The Tiara on the Terrace

by Kristen Kittscher

  “‘Everyone’? I gave it to Rod. Not ‘everyone.’” An odd thick feeling filled my throat. “Grace, we need help,” I said quietly. “And this is our best hope right now. You have to admit that.”

  Grace scuffed the toe of her sneaker against the path and shrugged, then jerked her head up as a clatter of footsteps rang out behind me. “Oh my god, are you guys all right?” Kendra asked breathlessly as we turned to find a cluster of very worried royal faces peering back at us. In their bright-pink business suits and silk neck scarves, Jardine, Sienna, and Kendra looked like flight attendants who’d just hopped off a flight from Bora-Bora. “We rushed from Scarf-Tying as soon as we heard,” Kendra added. As silly as her words sounded, I was a little touched.

  “So freaky,” Denise said, her brown eyes wide, and the rest of them agreed. Sienna reached out and ruffled my hair. “Jake would’ve killed me if something happened to you on my watch.” She smiled. “Glad you’re okay. For both of our sakes.”

  “We heard someone shut you in,” Danica said. The sparkly blush she must’ve been experimenting with shimmered in the sun.

  “Wow. Rumors spread fast.” Grace shot me a look and sighed.

  “The door just shut by accident.” I shrugged. “No big deal.” My supposedly casual shrug probably looked more like a spasm.

  “Everyone thinks some jealous seventh grader shut you in because she thought you shouldn’t be pages,” Denise said. Her eyes flicked to Kendra, and I wondered if Denise was talking about Marissa. Then she rushed to tack on: “But that’s so stupid! I mean, obviously, you guys are the best.”

  “And no one would think you don’t deserve to be pages,” Danica added, flicking her hair over her shoulder. “Ever.”

  I was beginning to understand why Danica and Denise’s child acting career in LA never panned out.

  “C’mon,” Jardine said, almost sweetly. “We’ve got our first photo shoot on the terrace. We’re definitely going to need your help. If you’re up for it?”

  Grace promised the Court we’d join them after we cleaned up a bit, and we practically sprinted back up to the mansion. As soon as we were inside, she tugged me toward the first floor powder room and shut the door.

  “I’m sorry, Grace. I swear Rod would have never run off and told everyone we were shut in. He—”

  “Of course he wouldn’t.” Grace waved her hand. “They’re just being them. Listen, we’ll talk about that later. Let’s see if we can find anything else in those emails. If Mr. Zimball’s going to help—and I sure hope you’re right about that—maybe there’s something more we can hand over.” She pushed aside the bottles of Pretty Perfect lining the vanity to make more room. It was funny to think that a day ago I’d been in that same bathroom, steeling myself for clipping Kendra’s toenails or whatever I thought it meant to be a royal page. Little did I know that being a page was going to be the easy part.

  I fanned out the emails we’d printed out from Mr. Steptoe’s office on the marble countertop and we sorted through them.

  There was lots we didn’t understand. Various officials wrote confirming meetings, orders, and Festival plans. An email exchange between Mr. Steptoe and Mr. Katz caught my eye:

  Hi, Josh,

  As you know, your things are still in my office. I must say, I’m going to miss your inspirational posters—I’ve needed the encouragement. Still, it’s been two weeks now. I’d appreciate it if you can move the remainder of your things today before you leave. I’ll be here till midnight, at least. Miyamoto’s is delivering the tiara for the big unveiling tomorrow, then I’ll be doing my float rounds. Come by anytime! Doesn’t matter if I’m in the office or not.

  I know it’s not fair it had to shake out this way. I’m deeply saddened it’s affected our friendship. It really shouldn’t.

  Fondly,

  Jim

  I could feel Katz’s anger seething in his reply:

  Had to shake out this way? It didn’t, Jim. You know that. But fine. I’ll be there tonight.

  My hand trembled as I reached the email over to Grace. “Check this out.”

  “Wow. Not exactly a friendly email,” Grace said, her expression darkening. “It sounds like he even thinks Steptoe could have stopped his demotion, doesn’t it?”

  “And that ‘I’ll be there tonight.’” I shivered. “It sounds . . . threatening.”

  Grace squinted at the page and read it again. “And if he went that night, what’s he doing carrying out his stuff today?”

  “Especially since he had to have stopped by that night. All of his posters were gone.” I pictured the empty nails jutting from the blank walls in Mr. Steptoe’s office, like rows of accusing fingers. “What time did Steptoe send that email?”

  Grace looked down at the page. “Five oh five p.m.,” she said.

  “You have that notebook in there?” I pointed to the messenger bag she’d grabbed from kitchen on our way in. Grace nodded and pulled it out. My handwriting looked a little shaky as I wrote:

  MR. KATZ SENT ANGRY EMAIL.

  VISITED VICTIM BETWEEN 5:05 P.M. AND HIS DEATH.

  ARGUED WITH POTENTIAL VICTIM #2 AT BALL.

  SPOTTED LEAVING VICTIM’S OFFICE WITH BOX THE NEXT DAY.

  “With a glass paperweight,” Grace added in a hushed whisper as she read over my shoulder. “Talk about a possible weapon. Remember?”

  I nodded. As I wrote it down, a thought hit me. “Grace, at the Beach Ball, when Lee and Katz were talking. Katz didn’t go back into the ballroom right after. He went . . .”

  “. . . Back to the kitchen,” Grace finished, stiffening. “Oh my gosh, you’re right. Maybe Mr. Steptoe wasn’t killed by that s’more, after all.”

  Next to my note about the paperweight, I added:

  HAD ACCESS TO “WEAPON”/PEA SOUP IN KITCHEN?

  I felt a tingling at the base of my neck. “Steptoe, Lee, Sparrow, and Rod’s dad were all judges. But they were also all involved in the decision to push Katz out,” I said.

  “Exactly.” Grace nodded.

  We sifted back through the emails. I looked at the one from Harrison Lee about not needing help with accounting again. It was shady, for sure. And Grace could be right. If it was stress that laid him up, the stress might not have been from taking over the Festival presidency. Still, the longer he was lying in that hospital bed, the surer we could be that he was a victim.

  There wasn’t much else. A schedule for the Royal Court public appearances. Questions about bleacher set-up on the parade route. Some boring emails from Rod’s dad about ticket sales.

  “I didn’t see any love notes from Sparrow,” I said. “If they were an item, there’d be tons, you’d think.”

  Grace frowned. “I saw something from her when we searched his inbox. I’m sure of it,” Grace shuffled through the papers again. “Yes! Here!” She flipped down the toilet seat and sat cross-legged on it as she bent over reading. “Not what I’d call a love note, though. . . .” She handed it over.

  To: Jim Steptoe

  From: Lauren Sparrow

  Subject: SUPPLIES

  Just a note to say thanks again. I can’t believe you all managed to get a double order delivered on time! No wonder they’ve put you in charge. I know how tough it is for you to keep everything on track in this season, as it is. I really do hope that alternative sourcing routes come through soon. Last breeding season already produced a far smaller crop—and, obviously, the harvesting is hardly environmentally friendly. Of course, beauty has its price. And no one can argue with gorgeous results! Still.

  Please do alert me if you anticipate any slowdowns.

  You’re a dear. Feeling lucky to have you in my corner—

  All my best,

  LLS

  “She does call him a dear.” The printout crackled as I handed it back. “But, yeah, it’s not exactly romantic. Why are she and Steptoe talking about flower orders, anyway?” I said, cocking my head. “That’s Lund�
��s department.”

  “Right?” Grace said. “And why is she so lucky to ‘have him in her corner’? Do you think she and Mr. Steptoe were taking over control of the float decorations?”

  I rubbed the back of my head. “It kind of makes sense, when you look at Barb’s email. ‘You say it’s time for me to go,’ she said.”

  “After twenty years, I can see them wanting to change things,” Grace said, standing up suddenly. She began to pace, stopping to fix her ponytail in the mirror.

  “Especially if she’s trying to tell them who should be on the Court,” I added. “If Steptoe and Sparrow were trying to shove her out? It must’ve driven her crazy.”

  “Crazy enough to kill?” Grace’s eyebrows lifted.

  I pictured Ms. Sparrow’s tight smile at Lund in the living room the day she broke the news about Mr. Steptoe, and wondered if she knew she could be a target. I swallowed hard. “On the judging committee and she’s trying to topple the Floatatorship? She might as well have a bull’s-eye painted on her.”

  “Then why didn’t our Floatator try to take out both of them?” Grace said, rubbing her temples. “Instead she poisons Harrison Lee’s soup? It makes no sense.”

  “If she tried to poison Harrison Lee. We don’t know that.” I shrugged. “All we know is this might give Lund even more motive for murder, don’t you think?”

  “And it means Ms. Sparrow could be in serious danger,” Grace said grimly.

  Just then someone knocked at the door.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Dead Wrong

  Grace and I looked at each other in panic. “Someone’s in here!” she called out. I flattened myself against the wall behind the door.

  “Is that you, Grace?” a muffled voice called out. “It’s Lily.”

  My reflection in the mirror over the sink stared back at me, eyes bulging, chest heaving.

  “My mom forgot to give you and Sophie your headsets back?” Lily said, her voice tilting up. “I don’t want to leave them. I’ll wait for you out here.”

  “Just a sec!” Grace said. As she scrambled to gather up the emails from the vanity, half of them scattered to the floor with a loud rustling. We froze.

  “Are you doing okay? After . . . everything?” Lily asked.

  I leaned down and, as quietly as I could, gathered up the papers.

  “What? Yeah!” Grace said, way too enthusiastically. She flushed the toilet, then motioned for me to stay against the wall, took a deep breath, and poked her head out the door.

  I cringed as Lily’s eyes immediately met mine through the gap between the door hinges. The toilet let out a final swish and burble as I stared back.

  Lily’s forehead creased. “Hi, Sophie.”

  “Hey,” I said. The mess of papers in my hands crinkled as I hugged them tighter to my chest.

  “You guys are hard to keep track of,” she said slowly, her eyes flicking between us. She handed our radio headsets to Grace. “These should make it a little easier.”

  She smiled, but as she pivoted on her heel and walked away, a chill ran down my back.

  We shoved the emails in Grace’s messenger bag and headed to check on Trista when we ran into Mr. Zimball striding down the hall toward us. “There you are, ladies. I’ve been looking all over for you. Glad to see you in one piece! Can I steal you for a chat?” he asked. Warm relief rushed through me as I spotted a folded white paper poking up from his shirt pocket. Barb’s email. Rod had talked to him. Finally, we’d get help.

  “Sure,” Grace replied. As we followed Mr. Zimball down the hall, she smiled at me, and I could sense how relieved she was too. When we reached the living room, Mr. Zimball slid open the paneled door and invited us ahead.

  We stepped through the doorway and froze. Parked on the sofa, still wearing her grungy work overalls, was none other than Barb Lund. The pattern of the Oriental rug in front of us blurred dizzily as I willed my legs to follow Grace to the long sofa facing the fireplace. As soon as we sat down, Grace started nervously twisting her hair.

  “We wanted to check in. You doing okay?” Mr. Zimball plunked down in his armchair and leaned his elbows on his knees. His face was filled with concern.

  “Oh, definitely,” I lied. My eyes darted to the email in Mr. Zimball’s pocket and back to Lund. A drop of sweat shimmied down my forehead like a raindrop across a windowpane. A pretty suspicious look for someone who’d spent the afternoon in a freezer.

  “That’s a relief. I hear Ms. Sparrow has some fun and games planned tonight. That should be nice for you. Nothing like some hot cocoa at craft night to warm you all up nicely,” Mr. Zimball said.

  Hot cocoa! Maybe I’d nearly died in a fridge, but right then I wanted to live on an iceberg. In an igloo. With all ice furniture. Wearing an ice hat. Drinking iced tea. I pretended to rub my eye but mopped my forehead with the back of my hand instead.

  “Royalty should never miss out,” Ms. Lund said through clenched teeth as she stared right at Mr. Zimball. I realized she must be commenting on Lily’s snub.

  I eased back into the sofa. That paper in Mr. Zimball’s pocket had to have been something else. There’s no way he could have read it and invited us to a little sit-down with Barb Lund.

  “We were worried you all might have gotten yourselves a little worked up,” Mr. Zimball continued.

  Grace stopped jiggling her heel and leaned back, too. “We’re really okay now,” she said. “It was just a little scary.”

  Mr. Zimball reached up and pulled out the paper from his pocket. The pit in my stomach opened into a canyon. “No. I mean about this.” He held up Barb’s email.

  The ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner suddenly seemed so loud I was sure some tiny person was crouched next to it holding it up to Barb’s megaphone.

  Barb looked at us, arms folded.

  “After what you girls went through in October, I can see where you might imagine danger lurking around every corner,” Mr. Zimball said gently. “We’re all very upset by Mr. Steptoe’s passing. He was family to me. And Festival family to all of us.” He gestured as if the room was full of people, and I saw his hands were trembling. “An accident this tragic is hard to take in.”

  I stared at the email and sank lower into the sofa. I realized that to him, it looked like Barb fired off an angry rant with lots of crazy figures of speech. He hadn’t heard Officer Carter telling Lee how long a murder investigation would take. He wouldn’t trust twelve-year-old Trista’s explanations any more than the police who supposedly “looked into it,” even if we told him. We were just town heroes who’d gotten ahead of themselves.

  “I wanted you all to have an opportunity to chat in order to put your mind at ease,” Mr. Zimball said, nodding to Barb. “And Ms. Lund wanted to have a chance to clarify some things. Right, Barb?”

  “I’ll say. You all must think I’m battier than a bedbug,” she said, slapping her hands on her knees. “I would have thought the same thing at your age, I promise. I would have taken that note right to my spy club.” She sighed sadly, and her voice grew quieter. “I’m very, very sorry I sent it. Those were my last words to Jim. I’m going to have to live with that,” she said, and I realized it was the first time I’d ever seen her look sad. Of course, we knew by then that she could act, even if she was just pretending we were royalty. “I’ve been known to lose my temper and go a little overboard from time to time.”

  Grace let out an involuntary puff of air that sounded suspiciously like a snort. Lund didn’t seem to hear it. She explained that she was angry, and her “colorful language” was exaggerated.

  “Mr. Steptoe and I didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things. I was very upset about Lily being denied the crown, and I’m not going to lie, I still am,” she declared as if Lily had been poised to rule an actual country. Her eyes shifted to Mr. Zimball and back. “But me! Sending a death threat!” She shook her head as if that were the silliest thing she’d ever heard.

  “I think that clears up a lot. Thank you,
Barbara,” Mr. Zimball said. “Agreed, girls?”

  There wasn’t much use in arguing. Grace and I mumbled a yes.

  Then Mr. Zimball frowned and ran his hand through his hair the same way Rod did when he was brushing petals from his curls. “There’s something that concerns me. Rod also said you thought someone shut you in on purpose?”

  My heart froze midbeat. Barb flinched.

  “It did seem really weird,” Grace said at last. “Trista hooked the door in place. There wasn’t any wind. And then boom, it slams.” She added, hurriedly: “But I guess we were wrong. It was just an accident.”

  Lund and Mr. Zimball traded long looks.

  “If someone shut you in there, that’s serious business.” Mr. Zimball leaned forward. “Kids need to understand how dangerous pranks like this can be.”

  “And un-ac-cept-able,” Barb added. She folded her lips over her teeth in disapproval. Her resemblance to the grim-faced Ridley relatives scowling from the portraits above the fireplace had never been so startling.

  “Ms. Lund and Ms. Sparrow are going to talk to the volunteers as soon as Ms. Sparrow wraps up the terrace photo shoot. Bullying’s an important issue to us and, frankly, we have concerns about it every year.” He let out a long sigh. “A lot of girls want to be on the Royal Court. Some get upset.” He avoided looking at Barb Lund, who shifted uncomfortably on the sofa.

  “I had my fair share of knocks in middle school,” she blurted, no doubt trying to turn the spotlight back on bullying. “‘Four-eyes,’ they called me. I had glasses twice as thick as my Lily’s. I begged for contact lenses but when you’ve got the Ridley dry-eye curse, you’re up the creek.” She sighed. “You all might think Lauren was our beauty queen, but she took her lumps, too. I wonder if the people in this town buying up her beauty creams by the vat still remember when they called her “crater face” because she had pimples. Now she’s got her empire, and I got the ol’ laser eyes now.” She widened her eyes at us. “They’re practically bionic.”

  She wasn’t kidding. Nothing got by her now. As Ms. Lund delved into a little too much information about her eye surgery, I thought about Lauren Sparrow. It was weird to imagine her ever being bullied. Suddenly a lot about her pretty perfectness made sense, though. Her expensive-looking matching outfits. Her copper waves of hair, always gorgeous and styled, even when she was going for a “casual” look. Her endless cute shoes, with their different buttons and buckles. She was making up for something she didn’t have. Now I understood why she had been so worried about Trista and me when we were auditioning and—even though the tips of my ears still burned when I thought about it—I forgave her. She’d been trying to look out for us.