Chapter Ten
Zombies Found and Lost
THURSDAY, 3 AM
Before Ernestine and Charleston could make their getaway, Maya pounced on them.
“What on earth is going on?” she demanded, her lovely wiry curls shaking with fury as she stood in a pair of batik-print pajamas.
“We think we’ve just figured that out,” Charleston said helpfully as Ernestine crossed her arms and pressed her lips together defiantly.
“I told you both not to go roaming around while there’s a murderer about!” Maya propelled them toward the steps. Rarely did she give Ernestine a good talking-to, but when she did, Maya’s tone could be every bit as impressive as her own mother’s, whom Maya had once described as being like Miss Trunchbull from Matilda, only more rigid and less cuddly. “Do I have to lock you both in the attic? Every time I turn my back, the two of you are sneaking out someplace! I don’t force a lot of rules on you two, but I do ask that you tell me where you’re going!”
“You sound exactly like your mother.” Ernestine knew exactly where to stick the dagger.
Maya froze. Turning to look at her daughter, she said, “That was low.”
Before Ernestine could say anything back, a hideous scream split the air in two.
“Now what?” Maya cried. She tried to push Ernestine up the stairs to safety, but Ernestine nimbly jumped around her and headed in the opposite direction, toward the screaming.
“Probably another person getting murdered!” she called back cheerfully. If it was, Ernestine wasn’t about to miss it. As she passed by Mr. Theda and Mr. Bara’s apartment, Mr. Theda stuck his head out the door, looked wildly about as though expecting to see the zombie hordes massed in the hallway, and then returned to his apartment when it became clear there was probably nothing more interesting going on than yet another murder attempt. At least he had the sense to bolt his door after he shut it.
The real reason for Mr. Theda both looking out into the hallway and then double-locking his door became clear when Ernestine arrived in Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s apartment to find her landlady still screaming.
“They’re gone!” Mrs. MacGillicuddie waved her hand dramatically toward the cabinet that had stored all of the videos of Mr. Theda’s old soap opera, Torrid Dilemmas.
“What’s gone?” Detective Kim demanded, racing back to her apartment from the back garden as Mrs. MacGillicuddie collapsed onto her couch.
For a moment, Ernestine thought her landlady was going to give Mr. Theda away. Instead, she laid back limply on the settee. “The zombies, darling. It’s such a relief. Go back to fingerprinting my koi pond or whatever it is you need to do to catch that awful zombie impersonator who tried to kill darling little Mr. Sangfroid, the sweet old thing.”
“We haven’t actually ruled Mr. Sangfroid out as a suspect,” Detective Kim pointed out.
“Then you should probably run along and do so, darling. Go on, I’m fine.”
Peeping out from beneath her one hand, she made sure Detective Kim left as she waved him off with the fingers of the other. Then she hopped up and fished the shotgun out of the umbrella stand where Ernestine had deposited it earlier in the day. In a no-nonsense voice very different from her usual drawl, she said, “Right. I’ll fix him. There’s one person in this house who knows how to commit a proper murder.”
“Mrs. MacGillicuddie!” Ernestine grabbed her by the nightgown to keep her from marching out of the apartment with her weapon, giving her mother enough time to snatch it out of their landlady’s hands.
“Maya Montgomery! You give that back to me this instant!” Mrs. MacGillicuddie tried unsuccessfully to swipe it back, but Maya managed to hold her off. Not knowing what else to do with it, she dumped it back into the umbrella stand right before the Talmadges burst through the door.
“What is it? What’s going on?” Mrs. Talmadge gasped.
“Murderer!” Ernestine shrieked as dramatically as she could, being sure to hop up onto the ottoman so everyone could see her. Eduardo had just walked into the room, but upon hearing her accusation, he rolled his eyes and walked back out again.
Mr. and Mrs. Talmadge clutched each other. In a quavering voice, Mrs. Talmadge asked, “W-w-w-what do you mean?”
Detective Kim ran back into the room, panting. For such a young guy, he really needed to get into better shape or he’d never be able to outrun the zombie masses, in Ernestine’s opinion. Of course, she supposed that would at least give everyone else time to escape. Maybe Detective Kim was just an especially dedicated public servant, one willing to get eaten for the greater good.
“Arrest them!” she declared, still pointing at the Talmadges. “They’re the ones who’ve been trying to off Mrs. MacGillicuddie!”
“Rupert!” This time Mrs. MacGillicuddie really did collapse onto the settee. Charleston rushed to her side as she added, “Pansy!”
“It wasn’t us!” Mrs. Talmadge cried as Mrs. MacGillicuddie thrust Charleston aside and reached into the umbrella stand. “No!”
However, instead of a shotgun, Mrs. MacGillicuddie tried to shoot them with an actual umbrella. It popped open impressively but did no worse damage than causing Mrs. Talmadge to throw herself protectively (and rather sweetly) in front of her husband just as he tried to throw himself in front of her. Instead, they both collided together and fell to the floor.
“Oh, drat.” Mrs. MacGillicuddie tossed the umbrella away, but before she could get to the shotgun, Detective Kim stepped in between her and the Talmadges, helping them up.
“What’s this all about?” he demanded.
Grabbing Charleston by the hand, Ernestine yanked him up onto the ottoman. “We heard them, didn’t we, Charleston? Confessing to the murder.”
“Yup,” Charleston agreed, well, agreeably.
“We never said any such thing!” Mrs. Talmadge gasped.
“You did,” Ernestine argued back. Pointing at first to Mr. Talmadge and then Mrs. Talmadge, Ernestine said, “You said you wished you hadn’t done what you did to Mrs. MacGillicuddie. And then you said that she’d never know it was you.”
“Oh. That.” Mr. Talmadge flushed in shame.
“Oh, dear.” Mrs. Talmadge closed her eyes as though developing the same headache that seemed to lurk between Detective Kim’s brows when Ernestine was around. “You’d better tell them, Rupert.”
Mr. Talmadge muttered something unintelligible.
“What’s that?” everyone asked at the same time.
Heaving a sigh, Mr. Talmadge said more clearly, “I said that I’ve been using real cream and butter in all of her low-fat dishes for the past week now.”
“Come again?” Detective Kim blinked.
Ernestine grabbed Charleston and yanked him down onto the floor as their landlady sailed over the ottoman in a murderous rage.
Wielding the umbrella, she whacked Mr. Talmadge about the head and shoulders with it. “You monster! That’s why I’ve gained five pounds! I’ll never forgive you for this, you beast!”
Detective Kim and his officers swarmed them. By that time, Mrs. Talmadge had gone after Mrs. MacGillicuddie with the golf putter also tucked inexplicably into the umbrella stand. Thankfully, no one thought to grab the shotgun as Maya hustled both Ernestine and Charleston out of the room and back up to the attic.
“But I still have a ton of questions I need to ask everybody!” Ernestine protested. “Where was everyone tonight? Do they all have alibis? What were the Swanson twins doing over by Dill’s store? Was Mr. Theda the zombie? He certainly took advantage of the murder attempt to get his videotapes back! And where was Eduardo? Do we know for sure he was poisoned? Maybe he was faking!”
“Ernestine, you’re babbling,” her mother said firmly, shutting and locking the door. Then she pointed at their bedroom and plunked herself down on the couch to make it clear there would be no more sneaking out. “I’m calling you both into school sick tomorrow. Neither one of you has gotten a decent night’s sleep in almost three days! You need your rest or you’ll both end up in the hospital with pneumonia from all this wandering about in the cold.”
Under normal circumstance, Ernestine would have been outraged by this speech of her mom’s. She hadn’t missed a day of school since kindergarten and all of that… unpleasantness with Rocco. Even then, she had only missed one day so she could give a rousing speech encouraging the jury to execute him. Well, technically, she was only supposed to testify against him, but Ernestine was never one to give up the opportunity to make a rousing speech.
Anyhow, Maya had a point about their lack of sleep. Plus, if she stayed home from school, she’d be able to grill the residents of MacGillicuddie House to see which one of them was the would-be murderer. Assuming, of course, that it wasn’t one of Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s family members, which was personally where Ernestine was placing her money.
Speaking of money, she snuggled up in her top bunk with her big wad of cash in one hand and baseball bat in the other, and fell almost instantly to sleep. If zombies were going to attack tonight, someone else would just have to deal with it for once.
In the morning, she slept until quite late, not hopping out of bed until the sun was high in the sky. Charleston still lay in the bottom bunk, his glasses askew and a little smile on his lips. He, too, clutched his money like it was a teddy bear, but at least his baseball bat was close at hand. Letting him sleep, Ernestine went out to the kitchen. On the counter, she found a bowl filled with pancake batter but no pancakes. The egg carton was still out, as was the bag of flour, and she could hear music over in her mom’s studio. Apparently, she’d gotten distracted before actually making Ernestine pancakes.
Which was fine because she shouldn’t have even been making pancakes in the first place. What she should have been making was a birthday cake, Ernestine thought grumpily. Stupid gallery opening.
After cleaning up the mess from the almost-breakfast, Ernestine took a very long, very hot bubble bath. As she soaked, she took out her notebook and made a list of suspects:
MR. TALMADGE—Would inherit enough money to open his restaurant if Mrs. MacGillicuddie died. Caught spray painting Dill’s store shortly after the murder attempt but could have been establishing an alibi. Likelihood of guilt: MEDIUM.
MRS. TALMADGE—Would prefer not to see Mr. Talmadge inherit and open the restaurant, so has nothing to gain from Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s death. Likelihood of guilt: EXTREMELY LOW.
MR. THEDA—Would inherit Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s incriminating tapes if she died. But clearly stole them from her tonight. So no need to murder her for his inheritance after all? (Of course, she could always get them back.) Likelihood of guilt: ??????
MR. BARA—Would do anything for Mr. Theda. Likelihood of guilt: ALSO ??????
EDUARDO—Stands to inherit quite a bit of money when Mrs. MacGillicuddie dies but sick in bed at time of murder attempt. Of course, could all be a ruse. Maybe he never really drank the poison and only pretended to be sick. Likelihood of guilt: ??????
RODNEY—Hates his mother and wants her money. Likelihood of guilt: EXTREMELY HIGH.
AURORA BOREALIS—Hates her grandmother and wants her money but extremely lazy. Likelihood of guilt: MEDIUM.
LYNDON—Likes his aunt but wants her money. Completely incompetent. Likelihood of wanting to kill someone: HIGH. Likelihood of being even sort of successful at it: EXTREMELY LOW. Overall likelihood of guilt: LOW.
MR. SANGFROID—Stands to inherit some very valuable paintings when Mrs. MacGillicuddie dies. Hates her and everyone else. Found at scene of the crime but might have been framed. Likelihood of guilt: ??????
Ernestine tapped her lip with her pen. It was quite a long list, but it occurred to her that there were two more names she should add to it, though they only required one additional entry:
THE SWANSON TWINS—What were they doing over by Dill’s store at 12:30 in the morning? Likelihood of guilt: ??????
Hm. Too many questions marks and also too many suspects to deal with in one day. So Ernestine decided to scratch off the least likely suspects as well as the one still stuck in the hospital and therefore unavailable to be grilled. That left her with:
MR. TALMADGE
MR. THEDA
MR. BARA
EDUARDO
RODNEY
AURORA BOREALIS
THE SWANSON TWINS
Getting out of the tub, Ernestine dried herself off. Looking in the mirror, she grimaced at the mess that was her hair, then shrugged and pulled it up into the neatest bun she could. After tidying up in the bathroom, she headed out to the kitchen to find Charleston giving Maya lessons on how to make pancakes.
“You see,” Charleston explained, glasses askew and hair a mess, “the lemon zest helps bring out the fruitiness of the blueberries.”
As Maya watched with interest, he poured the batter onto the griddle.
“Where did you learn that?” Maya asked, impressed.
“Tllmdgs,” Charleston mumbled, taking a bite of bacon. Ernestine took that to mean either “Talmadges” or else “Tall midgets.”
When the pancakes finished cooking, Charleston whisked them onto the plate, dusted each one with powdered sugar, and then served them up as the rest of the family sat down at the table.
“I need the two of you to deposit this for us today.” Ernestine brought out the two stacks of cash Mrs. MacGillicuddie had given them last night. She also took out the stack Mrs. MacGillicuddie had given her earlier and divided it evenly between herself and her stepbrother.
“Wow! You’re giving me half of that, too?” Charleston missed his mouth with his fork, delivering the bite of pancake it was carrying to his ear.
“Of course. I wouldn’t have even been there to save Mrs. MacGillicuddie if you weren’t helping me start the apocalypse.”
“There’s an apocalypse about?” Frank set down his cup of coffee and blinked about with interest, trying to spot it. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“I’ll let you know when it gets here.” Maya laid her hand reassuringly on her husband’s.
He smiled at her and then seemed to notice all of the money on the table for the first time. “Where did all of this come from? Have we sold something and I’ve forgotten about it?”
“No, the kids keep sneaking out and saving people from certain death,” Maya sighed.
“Wow! Like superheroes? Righteous, man!” Frank beamed approvingly, causing Maya to sigh again and Charleston to smile and sit up straighter.
Ernestine, too, liked his way of looking at things. Superheroes of the Apocalypse. Yes, she definitely could get used to being called that. It would lead well into: Montgomery for President: Superhero of the Apocalypse, Leader of the Free World.
After breakfast, they all divided up the day’s maintenance work. Ernestine immediately claimed the mouse problem in Mr. Theda and Mr. Bara’s apartment, while Charleston chose feeding the various chickens, swans, peacocks, and other fowl that lived in the carriage house when the Swanson twins weren’t using them for their act.
“If you see the Swanson twins, keep an eye on them,” she warned in a low voice as they headed out of the apartment.
“They might try to murder you.” Technically, Ernestine supposed anyone might murder anyone else at any given time. You never could tell what was going through someone else’s head. Still, if the twins were murderers, then Ernestine figured there was an above average chance they might murder someone asking questions about the first murder. Murders were probably like lies. As soon as you did it once, you had to keep on doing it to cover up the first one.
Leaving Charleston behind with his mouth hanging open, Ernestine went to her first stop. Which was actually neither Mr. Theda and Mr. Bara’s apartment, nor was it in MacGillicuddie House at all.
No, her first stop was at the police station four blocks away. Well, to be technical again, her first stop was actually at Mitzy’s Coffee Shop for a coffee and an éclair. These she presented to a very weary Detective Kim as he peered at his computer, trying—and failing—to summarize the night’s events in a believable way.
“I brought you some coffee because I thought you’d be tired after last night.” Ernestine handed him the cup and the bag with the éclair in it. She had put on her school blazer and navy skirt to make her look more professional.
“That was very nice of you.” Surprised, he accepted them gratefully, tearing the lid off the cup so he could guzzle the scalding liquid as though impervious to burns. “Wait, shouldn’t you be in school?”
“I’m out sick due to psychological trauma,” Ernestine bragged, actually quite pleased to have such an interesting injury. “Also, I have some questions.”
“Of course you do.” Detective Kim set the éclair down just as he had picked it up. Looking around to see if anyone was listening, he whispered, “Look, I’ll answer what I can.” In a much louder voice, he announced, “OF COURSE, I CAN’T SHARE CONFIDENTIAL POLICE INFORMATION WITH YOU.”
“I UNDERSTAND,” Ernestine replied loudly and, she felt, convincingly. Then she plunked herself down in the chair next to his and said in a low voice, “How’s Mr. Sangfroid doing? Have you been able to question him?”
“Not yet,” Detective Kim admitted ruefully. “The doctors say he’s going to be fine, but he’s had quite an injury to his head. He’s not exactly coherent yet. He keeps babbling about his cat, Tiddlywinks, and dancing the tango with Libby Swanson down in Brazil. None of it makes a lot of sense yet, to be honest.”
“Do you think he did it?” Ernestine asked.
“I don’t know,” Detective Kim sighed. “It doesn’t look good for him, but it also looks a little too convenient to me. Let’s just say I’m not ready to arrest him, and I’m not ready to rule him out.”
This all sounded very sensible to Ernestine, who was beginning to think that Detective Kim would do just fine in the apocalypse. He seemed like he knew how to keep his head about him.
“Okay, have you confirmed Mr. Talmadge’s alibi? Could he have tried to murder Mrs. MacGillicuddie, then run over to Dill’s store just in time to be caught by the Swanson twins?”
“Definitely not.” Detective Kim clicked around on his computer and pulled up video of Mr. Talmadge skulking around outside Dill’s store before pulling out his can and spraying paint onto the bricks below the camera. “Dill turned the video over to us this morning. If you look at the times, you can clearly see he arrives around midnight and doesn’t get caught until the Swanson twins walk up at 12:25 on their way back from practicing at the Palace Theater. Since you caught the zombie attacking Mrs. MacGillicuddie at 12:17, he’s accountable for until eight minutes after the attack.”
He fast forwarded to that part, showing the twins coming out the theater’s front door across the street and marching up to Mr. Talmadge. Outraged, one of them put him into a pretty good headlock while the other removed the can from his hand while giving him what looked like the scolding of his life. Even through the camera, she made Ernestine sit up straighter and uncross her legs.
“Do we know what time they arrived at the theater?” Ernestine tapped her lip thoughtfully.
“You think just like a detective.” Detective Kim grinned at her. Ernestine beamed in response. She did so love to have her intellect appreciated. “The janitor said they arrived at eleven, just like they always do as he’s leaving for the night.”
“Hm.” Ernestine tapped her lip with her pen. “What about Rodney, Lyndon, and Aurora Borealis? Do they have alibis?”
Detective Kim shook his head. “They say they were all home asleep at the time of the attack, but none of them can prove it.”
“What about Eduardo? Could he have faked his earlier poisoning and then attacked Mrs. MacGillicuddie?”
“Faked? No. The doctor’s report came back, and he was definitely poisoned. But I suppose it’s always possible that he did so deliberately to throw suspicion away from himself. Heck of a way to do it, though.”
Maybe he poisoned himself with the intent of coming back as a zombie. Though, like Detective Kim, Ernestine rather doubted it. She thanked Detective Kim and headed out. On her way, she pulled out her list and crossed off two names:
For now, Ernestine decided to leave both Eduardo and Mr. Sangfroid on the list. As she walked, she looked for signs of either one of her zombies, Herbert and Ella, but came across nothing other than her own MISSING ZOMBIE posters. From the people she passed, everyone seemed to think the flyers were just part of Mr. Theda’s upcoming appearance at the Palace Theater. The marquee advertised both him reenacting scenes from his most famous movies and the Swanson twins doing a death-defying act beforehand.
As she continued toward MacGillicuddie House, she passed Dill’s store. Spotting her through the plate glass window, he raced out the door and brandished one of the flyers at her. “Is this yours?”
“Er, yes?” Ernestine wasn’t sure if he meant the zombie or the flyer, but either way, she supposed the answer would still be yes.
“He was in yesterday, eating some of the tulip bulbs I’d just gotten in! Shuffled off without even paying for them! Just grunted when I tried to stop him.” The skinny vegan grocer glared at her with his hands on his hips, jaw thrust out like he wanted to know what she was going to do about it.
Ernestine just blinked at him before finally admitting, “I don’t even know what to say to that.”
In answer, Dill thrust out his hand, palm open.
Sighing, Ernestine dug into her pocket for change. “How much were they?”
“Twenty dollars!”
“For tulip bulbs?”
“They’re vegan.” Taking the money, Dill crossed his arms, clearly still unhappy with her. “He’s not going to be back, is he?”
“They always come back,” Ernestine warned in her most foreboding voice.
“Huh. Well, tell them to bring cash when they do.” Dill turned to go, but Ernestine grabbed him by his grocer’s apron and refused to let go.
“Hey, that twenty dollars doesn’t just cover the cost of the tulip bulbs. I want some information, too.” Now it was her turn to thrust out her chin to let him know she meant business.
“What kind of information?” Jerking his apron free from her grip, Dill suddenly looked as hunted as a rabbit, a reaction Ernestine found both unexpected and very, very interesting.
“I want to know why the Swanson twins would be coming to see you at 12:30 in the morning.” That they were coming to visit him was just a wild guess. Well, not entirely wild. Based on the video footage Detective Kim had shown her, the Swanson twins had seemed disproportionately angry at Mr. Talmadge’s vandalism. It was the sort of outrage Ernestine would have shown if she’d caught someone messing around with MacGillicuddie House.
“They weren’t coming to see me.” Suddenly, Dill’s skin color didn’t look so good. His eyes twitched this way and that, as though to see who else might be listening.
“Liar.”
“I am not. You’re the liar.” Dill tried to scoot back in through the door, but Ernestine quickly threw herself in front of it.
Spreading her arms and legs out wide, she said, “If you don’t tell me, I’ll go tell Detective Kim there’s something fishy about you, and then he’ll start wondering if you had anything to do with Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s attempted murders. And then she won’t let you cater any more of her parties, if you’re lucky. If you aren’t, Eduardo and I won’t be able to get the shotgun out of her hands in time.”
Dill gulped. He clutched the twenty she had given him to his chest like he could use it to deflect the imaginary bullets when they started flying. Glancing around to confirm that he wasn’t being stalked by an angry old woman in a sequined dress and tiara, he hissed, “Shhhh! Keep your voice down, will you?”
“I will if you’ll tell me what’s going on.” Ernestine stiffened her arms when he tried to push them down so he could get inside.
“There’s nothing going on!” Dill slapped his face. “Look, Mora’s my mom, okay?”
That was the second time within a few minutes that he’d left Ernestine completely flabbergasted. “Say what now?”
This time Dill was successful in pushing her out of the way, but he didn’t go inside. Instead, he repeated, “My mom is Mora Swanson. Don’t tell anyone, though. I promised her I wouldn’t say anything when she moved in. She doesn’t want anyone to know that she’s old enough to have a grown-up son.”
“Um, okay.” Ernestine was fairly confident that people could guess she was that old anyhow, but she wasn’t about to point that out right now. “So what was she doing here last night?”
“Well, they would have been coming by to see me, if they hadn’t run into that nutjob Talmadge. They stop by every night after they finish practicing over at the Palace.” Dill waved down the street at the fancy old movie theater. He continued on, “What a lunatic that guy is! And Mom and Aunt Libby had even been trying to make things better between us ever since they found out he wanted to open a restaurant in the same space I did. They even convinced Mrs. MacGillicuddie to let me cater her party, thinking he might be in a good enough mood to at least give my food a try. Maybe let a young, new guy have a go at success since he already had his. It, uh, didn’t exactly work out that way.”
“So I noticed,” Ernestine said dryly, remembering the fight about to take place right before the chandelier put a stop to things. “Why do your mom and aunt care if you and Mr. Talmadge get along, anyhow?”
“They’re concerned he might make things difficult for my restaurant if we don’t. Tell people that there’s really chicken in my tofu tacos or hamburger in my meatless lasagna. That sort of thing.” Dill shuddered at the very thought.
Well, that certainly explained what the Swanson twins were doing here last night and what they had been doing while the zombie was off trying to murder Mrs. MacGillicuddie.
With a rodent problem to take care of and a murderer to ferret out, Ernestine returned to MacGillicuddie House around noon. That put her just in time to witness Aurora Borealis scuffling with both Swanson twins outside over an absolutely enormous bouquet of red roses. It was so humongous that Ernestine’s first reaction was to wonder who had died. Her second reaction, of course, was to wonder whether she’d have more success raising a zombie from that corpse, it being really fresh and all, than with Herbert or Ella.
“They’re mine!” one of the Swanson twins cried from the other side of about a hundred blooms. “It clearly says ‘Mora’!”
“It does not!” Bracing her stiletto heels into a crack in the garden path, Aurora Borealis tried to wrench the bush free of the other two. “It says ‘Aurora’!”
Charleston huddled nearby under a sculpture of a rhinoceros made out of old game systems. Red flower petals decorated his hair. As Ernestine approached, he warned, “Don’t try breaking them up. I did, and they all beat me with roses. I’ve still got thorns stuck in my scalp.”
Not one to run away from a confrontation, especially one that promised to be interesting, Ernestine was just about to turn the hose on them and freeze them into decorative sculptures when she noticed Aurora Borealis’s phone lying on the ground.
Snatching it up, she cried, “Selfie!”
Aurora Borealis instinctively stopped what she was doing and posed with her hand on one hip and her lips puffed out in a pout.
That allowed the Swansons enough time to jerk the giant-sized bouquet free and shout, “Ha!” before staggering backward under the weight of all those flowers. Before one of them could be impaled by the Nintendo rhinoceros horn, Charleston shot gallantly forward and steadied them. Ernestine snatched the card off the bouquet and read it. In snowflake-smudged handwriting, it read: Morora. Or possibly: Aumora.
Goodness. Whoever wrote the name out had terrible handwriting.
“Yeah, I’ve got no idea.” Before the squabbling could start up again, Ernestine yanked the bouquet apart. She shoved about fifty roses into Aurora Borealis’s arms and about fifty more into Mora’s arms. “There, each of you gets half. And there better be no complaints, or I’m going to give them all to Charleston for getting thorns in his head. Then you’ll just have to complain to Mrs. MacGillicuddie if you don’t like it.”
“I’m going to tell my daddy on you!” Aurora Borealis whined, clearly not pleased to be receiving a mere two hundred dollars’ worth of roses.
“Oh, don’t be such a crybaby,” Libby said sourly. “And give us back our shoes!”
Aurora Borealis went pale and skittered backward. She glanced guiltily down at her feet, where a pair of high, white shoes covered in crystals glittered up at them all.
The shoes she’d stolen from the Swanson twins the night the chandelier fell.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sticking her nose up in the air, she marched up to the house, dumping her flowers in the garbage can sitting out on the front porch.
“What an awful girl,” Libby muttered, staring after her. “She can afford thousands of pairs of shoes of her own. Why does she have to keep stealing ours?”
“She’s stolen more than one pair?” Ernestine sucked at the various cuts the thorns had made in her hands, trying to get them to stop bleeding.
“Well, someone has! If not her, then who?”
That was an excellent question. Aurora Borealis was, indeed, an awful girl. The question was, had she stolen the green iridescent shoe found on Mr. Sangfroid? Had it once belonged to the Swanson twins or had it come from somewhere else?
Wherever it had come from, had the would-be murderer stolen it from Aurora Borealis?
Or was she a budding murderer as well as a thief?