“What’s with the letters?” Trista frowned.
Grace pulled out three small index cards. “So, Sophie was telling me about this cool code,” she began. I beamed. If I’d had any doubts about why she’d been so into us being pages, they were gone now. “It’s like Morse, but better than Morse . . . ,” she said, smiling knowingly at me as she echoed my exact words in the float barn.
“. . . Because not many people know about it,” I finished. “It’s called a Polybius code or cipher. Prisoners used it in the olden days.” I pointed to the square on the index card Grace had handed me.
1 2 3 4 5
1 A B C D E
2 F G H I/J K
3 L M N O P
4 Q R S T U
5 V W X Y Z
“Let’s say you have an emergency and need to send an SOS,” I continued. “You find S on the grid—it’s at row four across, three down.” I tapped one of the books four times, paused, and hit it rapidly three more times. I think it was the first time I’d ever had to explain anything to Trista.
Grace’s hair fell over her radio headset as she leaned forward. “You have to pause longer between letters so it’s not confusing,” she explained to Trista. “So before tapping out the numbers for O, you’d wait a few beats.”
“Got it,” Trista said, almost impatiently. She quickly rapped out the three across, four down pattern for O, waited a long second, then tapped out S just like I had. “Guess you can signal with a flashlight like Morse too, huh?”
“Yep. Anything,” Grace replied. “Honking. Clicking. Whistling.” She pointed to the letters on the layout. “I made letter codes for places in the mansion and the grounds so we can call meeting spots over the radio. And I listed the codes on the back of the card.” She flipped one of them over proudly.
Trista nodded, impressed. “So, let’s see . . . RG stands for Rose Garden, that’d be—”
The door to the library burst open just as Trista was making extremely loud fake beeping sounds with her mouth. Danica and Denise stared back.
“Um . . .” Danica looked at her sister.
“You caught us!” Grace smiled so wide I thought she might sprain her lips. “Playing spy games, again.” She pretended to roll her eyes at her own silliness. “You guys want a secret code map?” She picked up one of the printouts.
I leaned my mouth closer to the mike of my radio headset clipped onto my shirt. “Roger, wilco two-two-four-ten-twenty-one. We’ve got intruders. Twelve o’clock. Do you copy?”
“Whoa,” Denise said. “You’re really into this.”
Grace shrugged. “Passes the time.”
“Ten-four,” barked Trista.
Danica nodded slowly. “Well, uh, ten-four, one-niner, whatever . . . You might want to actually turn those radios on? Ms. Sparrow was wondering what held you all up.”
Danica and Denise barely had a chance to close the door before the three of us practically fell on the carpet laughing. “Close call, team,” Grace said.
I slapped them both five. “Over and out.”
A half hour later, I was upstairs in the royal suite, struggling to figure out which color codes went with the outfits detailed in the Royal Court mix-and-match wardrobe binder. Next to me Trista was already elbow-deep in Jardine’s closet, hangers screeching as she flipped through dresses like a department store saleslady during prom season. At least I was faster than Danica and Denise, who stopped every other minute to hold up dresses and twirl for each other.
Trista had just finished whipping Jardine’s closet into shape and was jumping in to help me when static crackled over our headsets in a clear pattern. I slipped the index card from my back pocket and sneaked a look as I listened. Psht-Psht-Psht-Psht came four rapid bursts, then a pause, then three more. S for Steptoe’s office. Time to put our plan in action.
As Danica and Denise started oohing and ahhing over outfits again, I made eye contact with Trista and excused myself to the restroom. Trista gave a single nod and turned back to Kendra’s closet, hangers jangling and screeching again as she flipped through them double-time.
I grabbed a roll of paper towels from the bathroom off the Queen and Court sitting room and headed to the third floor. Grace was at the top of the landing, pretending to dust a glass case displaying past Royal Court tiaras and dried bouquets. A spray bottle of window cleaner hung from her belt.
“Trista’s coming.” I held up the paper towels and shrugged. “This is all I could find for cover.”
“That’ll work.” Grace tucked her feather duster into her belt next to the spray bottle, then set one of the vintage watches she wore on her wrist—the digital one. “There’s a huge Festival meeting in the living room—all the officials. We should have enough time. Etiquette doesn’t start for twenty minutes. “
I cocked an eyebrow. “Twenty minutes Festival time?”
“Uh,” Grace’s watch chirped as she reset it. “Make that fifteen.”
“You sure we’re alone up here?” I peered down the long hallway.
Grace twisted her ponytail into a messy bun and checked herself out in the display case reflection. “Don’t worry,” she said.
I worried. I worried a lot. Officials had been dashing up and down the stairs all day. Electricians rattled around with their stepladders, checking light fixtures. And every time I passed a window, it felt like I was jumping at yet another silhouette of a window washer. The last thing we needed was for someone to catch us on our very first mission.
A clattering on the stairs interrupted us, followed by a grunt and muttered curse. Grace’s mouth fell open as Trista rounded the corner battling with the hose of a vacuum cleaner as if she were in a fight for her life with a boa constrictor. She’d strapped the vacuum canister to her back like a leaf blower, and a dust mask hung from her neck.
“All set!” she boomed. “You think you’re going to need me to pick the lock?”
We cringed. She might as well have yelled directly into Barb’s megaphone.
“Nah, we’re probably fine,” Grace whispered back. She hesitated a moment—probably weighing the risk of telling Trista to bring it down a notch or five—then leaned out to look down the long carpeted hall. “Coast looks clear. Let’s go!”
She darted forward like a cat, slowing at each open office door then jetting past it. There wasn’t much point. With Trista’s vacuum rattling the whole way down the hall, we might as well have been trying to spy with a one-man band trailing behind. Grace shot us irritated looks, but she kept going.
Finally, we stood in front of the thick paneled door of Mr. Steptoe’s former office. Engraved letters on a brass plaque greeted us: Festival President.
Grace swallowed hard and looked at Trista and me. “Ready?” she whispered.
We nodded.
“Okay. One, two—” Grace reached for the knob. The door swung open first. “—three,” she finished faintly as her head tilted up to the figure in front of us.
Chapter Thirteen
Otter Beware
Principal Katz stared back at us, dazed.
A minimum of seven centuries passed before any of us spoke.
“Just clearing out some things I left behind,” Katz said. He tightened his grip on the white file box he carried and smiled at us like my dad smiles at our neighbor’s Rottweiler. Next to me, Grace stiffened.
“Ms. Sparrow sent us to do some cleaning up,” she said, eyeing the glass paperweight poking out of the open box. “And to see if you needed any help?”
Mr. Katz looked even more startled. It was hard to believe this was the same man who’d once glared over his glasses at me from behind the principal’s desk at Luna Vista Middle School. “Why that’s, uh, awfully nice of her. I didn’t realize”—his face turned a blotchy, sunburned pink—“but no, thanks, I’ve got it covered.” He pivoted and scooted down the hall. If he’d had a tail to tuck between the legs of his brown polyester suit pants, he would’ve.
The three of us traded looks.
Grace fo
lded her arms. “He was demoted two weeks ago, at least. What’s he doing clearing out things now? Looks a lot like someone removing evidence from a crime scene to me.”
Trista nodded toward the wide-open office door. “Guess I won’t need to pick the lock?”
“Or remove any police tape,” I pointed out, my stomach hollowing. If police were secretly investigating, the last thing they’d want was people cruising in and out of the victim’s office whenever they liked. That could only mean one thing: they weren’t.
“C’mon!” Grace’s bun shook loose as she charged ahead. “We don’t have much time.”
A hush fell over us as we entered the office. A triangle of sun blazed through the gap in the beige linen drapes, lighting up dust motes like an old-time movie projector. The off-white walls looked anything but inspiring without Mr. Katz’s framed posters of golf courses and rainbows. There was even something a little bit creepy about the tiny nails still jutting out of the wall where’d they once hung.
Mr. Steptoe’s desk looked bare without him sitting at it, even though it was lined with various trinkets and souvenirs. A calendar counting down to the Festival leaned next to several framed photos. One was of Rod and his family standing with him in front of the Luna Vista Aquarium. As a bachelor without kids of his own, Mr. Steptoe probably thought of the Zimballs as family, I realized.
Grace dragged Mr. Steptoe’s black swivel chair over to block the door, then tossed us pairs of the latex gloves she’d stolen from the beauty closet in the Royal Court sitting room. “People wear them for dyeing hair,” she explained. “But they’ll keep us from leaving prints.”
Trista winced as she snapped on her gloves. “One size fits all: greatest myth of the twenty-first century,” she said with a snort.
“Right next to ‘flesh-colored,’” Grace held up her own hand. Next to her skin, it was Mickey Mouse–glove white.
“Tell me about it,” Trista rolled her eyes, then headed for Steptoe’s computer. “Password hack might be tough,” she said.
“Then again . . .” I pointed. One shelf of the bookcase behind the desk was practically a shrine to sea otters—including sea otter salt and pepper shakers, a sea otter snow globe, a small stuffed sea otter wearing a T-shirt that read “Otterly Awesome.” “We otter be able to make an educated guess.”
Grace giggled. “No kidding. The man loved his puns. This otter do it?” She held up the keyboard and tapped a Post-it note taped under it. “UnderTheSea-Sixty-Three,” she read out. “Right where my parents keep theirs.”
Trista rolled her eyes. “You guys ever wonder how adults even survive, let alone run the country?” The keyboard clattered as her fingers flew across it.
“All. The. Time.” Grace sighed.
I leaned down to pick up a pink piece of paper that’d fluttered to the floor when Grace had flipped the keyboard over. Miyamoto Jewelers, read the fancy lettering across the top. Fine Craftsmanship since 1913.
I froze.
“Are you okay, Soph?” Grace frowned and leaned over my shoulder. “Oh, wow.” She tapped the paper. It was a delivery receipt—the delivery receipt—for the official tiara of the 125th Winter Sun Festival. “Time stamped 10:45 p.m. That means he died sometime between then and the next morning. Good find.”
I pictured the tiara spiraling into view in its velvet display case, its rose insignia filling the giant outdoor screens—Harrison Lee, all choked up, announcing it as “Jim’s final gift to us all.” Locking that tiara into its secret compartment had probably been one of the last things Mr. Steptoe had ever done. I stared at his spindly signature at the bottom of the receipt until it blurred.
“Whoever delivered that tiara was one of the last people to see him alive,” I said.
“If not the last,” Grace said. She held out an open Ziploc bag for me to drop it in. “Any record of who delivered it?”
I shook my head. “Shouldn’t be too hard to figure out, though.”
“Whoa,” Trista interrupted. She shook her head at the computer screen and let out a low whistle. “Check it out.”
Grace and I leaned in to look. On the screen was a picture of a puppy and kitten curled up together, followed by a poem about enjoying life to the fullest that actually rhymed sweet with feet. The email asked Mr. Steptoe to forward the message to nine animal lovers, then, in case he needed extra encouragement, detailed all the horrible tragedies that struck people who didn’t. Freak accidents involving Ferris wheels, barbecues, corn threshers, mountain ledges . . .
Everything but death by giant marshmallow, basically.
Grace covered her mouth in horror. “That’s it. I’m forwarding every chain email to everyone ever, forever. And ever.”
“Me too,” I said. “Twice.”
“That’s the sad thing.” Trista pointed to the screen. “Dude actually forwarded it.”
“No!” Grace gasped.
Trista sighed wearily. “The outbox doesn’t lie.”
We observed a moment of silence at the unfairness of it all.
“Well.” Grace spoke at last. “What else have we got?” She ran her finger down the list of sender names in Steptoe’s inbox. “Spam, spam, World Wildlife Foundation . . . oh, hey, Harrison Lee? Click on that.”
I skimmed quickly over her shoulder. The email seemed to involve something about Festival money and was cc’ed to Mr. Zimball:
Hey, Jimmy,
I’ll have the expense spreadsheet ready for you by Friday. The account’s looking low, but no worries. We have plenty to cover budget. Just a temporary issue. Thanks for your offer to take over bookkeeping given everything I’m balancing at work. I’ll let you know if it gets to be too much, but I’ve got it under control. Quick coffee meeting Fri. at 9?
—Harrison
“Talk about shady,” Trista said. “He’s all, ‘There’s no money in the account. But, no worries, I don’t need any help!’”
Grace and I both glanced to the door. Trista’s imitation of Harrison Lee’s booming voice was more booming than any spy’s ever should be. My skin crawled remembering that—at any moment—the murderer could burst in and find us snooping.
Grace lowered her voice to a whisper. “Classic. Businessman gets caught stealing, then kills to keep the secret.” She nodded.
“An even better motive to kill than being Festival President,” Trista added, completely ignoring Grace’s volume cue. “Two get-rich-quick schemes in one.”
“It’s like the plot of every cop show I’ve ever watched with Grandpa Young,” I said, but in my head I pictured Lee on the stretcher at the Beach Ball, his face racked with pain.
“There’s just one thing. He can’t be the killer and a victim.”
Trista’s mouth twisted as she thought about that. “Unless he’s faking. If the police are still investigating, you know who they wouldn’t suspect? A victim.”
We looked at each other. A shiver tingled across my back. It was possible. “He’s also the only one who knew there was a chance the police were going to investigate this as murder,” I said, picturing him call out to Officer Grady all buddy-buddy, trying to convince him to speed things along. Then I shoved the thought away again. “Or . . . ,” I added, “he did really collapse from dehydration and stress.”
Grace raised an eyebrow. “Know what’s stressful? Murdering someone!”
It seemed just crazy enough to be true. After all, it wasn’t like Harrison Lee was some hardened criminal. He was a man with a used car business and screaming loud plaid pants who’d maybe gotten himself into some deep water. Or shallow soup, as the case was.
Trista turned back to Mr. Steptoe’s inbox and groaned. “We need to search these emails for keywords or something. There’s too much.”
“Maybe his web search history has some clues?” I offered.
“Good thought,” Grace said.
Sadly we found nothing but some links he’d followed to videos of seals and sea lions frolicking in the ocean. His desk drawers didn’t turn up anythin
g, either, except that he, too, must’ve been hoping for a little Pretty Perfect magic to make his wrinkles disappear. He’d stocked up on three different kinds of moisturizer.
“Guess that was kind of a waste.” Trista sighed, and I wasn’t sure if she was referring to the search or to Mr. Steptoe’s skin-care regimen. I suppose both were true.
Grace popped open one of the jars of moisturizer and rubbed it into her cheeks, using Mr. Steptoe’s magnetic paperclip holder as a mirror. “Isn’t it nice when a man really cares about his appearance?” she asked, looking at me pointedly.
“You know Jake slathers his hair in gel instead of washing it, right?”
Grace shook her head at me sadly. “You just don’t understand him,” she said, sighing.
“All right, all right,” Trista said. “I think we should get back—”
“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “Remember how you joked about how Ms. Sparrow would probably slick down Mr. Steptoe’s hair every day if they were an item?”
Grace squinted. “Yeah. . . .”
I pointed to the jar she was holding. “Would she also want to make sure his skin was nice and soft?”
Grace’s eyes lit up. “Oh my gosh, Soph, you’re right. Lovers after all, you think?”
Trista pursed her lips and nodded. “Could be.”
We jumped as the radio suddenly squawked with feedback.
“Princess down! We’ve got a princess down! Code Red!” The voice squealing through the static was unmistakably Kendra Pritchard’s. “Pages! Emergency! Report to the front foyer immediately! Bring the first aid kit!” Kendra’s voice blasted over the radio again.
“Uh-oh,” I said, grabbing the paper towel roll and delivery receipt before turning to the door.
“Bring your tweezers.” Trista sighed and rolled her eyes. “She’s probably got a splinter in her pinkie.”
The Tiara on the Terrace Page 10