Millie dissolved into fresh giggles and then pulled herself together with what appeared to be another exciting brainstorm. “What if it was A GHOST?”
“There’s no such thing—” I tried.
“Adolpha the She-Wolf is a ghost, and she HATED Nathaniel Blackwood. And I’ve been feeling this weird draft on the back of my neck all night. And when I touched Keme’s arm earlier, all the hairs STOOD UP!”
We were all kind enough not to look directly at Keme, but even out of the corner of my eye, I could see his sudden—and intense—blush.
“Keme doesn’t have any hair on his arms,” I said to break the moment. Then I had to dodge a kick, and Bobby had to keep me from falling over. “And it’s not a ghost. Ghosts are not a workable theory.”
“What about the drips?” Fox asked.
“Yes,” Indira said. “My thought exactly.”
“Who?” Bobby asked.
“The donor,” Indira said. “And the bookseller, or whatever he is.”
“Colleen and George,” Fox said. “The drips.”
“Why would Colleen donate the book only to steal it back?” I asked. “Unless this is the ultimate prank.”
Indira shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe that man, George, stole it. After all, he appraised it. He might have decided it was too good to pass up. He’d know how to sell the book, too, which is an additional factor.”
“Plus,” Millie said, “they’re gone.”
We all looked at her.
“What?” Millie asked.
“What do you mean they’re gone?” I said.
Keme’s brows drew down. “What do you think she means?”
“They snuck out while your dad was showing Deputy Winegar his gun stance.”
“What in the world is a gun stance?” I asked.
“Let it go,” Bobby said. To Millie, he said, “They just left?”
“Oh yeah, and you could tell they didn’t want anyone to see—that’s probably why they went out to the sun parlor and climbed over the railing.” Her face lit up. “Like NINJAS!”
“Ninjas,” I said. “For the love of God, Millie—”
Here’s one cute thing about Keme: he can communicate pure murderous intent with nothing but his eyes.
(Is that cute?)
I fumbled my way to say, “—uh, I guess they could be ninjas.” A bit defensively, I added for Bobby’s benefit, “Anything’s possible.”
“Okay,” Bobby said in the tone of someone contemplating a drastic change in his romantic life. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to tell Salk what we know, and then we’re done.”
Of course, it didn’t go as planned. First, we had to wait while Salk (under my mother’s direction) finished his walk-through of the billiard room. Then we had to wait while Winegar (with my dad interrupting) reported that the bystanders—meaning, everyone else—had been sent home, and he’d completed an initial perimeter check. Salk shooed the rest of us out of the hall while he worked, and Indira took advantage of the change in location to put the rest of us to work cleaning up the mess from the fallen cupcakes. (My parents—big surprise—immediately escaped upstairs to avoid, you know, having to do any actual work.) After a while, Salk pulled Bobby into the hall. They talked for a long time, which made me worried for some reason I couldn’t put my finger on. And then—finally—Bobby came back and told me Salk was ready to talk to me.
Salk ran me through the questions I’d more or less expected—what happened, had I noticed anything unusual, etc. After I’d told him everything, Salk nodded and asked, “But you didn’t actually see the mayor?”
“No,” I said. “But I smelled her perfume. I mean, I thought it was her perfume. It definitely smelled similar, anyway. And I’m pretty sure she was the one saying, ‘Excuse me.’”
Salk nodded some more. And then he said the worst thing an officer of the law can say: “We’ll take that into consideration. In the meantime, I’m going to have to keep the billiard room closed off. I need to see if I can get any prints. If I can get another deputy over here to help, it’ll go faster.” He must have misunderstood the look on my face because he added, “I promise I’ll be as quick as I can.”
