Officer Grady paced in front of the fireplace and waited for everyone to settle in. Then he cleared his throat and explained that he’d gathered us all to get the facts. “And I plan on getting every last one of them straight,” he said, his narrowed eyes darting around the room. “Ms. Sparrow has been advised of her rights. She has opted to speak publicly about her role in this afternoon’s incident . . . and in the death of Jim Steptoe.”
A hush fell over us. Someone’s chair creaked as they shifted in surprise. Lauren Sparrow stared into her lap and picked imaginary lint from her skirt. It almost looked as if she were trying to pluck the telltale pink roses right off.
“First things first,” Grady continued, his deep voice rumbling through the room. “Ms. Bottoms, could you tell us how you ended up stuck in that float?”
All eyes turned to Trista. Clutching her mom’s hand, she began describing our entire morning in her loud, clear voice. Lauren Sparrow flinched as Trista detailed everything that had tipped us off to Sparrow, from her strange email to the button we’d found on the Beary Happy Family float. “When I had a chance to slip into Ms. Sparrow’s office while she was busy with the Court, I took it,” Trista explained, adding that a locked file cabinet got her attention. “Took three of my hairpins, but I had it open fast,” she said with a hint of pride. “That’s when I saw them. Right in the bottom drawer.” She shook her head in disbelief.
“Saw what, Ms. Bottoms?” Officer Grady’s brow creased. Everyone in the room seemed to shift forward in their seats as they waited for the answer.
“Winnie the Pooh key chains,” Trista declared loudly. “Eight of them, at least. All charred different amounts. Like they’d been barbecued.”
Someone snorted. For a second, I thought it was me. The thought of Ms. Sparrow toasting mini stuffed Winnie the Poohs was ridiculous. The corners of Trista’s mouth turned up as she described the various burned states of the Winnie the Poohs—as if she were only now realizing how crazy it all was. Meanwhile, Ms. Sparrow’s cheeks turned redder than the background of the living room rug.
“Grace, Sophie, and I had a theory that Ms. Sparrow started the fire by accident,” Trista continued, her curls spilling over her shoulders as she leaned forward and talked faster. “There hadn’t been a breeze that night, so how could a curtain blow into her candle? When I saw those Winnie the Poohs, I knew we were right.”
Sienna squinted. “So, she burned a key chain and put it in the Beary Happy Family’s campfire to pin this all on Ms. Lund?”
“She burned eight of them?” Jardine’s eyebrows practically leaped to her hairline.
“Guess she had to singe it juuust right,” Mr. Diaz piped in. Ms. Hoffman shot him a glare. She was so over the puns.
A heavy feeling was spreading through my chest. I thought it was anger—but there was sadness, there, too. I’d trusted Lauren Sparrow—liked her, even. How could my instincts have been so wrong? Even as she sat in the chair in front of me, ready to admit all of it, I couldn’t imagine her as a killer.
“That was the same day we got in trouble for spying,” I said, realizing Sparrow must’ve been panicking about our snooping around.
“Exactly,” Trista said. “We thought maybe someone was targeting her. But that wasn’t it at all. She was busy barbecuing dolls to send us on a wild goose chase.” She pointed to her head and twirled her finger at the craziness of it. “She knew you all would be at the stables the next day—and it wasn’t much of a leap to guess you’d go poking around.” Trista looked straight at Lauren Sparrow, who was twisting her hands nervously and still staring into her lap. Her pink fingernail polish gleamed. It was the only thing that still looked perfect about her.
“I wasn’t trying to frame Barbara!” Lauren Sparrow blurted out. “I knew the police could never arrest her just because some kids found a key chain.” Her voice was hoarse, as if it had broken along with the rest of her somewhere along the way. “I needed to throw you girls off somehow, that’s all,” Sparrow added quietly.
Next to us, Rod straightened in his chair. “So you’re the one who shut them in the refrigerated flower shed!” he exclaimed. “Then you pretended to come looking for them.”
Lauren Sparrow nodded. “I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. I swear. I was just trying to scare them a little. You all were so . . . persistent.” She rubbed her temples. “It never occurred to me that Trista—”
“Enough.” Officer Grady held up a hand. “We’ll hear from you in a minute,” he said gruffly.
“You scared us all right,” Grace said, leveling her gaze at Ms. Sparrow. Rod looked over at me, eyes filled with concern as if he were remembering the moment.
My parents and the Yangs sat next to each other on the sofa, mouths half open, their heads swiveling between us all as if they were watching a tennis match.
“For everyone’s information, Barbara Ridley-Lund was released earlier this morning due to insufficient evidence,” Grady announced a little defensively. He explained that by matching the pictures we’d taken with our disposable cameras with the ones they took at the crime scene, they’d realized the key chain had not been there the day Steptoe was found and therefore didn’t link her to the scene. Lund’s story about the forklift misunderstanding seemed plausible, so they didn’t have solid enough evidence to detain her any longer. “Ms. Lund claimed she’d become impatient waiting for Mr. Zimball to help clear some equipment and attempted to operate the vehicle herself.” His mouth twitched as he held back a smile. “As we know, that didn’t go so well.”
Grace, Trista, and I looked at each other. We’d made an honest mistake—no one could say we hadn’t. Still, it was hard not to feel guilty that Barb Lund had spent a night in jail.
Trista tensed up as she told the next part of her story. “I put one of the Winnie the Poohs in the Ziploc bag Grace had given me for evidence and shut the cabinet,” she said. “But just then Ms. Sparrow walked in the door.” She described how she shoved the plastic bag down her dress, made something up about looking for a hair tie, then booked it out of there—heading straight for the Root Beer float to see if she could fix the speed issue they’d had. “I remember hearing something clanging outside, but I was crouched under the dash working. I didn’t think much of it.” Her eyes darkened. “Not until I tried to leave.”
Trista said she saw the wrench jammed through the latch and knew Sparrow had to have done it. “I tried hard not to panic,” she explained. “My inhaler and refills were in my cargo jacket that I’d left in the mansion.” Her breaths quickened as she thought back to the moment. “It didn’t really go with the outfit, you know?” She outstretched her arms and looked down at her dress. “At least I’d taken my allergy meds.” Trista described how she shouted for help but couldn’t make herself heard above the marching bands warming up. “I had to take it easy. If I worked myself up . . .” She trailed off, leaving us to remember what had happened in the refrigerated shed.
“And the float team had already left to get good seats along the route,” the AmStar engineer said, running his hand through his thick gray hair.
“So you cranked up the music and sent the Polybius SOS,” Grace said.
“The Polly-be-what?” Mr. Diaz asked, his smooth announcer voice sounding especially out of place.
“Okay, that’s kind of genius,” Jardine said after Trista explained how she blared the music to signal us.
“So that’s why you guys were always knocking and making weird noises with your mouths on the radio,” Danica exclaimed. “Everyone knew that wasn’t static, FYI,” she added, raising an eyebrow. Grace and I looked at each other sheepishly.
Trista tossed up her hands as she wrapped up her story. “And . . . I guess you all know the rest. . . .” As she looked out at the faces in the silent room, I could see the memory of the fiery float flickering in her eyes. I felt like I could still hear the thundering wheels and see the flames blazing behind like a comet as Willard Ridley and the float disappeared over the cliff. I swallow
ed hard. It really had been too close a call.
Lauren Sparrow kept shaking her head, over and over. Trista’s mom narrowed her eyes at her in a death-stare that seemed like it could have actually killed Sparrow. “So you thought you’d get away with sending my daughter over the bluffs? You were going to kill a child? My child?” she shouted through clenched teeth.
Trista flinched. “Mom . . . ,” she pleaded quietly.
“That was the last thing I was thinking!” Ms. Sparrow cried out. Everyone shot each other puzzled looks. If locking a kid in a parade float and then trying to zoom it over a cliff wasn’t attempted murder, what was? “I—I was buying time—to—to get away,” she stuttered, wiping her nose with a tissue. “That’s all.”
The AmStar engineer cleared his throat and spoke up. “But then we ran into you by the bleachers.”
Lauren Sparrow nodded and explained that she’d rushed back to the Royal Court float to help us, knowing that she’d raise suspicion if she disappeared before the Festival was off and running. However, before the floats rolled into action, the AmStar engineers and Mr. Diaz and Ms. Hoffman had pulled her up into the booth to do the honors of steering the float.
“We thought she’d be the perfect person,” Mr. Diaz said. “What did we know?”
The AmStar engineer explained that Sparrow had handed the remote back and slipped away, but that he couldn’t control the float. “Something must’ve happened when Ms. Young jammed the float wheel,” he said, then turned to me apologetically. “Though you did the right thing. Don’t get me wrong.”
“You jumped to conclusions,” Lauren Sparrow said, looking pleadingly at me, Grace and Trista. “I wasn’t trying to do anything to Trista’s float at all. I’d never do that. That’s nuts!”
Harrison Lee sputtered in disbelief. “And charring Winnie the Pooh and planting them for kids to find isn’t nuts?”
Officer Grady frowned at Ms. Sparrow. “It seems they didn’t jump to any crazy conclusions when they suspected you killed a man, did they?” He asked Ms. Sparrow if she was ready to tell her story, and once again reminded her she did not have to confess publicly. She waved her hand.
“I want everyone to hear the truth—straight from me. I’m not a murderer!” she cried, her bulging eyes making her look pretty much exactly like a murderer. The officers next to her stiffened, as if worried she might do something rash. But she just told her story in a quiet voice that only occasionally broke as she wiped away tears. It felt strange to see any adult be such a mess, let alone smooth Ms. Sparrow.
“You have to believe me. Mr. Steptoe was alive when I left him on Tuesday night before the Royal Court announcements,” she began. “At least, I thought he was.” She bit her lip and exclaimed that it had all started a few days earlier when she sent a thank-you email to her chief chemist for rushing an important order.
“Raúl Jiménez,” Grace interrupted. The Court whipped their gazes to Jardine. So much for those marriage plans.
Sparrow nodded. Her cheeks flushed like they had the night we’d been gathering around the TV. It was funny to think how much I had misread her blushing that night.
“I didn’t think anything of it until I ran into Jim the day before the Royal Court announcements,” Sparrow continued. “He wanted to talk about Pretty Perfect’s ingredients.”
Grace and I nudged each other as she described exactly what we’d figured out: thanks to her email autofill, her message had gone to Jim instead of Jiménez. “I panicked,” Sparrow said, her voice cracking. “It’s hard for me to admit this, but Pretty Perfect’s famous ‘secret ingredient’ is actually a special protein that Mr. Jiménez discovered in harp seal pups. Extracting it from them was highly illegal, and I knew it—but they assured me the seals weren’t hurt in the process.” She ran her hands through her hair nervously. “All I knew is that it worked miracles for people’s skin.”
She studied the rug for a beat too long. “Then I learned the truth.” In a halting voice, she went on. “The protein is found in harp seals while they’re still white, a few weeks after they’re born. Pretty Perfect could only stockpile enough to make our product just after birthing season.” Her voice went higher as she looked up at the room. “I promise, if I’d have been aware of this from the get-go, I never would have gone along with it. It was such a shock to find out.”
Jardine gasped, breaking the silence. “So—so—when they get the protein—the seals—die?” she stuttered.
Ms. Sparrow closed her eyes and nodded slowly.
“Beauty has its price,” Grace muttered the line from Sparrow’s email to herself as a murmur rippled through the room. Jardine covered her mouth with her hand, looking as if she might be ill. I looked at the seals I’d painted on the T-shirt she was wearing, remembered the seals in the video, and felt sick too.
“You have to believe me,” Ms. Sparrow pleaded frantically. “As soon as I found out, I was horrified. I begged Mr. Jiménez to find alternative sourcing options.” Her face grew blotchy and red. Her hands trembled. “I wanted to put a stop to all of it right away.”
“Then the celebrities started endorsing Pretty Perfect,” Trista said, folding her arms.
Sparrow nodded. Her glassy eyes swept across the room. The air felt stuffy—almost humid.
“Demand skyrocketed,” she said. “We couldn’t keep up. I was sick about it. I really was. But if we didn’t continue, the secret would get out. Everything I’d worked for—the whole business. It’d die.”
“Better your business than the seals!” Jardine cried out, jutting her chin angrily. “And you say you’re not a murderer?”
Officer Grady shot Jardine a sharp look and pressed his finger to his lips. One of the cops next to Sparrow nudged his voice recorder closer to her as she continued her confession.
“I was going to make sure it all stopped,” Ms. Sparrow said. “That was what I was trying to tell Jim that night, but he wouldn’t listen. My mention of ‘breeding seasons’ in my email tipped him off that we might be harming animals, and he’d started to look into it. He threatened to go public as soon as he had more evidence,” Ms. Sparrow said. “I—I just couldn’t face it.”
“So you killed him to keep him quiet,” Grace said.
“No! It was an accident!” she practically shouted. Her messy hair shook around her shoulders, and a vein popped out in her neck. I thought they might need to cart her off, but she collected herself again. “That night, we met in his office. Our discussion got very heated. I admitted to him that there were some irregularities in Pretty Perfect’s ingredients, but that I was clearing them up. We were interrupted when you came, Josh.” She turned to Mr. Katz.
“It makes sense now,” Mr. Katz said, nodding. “I felt the tension. I was also still angry. I just chalked up the awkwardness to your roles in my, er, transfer to Route Integrity. I took my pictures from the wall and scrammed. I was embarrassed. Figured I’d come back for the rest the next day.” He looked at us and smiled. “But I was embarrassed then, too. I’m proud of my Pooper Scooper team now, but it took a little getting used to,” he added.
Lauren Sparrow continued. “I went back to reason with him just as the delivery person from Miyamoto’s came with the tiara. Jim told me our discussion was over, as far as he was concerned, then he went to lock the tiara in the pedestal for its unveiling at the Court announcements. When he went to the float barn to do his nightly float check, I followed him, pleading, but he ignored me.” Her voice quavered with emotion, and she wiped tears from her eyes. “I was angry. I wanted him to hear me out, but he wouldn’t. He was leaning over the campfire of the Girl Scout float when . . .” She closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. “I stomped my foot in frustration. It hit something—I don’t know what. It happened before I knew it. The s’more feature—it swung down hard and knocked Jim over.” Her eyes pooled with tears.
“The manual override on the hydraulics,” Trista said, mostly to the AmStar engineer, who nodded. “I knew it had to have been triggered
by someone.”
“I didn’t know that Jim had died until the next morning,” Sparrow said. “I ran out of there. I thought the marshmallow was made of foam. I didn’t think it could be a serious injury. When I left that night, I was upset. All I wanted to do was make things right, so I emailed Raúl and told him to stop production immediately. I thought there had to be a way to make it all okay. I knew Jim would tell everyone—that he’d ruin me. I came to terms with that. But I never . . . I never expected . . .” She couldn’t finish her sentence. “I was devastated when I heard the news.”
Lauren Sparrow slumped in her chair, looking out at the faces in the crowd. I could barely believe that a few days earlier she’d been standing by the same fireplace in the same rose-print skirt, answering our questions. I knew she was telling the truth. If she’d knowingly killed Mr. Steptoe, she never would have placed herself at the crime scene by wearing a skirt that so perfectly matched the secret rose-theme.
“I was going to come forward then,” Sparrow explained. “But when the police declared it an accident, it felt like I’d been given a second chance, you know? And it was an accident. Confessing wasn’t going to bring Jim back. Nothing was going to bring Jim back.” Her throat bobbed as she swallowed back tears.
“Then we got on the case,” Grace said, her chest puffing up with pride.
“Then you got on the case,” Sparrow repeated quietly. “I overheard you talking at the Beach Ball, and I thought it was a good idea to keep close tabs on you. If you were going to be royal pages, I could. At least, I thought so. It’s crazy how much you can lose sight of right and wrong when you’re busy trying to be perfect.”
Grace, Trista, Rod, and I all shared a look. Rod smiled at me. We knew a thing or two about that.
“That’s the truth, Ms. Sparrow,” Officer Grady said, a twinge of regret in his voice. “The force is guilty of that, too. We rushed this. We were way too focused on the Festival.” He turned back to Officer Carter. “Sometimes you got to stop and listen to the rookies, right, Officer?”
The Tiara on the Terrace Page 24