Madhattan Mystery (13 page)

“
IT'S SIX FORTY-FIVE IN THE MORNING! I'LL CALL THE COPS
!”

“Six forty-five,” Lexi repeated sheepishly.

Miss Carelli had stopped singing too. There was silence except for the ticking chicken clock on the wall with its giant darting eyeballs. Lexi guzzled the rest of her milk, crossing “singing” off her mental checklist of possible talents—one she
for sure
did not possess.

“Sorry I blew your free lesson. I sound like a constipated macaw.”

“Oh, that old coot's always complaining about every little thing. How about some waffles? There're fresh blueberries to top them with.”

“I'm not in a very waffley mood.” Lexi slid into a chair, folding one leg under the other, and plunked her glass down on the table.

“
Yeeesh!
” Aunt Roz squealed.

Had she set it right on her aunt's script? “Ooh, sorry!” Lexi moved the glass and quickly blotted the water ring with a corner of the
New York Post
. She smiled when she realized Aunt Roz hadn't reacted to the glass at all, but had just ripped off her pore strip.

“I found the perfect opening night dress, Alexandra, on sale at Macy's. A real stunner, wait till you see. Just clingy enough without making me look too hippy.”

“Oh. Good.”

Resting her groggy head on her palm, Lexi took in her aunt's collection of show posters and country kitsch covering the walls. There wasn't a bare spot to rest your eyes in the entire apartment, but it still somehow came across as neat. Organized clutter. And with a definite
decorating motif: half theater lobby, half Vermont bed-and-breakfast.

“I'll pick it up next week.” Aunt Roz loaded the toaster with frozen waffles and glanced over at Lexi. “You have to eat
something
, hon. How about my famous scrambled eggs à la Roz?”

“That's okay.” Lexi slid out of her chair and lumbered over to the sink to rinse out her glass. “Not hungry.” She had the odd sensation that someone was staring at her the whole time, just like with Gabe in Our Lady of Loretto—and it wasn't Aunt Roz or the chicken clock. Nothing else had eyes except a needlepoint of a goose in a bonnet hanging over the counter—and a poster from the Broadway show
Les Misérables
. Bingo! The stringy-haired, sad-eyed orphan logo was definitely the culprit.
That gastronomical feast for Melrose! Or whatever her real name was
. How could she forget?

“Oh, you know what, Aunt Roz? I changed my mind!” Now Lexi was wide awake and then some. “I'll take some waffles to go, please. And you might as well throw in those eggs, too.”

“Well, of course. I thought you weren't—”

“Plastic containers? D'ya have any?”

“Um, try the cabinet next to the fridge.” Her aunt looked puzzled as Lexi ran around the kitchen, buzzing like a cell phone on vibrate.

“I am so brain-dead in the morning. I totally forgot how famished I get at camp when we're off doing, you
know—camp stuff.” Just like stealing to help the less fortunate, fibbing to loved ones was allowed under extreme circumstances, she decided as she searched through cabinets and drawers, gathering plasticware, duck sauce packets, a bag of double-stuffed Oreos … “Kevin does too, so—”

“What do I do?” Kevin appeared in the doorway in a black
Star Trek
T-shirt, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Something smells good.”

“Waffles and eggs—come help yourself, sweetheart,” Aunt Roz said, slaving away at the stove now, like a fry cook at a diner. “Unless you want yours to go too.”

“Huh?”

“Have some now and take some for later,” Lexi said to him with big eyes. “You know how you get. How you're always starving to death in the middle of those long—whatchamacallits—nature hikes.” She crammed a cookie into his questioning mouth and gave his cheeks a little slap. “Wakey-wakey, eggs and bakey.”

“There's bacon?”

He was clueless, but no matter. Aunt Roz went on to prepare a feast worthy of a soccer team and laid it all out on the counter. “Take it all,” she said, practically fainting into a chair with a fresh cup of coffee and a sigh. “I certainly don't want it getting back to Mark that I starved his children.”

Lexi gave her a grateful peck on the cheek and got busy packing the food.

“I feel just awful that I haven't been able to spend much time with you kids, you know? What with the play, and camp, and the world exploding around us.” Aunt Roz fluffed the
New York Post
, licked a finger, and turned the first page with it. “But tomorrow is Saturday and I promise to make it up to you. I have a music rehearsal in the morning—a costume fitting, but then I'm free the rest of the day.” She crumpled down the paper. “What do you guys say we paint the town red? A Day of Family Fun! We can go to the zoo, the park, wherever you like. Are you listening or am I talking to the wall? How about the planetarium, Kevin? I'll bet you'd love that.”

He was in the middle of sucking down blueberries but gave an eager nod.

“Then afterward, I'll whip up a fabulous home-cooked dinner before we head out to Radio City. An old stage manager friend of mine wrangled up four free tickets for the show that's there now—some dance troupe, I forget. We could take Kimmy!”

“Oh, joy,” Lexi grumbled.

“You don't sound very excited, Alexandra.”

“No, I am.”
Not really
. “I'll tell her today.”
Or not
.

“You may as well ask her to dinner, too, while you're at it,” Aunt Roz said, and turned another page. She slowly buried her nose in the newspaper; then jutted the paper out at arm's length, blinking widely. “What in the world? ‘
KILLER TOMATOES THREATEN THE MIDWEST
'? This has to be some kind of joke.”

Lexi stopped what she was doing and zoomed over to her aunt to read the headline in question. “What? Where?” She focused in on it. “That's killer
tornadoes
!”

It took a second before they all erupted in a fit of laughter. Kevin grabbed two tomatoes off the windowsill and staggered around the kitchen, pretending they were attacking him. He accidentally knocked a huge copper kettle off the radiator, causing Mr. Findlay to yell “QUIET!” again, which made things even funnier.

“Oh, boy, that's one for the books,” Aunt Roz said as the laughter died down. “I'm blind as a bat without my bifocals. Kevin, be a love and check my nightstand for them? I don't know where I possibly could've—”

Before she could finish her sentence, he did a sock-slide into the living room—then right back.

“What's bifocals?”

“Eyeglasses. I need them to see both near
and
far. Don't get old!”

Kevin disappeared again while Lexi retrieved the kettle, still giggling about the killer tomatoes. She plunked it back on the radiator and perched on the edge nearest her aunt.

“How about we get dressed to the nines for our night out on the town, Alexandra? We can do up your hair in a French twist.”

Lexi gasped. Not because of the hair-don't, but because of the small headline that jumped off page two of the
Post
.

“Uh, what? Sure, I'd like that,” she lied, and made a mental note to rip out the article before she left.
Person of interest? We'd better get cracking
. She fingered her opal necklace, picturing the day that lay ahead. Maneuvering dark, spooky tunnels with Melrose and Kim Ling—at each others' throats, spiders in their hair, rats at their feet. She looked down at actual goose bumps sprouting on her arm and noticed something else. “Wait, aren't
those
your glasses? Hanging around your neck?”

Aunt Roz's head dropped. “Well, for heaven's sake.” Sure enough, her glasses were poking out from her robe. She clucked her tongue and slid on her glasses. “Never mind, Kevin!” she called out. “Sometimes you can drive yourself crazy looking for something that's right under your nose.”

Lexi's breath caught. Right under her nose, huh?
Was that another mysterious clue from the universe? Are the jewels somehow buried right under our noses?
She thought hard about it for a second and concluded that she was being supersensitive—which was normal under the circumstances.

“Look what I found on the bureau!” Kevin said, slipping and sliding back into the kitchen with a large brown
package. “Can I open it, Aunt Roz? It's addressed to me and Lex.”

“Oh, I completely forgot! Yes, go ahead. That arrived for you yesterday from your parents.”

“Pa
rent
,” Lexi said with stiff curiosity, but headed in the opposite direction.

Aunt Roz went to get scissors from a kitchen drawer, but Kevin was already elbow-deep in packing popcorn before she got back. “Presents! Score!” he announced, waving a blue package tied with yellow ribbons. Seconds later, the wrappings were strewn all over the floor and he was testing out his shiny gold collapsible mini-telescope. “Awesome!” He demonstrated it for Lexi and Aunt Roz, then flew into the living room, yelling, “There's something in there for you, too, Lex!”

“Hmm.” Lexi took her sweet time readying Melrose's food stash before wandering back to the table for her gift. She reluctantly dug out the beautifully wrapped box addressed to her and gave it the teeniest shake. Then a fierce rattle.

“Well?” Aunt Roz said, speed-sweeping up the popcorn as if it were nuclear waste. “Aren't you going to open it?”

“Maybe later.”

“Alexandra!”

“Oh, okay.” Lexi flicked open the note card and read it aloud.

Dearest Alex
,

Hope you're having a lovely time in NYC.
We picked this up for you at a little antique shop
in Paris since we know how much you appreciate
pretty things. It'll last a lifetime
!

Much love,
Dad & Clare

Lexi's tongue darted in and out. She hoped her aunt didn't see. It was obviously Clare's curlicue handwriting—her snooty, stuck-up words.
She's taking over already!
In one swift move Lexi tore through the paper to find a long gray velvet box.
Alex—ugh, I hate when she calls me that
. She flipped it open and her eyes went wide.

“Well, what is it?” Aunt Roz was at the garbage can, craning her neck to see. “What did you get?”

“Just a necklace.” Lexi slowly pulled out the most magnificent strand of pearls she had ever seen. They shimmered against her skin in an iridescent silver-black-purple luster.

“Black pearls!” Aunt Roz practically tripped over herself to come examine them. “Oh, my goodness, and those aren't faux.”

“They're gaudy.”

“They're exquisite!”

“Whatever.”

With purpose in her step, Lexi headed into the living room. The necklace was dragging off one hooked finger as
if it were something she had dredged out of a clogged drain.

“Honey,” Aunt Roz called after her, “aren't you going to try them on? For me? Alexandra?”

She strode past Kevin—who was standing on the chaise lounge, spying out the window through his telescope like the captain of a ship—directly toward Romeo and Juliet and, without even a slight hesitation, dropped the string of pearls into the scummy, smelly fish tank.

“Omigod, it's Dora the Explorer!”

“Don't make a big thing about it, Kim, I can't deal. Not today.” Lexi stepped onto the front stoop of the brownstone, self-consciously fingering the short, black wig she was wearing from her aunt's collection. It had been sitting on a Styrofoam blob in the hall closet and sort of called out to her when she was leaving. “I'll just feel a lot safer being incognito today, okay?”

“
Sí
, Dora!
Te ves muy bonita como una morena
.”

“Op-dray ead-day.”

Kim Ling gave her a crooked look. “Oh! Pig Latin—ha, I get it. Touché.”

Lexi hooked the food-filled plastic bag on her arm and threw on Aunt Roz's movie-star sunglasses—they had called out to her too. She glanced across the street where the mysterious black Lincoln had been parked and breathed
a mini sigh of relief. There was no sign of it. In fact, both Seventy-Third Street and West End Avenue were light on traffic because of some sort of street repairs.

“Oh, is that the bribe for what's-her-face?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Kim Ling peeked into Lexi's bag. “Smells—interesting,” she said, barely sniffing. “I hope it does the trick.”

The front door of the brownstone sprang open. “Aunt Roz!” Kevin announced. He slammed the door shut and came thundering down the steps. “She's right behind me. We should scram!” He sailed down the block on his sneaker-wheels and the girls took off at a mad clip, following right behind him.

“So, why're we running from your aunt again?” Kim Ling asked Lexi over the clattering coming from her bouncing backpack.

“I just told her that your mom had volunteered to walk us to the City Camp bus every day.” She grabbed a quick breath. “That it's picking us up and dropping us off, making me, like, this horrible, horrible person.”

“Excellent! My mom never leaves the apartment this early, so they won't be bumping into each other in the hallway. And her Mandarin accent's so thick, even if they do cross paths later on, your aunt'll never catch wise.”

That didn't make Lexi feel even the slightest bit better.

“We'll never get a cab,” Kim Ling said, huffing and puffing, scanning the congested streets. “Steam pipe must've
busted—happens a lot in this city—too much hot air. But we have gobs of time before we have to meet up with Cindersmella. Wanna just hop on the subway?”