Lou Lou and Pea and the Mural Mystery

by Jill Diamond

“Someone could have turned on the sprinklers when Sarah’s back was turned,” Pea said.

  “Jeremy! He was in the studio when we made our sugar skulls,” Lou Lou remembered. “He probably scoped it out so he could ruin everything later!”

  Pea pointed down the block. “Look, here comes Elmira!” The Candle Lady hurried toward them. The brown fabric of her shapeless clothing billowed out around her.

  “Hi, Elmira!” Lou Lou called.

  “¡Hola, Lou Lou Bombay y Peacock Pearl! How are you today, my dears? Have you made any progress on the—”

  “Mural Mystery!” Lou Lou finished Elmira’s sentence. “Don’t worry—we’re definitely getting closer to proving who is behind the crimes. We have to stop tragedies like this.” Lou Lou pointed at Sarah’s Studio. Inside, Sarah was mopping the floor.

  “You’re right. ¡Estoy totalmente de acuerdo!” said Elmira, looking vexed. “I was so sad for Sarah when she called to tell me about her soggy sprinkler storm surprise. I rushed here to bring her this candle.” Elmira held up a candle that said Reparar, and had a picture of a man with a hammer and a nail. “I do not have a ‘dry’ candle so I chose the next best one, a ‘repair’ candle,” she explained.

  “Did you find any clues about who robbed you, Elmira?” Lou Lou asked.

  “Regrettably, no.” The Candle Lady sounded sad.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Lou Lou said. “I think my new neighbor, Jeremy, committed the other crimes. He probably stole your money, too! Do you know him?”

  “I have met him,” the Candle Lady replied. “He seemed like un buen niño, but who knows? Las cosas no siempre son lo que parecen.”

  “Things are not always what they seem,” Pea translated. “I hope you can still go on your vacation,” she said to Elmira.

  “Gracias, niña. You are very kind, pero no es posible.” Elmira changed the subject. “I should head into the studio now.”

  “Adiós,” Pea said to the Candle Lady. The girls watched as one of their favorite neighbors rushed to help another.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Hallow-What?

  After Pea went home, Lou Lou spent the rest of Sunday afternoon weeding her garden and finishing homework. She couldn’t help peeking at Caring for Your Camellia and admiring the different varieties. When she’d looked at the apple blossom camellias and turned next to the autumn queen page, a wave of sadness for poor Pinky washed over her.

  Monday was the first day of the three-day celebration of Día de los Muertos, so before bed on Sunday, Lou Lou cleared her desk and set up a tribute to Pinky. The centerpiece was the altar, next to which Lou Lou placed her sugar skull and a vase of marigolds from Green Thumb. She also laid out traditional pan de muerto, bread of the dead, made by Pea and her abuela. Pan de muerto was a sweet bread often topped with bone shapes. But Pea had decorated Pinky’s pan de muerto with flower shapes and magenta sugar sprinkles instead. The orange flower water in the recipe made it extra special for Pinky.

  * * *

  When she woke up on Monday morning, Lou Lou spent a few minutes looking at the tribute and thinking of the good times with Pinky.

  “I remember your first flower,” she said aloud to the spirit of her camellia. “I knew right away that I’d grown a blue-ribbon contender!”

  “Lou Lou?” her mom called from below, interrupting Lou Lou’s reminiscing.

  “I’m almost ready for school!”

  “Okay. But I was wondering if you want your ladybug wings for your Halloween costume.”

  “Hallow-what? Oh, right!” Lou Lou smacked her forehead. With all that had happened the past few days, she’d forgotten today was Halloween. Her whole school would be a mass of wizards, goblins, and princesses. Each year, Lou Lou alternated costumes between the scariest horticulture insect threat, the aphid, and the insect that was dearest to her heart, the ladybug. While most people liked ladybugs for their pretty markings, Lou Lou liked them because they ate dreaded aphids for dinner. This was a ladybug year.

  Lou Lou quickly pulled on a red dress with black spots.

  “Do you have my antennae, Mom?”

  “I can’t find them, honey.” Lou Lou did a quick sweep of the crow’s nest for the antennae but they were nowhere to be seen. She grabbed a black headband and some pipe cleaners from her art supplies box and quickly made a makeshift set before she climbed down the rope ladder.

  At Lou Lou’s school, the halls were packed with kids in costumes. Lou Lou’s ladybug wings gently slapped the elbows of bunnies and firefighters as she made her way to English. Kyle Longfellow was dressed in a black-and-silver Comet Cop costume, complete with glossy leggings and big gloves. Lou Lou smiled when she saw that he was wearing his bumblebee sweater over his silver bodysuit, leaving his Comet Cop cape to peek out at the bottom.

  In the midst of the crowd, Lou Lou heard, “Happy Halloween, neighbor!” She froze and her ears started to burn.

  “Jeremy,” she growled. So far, she’d avoided him at school. The sixth-grade classrooms were on a different floor and they didn’t have the same lunch period. But she’d known that she’d run into him someday. It seemed today was that day.

  “Happy Halloween,” she muttered. Jeremy was wearing a Dracula cape along with his usual black boots and studded bracelet. But what caught Lou Lou’s eye was the black candle he held in one hand. It had a picture of a scary beast and the word Protección on the glass holder.

  “What’s that for?” she asked, pointing at the candle.

  “Nothing, really,” Jeremy replied. “I just thought it looked creepy and matched my costume. They won’t let me light it in school, though.”

  “Where did you get it?” Lou Lou asked, remembering she’d seen other Protección candles strewn across the floor of the candle shop after the robbery.

  “Someone gave it to me,” Jeremy replied vaguely. He quickly changed the subject. “Hey, cool ladybug costume!” Jeremy grinned at Lou Lou and she saw his fake fangs. “I like that you came up with something original. Unlike some people.”

  Lou Lou followed Jeremy’s gaze and saw Danielle and her snooty-girl posse gathered around Danielle’s locker. They were dressed all in pink, the Sugar Mountain Sisters’ favorite color. They had pink bows in their hair and wore T-shirts with pink glittery letters printed across the front. Danielle’s said Shelly, another girl’s said Sherry, and the other girls’ shirts said Shellytwo and Sherrytwo. Clearly, there weren’t enough Sugar Mountain Sisters to go around. Lou Lou noticed Danielle touch her neck and frown. Jeremy seemed to notice it, too.

  “I heard that girl complaining in the gym about someone stealing her jewelry. Do you know anything about that?” Jeremy asked.

  “No, do you?” Lou Lou tried not to sound too suspicious.

  “Nada,” Jeremy said. “I’m just the new guy, remember? How would I know anything about anything?”

  Lou Lou narrowed her eyes.

  “All right, I gotta get to Social Studies,” said Jeremy. “Catch ya later. Happy Halloweeeeeen!”

  Lou Lou felt unsettled as she watched Jeremy lope off down the hall. He must have stolen the Protección candle from Elmira’s shop during the robbery, she thought. Had he brought up Danielle’s necklace to brag about his crime, just like he’d done with Pinky’s planticide? She couldn’t be sure, but one thing was certain—seeing Jeremy was the creepiest thing that had happened to her so far this Halloween!

  Although she had serious matters on her mind, Lou Lou’s Halloween classes were fun. In art, they sketched a vampire family tree. Lou Lou’s math teacher held contests to guess the weight of a pumpkin and the number of candies in a jar. Lou Lou’s guess of eleven pounds, six ounces won her the pumpkin and Danielle won the candy.

  “The Victoria candle is working!” Lou Lou heard Danielle tell the other Shelly and the Sherrys when she claimed her prize. “I am so totally going to win tickets to that movie premiere.”

  Even Miss Mash got in the Halloween spirit in Science by making a bubbling potion and cac
kling in her taupe witch’s hat. Still, Lou Lou was excited when the day was over and she was finally sitting with Pea at the SS Lucky Alley kitchen table. Between them was a giant mound of candy they’d pooled after their school Halloween parties.

  “Feel like going trick-or-treating?” Lou Lou bit the head off a red gummy bear.

  “Yes!” Pea daintily nibbled on a marshmallow ghost. She adjusted the velvet hat she’d bought at Sparkle ’N Clean so it wouldn’t fall off her head. In her beaded gown and emerald green boa, Pea made an excellent Halloween Ella Divine. “There is no such thing as too much candy. Also we can see everyone in their costumes.”

  “I’ll go tell my mom.” Lou Lou went into her parents’ bedroom. Her mom, still ill, was curled up beneath a thick quilt made by Grandma Bombay and decorated with a nautical star. Lou Lou tiptoed to the bedside.

  “Mom? Can Pea and I go out trick-or-treating?”

  Lou Lou’s mom smiled weakly.

  “Sure, honey. Only as far as Twenty-Fifth Street, though. And can you bring in the mail before you leave?”

  “Of course!” Lou Lou bent down and kissed her mom’s forehead like her mom always did to her when Lou Lou was sick.

  Before she rejoined Pea, Lou Lou went to the SS Lucky Alley mailbox. Among the letters and bills was an envelope with no stamp or address, just the initials L.L.B. printed on the outside. Lou Lou opened it as she walked into the kitchen and found a piece of ivory paper folded up inside.

  “What’s that?” Pea asked. There was no letterhead, greeting, or signature, just a message in black ink in the center of the page. Lou Lou read aloud:

  IN ALL THE SCENES SHOWING SOMETHING NEW,

  LOOK AROUND FOR THE BRIGHTEST HUE.

  LEARN ITS NAME, AND ONCE YOU DO,

  EACH FIRST LETTER WILL BE A CLUE.

  P.S. YOU SEEK THE ONE THAT’S MISSING.

  By the time she reached the word missing, Lou Lou’s ears were as red as the gummy bears she’d been eating.

  “It must be a riddle!” Lou Lou squealed. “About the Mural Mystery!”

  “I think you’re right!” Pea was excited, too.

  “We can solve it!” Lou Lou said. She loved riddles and had never been presented with one so important. “Maybe it will point us to clues to solve the crimes. It’s too bad we didn’t see who put it in the mailbox.”

  “Even if we had, everyone is dressed up so it’s difficult to tell who’s who. A lot of people know where you live so it could have been anyone.”

  “The first step is to break the riddle into pieces.” Forgetting about trick-or-treating, Lou Lou plunked down in a chair next to Pea and laid the paper on the table between them. Pea pulled a pen from her schoolbag.

  “Okay, so the beginning is easy. IN ALL THE SCENES SHOWING SOMETHING NEW must mean the changed murals, right?”

  “Definitely,” Pea agreed. In her careful handwriting, next to the riddle’s first line, Pea wrote, SCENES SHOWING SOMETHING NEW = changed murals. She looked back at Lou Lou, whose brow was furrowed in concentration.

  “LOOK AROUND FOR THE BRIGHTEST HUE is tougher,” Lou Lou said.

  “Hue means color—” Pea began.

  “All of the murals have many bright colors,” said Lou Lou.

  “True,” Pea replied. “But the riddle says hue, which means just one. How will we know which one?”

  “Hmm, I think we should focus on the brightest hue in the newly added images. Let’s put that down as a guess.” Pea agreed and next to the second line on the page she printed, BRIGHTEST HUE = new color in mural addition.

  “LEARN ITS NAME, AND ONCE YOU DO,” Lou Lou read. “We just need to find the name of the hue.”

  “That sounds right,” Pea said. “Good thing I brought my color swatch book.” She wrote, LEARN ITS NAME = name of brightest hue.

  Lou Lou read the last line of the riddle. “EACH FIRST LETTER WILL BE A CLUE. So we’re looking for the first letter of each hue’s name.”

  “What do we do with the first letters, once we have them all?” Pea asked.

  “I don’t know. We’ll figure that part out later, I guess,” Lou Lou said. “We can’t forget the P.S. What does YOU SEEK THE ONE THAT’S MISSING mean?”

  “I have no idea. I think we should solve the main part of the riddle first, then consider the P.S.,” Pea said. “My mother is coming to pick me up at five-thirty. We don’t have much time to check out the murals.”

  “Then let’s go!” replied Lou Lou.

  Seconds later, Lou Lou and Pea were out the door. Everywhere they looked, there were ghosts, ghouls, and monsters clustered in doorways holding out pillowcases and pumpkin-shaped buckets for candy.

  There wasn’t enough time to visit all the murals, so they went to A Lovely Day for a Parade and Dancing in Space first, since they were right next to each other. When they arrived, Lou Lou pulled the Mural Mystery Matrix and a pen from her satchel, and Pea unfolded the creased riddle paper.

  “These are SCENES SHOWING SOMETHING NEW, so we’ve got that part of the riddle covered,” said Lou Lou.

  “Moving on to BRIGHTEST HUE,” Pea said.

  Lou Lou looked at Dancing in Space. “This one’s easy. Danielle’s necklace is only one color so that’s got to be the hue we’re looking for.”

  “Yes, write down—” Pea stopped and began to thumb through her color swatch book.

  “It’s rose gold,” said Lou Lou. “Danielle made sure to tell everyone that.” In the Mural Mystery Matrix box that corresponded to Dancing in Space and Danielle Desserts’s Starry Necklace, Lou Lou wrote, Rose gold. She thought, EACH FIRST LETTER WILL BE A CLUE, and underlined the R.

  “A Lovely Day for a Parade?” Pea asked, nodding in the direction of the other mural.

  Lou Lou took a deep breath before she turned to face Pinky in A Lovely Day for a Parade. She knew the best thing she could do for Pinky was to focus on solving the camellia’s planticide, not cry over withered flowers. Still, she was grateful for Pea’s comforting hand on her elbow as they stared at the image of the dying plant.

  “There’s a lot of brown.” Lou Lou looked sadly at the shriveled leaves. “That could be the hue.”

  “Some of Pinky’s painted flowers are not dried up, so there is a lot of magenta, too,” said Pea, opening her swatch book to a shade that perfectly matched Pinky’s healthier petals. “That is definitely the BRIGHTEST HUE.”

  In the Matrix box at the intersection of Dear Pinky’s Incredibly Tragic Planticide and A Lovely Day for a Parade, Lou Lou wrote Magenta. She underlined the M.

  “I don’t get it. So far these letters don’t mean anything,” Lou Lou said.

  “It might make sense after we add more hues,” replied Pea. “But now…” She looked at her watch. “We have to go back. My mother is probably at your house already!”

  They hurried to the SS Lucky Alley, hoping to beat Pea’s mother. But when they arrived, Silvia Pearl was already on Lou Lou’s front steps. She was holding Dos, who’d been to the vet because Uno had given him a bad swipe. Dos yowled at Lou Lou and Lou Lou yowled back. Vet or no vet, Dos was a mean cat. But he loved Pea and purred loudly when she petted him.

  “Estás un poco tarde. I’ve been waiting for you, Peacock Paloma Pearl,” said Silvia. Uh-oh, Lou Lou thought. Pea’s mother only used Pea’s full name when she was angry.

  “It’s my fault, Silvia.” Lou Lou jumped to Pea’s rescue. “I needed her to help me with something important because my mom is sick today.” This was mostly true.

  “I am sorry to hear that, Lou Lou.” Silvia’s tone softened. “Please tell your mom that I hope she feels better.” She looked at Pea. “You need to do your homework, Miss Pea ‘Ella Divine.’ It’s time to go.” Dos yowled in agreement.

  Pea handed Lou Lou the riddle. “See you tomorrow!” she said, and followed her mother to the door.

  “See you tomorrow!” Lou Lou called back. “And don’t forget…” Pea glanced over her shoulder, and Lou Lou made an M with her hands. Pea smiled in recognitio
n and made a second M in return.

  Mural Mystery.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Cats, Hats, and Bats

  Tuesday was dreary and Lou Lou’s sleepy eyes felt heavy. Her stomach was queasy from eating too much chocolate the night before, and the sight of gummy bears made her feel sick. Pea was wrong—there was such a thing as too much candy.

  It was not Lou Lou’s best day at school. After waking up late, she threw on mismatched clothes and skipped breakfast to prepare last minute for a discussion about famous inventors. But when she got to class, it turned out that Mr. Anthem’s lesson was about geography. At lunch, Lou Lou realized that her dad had accidentally switched her turkey sandwich for his liverwurst. By the afternoon, she’d lost count of how many chrysanthemums she’d said to herself during the day. The only good thing was that there were no more Jeremy sightings.

  When Lou Lou finally arrived back home and saw Serena smiling over the SS Lucky Alley’s front door, she breathed a sigh of relief. Pea was due any minute to work on the riddle and the Mural Mystery. Then the phone in the kitchen rang.

  “Ahoy, you’ve reached the SS Lucky Alley. This is Lou Lou speaking.”

  “It’s me,” replied a familiar voice. “I haven’t left my house yet. Uno rubbed against my paint palette and it’s taking me forever to get the turquoise out of his fur.”

  “Drat!” said Lou Lou, who was eager to get back to riddle solving. Though she couldn’t help but laugh at the thought of Pea’s painted cat. “Can you ask your father to drop you off at If Pigs Could Fly? That way I can meet you there and we can get right to it!”

  “Definitely!” said Pea. “See you in twenty minutes.”

  Lou Lou stuffed the Matrix and the riddle into her satchel and grabbed her coat. She put on her sneakers, then wrote her parents a note saying she had gone for a walk with Pea and would be home before dark.

  On the way to If Pigs Could Fly, Lou Lou kept an eye on the other murals and, sure enough, the Mural Mystery had struck again. On the side of a garage was a mural that Lou Lou and Pea called Cats, Hats, and Bats. It showed cats of all colors and sizes in elaborate head wear. Calicos wore hats piled high with fruit, black cats sported feathered berets, and Persian cats wore wide-brimmed hats with elaborate curlicues. Around their heads fluttered dark bats. Both Lou Lou and Pea counted this mural among their favorites. Pea liked it because she adored felines and fashion. Lou Lou loved the bats, which were a horticulturist’s friend thanks to their appetite for pests and their ability to pollinate plants and flowers.