The Tiara on the Terrace

by Kristen Kittscher

  “I can’t help but wonder if Lily had been Sun Queen whether we’d be seeing this same sort of trouble. Good leadership counts for so much,” Ms. Lund huffed. “I shall personally be supervising all runs to the flower shed from here on out,” she added. “We will not tolerate pranks on our Festival royalty.”

  Mr. Zimball cleared his throat. “I hope we’ve cleared this up for you. And I hope the message is coming through.” A hard edge crept into his voice. “It’s simply not safe for you to be running around hiding and snooping—in Mr. Steptoe’s office or elsewhere. I don’t want to hear one more breath about you all spying. Not even if you’re just playing. Does that make sense?”

  Grace and I glued our eyes to the floor and nodded.

  “Good.” Mr. Zimball smiled sadly. “Times like these can make the best of us lose our heads. But rest easy knowing that we’re doing all we can to keep you safe.”

  “We sure are,” Lund said. She broke into the broadest smile she could, which wasn’t very broad at all.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Knock Knock

  “It’s a cat-and-mouse game now,” Trista said darkly after we raced back upstairs to update her. She’d recovered but she was still resting in bed. “Either Lund wins, or we do.” She propped herself up on her pillows and nudged a stuffed tiger out of the way as if it were some random object someone had placed on her bed, but it looked seriously well-loved.

  “We need to tighten up operations,” Grace nodded from her own bed. “We get caught spying now and we’re done.”

  “If the killer doesn’t catch us first,” Trista added.

  I felt a sad sinking in my chest and looked around the room to avoid Grace’s gaze. Trista’s side looked like what I’d imagine a military school dorm room would be like. The few toiletries she had were lined up in a neat row on her dresser, and a green duffel bag had been placed neatly at the foot of her bed.

  “I’m so sorry, guys,” I said in a small voice. “I should’ve asked you before I gave the email to Rod.”

  “Aw, don’t be so hard on yourself, Soph,” Grace said. She scooted over on the bed to make room for me. “I totally overreacted. As soon as I saw Mr. Zimball in the hall, I realized I would have done the same thing.” She hugged her knees to her chest. “I think I was—I don’t know. It felt like you and Rod were suddenly in this together without us or something. And I know how much you like him, and . . .” She dragged her fingers through her hair and looked away.

  “I’d never be in something together without you guys.” I grabbed the dog tags hanging around my neck, leaned toward her, and showed her the imprint on them. “Semper fidelis. It’s Latin for ‘always loyal.’ That was Grandpa Young’s army regiment’s motto,” I said, letting them fall to my chest again.

  Grace smiled. “By the way, those look awesome. I’m totally jealous. Vintage is your style. There’s just one thing I don’t like about them.” She scooted closer and lifted the tags. “They cover up your yin.” She shifted the tags so my half of our split yin/yang pendants showed again.

  “Maybe I could split up these dog tags and share them between the three of us.” I looked at Trista.

  “Nah,” Grace said. “They’re perfect for you, ‘soldier,’” she said, imitating Grandpa Young.

  Trista spoke up. “And thanks, but I prefer not to distract from my flair.” She pointed to the bedpost, where her cargo jacket plastered with Girl Scout badges hung. “Besides, check out that chain your Grandpa put on them. No way you’re getting those tags off. What is that, a titanium alloy? Practically indestructible.” She got up from her bed and walked over to us. “But we’re still a team, promise,” she said as she reached out her hand, palm down. We looked at it, puzzled. “Well, c’mon, put your hands in! Like how they do in sports. Before a game? Isn’t that what they do?”

  “Oh!” Grace said as she slapped her hand on top of Trista’s. I did the same.

  “Ready . . . break!” Trista called out, and we lifted them again, wriggling our fingers. “I mean, we could totally have a secret handshake, but we don’t have time for that.”

  “We sure don’t. Soph and I need to go fan the Royals at their photo shoot or something. Rest up. Meeting at Location A after lights-out.” She pointed to the floor. “That’s here. I’ll knock a Polybius code on the wall.”

  Later that night Ms. Sparrow gathered us all together in the Queen and Court sitting room to kick off our first night in the mansion with some hot cocoa and fun bonding activities to give us all a chance to get to know each other. The Festival had wisely canceled the traditional opening s’more roast around the far garden fire pit, given the general feeling about marshmallows those days. Ms. Sparrow had arranged for a craft night instead, pairing us up to decorate white T-shirts for each other. We were supposed to interview each other, find a creative way to represent that person with our T-shirt design, then share with the group while we sipped our cocoa.

  “T-shirts! Right up my alley!” Trista beamed after Ms. Sparrow finished describing the decorating activity that night, and I don’t think she was acting. Trista had a real thing for T-shirts, especially ones with slogans she loved. My favorite of hers was a faded green one that read “PROUD TO BE AWESOME” across the chest. “You’ve been paired with the right person,” Trista told Sienna matter-of-factly. “If you want to represent me, I’d go with a 1996 Ferrari 550 and the character Memnon from TrigForce Five. Paint him with horns, please. So,”—she reached for a blue puffy paint pen—“what things do you like?”

  “I play soccer?” Sienna said hesitantly, looking overwhelmed by Trista as she twisted her light-brown hair around a finger.

  Lauren Sparrow had us help her lay out a sheet of plastic over the carpet and the flower-patterned sofas to protect them, then we spread out on the floor in our pairs. I was matched with Jardine. Grace was with Danica.

  After we served ourselves mugs of hot cocoa (without marshmallows, of course), Jardine and I laid out our white T-shirts and paints. “No yellow,” she announced to me before we even started interviewing each other. “I don’t look good in yellow.”

  “No problem.” I missed the Jardine who was worried for us when we got locked in the shed. “Maybe green?” I asked, looking at the silky wallpaper’s broad two-toned green stripes.

  “Sure,” Jardine said, smoothing out my T-shirt. “So, you’re really into this tai chi thing,” she said, struggling to sound interested. “That’s Chinese or something, right?”

  Grace jerked her head up and looked at us. Jardine had said the word Chinese like it meant Martian. I could feel Grace wondering if I was going to set her straight, or if she’d have to.

  “Right, it’s a Chinese martial art. You’re making it sound like it’s really strange!” I said, feeling blood flow to my face. It was hard to stand up to Jardine. “Like, a quarter of a billion people do tai chi every day.” I explained that it could be used for self-defense or for exercise and focus.

  Grace surprised me by chiming in, then. “Soph’s interested in Chinese culture in general,” she called across the circle. “It’s really cool.”

  “But I got a little too into it,” I smiled. Grace smiled a little too. She’d once pointed out that me quoting Chinese philosophers and babbling about feng shui to her would be like her dancing jigs and dressing like a leprechaun and thinking she knew something about being Irish. I’d since taken it down a notch or five. “I focus on my tai chi now,” I told Jardine. “We’re training with staffs and ropes, which is pretty fun.”

  Jardine seemed to think that detail was interesting enough for a symbolic T-shirt and got to work, but after only a few minutes she got distracted by the TV on the wall above a wood desk in the corner. Ms. Sparrow had hooked her laptop up to it and was showing clips from her Pretty Perfect “how-to” web series on make-up and skin care. If we finished early, Ms. Sparrow had suggested that for fun we watch and try out some of the techniques with the products she’d laid out.

  “Oh my gosh. Who is
that?” Jardine pointed to the screen where a man stood bundled up in a jacket in front of some kind of Arctic-looking landscape, his longish jet-black hair whipping in the wind as he talked about Pretty Perfect products. “So. Gorgeous. I can’t even.” Jardine turned back to the group. “Check him out, ladies.”

  Raúl Jiménez—Pretty Perfect Enterprises—Chief Chemist, said the caption on the bottom of the screen.

  The rest of the girls got giggly, especially Danica and Grace. “Sooo cute,” Grace jumped in as if she’d loved Raúl her whole life long and Jake didn’t even exist.

  “And Raúl.” Jardine swooned. “The most perfect name ever.”

  I wondered if one day I’d go crazy over every remotely good-looking guy on TV, even if he was, like, thirty. Maybe that was a thing you just grew into suddenly. It sure seemed to have happened that way for Grace.

  Trista was the only other one who wasn’t swept up in Raúl. She was already finished with Sienna’s T-shirt. She’d simply scrawled, “I LOVE SOCCER. GO RIPTIDES!” in blue across the chest, laid it out to dry, and disappeared behind a battered copy of Teen Vogue someone had left behind. Considering her favorite magazine was Car and Driver, she looked surprisingly interested in it.

  Jardine oohed at the screen again, this time at the adorable baby white seals playing on an iceberg in the background. “Where is that? Canada? Pages, book me a flight there ASAP!” she joked.

  “I love his voice,” Grace chimed in, then lowered her own to imitate his deep bass. “‘We put together a unique blend of proteins—a secret recipe of sorts.’” She hammed it up, arching one eyebrow debonairly, and everyone laughed. It almost felt like she was purposely trying to rub in how easy it was for her to fit in when she wanted to.

  “Secret recipe?” Sienna giggled at the TV. “I want to know his secret recipe.”

  “Ladies! Enough!” Ms. Sparrow finally scolded. “You can watch the videos after you make your T-shirts,” she said firmly. Her face turned tomato red, and I realized that she thought Scientist Raúl was handsome too.

  I wasn’t the only one who noticed Ms. Sparrow’s blushing. The girls all flashed each other knowing looks and shrank back. Suddenly, it occurred to me she worked with this Raúl Jiménez guy every day. Could he even be her boyfriend? If so, we could forget any wild theories about a romance gone wrong with Mr. Steptoe. Perfect Raúl was definitely a better match—and Lord knows she loved matching.

  “Sorry,” Sienna said quietly before turning her attention back to her T-shirt. Drawing a Ferrari with paint-pens sure looked hard.

  Jardine flopped down next to me and asked me to paint baby seals all over her T-shirt. I flinched, thinking of Mr. Steptoe and his otters. He really would have been touched if we’d made him a T-shirt with seals on it, too. I looked back to Ms. Sparrow and felt a sharp prickle run across my skin. What if Barb was targeting her next?

  While I made a smeary mess trying to paint seals in green, across the room Grace and Danica were huddled next to a velvety ottoman whispering, giggling, and making smooching sounds that either had something to do with Raúl or Danica’s camp boyfriend, I didn’t know which. They sure were getting along well. I guess Grace didn’t mind the smell of Axe.

  Jardine took a pad from an end table next to the couch and started practicing signing her married name. “Jardine Jiménez,” she said aloud, pronouncing her “new last name” with such an over-the-top accent you’d have thought she’d spent a year abroad in Acapulco. “Hee-MEN-nez,” she practiced. “JJ! J-Squared!” She beamed at the group. “Or Jardi-J? I love it!”

  She sighed as Ms. Sparrow came over and finally reminded her to get painting my shirt. I’d finished Jardine’s seascape. It was a total mess. The seals looked more like eels. As I laid it out on the plastic to dry, Jardine looked at it and wrinkled her nose before forcing out a cheerful, “That’s great, Sophie! Thanks.”

  The night was far from pretty perfect. And I had a feeling it was about to get worse.

  I was right. Just then we heard the thud of footsteps out in the hallway.

  “Who is that?” Kendra said, cocking her head. Everyone looked at each other uncertainly. The rest of the Festival officials had long since left for the night. The door behind us creaked open the rest of the way.

  “Knock, knock!” a voice sang out.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Burning Questions

  “Hallooo there, ladies!” Mr. Lee crowed. My stomach dropped. He was back. Grace, Trista, and I traded dark looks across the circle as the room burst into a chorus of cheery hellos and sighs of relief.

  “Didn’t you work enough this afternoon, Harrison?” Ms. Sparrow asked, and I realized with a jolt that he had been back. He looked happy, healthy, and rested—and not at all like a man who’d spent over twenty-four hours lying in a hospital bed.

  After Lee muttered something about have a lot to catch up on and Ms. Sparrow made him promise not to work too hard, he rolled his eyes sheepishly and made an exit with a goofy double-handed wave. “Welp, ciao, my Coral Beauties!” he called out. “Just wanted to personally welcome you to the Festival family!”

  Grace pretended to casually walk over and borrow one of my paint pens.

  “From Victim Number Two to Suspect Number One,” she muttered to me as she leaned over. “Listen for the signal.”

  When Grace knocked the Polybius code later that night, Danica and Denise were still giddily wide-awake. They knocked back. Soon, they’d roped me into playing a version of “name that tune” entirely in knocks, which would have been kind of fun if I a) didn’t have to catch a killer, and b) wasn’t playing with near-telepathic twins. After the umpteenth time they guessed each other’s “songs” right after three knocks, they finally went to sleep.

  Still, I held my breath as I eased open my door and tiptoed next door, Mr. Zimball’s firm warning echoing in my mind.

  “Sorry, guys,” I whispered as I shut the door gently behind me. A bedside lamp they’d covered in a sheet cast a ghostly glow over the room and sent eerie shadows across the patterned wallpaper. “I thought they were never going to stop.”

  I shielded my eyes as they turned their flashlights toward me.

  “That last one was totally “Happy Birthday,” wasn’t it?” Grace asked. She was sitting cross-legged on her bed in plaid boxer shorts and a T-shirt from her Chinese summer day camp.

  I shook my head. “Kumbaya.”

  “Told you,” Trista said to Grace.

  “Double or nothing for tomorrow night’s round,” Grace fired back without skipping a beat. The way they joked around, it felt like they’d been roommates forever.

  “You mean if we make it through another night,” Trista said as she sat up in her twin bed. She was wearing a matching set of baby blue flannel pajamas dotted with cartoon sheep.

  Grace chewed at her lip. “We’ve got work to do, don’t we? Let’s run down the facts.” She pushed her black notebook toward me and reached out a pen. “Want to be secretary again?”

  “Okay,” I said as I sat down cross-legged on the bed next to her. “So. Lee is back on the list,” I began. “We have one supershady email from him and a good motive.”

  “Right,” Trista nodded. “I’m pretty sure stealing money from the Winter Sun Festival ruins you for life in this town, even if they don’t throw you in jail.”

  “And we know he was at the mansion earlier today,” Grace added. “Early enough to have shut us in that fridge? We’ll need to find out.”

  “Problem,” Trista interrupted. “He can’t be the same person who locked us in the flower shed. He didn’t even know we’re spying, so how could he have known to scare us off?”

  “Or kill us,” Grace reminded her almost proudly. “Whoever it was might have been trying to kill us.”

  I shivered and moved to close the window next to Grace’s bed, but I knew it wouldn’t help. The night air outside was perfectly still and soundless. Not even a breeze rattled through the leaves.

  “Actually,
Lee could know we’re spying,” I said, remembering Grace’s float faceplant the morning they found Steptoe. “He could have seen us run out of the float barn after we eavesdropped on the police and him that morning.”

  “Or . . . overheard you and me talking at the Beach Ball,” Grace added with a wince, remembering how careless we’d been. “Then, boom, he fakes a collapse to throw everything off.” Grace flung up her hand and bumped her flashlight. It lit up her face spookily as she leaned forward. “Like Trista said: No one suspects a victim,” she whispered dramatically.

  “Maybe.” Trista squinted at us. “But I’d say the lady who basically wrote ‘I’m going to kill you, Steptoe,’ and then sent us to die in a fridge is still probably the number one suspect.”

  Grace grabbed her pillow to her chest and sank back on the bed. “Point taken, Page Bottoms. You’re getting this all down, Soph, right?”

  I nodded. “That meeting with her and Mr. Zimball got me thinking too. Steptoe was on her case all the time, right? But Mr. Zimball is always jumping to help her. If she wiped out Steptoe and Lee, she’d get revenge for Lily and have her man in charge.”

  Trista and Grace exchanged a look, and I felt like I’d said something dumb, so I hurried to add a new idea. “And then there’s Lily. She’s everywhere. It’s like Lund sent her to track us twenty-four/seven.”

  “We can’t forget that Lily could be acting alone,” Trista said. “How much do we really know about her except that her mom has prepped her since the Paleolithic era to be the Queen? And that she hunts?”