I laughed. “I really don’t—”
“Before you answer, consider the menu. We will begin with a simple antipasto, perhaps some mozzarella with tomatoes fresh from the vine, sprinkled with basilico and drizzled with bright green olive oil. Then tagliatelle folded with prosciutto and cream, put under the broiler until it is golden on the top. That is followed by a steak so tender you could cut it with a fork, seasoned in the Florentine manner, with the tiny potatoes, roasted alongside. And then we finish with a scroppino. You do not know what that is? You make it by taking a little lemon gelato in a glass, then adding a touch of cream and—”
He stopped talking because I was kissing him. “That’s it!” I said. “That’s the answer!”
He gazed at me, blinking fast. “Does this mean you will come to lunch?”
I felt a huge surge of elation wash over me, like when you walk into a bakery and there are dozens of gorgeous cakes in front of you. Like I was the happiest-slash-luckiest girl in the world. I climbed out of the gondola with my sack of glass, said, “I don’t know. Maybe. Right now I have to go. Thank you!” and ran into the lobby.
I was so happy to see Camilla at her post behind the concierge desk I almost kissed her too. “I need a candle and some matches.”
“Where have you been, Jasmine? They tear up the hotel looking for you!”
“It’s a long story. But it doesn’t matter. Can you get me a candle and some matches?”
“I suppose, but—”
A pink birthday candle and a box of matches slid down the counter toward me, and a voice said, “Here. I hope you’re planning to use them to burn those pants.”
I turned around. And screamed.
Chapter Sixteen
IT WAS POLLY, ROXY, AND TOM! POLLY, ROXY, AND TOM WERE IN VENICE! TOM, POLLY, ROXY—
My brain couldn’t take it in.
Okay, yes, I cried.
I hope you don’t have any idea what it is like to be by yourself for six weeks followed by being with Evil Henches with faerie names for four hours, during which your only friend in Venice was murdered and you spent the night in a police station wearing leather pants and were attacked and had part of your brain start thinking like the heroine in a romance novel, but if you do you can perhaps imagine how I felt seeing my pals.
Even if they were all, inexplicably, wearing water wings.
This was better than a huge bakery. It was like if the Surgeon General declared that you should eat five to nine servings of pastries a day and never look at another vegetable, unless it was on pizza or a taco.
“I’m so happy to see you!” I said, hugging them. 10
They didn’t say anything, naturally being too overcome with emotion. When we got to my room, I ducked into the bathroom to change into a leisure outfit of Polly’s selection—burgundy leggings, a long-sleeved dark yellow dress, and my cowboy boots with the rainbows on them—so I would be more comfortable while we caught up.11
I was all ready to settle in for a nice cozy chat but as soon as I came out of the bathroom, Roxy and Polly shuffled in there with Polly’s carry-on bag and closed the door.12
“What are they do—” I started to say, but Tom interrupted me.
“So, Menudo’s getting back together,” he said.
I stared at him. “I beg your pardon?”
“You know Menudo? The band that gave us Ricky Martin? We flew over with them. Their manager is friends with the King and Queen.” The Cadillac King and Queen were Roxy and Tom’s parents, ex-telenovela stars, now owners of the largest Cadillac dealership west of the Mississippi. “They were coming to do some special show so we hitched a ride on their private plane. I’m not sure they’re going to stay together, though, they fought the whole way over.”
“Wait,” I said, raising my voice so I could be heard in the bathroom. “You came on an airplane with MENUDO? A group that wore Lycra before the Power Rangers made it cool? And you, Polly Prentis, are le busting my chopos over one tiny pair of leather pants?”
“They don’t wear Lycra anymore,” Polly answered through the door.
“Not since Polly spent nine hours on the plane redesigning their costumes,” Tom added.
“What are Polly and Roxy doing in there?” I asked.13
Tom said, “What’s interesting is Menudo isn’t just a band, it’s a food, too.”
I shut him down with a Steely Gaze. “What. Is. Going. On?”
Although Tom could come labeled with both CAUTION: HOT SURFACE and MAY CAUSE TOOTH DECAY because of his good looks and sweetness, my favorite thing about him is that he can’t lie. At all.14
“Do you know what a lute looks like?” he asked.
I stared at him.
“Do you think it’s more like a piano or more like a violin?”
“I think it’s more like a TELL ME WHY YOU’RE HERE RIGHT NOW OR I WILL REMIND POLLY OF HOW YOU USED TO WEAR PLEATED PANTS.”
“That was once! One time! When I was seven! Eleven years ago! And my mom made me.”
“Do you really think that would make a difference to Miss Prentis?”
He took a deep breath. “Okay, the truth is, we missed you.”
I put my hands on my hips with the first two fingers pointing down and wiggled them, the (new) Universal Symbol of Pleated Pants©.
“And we decided you needed us more than we needed a college tour,” he rushed on. “I mean, first there was the whole BadJas-slash-taking-Mr. T-as-your personal-savior thing.” He shot an apprehensive glance at the bathroom door and lowered his voice to say, “Not that I think that’s a bad idea.”
“Thank you. And?”
“When you disappeared from email, it was clear that something dire was happening, so—” As he talked, Tom had wandered over to the bed. “What’s in the brown paper bag?”
“It’s evidence. Don’t change the subject.”
“Evidence? It looks like broken glass.”
“It is. A glass that was broken when I was knocked out this morning by being hit over the head with an object or objects unknown,” I said casually.
He looked at me but said to the bathroom door, “Did you hear that? Someone hit Jas over the head to knock her out.”
“That explains her hair,” Polly said through the door. And then it opened, and she and Roxy stepped into the room.
At least I think it was Polly and Roxy. It was hard to tell since they were both wearing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle masks. They were still sporting their water wings, but had now further accessorized with tool belts. Polly’s had duct tape, nail scissors, a rolled-up magazine, a rolled-up sheath of paper-clipped computer printouts, and hand sanitizer in it. Roxy’s had pliers, an odd-looking pair of tweezers, a snack-pack-sized bag of Teddy Grahams, and a Pez dispenser. Roxy was also holding a notebook and a pair of safety goggles with spirograph patterns and little flashing lights glued on the lenses.
Oh, hello, Insanity Avenue. It’s been so long since I’ve strolled down your wide and attractive sidewalks. “I don’t think the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles wear dresses,” I pointed out to Polly. “Or floaties.”
But the Turtle Formerly Known as Polly was not interested in such cinema verité–type details. “Pull the curtains,” she said ominously to Tom as she and Roxy advanced on me. “This is more serious than we thought.”
“What are you doing?” I asked, backing away from them.
Polly took the duct tape off her tool belt. Roxy, aka Donatello, held out the goggles and said, “We are commencing Operation Extricate Jas. Put these on.”
“Extricate me from what? What are the Teddy Grahams for?”
“To keep up our strength during the arduous ordeal.”
Little Life Lesson 31: “To keep up our strength during the arduous ordeal” is never the right answer to the question “What are the Teddy Grahams for?”
She went on, “Now put on your mind-control goggles so we can access your delta waves.”
Little Life Lesson 32: “Now put on your mind-control goggle
s so we can access your delta waves” is never the right answer to anything.
“What if I like my delta waves the way they are?”
“Don’t be balky, Jas,” Polly said, twirling the duct tape on her finger.
I took the goggles. “Can’t you at least tell me what you have planned?”
Roxy opened the notebook and started reading: “Operation Extricate Jas, Step 1: Convince Jas of the perils of associating with Arabella Neal by telling her about—”
“You don’t have to do that,” I interrupted.
“Yes, we do,” Roxy corrected. “That’s the only operational objective we have so far. Well, except Polly’s private mission with your Wonderbras.”
“Well, then, your operation is over. Arabella Neal is dead.”
Polly dropped the tape. “What? When?”
“Last night. The police think it was suicide. But I—”
“Let me guess,” Polly said, pushing her mask up on her head, “you are convinced it’s murder and you want to prove it and find out who killed her and why.”
“How did you know?”
“I spent my youth playing Crime Scene Barbies with you, Jas.”
“I could be wrong.”
Polly shook her head. “You’ve been wrong about clothes. And you’ve been very wrong about guys—”
“Very, very wrong,” Roxy agreed. “And you were wrong that time you said we’d pass another In-N-Out burger so we didn’t have to stop at the first one but there wasn’t another one for two hundred miles and I almost wasted away through Vitamin Burger withdrawals.”
“—but you’ve never been wrong about a crime before. If you say she was murdered, we think she was murdered. What happened?”
So I told them about the whole thing, from the chase earlier in the afternoon through seeing Arabella’s body, searching for the goldfish, being in the armoire with Bobby, getting knocked out, and getting an idea in the gondola, only leaving out the part where I kissed irrepressibly hot Max.15 It was very cathartic and when I was done Polly said, “Let’s see it. The clue.”
Then she said, “Ack, put it away, put it away!”
“You don’t like the leetle kitty?” I asked, holding it in front of her eyes.
Roxy said, “It’s not, by any chance, made of candy, is it?”
“No, and please don’t use that word around me.”
Polly had her hand over her eyes now, shielding them. “If you give me the paper, I’ll wrap it back up. Jas, please. I think it burns with an inner demonic light. What are you doing, anyway?”
When it had become clear that my friends no longer intended to do an intervention involving my delta waves and duct tape, I’d gotten up and started collecting my tools. As I talked, I’d melted the bottom of the candle and attached it to the ashtray that had come with my room.
“I hope whatever you’re doing involves steak done in the Florentine style,” Roxy said. “I’m starving.”
“What I realized in the gondola was that maybe the clue wasn’t the glass art,” I explained.
Polly sprang to attention. “Does that mean we can shatter it into a thousand small and unrecognizable pieces? Because I feel a strong urge to do that.”
“So if it’s not that objet d’art,” Tom asked, “what is it?”
“The paper it was wrapped in. See how the corner is folded? Arabella always did that when she wrote on something. Her brother said it was some belief she had about the message getting lost if she didn’t.” My friends were looking at me like I’d just graduated from Loony Academy, the School that Madness Built. “What?”
“Jas, sweetie, that paper is blank. There is no message on it,” Roxy told me gently.
“Not yet,” I said, putting on my MysticalJas voice. “But watch closely and before your eyes, I’ll summon a message from the other side.”
At that moment, there was a knock at the door.
Chapter Seventeen
The knock was followed by a voice saying, “Calamity, open up. We know you’re in there.”
“Hark! A message from the other side!” Polly commented as Tom went to let the Evil Henches in.
“Tommmmy!” Veronique and Alyson shrieked in unison, throwing themselves on him.
They were dressed like backup dancers for a band called 1980s Genies from Hell, if there ever was such a band, in outfits that involved billowy black pants, long-sleeved midriff-bearing shirts, suede ankle boots, black fedoras, and belly chains.
Le yes. Belly chains. With dangly charms on them.16
Because of the way they were clinging to Tom I’d only had a partial view, but I got a complete eyeful as Alyson turned to me and said, “Why didn’t you tell us the dead girl was Arabella Neal? We thought it was just some regular nobody, not a Brand Name.”
What a kind-slash-humanitarian approach to life! “I’m sorry, I assumed the spirits would inform you. If I’d realized—”
“Shut up, Jas.”
Because I am a people pleaser, I obliged her. Also I had work to do. Leaving Roxy to disentangle the Wu-Genie Clan from Tom, and Polly searching through her bag for her BluBlocker glasses, I lit the candle and held the paper over it.
Nothing happened.
When Max was talking in the gondola, I’d remembered the squeezed lemons and the Q-tip at Arabella’s and decided that she’d written a secret message in lemon juice for me on the wrapping of the Kitty that would show up when exposed to heat. But as Nothing continued to be the only thing Happening, I thought maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe there was no secret message.
Although I had never practiced Hope-Slowly-Giving-Way-to-Misery-&-Despair as an expression in the mirror, I was pretty sure I was nailing it right then. Because if there was no message that meant the cat was it.
Which meant: Despair.
Also: Doom.
“Try the other side of the paper,” Roxy suggested. “The side you’re holding has tape running down it and that keeps the words from showing up.”
I moved the paper around.
Still nothing.
“Calamity, if you’re done trying to burn the hotel down, maybe we could all, like, go do something. You know, something that doesn’t suck.”
“Thank you for your support, Genie Sapphyre—”17
“It’s just Sapphyre,” she corrected me.
“—but no one asked you to come and hang out here.”
“You always act like you put the U in SUPER, but I bet that Tiger’s*Eye and I18 can figure out what happened to Arabella before you can.”
“How?”
“By summoning helpful spirits through an open, optimistic mind.”
“We do it by tuning into the vibrations of the universe,” Veronique elaborated.
“Excellent. Go ahead and get started. Here.” I handed her the paper the cat had come wrapped in. “See if you and Sapphyre can get the spirits to write on this.”19
Roxy grabbed my arm. “Look!”
I’d been right after all! There was a message written in lemon juice! The first word to appear was NONE. Then XPLAN. It took a while, but after about three minutes we had it. It read:
FTHR POISN
THRU HAND
BAUR BX 34
WIL XPLAN.
TRST NONE!
FIND M!
“See, Jas,” Alyson said. “All it took was a little positive thinking.”
I said, “.” Really, it was the only thing to say.
Q-tips aren’t exactly fine-point rollerballs, so the short message pretty much filled up the entire paper from edge to taped edge, even in that breezy telegraph style.
“What does it mean?” Polly asked. “I mean, I get ‘Trust No One,’ because that’s upbeat and cheery, but what about the rest?”
“I don’t know who M is, but I’m pretty sure this means her father was poisoned through his hand, and the proof of it is in safety deposit box thirty-four at the Bauer Hotel,” I said, and I think my voice might have shaken with excitement. Because here, finally, were clue
s in the offering!
“Is it close to pizza?” Roxy KettleKörn said.
“But Ned Neal died of a heart attack while locked in his office,” Polly objected. “I have an article about it, right here.”
“Not according to Arabella. She thought he was murdered.”
“Oh. Oh, no.”
“We could discuss this so much more comfortably with pizza,” Roxy said conversationally.
“Oh, yes,” I told Polly. “And now we’ve got some evidence. Let’s—Roxy, what are you doing?”
“What, me? It’s an interpretive dance. I call it ‘Feed Me Pizza or Risk Something Really Bad Happening.’”
“Wait, are you saying you’re hungry?”
“Do not taunt me.”
“After we pick up the box, I’ll take you to a place where they have one hundred and forty-two kinds of pizza.”
Roxy’s eyes got huge. “Did you say one hundred and forty-two?”
“Yes. And often Italian people order French fries as an appetizer while they are waiting for pizza.”
“I LOVE YOU, ITALY!”
With that established, we set out for the Bauer.20
Little Life Lesson 33: If you ever want to meet the security staff at a fancy hotel, just march into the lobby with a posse that includes four people in customized floaties and two members of the Jackson 5 Genie Tour, who are vibrating, and announce that you want to get into a safety deposit box that doesn’t exist.
Little Life Lesson 34: Starting the whole conversation off with, “Hey, man, how’s tricks?” because you’re too excited to remember how to say “Good day, how are you?” properly also helps.
Although she was very precise in her home life, Arabella was a bit neglectful of details in her correspondence. Like it turned out, when we got to the Bauer, 21 there was no box 34. There was a box 34A, a box 34B, and a box 34C, but for some reason the desk clerk was reluctant to tell us which one was Arabella’s or allow us to try the seventh key on her I-Heart-Hotcakes keychain on all of them just for kicks.
Roxy’s suggestion that we try the mind-control glasses on him was unanimously vetoed. Leaving the Evil Henches in the lobby to terrify the guests and beseech the spirits for the answer, the rest of us went outside so Tom could use his Imitate Anyone over the Phone superpower to place a call in what he guessed was Ned Neal’s banker’s voice asking the manager to extend any and all courtesies to Arabella’s friends. I’m not sure if it was the call or the fact that he wanted to get Alyson and Veronique to stop chanting in his reception area, but although the manager did not look like he wished to throw festive dinner parties in our honor, he did agree to grant one of us access to Arabella’s box, 34C.