When I came out to breakfast, Grandpa and Dad were sitting at the table sipping their coffee and silently trading sections of the newspaper as the dishwasher hummed behind them. “Oh good, you’re up,” my father said as I came in. He tried to look stern. “Last thing you need is to be late reporting to Ms. Lund.”
“Huh!” Grandpa squinted at his section of the newspaper. It showed a really complicated diagram of what I assumed was the Girl Scout float. He rapped his knuckle on the picture and gave a low whistle. “What a way to go.”
I stared down at the 3D cross-section diagram with all its swooping arrows. It looked so official, as if the police had flown in a team of physicists specializing solely in fake marshmallow deaths to figure it all out.
“Have you heard any updates on Mr. Lee?” I asked my dad.
“The Yangs say he’s still resting in the hospital, as far as I know.”
I cleared my throat. “Do you think it’s weird that, you know, first Mr. Steptoe has an accident”—I stumbled over the word—“and then Mr. Lee collapses?”
“Why would that be weird?” My dad frowned as he smoothed the tufts of hair around his ears—the only hair he still had—then looped his AmStar lanyard around his neck and straightened his tie. “Poor Harrison. It’s no wonder. His good buddy dies, he’s thrust into the spotlight, in charge of everything. He has to manage the press, take over the Festival, give improvised televised speeches—all while putting on a brave face? I doubt he’s slept at all since they discovered Jim. I’d have fallen apart even earlier with all that stress.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I thought it could look like—like maybe someone was after the Festival Presidents on purpose.” I mumbled that last part as quickly as I could.
Grandpa scratched his head, as if seriously considering my theory. He turned his newspaper sideways and peered so closely at it that his nose practically grazed it.
“The thing is, after Kendra found Mr. Steptoe, Grace and I . . .” I wasn’t sure how to put it without getting myself in more trouble. “We went back into the float barn and overheard the police saying that it would take at least two weeks to investigate—”
“You sneaked back into the float barn after they evacuated you?” My dad interrupted before I finished, his blue eyes widening. “Soph! Do you realize how dangerous that could’ve been?”
He shook his head at me and leaned forward in his chair. “Listen, you and Grace went through a lot with all that Tilmore Eight fugitive business.” He softened his tone and ruffled my hair. Usually, I liked it when he did that, but right then it made me feel about six years old. He might as well have counted the freckles on my nose, like he used to do when he tucked me in at night. “You were excellent investigators. I know that. We all know that. If it weren’t for you girls, Deborah Bain would still be on the loose in this town.”
“Darned straight!” Grandpa interrupted, winking at me. “Ow.” He frowned and rubbed his knee under the table where my dad must’ve nudged him too hard.
My dad ignored him. “But you’re getting carried away.” He sighed. “And I think your pal Trista is getting carried away too. Last night Jason from AmStar told me that she thinks she knows the float couldn’t malfunction. She asked the float engineers to explain it to the police.”
“Did she?” I asked, relieved to hear it.
“She’s a firecracker, that one,” Grandpa Young interrupted. “We could have used someone like her in the 187th Airborne.”
My dad ignored him. “This was a terrible, one-in-a-million accident, but trust me, Sophie. The police have covered their bases.” He waved to the newspaper. “Ensuring a safe Festival is everyone’s number one concern.” He grabbed his car keys and gently squeezed my shoulder on his way to the door. “Now why don’t you worry about staying off Barb Lund’s radar instead, huh?”
I stared at my half-eaten toast and nodded. Little did he realize that staying off Barb Lund’s radar was exactly what I was worried about.
“Lee is still in the hospital, Sophie,” Grace said, shaking her head as we walked into the float barn to report to Barb that morning as commanded. The floats’ half-built ice cream sundaes and Ferris wheels and cartoon figures looked creepy without volunteers scrambling all over them. I shivered a little. The fog had made the morning especially chilly, but I would have been freezing no matter what. I felt cold from the inside.
“The doctors say it’s stress, but off the record, they told my parents they don’t know what’s up. They’re keeping him there. Dehydration? Stress? Or attempted poisoning? I think this was an attack. Pure and simple.” She shot me a firm look and then held out her pen.
“It’s now or never, Sophie.”
I knew she was right, but I kept my arms glued to my side. “You know, Lee has been under an awful lot of stress,” I said, repeating my dad’s words at breakfast.
She thrust the pen toward me again. “You really want to wait around to see who the killer hits next? Rod Zimball’s dad is Festival president now, you know.”
I looked at the white teardrop-shaped half of our yin/yang friendship pendant hanging around her neck. She used to claim the necklace didn’t go with any of her outfits, but we’d both worn our pendants every single day since we’d captured Deborah Bain. I felt a little pang as I remembered that night on the beach below the bluffs two months earlier, when it looked like we might not even make it out alive—gunshots echoing above, waves crashing around us.
Grace sighed impatiently. “You captured a killer and now you’re afraid of a little royal-page primping?”
I opened my mouth to argue, but Barb Lund’s screechy voice saved me.
“That you, Young and Yang?” she shouted from her office.
Grace and I cringed and bolted down the float barn aisle like Olympic track runners, stopping to catch our breath for only a second before shuffling into Lund’s office. It was a stuffy little room in the far corner of the warehouse.
It took me a moment to even notice Barb Lund amid all the clutter. She might have run a tight ship when it came to float decorating, but her office looked like the entire archives of Festival history had exploded inside of it. Photo collages of past Winter Sun Festival floats hung crookedly on the wall next to autographed headshots of former members of the Royal Court. “Love and Hugs, Princess Stephanie,” read one photo of a big-haired teenager wearing a pink dress that looked like a birthday cake. Then there were the stuffed animals. I mean, I like Winnie the Pooh as much as the next person, but do you really need a shelf of twenty of them in various sizes?
Barb hunched over a dusty computer monitor reading email. Judging from her deep frown, she wasn’t anywhere near over Lily’s royal snub. If anything, she looked even angrier. “Late with the onion seed delivery again,” she exclaimed. “I could wring their necks!” Her chair squealed as she turned to us. “Speaking of late.” She thrust a finger at a dusty digital clock. The clock’s red numbers stared back: 7:00 exactly.
Grace opened her mouth to say something, but Lund cut her off. “Don’t tell me you don’t know about Festival Time,” she said, then singsonged a little rhyme: “On time? You’re late! Gotta hurry up and wait!”
Grace and I stood in silence, not daring to look at each other. “We’re really sorry,” I offered, at last.
Ms. Lund didn’t seem to hear me. “You don’t even want to know what happened when Queen Marianne only showed up on time for float boarding on parade day in 1998,” she said, shaking her head. Ms. Lund took Festival tradition so seriously, she talked about past Royal Court queens as if they were actual monarchs. If Lily were still on the Court, Barb would have been so busy bowing and curtseying to her she would have had trouble showing up at any time, let alone Festival time.
We flinched as Barb unclipped a Winnie the Pooh key chain from her belt loop, unlocked a desk drawer, and shoved two jars and two pairs of tweezers our way. “Start with the ice cream sundae. Any wrong-colored petal”—I gulped as she leaned forward—“make sure
it’s gone for good. Understood?”
“Yes, ma’am!” Grace cried out before we both turned and ran away. We didn’t stop until we were back at the Root Beer float. “Jeez, that was scary,” she said, leaning against the side of an ice cream cone as I caught my breath. “How can a woman with that much love for Winnie the Pooh be such a pain?”
“Haven’t you heard?” I looked at her sideways. “She’s not a pain, Grace. She has high standards.”
Grace laughed. “Guess I didn’t get the memo.”
“Maybe she’s just misunderstood,” Trista interrupted, poking her head out from the camouflaged front compartment where a driver would hide away to steer the float during the actual parade. I was surprised—and relieved—to see her there so early. She grunted as she shimmied herself free from the compartment. “Ugh, it’s awful in there,” she said, then sneezed into the crook of her arm loudly—twice. She held up a small device with several levers. “Remote control is going to revolutionize this festival. Worth showing up early to get the quiet time in.”
“Hey, weren’t you supposed to be volunteering with us last night?” I asked, realizing she probably didn’t even know about Lee yet. I couldn’t wait to hear what she’d think.
Trista shrugged. “My tuxedo T-shirt was at the dry cleaners.”
“Oh,” I said, as if that actually explained it.
Grace launched into a reenactment of the Beach Ball disaster, stopping short of actually imitating Lee’s moan as they carried him off on the stretcher. When she’d finished, Trista set down her remote control and made a face. “Dehydration? Stress?”
“Ridiculous, right? You’d think he’d be stabilized by now.” Grace folded her arms.
Trista sighed and ran her hand through her thick curls. “I’ll tell you what’s ridiculous. I went to the AmStar team and asked for help explaining why it can’t be an accident to the LVPD. They wouldn’t take me seriously.” She looked at us sheepishly. “They think I’m letting you two mess with my head. Like, we think everything’s a murder mystery now because of everything that went down.”
“My parents think so too,” I said quietly.
“Mine think I just really want to be a royal page.” Grace looked at us. “What?” she asked. “No way I was telling them this crazy stuff. They’d flip!”
“The lead guy from the AmStar team did talk to the police for me, though. They said they’d take another look,” Trista continued. “But I’m twelve, what do I know about physics?” She snorted sarcastically.
“I’m thinking it’s slow-acting poison,” Grace piped up. “Polonium. Thallium, maybe. With AmStar in town, people can get access to some pretty intense stuff.”
She may have been into designing miniskirts made out of papyrus now or whatever, but her crime trivia was obviously still rattling around in her brain. Trista shook her head. “Thallium poisoning causes significant hair loss.” Then she raised an eyebrow. “I think it’s pretty clear that’s out.”
“With as much hair as Lee has, you’d never even notice,” Grace said, and I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Fair point.” Trista looked thoughtful as she wiped her greasy hands on her jeans.
“Tryouts are today. If we want inside access, we have to act now.” Grace countered. “I’m already signed up.”
I felt a surge of dread. I still couldn’t believe she was charging ahead into all this without me. Trista glanced back at the float-driver compartment, then to the sign-up clipboard.
“Now that’s a recipe for disaster,” Trista said. “The last time I left you two to your own devices, you got yourselves locked in a criminal’s basement!” She looked down at her cargo jacket and brushed it off. “Auditions are at noon, you say?”
“Oh, no. I’m not going.” I stepped back. “I am not smearing myself with Pretty Perfect make-up and bowing down to Princess Kendra. Ever.”
“This isn’t about bowing to Princess Kendra, Soph,” Grace pleaded. “The whole town’s depending on you.” She tugged my arm gently. “On us.”
“Depending on me to trip in my platform shoes and face-plant in a pile of Festival horse dung in front of the bleachers?” I crossed my arms. Grace shot Trista a helpless look.
Trista shrugged, a smile playing at her lips. “You know, I heard horse poo could be the path to a new you.”
Grace’s chuckle faded fast. As she looked at me pleadingly, a stream of images tumbled through my head: I imagined Trista botching a covert mission thanks to her inability to either tiptoe or whisper. Grace “accidentally” toppling over a third-story railing and landing in the marble entryway after thinking it was a great idea to confront the murderer with evidence. I saw a target hovering square at the center of Mr. Zimball’s head.
I looked down at my nails and pictured them painted candy-apple red. I looked at my feet and tried to imagine wearing heels and not falling down. Then I looked at Grace and Trista. Their faces were hopeful, their eyes desperate. I sighed.
“Okay. Where’s that sign-up sheet?”
Chapter Ten
Turning the Page
I wrote my name on the sheet right under the all-caps BOTTOMS Trista had scrawled, adding a heart over my i to fit in with all the other sparkly gel-inked names. The next thing I knew, Grace, Trista, and I were in the Ridley Mansion living room for royal-page auditions, drowning in a sea of rustling satin and swoopy updos.
I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out every middle-school girl in Luna Vista had packed into that room. Even all the upholstered antique furniture and wood-paneling couldn’t absorb the squeally chattering. Flowery hairspray hung so thick in the air you could taste it on your tongue. If someone had lit a match, the whole place would’ve exploded.
That would have been one way of backing out.
I’d been in the mansion at least a dozen times—for field trips and boring tours with my parents and their out-of-town guests. And I knew, or at least knew of, half the girls in the room. Still, I felt like I’d landed on an alien planet. As Grace led us past a group of seventh graders, their eyes flicked up and down my glue-stained jeans and hoodie before traveling over to Trista and the welding helmet she was holding at her side. My former friend Stacy Pedalski was one of them. She shook her head slowly as if we’d violated a sacred law. I couldn’t believe she and I had once spent an entire weekend huddling inside a sofa cushion fort, sipping Coke through Red Vines while we watched all eight Harry Potter movies.
Grace had tried to snazz up our outfits by raiding the lost and found. Unfortunately, the same scarf that had transformed her into a Teen Vogue model had made me look like an accident victim in a neck brace. Trista had refused to even try it on, citing health risks. Something about lost-and-found fungus and the importance of proper airflow for people with allergies. “Besides,” she said, flashing jazz hands over the Girl Scout badges sewn on her cargo jacket. “It distracts from my flair.”
Meanwhile, Grace had pulled together leggings, a skirt, and cardigan to create a cool vintage style that made her look like she was in high school already. Leave it to her to look fashion-shoot ready in a moldy lost-and-found skirt.
I squared my shoulders and tried to make myself look taller. “Too bad there weren’t any heels in the lost and found,” I mumbled.
“You got this, Soph.” Grace plucked a stray flower petal from my shoulder and adjusted my pendant. “We’re town heroes. We don’t have to be perfect.”
“We’d have to really mess up for them not to let us in,” Trista agreed.
Grace elbowed Trista when she thought I wasn’t looking.
“What?” Trista blinked. “Am I wrong?”
My throat went sandpaper dry. I remembered Rod’s smile in the float barns when we were joking about trying out for pages. His words echoed in my head: There’s no way you wouldn’t get a spot. I glanced around the living room. Girls eyed us jealously and turned back to their friends, whispering. Every person in that room expected us to coast to victory. I looked up at Grace, hoveri
ng a head taller than me, her silky hair tumbling down her back. The judges would pick her in a second. But what about me? I pictured myself standing at the judges’ table as they shook their heads at me slowly in perfect imitation of Stacy Pedalski. I could already hear the shocked whispers—could already feel my cheeks blazing red as I insisted that, really, it was no big deal. I hadn’t even wanted to audition in the first place.
It turns out there was something worse than being a royal page.
Not being a royal page.
A giggle erupted next to us. It was the twins, Danica and Denise Delgado, who seemed to giggle each time their spaghetti straps slipped off their shoulders—which was roughly every two seconds. I was already practicing in my head how I’d break it to Rod that I was backing out, when I caught sight of Mr. Zimball wandering casually through the room. He smiled broadly as he shook hands, not even a hint of worry clouding his face.
I wiped my sweaty hands on my jeans and stayed put. The man was a sitting duck.
“Welcome, you three!” Mr. Zimball peered down at Trista’s welding helmet. “May I, uh, hang that up for you?”
Trista hugged her helmet closer and eyed the crystal chandelier dangling above her head. “It’s cool, thanks. Might come in handy.”
Mr. Zimball hovered awkwardly for a moment. The way he shifted his weight from foot to foot reminded me of Rod. When a Festival official cruised past with a silver tray, he leaped at the chance to wriggle away. “Well, best of luck to you this afternoon,” he said, grabbing a mini egg roll before he strolled off.
“See that? Even the judges are wishing us luck,” Grace whispered.
The Tiara on the Terrace Page 7