As I fondled the pillow, my fingers landed on something cool and plasticky. I sat up and rubbed sleep out of my eyes before picking up the thin, square object. It was a photo, a Polaroid, a blurry one that had a finger covering half of the frame. I blinked as my eyes attempted to adjust to the muted sunlight streaming through a thin window that ran along the top of the loft wall.
I flipped on the lamp, but before I had the chance to look closely, a peacock shrieked again and a knock sounded at my door.
I threw the photo back onto the pillow and yelled, “Coming!” before stumbling down the stairs, my head still sloshy from last night.
“Delivery,” Lacy called from the other side.
When I swung open the door, she stood with a giant tote on her shoulder and her hand propped on a long metal rack filled with garment bags of all shapes and sizes. Aunt DeeDee’s pageant order had come through even though she was locked up.
“I brought coffee too.” Lacy handed me a hot to-go cup. “From the dining room bar. It’s pretty good.”
“I hope you’ve got a cyanide pill to go with it,” I said as I took a sip of the hot brew, and winced as it scalded my tongue.
“You and me both, friend.”
“Any news on Mr. Finch?” I asked.
“Not yet. Over breakfast, some of the contestants were whispering that he probably ran off with a previous winner, and others thought he must be dead in the woods at the edge of the estate.”
I tried to swallow another gulp of coffee but choked on it this time.
“DeeDee was on my mind the entire night, particularly since I was up until three making sure the missing tents arrived and all ten were properly erected.” Lacy pointed a finger at me. “Did youjust wake up? You haven’t showered yet? Or attended Jemma’s Broadway Butt-Busting workout?” She pretended to be shocked.
“I literally just got out of bed.” I went to the sink, set down my coffee, and splashed water on my face. “Did you work out?”
“I did, actually,” she answered, looking pleased with herself as she plopped on the couch. “We listened to ‘Memory’and crawled around like cats. It was surprisingly difficult to stay on all fours until the last note, but Jemma did a great job—showed us all the moves and yelled encouragement at us for the entire hour.”
The yelling part made sense, but the encouragement part, not so much.
“Well, best get to it.” Lacy nudged me toward the bathroom. “I’ve got stuff to do, but I know DeeDee would want me to oversee your hair and makeup.” She placed her tote on the two-person stained-wood kitchen table. “Do you have everything you need?”
“It’s all upstairs,” I answered, not wanting to think about possible beauty torture devices my aunt had packed for me.
The hot shower did wake me up, and the specialty lavender shampoo and mint body wash left me smelling like something Bella wouldn’t have recognized. I thought about the stables on the Rose Palace property and wondered if I could sneak out and bribe someone into letting me go for a ride. The blessed escape of riding through the foothills called to me, but instead I had two jobs to do: win a pageant and solve a mystery.
As I imagined exploring every inch of the grounds, searching for a man who may have left of his own accord, I used the brand-new loofa and scrubbed all the parts that one is supposed to leave bare and shiny at a pageant.
I peeked my head outside the door. “Do you have my outfit ready?”
“You’ll need to wait to dress until after we do hair and makeup. Just come out in your underwear and towel,” Lacy answered, as the stairs creaked above me.
I figured she was spying to see which shoes I’d brought. She would be disappointed.
I’d almost closed the bathroom door again when I heard Lacy scream.
I tightened the towel around myself as I rushed up the stairs, but when I got to the top, she hadn’t fallen or found a gigantic spider. Instead, she was standing next to the bed, holding the photo I’d found and promptly forgotten.
“That was here when I woke up,” I said, waving away her dramatic response. “The last person here must’ve left it.”
Lacy shook her head and pointed at the bedspread. “I saw it lying on the pillow and pulled back the duvet to get a closer look. Then I saw…” Her voice faded.
I went to stand next to her and lifted the covers gently, expecting to find a dead rat or a newspaper headline saying that all the coffee in the entire world had been depleted.
Instead, it was a handful of Polaroids with one word written in capital letters at the bottom of each of them. I read them in the order that they lay.
BOTH KILLED THEM OF SHE
“What does that mean?” Lacy asked. “I just saw the word ‘killed’ and freaked out.”
