Sammy Keyes and the Hollywood Mummy (6 page)

“Is that why your hair's all …” Marissa ruffled the top of her head, trying to find the words.

“Exactly. It has really helped me get into character. Max says it also shows commitment, which is something this casting director is looking for. And now that I think about it, it may have helped LeBrandi and me to make the final cut.”

“LeBrandi did her hair like that, too?”

My mother nodded. “We did it at the same time. It was scary”— she grinned at us—“but fun.”

Marissa says, “But I don't get it. If Jewel's got amnesia, maybe she doesn't remember how she used to be. I mean, she doesn't even know who she is, right?”

“Marissa, all I can tell you is that if this is what the producer wants, this is what you try to deliver.”

“What happened to the old Jewel, anyway? Did she die in real life?”

“No,” my mother says, standing up. “The truth is, she got too old and too fat. Now come on, girls. Let's get going.”

We got dressed quickly and stuffed our jammies away, and we were following her to the door when she says, “Why don't you wait right here.” She checks her watch.

“If LeBrandi's not ready, I don't want you standing out in the hallway with that suitcase.”

So she goes out while we wait. And when she isn't back a minute later, I stick my nose out and look up and down the hallway.

Marissa says, “Well?”

“She's gone.”

She looks out, too, checking both directions. “Where'd she go?”

“I have no idea.”

She points to the left. “That's her room, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe she went inside.”

Just then we see her, scurrying toward us from the bathroom. She comes inside the room, shuts the door, and says, “The room's locked, she's not in the bathroom, she's not in the gym … do you think she's still asleep?”

She's really just talking to herself, so she doesn't wait around for an answer. She goes back to her door, knocks, and whispers, “LeBrandi! LeBrandi, wake up!”

I ask, “Don't you have a key?” but then I look down at our doorknob and notice that it doesn't have a keyed lock. All of the doors just have privacy locks like you find in people's bathrooms.

So I say, “She must be in there. You wouldn't lock it unless you were inside, right?”

She knocks a little louder. “LeBrandi! LeBrandi, it's getting late!”

Marissa offers, “Maybe she locked it by accident. I've done that before.”

My mother comes back and says, “What am I going to do?”

I shrug and say, “Just break in.”

“Break in? How? I'm not going to rip the door off its hinges.”

“No, Mom—”

“Samantha!” She barked it like a dog with laryngitis.

“Sorry! Aunt Dominique.”

“Well, what? How would you get in?”

“All you need is something like a cake tester.”

“I don't happen to
have
a cake tester!”

“Anything skinny and hard. A paper clip. A piece of wire. A bobby pin?”

She's all over it. In two seconds flat she's got the drawers of LeBrandi's desk flying in and out, but the best she can produce is a pencil.

“No. It's got to fit into that little hole in the middle of the knob.”

She starts tearing through the empty drawers of Opal's desk. “Well, help me look! Maybe there's something in LeBrandi's dresser.”

So we go rummaging through LeBrandi's underwear and stockings, bathing suits and polo shirts, and find absolutely nothing that will work. Then a pair of socks stabs me. Just digs in and jabs me. I squeal, “Owwww!” then yank my hand out of the drawer as blood erupts from my ring finger.

My mother whispers, “What happened?”

I stick my finger in my mouth and mumble, “I got jabbed by a sock!”

She frowns. “Jabbed by a sock? And you're
bleeding
?”

I check my finger, then pop it back inside my portable blood vacuum. “Grm-hm.”

Marissa's looking through the drawer. “Which pair?”

“They're sort of an olive green… yeah, those! Careful!”

Now, to my mother, bleeding is like farting. It's just not something you do in polite company. And if you do have an accident, well, you excuse yourself and leave the room before anyone realizes what you've done.

But I didn't have anywhere to go, so I just stood there, sucking on my finger while Lady Lana wrinkles her nose like the room is full of gas. Then Marissa untucks a pair of socks and gasps, “Look at this brooch!”

It's a large gold oval pin with a red stone in the middle. And even though the stone is too big to be a ruby, from the way it's cut and set, it sure seems like
something
expensive.

My mother gasps, too, and very gingerly takes it from the palm of Marissa's hand. She looks at the front, then the back. And when she sees the spear of gold used to pin the thing on, she says, “That would draw blood, all right.”

I nod and say, “It'll also open a door.”

It's like she'd forgotten. “Oh!” She hands me the brooch. “Here!”

So I take the thing, and that's when I see that the design etched in gold around the stone isn't just swirls and swiggles. It's two snakes. Intertwined. And I don't know why, but all of a sudden I get the creeps. Like I hadn't just been jabbed by a brooch—I'd been bitten by a snake.

I look at my mother and say, “These are
snakes
.”

She jumps back and looks around frantically. “Snakes? Where?”

“On the brooch, Mom. Right here.”

She takes a quick look at it and says, “So what?” Then she adds, “And it's
Dominique
, Samantha.”

“Oh, right.”

I don't know why the snakes bothered me. Snakes are actually pretty cool. Unless they're coiled up and rattling, ready to inject you with poison, that is. But as I grabbed my backpack and followed my mother next door, I kept looking at the snakes, twined together around the stone, and something about it felt strange. Foreign. Like this brooch didn't belong anywhere near California.

Then I remembered the decorations downstairs and asked my mother, “Where do you think LeBrandi got this?”

She looked around nervously, then checked her watch. “I don't know. I don't
care
. Would you just open the door?”

So I did. I pushed the pin in, popped the lock out, opened the door, and stepped aside.

My mother blinks at me. “You made that look so easy…! Where'd you learn how to do that?”

“It
is
easy. And everyone knows how to do that.” I look at Marissa standing there with her suitcase. “Don't they?”

She shrugs. “That's what I do whenever Mikey locks himself in my bathroom … but I think I learned it from you.”

My mother peeks into her room, then motions us in, whispering, “She's still asleep! I can't believe it.”

Other than the light from the hallway, it's pretty dark inside the room. But I can see the silhouette of someone in the bed against the wall. My mother sits on the edge of the mattress and shakes her a little, saying, “LeBrandi? LeBrandi, it's time to get up!”

Something about this is giving me the creeps. And it's more than the fact that my mother's room is like a little cave, small and dark and cool—it's the air. It feels like it's charged wrong. Like the ions are clashing, and
angry
or something.

So I put the brooch in my sweatshirt pocket and flip on the light.

My mother jumps, but LeBrandi keeps right on sleeping, the covers tucked up to her neck as she faces the wall. My mother shakes her again. “LeBrandi! Wake up!”

That's when I notice the orange vial of prescription pills sitting all by itself on the dresser, which butts up to the head of the bed. I whisper, “Look!” and point.

She grabs the pills and reads the label, saying, “I told her to stop taking these! She's missed morning conference twice already because of these!”

I moved a little closer. “Sleeping pills?”

“Yes.” She hands them over to me, saying, “Opal got her started on them.” She shakes LeBrandi again, only this time she shakes her hard. “LeBrandi! Wake up!”

Now, the first thing I notice when my mother hands me the vial is that it's empty. No rattle of pills inside. Then my mother rolls LeBrandi onto her back. And while she's smacking LeBrandi's cheeks with her fingertips, saying, “Wake up! LeBrandi, wake up!” the air seems to be zapping
all around me. I mean, one look at LeBrandi and I know.

No matter how hard my mother slaps her, she's never going to wake up again.

It's creepy enough finding a dead body. But when that dead body looks just like your mother, you get more than the chills. You get sick to your stomach.

And while my mother's busy slapping LeBrandi's cheeks and I'm trying to keep the fish in my stomach from swimming too far upstream, Marissa grabs my arm and gasps, “They could be twins!”

I just nod.

“And she looks …”

I choke out, “I know,” then swallow hard and clear my throat. “Mom… Mom, stop it. She's dead.”

“What?” She looks from me to LeBrandi, then back at me. “She can't be!”

“She's
blue
, Mom.”

My mother takes LeBrandi by the shoulders and shakes her. Hard. Then she looks at me and gasps, “Oh my god!” and she's off like a shot, out the door and down the hall.

Marissa says, “Shouldn't we try CPR or something?” but I just stand there with the orange vial in my hand, staring at this fuzzy blond woman with blue skin.

“Maybe take her pulse …?”

“Marissa, it's hopeless! Look at her!”

“Well, shouldn't we at least
try
?”

I felt like saying,
You
try! but instead I put the vial on the dresser, dropped my backpack off my shoulder, and sat down on the edge of the bed. Marissa parks her suitcase beside the bed and sits on it, then looks at me like, Well?

So I pick up LeBrandi's wrist and press against the inside with my fingertips, looking for a pulse.

Touching her is giving me the creeps. Her skin isn't like ice or anything, but it's cool and pale, and her fingers are arched straight up at me.

I put her hand back by her side and whisper, “Nothing.”

Just then a woman in purple-and-green plaid pajamas and purple cottontail slippers comes barging in. She gasps, and the rag-wrapped pigtails on top of her head seem to flex toward the ceiling as she says, “Oh my god—it's true?”

We just look at her.

“She's
dead
?”

“I…I think so.”

“I overheard Dominique on the phone …and… and… oh-me-oh-my, oh-me-oh-
my
!” she whimpers, hopping around like the Plaid Rabbit, late to tea. Then her nose twitches up and down really fast and she cries, “This is terrible, just terrible!” and barges right back out the door.

Thirty seconds later she's back with two other women, and in no time more show up. And pretty soon we're having a pajama party of brightly colored women playing Pass-the-Vial and wailing Why-oh-why-LeBrandi.

Then suddenly the Plaid Rabbit gasps and slams the vial
back onto the dresser, and when everyone else looks where she's looking, they all go wide-eyed and silent, shrinking back against the walls. And let me tell you, Marissa and I shrink back, too, because coming straight at us is a mummy.

A real live mummy.

That's what she looks like to us, anyway. She's got white gauze wrapped around her hands, around her head and most of her face, and she's wearing a white robe, crossed tight at the neck. She shuffles toward us in heavy woolen socks, and the minute her eyes land on me, I scramble to the side too.

See, she's got eyes like a tiger, yellow and fierce. And I'm not talking yellow like our cab driver's had been—no, her
irises
are yellow. And as I'm hugging the wall, Tiger Eyes takes one look at LeBrandi, then turns on Marissa and me. “Who are you.”

It's a command, not a question, but still, it needs an answer—one I tried hard not to choke on. “We're Domi… Dominique's nieces.”

“This is not a hotel.”

“We … we came to…to surprise her, and… and um… well, we're leaving this morning. We didn't know.”

“Hrrmm.” She turns back to LeBrandi, then sees the vial on the dresser. She picks it up and shakes it at the other women. “This should be a lesson to you, girls! You see where this can lead?”

Just then my mother appears, her shoulders cradled in the arm of a man with a white moustache wearing a shiny gold robe and black slippers.

Right away I know that this man is Maximilian Mueller. There's just an air about him. His hair's damp and styled back, and the part down the side is as sharp as the edge of his moustache. His face is tan, and shiny from shaving, and his hazel green eyes look magnified to about three times normal size by the lenses of his boxy tortoiseshell glasses.

Soap and aftershave fill the air like incense as he pats my mother's shoulder and says, “Take a deep breath, Dominique. Inga and I will handle this.”

As Max walks in, the Pajama Platoon seems to let out a gigantic sigh of relief. And when they see their friend Dominique crying, they all start bawling. The Plaid Rabbit grabs my mother by the arm and says, “Why,
why
?” and another lady with plum red hair sobs, “She was so beautiful!”