The Tiara on the Terrace (5 page)

T
he mansion living room burst into a nervous buzz as soon as Ms. Sparrow left. Kids sprang for their cell phones. A few grabbed their uneaten bag lunches and headed for the door. Others huddled in corners with friends, as if they might be able to erase the terrible news by sticking together and hiding from it.

“This is messed up,” Trista said once she'd finally pushed her way through the maze of fancy antique furniture and upset volunteers. “Majorly messed up.” She fumbled in her cargo jacket pockets for her asthma inhaler and drew in a quick puff, then squinted at us. “You two found out something, didn't you?”

“Shh. Not here.” Grace's eyes swept the crowd. Through the French doors I could see kids lining up along the
circular driveway already, waiting for rides home. “We need a plan.”

“Rose garden?” I offered.

“Perfect.” Grace nodded. Trista was already striding ahead. We scooted after, and were about to slip through the door when a gruff voice stopped us.

“Young! Yang!”

We turned around to find ourselves staring directly into Barb Lund's narrowed eyes. She stood so close I could see a hair quivering on her cheek mole. She snapped her gum. Grace and I flinched.

“What part of ‘see me' didn't you two understand?” she asked.

A cluster of eighth graders behind her fell silent and stared. Grace looked toward the door. For one terrifying second, I thought she might actually be crazy enough to make a run for it and leave me there.

Barb sighed heavily, sending a sickening, warm cloud of spearmint-tinged tuna-fish breath wafting over us. I tried not to make a face. Grace pressed the back of her hand against her nose and pretended to fight back a sneeze.

“First, you two jibber-jabber the morning away. Then you mosey over here via the slow boat to Timbuktu!” Barb flung up her hands. “Welcome to the top of Barbarossa's
Watch List, ladies. Report to me at oh seven hundred tomorrow. Got it?”

“But . . . ,” Grace blurted, “will we even be here tomorrow? I mean, considering what—”

“I asked a simple question, Ms. Yang.” The muscles jumped in Barb Lund's jaw as she snapped her gum again. “Two words. Got. It?”

I swallowed hard and stepped forward. “Yes, ma'am. We got it.”

Grace hesitated, then raised one hand in an awkward salute that I prayed Ms. Lund wouldn't think was sarcastic. “Loud and clear,” she sang out.

“Awesome possum,” Ms. Lund said, looking as close to pleased as I'd ever seen her.

“It's like she didn't even hear Ms. Sparrow,” I hissed as we crunched down the gravel path to the rose garden near the float barn. Trista had already parked herself at the stone table next to a trickling white fountain. She'd laid out her lunch and was bent over her phone, fingers flying. Probably playing TrigForce Five. She'd been glued to that game for weeks. Trista usually beat games in a day or two, so this one must have had 180 levels or something.

“Highly unlikely,” Trista said without looking up. “Barb
was sitting right next to her.”

“Maybe she's deaf from her megaphone,” I suggested, rubbing my ear. “I might be.”

“Oh, Lund heard her, all right. She just doesn't care!” Grace slapped her lunch bag on the table and sat down. “Now, get this . . . ,” she began.

Trista tucked her phone away and listened carefully, zipping and unzipping one of the zillion pockets on her jacket as we updated her. It felt so strange to talk about murder while a fountain burbled next to us and palm trees swayed in the perfect blue sky. I found myself wishing Grace would hurry up and finish so Trista could wave away all the crazy talk of murder and shake some sense into us. She always did.

But when Grace finished, Trista stayed silent for a long time.

“It can't really be murder, right?” I said, pulling my sandwich out of my lunch bag. “I mean, no one can, like, time a dancing s'more to malfunction and hit someone's head.”

“There are more direct ways of taking someone out, yes,” Trista said.

The tension ran out of my shoulders. Finally, she was going to set us straight. No one was more logical than she
was—or as smart. Her mom was a head rocket scientist at AmStar, the company that made technology for the military, where just about everyone in town worked, including my parents. Everyone thought Trista would be head rocket scientist there one day, too. There was a reason AmStar engineers had already recruited her to assist the Festival's float-tech team.

“I thought so. I mean, they said they were looking into it as a
possible
homicide,” I said.

“But it is technically possible,” Trista added abruptly. I tensed up again. “For one, the s'more animatronics are controlled by computer. It'd be easy to mess with the code.” She rattled off a bunch of technical details I didn't understand.

“And it sure would be a stealthy way to kill, wouldn't it? I mean, who'd think of that?” Grace arched an eyebrow and reached for her Diet Coke.

Trista looked lost in thought. “Usually, I'd say it's crazy. Seriously, murder by marshmallow?” She snorted. “But here's the thing. A hydraulic jack operates that s'more. I find it hard to believe that it could swing down accidentally. The odds of it malfunctioning out of the blue like that? They're thin.
Really
thin.”

She pulled a pen from one of her jacket pockets, smoothed out her lunch bag, and drew a diagram of the
levers involved in making the s'more move. “There's a manual override lever over here”—she tapped her lunch bag—“but there's no way Steptoe could've triggered it
and
been hit all the way over here.” The bag rattled as she slid her finger to her sketch of the campfire. “Someone else had to have been involved.”

A chill ran through me. Ordinarily, Trista could have
witnessed
Steptoe's murder and still had doubts.

“And if someone else was involved, why didn't they get him help before Kendra was screaming bloody murder over a Girl Scout campfire?” Grace asked, taking a bite out of her apple.

“Precisely.” Trista nodded. “I'm not surprised they're looking at this as potential homicide. Not one bit.”

A lump knotted in my throat as I pictured Mr. Steptoe. Only two days ago he'd had lunch with us at the very same table. Steptoe was an animal lover and a vegan, which meant he didn't eat or use any animal products. He was always eating weird stuff like sprouted barley and “cheese” made from almonds, so we used to stop by and play a funny little “guess what food this is” game with him. Even though we were teasing, we thought it was cool he loved animals enough to ban himself from pepperoni pizza and ice cream for life.

I shrank into my hoodie. “Who would ever murder someone that nice? I mean, the guy literally has never hurt a fly.”

“As far as we know.” Trista said, cocking an eyebrow. “People have secrets.”

My stomach twisted as I forced down a bite of my ham sandwich.

“And Mr. Steptoe was the Festival President. Lots of people might have wanted him out of the way,” Grace added, flipping the tab of her soda can nervously back and forth.

“Doesn't that seem a little much?” I asked, but as soon I heard my own words I realized it was possible. Barb wasn't the only adult who took the Festival way too seriously. People volunteered for years—decades, even—hoping to get a top Festival position. Committee spots opened up only when people moved or died. Landing one was like getting appointed to the Supreme Court or something.

“Not at all. Take Mr. Katz. Think how bitter he must be,” Grace said.

Mr. Katz used to be the principal at Luna Vista Middle School. After at least twenty years of working his way up in the Festival, he was finally supposed to be sworn in as president. Two weeks earlier it had finally occurred to the Festival officials that maybe the guy who'd hired a
dangerous fugitive as a school counselor without a background check wasn't the best public face of the anniversary parade. They'd demoted him to Head of Parade Route Integrity, aka the Pooper Scooper Brigade of kid volunteers who shoveled horse droppings so the floats didn't roll over them. It had to have been rough trying to wear the trademark brown suit with pride while you're literally shoveling poo.

“Poor guy. He'd already hung all his inspirational posters in the mansion office,” I said.

“He's going to need a new one.” Grace smiled slyly.
“NO LOAD IS TOO GREAT TO BEAR.”

“Ha! Showing a guy shoveling horse turds,” I added.

Grace giggled. Trista cracked a smile.

“DOWN IN THE DUMPS? TIME FOR A PICK-ME-UP!”
Grace sang out.

“How about”—I swept my hands out like a star imagining her name in lights
—“HORSE POO: THE PATH TO A NEW YOU!”

Grace snorted Diet Coke out through her nose, which made us laugh even harder. It was a nervous, out-of-control laugh that let out my tension—but only for a second. We trailed off and looked around guiltily. We weren't exactly dealing with a laughing matter.

“OK, let's think about this.” Grace pulled a black sketchbook from her messenger bag and set it on the table next
to her uneaten lunch. She had been into drawing lately—mostly designs for clothes that no one could ever possibly wear because they involved large, funky head wraps and skirts made of venetian blind slats. She flipped to an open page and wrote
SUSPECTS
in large letters, listing Katz first.

“Like it or not, if the Festival goes ahead, we're going to have to try out for pages.” She eyed me firmly. “We're going to need access. Royal access. Up close and personal.”

“Whoa! Wait a minute, now.” I pictured the glint in Grace's eyes that morning as she tried to convince Trista and me that being royal pages could be fun. Not to mention the way she straightened when Marissa complimented her jeans. Suddenly it hit me that she might be way more interested in hanging out with cool, older girls than in actual spying. The police were investigating, after all. They didn't need us.

“I don't think an entire weekend running around making smoothies for Kendra Pritchard is really going to help here.”

“You're kidding, right?” Grace looked puzzled. “The best thing we can do is get into that mansion. We'd have after-hours access to the offices of all the major players. Think what we could do with three days there together. Night ops, constant surveillance, no sneaking around our parents.”

Trista and I traded looks.

Grace's eyes danced mischievously. “I even heard that the Festival lectures the parents on how they're supposed to let the Court ‘bond with their Festival family' and not call unless they absolutely have to. ‘Tradition,'” she added with air quotes.

A pit opened in my stomach. Grace's parents were really protective of her, so she liked the idea of getting some freedom. Meanwhile, I'd never spent a full weekend away from home, let alone one without talking to my family at all.

“I'm with Sophie on this,” Trista said. “If a murderer is on the loose—and it sure looks like it—we can't just start running night ops. It's way too dangerous. The police are working.” She reached for her plastic fork. “Better to wait and see.”

“But the police said it could take weeks! We can't wait around for that. It's safer to get on the Court now.” Grace darted a glance up the hill. “We'll investigate Lund first,” she barreled on as if we'd already moved into the mansion. “Mr. Steptoe dies and she's all obsessed with putting us on her Watch List? I swear she smiled when Ms. Sparrow broke the news.”

“That's just what happens when her mole itches,” I said.

Trista nodded as she tucked her paper napkin into her
T-shirt like a bib and opened her Tupperware container of salad. “Agreed. Probably had a small seizure. At best a facial spasm,” she added. “Happens under stress.”

“Stress from having taken out Mr. Steptoe?” Grace offered.

“Could be,” Trista said, squeezing a packet of vinaigrette dressing over her salad. “But that doesn't mean we have to audition for royal pages.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Besides, Lund doesn't want the Festival canceled. It's her life! Rod told me she even has the Royal Court tiara logo on a toilet seat lid in her house.”

Grace wrinkled her nose. “Probably one of those cushioned ones.”

“Totally.” I chuckled.

“If there's no parade, Lily Lund can't be queen,” Trista piped up. “Her life dream. Up in Girl Scout campfire smoke.” She wriggled her fingers for effect.

Grace didn't crack a smile. She tapped her pen against her notebook. “But we also know how Lund felt about Steptoe. Think about it. If Barb's not the police's number one suspect, she should be.”

We had all seen Lund and Steptoe's standoffs over float decorating that week. Unlike past presidents, Jim Steptoe liked to check progress each night and list problems for
Barb to look into. It didn't matter how helpful Mr. Steptoe was trying to be; Barb wasn't having it. The afternoon before, she'd called him a nincompoop right in front of us. Mr. Steptoe had turned as red as a carnation petal. “You're right, Barbara,” he'd shot back. “I am a nincompoop—for not replacing you when I had the chance!” Then he'd stormed off. Later we all wondered how much it would affect Lily Lund's chances of making the Royal Court, considering he was the head judge.