I was about to slip into a back row when Rod walked down the center aisle toward me, looking a little lost. His curls were plastered damply against his head, and his tie was knotted very tightly, as if he hadn’t had much practice dressing up. He gave a half-wave.
“I like your blazer,” I said lamely, making a mental note to work on my greetings.
“Thanks.” Rod rubbed the back of his neck and shifted uncomfortably. “My mom and dad made me wear it.”
I made a face and pointed to my flowery skirt. “Same.”
“We look nice, though, right?” Rod forced a grin, and I wasn’t sure if he was trying to compliment me. I blushed anyway. He glanced back at his little brother, then jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “I guess I have to—”
“I’m really sorry about Mr. Steptoe,” I blurted.
“Yeah.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he kicked his shoe against the grass. “I am, too,” he added quietly. He gestured awkwardly to the rest of his family, who sat—pale and unsmiling—a few rows behind me. When I saw them there all together, I kind of wished I’d sat with my parents after all. Maybe the day wouldn’t have felt so weird.
I shielded my eyes from the sun and squinted at the Royal Court contenders sitting on the terrace, their hands folded in their laps. As the Festival’s official brass quintet warmed up next to them, the girls stared straight ahead, smiles frozen as if a tuba blaring inches from their ears was actually quite pleasant.
I wouldn’t last a second as a royal page.
Harrison Lee stepped up to the podium. Two men in white suits stepped forward on either side of him and raised silver trumpets. But instead of the brassy bursts that usually started the Royal Court announcements, sad, wilted notes oozed from them. Harrison Lee bowed his head as if he were praying. As the cameras zoomed in on him, the forest of his thick, gelled hair filled the two large TV screens mounted on either side of the terrace.
“Today is a difficult day,” he began, lifting his head again at last. He plucked a light-brown handkerchief from his front blazer pocket and dabbed at the sweat glistening on his brow. It was a warm day for December, but not that warm. I suppose it could have been nerves. He hadn’t had much time to prepare.
My cell phone buzzed in my lap. It was a text from Grace:
Look at Lee sweat! Guilty much?
Lee took a nervous sip from his thermos on the podium and continued. “Many people thought we should cancel the Royal Court coronation altogether. But anyone who knew Jim Steptoe also knows he believed the show must always go on. As he liked to say: ‘The winter sun always shines.’” Lee brought his fist to his mouth and closed his eyes. I felt bad because even though he was probably struggling not to cry, it looked like he was holding back a burp.
I looked across the aisle. Grace was scanning the crowd. I followed her gaze to the very back of the lawn, where Mr. Katz stood in his brown suit, shoulders stooped, waiting to usher latecomers to seats. His eyes darted across the crowd shiftily.
“I hope all of you will join me in remembering his life in a special service at St. Luke’s on the Sunday after the Festival, when we can give him the farewell a great man like him deserves,” Lee added. Splotches of moisture darkened his tan shirt. I wasn’t used to seeing him in such drab colors. Usually he wore bright pastel golf shirts—and sometimes even screaming loud plaid pants.
“In presidential tradition, Jim chose this year’s parade theme,” Lee continued. “He was inspired by the lyrics of his favorite song—a song that sums up the Festival spirit.” He cleared his throat so hard I thought he was going to cough up a hairball right there on the stage, which was better than belching, I supposed. Some of the adults in the crowd nudged each other uncomfortably, and I was relieved I wasn’t the only one horrified by the weird funeral-parade kick-off combo. Poor Rod. It was bad enough that a giant marshmallow had taken out his family’s friend. Now he had to sit through a strange, sweaty, hairball-coughing tribute to him, too. It all felt like the kind of crazy bad dream I have when I’m running a fever.
“We. Are. Family,” Harrison Lee said, pausing dramatically after each word. “And we’ve lost a dear member of our family.” A few sniffles rose up from the crowd. I caught a glimpse of Trista at the soundboard. Head cocked and mouth open, she looked as if she were watching a family of cockroaches scurry across the floor.
“However, we’re here to announce the newest representatives of our Festival family. Please join me in congratulating our Royal Court finalists!” Lee swept his hand toward the contestants seated on the terrace. As applause rang out, their strained smiles grew even wider. Kendra Pritchard actually showed gum line, she was trying so hard. One of Jake’s friends, Sienna Connors, was the only girl who looked comfortable up there. Her sandy brown hair looked windswept, like she’d come to the announcements after a morning of surfing.
The man next to me fidgeted and sighed as my cell phone vibrated with another text from Grace.
Check out Barb. Purple muumuu. 10 o’clock.
I was bad at following clock directions—but it wasn’t hard to spot Barb in the crowd. Women wearing bright purple have a way of standing out. She definitely did not look like a mother who’d waited eighteen years for that moment. Arms tightly folded, she looked, in fact, like someone who’d recently caught a hefty whiff of raw sewage. She fanned herself with a half-crumpled program. No way that was landing in Lily’s Royal Court scrapbook. Not without some serious magic from an industrial-strength steam iron.
I caught Grace’s eye and gave a single nod. I wondered if, with every moment I went along with her, I was nudging us closer to being royal pages.
The audience straightened in their seats as two Brown Suiters removed a fancy cloth covering the famous royal tiara pedestal and the velvet-lined glass case on top of it where the tiara itself would soon rise into view.
“But first, it’s time to unveil the Sun Queen’s tiara,” Harrison Lee said. “And the flower that Jim Steptoe chose to grace it.” A hush fell over the crowd. Each year just before the Festival started, it was tradition for the Festival President to choose a symbolic plant or flower for the parade, which was first revealed with the Sun Queen’s tiara. Only the jeweler who made the crown featuring the flower, and the president himself, knew the secret choice. We all realized that locking that tiara inside the secure hollow pedestal had to have been one of last things Mr. Steptoe ever did.
“From nineteen-ninety’s memorable choice of the Venus flytrap to last year’s bird-of-paradise that Scott Maxwell chose to represent our own sliver of paradise here in Luna Vista, we’ve seen some amazing selections over the years. And now we have it. Jim’s final gift to us all,” Lee said as the queen’s tiara spiraled from the depths of the pedestal compartment and appeared on the velvet lining. “The official symbol of the 125th Winter Sun Festival!”
The crowd clapped soberly as the tiara filled the outdoor screens with its glittering fake diamonds. The camera panned across the fancy metalwork and zoomed in on the flower insignia at the front of the crown. “A Coral Beauty rose,” Harrison Lee announced as the unmistakable folds of petals came into view. For someone who didn’t seem all that broken up yesterday, he sure was milking the moment. The applause grew louder.
I leaned forward to catch Grace’s eye, but Lauren Sparrow blocked my sight line. Her face was drawn, but she looked much more together than she had the day before. Her outfit—an Asian silk jacket and dark pants—somehow managed to be both festive and serious.
“How fitting that Jim Steptoe left us with a symbol of love and friendship.” Lee’s voice echoed across the lawn. “Now which of Luna Vista’s own lovely roses will wear it? We take many characteristics into consideration when we select our Court,” he said, sounding an awful lot like one of his late-night ads as he mugged directly into the local news cameras lined up near the white tents. I found myself wishing Trista would spill her iced tea and short-circuit the soundboard.
“But, most of all, we look for effortlessn
ess. The Festival is no beauty contest. The Royal Court is made up of smart, talented young women who are shining ambassadors for our community just by being themselves,” he said.
If Grace had been sitting next to me, my ribs would be cracked from her elbowing. I shot off a quick text to her with a smiley face.
“Before we honor those ladies, let’s take a moment to pay tribute to the people who made it possible for us to gather here today. In my book, they’re Luna Vista royalty too.”
Trista pulled her cap lower as Harrison Lee looked toward the volunteers at the soundboard. For someone whose regular speaking voice was a shout, it was surprising how much Trista hated being in the spotlight—even to be thanked.
Harrison Lee’s blinding white smile filled the outdoor TV screens. “Officer Grady? Can you please stand?”
I frowned. Why did we need pay tribute to a police officer? Trista looked back at me in shock as Officer Grady stood up from his seat in the row in front of her and pretended to humbly wave away the crowd’s cheers.
Lee bumped the microphone as he clapped over-enthusiastically. “We couldn’t be more grateful to Paul Grady and his fine team at the LVPD for quickly determining the cause of Jim Steptoe’s accident. It isn’t easy kicking off our Winter Sun Festival under the shadow of tragedy, but thanks to their thorough investigation, we have closure. We can move forward—with full peace of mind. We salute you, officers.”
My chest tightened. Closure? A little more than twenty-four hours had passed since we’d eavesdropped on the police in the float barn. Pink-faced Officer Carter’s voice echoed in my mind. Homicide, he’d said. We’d heard him right. He’d said it would take weeks to investigate. How could they have tied everything up so fast? My heart started to race.
Grady sat back down again. I turned to Grace. Staring straight ahead, she looked at Harrison Lee as if he’d grown a second head. Next to her, Lauren Sparrow wore an almost identical look. Her Royal Court program dropped to the ground and abruptly fluttered shut.
Chapter Seven
Royal Upset
Grace locked her panicked eyes on mine. My head felt light, and Harrison Lee’s voice sounded warped and far away, as if he were talking underwater. The Court finalists—their ankles crossed, their smiles like grimaces—looked like a row of plastic puppets.
There was nothing to worry about, I told myself, even as my heart pounded and a trickle of sweat slid down the back of my neck. The police had discovered some missing piece of the puzzle. That’s all. They knew how Mr. Steptoe had died, and it wasn’t at the hands of some deranged killer. Or poor Mr. Katz in his horse-turdy suit. Or even Barb Lund, whose arms were so tightly crossed that she looked as if she were trying to keep herself from throttling someone that very second. It had been an accident. Pure and simple. So what if the police had said the force would need weeks to investigate? They might’ve made a mistake. It’s not like bodies showed up in parade floats every day on their watch. Besides, we’d heard one snatch of conversation only minutes after they’d arrived. Things had changed.
Obviously.
“The envelope, please!” Harrison Lee bellowed, chuckling at his own corny imitation of an Academy Awards host as he took the list of Royal Court winners from the Brown Suiter next to him. The contestants sat up as if tugged by an invisible string.
Lauren Sparrow straightened in her chair, too. Her program was neatly tucked halfway into her leather handbag and she wore a relaxed smile. Suddenly I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen that flash of surprise on her face at all.
As the cranes on the news vans hinged outward, elbowing their way in for close-ups, I felt queasy as I remembered how worried Lee had been about the press. He’d practically begged Officer Grady to wrap everything up faster because of the Festival. But the police would never rush to give us “closure” if a murderer was on the loose, would they? My head started to throb.
Lee prepared to announce the Royal Court’s first new princess. “Siennnn-na Connnnn-nors!” he boomed.
Trista had to rip off her headphones and fumble for the soundboard levels as a chorus of ear-splitting shrieks rose up. Shocked, Sienna tottered on her heels toward the podium. One of the previous year’s princesses who was wrapped in a tight gauzy dress that reminded me of a mummy—or a patient recovering from full-body surgery—pressed a bouquet into her arms. Sienna might have been surprised, but the rest of us weren’t. She was everything the Festival could want in a princess and still managed to be ridiculously nice. The genuine, fun kind of nice. Not the boring kind people pull off because they have no opinions.
As Lee turned back to the crowd, Kendra was already smoothing down the folds of her dress, ready to stand. She blew a kiss to someone in the crowd—possibly to her sister, Marissa. Possibly—and even more likely—to her dog.
Harrison Lee drew in a noticeably longer breath before he announced the next Court member. “Allow me to introduce . . . Princess Lily Lund!”
A stunned hush fell over the crowd as they put it together. If Lily was princess, she couldn’t be queen. If Lily wasn’t queen, then—
The crowd broke into an awkward cheer while craning their necks to look for Barb. I whirled around to see her expression for myself.
She sat like a statue, her feathered bangs ruffling in the breeze. She wore a look that . . . well . . .
A look that could kill.
Meanwhile, Lily stood stiffly on the terrace clutching her bouquet of flowers so tightly to her chest I wondered if the rose thorns were drawing blood yet. She struggled to keep her smile, but when the camera swept across her face, I saw her glasses were misting up with tears. My lap buzzed with a stream of exclamation-point-filled texts from Grace. As I leaned to catch her eye across the aisle, I saw Lauren Sparrow cheering, her quick claps reminding me of beating birds’ wings.
The sun glinting on the bell of a trumpet blinded me as the heralds sounded out another blast. “Hear ye, hear ye, Faithful!” Harrison Lee cried out the coronation announcement. It sounded so silly, but it was part of the tradition. “All rise to welcome the new reigning Sun Queen of our Anniversary Festival Royal Court.”
Kendra’s gummy dental-office smile could not have been brighter or wider. She’d practically stood up from her chair already.
“Jardine Thomas!” Lee finished.
Kendra’s smile froze and her eyes went wide as Jardine Thomas hopped up and rode the roar of the crowd over to the podium, chin leading the way. “Jar-di!” someone hooted as some of the older Luna Vistans stiffened and shifted in their seats. Even with the camera’s close-up magnifying Jardine’s every feature, her flat-ironed hair and dark-brown skin looked perfect. Behind her, Kendra and the losing finalists beamed and clapped so hard their hands must’ve stung.
Lund tossed her balled-up program to the grass as last year’s Sun Queen balanced the royal tiara on Jardine’s head. The band burst into a slowed down version of “We Are Family,” that 1970s song Grandpa Young hummed as a joke at the dinner table sometimes. Silver and gold confetti filled the air, shimmering in the sun as people poured into the center aisle.
As I filed out of my row, Grace pushed her way through the crowd, her gaze dark and urgent. My mouth went dry.
She threw her arm around me and leaned in. “We’re looking at a cover-up,” she whispered. “A royal one. And you know what that calls for, don’t you?”
My stomach lurched as she answered for me.
“That’s right, Soph.” Grace squeezed my shoulder, eyes gleaming. “Undercover royals.”
Chapter Eight
The Beach Ball
“There’s no way the police are going to risk leaving a killer at large,” I told Grace when she repeated her police cover-up theory to me that evening in the mansion kitchen. Weeks ago we’d signed up to be servers at the “Beach Ball,” the gala dinner celebrating the new Court. Behind us cooks bustled around the sizzling stove. Clattering dishes mixed with the faint sounds of piano drifting in from the ballroom.
“This
is the Festival, Soph. You heard what Lee said about the press,” she whispered, her eyes darting nervously to the other middle-school Beach Ball servers hustling in to change into their white waiter jackets. “If this got out, it’d be a disaster for Luna Vista’s reputation. First we harbor a fugitive, now a murderer?” She shook her head. “The Winter Sun Festival was supposed to make everyone forget about the Tilmore Eight fugitive. What if they—”
“Listen,” I interrupted, tugging her closer. “The police investigated. It was an accident. Case closed.” I wasn’t sure I believed it, but I was desperate to shut down her royal page plan. “C’mon. Tonight’s supposed to be fun!”
A week earlier when Grace and I had found out that we’d snagged one of the Beach Ball’s few volunteer waiter slots, we’d been so excited we’d pretty much thrown our own ball. Well, a spontaneous dance party, actually—even if it had come crashing to a halt when Jake had walked in to borrow my three-hole punch. Grace had been so embarrassed that Jake had caught her shaking her butt in the air, she hid in my bathroom for a full ten minutes before I managed to coax her back onto the “dance floor.” I wished it were as easy to get her to lighten up for the actual Ball.
“Besides . . .” I pulled a waiter jacket from a hook and slipped it on. “Everyone is on high alert. I heard some parents are freaking out so much about safety they’re going to make their kids wear helmets in the float barn. Somebody else is all over this, I promise.”
Grace’s brow creased. “Helmets?”
I nodded. “Rod told me Peter Murguia’s mom is making him wear a neon one. You know, for extra visibility.”
The Tiara on the Terrace Page 5