I looked Rod helplessly. “Meet you by the port-a-potties in ten?”
I cringed. Leave it to me to suggest meeting at toilets when a gorgeous rose garden was a few steps away.
“Uh, okay?” Rod squinted. “I’ll bring the air freshener?”
Barb and Lily sent us with a list to the old refrigerated cargo container the Festival used for extra flower storage. It was far down the path, past the herb garden and the tennis courts. The sun beat down. I fanned my T-shirt to get a little air, wishing there was more of a breeze from the ocean that stretched beyond the jagged bluffs down the hill in the distance. “Is it me, or is she now talking to us all British, too? I mean, ‘Request the favor of our presence?’” I said. “I guess she really is just into this royalty stuff.”
“She thinks we’re dumb enough to relax if she’s all polite,” Grace said darkly, her Converse slapping on the path as she strode ahead.
“Well, whatever it is, we’re not relaxing, are we?” Trista said. She sneezed a sneeze that sounded like a lion roaring. “Man! This better be the last run before we go back to the Mansion. If she doesn’t kill us, this pollen will. I didn’t think I’d need to take my allergy meds this morning.”
Grace glanced nervously over her shoulder. “Watch your backs. They didn’t have to send us all the way down here. The tents still look fully stocked,” she said, her voice swallowed by the noisy hum of a generator set up to run the air-conditioned white tents on the lawn outside the float barn where a lot of the flowers were kept.
My legs felt shaky as we headed farther down the path. The mansion was barely in view anymore when we reached the refrigerated compartment. Trista heaved open its door and hooked it in place. As we stepped inside, Grace lifted up her arms and spun around to drink up the chilled air.
“Ahhh . . . coolth.”
“And serious flower power,” Trista said, rubbing her watering eyes. Flowers burst from every shelf and corner. The sickly sweet smell made me dizzy. It reminded me of the time I rode twenty-six floors up in an elevator next to a lady who smelled like she’d spent the last two weeks snorkeling in a vat of my grandma’s perfume.
“Sure you don’t want to wait outside?” I asked Trista, remembering she once fainted at school after a bad allergy attack.
“Nah,” Trista said. She puffed on her inhaler, then pounded her fist against her shoulder and raised it. “Royal solidarity. ‘We are family,’ right?”
Grace bumped her own fist against Trista’s. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
She looked down at Barb’s list then at the blooms packed on the shelves around us. “This is going to take forever.”
“Check it out. You can see your breath.” I blew out a puffy white cloud. Grace wrinkled her nose and fanned it away. “Ew. Did Barb force-feed you one of her tuna and pickle sandwiches?”
I laughed.
“You two done playing around?” Trista shoved a bunch of pampas grass into a bucket. “Because I think we have more serious things to discuss.”
Grace’s smile fell. “True. And not much time.” She plunked down her bucket of snapdragons and pulled out her black notebook from her shorts pocket. “All right. So Barb couldn’t take Mr. Steptoe all up in her business, and finally lost it when Lily wasn’t queen.”
“So maybe Mr. Lee wasn’t a target? He really is just sick from exhaustion?” I said, hopefully.
“Uh, Lee was on the Royal Court judging committee too,” Trista pointed out.
Grace tapped her finger on her notebook page. “Yup. More likely that Lund is taking the other committee members out, one by one. Maybe with Lily’s help.”
“Who else were judges?” Trista asked. “Steptoe, Lee, Sparrow . . .” She counted them out on her fingers.
“At least two past queens . . . ,” Grace began. She didn’t want to say the obvious out loud.
“Rod’s dad,” I added, my voice small.
“And Rod’s dad.” Grace cringed apologetically.
“All targets,” Trista said. “And two of them are down.”
“Maybe Mr. Zimball will listen to us now?” I said. “We have to take that chance.”
“On the other hand, there’s a possibility it’s just . . . Achooo!”—Trista let out another massive sneeze. She pulled out her inhaler and took a puff. “Anyway, what I meant was maybe Lund was just firing off a really angry email.”
“That’s one angry email,” I scoffed. “‘You won’t live,’ ‘you are dead,’ ‘I’ll ruin your life’?”
“We know she has a temper. There’s no doubt she wrote that email fast.” Trista rearranged some irises in her bucket.
“Or Lily did, using her mom’s account. Tough to tell with all those mistakes,” I pointed out.
“Either way, ‘ruining’ is not ‘killing,’” Trista said. “Don’t forget. We have other suspects. Katz, for one.”
The compartment door slammed shut with a metallic clang.
“Dunh, duhn, duhn!” Grace laughed. “It’s a sign!”
“He is pretty sketchy,” I admitted. “What do you think he had in that box he was carrying out?”
“Guess we know what our next mission is,” Grace said as she went to open the door back up. “And you saw him at the Beach Ball talking to Lee, right? He looked like he was going to punch something he was so mad.” Grace looked at the door and frowned. “Um. Am I crazy? Where’s the handle?”
Trista’s face clouded over. “Uh-oh.”
I walked over and pushed against the door. It didn’t budge. “This can’t just close and lock. Can it?”
“Yes,” Trista said. “It can.” Her voice sounded quieter than I’d ever heard it.
“There’s got to be a latch here somewhere. Maybe a button?” I ran my hands across the cold metal.
Grace felt around on the wall as if stumbling for a light switch in the dark. “Nothing here,” she said.
The handprints I’d left when I pushed the door looked ghostly as they faded. I shuddered, picturing Festival officials finding us, days later, icicles hanging from our noses.
“Hey, I hooked that door into place. No way the wind could’ve blown it shut,” Trista said. Her breath quickened. So did mine. I’d never seen her nervous before.
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” I shivered.
Trista nodded and drew in deeply on her inhaler again.
Grace ran her hands through her hair and paced. “Who else knows we’re down here right now?” Grace asked, her voice rising in panic. “Tell me someone else knows.”
I pictured Rod. My last hours on earth, and I left him waiting for me at a row of port-a-potties. The stink of sewage and eye-watering disinfectant fumes would be his final memory of me. I closed my eyes and concentrated all my brain waves on sending him a message to come find us, then I wheeled around and pummeled my fist against the door as hard as I could. “Hello!” I cried out. “Anyone there?”
“This place is ventilated, right?” Grace’s question came out all in a rush. “Like, we’re not going to run out of air?”
I rubbed my bare arms. “Pretty sure we’ll freeze to death first.”
Grace raised a warning finger at me. “Don’t you dare joke about that.”
Behind us, Trista coughed again. Grace looked back. “Are you okay?”
Trista nodded. “Totally fine. Stupid allergies! Ugh, why didn’t I take my medicine? Just need another . . .” She trailed off and looked at her inhaler. “Puff.” She held it up, squinting at it like it was some alien artifact that she’d stumbled upon amid the flowers. “Uh-oh.”
“What?” I asked.
“It’s empty,” she said in disbelief.
I banged on the door again until the heel of my hand stung. “Open up!” I shouted. My breath left another foggy trail, but nothing about it was funny this time. Not one thing.
Grace turned to Trista hopefully. “Maybe you’ve got a refill in one of your pockets?”
“‘Course I do,” Trista said, unzipp
ing one cargo jacket pocket after another and feeling around. “I always do.”
“You won’t need them. We’ll be out of here in a sec,” I said, trying to sound calm. I scanned the room. My heart thudded against my chest like it was trying to escape.
“If we could somehow get that vent open”—I pointed to a square grate in the ceiling next to a giant cooling fan—“I might be small enough to fit through it.”
“I’ll lift you up!” Grace said. Flowers spilled over as she shoved buckets aside to make shelf space, then she boosted me up as high as she could. The shelves rattled as I hoisted myself higher. I felt like I was on the float barn scaffolding again, closing in on my target.
“It’s got to be around here somewhere,” Trista muttered to herself, searching her pockets again, her breathing ragged.
I tried to keep my own breaths even as I wriggled toward the vent. Up close, it looked way too narrow for me to fit through—but I had to hope. “Listen, lots of people saw Barb send us off,” I said, hoping I sounded more sure than I was. Rod was probably at the port-a-potties right that second. Would he worry?
“Let’s hope you’re right,” Trista said, her voice so much fainter than usual.
I slipped my fingers through the vent grate and tugged. Screws held it tight at every corner. I stuck my thumbnail in one and tried to turn it. My nail snapped. “Ow,” I muttered to myself. Jardine Thomas knew nothing about real nail-breaking emergencies.
“How’s it going, Soph?” Grace tried to sound casual. She wasn’t fooling anyone.
“Great! I think this could work!” I called back cheerfully. “Hey, you guys see anything around we could use as a screwdriver?”
Trista started to look around, but Grace held up her hand. “I got it. You take it easy,” she said before tearing around like a robber ransacking the place. She spilled over more flower buckets. She looked under the shelves and riffled through a burlap bag in the corner. She flung open a big rectangular cooler and toppled over a jar. Red cranberry seeds hissed as they poured to the floor.
“What about your—?” Trista rasped faintly, raising one finger.
Just as I figured out that she was pointing to my dog tags from Grandpa Young, a sound like an airtight jar opening made us all turn to look.
The door banged open. Warm air rushed in with the blinding sunlight.
We squinted at the two silhouetted figures in front of us.
Chapter Sixteen
Warming Up
“They are in there!” Ms. Sparrow cried out. The sun reflected in her coppery hair like a halo, making it feel like an actual angel was sweeping to our rescue. When my eyes adjusted to the light, I caught sight of something even more angelic: Rod stood right next to her.
“You guys all right?” he asked. His voice cracked, but relief washed over his face.
Ms. Sparrow’s eyes widened as she spotted Trista breathing heavily.
“She needs her inhaler,” Grace called back.
“It’s in my top drawer,” Trista wheezed.
Ms. Sparrow waved Grace toward the mansion and told her to hurry back with it. Grace shot forward like a runner out of a starting gate, gravel flying, while Ms. Sparrow offered a nonstop stream of soothing words as she and Rod helped me lead Trista to a bench by the path. “I used to have asthma too,” she told Trista, who seemed to be catching her breath again. “Now I’m just stuck with these allergies. I take one step in the float barn and, ugh!” As calm as Ms. Sparrow’s tone was, she had trouble hiding her worry.
“I’m just lucky I didn’t faint,” Trista said.
“I’ll say,” Ms. Sparrow replied, eyes wide.
“That happens if I have a full allergy attack sometimes,” Trista explained, waving off Ms. Sparrow’s shock. “Don’t worry. I’m good as long as I take my meds.”
Ms. Sparrow turned to me. “Sophie, are you okay?” she asked, her voice shaking the way it did the morning she told us about Steptoe. It made me feel even more shivery, though the sun was warming my back.
I nodded. I couldn’t find my voice yet.
“Sophie and Rod, take the flower refills to Ms. Lund, please.” She motioned to the buckets inside the refrigerated compartment, her voice still wobbly as she asked us to have Lund send the Festival medic to take a look at Trista. “Please reassure Ms. Lund that everything’s fine,” she added. “I don’t want her to . . .” She trailed off, looking a little sheepish.
“Overreact?” Rod finished helpfully. Ms. Sparrow nodded, relieved we’d gotten the drift. It was true. If Barb Lund hadn’t been the one to shut us in the fridge, she probably would have called the marines, a SWAT team, and several ambulances—not to mention a K9 search and rescue team. Pookums would’ve loved that.
I turned to go back in the shed, but Rod flung his arm in front of me the way my mom does when we stop short at a traffic light. “Lemme bring them out to you,” he said, already lurching forward.
If my cheeks weren’t still numb from the cold, I would’ve smiled. Rod quickly finished filling the buckets and loaded me up. Then we dashed along the path as fast as our lungs let us, buckets thumping against our sides. As we rounded the corner to the float barn, we had to stop to catch our breath.
“That was crazy scary, Soph,” Rod said, panting. He explained he’d waited for me for a while then figured Lund had sent us off somewhere else. His eyes turned dark. “Then, when Ms. Sparrow said she’d been looking all over for you—”
“Wait,” I interrupted. “Didn’t Ms. Lund tell her where we were?”
Rod frowned, trying to remember. “I guess not.”
“Listen. Trista says she hooked that door in place,” I said, gulping for air. “Someone shut us in there on purpose.”
Rod’s eyebrows shot up. “Why would anyone—?”
“We think it might be Ms. Lund,” I whispered. “Maybe Lily.”
The squirrels behind us squawked and scurried after each other up a tree as Rod took in the news. “You serious?” he asked at last.
I darted a nervous look around as I pulled Lund’s email from my jeans pocket. Up on the terrace, the Royal Court were practicing their waving and walking in full wardrobe, their occasional shrieks of laughter echoing down the hill to us. Danica and Denise hovered nearby, handing them mini–bottled waters and snapping pictures with the Festival disposable cameras.
My hands trembled as I handed over the email. “Oh, I’m serious, all right,” I said.
Rod stared at the paper long enough to read it at least twice. He shook his head slowly. “Where did you find this?”
“Trista thinks it could just be an angry email,” I said, hoping he didn’t notice I’d ignored his question. “But look at the time. Mr. Steptoe was found dead twelve hours later.”
Rod squinted toward the float barn. “Steps from her office. On a float.”
“Exactly. Nobody knows those floats better than Lund.” I clenched and unclenched my hands nervously. “We think she knows we’re onto her. She or Lily shut us in to scare us or maybe . . .”
“. . . worse,” Rod finished for me. He tugged at a curl at the back of his head. “I’m really freaked out, Sophie. How are you not freaking out right now?”
The truth was, if I’d actually eaten lunch, it would have come back up and landed on his shoes right then. But I stood up as straight as I could. “Because I know we’ll figure this out.” I stopped myself before adding “in time.” He didn’t need that reminder.
Rod nodded uncertainly. “Maybe my dad will finally listen.” He tapped the email. “I can keep this to show him, right?”
I looked toward the mansion and hesitated. It didn’t feel right not to hand it over. It was his dad’s life at risk, after all. “Yeah . . . I think so,” I said. Then, a little louder: “Sure.”
Rod crammed the email in his pocket and pointed to the buckets of flowers. “I’ll take care of these. Pretty sure Lund’s the last person you want to see right now?”
I grinned. “Good guess.”
He loaded himself up and turned to leave.
“Oh, and Rod?” I called back.
“Yeah?”
There had to be some other way to say it—some words that would mean more than the same phrase people used if someone poured them lemonade or held a door open. But if there were, I couldn’t find them.
“Thank you,” I said. The words sounded even smaller than I thought.
Rod shrugged. “No problem,” he said, and turned toward the float barn, buckets rattling against his knees as he headed off.
I hurried down the path back to Trista but ran into Grace on the way. She rushed toward me and grabbed my hand. Hers was still ice-cold.
“The medics checked out Trista and took her up to our room to rest.” She panted. “She’s totally fine.”
“I’m not sure I am.” I shivered a little.
“Me neither.” Grace looked back down the path toward the shed. A truck creaked down the side driveway toward the float barn, where volunteers were streaming in and out with supplies. “You think Lund locked us in? It had to be her or Lily, right?”
“Lots of people saw her send us down there, though.”
“Sophie, whoever it is, they’re definitely onto us. We don’t have much time.”
“Don’t worry. We might not even need it,” I said.
Grace cocked her head. “What do you mean?”
“I just talked to Rod and told him we were shut in. He’s as scared as we are. He’s taking Lund’s email to his dad, and he’s pretty sure Mr. Zimball’s got to take this seriously now.”
Grace was silent for a long time. She let her hand drop from mine. “You just . . . gave the email to him?”
“It’s his dad were talking about. You know that. How could I not tell him?”
Grace’s lips clamped together. She shook her head and fixed her eyes on some rose petals that had scattered from the arbor onto the path. “Well, you could have waited and asked, you know,” she said after another long pause. “We’re a team. We’re running an investigation. You can’t just up and hand over our evidence to everyone.”
The Tiara on the Terrace Page 12