“Which means we’re ‘the hens.’” I wrinkled my nose. “How does Savilla feel about that?”
Lacy shook her head at the mention of Mr. Finch’s daughter, a girl who’d been with us all through the innocent primary years, the pimply middle-school stage, and the finding-ourselves high school era. Savilla’s family was royalty around here, and like somany royals, it was complicated: Her biological mother had fled the scene shortly after her birth, and her father had married one of the pageant winners a few years later. From what I understood, Savilla had been living—and likely partying—in the family penthouse in New York, so I hadn’t heard from her in half a decade.
“No idea,” Lacy said. “I haven’t seen her yet.”
After two scans, a brief call, and a few overly serious glances, Joe came back to my side of the car and handed me my ID, as he addressed both of us. “There’s been a disturbance already up at the big house. A bunch of police cars went through here a half-hour ago.”
“Maybe it’s the security team?” Lacy asked.
Joe shook his head. “Something went missing. Keep an eye out for anything suspicious.”
“Will do,” Lacy said, sounding official again.
“All clear,” he said as he tapped the roof of the car, lowered the spikes in the ground, and sent us through the gates.
I turned to look behind us as Lacy’s car bumped along. “What do you think was stolen?”
“There’s a lot of valuable items on display: jewels, crowns, some high-value artwork. The Rose Palace has changed since we toured it as kids. Less homey now. More like a museum.”
“Security Guard Joe takes his job very seriously,” I mused. “I thought he might make me sign away my firstborn or insert a tracker under my skin.”
“They do that while you’re sleeping.” Lacy steered past a peach orchard. “Supposedly, they’ve installed a top-notch system with an invisible laser all around the perimeter.”
“Why? What are they trying to keep out?”
Lacy gave me a knowing look. “Better question: What are they trying to keep in?”
We drove down the tree-lined lane toward the estate, and despite my mixed feelings about the pageant, I couldn’t help but admire the front of the building as we pulled up to the château-esque structure.
Built of weathered white stone, the palace stretched four stories high to a pitched roof. Grotesques and gargoyles lined the house, and spires rose above the ornamented stone, promising mysterious passageways and grand promenades to those who dared cross the threshold. Low clouds hung in the early evening twilight, giving the architecture an ethereal grandeur, but the silhouette of the blue-tinged peaks still dwarfed the man-made structure, as spectacular as it might be. The top-most part of the building reminded me of Rapunzel’s tower, and I suddenly wondered if someone—a wicked queen, perhaps—might be watching me.
This house had been part of my Aubergine education for most of my life. According to the tour I’d taken of it as part of my fifth grade studies, it’s approximately one hundred thousand square feet and a quintessential representation of the Gilded Age. Savilla Finch had been bored throughout the entire tour: she’d kept running off to the kitchen to grab a piece of string cheese or a bag of Cheetos, before finally sneaking up to her room. Lacy and I hadn’t been sure if she’d been showing off that she actually lived on such an amazing estate, or if she’d really thought her home was nothing special. Probably the latter.
Built in 1896 by the diamond-mining Finch family of New York, the Rose Palace was so named because of the swamp rose bushes that had grown prolifically on the land before development. The nineteenth-century Finches had chosen to build in Aubergine for its charm and because they’d wanted to compete with the glory of the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina, which had been christened a year earlier. The home had been a gift for the then-Mr. Finch’s wife, and she’d in turn hostedthe first-ever Rose Palace Pageant on the grounds in 1925. She had been seventy-two years old by that point but, according to photographs, she’d dressed in frills and lace just like the contestants. The home had stayed in the Finch family all this time, hosting weddings and funerals and always—every year without fail, even through the Great Depression, World War II, Vietnam, and the 2008 Recession—the Rose Palace Pageant.
Lacy dropped me at the front, where, sure enough, a line of police cars were in a row. Before she left to park, she placed a hand on my forearm. “Hey, one more thing. There’s a guy here I want you to meet.”
I rolled my eyes. “If he’s anything like ‘Mister-I-Collect-Anime-Figurines,’ then no thanks.”
Lacy chuckled. “I set you up on one bad date, and I never hear the end of it.”
“What about ‘Mister-I-Match-My-Shoes-With-My-Underwear’?”
“I still think he could’ve been a fun time.” Lacy batted away my concerns. “But this isn’t a setup, just someone I think you might want to keep an eye out for. Did you vote in the last county election?”
I squinted one eye, thinking. I’d always been a fan of doing one’s civic duty, but I had no clue how this related to her train of thought. “Uh… are you trying to get me to run for office?”
“The new sheriff is here this weekend, volunteering with security, and girl, that man is fit. If you don’t win a prize, maybe you can at least bring him home as a consolation.”
“Who’d he run against?” I asked, thinking it might jog my memory.
“Joe,” she answered.
“Joe Larson? Security Guard Joe?” I asked.
Lacy shrugged. No wonder this guy had won. Joe Larson could barely tie his shoes when we’d graduated and, as far as Iknew, he’d done odd jobs ever since. Still, Aubergine was a tight-knit community, loyal to its own.
“The sheriff lives two towns over in Mount Cedar, so it was a close race,” Lacy said. “I think he’s trying to get to know people, make friends in Aubergine, try to convince them he’ll do a good job.”
