Chapter Twenty-One. The Body with The Bad Brilliant Idea
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE BODY WITH THE BAD brILLIANT IDEA
It takes some of the shine off my moment of glory when I explain that my reason for having access to a master key is that I like to play post office, and sometimes a package needs to be taken inside one of the units, especially if the contents require refrigeration.
Still, I won’t forget the look of admiration on Felix’s face anytime soon.
“Here I was thinking we’d have to google ‘how to pick a lock,’” he says as we detour to the mail room. “And I don’t even have a credit card. I was going to have to bust out my library card. But no, I have the ultimate partner in crime.”
That reminds me I haven’t filled him in on the latest.
“There’s a new wrinkle in the case. About Bradley.” As opposed to the private investigation Felix and I are conducting, in our own unique fashion.
“What is it?”
“They didn’t tell my grandmother that part. But I guess the EpiPen must have been a red herring”—look at me, busting out the detective novel slang—“because they don’t seem to care about it anymore. Unless they’re saying that to get someone to let their guard down and incriminate themselves?”
Felix nods as if this is a reasonable possibility. I try to picture floating that theory to my friend Sam and realize it would never happen, because her skepticism is a foregone conclusion. Does that mean Felix is my friend?
And why is that thought vaguely disappointing?
Maybe it’s my competitive side. It feels like Felix and I are playing a new game, and the stakes have something to do with who likes who more.
I think the winner is the one who gets the other person to show their cards first, but it’s like the police always say: I can’t comment further about an ongoing investigation.
The second Sofia confirms via text that she has Bernie in the van, we spring into action.
Felix heads straight for the door of the penthouse. There used to be a Venetian scene painted on the front, courtesy of his grandfather, but all that remains is the ghostly outline of a gondola under a bridge, peeking through a layer of chalky white.
I’m on lookout duty, stationed near the elevator to listen for the sound of someone heading for the top floor.
On the slim chance that anyone shows up, our excuse for being here is that Felix wanted to look out the window at the end of the hall for an aerial sketch he’s allegedly doing.
And I came with him to … hand him pencils like I’m a nurse and this is an operating room.
Whatever. If any of the residents caught us together, they’d assume we snuck up here for “privacy.” We’d swallow the humiliation and try again later.
I’m so focused on watching the light-up display above the elevator that it takes me a second to wonder why I’m hearing an owl hoot in broad daylight. Inside the building.
When I glance at Felix, he jerks his head at the door, which is now ajar.
“Did you just hoot at me?” I ask in a normal voice.
He shoots me a panicked look, but we have the entire top floor to ourselves and it’s a valid question. “I thought we should have a signal.”
“Why not an eagle? Or, you know, a hand sign?” I do the heavy metal horns thing, twisting my wrist back and forth.
“Can we talk about this inside please, Virginia?” Felix hisses.
“Whooooo,” I hoot at him, but not too loudly.
Once the door closes behind us, the nervous jokes dry up.
It feels 110 percent more criminal to be inside the unit.
Even though I used to come up here all the time with Grandma Lainey to visit Claude, my skin prickles with awareness of how unwelcome I would be now that this space belongs to his sister.
“It’s different, isn’t it?” Felix looks to me for confirmation.
“Like a Bed Bath & Beyond threw up in here.” The original aesthetic was described to me as “édith Piaf in Paris,” which apparently means long brocade drapes, velvet settees, and ornate scrollwork legs under the spindly side tables, of which there were many.
Everything that could have a pattern—from throw pillows to rugs to coasters—did.
Now there are off-white slipcovers on most of the furniture, pastel bath mats have been tossed over the carpet, and beachy country accents are scattered throughout the living area, like somebody went wild with a hot glue gun and a basket of seashells.
Dark squares mark the wallpaper where paintings used to hang.
“I wonder what she did with the rest of my granddad’s art.” Felix’s voice is subdued, and not because of stealth this time. Claude collected a lot of Mr. Gutierrez’s work, and the only piece still on display is the portrait of Zenobia propped on a bookcase.
“Do you want to look for the paintings first?”
He shakes his head. “That’s okay.” I get the feeling he wants to say more but talks himself out of it. “We don’t have time.”
Technically we probably do, but emotionally we both want to get out of here ASAP. Hardened criminals we are not.
“Where should we start?”
“Um.” Felix turns in a half circle. “What’s all that stuff on the table?”
For a second, I worry about touching things with my bare hands, but that’s silly.
No one’s going to check a book of … fabric samples for fingerprints.
“Fifty shades of beige,” I report, flipping a few pages.
“Must be part of her decorating blitz.” There are also boards with miniature ceramic tiles and squares of carpet in hues that range from oatmeal to taupe. “Can you say bland?”
This place is going to look like a rice cake by the time she’s done. I put the binder back where I found it. Questionable as all this is on the aesthetic front, it doesn’t feel particularly relevant to our quest.
“Let’s try the office,” Felix suggests.
When Claude was alive, his “office” was more of a dressing room, packed with outfits and accessories from decades on the stage.
The small desk in the corner was mostly ornamental, since he did most of his correspondence at the breakfast table.
This room was a magical place to play, even if it gave me a warped sense of how many robes the average adult owns.
“Whoa.” Felix pauses on the threshold, taking in the black garbage bags stacked against the wall.
“It’s not your grandad’s paintings.” That’s my first thought, because the shape is too squishy for that.
“It must be Claude’s stuff.”
I’m tempted to drag them out of here before she can trash her brother’s entire wardrobe, but there’s no way she wouldn’t notice.
Also, there’s something on the desk. I wouldn’t say my thumbs are pricking or the hairs on the back of my neck are sticking up or any of the other things that happen in mystery books when someone is about to make a big discovery, but it does strike me as a good place to look.
Felix and I get there at the same time, frowning as we attempt to make sense of what we’re seeing.
“Did she … write down all her evil plans in glitter pen?” he asks. “Pinterest but make it diabolical.”
“It’s a desk calendar, crossed with a diary.” They’re big in mom circles, for people who like organization and crafts, with a steady stream of social media humblebrags. That reminds me to take a picture, in case we need to study the details later.
This is an extra fancy one, with themed stickers and coordinating markers, all in the pale pink and gold family. It reminds me of something, but the connection doesn’t click until I see the cursive scrolling along the bottom of the page. Good Morning, Beautiful!
“Her cup must be the same brand.” I point at the words, festooned with the familiar bunch of flowers wrapped in a plaid bow. “Did you notice she hasn’t been lugging that thing around anymore?”
“Maybe she got carpal tunnel.” He taps yesterday’s calendar square. “Or else it wasn’t appropriate for a meeting with Shark, Shark, Shark & Leech, Esq.”
Tell me how you really feel about lawyers, Felix!
My eyes trail back even farther, to the day Bradley died. “Talk to B about ME,” I read aloud. “She had to schedule time to talk about herself?”
“Am I allowed to say that he didn’t seem like a great listener?” Felix lifts the edge of the calendar, sliding out a piece of paper on official-looking letterhead with lots of initials after the name. “What’s a forensic psychiatrist? Wouldn’t that be like mental health for dead people?”
I don’t know how sleuths of yore coped without access to search engines. Maybe that’s why you had people like Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, who knew something about everything. Since Felix and I are (semi) normal teenagers, I find the answer on my phone.
“It looks like they either work with criminals or—” I trail off, stomach sinking.
Felix nudges me. “What?”
“Court cases. Including ‘posthumous evaluation’ to determine ‘testamentary capacity.’” I look up from my phone. “Probably we should read the letter.”
It’s short and full of fancy terminology, but we both get the gist: She’s looking for someone to help her challenge Claude’s will.
This person turned her down, but that doesn’t mean Bernie hasn’t found an “expert” to testify that Claude didn’t know what he was doing—or was “unduly” influenced by someone around him.
“I guess she wasn’t working on herself when she visited all those shrinks,” Felix says.
“Unfortunately not.” Which we should have guessed from her personality. Why try to improve what she already thinks is perfect? “So then what, they throw out Claude’s will and she gets the whole building because she’s his closest relative?”
Frowning, Felix drops to his knees and starts opening drawers. In the second from the bottom, he finds a rolled sheet of white paper. I know it’s not going to be something really good like a treasure map, but my heart still beats faster as he slides off the rubber band.
“Oh.” He smooths it with both hands. “It’s a building. Manor Estates,” he reads.
“Is that not … redundant?”
“You’ll have to ask Bernie. Apparently this is her happy place.” He points at a spot on the plans where someone has written the words “Salon (nails and hair)” in pink marker. There are other notes in gold and tan (Tea Room, Boutique), clearly added after the fact.
My eyes trace a line from the Golf Cart Depot to the Pickleball Courts. “Where are they even going to build something like this? This town is already wall-to-wall retirement communities.”
Felix bends closer to the drawing. “Oh shit.” His eyes go wide. “It’s here.”
The blankness of my expression tips him off that I’m not following.
“Look.” He points to the bottom right corner of the page. “These are the cross streets for this block. They want to build this thing right where we’re standing.”
“But that would mean—”
“No more Castle Claude,” he confirms. “It’s still not enough land … ohhh.”
“What?”
“Remember that empty lot, with the fence around it?” He swallows. “And the sign?”
Felix turns back to the plans, and this time I see what we’ve both overlooked until now. In the upper left corner, above an address and phone number, tiny block letters spell out the words ODELL PROPERTY DEVELOPMENT.
“M-E,” I breathe. “As in Manor Estates. This is what Bradley was coming to talk about. Not me.”
“Although it is pretty narcissistic.” Felix scowls at the plans. “Coming in here and destroying a whole community so you can have your personal playground.”
“We need to show this to Mervyn.”
Felix grimaces. “Might be tricky to explain how it came to be in our possession.”
“Maybe he’ll be too upset to notice.” Another thought occurs to me. “He was dead wrong about Claude’s sister. She’s more than a nuisance.”
“Yeah, but he was right about Bradley’s family.”
“Wait.” I grab Felix’s arm when he starts to roll up the drawing. “If this was the plan all along, why was Bradley talking about his Dudebro Chateau? Because those two flavors do not mix.”
Felix shakes his head. Real estate wheeling and dealing isn’t part of the high school curriculum. My only frame of reference is Monopoly, and I hate that game.
Elsewhere in the apartment, we hear a crash. Felix and I stare at each other in mute terror. Did someone else decide to break in at the same time?
When we tiptoe out of the office and peek around the corner into the living room, my shoulders slump with relief. It’s Claude’s cat, staring at the remains of a potted succulent as if she has no idea how it managed to leap off the counter with no assistance whatsoever from her paw.
“Zenobia,” Felix calls, and the cat jumps down and runs over to butt her head against our shins and snake around our legs in a purring figure eight.
“Good kitty, but we have to go,” I tell her, with a final pat. She runs to the door like she understands the words. Claude always said she was a genius.
Unfortunately, now she’s scratching at the paint and yowling.
“I think she wants her afternoon stroll,” I tell Felix, with a pang of sadness at the memory of Claude and his cat on their daily ramble around the building, usually with coordinating accessories.
His sister has probably been too busy hatching plots to take Zenobia anywhere.
“Is it that late?” Felix tucks the rolled-up plans under his arm before digging his phone out of his pocket. His whole body stiffens. “She’s coming back.”
“What?”
He shows me the screen. “Sofia texted a few minutes ago.”
“Please tell me you’re joking.”
“I had it on Do Not Disturb! We were in stealth mode.”
“I thought she said it would go on for at least an hour!”
“I guess Bernie forgot something.” Felix is looking around the room wildly, like the news short-circuited his brain.
“Let’s get out of here.”
“Too late.” He nods at Zenobia, who is now stretching up on her hind legs to scratch the doorknob. “She’s on her way up.”
I run through everything I know about Claude’s apartment in a millisecond as I grab him by the hand that isn’t holding Bernie’s papers.
We hurry past the dining nook and through the galley kitchen until we reach the slatted doors of the narrow broom closet.
Praying she hasn’t returned to dust her knickknacks, I drag Felix inside with me, easing the accordion door closed just as a key rattles in the lock.