Dirty, stinky, and tired, Sloane and Amelia returned Chiave to Mr. Lindsay once they found their way back to the mansion. Aiden and Ashley were slinking about the entry hall, whispering to each other and eyeing up the enormous museum vase full of peonies.
When Amelia passed by them, covered in mud and grass and looking like she’d just crawled out of a movie about the Great Depression, both of her half-siblings barely gave her a glance.
“Don’t you have anything to say?” she demanded.
Aiden and Ashley jumped guiltily. Then they immediately started acting extremely, aggressively casual.
“Hey, sis!” Aiden stretched and then did some lunges. “Nothing to see here! Just doing my stretches before a run!”
He wore a pair of dress pants, a collared shirt, and a tie. Definitely not running clothing.
“Yup! Me too!” Ashley stretched her arms high above her head in spite of the fact that she wore a dress and heels. “Think I’ll get in a five-kilometer run.”
“I was going to do a ten-kilometer run!”
“Yes, but I was going to do my run after I’d kayaked ten miles,” Ashley countered smugly.
“In your dress and heels?” Amelia asked, confused. “And you in your tie and dress shoes?”
Both Aiden and Ashley started, then went bug-eyed at being caught out in lies.
“Yup!” they both agreed.
And took off running to prove it.
Amelia stared after them, dazed.
“I could be wrong,” Sloane said, “but I think my grannies have somehow manipulated them into collecting peony-growing information from the competition.”
Returning to their room, they took turns in the bathroom to scrub the mud, heat, and humidity of the woods off their skin. Sloane also strongly recommended that they check themselves over for ticks, but fortunately, neither one of them found anything.
Clean and smelling much fresher, they got around to lunch. As they did so, Amelia checked their YouTube channel. What she saw pleased her immensely. “We’re back up over a thousand now, Sloane. Though one of them is QueenMac329, and I’m pretty sure that’s Mackenzie Snyder because that user posted that we’re super lame and should just give up.”
Pulling her long dark hair back up into a ponytail, Sloane peered over her friend’s shoulder. “And I think that one there is her grandma. You know, ‘QueenMacGramma’? The one who says we have stinky butts and are dumber than her granddaughter?”
Both Sloane and Amelia stared at the screen, considering this.
“Sloane?” Amelia said. “Are we being bullied by a grandma?”
“I actually think it’s more that Mac’s grandma is trying to bully my grandmas, and we’re sort of in the way.” Sloane twisted the tip of her ponytail around her finger, thinking. “Hm, or maybe Mackenzie and her grandma are trying to bully us, and my grannies are in the way.”
“Either way, I’m blocking them.” Amelia blew a dismissive sound, tapping at her tablet with her finger.
As soon as she’d done it, Amelia tossed her tablet easily aside and began rooting around in her suitcases for the perfect outfit to wear. Sloane watched her friend, confused.
“Doesn’t it bother you that Mac and her grandma posted that?” she asked.
“Not really.” Amelia shrugged. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. It was awful when we were in school, and she was always making fun of me. But now… well, I guess I feel like snobby Mackenzie Snyder isn’t the person I want to like me.”
Amelia started out sounding casual and indifferent, but by the time she’d finished, hurt bled into her words. She tried to toss them off like they didn’t matter, but her voice got thick and soggy, betraying just how much she ached inside.
“Amelia,” Sloane said hesitantly, trying to be as careful as a doctor examining a wound. “I don’t think it’s that your family doesn’t like you.”
“Oh yeah? Then what is it?” Amelia demanded, scrunching up the dress she’d picked into a tight ball. “Because they sure act like it!”
“Honestly? I think they know that you’re super creative and smart in ways that they aren’t.” Sloane felt so awkward saying it that she kept twisting and twisting her hair. “And it’s surprised them and made them feel unsure about themselves. And I don’t think that’s something your family is used to feeling.”
Amelia released the dress she’d squeezed in her fists. She thought about what Sloane said. “I like your version better than my version. But I don’t know that I believe it.”
That wasn’t exactly true.
Amelia desperately wanted to believe that Sloane’s version was the correct version.
That she was wrong when she was convinced that her family was laughing at her behind her back. Or rolling their eyes at her.
The trouble of it was, she wanted it to be true so badly that Amelia didn’t think she could bear it if she believed it only to find out that Sloane was wrong.
It was easier not to feel loved and cared for than to think that you were and have it taken away from you.
Some of this showed in Amelia’s face, but before Sloane could figure out what to say to it, her phone rang. Relieved that she wouldn’t have to figure out how to deal with something that felt too big, Sloane pulled out her phone and opened a FaceTime call from her dad.
“Hi, Sloane!” he cried happily. “Are you having fun with Amelia and her family? Are you discovering lots of clues about what happened to that yak-leaning lady’s money?”
“ ’Yaklin’,” Sloane corrected, grinning. She was sure that her dad knew that and was just making a dad joke.
“Hey, do you know where the pizza cutter is?” her dad asked, the camera swaying back and forth as he looked through the kitchen drawers. “Weren’t you using it for something the other day?”
“I couldn’t find the scissors, so I was using it to cut apart some paper.” Sloane made a face. “It didn’t end well. I think it’s still up in my room. Why?”
Before he could answer, a woman’s voice called out, “Pizza is here!”
Cynthia.
Seife.
“Yay!” children’s voices cried. David Osburn turned around, giving Sloane a clear view of Skye and Brighton as they crowded eagerly around the table. Smiling at them, Cynthia set down two steaming cardboard boxes. Brighton immediately lifted the lid to peer inside.
“Bacon and banana peppers? Ew—gross! Who eats bacon and banana peppers?” He wrinkled his nose in disgust.
Sloane and her dad ate pizza with bacon and banana peppers, that was who.
Sloane and her dad.
And now her dad and Cynthia ate it too, apparently.
“That’s not for you, silly. But it is Sloane’s favorite, so David wanted me to give it a try.” Cynthia ruffled her son’s hair affectionately. Then she opened the lid on the other box. “Here’s a cheese pizza for you and Skye.”
Brighton and Skye both sagged in visible relief. Picking up a piece of the cheese pizza and biting into it, Brighton leaned into the phone’s camera. From around a mouthful of mozzarella, he mumbled at Sloane, “You eat gross stuff? I didn’t know that you eat gross stuff.”
Actually, Sloane had once bitten into a ghost pepper on a dare. (And then immediately regretted it.) However, that had nothing to do with this. “Bacon and banana pepper pizza isn’t gross! It’s delicious! Look, Dad, I’ve gotta go.”
Before he could answer, she ended the call.
Clutching her phone in both hands, Sloane stared at the room in front of her.
Her dad was eating bacon and banana pepper pizza without her.
Was he about to watch old episodes of Doctor Who with Cynthia and her kids too? That was their thing—her and her dad’s and her mom’s, back when Maisy Osburn was alive. They’d eat pizza and watch the cheesy old episodes from the 1970s. The Osburns were the only ones in the whole world who did that, and even after her mom died, Sloane and her dad had kept right on doing it.
Her dad was replacing her and the memory of her mom with Cynthia Seife and her kids.
It wasn’t that Sloane didn’t want her dad to move on. She did.
But she wanted him to take her along.
Instead, she’d only been gone two days, and he’d already moved an entirely new family into the house.
“Breathe,” Amelia encouraged her once again, finding Sloane curled up on the tombstone bed. She tugged the phone out of Sloane’s clenched fingers as her friend hyperventilated. “Breathe. They’re just eating pizza, okay? It’s just pizza.”
“Our pizza!” Sloane cried between gasps. “Our special Doctor Who pizza! They’re eating it without me!”
“Maybe that’s because your dad likes bacon and banana pepper pizza too,” Amelia pointed out. “Maybe he just ordered what he likes on a pizza. And you don’t know that they’re watching Doctor Who together. Did you even see the TV turned on?”
“Well… no,” Sloane admitted, breath calming. She realized that she’d wrapped a strand of hair so tightly around one finger that it had cut off her circulation. Sitting upright, she released it. “Do you really think that’s it? That it’s just pizza?”
“I’m positive,” Amelia assured her. “My family would mail me back to the stork if it accepted returns, but your family would turn the stork into a Thanksgiving turkey if it ever tried to take you back.”
In spite of herself, Sloane grinned. “Thanks. That’s really horrifying. But thank you. And you’re wrong about your family, you know. They just don’t know what to do now that they aren’t bossing you around all the time. And from what I’ve seen, Miller-Poes do not like it when they don’t know something.”
“That’s an understatement.” Amelia scowled.
Still, they both felt a bit better.
Not completely better. But better enough. For now.
Amelia had changed out of her hobo overalls and into a tie, button-down shirt, jacket, and fedora. Instead of a corncob bubble pipe, she’d stuck a toothpick in her mouth, explaining, “This is how all gumshoes dressed in the twenties and thirties.”
“What’s a gumshoe?” Sloane felt she should know but couldn’t remember.
“A detective. The detective is for chomping on while I squint at the suspect like I don’t believe a word he’s saying.”
“I thought we were already detectives.”
“We were girl detectives before. Smart and stylish. Now we’re bitter and hard-boiled,” Amelia explained, cheering up. “When we question people, I scare them by pounding on the table. Or maybe flipping it over. I haven’t quite decided which just yet.”
Quickly Sloane assured her, “I think pounding will be scary enough. No need to flip anything.”
For her own part, Sloane pulled on a jersey dress, feeling she needed to be fancier than shorts and a shirt. But not feeling like she could pull off the 1920s detective look herself.
Starting downstairs, they jerked to a halt at the balcony overlooking the entry hall. Below, the mansion was filled with people, all elegantly dressed. Not tuxedos-and-gowns elegant, but summery, Who, me? I just threw on this fabulous outfit casual. Flowy dresses for the women and pressed pants and pastel shirts for the men.
All of them were milling about the marble-topped table with its enormous vase of peonies. Smiling at each other in the way adults sometimes did when they secretly wanted to smash pies into each other’s faces.
But—being adults—they didn’t.
Even if privately they desperately wanted to start a food fight.
If they did, there would be plenty of food to pick from. Waiters in 1920s–style tuxedos circled among the guests, carrying silver trays heavy with snacks. Kuneman—the woman in the pink dress from dinner the night before—“accidentally” almost sloshed a glass of punch onto Baker’s shoes. That was the woman in the blue silk dress who seemed to be Kuneman’s sworn enemy. Once again, they wore pink and blue, with Kuneman preferring diamond jewelry and Baker, pearl jewelry.
In exchange for Kuneman’s attempted assault, Baker also “accidentally” sloshed her glass of punch onto one of Kuneman’s peonies in the museum vase on the hall table, staining it from orange to red.
Both Shakespeare and Mr. Boening-Bradley had to intervene to tear the two of them apart before anyone’s silk gown could get torn to tatters by garden shears. Not needing any shears of his own, the president of the Ohio Peony Enthusiasts Club clicked his fingers menacingly together the same way a praying mantis clapped its claws. That seemed to unnerve even the two warring competitors.
“Maybe now isn’t the best time to grill our suspects about what they know,” the normally drama-loving Amelia admitted. She liked her skin in one piece.
“No, no, no—now is good.” Sloane started down the steps, taking her friend by the elbow and dragging her along. “They’ll all be busy and distracted, so maybe they’ll let something slip. Besides, even if we get—I don’t know—shanked with a garden hoe by some ritzy peony-obsessed weirdo, it still beats sitting upstairs in our room feeling sorry for ourselves.”
“I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself!” Amelia protested hotly as they reached the bottom of the stairs and were swallowed up by the crowd.
The portrait gallery was closed off for the moment. Based on what they could hear from people talking, the Judge and the rest of the peony judging committee were inside, inspecting the peonies. That was why everyone outside was so tense. Both Amelia and Sloane got the sense that, if one of the gardeners was murdered, their peony might be disqualified.
Or at least the other gardeners seemed to think that.
“Let’s split up,” Sloane whispered to Amelia. “You go question Chef Zahra and Shakespeare. I’ll take Mr. Boening-Bradley and Sergeant Pepper.”
“Why do I have to take the person armed with a meat cleaver?”
“Fine. I’ll trade you Chef Zahra for Mr. Boening-Bradley.”
Amelia thought that over for a moment, then shook her head. “No, I’ll take my chances with the chef. At least she needs a meat cleaver to murder me. Mr. Boening-Bradley seems like he could do it with his bare claws. Er, hands.”
They went their separate ways. Amelia found Chef Zahra in the kitchen but was too intimidated by the way she was confidentially banging pans and flipping things in skillets to try to flip over anything herself.
“Yes, that’s my office down the hall, and yes, those newspaper clippings are mine,” the chef said absently when Amelia questioned her.
“I looked you up online,” Amelia said, feeling this was a thing a 1920s detective normally wouldn’t say. “You were working at a pretty big hotel in Chicago before you took this job here at Tangle Glen about a year ago.”
“So?”
“So, isn’t this kind of a step down?” Amelia swallowed nervously, keeping an eye on a nearby set of knives. “Why would you leave there to come here?”
Several of the junior chefs were leaning toward the two of them, clearly trying to listen to what Chef Zahra would say. Noticing it, she let out a hiss, grabbed Amelia, and hustled her into the pantry.
“Please don’t fillet me!” Amelia squeaked, snatching up a baguette loaf with which to defend herself in case Chef Zahra tried.
“What are you talking about? Get your hands off my food!” The chef yanked the bread loaf out of Amelia’s hands. Then, lowering her voice, she said, “Look, kid. If I tell you, will you get out of my kitchen?”
Amelia nodded.
Chef Zahra sighed, rolled her eyes, and straightened her apron. “You’re right. Technically, coming here is a step backward. But my mom is a professor of horticulture over at the University of Toledo.” When Amelia frowned in confusion, Chef Zahra explained, “That means she teaches the science of growing plants. She’s the one who first told me about this peony competition. They give out some pretty big awards, with the top one being for fifty thousand dollars. I want to open my own restaurant, and winning that money would help me do it. Mom knew that Jacqueline Yaklin had an award-winning breed of peonies, and I thought I’d re-create it. Even if it doesn’t win, I can sell it to a gardening company and make decent money. So, yeah, I never planned on sticking around here very long, but I’d rather not tell all of my chefs that, okay? What’s it to you, anyhow?”
Scrounging up her courage, Amelia said, “Fifty thousand is a lot of money. But if you were researching Ma Yaklin’s peonies, then you have to know that there’s also two million dollars hidden somewhere around Tangle Glen. Tell me you don’t want that money for your restaurant!”
Just in case she’d made the chef mad, Amelia snatched up a jar of pickles and held it threateningly.
However, Chef Zahra just laughed. “Are you kidding me? Kid, that money is long gone! Unless it’s locked up tight in a metal box, mice ate it a long time ago if it’s anywhere in the house. And if Jacqueline Yaklin buried it anywhere outside, it’s rotted away. No thanks! I’ll stick with the money I can actually get. Not some ghost money.”
Still chuckling, Chef Zahra went back to her pots and pans in the kitchen. Amelia slunk out of the kitchen, feeling a bit embarrassed and confused.
Could the chef be right?
Were they chasing ghost money?
Amelia imagined posting a video to YouTube of her and Sloane finding tattered scraps that had once been Ma Yaklin’s money. She could only imagine the comments they’d get about that. And not just from Mackenzie Snyder and her mean grandma.
Then Amelia remembered Sloane saying something about Ma Yaklin hiding her money in a metal box too. Bootleggin’ Ma Yaklin had been a smart woman. If both Chef Zahra and Sloane could think of storing the money safely in a metal box, then Ma Yaklin would have known to do it too.
Shakespeare Wikander likewise admitted to growing the purple peonies out in the clearing in the woods. However, when Amelia pressed him on whether he was digging for something else out there, he denied it.
“Look, I don’t really like nature,” he said as he practiced turning his feather duster into a bouquet of Sergeant Pepper’s roses and then back again. “Gardens are fine, but the only reason I grew my peonies in the clearing was so Chef Zahra wouldn’t see them. Aside from taking care of my soon-to-be-award-winning plants, I’d rather stay out of the woods. Too many bugs and snakes.”
Shuddering, he hurried off to break up Baker and Kuneman again as they swiped silver trays from the waiters and got ready to whack each other with them, tottering on their high heels, the chandelier light glinting off their jewels. The sight of the roses he was holding at least united the two of them in ganging up on the house manager and sneering at him for carrying around “such a common flower!”
Sloane similarly struck out with Mr. Boening-Bradley, who waved her away with his handkerchief held at the tips of his spindly, insect-like fingertips. “Shoo! Leave, you unpleasant child! Don’t you know it’s gauche to talk about money?”
“Go?” Sloane repeated in confusion, looking behind herself. He already had waved her all the way to the wall. “Go where?”
“Not ‘go’! Gauche! It’s French for—oh, never mind.” Rolling his eyes, Mr. Boening-Bradley tucked his handkerchief back into his pocket. “The point is, one doesn’t talk about money. One just has it. And one certainly doesn’t go tromping about someone else’s house, trying to find it!”
Sloane didn’t know who this “one” person was, but she had one more question for him. Crossing her arms, she scowled and demanded, “Oh yeah? Well, tell me that you wouldn’t lock me and Amelia in the basement!”
Looking about, Mr. Boening-Bradley lowered his face to Sloane’s. She squeezed herself against the wall to keep away from it. His eyes looked more bug-eyed than ever. His jaw even more like a praying mantis’s. “I would happily shut the two of you in the basement and throw away the key! Alas, I can’t take credit for that absolutely brilliant idea. If you find out who did it, let me know so I can shake that person’s hand!”
With that, he hopped away. Well, he walked. But somehow he managed to give the impression of a whole plague of locusts.
Glaring after him, Sloane resolved to get her hands on some bug spray and zap Mr. Boening-Bradley with it the next time he got close.
She had better success with Sergeant Pepper, whom she found out in the garden, trimming the rosebushes as rain began to fall from the heavy clouds that had gathered around Tangle Glen. The gardener wore a grubby pair of overalls and thick gloves. She grimaced up at the drizzle and started collecting her tools, placing them into a nearby wheelbarrow.
“Hey, Sloane!” Sergeant Pepper grinned at her, then winced as a raindrop smacked her in the eye. She’d snipped off one of the deep red roses and tucked it into her ponytail. Wiping the rain from her face, she offered one to Sloane, too. “Want a rose? I’m so sick of smelling peonies that I’m wearing one until the competition is over. All those peony competitors are driving me wild! I’ve never had so many people sneer and make snide comments about my gardens.”
Sloane accepted the rose and tucked it into her ponytail too. For no other reason than because she was sure that it would annoy Mr. Boening-Bradley if he saw it. However, before she could question Sergeant Pepper on where she was when Sloane and Amelia had been locked in the basement or what she knew about where Ma Yaklin’s money might be, Chiave came romping up, tail wagging.
With Sergeant Pepper’s wallet in her mouth once again.
“Oh, you bad dog,” Sergeant Pepper sighed, taking it back and wiping the slime off in the grass. To Sloane, she said, “She’s just a great big puppy, always wanting to play.”
“At least when she’s stealing wallets, she isn’t crawling all over the peonies or peeing on them,” Sloane pointed out as she followed Sergeant Pepper and Chiave back to a large gardening shed.
“True,” the gardener admitted as they went inside. Once there, she tucked her wallet into a backpack while Chiave sniffed everything in sight. (But, fortunately, did not pee on any of it.)
Sloane looked around. The room was pretty grungy and full of junk, with old, smeared windows and lots of rough wooden tables and benches. Dirt and dead garden clippings covered the floor, and rusty equipment sat everywhere. Clay pots and metal pails jostled for space on warped wooden shelves with old books, a typewriter, lots of paintbrushes, a broken lamp, and about three dozen other things that no one seemed to want anymore but couldn’t bear to throw out. Off to one side, a rickety set of stairs led upward, probably to more storage on the second floor.
A large, tattered photo album lay open on one of the tables, next to a seed catalog.
“Hey, that’s Tangle Glen back a long time ago, isn’t it?” Going over to the album, Sloane pointed at a water-stained black-and-white picture.
“From the early 1930s.” Sergeant Pepper nodded, joining her as she took off her muddy gloves. “Mr. Lindsay gave it to me. He’d like me to try to re-create what the gardens looked like back when his grandfather first bought the place.” She flipped the page. “See, there he is.”
Anderson Lindsay stood in front of the mansion, smiling smugly and pointing at the holes were Ma Yaklin’s peonies used to be. There was just no denying that he was pleased by the destruction—if you knew what had happened.
Sergeant Pepper clearly didn’t, because she said, “I think he must have been getting ready to plant some peonies in there. Mr. Lindsay said his grandfather was runner-up at the Annual Ohio Peony Enthusiasts Competition back in 1932. Those are the same bushes that are out front now. Did you know that they can live to be a hundred years old? I had a great-aunt who was a pretty good gardener, too.”
Sloane did not, and wasn’t sure when that information would come in handy. Still, she made a polite noise and flipped a page. There was another picture of Anderson Lindsay, this time with a little boy who Sloane assumed was probably Mr. Lindsay’s father, and a bloodhound who must have been the first Chiave. Or, at the very least, another Chiave.
Only—hang on a second.
Under the picture, someone had handwritten names. They were:
ANDERSON, CLYDE, AND ELIZABETH
Elizabeth? Who was Elizabeth?
“Isn’t that dog’s name Chiave?” Sloane asked, poking at the picture.
“Oh—no, he shows up later. See, here he is.” Sergeant Pepper flipped through the pages until she found a spread of dog pictures. In one, two bloodhounds licked a laughing toddler Clyde. In another, one dog dug at some freshly planted peony bushes while the other one watched. In yet a third, a dog sniffed sadly at a fence that had been staked around the bushes.
In the fourth photograph, both dogs panted happily at the camera, surrounded by a pack of puppies.
“Mr. Lindsay said that Elizabeth was runner-up in a money-sniffing competition,” Sergeant Pepper explained, as Elizabeth’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great-granddog tried to paw her way into the gardener’s backpack again to steal her wallet. “Back then, both the police and bootleggers would train their dogs to sniff out things like that. Actually, the police still do that today, sometimes. Anyhow, Mr. Lindsay’s grandfather must have decided that Elizabeth’s super-sniffer was worth hanging on to. So, he got another bloodhound and the two had puppies.”
“Uh-huh,” Sloane agreed distractedly. “Hey, mind if I borrow this picture? Thanks, I’ll bring it right back!”
Before Sergeant Pepper could actually reply, Sloane plucked the stiff old photograph out of the triangles sticking it to the page.
“What? Hey, wait! That’s Mr. Lindsay’s photo!” Sergeant Pepper cried.
However, it was too late.
Sloane was already sprinting out of the gardening shed and back toward the mansion.
Because she was pretty sure of two things.
One, that Elizabeth was the dog Anderson Lindsay had been holding in the old newspaper clipping when he’d been in the background after the sniffing competition in 1932. The one where he’d been glaring jealously at Ma Yaklin.
The second thing Sloane was sure of was that the first Chiave looked exactly like Eli.
Anderson Lindsay had dognapped him.