The Tiara on the Terrace (7 page)

“But, most of all, we look for effortlessness. The Festival is no beauty contest. The Royal Court is made up of smart, talented young women who are shining ambassadors for our community just by being themselves,” he said.

If Grace had been sitting next to me, my ribs would be cracked from her elbowing. I shot off a quick text to her with a smiley face.

“Before we honor those ladies, let's take a moment to pay tribute to the people who made it possible for us to gather here today. In my book, they're Luna Vista royalty too.”

Trista pulled her cap lower as Harrison Lee looked toward the volunteers at the soundboard. For someone whose regular speaking voice was a shout, it was surprising how much Trista hated being in the spotlight—even to be thanked.

Harrison Lee's blinding white smile filled the outdoor TV screens. “Officer Grady? Can you please stand?”

I frowned. Why did we need pay tribute to a police officer? Trista looked back at me in shock as Officer Grady stood up from his seat in the row in front of her and pretended to humbly wave away the crowd's cheers.

Lee bumped the microphone as he clapped over-enthusiastically. “We couldn't be more grateful to Paul
Grady and his fine team at the LVPD for quickly determining the cause of Jim Steptoe's accident. It isn't easy kicking off our Winter Sun Festival under the shadow of tragedy, but thanks to their thorough investigation, we have closure. We can move forward—with full peace of mind. We salute you, officers.”

My chest tightened. Closure? A little more than twenty-four hours had passed since we'd eavesdropped on the police in the float barn. Pink-faced Officer Carter's voice echoed in my mind.
Homicide,
he'd said. We'd heard him right. He'd said it would take weeks to investigate. How could they have tied everything up so fast? My heart started to race.

Grady sat back down again. I turned to Grace. Staring straight ahead, she looked at Harrison Lee as if he'd grown a second head. Next to her, Lauren Sparrow wore an almost identical look. Her Royal Court program dropped to the ground and abruptly fluttered shut.

G
race locked her panicked eyes on mine. My head felt light, and Harrison Lee's voice sounded warped and far away, as if he were talking underwater. The Court finalists—their ankles crossed, their smiles like grimaces—looked like a row of plastic puppets.

There was nothing to worry about, I told myself, even as my heart pounded and a trickle of sweat slid down the back of my neck. The police had discovered some missing piece of the puzzle. That's all. They knew how Mr. Steptoe had died, and it wasn't at the hands of some deranged killer. Or poor Mr. Katz in his horse-turdy suit. Or even Barb Lund, whose arms were so tightly crossed that she looked as if she were trying to keep herself from throttling someone that very second. It had been an accident. Pure and simple. So what if the police had said the force would need weeks
to investigate? They might've made a mistake. It's not like bodies showed up in parade floats every day on their watch. Besides, we'd heard one snatch of conversation only minutes after they'd arrived. Things had changed.

Obviously.

“The envelope, please!” Harrison Lee bellowed, chuckling at his own corny imitation of an Academy Awards host as he took the list of Royal Court winners from the Brown Suiter next to him. The contestants sat up as if tugged by an invisible string.

Lauren Sparrow straightened in her chair, too. Her program was neatly tucked halfway into her leather handbag and she wore a relaxed smile. Suddenly I wasn't sure I'd ever seen that flash of surprise on her face at all.

As the cranes on the news vans hinged outward, elbowing their way in for close-ups, I felt queasy as I remembered how worried Lee had been about the press. He'd practically begged Officer Grady to wrap everything up faster because of the Festival. But the police would never rush to give us “closure” if a murderer was on the loose, would they? My head started to throb.

Lee prepared to announce the Royal Court's first new princess. “Siennnn-na Connnnn-nors!” he boomed.

Trista had to rip off her headphones and fumble for the
soundboard levels as a chorus of ear-splitting shrieks rose up. Shocked, Sienna tottered on her heels toward the podium. One of the previous year's princesses who was wrapped in a tight gauzy dress that reminded me of a mummy—or a patient recovering from full-body surgery—pressed a bouquet into her arms. Sienna might have been surprised, but the rest of us weren't. She was everything the Festival could want in a princess and still managed to be ridiculously nice. The genuine, fun kind of nice. Not the boring kind people pull off because they have no opinions.

As Lee turned back to the crowd, Kendra was already smoothing down the folds of her dress, ready to stand. She blew a kiss to someone in the crowd—possibly to her sister, Marissa. Possibly—and even more likely—to her dog.

Harrison Lee drew in a noticeably longer breath before he announced the next Court member. “Allow me to introduce . . . Princess Lily Lund!”

A stunned hush fell over the crowd as they put it together. If Lily was princess, she couldn't be queen. If Lily wasn't queen, then—

The crowd broke into an awkward cheer while craning their necks to look for Barb. I whirled around to see her expression for myself.

She sat like a statue, her feathered bangs ruffling in the
breeze. She wore a look that . . . well . . .

A look that could kill.

Meanwhile, Lily stood stiffly on the terrace clutching her bouquet of flowers so tightly to her chest I wondered if the rose thorns were drawing blood yet. She struggled to keep her smile, but when the camera swept across her face, I saw her glasses were misting up with tears. My lap buzzed with a stream of exclamation-point-filled texts from Grace. As I leaned to catch her eye across the aisle, I saw Lauren Sparrow cheering, her quick claps reminding me of beating birds' wings.

The sun glinting on the bell of a trumpet blinded me as the heralds sounded out another blast. “Hear ye, hear ye, Faithful!” Harrison Lee cried out the coronation announcement. It sounded so silly, but it was part of the tradition. “All rise to welcome the new reigning Sun Queen of our Anniversary Festival Royal Court.”

Kendra's gummy dental-office smile could not have been brighter or wider. She'd practically stood up from her chair already.

“Jardine Thomas!” Lee finished.

Kendra's smile froze and her eyes went wide as Jardine Thomas hopped up and rode the roar of the crowd over to the podium, chin leading the way. “Jar-
di
!” someone hooted
as some of the older Luna Vistans stiffened and shifted in their seats. Even with the camera's close-up magnifying Jardine's every feature, her flat-ironed hair and dark-brown skin looked perfect. Behind her, Kendra and the losing finalists beamed and clapped so hard their hands must've stung.

Lund tossed her balled-up program to the grass as last year's Sun Queen balanced the royal tiara on Jardine's head. The band burst into a slowed down version of “We Are Family,” that 1970s song Grandpa Young hummed as a joke at the dinner table sometimes. Silver and gold confetti filled the air, shimmering in the sun as people poured into the center aisle.

As I filed out of my row, Grace pushed her way through the crowd, her gaze dark and urgent. My mouth went dry.

She threw her arm around me and leaned in. “We're looking at a cover-up,” she whispered. “A royal one. And you know what that calls for, don't you?”

My stomach lurched as she answered for me.

“That's right, Soph.” Grace squeezed my shoulder, eyes gleaming. “Undercover royals.”

“T
here's no way the police are going to risk leaving a killer at large,” I told Grace when she repeated her police cover-up theory to me that evening in the mansion kitchen. Weeks ago we'd signed up to be servers at the “Beach Ball,” the gala dinner celebrating the new Court. Behind us cooks bustled around the sizzling stove. Clattering dishes mixed with the faint sounds of piano drifting in from the ballroom.

“This is the Festival, Soph. You heard what Lee said about the press,” she whispered, her eyes darting nervously to the other middle-school Beach Ball servers hustling in to change into their white waiter jackets. “If this got out, it'd be a disaster for Luna Vista's reputation. First we harbor a fugitive, now a murderer?” She shook her head. “The Winter Sun Festival was supposed to make everyone
forget
about
the Tilmore Eight fugitive. What if they—”

“Listen,” I interrupted, tugging her closer. “The police investigated. It was an accident. Case closed.” I wasn't sure I believed it, but I was desperate to shut down her royal page plan. “C'mon. Tonight's supposed to be fun!”

A week earlier when Grace and I had found out that we'd snagged one of the Beach Ball's few volunteer waiter slots, we'd been so excited we'd pretty much thrown our own ball. Well, a spontaneous dance party, actually—even if it had come crashing to a halt when Jake had walked in to borrow my three-hole punch. Grace had been so embarrassed that Jake had caught her shaking her butt in the air, she hid in my bathroom for a full ten minutes before I managed to coax her back onto the “dance floor.” I wished it were as easy to get her to lighten up for the actual Ball.

“Besides . . .” I pulled a waiter jacket from a hook and slipped it on. “Everyone is on high alert. I heard some parents are freaking out so much about safety they're going to make their kids wear helmets in the float barn. Somebody else is all over this, I promise.”

Grace's brow creased. “Helmets?”

I nodded. “Rod told me Peter Murguia's mom is making him wear a neon one. You know, for extra visibility.”

“Whoa.”

Grace let the thought sink in. If other kids' parents were making them wear safety helmets, the Yangs were probably one step away from fitting her for a padded float-decorating suit. They didn't mess around.

“Yup.” I crossed my arms. “Also, for all we know, the police are still on it and just announced it was an accident. It's not like you tell a murderer, ‘Ready or not! Here we come!'”

Grace pursed her lips. “I sure hope so, Sophie. Because if they're not—people could be in serious danger. Steptoe wasn't the only one on that judging committee. What if there are more targets?”

My shoulders tensed as I thought of Barb Lund's expression at the announcements. I had to admit it wasn't entirely crazy to think she could've snapped. If someone spent years dreaming of something only to have it taken away at the last second, couldn't they lose it? I mean, I had a total meltdown when my parents went back on their promise to get us a Golden Retriever puppy—and I'd only begged for, like, a year.

“It's not like they shut Lily out of the Court altogether, Grace,” I said.

“Tell me one time Trista was wrong about something,” Grace said. “Ever. Because that's the only way I'm going to
buy that the s'more swung down by accident.” She glanced through the archway into the ballroom where guests in sequined dresses and tuxedos were pouring in.

It was hard to argue with her. “I can't.” I let my arms slap to my sides. “But please, Grace, we don't have to be pages. We can still investigate. Here. Tonight! When else are all our suspects going to be in one place?” I waved my hand toward the ballroom.

“Okay, it's a plan. Let's find out everything we can now,” Grace replied as she rolled up the cuffs of my oversized white waiter jacket and brushed the lint off of it. She smiled slyly. “And if we don't solve the case . . . we audition for pages.”

“Grace, seriously. I'd rather die.”

“Oh, I hear the judges
love
zombies.” She thrust out her arms at me stiffly and imitated the Court contestants' empty grins.

I laughed. “But will they love my moves?” I did one of our more ridiculous dance party steps, which was something like a cross between a jumping jack and a can-can kick. I was midjump, holding a dinner roll, when Marissa Pritchard waltzed in with Danica and Denise Delgado.

“What are you doing?” Marissa asked, her lip curling. The twins stared, openmouthed.

“Sophie's teaching me a new form of sign language,” Grace explained. She turned to me and scratched one armpit while hopping up and down on one foot, then we both totally lost it, clutching our stomachs as we cracked up. It made me really happy that she didn't care what Marissa thought. Maybe I'd been wrong about her wanting to hang out with them. Danica and Denise turned to each other and laughed too—though more
at
us than with us.

Just then Rod Zimball came in with his friends, Peter and Matt. My laughter faded as Marissa smiled sweetly at them. “Sophie's teaching us sign language,” she announced. “Want to learn?”

I felt my face turn an even deeper shade of magenta than the napkins Danica and Denise had started laying inside empty breadbaskets.

Rod ran his hand through his hair and rested it on the back of his neck. “Uh, kinda busy right now?” He looked at me apologetically. “Maybe later?”

I was trying to think of something to say when Harrison Lee ducked in through the ballroom archway and saved me. “Good evening, ladies. How's the finest waitstaff this side of the Mississippi?” he asked, smiling as widely as he did on his car commercials. Principal Katz was hovering behind him with a strange look on his face. Lee turned to
him irritatedly before we could even answer. “Listen, Josh, I told you,” he uttered in a low, firm voice. “It's not up to me! It was a committee decision, it was the right one, and we're not revisiting it.” He made a show of wiping his hands. “This discussion is over.”

Grace widened her eyes at me. Meanwhile Katz pressed his lips together so tightly they turned white, then he shuffled to the back of the kitchen to say hi to one of the cooks. Harrison Lee plastered on his smile and turned back to us. “Don't those look good!” he looked longingly at some bacon-wrapped figs on a silver tray. “Now, what do you say you serve some of those up, kiddos?”

As soon as we grabbed our trays and stepped through the archway to the ballroom, Grace drew in a sharp breath. “Wow,” she said. “Gorgeous.”

Candlelight flickered over the faces of guests as they milled around, bobbing their heads along with a jazzy tune floating up from the baby grand in the corner. Big bouquets of pink roses decorated each table, and old-time photos of past Winter Sun Festivals lined the wood-paneled walls. Giant arched French doors reflected it all back, making the room seem twice as big.

My parents stood across the room with the Yangs and some other neighbors from Via Fortuna. Grace's dad
must have been telling a hilarious story, because everyone erupted into guffaws and clinked their champagne glasses with his. Grace's mom dabbed away tears of laughter with her cocktail napkin. She seemed especially happy to be in a sleek tailored evening suit instead of her usual white doctor coat.

“It really does look beautiful,” I said.

“No. I meant your brother.” Grace grinned. “He looks gorgeous.”

“Ew!” I swatted her with my napkin. “You did not just say that.”

Jake had sat down at a table with a bunch of his high school friends. The bow tie of his rented tuxedo was crooked, and his light-brown hair was slathered with so much gel I swear he must have paid a visit to Harrison Lee's hairdresser. If that was Grace's idea of cute, she needed a full mental-health assessment. Not to mention an eye exam.

Jake caught my eye and waved his index finger in the air. “Garçon! Garçon! Help!” he called out, elbowing one of his friends. “I think there's a fly in my soup!” He laughed and winked.

“He's all yours,” I said to Grace.

“I do like a man with a sense of humor.” She smiled, then turned and surveyed the room. “Okay, Agent Young,
you take the right flank. Tables two through ten. I'll cover the left and the Royal Court banquet table.”

“Ten-four, Agent Yang.” I looked up at her glumly. “I wish we still had the walkie-talkies.”

“Aw, we're beyond all that now, remember?” Grace's eyes danced. “But that code you were talking about? The Poly-bee-something?
That
, we need to check out, my friend.”

I laughed. “We really do,” I said, as a bubble of happiness rose in my chest. If I weren't carrying a tray, I would've high-fived her. But the bubble deflated when Grace's face fell suddenly. She grabbed my elbow and nodded toward the Royal Court banquet table. “Who's missing from this picture?” she hissed.

I turned to follow her gaze. Dressed in evening gowns and sporting their glittering tiaras, Sienna and Jardine were beaming with excitement as they circulated among their parents and some Festival officials. Or tried to, at least. They wobbled around in their slinky dresses like mermaids recently washed ashore. Next to them, in a matching Court tiara that looked dull in comparison to her sparkling braces, was none other than Kendra Pritchard. She looked so happy she practically glowed.

“Lily Lund . . . ,” I said, too loudly, right as Marissa and several of her friends were sweeping by with breadbaskets.

“Oh, didn't you guys hear?” she asked. “Lily dropped out. Or her mom pulled her out. She said she couldn't support the Court's values.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder. “I'll say!” She smiled smugly. “They chose my sister instead.”

“That's great, Marissa.” I said unenthusiastically. “Congrats.”

“Now things are the way they were meant to be.” Marissa tilted her chin higher. “And when I'm a royal page, they'll be even better.”

“
If
she's a royal page,” Grace muttered to me as Marissa flounced off. “I have a bad feeling, Soph. Very bad. And if the police are still on it, well . . .” She arched an eyebrow and jerked a thumb toward a table in the far corner by the piano, where Officer Grady was swigging back his drink. The back of his neck rolled over his tuxedo collar as he laughed at a joke. “They might want to work a little harder.”

“Officer Grady doesn't have to be on it
personally
, Grace.” I was doomed. With every passing moment, I was one step closer to being wrapped up in some sort of poufy taffeta dress, cowering in the shadow of the giant half clamshell, trying—and failing—to wave in sync with the rest of the Royal Court. “Okay, right flank, you said? Mission commences in three, two, one. . . .” I adjusted my grip on my tray and strode forward. “Maybe you can eavesdrop on—”

Grace's eyes widened in warning, but it was too late. “Young and Yang,” a deep voice bellowed behind me. Harrison Lee smiled and pointed to the long banquet table at the center of the room. “Our Royal Court could use some of those appetizers.”

“We're on it, Mr. Lee,” Grace sang out, balancing her tray in one hand like a pro waiter. “Ready, Sophie?” She leaned in and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Think of it as practice.”

I sucked in a deep breath. I sure needed practice.

“Maybe they can use some appetizers,” I muttered to Grace as we started to wind our way through the crowd to the Court's banquet table. “But their dresses are too tight for them to actually
eat
them.”

I hadn't taken two steps before guests descended upon me like a flock of birds, plucking hors d'oeuvres from my platter. One lady set her lipstick-stained wine glass right on my tray without a word. Another dumped her coat over my free arm. “Oh, sweetie, could you take care of this for me?” she asked, already turning away. Grace cruised effortlessly ahead, snaking through the crowd, tray balanced high as I ran interference as a human coatrack and litter collector. By the time I reached the Court, I had three measly hors d'oeuvres left and enough used toothpicks piled up to play
an extended game of pick-up sticks.

“Deviled egg?” I held out the tray to Kendra and Jardine. They turned up their noses as if I'd offered them boiled monkey brains.

“Um, no thanks?” Jardine said. As I struggled to juggle the coats in my one hand I must've tilted the tray a little too much. Or one of the deviled eggs had simply decided it was time to show off. Like a tiny circus acrobat, it somersaulted through the air toward Jardine, and landed
splat
on the front of her evening gown, smearing its foamy yolky yellow across her chest.

Jardine's face twisted in shock. I let the coats fall to the floor as I scrambled for a napkin and leaped forward, spewing apologies. Grace shoved my arm clear of Jardine's chest like a goalie making a save. “We'll be back with more in a sec!” she sang out, widening her eyes at me. She scooped up the coats and her own tray, and we dove back into the crowd. I caught sight of Rod, water pitcher in hand and mouth open, staring at the major scene I'd caused, and my cheeks itched with heat.