Something did explode. A laugh of pure joy. “I can’t believe it. I look amazing,” she said, staring in the mirror in disbelief. You’d have thought she was meeting a celebrity. Then she whooped and hooted, spinning around, her black curls twirling with her. The shiny folds of fabric rustled and rippled as she strutted her big self around the room, pursing her lips and pretending to be a supermodel on a catwalk while Grace and I cheered. She did look amazing. Really, really amazing.
She stopped abruptly and looked down at herself, frowning. “I don’t think I even need my jacket,” she said, dead serious. “Do you?”
As Grace screwed up her eyes and cocked her head, pretending to think about it, the tailor shot her a puzzled look. “Better without,” Grace said at last. The tailor and I nodded exaggeratedly.
Butterflies fluttered through me as I slipped into my own dress. It was the same blue satin but tight around my legs and hips. I think I was supposed to look like a mermaid. I braced myself before looking in the mirror. I never felt like myself when I was wearing a dress, anyway—let alone one that transformed half of me into a fish. But when I saw my reflection, I felt the same surprise that Trista must have. The dress didn’t look bad on me at all. It looked really good, actually. I stood up on my tiptoes. “Maybe I should see if Ms. Sparrow can dig up some wedges, to, you know, add height?”
Grace broke into a wide smile. “You look so pretty, Sophie,” she said. “Pretty and perfect.”
I smiled back and picked a stray piece of lint from her shoulder. “You look fantastic too, Agent Yang. Like a town hero.”
“Who knew? Right, Sophie?” Trista was shaking her head. Then her face darkened. “Oh man,” she said.
“What?” I looked down at my dress, worried she’d seen a stain.
“I just realized why we haven’t been able to get the Luna Vista float cranking up to full speed. The pulse duration control’s set wrong.” Her dress wrinkled as she slouched and sighed. “I wonder if there’s even time to fix it.”
I had no idea what the heck a pulse duration control was. It didn’t seem like it could possibly matter now. “It’s all right, Trista,” I said. “You’ve done your best. What more is there?”
Trista stared glumly into space, not even seeming to hear me. The tailor gave our dresses one final check, then we slipped back into our regular clothes and followed her to the official Royal Court sitting room to help the Court with their fitting. Trista took one look at the line-up of Coral Beauty rose bouquets, sneezed one of her roaring sneezes, and muttered something about needing to find her allergy meds.
“Woo-hoo!” Jardine cried out and sprang to her feet the instant she saw us. As the Court flocked around us, at first I thought they were just excited to try on their dresses. Then they swept us up in hugs as if we were long lost relatives and pressed us with a zillion questions about the night before.
We puffed up our chests proudly, answering every last one. Jardine laughed and high-fived Grace. I felt a surge of dread as I guessed what was coming next.
It was worse than I ever could have imagined. Jardine flung her arms up and crossed her wrists above her head, then twirled around, belting out the theme song from Wonder Woman at Trista-like volume. “Won-derrrrrr Wo-mannnnnn!”
I froze, numb, as the rest of the Court chimed in, laughing and singing while Jardine continued her spinning. Pookums sprang forward with his own imitation, dizzily following Jardine’s whirls. I felt Trista’s eyes on me. My whole body felt like it was burning as I braced myself for Grace’s reaction.
“Ha! Wonder Women.” Grace chuckled, giving a bashful smile. “That’s good. Aren’t we, though?” She stretched her arms out and struck her own Wonder Woman pose.
Jardine laughed. “You mean, aren’t you?” she slung her arm around Grace’s shoulder. “Right, guys? She really is Wonder Woman!”
Grace looked at me and shrugged, as if embarrassed she was getting all the credit for Barb’s big arrest. A sinkhole opened in my chest. Some small part of me hung onto the hope that she might not care. “Grace, I have to explain something—” I started.
“But I mean, like, get it?” Jardine interrupted, irritated that Grace was missing the joke. She pointed to her backside. “Wonder Woman.”
Grace’s face crumpled in confusion. She nudged me. If Jardine weren’t Queen Jardine, Grace would’ve definitely given her a full-on crazy look. Instead she fake-laughed, pretending it was absolutely normal that Jardine thought her butt had superpowers.
“Love it,” Sienna chimed in. “Perfect way to own the embarrassment, you know? Worst moment and best moment: same great nickname!”
“Wait. What?” Grace asked. Jardine stopped singing. I watched in horror as a slow, awful wave of recognition spread across Grace’s face. Within seconds, she turned a deep reddish-brown, like she’d been lying out in the desert sun for weeks.
She whipped around to me, her eyes dead inside. “Seriously?” Her bottom lip quivered. “Why would you tell them that, Sophie?”
Her question wasn’t even a question, really. It fizzled into a sentence that came out as a rasp.
I stood, dumbstruck. The flowery drapes and wallpaper of the Queen and Court sitting room blurred around me as my insides throbbed with shame. I would’ve done anything to go back in time a day and do it all over. “I’m so sorry, Grace. I didn’t think—I mean—I wasn’t thinking straight,” I stammered. “And last night everyone was sharing stories, and if you’d been there I thought you might have . . .”
Grace spun on her heels and walked away.
“Wait!” I called after her. “Let me explain!”
Grace whirled back. “There’s nothing to explain, Sophie,” she hissed.
As she thundered out the door and down the hall, a lump the size of a fist formed in my throat.
The Court stared in shock.
“Uh-oh,” Sienna said at last.
“Ouch,” Jardine said, slowly letting her hand fall from her mouth.
Sienna patted my shoulder in sympathy. “Don’t worry, Sophie. She’d have totally told us the story herself. She’ll get over it. It’s no big deal, right?”
Trista, who had quietly watched the whole scene, shook her head sadly.
I looked to where Grace had disappeared, tears stinging my eyes, then back to them again. “It is a big deal,” I said, my voice more of a croak as I stared down at Grandpa Young’s dog tags. “A really, really big deal.”
“Uh, guys?” Kendra interrupted then. “I think this might be a really bad time, but . . .” She held out a crumpled pair of riding breeches and fanned her hand in front of her wrinkled nose. “Pookums just found these?”
Everyone turned to me, eyebrows raised.
At least that was one mess I’d be able to clean up.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Pretty Perfect
Ms. Sparrow found me scrubbing the poo-stained riding pants in the bathroom off the sitting room. She’d changed already into her own outfit for the parade that—no surprise—matched the rose theme perfectly. She’d paired a lovely cream-colored silk blouse and coral cardigan with bright-coral pumps and the same rose-patterned skirt she’d worn the day she’d shared the horrible news about Mr. Steptoe. My mind reeled as I realized all that had happened since then. Five days was all it took to find a killer and lose a best friend.
“You doing all right, Soph?” Ms. Sparrow said gently. Tears sprang back into my eyes at her question. She quickly stepped in to help me rinse out the breeches. “There’s a tissue on the vanity,” she said, turning her attention to the pants in order to give me a moment of privacy. “The girls told me what happened,” she said after I’d blown my nose. “I thought I’d check in.”
I looked back at her red-rimmed eyes and for a minute I thought she was actually so sad for me that she was also tearing up. I almost passed the tissues to her before she complained that the Court’s royal bouquets had made her allergies act up like Trista’s. She looked tired too. Her Pretty Perfect
make-up could maybe take ten years off, but it couldn’t erase the dark circles under her eyes. It had been a late night for all of us.
“Yeah, I’m all right, I think,” I said. My words came out sounding strangled.
“You’ve had quite a weekend.” Ms. Sparrow nodded. “And we’re all really, really proud of you girls.” She hung up the breeches to dry and turned back to me. “Don’t worry,” she said gently. “Friends have their ups and downs, you know.”
I laugh-sniffled and had to wipe my nose again. “Especially when they’re trying to catch a killer, huh?”
Ms. Sparrow didn’t laugh back. She just patted my shoulder. “Sometimes friends make mistakes they can’t ever take back. But that’s not what happened here. Grace will realize this mistake isn’t worth losing a friend over.”
“You think so?” I said, crumpling my tissue into a ball.
“I know so,” Ms. Sparrow said. “I’ve had enough of my own friend trouble to know the difference. We made mistakes. And we fixed them. You’ll be able to make this up to Grace. She’ll forgive you. I know she will.”
I looked down and took a deep breath. The roses on Ms. Sparrow’s skirt blurred together, and I felt a sudden wave of sadness that Grace hadn’t had a chance to make the tiny roses out of ribbon to decorate the buttons of Ms. Sparrow’s shoes. They would have matched perfectly.
I realized it with a jolt. The roses. The morning she’d broken the news about Steptoe was also the day the Royal Court announcements should have taken place. The same Royal Court announcements where Mr. Steptoe would have proudly unveiled the Festival’s secret flower theme. My hands trembled as I pictured Harrison Lee on the mansion terrace the next day, revealing Mr. Steptoe’s “final gift to us all,” as the tiara—with its beautifully shaped Coral Beauty rose—spiraled into view on the pedestal.
Only the people at Miyamoto’s Jewelers knew that Mr. Steptoe had decided a Coral Beauty rose would grace the Sun Queen’s tiara that year. And yet Ms. Sparrow just happens to slip on a rose-filled skirt that matches the theme almost perfectly? Sure, lots of people own flowery skirts—even I had the one my mom made me wear sometimes. But that was one lucky coincidence for a woman who loved to match. At that very moment even her shoes were the same pretty pink color as the roses.
I froze. The buttons. I blinked. Twice. Then I rubbed my eyes. A bright-pink round button blinked back at me. It was a shiny plastic one that looked just like a button from the sleeve of a sports jacket. And—if it had been navy blue—I would’ve have known exactly where to find its match. It was the same size as the one we’d discovered in the campfire. The same shape. It had the same wide ridge along the outside—even the same uneven crisscross stitches across the four tiny holes at the center.
I pretended to drop my balled-up tissue and leaned down to take a closer look. As I did, I remembered. The blue button couldn’t have been Mr. Steptoe’s—not if Grandpa Young was right. He’d been so touched that Mr. Steptoe had “died in the line of duty.” I didn’t recall his words exactly, but he’d said something about Mr. Steptoe being found in his Festival brown suit. As I lifted my head slowly back up, my body went numb.
I looked up at her puffy, watery eyes and felt sick as I realized they’d looked almost exactly the same when she told us about Steptoe. I’d assumed they were tears. As she sniffled and cursed her allergies, the clues suddenly came together like iron filings zooming toward a magnet in one of my science labs. If my hunch was right, we’d all just made a horrible, horrible mistake.
Barb Lund was no killer. The real one was standing right in front of me.
I took a deep breath and tried to slow my heartbeat. Then I looked up at Ms. Sparrow and gave a weak smile, praying she wouldn’t realize it was fake. “Thanks,” I said. “You don’t realize how much you just helped me.”
“Oh, it was nothing, Sophie,” Ms. Sparrow smiled back. A chill ran through me. “Now what do you say you go talk to her, huh?”
“That’s a really good idea,” I said, breathlessly. I flung my tissue into the wastebasket, spun on my heels, and jetted out of the bathroom, past the flurry of the Court swishing around in their dresses and out to the hall, where I broke into a run.
I slid into my room, grabbed the pile of emails from under my bedcovers, then flew to Grace and Trista’s. I pounded on the door hard, twice.
Grace cracked it open, saw me, and then moved to shut it again. I threw out my hand to stop it.
“Grace, please,” I panted.
“Not now, Sophie,” she said as I wriggled myself halfway inside. She was in her blue dress again already and had started to put on a tiny bit of make-up.
“You’ve got to listen to me. Just one minute. We have a lot to talk about. A lot. And I don’t even know where to begin except to say I’m so, so sorry.” I looked up at her, pleading.
Grace shook her head and pointed to the door. “Go get dressed and help the Court with hair and make-up, Sophie. I’ll be there in a second,” she said flatly.
“The thing is, Grace, I think we’re making a big mistake. A really, really big mistake.” My voice sounded high and strangled.
Grace stiffened. Her eyes glinted with rage. “We’re making a big mistake? We? No. Not we, Sophie. You.” She flicked her hair behind her like a whip, then pointed her finger at my chest. “You’ve made a big mistake! “Newsflash: You’re not the only one on the planet with feelings. I have them too. And guess what? They can get hurt.” The lacy curtains at the window twitched as she whirled away from me. Her shoulders slumped. Then, in a quiet voice, she added, “You can’t just expect to brush them away that easily.”
“Grace, I’m not trying to brush them away. Not at all! It’s just, I think we need to focus on something else right now and we can maybe—”
Grace’s mouth dropped open as she pivoted back to me. “Focus on something else? Listen to you! You’re brushing them away, right now, Sophie! I may be ‘Wonder Woman’ and all”—she said with air quotes—“but I’m not superhuman.” She jabbed her finger to the door. “Now leave me alone.”
I didn’t move. Sadness swelled through my body like a stinging wave.
“I know that, Grace,” I said quietly. My eyes were filling with tears, and hers were too. I looked around the room. Just two nights ago we’d been sitting on those same beds, laughing about Danica and Denise’s silly “name that tune” wall-knocking and sorting through our suspects. Now I wasn’t sure we’d ever laugh together again. “I don’t know why I told it, Grace. I told this dumb babyish story, and the way they looked at me . . . I just . . . I guess I wanted them to think I was cooler.”
She folded her arms and stared at me for several long beats.
“You are cool, Sophie,” she burst out, her chin jutting forward. “It’s so weird you can’t see that! The only time you aren’t cool? When you’re trying too hard to be something you’re not.”
I shrank back. Her words felt too true. “Listen, Grace, I don’t expect you to accept my apology. You shouldn’t. I know I never, ever, ever in a million years should have told that story.”
“Well, maybe just never in a hundred thousand years, but yeah.” She pointed to Grandpa Young’s dog tags. “Whatever happened to ‘Always Loyal,’ huh? What else have you told everybody? Some things are supposed to stay between us, Sophie.” Grace’s mouth tightened into a hard line.
I raised my eyebrow. “You’re right. They are. And they will, always,” I said firmly. “I wish I could take the whole night back somehow,” I said.
“Well, not the whole night.” She arched her eyebrow. “We did catch a killer. Again.”
My face fell. “Grace. When I said we made a mistake? I meant it. We made a mistake. I think it’s a big one.” I shut the door behind me and sat on her bed.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Sealing the Deal
When I’d finished running down all my theories, the blood drained from Grace’s face. She reached for her radio headset and spoke into it more cheerfully
and calmly than even Ms. Sparrow herself. “Page Bottoms! Page Young and I need some help with the emergency make-up kits. Can you please report to our room ASAP?” She then made fake static noises with her mouth in a very clear rhythm. Four short bursts, three short bursts. S. Three short bursts, four short bursts. O. Then again, S.
Her dress rustled as she slowly sank onto her bed. “This all sounds crazy, Soph. The question is: Why would she do it?”
I jumped as the door banged open and Trista charged in, frowning. Her hands were smudged with make-up. “Got your SOS, people. But I think I might have just taken out Kendra Pritchard’s right eye. What were they thinking putting me on mascara duty?” She looked sideways at Grace and me. “So, you two, uh . . .”
Grace smiled and sniffled. “We’re good. I mean, we’re a work in progress. But that’s not important now.”
“Phew,” Trista said. “I thought the SOS might have something to do with that whole business and, uh, that’s not my specialty, you know.” She scratched the back of her neck and looked at the carpet.
“No, we’ll deal with that SOS ourselves. This one, though . . .” Grace turned to me. “Tell her what you told me, Sophie.”
I handed Lauren Sparrow’s email over to Trista. “Remember how we didn’t focus on Ms. Sparrow because she didn’t have a motive? I think we missed something. And if I’m right? Barb Lund did not kill Mr. Steptoe.”
Trista squinted one eye and cocked her head. “We’re talking about Barb Lund, the one who almost turned Rod’s dad into a pancake? That Barb Lund?”
“Yep. Get this,” I began, lowering my voice as I launched into everything I suspected. I told her about Ms. Sparrow’s shoe buttons and how they looked exactly like the blue button we’d found in the campfire. I pointed out the rose-patterned skirt she’d worn the day she shared the news about Mr. Steptoe, and what a ridiculous coincidence it would have been if she just so happened to match the top-secret rose theme Mr. Steptoe had chosen. “The tiara delivery receipt was time-stamped at quarter to eleven that night.” My words rushed out so fast they tripped over my tongue. “Steptoe should have been alone in the mansion. But I think Sparrow was there that night, and I think she saw the rose tiara.” I took a breath. “You know her and her matching. I mean, even the tint of her sunglass lenses matched her shirt yesterday.” Then I reminded Grace how red Ms. Sparrow’s eyes had been the morning Kendra had found Mr. Steptoe. “And right after she rescued us, she told Trista she can’t set foot in the float barn without her allergies going nuts. Remember?”
The Tiara on the Terrace Page 20