without getting bored. But I didn’t get the chance.
The EMTs arrived, rolling a gurney into the room. “We couldn’t get her breathing with mouth-to-mouth. We didn’t know how long she’d been without air, so we thought we had to do an emergency tracheotomy,” Frank explained as they prepped her for the ambulance.
“You thought right,” one of the EMTs answered, flipping her long braid over her shoulder.
I picked up the piece of elephant ear leaf off the floor. “My brother figured out this is what she ate. What poisoned her. We’re not sure how much she got down.”
“It’s called elephant ear,” said Frank.
The other EMT took the leaf from me. “The docs will want to take a look at it. What’s this girl’s name?”
“Savannah Harris,” Frank answered. “Her parents aren’t here. They’re in Atlanta. But we’ll call them.”
“Tell them we’re taking her to Mercy Hospital,” the EMT with the braid said. Then they rolled Savannah—I was getting the Savannah part in my head—out of the room.
Frank and I finally got back to our own room. We’d had to answer a bunch of questions from the hotel manager about exactly what had happened. We left out the part with the lock pick and the double identity and just said we were friends with Angie, and we got worried when she didn’t open the door. It was unlocked, so we went in, and she wasn’t breathing.
We explained that we’d both taken a lifeguarding class that involved a lot of first aid, and that’s how we’d known how to do the emergency tracheotomy.
I still couldn’t believe I’d made a cut into someone’s throat. As I flopped back on my bed, I realized that the back of my shirt was glued to me with my own sweat. If you want to know all the gory details, the pits of the shirt were soaked too, and I didn’t exactly smell like a daisy.
“We’ve gotta call Savannah’s parents,” Frank said.
I moaned. I knew he was right, but that’s not a conversation you want to have. “You do it,” I told him. “You’re the older one.”
“I’ll flip you for it.” Frank sat down on his bed and picked up a quarter from the nightstand. “Heads or tails?”
“Tails,” I told him. “No, wait. Remember that article you were telling me about? The one that said that there’s a flaw in the coin flip?”
“Oh, yeah. It said that a coin is always more likely to land on the same side it starts out on,” Frank said.
“So coin tosses are bogus. Let’s do rock, paper, scissors.” I threw my choice. I lost.
I sucked in a deep breath, sat up, and dialed information. There was a number for Matthias Harris in Atlanta listed. Just one number. I checked the clock. Nine thirty. At least I probably wouldn’t be waking anybody up.
I punched in the number and waited while it rang. A man answered. “I’d like to speak to Mr. Matthias Harris, please,” I said.
“This is,” he told me.
“Mr. Harris, my name is Joe Hardy.
I’m a friend of your daughter’s. She’s all right, but she’s been taken to the hospital. She accidentally ingested some poison.” Accidentally in that she didn’t mean to eat poison. Not in the way that somebody had tried to kill her. Mr. Harrison could get that info after he’d had time to absorb the first part.
“What? How did it happen?” Mr. Harris exclaimed. “Never mind,” he said before I could answer. “Where is she?”
“She’s at Mercy Hospital in Miami.”
“That’s impossible. My daughter was spending the weekend two blocks away from here at her cousin’s,” he shot back. “Are you sure you have the right person? My daughter is Savannah Harris.”
“Savannah Harris, yes. I don’t know what she told you, but she’s been in Miami since at least Friday,” I answered.
“What is she doing there?”
It really didn’t sound like he knew. If Savannah was sabotaging the Football Franks competition to help her dad, it wasn’t because he asked her to.
“What is she doing there? and who are you again?” Mr. Harris demanded.
“Joe Hardy. I’m here to enter the Football Franks Hot Dog Eating Contest. Your daughter was in the contest too.”
Frank leaned closer. I knew he wished he could hear what Mr. Harris had to say to that.
“That contest of Edward’s that’s giving out college money?” Mr. Harris burst out.
“Yes, that’s it,” I answered.
“Film school,” said Mr. Harris, sounding angry, and disgusted, and scared out of his head. “This is all because I said I wouldn’t pay for film school.”
Film school? I’d figured that was part of Savannah’s cover story. I thought it was as fake as Angie’s acne.
“The winner does get scholarship money, am I right?” Mr. Harris continued. “I’ve seen all the commercials.”
“It could be over three hundred thousand dollars for school,” I answered.
“If I’d known she wanted it that bad … We’ll have to talk about it. But why am I wasting time on it now?” Mr. Harris said, clearly talking to himself a lot more than he was talking to me. “Mercy Hospital, you said? Miami?”
“Right.”
“Her mother and I will be on the next available flight. No, we’ll charter a plane.” His voice cracked on the last word. It was like all the news was finally hitting him. “She’s really all right?”
“She had to have an emergency tracheotomy, but she should be fine,” I assured him. I didn’t tell him that the procedure had been performed by two teenage guys. He didn’t need to be picturing that the whole flight to Florida.
“We’ll be there soon. Thank you for calling us.”
“Wow,” I said when I hung up. “That was intense. And that thing that Angie-slash-Savannah said about wanting to win the contest so she could get money for film school because her parents wouldn’t pay? It seems like that part is true.”
“Now that she’s become a victim too, it doesn’t make much sense that she was behind the other attacks and David’s murder,” Frank pointed out.
“Yeah. She’s off the suspect list for the same reason Vern and Jordan are. Who’d put themselves in extreme danger to throw off suspicion? If we’d broken into Savannah’s room a few minutes later …” I didn’t want to actually say what could have happened.
“So we’re down to Douglas and Kyle again,” Frank said.
“They both have motive. They both have opportunity. But we haven’t found any evidence against either of them.” I rubbed my face with my hands, and my fingers came away with some of the makeup Savannah had used to give herself—or Angie’s self—bad skin. “I just realized how this gunk got on my shirt!” I exclaimed. “Savannah’s cheek must have brushed against my sleeve when we were dealing with the snake. She was right next to me.”
“Why do you think she was at the L.A. contest—since we don’t think she was there to kill David?” Frank asked.
“Maybe just to get some intel. Watch the competition’s techniques. She really wanted to win,” I suggested.
“I guess,” Frank said. “Well, Kyle or Douglas—whichever one is the killer—has managed to eliminate one person from the competition. There’s no way Savannah’s going to be eating anything but hospital food tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “And they got rid of David, who would probably have been the guy to beat, no matter what Kyle says.”
“Do you think that’s enough for whoever the murderer is?”
I wanted to say “definitely.”
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“There haven’t been any attempts on us yet,” Frank reminded me. Like I needed a reminder of that. “Maybe the killer will try something before the contest. We could catch them in the act. That would give us all the evidence we need.”
“If we don’t die,” I joked.
Frank’s right. Sometimes the only thing you can do is ignore me.
13
The Super Bowl of Hot Dog Eating
I sat in the hardest chair in the room, working away at my fifth energy drink. It wasn’t doing much for me. You’d think the fact that I was on guard against the possibility of getting murdered would be keeping me hyperalert. And it did, on my first shift.
But this was my last. My eyes were burning. I was even starting to do that head-jerk thing, where you kind of fall asleep without realizing it, and your head droops, then snaps back up.
It had been quiet all night. Neither Kyle nor Douglas—or whoever the murderer was—had made a move toward me and Joe. In less than a day, our suspects would be heading home, off to different states. Joe and I had to get it together and find some evidence, or we might end up letting a killer walk. And that was unacceptable.
My brain felt like it was pulsing. Were we missing something? That Angie-is-Savannah revelation had been a shocker. Why hadn’t I noticed she was wearing a wig? Or wondered why her body was pudgy but her face wasn’t?
Because she’s in your teen girl blind spot, I answered myself. I had to work on that.
I checked the clock. Then I gave the bottom of my brother’s bed a kick. “Joe, get up. It’s almost time to go downstairs for breakfast with the guys.”
Joe rolled over. “Not possible. I’ve been asleep for ten minutes.”
“You’ve been asleep for two hours,” I told him. “Come on. Up.”
He grabbed his pillow and put it over his head. “Whatever,” I said. “I’m taking a shower. If you’re still in bed when I get out, it’s the Aunt Trudy method for you.”
Joe didn’t answer. I left him sleeping, took a fast shower, brushed my teeth, then filled a glass of water from the sink. I smiled as I headed back over to Joe and held the glass over his head. “Wakey-wakey, eggs and bakey,” I cooed, doing my Aunt Trudy. “This is your final warning,” I added, switching back over to my voice.
Joe didn’t twitch. So I pulled the pillow off his head and dumped the water over him.
“Oh, man. That was not cool,” he complained.
“You have to work on the speed of your wake-up,” I told him. “If there had been an incident with the killer—”
“You know I would have been on my feet in a second,” Joe interrupted.
“Have you forgotten that the killer might be sitting at the breakfast table right now?” I asked as I got dressed.
Joe started pulling on his own clothes.
“You’re not taking a shower?”
“You’re the one who just said the killer might be sitting at the breakfast table right now,” Joe reminded me. “I know being neat and clean is more important to you than almost anything, but I have different priorities.”
“At least brush your teeth, swamp breath,” I politely suggested.
Joe gave me a you-are-not-my-mother look. But a minute later I heard teeth-brushing sounds from the bathroom. If he didn’t brush his hair, I wasn’t going to say anything. But the lack of teeth brushing affected me, too. I had to smell him.
“Are you ready?” Jo
e asked when he stepped out of the bathroom. “I’m always waiting for you. Gosh!”
I cracked up. Joe does a really good Napoleon Dynamite.
Maybe I should make him do it again, I thought when we arrived at our table in the restaurant. Jordan and Kyle were already there, and they looked like they could use a laugh.
“Did you guys know Angie got poisoned last night?” asked Kyle.
“Yeah,” I said.
“How’d you find out?” Joe said. Excellent question. Did Kyle know because he was the one who put the elephant ear in her salad?
“I was coming into the lobby when the EMTs were wheeling her out,” Kyle answered.
“So is that it, do you think?” asked Jordan. “Whoever is doing this got somebody out of the competition. There’s no way Angie’s going to be there. Is that enough for them now? David’s gone. Angie’s gone. Is that enough?” His voice got louder and louder. He pretty much yelled the last question. Good thing they’d put us in a private room, which they’d probably done because they’d figured out our mass food consumption wasn’t that pleasant to watch.
“If they wanted to win, they would have had to kill me,” Kyle said.
That was his usual bragging style. But it didn’t have quite the swagger behind it that it usually did. Huh. I wondered how Douglas would be acting this morning.
“You’re such an idiot,” Vern said. He’d arrived in time to hear Kyle. “A person actually died. Other people almost died. Do you even listen to yourself when you talk?”
“All I was saying was, if somebody wants to win so badly they’re murdering people, they should be going after the toughest competitor. And that wasn’t Angie,” Kyle explained.
“Angie? What does Angie have to do with it?” asked Vern as Douglas joined the group.
“You don’t know?” Kyle said.
“I’ve been locked in my room since I saw you guys yesterday,” Vern said. “It sounded like a good idea when Angie said it.”
“Somebody tried to poison Angie last night,” Joe told him. “She’s in the hospital, but she’s going to be okay.”
Vern put his face in his hands for a long moment. Then he raised his head and looked at each person sitting at the table. “One of us did it to her, right? It has to have been one of us?”
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