Chapter 10
A slit of unwelcome sunlight swept into my eyes. I struggled to sit up, then yawned. The songbirds outside were singing sweetly, the sky was a calming blue, and morning dew shimmered on the jade-green grass below, but something was tugging at my mind, like something crucial was missing...
How had I fallen asleep? I wondered. Wasn’t I reading...?
Then it hit me. Wisteria’s diary was missing! I patted around my bed and searched around the bedroom for Wisteria’s booklet, but with no avail. I glanced at my door. I had locked it last night, and now, it was...unlocked. Unlocked?!
And according to what I had read the night before, only two people have the key: Tristan, who was obviously dead, and Wisteria.
Wisteria had taken the book while I was sleeping. Probably to hide it from me.
And that means Wisteria knows I read her diary.
And that means she’s going to do something about it.
I sank onto the bed and cupped my chin in my hands, reminding me of my mother when I last conversed with her.
I tumbled out of the bed with dark shadows under my eyes and bed hair sticking up around my face. My clothes were rumpled from sleeping in them. I knew I should have slept more to avoid looking like I was rising from the undead, but I had a deadline to consider - the end of my “sleepover”.
Hmm...who cares about the deadline, anyway? I smiled slyly. I need more time, right?
I grabbed the phone from the desk, and found the “record” function. I pressed “record.”
“Hey, Mom. Hey, Dad. Hi-ya, Jeremy.” I paused and silently counted to three. “Yeah, I can’t talk, sorry. I’ve got tons of homework to do, and I didn’t feed Pawprint yet. See you when you guys come back from Miami! Have fun!”
I hit the “Stop” button, then pressed the “Notes” function. On it, I typed out my parents’ phone number. Then, I slipped the phone in my pants pocket, promising to put it back after I solved the case. Then I dragged myself out of the bedroom, and somehow made it down the spiral stairs without breaking my neck. I reached the bottom and croaked a call for Josephine, when a blast of fresh air smacked me. From the morning mist came Wisteria, bundled up in layers of clothes. Her eyes focused on me, and we stared at each other awkwardly.
“G' morning, Ms. Royale,” I rasped at last.
“Good morning,” Wisteria nodded curtly and turned away from me, her right hand creeping toward and into her coat pocket. Her hand closed around something in her pocket.
What’s in there?
“Ms. Austins! Is my breakfast ready?” Wisteria shouted. A soft “yes” came from the kitchen.
“Taste my food! A bit of everything!” Wisteria ordered. The same answer came.
Wisteria hung up her jacket and scarf on the coat rack next to the front door. As she turned to enter the kitchen for breakfast, I intercepted.
“Ms. Royale, I’m planning to go to Ms. Rainsworth’s house, but it’s quite chilly outside, and I was wondering if I could borrow your scarf,” I asked.
“Mhmm,” Wisteria murmured without looking at me.
I lifted her scarf from the rack, and wound it around my neck. After making sure that Wisteria could not see me, I stuck my hand in her coat pocket and took out a small glass vial. I observed the bottle and the clear liquid inside it. I had a feeling the liquid was not water, even though the substance could be easily mistaken for water. Due to this assumption, I achieved a simple idea.
Carefully, I slipped the vial in my jeans pocket. Then, patting my pockets as if I had forgotten something, I bolted up the stairs, into my room.
From my desk, I snatched the glass bottle filled with colorful sand and a flower I had seen yesterday night. I compared Wisteria’s jar to the one filled with sand, and was surprised that they seemed identical.
That’s even better, I thought. But is that a coincidence?
I plucked out the flower and stuffed the flower to the back of a drawer, then went to the sink and dumped out the sand. I rinsed the sand out of the bottle, then filled it with water to the same level as the liquid found in Wisteria’s jar.
After I capped the vial that I filled with water, I swooped back downstairs and tucked the bottle back into Wisteria’s coat pocket. I tugged my sweater over my head, but it was a thin sweater and did little to protect me from the cold. Then, with a scarf around my neck, no coat on, and a bottle of who-knows-what clamped in my hand, I set out into the gusts of cold.
What I found outside infuriated me: my bicycle, which I had ignorantly tossed onto Ms. Royale’s front lawn, had been rained upon last night, and was now covered in rust. The structure creaked and groaned. Worse, I hadn’t brought a helmet. So, for my own safety, I began my brisk walk to Evelyn house.
~ ~ ~
According to my wristwatch, it was 11:42 when I reached Evelyn’s home. I strode to her front door and pressed the doorbell. I noticed that the doorknob had the cast of a butterfly, as if in the process of making the doorknob, a butterfly had made an imprint in it.
“That’s a curious device,” I murmured to myself. “But then, where’s the key-hole?”
The window beside the door lifted a crack, and a pair of suspicion-filled blue eyes peered out. “It’s you again. Sadie,” she said with scorn. “And for a ‘detective,’ shouldn’t it be easy for you figure out how to open my door? That doorknob is my k-” Evelyn stopped herself. “Never mind,” she muttered. Her eyes disappeared from the window, and a moment later the front door opened.
“What do you want?” Evelyn demanded.
“I was going to kindly ask permission to talk to you inside your house,” I said, rubbing my ice-cold hands together. “You know, I’m sort of cold.”
“The house isn’t much warmer than out there. I bought my own heater to warm up my house.” Ms. Rainsworth stepped aside to let me in.
As I entered the home, the floorboards creaked annoyingly under my feet. Evelyn banged the door closed behind me. Compared to Wisteria’s manor, Evelyn’s house was a shack. The walls showed off its plentiful amount of gray spots, some of the wood planks that made up the floor were ripped up, and there was a leak coming from the ceiling in a cramped living room. A cracked, yellow bucket caught the dripping water. The weak sunlight peeking in from the boarded up windows highlighted the plethora of dust motes floating in the musty air. I sneezed, but I felt like the dust motes weren’t the only reason.
“You coming down with a cold, young lady?” an unfamiliar, deep voice called. “You should wear more in this temperature. Summer here doesn’t mean it’s hot.”
To my surprise, a young man was leaning against the spotted walls of Evelyn’s house. He was lean and muscular, his muscles rippling as he stood up straight. He towered over both Evelyn and me; he was easily six-five in height.
My eyes traveled up to this stranger’s face. The first thing I noticed was that his nose had obviously been broken, and that he had thin scars covering his rough, tan face.
This man must get into fights a lot.
His rust-colored hair was gelled and combed back away from his forehead. His green eyes rested on me, scanning me up and down.
Hey...this guy looks like Wisteria...acts a bit like her, too...
The man extended his giant hand, and I took a step back in fear. I scolded myself for being paranoid when I found that the man had only given me a tissue, not to punch me.
“Good evening, sir. I’m Sadie.” I dipped my head politely and took the tissue. I sneezed again, so blew my nose.
He nodded in my direction, then turned back to Evelyn. He smiled, and patted her shoulder.
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay, Eve?” the man leaned over and pecked Evelyn on the top of her head. Evelyn flushed a deep red as the stranger stepped through and shut the front door.
“Hey, Ms. Rainsworth, who was that?” I asked. I coughed a few times. Ugh, colds.
“That was Noah. Noah Royale. Wisteria’s older brother.” Eve was still in a daze. “He’s gorgeous...oh my goodness...”
I covered my mouth, forcing myself to hold in my laughter. “Okay, Ms. Rainsworth. What I was going to say-”
“What is it now?” Ms. Rainsworth snapped out of her stupor and crossed her arms. “Not to question me again, I hope?”
I shook my head. “I was asking you for a favor.”
Evelyn raised an eyebrow. “And what makes you think I’ll do it for you? Go ask Mrs. Dwight, why don’t you?”
My lips puckered involuntarily. “She seems too...uptight to complete my favor. But I felt like you wouldn’t care.” Before Ms. Rainsworth could respond, I reported my problem.
“I need more time for the case. But I have to go home at two, to call my parents. They want to make sure I come home from my, uh, fictitious sleepover. The thing is, the phone is a landline phone, and it won’t work anywhere but inside my house. Plus, I have to feed my dog, Pawprint.”
Evelyn scowled. “Your dog will maul me.”
“Naw, he’s good with strangers. Unless you provoke him to attack you, Pawprint will leave you alone. Anyway, on this phone, I recorded my voice. So what I need you to do is to call my parents. The phone number is in Notes.” I glanced at Evelyn, who nodded. “If someone responds after you call the number, play the recording until it’s over and then end the call immediately, before anyone responds. If the call goes to voicemail, just play the recording.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever, I get it. What time?”
“Two o’clock, sharp. And I have a question about the doorknob. It’s so high-quality, compared to your...” My eyes scanned Evelyn’s house.
“It came from my rich days. I sold most of my belongings to sustain enough money for a house, but I decided that I needed some sort of security. So, I kept the knob,” Evelyn said.
“And your butterfly necklaces,” I reminded her.
“Of course I kept the necklaces! Except one, that I sold off, but that’s not the point! How other way would I enter my house?” Evelyn rolled her eyes, then widened them. “I mean-”
“Ms. Rainsworth, I’m not going to break into your house,” I assured her.
“It’s happened before; it could happen again.”
“Someone broke into your house before?” This time, I resisted the urge to survey her rundown home. “For what?”
Evelyn shrugged. “I don’t have anything extremely valuable, except for that, which wasn’t stolen,” Evelyn pointed to a wall of the living room, where darkness shrouded the walls like a cloak. “I don’t have a laptop, camera, printer, etcetera. My only way of contact is a cheap-o phone that doesn’t work half the time.”
“So that explains the static I heard in the phone when I called you earlier!” I exclaimed.
“Don’t even go there.” Evelyn rolled her eyes. “The only place that I think was messed with was the bathroom. But what would you steal from a bathroom?”
I sneezed. “No clue,” I answered. Then, my eye focused on the magnificent item hanging from a wall of the living room that Evelyn had pointed at: a gigantic carved bow made of dark, polished wood. Small arches, curls, and twists were etched into the wood. A few tiny butterflies were also skillfully carved. A woven arrow holder, filled with a few dozen arrows, was hung up beside the bow. The arrows were long and slim; the feathers were perfectly smooth.
“Woah,” I sighed as I took an impulsive step toward the bow and arrow. Ms. Rainsworth beamed proudly. She appeared optimistic and happy when she smiled, like what Wisteria had said when I first entered the Royale Manor.
“Are the arrows real?” I asked. “Like, real as in sharpened?”
“Well, I covered the tips with rubber. I used to hunt with them, in the woods behind Wisteria’s property. I memorized every centimeter of those woods. Now, I have better things to do than hunt for entertainment. Such as money,” Evelyn muttered embarrassedly. “After I stopped hunting, I still polish it every day, to keep it in excellent shape. In case I’ll ever need it.”
In case I’ll ever need it...
A grin danced a jovial jig on my lips. It was splendid; this was all that I needed. I turned to Ms. Rainsworth.
“I have another favor to ask of you. Listen carefully; this could possibly be an issue on life...”
“Or death?” Evelyn finished hopefully. Scary.
I nodded.