The Tiara on the Terrace (11 page)

“Welcome to the Ridley Mansion!” Kendra said breathlessly to Danica and Denise as if we weren't even standing there. As she guided us through the entryway, the dog she had shoved in her purse burst into an ear-splitting yipping. “This is Pookums Pritchard. He's a pure-bred Pomeranian,” she announced. It sounded like she was practicing tongue twisters. She plunked the dog onto the marble floor in front of us. “His great-grandfather took Best in Show at Westminster,” she added. Pookums immediately started sniffing the floor as if searching for a good place to relieve himself, then gave up, and licked his rear end instead. He wore a pink canvas vest that kind of looked like a tiny life jacket. “You'll be taking care of my Pooky when my royal obligations don't allow me to be the best dog-mother I can be.” Kendra pouted as she looked directly at me.

Trista sneezed and fished out her inhaler as Ms. Sparrow breezed past us in the hallway. She called out a bless you and handed Trista a crisp white handkerchief, then bonded with her over the nightmare of having allergies at a flower festival.

As soon as she'd left, Grace looked down at Pookums. “Do they really let you bring a dog—?”

“Pooky's a therapy dog,” Kendra snapped. “My emotional state is very fragile right now.”

Pookums growled fiercely at an umbrella stand as Kendra opened up the entryway closet. A small safe hung open on a shelf. Her pink manicured fingernails gleamed as she pointed inside. “Phones in here. House rules.”

Trista looked like she was handing over her younger sister to a death squad as she watched her phone—and access to TrigForce Five—disappear into the black hole of the safe.

“The Royal Court has a long history. We need to uphold tradition,” Kendra said proudly as if she'd been born and raised in the mansion herself. “Your parents have been asked to keep communication to a minimum while you're here. We ask the same of you. Part of the pledge you make as royal pages is to be present for us and for one another at all times. Like family.” She shut the safe door and twisted the dial, then shoved her purse at me. It was a good thing I had developed those tai chi reflexes, or it would've dropped on my toes like a bowling bowl. It was about as heavy as one too.

“And we are family. Festival family,” she added, giving Danica's shoulder a little squeeze while completely ignoring us. Danica and Denise's eyes were shining in awe.

“Ms. Sparrow has requested the presence of the Court
for our first lessons. You'll report for duty with us in a half hour. In the meantime, let's get you settled,” Kendra continued, beaming as she started up the majestic staircase. We followed. “You'll find your schedule in your rooms along with the Royal Court mix-and-match wardrobe binder,” she said when we reached the landing. “The outfits are sooo awesome! Study the combinations carefully, so you can put them together right.” She paused, and a starry look came over her. When she finally finished imagining herself sashaying down fashion runways in various dresses—or wherever else her mind had wandered—she nodded down the hallway with her chin. “Your rooms are right next to the Queen and Court sitting room,” she explained. “Ms. Sparrow will issue you each radio headsets. You are to wear them at all times. You never know when we might need you.” She smiled. I pictured flushing my radio down the toilet as soon as Ms. Sparrow issued it to me, then running out the big double doors and all the way home.

“Denise, Danica, and Sophie, the three of you are right in there,” she pushed open an ornately carved wooden door. “Trista and Grace, you're next door. Follow me.”

Grace and I exchanged a look of terror. We weren't rooming together? The possibility had never even occurred to me. Suddenly it felt like the hallway was closing in on
itself. The stripes on the wallpaper blurred. This was awful. This was worse than awful. I watched helplessly as Kendra ushered them down the hall, leaving me with Denise and Danica. They'd never looked more alike than that moment, as they flashed me twin looks that made it clear they, too, assumed I'd be rooming somewhere else. Danica struggled to smile.

“This is so exciting,” she said, her voice as forced as her grin. She gripped my hands and gave them a shake that made one of her sundress straps fall. “We're going to be roomies!”

T
he Ridley Mansion hummed with constant activity that morning. Brown Suiters rushed up and down the grand staircase to and from offices on the third floor. Caterers flitted around bringing coffee and pastries to meetings. Workers tromped across the Oriental rug runners in the long dark hallways, straightening the portraits lining them and tightening loose doorknobs. Tour guides led Luna Vista VIPs through the rooms, entertaining them with colorful stories about the Ridley family past.

“Kendra, screwing in the lightbulb is the Queen Mother wave. You've got to ‘wipe the window.' Nice, smooth long strokes,” Ms. Sparrow called out as we helped the Royal Court with Walking and Waving, their first lesson of the day. They'd channeled all their excitement that morning into taking Ms. Sparrow's instructions very, very seriously.

“There we go! Excellent!” she exclaimed. “Now hold that smile and let your legs do the walking. Glide with pride.” She showed them how it was done, clicking across the floor in cute purple heels that matched her dress.

I'd never realized walking required so much moral support. Granted, I was just happy to be out of the room I was sharing with the twins. Within five minutes, Denise had claimed the bunk beds and filled up the entire dresser with their clothes while Danica had sprayed Axe body spray around the room like she was trying to kill oxygen.
It reminds me of my camp boyfriend
, she'd said, sucking in a deep breath.

Luckily, the foyer smelled of both oxygen and flowers. I gulped in all the breathable air I could before Danica's next Axe-travaganza. I didn't even mind scuffing the Royal Court high heels with sandpaper so they wouldn't slip on the marble staircase. I did mind, though, when all of a sudden Grace became a Court celebrity.

“Oh my god. That is the
best
. I need one of those, like, yesterday,” Jardine said, pointing to Grace's messenger bag in the corner. Grace had made it from recycled corduroy pants and jeans, and used a cool old Chinese coin as a button to fasten the flap. The rest of the Court and Danica and Denise were just as into it too. As I watched Grace being
pulled into the whirlpool of their circle, I wondered if she would ever get out again—or if she'd want to. Even Ms. Sparrow joined in. “I should hire you to make me something!” she exclaimed, and Grace looked down at Ms. Sparrow's shoes and suggested she make her some tiny Coral Beauty rose button covers out of pink ribbon for parade day.

Things only got worse when, during the water break, they all snapped pictures of each other with the disposable cameras the Festival had given us since we couldn't use our phones, but no one posed with me and Trista. It started to sink in how long three days really could be.

It wasn't until Ms. Sparrow started in on Poise and Posture that I realized I might have worried too soon. “How about Trista, Sophie, and I get some books from the mansion library? You know, for balancing?” Grace asked Ms. Sparrow. She outstretched her arms and pretended to have a stack of books on her head as she walked, then secretly flashed us a look.

“Good idea!” I played along. “They'll be able to really”—I tried to remember the phrase—“glide with pride.” Ms. Sparrow had barely agreed and pointed the way before we'd grabbed Trista and headed down the hall.

The smell of musty paper and polished wood greeted us as we stepped inside the library and shut the heavy paneled
door. Bookshelves rose almost all the way to the room's high ceiling. Leather armchairs were nestled into reading nooks, and a few dark wood study tables were set up around the room. Grace plunked her messenger bag down on one of them and flapped it open. “Last night I downloaded these layouts of the mansion interior from the Luna Vista Historical Society website,” she said, pulling out several printouts. “I mean, we know the basics—but this has everything.” She darted a glance to the door, then, for cover, grabbed some books from the shelves and laid down the plans on their pages. “We're staying here, on the second floor.” She tapped the paper. Certain rooms were labeled with letters in brightly colored marker in what seemed to be some kind of a code. “All the VIPs' offices are one level up. Except Sparrow. Looks like she's got an office off her bedroom suite down the hall from us.”

“What's with the letters?” Trista frowned.

Grace pulled out three small index cards. “So, Sophie was telling me about this cool code,” she began. I beamed. If I'd had any doubts about why she'd been so into us being pages, they were gone now. “It's like Morse, but better than Morse . . . ,” she said, smiling knowingly at me as she echoed my exact words in the float barn.

“. . . Because not many people know about it,” I finished.
“It's called a Polybius code or cipher. Prisoners used it in the olden days.” I pointed to the square on the index card Grace had handed me.

“Let's say you have an emergency and need to send an SOS,” I continued. “You find
S
on the grid—it's at row four across, three down.” I tapped one of the books four times, paused, and hit it rapidly three more times. I think it was the first time I'd ever had to explain anything to Trista.

Grace's hair fell over her radio headset as she leaned forward. “You have to pause longer between letters so it's not confusing,” she explained to Trista. “So before tapping out the numbers for
O
, you'd wait a few beats.”

“Got it,” Trista said, almost impatiently. She quickly rapped out the three across, four down pattern for
O
, waited a long second, then tapped out
S
just like I had. “Guess you can signal with a flashlight like Morse too, huh?”

“Yep. Anything,” Grace replied. “Honking. Clicking.
Whistling.” She pointed to the letters on the layout. “I made letter codes for places in the mansion and the grounds so we can call meeting spots over the radio. And I listed the codes on the back of the card.” She flipped one of them over proudly.

Trista nodded, impressed. “So, let's see . . .
RG
stands for Rose Garden, that'd be—”

The door to the library burst open just as Trista was making extremely loud fake beeping sounds with her mouth. Danica and Denise stared back.

“Um . . .” Danica looked at her sister.

“You caught us!” Grace smiled so wide I thought she might sprain her lips. “Playing spy games, again.” She pretended to roll her eyes at her own silliness. “You guys want a secret code map?” She picked up one of the printouts.

I leaned my mouth closer to the mike of my radio headset clipped onto my shirt. “Roger, wilco two-two-four-ten-twenty-one. We've got intruders. Twelve o'clock. Do you copy?”

“Whoa,” Denise said. “You're really into this.”

Grace shrugged. “Passes the time.”

“Ten-four,” barked Trista.

Danica nodded slowly. “Well, uh, ten-four, one-niner, whatever . . . You might want to actually turn those radios
on? Ms. Sparrow was wondering what held you all up.”

Danica and Denise barely had a chance to close the door before the three of us practically fell on the carpet laughing. “Close call, team,” Grace said.

I slapped them both five. “Over and
out.
”

A half hour later, I was upstairs in the royal suite, struggling to figure out which color codes went with the outfits detailed in the Royal Court mix-and-match wardrobe binder. Next to me Trista was already elbow-deep in Jardine's closet, hangers screeching as she flipped through dresses like a department store saleslady during prom season. At least I was faster than Danica and Denise, who stopped every other minute to hold up dresses and twirl for each other.

Trista had just finished whipping Jardine's closet into shape and was jumping in to help me when static crackled over our headsets in a clear pattern. I slipped the index card from my back pocket and sneaked a look as I listened.
Psht-Psht-Psht-Psht
came four rapid bursts, then a pause, then three more.
S
for Steptoe's office. Time to put our plan in action.

As Danica and Denise started oohing and ahhing over outfits again, I made eye contact with Trista and excused myself to the restroom. Trista gave a single nod and turned
back to Kendra's closet, hangers jangling and screeching again as she flipped through them double-time.

I grabbed a roll of paper towels from the bathroom off the Queen and Court sitting room and headed to the third floor. Grace was at the top of the landing, pretending to dust a glass case displaying past Royal Court tiaras and dried bouquets. A spray bottle of window cleaner hung from her belt.

“Trista's coming.” I held up the paper towels and shrugged. “This is all I could find for cover.”

“That'll work.” Grace tucked her feather duster into her belt next to the spray bottle, then set one of the vintage watches she wore on her wrist—the digital one. “There's a huge Festival meeting in the living room—all the officials. We should have enough time. Etiquette doesn't start for twenty minutes. “

I cocked an eyebrow. “Twenty minutes Festival time?”

“Uh,” Grace's watch chirped as she reset it. “Make that fifteen.”

“You sure we're alone up here?” I peered down the long hallway.

Grace twisted her ponytail into a messy bun and checked herself out in the display case reflection. “Don't worry,” she said.

I worried. I worried a lot. Officials had been dashing up and down the stairs all day. Electricians rattled around with their stepladders, checking light fixtures. And every time I passed a window, it felt like I was jumping at yet another silhouette of a window washer. The last thing we needed was for someone to catch us on our very first mission.

A clattering on the stairs interrupted us, followed by a grunt and muttered curse. Grace's mouth fell open as Trista rounded the corner battling with the hose of a vacuum cleaner as if she were in a fight for her life with a boa constrictor. She'd strapped the vacuum canister to her back like a leaf blower, and a dust mask hung from her neck.

“All set!” she boomed. “You think you're going to need me to pick the lock?”

We cringed. She might as well have yelled directly into Barb's megaphone.

“Nah, we're probably fine,” Grace whispered back. She hesitated a moment—probably weighing the risk of telling Trista to bring it down a notch or five—then leaned out to look down the long carpeted hall. “Coast looks clear. Let's go!”

She darted forward like a cat, slowing at each open office door then jetting past it. There wasn't much point. With Trista's vacuum rattling the whole way down the hall,
we might as well have been trying to spy with a one-man band trailing behind. Grace shot us irritated looks, but she kept going.

Finally, we stood in front of the thick paneled door of Mr. Steptoe's former office. Engraved letters on a brass plaque greeted us: Festival President.

Grace swallowed hard and looked at Trista and me. “Ready?” she whispered.

We nodded.

“Okay. One, two—” Grace reached for the knob. The door swung open first. “—three,” she finished faintly as her head tilted up to the figure in front of us.