Madhattan Mystery Read online

  “Brava, brava!” a small crowd of theatergoers cheered as the actress who played Laura Wingfield exited the stage door, carrying a bouquet of long-stemmed roses.

  “Oh, look, they’re blue!” Lexi said, pointing them out to Kevin. “‘Cause she sang that ‘Blue Roses’ song, remember?”

  “Yeah, I didn’t get that part.”

  “Her character had some ancient disease called pleurosis, right? Which is why she kept limping around the stage. When her high school crush asked what was wrong with her, he thought she said blue roses—instead of pleurosis—”

  “Yeah, so?”

  Kevin obviously couldn’t have cared less. With no special effects, rocket ships, or mutant aliens in the play, he must’ve been bored out of his mind. Lexi, on the other hand, had gotten completely sucked in. It was about an overbearing mother, Amanda Wingfield, aka Aunt Roz, forcing her shy, crippled daughter to come out of her shell or die trying.

  Another burst of applause as the actor who played the gentleman caller burst through the stage door followed by Aunt Roz, who looked very much the star in her silver ribbon wrap. Lexi and Kevin were hooting and hollering, and she threw them a little wave and started weaving her way toward them through the eager crowd. When she stopped to autograph a program, her shawl fell to her shoulders and Lexi’s eyes widened. Her aunt wasn’t wearing that gorgeous red dress after all, the one that had been draped across her bed—but an eggplant-colored one instead.

  “That’s bizarre,” Lexi said, turning to Kevin. “You didn’t tell her about the thing I told you not to tell her about, did you? You know, the whole red-dress-bathtub situation?”

  “I refuse to answer on the grounds I might be intimidated.”

  “Incriminated, and that’s a yes.” She swatted him. “Kevin! Is that why she let us come tonight? Out of pity?”

  Aunt Roz was closer now, giving them an “I’m trying to get to you!” look, but two shiny-faced men were clinging to her and gushing.

  “We’ll see you at Palma, my dear, after you’ve dealt with all your stage-door Johnnies—You are coming to the party, right?—You must!—We can gorge ourselves on jumbo shrimp, wait for the reviews—and toast to how fabulous you were!”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world!” Aunt Roz blew them a kiss, then collected Lexi and Kevin in a giant hug. “Lord,” she said with a sigh, “I can’t smile anymore or my face’ll fall off.”

  Lexi gave her a peck on her heavily powdered cheek. “Thanks again for letting us come. I really appreciate it—I mean, after everything that I—well, you know.”

  “Yes. I know. Well, I’ve never been much of a disciplinarian. I figure Mark and Clare ending their honeymoon early to come pick you kids up will probably result in punishment enough.”

  No doubt. “Anyway, you were awesome tonight.”

  “No, you were fabulous, my dear!” Kevin mocked.

  “Why, thank you, kind sir,” Aunt Roz said using her Southern drawl from the play. “I hope you’re not just saying that.” She batted her false eyelashes a few times and turned to a handful of people to sign more autographs.

  “Nah, they ain’t lyin’, Mrs. McGill. You rocked.”

  “Well, I apprec—” Aunt Roz looked up from the program she was signing and gasped, fumbling her pen. “Melrose?”

  Lexi did a double take that could have given her whiplash. There Melrose stood in the dappled shadows of the streetlight, flipping her stringy blond hair—still wearing the outfit Lexi had lent her—but it looked as if it had been dragged through the Lincoln Tunnel.

  “What’re you doing here?” Lexi said, her guts suddenly in a knot. “Just your usual stalking? Or did you come for the dagger you left stuck in my back?” Okay, that was mean, but …

  “I was in the neighborhood, so I snuck into the theater and caught, like, the last fifteen minutes of the play. Your aunt was the best thing in it.”

  “Oh”—Aunt Roz cleared her throat—“well, I’m flattered.”

  “That ain’t the only reason I came.”

  Lexi, Kevin, and Aunt Roz stared her down. Waiting. Wondering. That angel-of-silence thing was happening again, just like at the dinner party of doom.

  “Well, what is it already?” Kevin asked. “We’re not getting any younger.”

  “Lemme guess,” Lexi said. “You’ve decided to come clean and return my opal necklace that you stole.”

  “What necklace? No. But you’re close.” And in one smooth move, Melrose whipped something pink out of her back pocket and slapped it into Lexi’s hands.

  Her eyes nearly sprang out of her skull. “My wallet? Where’d you find my wallet? How’d you even know it was—?”

  “I didn’t exactly find it. ‘Member, like, a week and a half ago? Someone slammin’ into you in Grand Central?”

  Lexi thought back to the day she had arrived. A bulldozer of a girl had crashed right into her without apologizing. The black-and-blue mark on her arm was just fading. “That was you?”

  “You were such an easy mark—standin’ there with your bag hangin’ open. You were practically beggin’—”

  “Okay, okay!” The rush of confused emotions vibrating through Lexi had her either wanting to hug the girl or slug her. Is it still there? she wondered and immediately flipped to the last plastic insert in her wallet. The only copy of her absolute favorite photo of all time—her mom on the boardwalk in Atlantic City holding up that gnarled shoe? Yes! And right next to it, tucked in a separate sleeve, was the tissue from the library of lips, the one with the perfect lipstick print. Before she knew it, hot tears were stinging her eyes.

  “Sorry about the missing cash if that’s what you’re bawlin’ about, but it’s long gone.” Melrose turned to leave. “Sorry about—everything.”

  “Wait, don’t go!” Lexi choked out. “You’re always running off.”

  “Well, I am a runaway. It’s what we do.”

  Aunt Roz insisted they carry on their conversation at Niko’s down the block—that the cast party could wait, and when she added that they could order whatever they wanted, Melrose was all gung ho. Minutes later, it seemed, they were all piling into a taped-up vinyl booth at the little coffee shop, giving their orders to a sleepy-looking waiter. He brought the drinks right away, and while the fry cook was grilling their tuna melts, Lexi grilled Melrose.

  “So, where’d you end up going after that night on the roof? You’re not still living in tunnels, I hope?”

  “Nah, the cops’re all over the place these days. Even St. Agnes. I can’t hack it out there on my own no more. So, I finally bit the bullet and—long story short—”

  “You moved back home?” Lexi asked.

  “Lemme finish. I checked into Covenant House—this teen shelter in midtown. Didn’t have much of a choice—and they don’t turn anyone away, so …” She started fingering her army of ear studs. “Anyway, I’m there, unpacking my stuff, right? That’s when I come across your wallet. For some reason I had to return it. Too much freakin’ guilt.”

  “Yay, guilt!”

  Kevin’s hand shot up. “High five!”

  “Nah,” Melrose groaned, “I don’t do that.”

  Aunt Roz seemed deep in thought, staring into her tea. She took a careful sip, and as her cup hit the saucer, she looked up with a splash of excitement on her face. “Melrose, were you serious before when you said you wanted to become an actress?”

  “Dead.”

  “You’d be a great one too,” Kevin said, shoving a handful of fries into his face. “I don’t know how I know, I just do.”

  “I was thinking,” Aunt Roz went on, “our theater has an apprentice program for teens. They offer workshops and classes in exchange for doing odd jobs. Would you be interested in such a thing?”

  “Are you kidding? That’d be awesome!”

  Unfortunately, that enthusiastic response came from Kevin, not Melrose, who was suddenly absorbed in the U.S. Presidents quiz on her paper placemat. She scratched an armpit, twisted her hair. Fin
ally she asked, “Like what kinda odd jobs?”

  “Does it matter? Building sets, answering phones.” Aunt Roz ripped off a false eyelash and smooshed it onto the table like a dead centipede. “Nothing glamorous.”

  Lexi waited for Melrose to speak. Why wasn’t she jumping at the chance?

  “You have to audition to get accepted,” Aunt Roz went on, removing eyelash number two, “but I suppose I can help in that department.”

  “She can help,” Lexi echoed.

  That was when the mountains of food came. Melrose never gave Aunt Roz a definite answer through the entire meal but from the glint in her eye and the hint of a smile on her greasy face, Lexi knew it was a done deal. “I bring the check,” the waiter said when they had finished, which he did very quickly, and they all began gathering their things.

  “Here, don’t forget your shawl,” Lexi said to Aunt Roz. “It fell on the floor.” She handed it across the table and her aunt flung it around her shoulders with a movie-star flourish. Ping! Something had landed on Lexi’s plate. She brushed aside a few abandoned fries and plucked off a long, golden strand of—“Omigod, look!”

  Dangling from her fingertips, spinning and winking in the fluorescent light, was her opal necklace. “Oooh!” The sparkling stone was white-white and a thousand different colors all at the same time. And not a hint of damage. Well, except for the pickle juice, which she immediately wiped off on her napkin. She kissed the opal, draped the cool, delicate chain around her neck where it belonged, and secured the clasp. Snap. There. She felt complete again.

  “That’s the same shawl you wrapped around me in Radio City, isn’t it?” Lexi asked Aunt Roz, putting two and two together—which she was getting pretty darn good at, she had to admit. “My necklace must’ve gotten tangled. I just can’t believe it! Oh, this is a good, good night.”

  “And to think,” Aunt Roz said, “I was planning on going with my black pashmina, had I worn that new red dress. It just goes to show …”

  In the taxi, on their way to dropping off Melrose, Lexi had the funniest thought: Ill-fated entanglements! Ha! The yogini was right. Mini-mystery solved. She still couldn’t help wondering about the biggie, though—the Cleo jewel heist—and if the police had even paid attention to her phone call at all, or just dismissed it like they did the first time around.

  The LCD screen in the seatback of the taxi flashed from the weather forecast to local news and Lexi zeroed in. Something about the stock market plunging to an all-time low and unemployment rising to an all-time high, but not a single mention of “the crime of the century.” She slumped back in her seat, defeated. That’s what she got for sticking her nose where no twelve-year-old nose ought to be.

  28

  EXTRAORDINARY

  Lexi’s last night in New York City was another sleepless one. Too many questions swirling around in her head; too few concrete answers. And she had wanted to look especially rested and refreshed when she met up with Dad and Cruella. Oh, well.

  “Why the sour puss?” Aunt Roz asked her Wednesday morning, setting a glass of orange juice in front of her on the bathroom sink. “Sweetie, you’ll be fine.”

  Lexi kept the blow-dryer diffuser, looking like the miniature spaceship Kevin had once mistaken it for, hovering over her wet curls and managed a sip of juice. “I know. Eventually.”

  “Chug it, Lex!” Kevin rolled by the bathroom on his sneaker-wheels. “We don’t want to be late meeting Dad and Clare.”

  “Well, you’re half right. And no Heelys in the house!”

  “We have oodles of time, Kevin,” Aunt Roz called out.

  “We’re going for a farewell breakfast first, don’t forget!” She opened the cabinet to grab her calcium pills and leaned into the mirror, cleaning the gunk from the corners of her eyes. “We deserve at least that after all the hoopla we’ve been through.”

  Lexi kept her focus on her own reflection, grasping at bunches of her hair so it would dry in a fuller curl. “Think Melrose’ll take you up on your offer?”

  “Well, it’ll be up to her if she turns the corner—but she’ll certainly have you to thank if she does.” Aunt Roz shook a pill onto her hand and washed it down with a swig of juice. “When I think of the lengths you went to in order to help that girl, well, it’s far more than most people would’ve dreamed of going—although I didn’t necessarily agree with your entire process.” She swatted Lexi’s rear end. “You’re quite an amazing girl—destined for extraordinary things.”

  There was that word again. Extraordinary. Even though her aunt sounded as if she were still doing a monologue from a play instead of just talking, it sounded sincere.

  “I mean it,” Aunt Roz insisted. “Your mother would be so proud of the strong young lady you’re becoming.”

  Lexi closed her eyes for a second so the words would sink in good and tight and she could take them back to Cold Spring. “I wish she was meeting us at the station today instead of—”

  “Of course you do, dear, but try and give Clare a fighting chance. It can’t be too easy for her, either.”

  “You know what I’m gonna do when we get back to Cold Spring?” Kevin said, dragging a duffel past the door like it was a limp carcass. “Ask Dad to drive us out to Kingsley Park—I want to try the Haunted Mansion ride again. I figure after risking my life trying to solve a big New York crime, it’ll be a cinch.” He sat on the bag and started scooting it backward down the hall. “What’d you stuff in this thing, Lex—anvils?”

  Lexi switched off the dryer. “Whoa,” she muttered to Aunt Roz. “Can’t wait to tell Dr. Lucy about that.” They locked eyes and shared a hopeful smile via the mirror.

  “You want to know what I think?” Aunt Roz grabbed a brush off the counter and began brushing her silvery hair. “I think it’s time to stop playing mother to your little brother. That’s Clare’s job now. You just enjoy being a girl.”

  It sounded easy. It sounded impossible.

  “Which reminds me of a song from South Pacific, but I’ll spare you my Nellie Forbush. Now, c’mon, it’s time to bid the Big Apple adieu,” she said, floating out of the bathroom, still brushing. “And don’t forget your pearls!”

  Oh, those. Lexi had planned on forgetting them accidentally on purpose. “I won’t.”

  The restaurant was too noisy to have a decent conversation and the cab ride to Grand Central was another quiet one, except for Aunt Roz fawning over the driver’s African dashiki shirt. “Is that tie-dye?” Lexi stared out the window, doing that adieu-bidding thing her aunt had mentioned—saying good-bye to the city. Another taxicab stopped at the red light next to them and she did a double-take. A beaming little girl in a navy beret was in the back seat pressing a long white feather against the window. Huh. Lexi could actually feel goose bumps sprouting on her arm. No, even bigger. Ostrich bumps. Major sign—if she still believed in such things.

  “This is good, Muchungwa!” Aunt Roz told the driver. “You can let us out right here.”

  The cab stopped about half a block away from Grand Central, so Lexi, Kevin, and Aunt Roz had to maneuver their way through the Wednesday morning masses swarming Forty-Second Street. As they approached the entrance of the train terminal, Lexi’s right arm felt pinched and heavy—not just from the weight of her bag. She had decided to wear the hateful pearls as a goodwill gesture, but wrapped around her wrist as a funky bracelet. No way was that thing going around her neck, competing with her opal.

  Through the doors of Grand Central they trudged, lugging their duffels and backpacks. Up the ramp. Around the corner and into the main concourse with its whirlwind of business suits and briefcases Lexi had come to know so well.

  “There she is!” someone shouted.

  Lexi looked over her shoulder to see who they were talking about.

  A swarm of cameras, lights, and reporters worthy of a rock star came rushing right at her. Microphones in Lexi’s face. Blinding flashes. Questions, questions, questions. Too many being fired all at once.

  “What t
he—?” Lexi’s first instinct was to make a run for it, but she was instantly surrounded. Trapped. She dropped her duffel, her heartbeat sputtering. “What’s going on? This must be a mistake.”

  “You are Alexandra McGill, correct?” a blue-suited reporter asked.

  Lexi didn’t even know the answer to the question. Her head was spinning like a carousel gone haywire.

  “Yes, that’s her, that’s her!” It was Kim Ling, shoving her way to the front of the pack. “She’s obviously clueless about what happened.”

  “Kim—what’re you doing here? Are you in your pajamas?”

  Again, Lexi was bombarded with a hundred questions.

  “Okay, this is ridiculous, being accosted like this,” Aunt Roz said, stepping forward. “Could someone please explain what’s going on? One at a time.”

  “An arrest was made in the Cleopatra jewel heist case, ma’am,” a tight-lipped female reporter declared, “thanks to a tip-off from—your daughter?”

  “Niece.”

  The reporter glanced at her notepad. “Nigel Humphries, head writer for the TV show The Streets of New York, confessed everything last night when the cops showed up at his house in Astoria.”

  “No way,” Lexi muttered.

  “Way!” Kim Ling said, stepping forward. “And when they reported his arrest without even mentioning your name, I thought, ‘Oh, heck to the no!’ I mean, I knew it had to be because of your epiphany, Lex, after spelling it all out for me in that e-mail. So, I took it upon myself to alert the media that a shy little Amish girl from Cold Spring had actually solved the crime of the century single-handedly and voilà—they’re all over the story like, if you’ll excuse the cliché, white on rice. They showed up at the brownstone en masse this morning but you guys had already left, so”—she hunched over suddenly, gasping for breath—“that’s when I steered them—here.”