“One of the vase shards got me.” Aurora Borealis dug the chunk out of her hair and offered it to Ernestine as though she thought she might like a souvenir. Ernestine held up a hand to indicate that she would pass.
Before either one of them could say or do anything else, one of the interior doors burst open, allowing a wild melee to pour out of it. Both Mrs. MacGillicuddie and Eduardo struggled to pry a gun out of the hands of the remaining Swanson twin, while Maya tugged her backward. It was as though the three of them thought their assailant was the rope in a fun game of tug-of-war.
Aurora Borealis shrieked and threw the vase at them. However, rather than taking out the would-be murderer, she clonked Eduardo on the head just as he managed to get the gun out of the twin’s hand. Both butler and gun clattered to the floor, leaving the firearm up for grabs.
“Eduardo!” Mrs. MacGillicuddie shrieked but didn’t let go of the Swanson twin.
“Oh, heck.” Aurora Borealis peered down at the fallen manservant. “I missed.”
With a shriek of her own and a mighty wrench, the Swanson twin shoved both Mrs. MacGillicuddie and Maya away from her. Ernestine’s mother tripped over the piano bench and landed on the floor with a cry of pain as she clutched at her knee.
“Mom!” Ernestine leaped over the settee to get to her, bringing them both to the attention of the remaining Swanson twin. She wore the remains of a zombie costume, though Mrs. MacGillicuddie had torn most of it off.
“You. What have you done with Libby?” Wig half-hanging off her head, zombie sores dangling from her face and neck, she picked up the gun and turned to advance on Ernestine.
“Not let her murder me.” Ernestine jutted her chin out defiantly and clenched her fists. Mora might shoot her, but she wasn’t going to cower. “What did Mrs. MacGillicuddie ever do to you and Libby, anyhow? It isn’t her fault that her husband’s family was so awful to you.”
That drew Mora up short. For a moment, she was struck as dumb as the zombie she was impersonating. Behind her, Mrs. MacGillicuddie got shakily to her feet. She had a green mud mask on her face and the glint in her eyes said that somebody might die tonight but it might not be who the Swanson twins had intended.
“So, you figured out who we really are.” Mora cackled bitterly and yanked off the wig and wiped the remaining zombie makeup from her face. “It was that photo Sangfroid had, wasn’t it?”
“That, and the halos you wore tonight. The way you both wanted to wear them on the same side of your heads.” Behind Mora, Mrs. MacGillicuddie used a tea towel to wipe the goop off her face. Then she put a pair of giant, dangly diamond earrings in her ears, rather like a soldier donning armor for battle. “You still haven’t answered my question: what did Mrs. MacGillicuddie ever do to you?”
“Why, took our inheritance, of course!” Mora waved the gun about as she spoke. Eduardo had started to get up, but the gun accidentally went off. The bullet passed through a taxidermied parrot inside a glass dome. As feathers and shards rained down upon him, Eduardo had the good sense to drop to the floor again. “Libby and I should have inherited part of the MacGillicuddie fortune when Mummy and Daddy died. Instead, they abandoned us at an orphanage in the mountains above Rio de Janeiro!”
“Why?” Maya gasped, clutching her knee. The lower half of her leg stuck out at a strange angle, and Ernestine worried that it was broken.
“Because…” Mora paused dramatically. Lowering the gun, she used her free hand to lift her shirt to reveal a long scar across her stomach and hip. “We were conjoined twins!”
Goodness. Her revelation had the intended effect: it brought everyone up short. Mrs. MacGillicuddie froze in surprise just as she had lifted up a vase of flowers to smash down onto Mora’s head. Meanwhile, both Eduardo and Aurora Borealis sat upright to get a better look at the scar. Only Lyndon, still unconscious and therefore as oblivious as usual, missed out on this turn of events.
“In that picture, it looks like we’re leaning against each other, but we weren’t. We were still connected together. Our parents were horrified by it and ashamed of us. So they abandoned us and cut us out of their will! We wouldn’t even have known the truth of who we are if one of our old nannies hadn’t looked for us and told us everything.”
“But—but—” Maya blinked in puzzlement. “But there’s nothing wrong with being a conjoined twin! That’s like them abandoning you because you had freckles!”
“The MacGillicuddies were awful people, darling,” Mrs. MacGillicuddie interjected, swinging the vase toward Mora, who just managed to duck out of the way in time. The vase shattered against the floor, but it at least knocked the pistol out of Mora’s hand before it did so.
“Drat.” Realizing she’d never be able to snatch it up again in time, Mora began to grapple hand-to-hand with Mrs. MacGillicuddie instead.
“You think you had a hard time of it?” Mrs. MacGillicuddie shrieked. “I had to live with my husband for nearly forty years before he had the decency to kick the bucket!”
“None of you deserve any of this money!” Libby burst into the room. Still wearing her zombie disguise and looking considerably the worse for wear for having been knocked out, she swayed from side to side as she advanced forward. “It should all be ours! We’ve had to work for a living all these years, dancing our way across six continents! All the while, you miserable lot have been living in the lap of luxury!”
“Oh, heck,” Ernestine sighed to her mother. “We should have tied her up.”
“Well, there was a lot going on.” Maya said tensely. “Next time we’ll know to do it.”
Libby reached over to grab the pistol out of Lyndon’s hand, but he chose that moment to regain consciousness. Sitting upright, he knocked her over without even meaning to. As she toppled over the ottoman, stiletto shoes up in the air, he looked about in confusion and asked, “What’s going on?”
“What’s going on? What’s going on?” Mora repeated, her voice growing more shrill with each repetition.
“Yes, that’s what I asked.” Lyndon didn’t seem to understand why she was so irate. Then he looked down and noticed the gun looped in his fingers. With a girlish shriek, he tossed it off to the side as though it were a spider he’d found crawling on his hand. As it landed, it went off, shooting a bullet into the fancy ceiling light dangling above.
“You fool! How we’re related to you, I don’t know!” Pushing herself up onto her hands and knees, Libby snatched up the fallen gun. Leaning across the ottoman like she was some sort of elderly sharpshooter, she pointed it straight at Mrs. MacGillicuddie. “We’re framing you for your family’s murder!”
Mrs. MacGillicuddie finally managed to get the upper hand against Mora and spun her about so that the other woman’s body was blocking her own. “You’ll have to shoot your own sister first!”
Libby’s gun wavered, but she didn’t put it down.
“Libby?” Mora gasped.
“I think the bullet would only nick your arm, Mora. Don’t be such a baby!”
Mora gasped again. “You were always jealous that I was the nuns’ favorite!”
“You were not! They just took pity on you because you were the less-pretty one!”
“Was I? Sangfroid only ever dated you after I turned him down!”
Maya, Ernestine, Eduardo, and Aurora Borealis all whipped their heads back and forth, watching this exchange and wondering if it made them all more or less likely to end up dead within the next few minutes. Then a new voice caught everyone’s attention.
“Mom? Auntie Libby?” Dill walked into the room, a bag of groceries in his hands. Spotting his mom with Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s arms wrapped around her and his aunt waving a gun about, he pulled up short, appalled. “What’s going on?”
“Mom?” Maya and Mrs. MacGillicuddie repeated in astonishment, while Eduardo and Aurora Borealis gasped, “Auntie Libby?” Lyndon didn’t seem either more surprised or confused than usual. Possibly because he always seemed surprised and confused by life.
“I told you not to call me that!” Mora snapped, still struggling to escape Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s grasp. “And Mommy’s busy right now, Dilly darling.”
“But, um, I… got your text saying you’d found the money to help me open my restaurant.” Hands shaking, Dill pulled out a bottle of organic carbonated apple cider. “I, uh, came over to celebrate. But, um, Auntie Libby, why are you pointing a gun at my mom?”
“They’re trying to murder me!” Mrs. MacGillicuddie snapped, apparently annoyed at not being the center of attention.
“Oh, that can’t be right.” Dill clutched the bottle of cider to his chest, more appalled than ever as Charleston skidded into the room with Mr. Ellington.
Taking advantage of the distraction, Ernestine lunged forward as her mom cried out, “Ernestine, no!”
Before anyone else could react, Ernestine threw herself across the ottoman and on top of Libby Swanson. This time, the gun skidded underneath the settee, which should at least have made it a bit harder for anyone to retrieve it. In Ernestine’s opinion, this was a huge improvement in their situation as she would much rather deal with a murderer who didn’t have a gun than one who did.
Unfortunately, the force of her impact with Libby had rolled them both over and over, with Libby ending up on top of her when they stopped next to a gold and ebony desk.
“You.” Libby snatched a letter opener off a table and lifted it up like a dagger. Ernestine managed to dodge the first blow, but the second one tore through the winter coat she still wore. “You ruin everything!”
“I do not!” Ernestine shot back in outrage, trying to free her legs so she could kick at her attacker. “I make things more interesting!”
“Not for much longer, you don’t.” With a triumphant smile, Libby grabbed Ernestine’s wrists with one hand and pinned them down. She held up the pointed letter opener so Ernestine could get a good look at it as she bent closer. Behind her, Mora threw off Mrs. MacGillicuddie and rushed to her sister’s side, apparently pleased that they were finally going to be successful in murdering somebody.
Then, suddenly, a cane whizzed through the air, knocking Libby into Mora and the letter opener to the floor. On one good leg, Maya staggered toward them. She had grabbed up Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s cane from where she had long ago lost it in the scuffle. Ernestine scrambled out of the way, taking refuge over by the umbrella stand. As Mr. Ellington and Charleston helped Aurora Borealis, Lyndon, and Eduardo out of the room, Libby shot a hand under the settee and yanked out the gun.
Well, so much for Ernestine’s theory that no one would be able to get it.
“Stop right there, all of you!” Libby spat, Mora peering evilly over her shoulder.
Everyone in the room froze.
Everyone, except for Ernestine. Who suddenly remembered the shotgun she’d tucked into the umbrella stand the other day.
And who also remembered how this whole unfortunate business had started.
Wrenching the shotgun out of the umbrella stand, she aimed it up at the ceiling and blasted the light fixture Lyndon had only nicked.
For the second time in a week, a chandelier plunged to the ground in MacGillicuddie House.
This time, it did not miss its target.
In an explosion of crystal shards, Libby and Mora Swanson ended up trapped inside the metal frame, which had pinned them to the floor like a birdcage.
The gun spun away, only to be stopped by Eduardo’s foot as he peered back into the room from around the doorframe.
Aurora Borealis rushed back in for her grandmother. For a moment, the two just looked at each other. Then, for the first time ever, Aurora Borealis took out her phone and proudly took a selfie with her grandmother.
Startled, Mrs. MacGillicuddie posed glamorously. For all their age difference, the two looked a great deal alike. As Ernestine sat, dazed, on the floor, she wondered for the first time if perhaps Aurora Borealis would be a great deal more likable when she was eighty.
Turning to Ernestine, Mrs. MacGillicuddie beamed. “I do love an exciting Valentine’s Day, don’t you?”
Chapter Fourteen
All’s Well That Ends Well, Unless You’re Dead or in Prison
SATURDAY, 10:38 PM
As it turned out, not only was no one murdered, but no one had forgotten Ernestine’s birthday after all. They had just been planning the most amazing surprise party for her in the world.
True, it also doubled as a gallery opening, but that didn’t bother Ernestine. And also true, neither a zombie apocalypse nor murder-most-foul occurred during it, which Ernestine normally would have found quite boring. However, for once she was more than happy to just sit back and enjoy the evening, leaving all of the details to other people.
The party had a “Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile” theme. Which meant fancy costumes for everyone, and the fanciest of them all for Ernestine, who loved her sleek black wig and gorgeous golden dress. She also loved the edible vegan pyramids made out of crostini Dill provided for his newfound great-aunt, as well as the nonvegan sphinx that Mr. Talmadge made out of various kinds of ham. She loved the Hep Cats dressed up as princes of Egypt as they wailed away on their instruments in the corner. She loved Mr. Theda, dressed up by Mr. Bara as Set, while Mr. Bara himself came as Ra. She loved that Mr. Price and Principal Langenderfer from school came in costume. She even loved grumpy Mr. Sangfroid, who’d finally been released from the hospital in time to get dressed up as a very wrinkly Marc Antony.
In other words, pretty much an ordinary, everyday party as far as Mrs. MacGillicuddie was concerned.
“I have to admit, this is the strangest case I’ve ever worked on,” Detective Kim admitted as he sat next to Ernestine. Alone among the guests, he was dressed in a very boring suit and tie, having stopped by to wrap up some loose ends with Mrs. MacGillicuddie and gotten swept up into the party along the way. In fact, he was the one who had persuaded Mr. Sangfroid to wear the Marc Antony costume Mrs. MacGillicuddie had picked out for him by pointing out that technically he could be charged with interfering with an investigation for holding back what he knew about the Swanson twins.
“It wasn’t like I had any idea that they were going to try to murder us both!” Mr. Sangfroid snapped at Mrs. MacGillicuddie by way of apology. “I knew they were up to something the minute that old album fell out of the attic. When I saw that picture of Libitina and Morana, I recognized it right away. Libby had her own copy of it, given to her by the nuns at the orphanage. She kept it on the fireplace mantel back when we were seeing each other all those years ago. She and Mora hated their parents for abandoning them, but I didn’t know who their family was until I saw that photo and put two and two together. I knew they must have been some sort of MacGillicuddie relation, so it seemed like enough to blackmail—er, persuade—Libby to go on one last date with me. For old times’ sake.”
“Instead, they decided to frame him for your murder,” Detective Kim explained to Mrs. MacGillicuddie, helping himself to one of the thirteen different cakes Charleston had helped Mrs. Talmadge make for the occasion—one for every year of Ernestine’s life. “They knocked him out in the garden before they broke into your apartment. When things went wrong in there, they still stuck to the rest of their plan. They shoved his head into the pond, making it look like he’d tripped as he escaped. Then, they planted the zombie clothes on him, though with you after them, Ernestine, they had to rush and left two right shoes next to him rather than a left and a right, along with the photo they’d meant to take off of him.”
“Why not just shove him into the water before they broke in?” Ernestine asked, causing Mr. Sangfroid to shoot her an outraged look that she ignored. “Wouldn’t it have been less risky to kill him first rather than risking he might wake up?”
“They didn’t know how long they’d be in Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s apartment and were worried that we would figure out that he died before she did. You can’t murder someone if you’re already dead,” Detective Kim said cheerfully. He took a bite of his cake
and looked astonished by its deliciousness.
“But if the plan was to get all of the other MacGillicuddie heirs out of the way, what were they going to do about Rodney, Aurora Borealis, and Lyndon?” Charleston asked, quite pleased by how much everyone was enjoying his cakes.
“After Mrs. MacGillicuddie was dead, they planned on making it look like Lyndon offed his uncle and cousin in a quarrel over his inheritance. Then, with all three of them out of the way, they planned to come forward to claim the MacGillicuddie fortune. The same nanny who found them in Brazil also brought them their birth certificates.”
“So the Swanson twins used their acrobatic skills to climb up the side of the house and break into Mr. Theda and Mr. Bara’s apartment and steal the zombie makeup,” Ernestine surmised.
“They also used the crowbar to make it look like someone from outside the house had broken in through the laundry room window, in case anyone became suspicious about how the chandelier came to fall. At that point, they were planning on making it look like Rodney had killed his mother. But then they saw Mr. Sangfroid take the photo album at the Mardi Gras party, so they had themselves a new victim to frame.”
“The very idea!” Rodney interjected, puffing out his chest beneath the bejeweled pharaoh’s collar he wore. “We may fight all of the time, but she’s still my mother!”
“They also snuck through your parents’ apartment earlier in the day to loosen the screws holding the chandelier to the attic floor. If you recall, they were the ones who told Mr. Talmadge that Dill had commissioned one of your stepfather’s sculptures. They did it knowing that Mr. Talmadge’s competitiveness with Dill would drive him to commission one, too. Then they used the cover of all the noise Frank was making with his power tools to sneak through your apartment and get to the storage attic on the other side. Then, they used the bad blood between Dill and Mr. Talmadge to instigate the fight that got everyone out in the foyer and Mrs. MacGillicuddie beneath the booby-trapped chandelier,” Detective Kim explained.
Ernestine, Catastrophe Queen Page 19