Chapter Four

Tidying Up Before the Apocalypse

TUESDAY, 4:26 PM

To Ernestine’s surprise, Frank and Maya had actually managed to clean up both the fallen chandelier and all the debris it had created. True, a crater had carved out a large chunk of the foyer, but given that the floor was actually an elaborate marble mosaic of Apollo and Artemis, Ernestine supposed that it might take a while to fix it. A draft swirled down from the attic above through the hole in the ceiling, and the lack of a light plunged the hall into a murky twilight.

Upstairs, the broken chandelier jutted out of Frank’s workspace, a clear indication that he planned on incorporating it into one of his sculptures. A swan sat in a large galvanized tub of water, floating happily as Maya painted its portrait.

Ernestine found her list of maintenance tasks still lying on the kitchen table. Several coffee rings marred it, but no one had bothered to X off a single task.

“Mother, you and Frank need to fix these things!” Snatching it up off the table, she marched over to her mother’s studio and shook the piece of paper in exasperation.

“We will, Nestea! We will!” Maya got up and tried to give her a paint-smeared hug, which Ernestine dodged because she didn’t want to mess up her uniform. Her mother compromised by kissing her on top of her head. “Cleaning up that chandelier took the better part of the day, and someone had to do something with the swans.”

“So you solved that problem by painting their portraits,” Ernestine observed dryly as Maya’s attention slid back to her artwork.

“Mmm, what was that?” she asked vaguely as she considered the way the light of the setting sun was making the swan’s wings glow red as though tinged with blood.

“Nothing.” Ernestine rolled her eyes at Charleston. On the other side of the attic, behind an enormous curtain, they could both hear the sounds of power tools that meant Frank was hard at work on his latest masterpiece. With their gallery show coming up this weekend, neither one of them was likely to get anything else done for the rest of the week. Not that Mrs. MacGillicuddie would care if the mansion fell down around them, so long as everyone had a marvelous time while it happened. “C’mon, Charleston. It looks like we’ve got work to do.”

“Oh, man. I really wanted to watch TV.” Charleston flopped onto the couch and burrowed his head into the pillows as though he could hide there.

“And I wanted to start the apocalypse. We can’t always get what we want, you know.” Ernestine heaved a sigh. “You make some sandwiches, and I’ll get the toolbox.”

Changing out of her uniform, Ernestine put on overalls and covered her hair with a red handkerchief. She grabbed her toolbox and an ancient, dog-eared book left behind by the previous maintenance man called The Handyman’s Handy Helper! Ernestine liked a book with an exclamation mark in the title. If you weren’t going to be enthusiastic about the book you were writing, then why write it at all?

Charleston was waiting for her out in the kitchen. He’d changed into old jeans and a plaid shirt. He handed her a mayonnaise-pickle-and-bologna sandwich while he munched on one of his own. Ernestine handed him his half of the list, and they went to work.

Her first stop was 2C, where Mrs. Talmadge peered anxiously over Ernestine’s shoulder as she poured a big bottle of gloopy stuff down the drain of the kitchen sink and asked her, “Aren’t you a little young to be handling dangerous chemicals?”

“Not at all!” Ernestine replied confidently since she firmly believed that one was never too young to handle dangerous anythings.

Mrs. Talmadge was on the plump side and had once been a chef to various punk rock bands back in the nineteen-seventies and eighties before eventually becoming Marilyn Manson’s pastry chef. She kept her white hair dyed bubble-gum pink and wore about a dozen earrings in her left ear. They all looked like nuts, bolts, and possibly a corkscrew.

“Mr. Talmadge seemed a little, um, irritated with Dill,” Ernestine said delicately as she put down the bottle and took off the heavy rubber gloves and goggles she had been wearing. “And with Mrs. MacGillicuddie.”

“Oh, that.” Mrs. Talmadge tutted. “He’s just worried about what his old mates the Dead Kennedys would say.”

“I’m sorry, what was that?” Mr. Talmadge knew some dead people named Kennedy? Where on earth had he found some dead friends to hang out with? Perhaps he could give her some pointers.

“That was back when I was still cooking for Sid,” Mrs. Talmadge continued mistily, not exactly answering Ernestine’s question. “That’s Sid Vicious, of course, dearie.”

“Did Sid viciously kill them, which is why the Kennedys were dead?” Ernestine asked. If so, maybe she could get his number so she could ask a few questions about how he’d brought them back afterward.

“No. Personally, I blame MTV.” Mrs. Talmadge peered into the bag Ernestine had brought downstairs along with the drain cleaner. With her thumb and forefinger, she pulled out one of the drumsticks they’d dumped on Herbert’s grave last night. “Speaking of dead things, what are these, dearie?”

“Oh. Those. Those are tonight’s supper. Hey, you haven’t seen any zombies wandering around today, have you?”

“Do you count Mr. Sangfroid when he’s overdone it on his medication?” Mrs. Talmadge pulled some dead grass off one of the chicken legs.

“Did he try to bite you?”

“Not this time, no.”

“Then I don’t, unfortunately.” Ernestine ran water down the drain until she was sure it had cleared up. “It should be good to go now, but if any body parts come up, let me know.”

“Uh, is that likely, dearie?” Mrs. Talmadge peered down the drain anxiously, apparently unaware that there might be a minor zombie apocalypse going on in the neighborhood.

“Depends on whether the zombie apocalypse has started,” Ernestine explained helpfully. “If it has, then you’re likely to find body parts anywhere.”

Next, Ernestine went to fix Mr. Sangfroid’s leaky pipe. When he answered his door, he was holding the enormous, dusty old photo album that had fallen from the attic when the chandelier crashed down.

“Isn’t that Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s photo album?” Ernestine asked pointedly.

“That’s none of your business! You’re just the hired help!” Mr. Sangfroid snapped the album shut as though she was the one doing the peeking. “And why didn’t you come sooner? Why aren’t your parents here? Maybe I should be contacting Children’s Services, eh?”

“Maybe you should,” Ernestine retorted, spine very straight. “I think they should know about an adult harassing a child.”

The Adam’s apple in Mr. Sangfroid’s throat bobbed up and down as he glared back at her in outrage for daring to stand up for herself. However, rather than slamming the door on her as she had expected, Mr. Sangfroid followed her down into the warrenlike basement so he could rant at her some more, this time about the end of the world. Unfortunately, his apocalypse was a lot less interesting than the average kind.

“Rubbish! That’s what those Talmadges are! Cooks! Kitchen help! Not true artists!” He pounded the dank floor with his cane as Ernestine unlocked and then relocked various small rooms, looking for the correct pipes. Each resident got a storage room along with their apartments above. “And what of Mr. Theda and Mr. Bara, eh?”

“What about them?” Ernestine located the pipe in a room full of debris from MacGillicuddie House’s glory days, including several very ugly paintings, a broken mirror or two, and an absolutely ginormous frame that had freed whatever it once held many years before.

Ernestine tried to reach the pipe but couldn’t. Mr. Sangfroid watched disapprovingly as she hopped up and down, trying to get to it, but didn’t offer to help.

“Cheap, low-brow entertainers, that’s what they are!” Mr. Sangfroid harrumphed.

Ignoring him, Ernestine tested the empty frame to confirm it was sturdy enough to hold her weight from where it was propped up against the wall. It was, and she climbed up on it. Mr. Sangfroid’s eyes widened at the sight, but he still didn’t offer to help. “Those horror movies of theirs appeal only to the low-brow, you know. Just like those Swanson twins. Common dancers! Not even ballet dancers! Little better than chorus girls. Why, it’s no wonder their parents—”

Mr. Sangfroid suddenly clammed up. Ernestine stopped winching the pipe to stare at him. “No wonder their parents what?”

“None of your business,” he snapped. “I disapprove of gossip!”

Straightening his back and jutting his chin out at her, he marched off with one final parting shot. “It’s just a pity that chandelier didn’t take care of Mrs. MacGillicuddie before she could invite in any more trash like your parents and you nosy kids!”

“Well!” Ernestine slid down off the picture frame as it began to crack under her weight, hands on her hips. “If you think things are bad now, wait until the zombies move in!”

He made her so mad that it wasn’t until she was out in the garden looking for Charleston that she realized she’d forgotten to lock that last door down in the basement. Meanwhile, she couldn’t find Charleston anywhere, even though litter patrol in the garden was the second item on his list, so he should have been on it by now. Hopefully, that didn’t mean he’d been hideously eaten or bloodily murdered on the way. She’d never had a stepbrother before, and she quite liked him, even if they did have to share a room. She’d prefer it if he didn’t get either hideously eaten or bloodily murdered. He was fine just the way he was.

If Charleston was missing, Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s 1937 baby-blue Studebaker limousine had returned. That meant Rodney and his daughter must be skulking around someplace like the ghouls in one of Mr. Theda’s movies.

Speaking of which, Ernestine found several crumpled flyers that the wind had torn off telephone poles and then deposited in the shrubbery along the wall. A fanged and clawed Mr. Theda sneered out at her from the page, advertising a showing of his movies over at the old Palace Movie Theater by the university, featuring a special performance by the Swanson twins. Though retired, Mr. Theda was actually more popular than ever, thanks to Mr. Bara’s social media savvy. The two had quite the online following and made an extremely comfortable living showing up at horror movie, sci-fi, and comic book conventions.

The flyer reminded Ernestine of Charleston’s suggestion to put up missing zombie posters. If nothing else, it would raise awareness on a very important matter of public health.

Tucking the flyers into her pocket, Ernestine went in search of her stepbrother, finding him at the site of the very first chore on his list. Only rather than fixing a squeaky floorboard in Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s apartment, he was standing on an ottoman while wearing an enormous flowered hat, high glittery heels, and a long lavender gown while a seamstress did something to the hem that seemed likely to end in Charleston stitched to the furniture.

“I don’t even know what to say,” Ernestine said when she stepped into the palatial room full of lemon trees and gold furniture. Charleston just shrugged and went back to eating brownies from the plate he was holding.

“So sorry, darling,” Mrs. MacGillicuddie drawled from where she lounged on a leopard-print fainting couch. She wore a hot pink silk robe with a feather boa and stiletto heels. Heirloom jewels encrusted her from the top of her head to the tips of her fingertips right on down to her feet where she wore emerald-and-diamond anklets worth more money than most people made in a lifetime.

As Mrs. MacGillicuddie had said before, at her age you never knew when it might be your last chance to wear your jewels. Especially your no-good-lying-cheating-dirty-rotten-underhanded-crook-of-an-ex-husband’s family jewels, may he rot in his grave until he rises as a zombie to shamble about so Mrs. MacGillicuddie could whack off his head with her cane. (A delighted Mrs. MacGillicuddie had added that last part after Ernestine told her about the coming apocalypse.)

When Ernestine was eighty, she wanted to be exactly like Mrs. MacGillicuddie.

Several other people filled the room aside from Charleston and the seamstress. Rodney sat on a purple chair beneath two potted lemon trees, looking like he’d been sucking on the fruit dangling above his head. Fluffy-Wuffy-Kins, Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s cat, gleefully shed long, white hair all over his suit as Aurora Borealis preened in front of her phone, taking a selfie so all her followers would know that she was still as gorgeous as she was ten minutes ago.

A man Ernestine didn’t recognize sat on a gilt chair covered in zebra print while scribbling down a bunch of notes. Kind of like Mr. Price, the school psychologist. Meanwhile, Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s nephew Lyndon tried to blend in with another lemon tree. Ernestine suspected that when the end of the world came, he’d be one of the first ones to get eaten because he’d be too busy trying to figure out how to make money off the zombies to pay attention to avoiding them. He’d probably just walk right up to the first zombie he saw and ask it if it wanted to get rich quick. He always had some sort of scheme that he was trying to get people to invest in, having already wasted his inheritance on bad investments.

“As I was saying, Mother, last night was the final straw! You’re deranged.” Rodney peered over at the guy taking the impressive amount of notes and said, “Did you get that? Are you making a note of the fact that she’s deranged?”

“Rodney, that chandelier might have rearranged my body parts had it hit me, but that hardly makes me deranged!” Eduardo hurried forward to fill Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s cup with tea as she waved it about irritably. He then discreetly removed a Fabergé egg from Aurora Borealis’s purse and returned it to its rightful place next to a Chihuly sculpture on a seventeenth-century desk Aurora Borealis had stuck her gum under. Ernestine noticed she was wearing the white sparkly shoes she’d stolen from the Swanson twins the night before.

Turning back to Ernestine, Mrs. MacGillicuddie begged her, “Don’t be upset with Charleston, darling. I’m dreadfully afraid I forced him to remain with us so Peggy here could hem my negligee. He’s exactly my size, you know.”

Ernestine approved of the way Mrs. MacGillicuddie tended to speak in italics. No sense in saying anything if you didn’t feel emphatic about it.

“He’s half your size!” Ernestine protested.

“Not on the ottoman and in my stilettos,” Mrs. MacGillicuddie trilled, while Peggy the seamstress looked up with a mouthful of pins and nodded in agreement. “I tried to get Rodney there to do it, but he’s much too busy consulting with that shrink he brought along to try and prove I’m crazy.”

“You are crazy!” Rodney puffed up his chest and then whispered to the psychiatrist, “You got that, too, didn’t you? Put down that she shows clear signs of dementia.”

“Plus, she said she’d give me twenty dollars,” Charleston interjected from around a mouthful of brownie.

“Oh, Charleston,” Ernestine groaned, setting her toolbox down next to the loose floorboard Eduardo helpfully pointed out for her. “You can’t put a price on your dignity.”

“I can on mine, and it’s twenty dollars.”

“That reminds me.” Getting up from her fainting couch, Mrs. MacGillicuddie tottered on her stilettos over to one of the lemon trees. Reaching a hand into the pot, she rummaged about until she came up with a stack of neatly wrapped bills. This she promptly handed to Ernestine. “For you, darling, for saving me last night from that awful chandelier while my devoted son stood by and watched, hoping I’d die so he’d get to inherit even more of the MacGillicuddie fortune.”

“Mother!”

“Wait, you’re giving her money, Grammy?” Aurora Borealis froze in the act of sliding an antique ashtray into her purse. “But she isn’t even very pretty! And she doesn’t have any followers on Instagram. You don’t, do you?”

That last comment was aimed at Ernestine, who was too busy thumbing through the stack of cash to bother answering. They were all fifties and there seemed to be about two hundred of them. That made…

Gosh. That made ten thousand dollars.

“Mrs. MacGillicuddie, this is too much.” Ernestine held the money out to her landlady. “I can’t possibly accept ten thousand dollars.”

“Ten thousand?” Lyndon gasped. Then, in a low whisper to Ernestine, he added, “I’ve got this fantastic business I’m putting together to set up hot chocolate cafés all along the equator in Africa, if you’re interested.”

Ernestine blinked. “Er, I don’t think so, no.”

“Ten thousand!” Aurora Borealis whined. “But you only gave me five thousand for my last birthday!”

“She only gave me a card!” For once, Rodney turned his open-mouthed outrage on someone other than his mother. He spent so much of his time with his chest puffed out, Ernestine half-expected him to float away like a balloon.

“At your party, you served me avocado, which you know I’m deathly allergic to,” Mrs. MacGillicuddie said pointedly, swiping a brownie from the tray Charleston was still holding, and collapsing back onto her fainting couch.

“That was an accident! I forgot to tell the chef!”

“Ha! Who’s got dementia now, Rodney?”

Rodney turned to the psychiatrist, only to discover the doctor studying him beadily as he tapped his lip with his pencil. Meanwhile, Lyndon peered into the barrel of the closest lemon tree as though hopeful of finding it mulched in fifty dollar bills.

“Keep the money, darling. Use it to start your adorable little zombie apocalypse. It sounds like grand fun.”

“Well, all right.” Ernestine didn’t feel entirely good about it, but she supposed keeping it herself was better than letting Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s awful family get their hands on it. She was going to need a lot of cash to run her campaign for president when the apocalypse was over.

“Wait, what’s this about zombies?” Aurora Borealis glanced around like she thought there might be one lurking in the lemon trees along with all of that cash. “Are there dead things around? Ew, gross!”

“There might be,” Ernestine warned. “As I was telling Mrs. Talmadge earlier, you never know for sure these days.”

As Charleston explained that the ravenous undead might be wandering the neighborhood, Ernestine pulled out a hammer and some nails to fix the loose floorboard. However, when she looked at it, there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with it. It didn’t stick up at all or look uneven compared to the rest of the floorboards. Yet that was the one Eduardo said had launched Fluffy-Wuffy-Kins into the lemon tree yesterday. Ernestine pressed down on one end with her hand.

WHUMP! The other end sprang up and almost smacked her in the face.

“Oh, I know, darling,” Mrs. MacGillicuddie peered over the fainting couch at her. “I would have broken my neck stepping on it, if Fluffy-Wuffy-Kins hadn’t stepped on it first, the brave, adorable, widdle darling.”

“Is that why his face looks so squashed?” Charleston asked, earning him a one-eyed glare from Fluffy-Wuffy-Kins, whose face really did look like it had been flattened by a floorboard.

Huh. Ernestine inspected the floor, her spider-sense tingling. Well, maybe it was her zombie-sense. Either way, something was tingling because something else wasn’t right. Two accidental almost-deaths in one day was one accidental almost-death too many.

Then Ernestine spotted it. She bent closer to get a better look and noticed sawdust in the cracks.

The board wasn’t loose. It had been neatly and deliberately sawed in two.

Mrs. MacGillicuddie hadn’t accidentally almost-died. She’d been purposefully almost-murdered.