“Unless they’re trying to make you disappear,” Ernestine pointed out.
“Yes, well, there is that. But I am rich, so you can’t blame them for trying, really,” Mrs. MacGillicuddie said without resentment. “I tried a few times with Father and Mother MacGillicuddie, but it was so much less complicated to just ship them off someplace where they couldn’t bother me. Now do scoot, darlings. I have a funeral to plan.”
Getting up, Eduardo led them out, leaning heavily on the cane Mrs. MacGillicuddie had lent him.
“What about you, Eduardo?” Ernestine crossed her arms and looked defiantly at him once they were out of Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s hearing. “You stand to gain a lot from Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s death.”
“¿Yo?” Eduardo pressed a hand against his chest in shock. “But I was poisoned! I could have died, too!”
“Which is just the sort of thing a smart, organized person like you would do to throw suspicion away from yourself,” Ernestine noted.
In spite of himself, Eduardo preened, flattered. Then, having smoothed his hair back down, he turned serious. “When Mrs. MacGillicuddie dies, I will lose the best friend I’ve ever had. No amount of money I will inherit will ever replace that.”
He shut the door on them, leaving Ernestine and Charleston to take both the mouse and the teapot back upstairs. As they went, Ernestine looked down at the remaining names on her list:
EDUARDO
RODNEY
AURORA BOREALIS
Eduardo had seemed sincere when he said that no one could replace Mrs. MacGillicuddie in his life. Still, maybe he had some money problems Ernestine didn’t know anything about? Maybe he’d regret Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s death but still feel he had no choice but to murder her. Reluctantly, Ernestine left his name on the list.
What about Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s son and granddaughter? Could one of them know something about their mysterious, monstrous relative? The one who had disappeared so many years before? Or did this have nothing at all to do with the picture?
And still, there were Mr. Sangfroid and Lyndon. Maybe Mr. Sangfroid had tried to kill Mrs. MacGillicuddie, only to accidentally trip and knock himself out.
Or maybe for once in his life, Lyndon was actually managing to pull off some crazy plan somewhat successfully.
If Mr. Sangfroid was the guilty party, then Mrs. MacGillicuddie was safe until he got out of the hospital. If it was anyone else, then she was still in danger.
And the killer could strike again at any time.
Chapter Twelve
In Loving Memory of Fluffy-Wuffy-Kins
FRIDAY, 7 PM
No one got eaten or murdered Thursday night, so both Ernestine and Charleston managed to sleep well for once. After school on Friday, Ernestine’s animal problems temporarily overrode both her zombie and murder problems. Aside from the growing list of maintenance work her mom and stepdad had been ignoring because of tomorrow’s stupid gallery opening, she had a mouse to exterminate and a dead cat to bury. Most kids looked forward to the weekends. Personally, Ernestine found school to be a much-needed break from the responsibilities of her home life.
It turned out that murdering an innocent mouse wasn’t as easy as you might think. They tended to stare pleadingly up at you with big black eyes and trembling whiskers. Ernestine discovered that she much preferred returning the undead to life than she did removing the living from it. So she reluctantly went to the bank and took out two hundred dollars of Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s money. With it, she bought the newly named Mr. Whiskers the poshest cage-and-tunnel-set the pet store owned. The tubes ran all around the attic and it took her and Charleston forever to set it up.
Around seven, they changed back into their school uniforms and joined Maya and Frank downstairs in the garden. Mr. Ellington and the Hep Cats dolefully played the blues beneath the frozen pergola, which had been decorated with white roses and white Christmas lights. Candles filled the veranda and gardens, even floating in the half-frozen koi pond. Honestly, it looked more like someone was going to get married than buried, but it certainly was pretty.
Most impressive of all, the Swanson twins sat on swings suspended high above the garden from the branches of a giant old oak tree. They wore angel costumes. Well, they were actually the swan costumes they had worn to Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s party earlier in the week. They’d just grabbed small harps and added halos to their heads and were busy adjusting them so that they’d be mirror images of each other, though that seemed to be leading to some unusual disagreement among the twins.
“No, Libby, I want my halo on the right! I’m the one that’s right-handed, after all!” Mora cocked the sparkly foil ring above her head off to the right.
“What does being right-handed have to do with it? I look better with mine on the right. Yours should be on the left. That’s your better side!”
“We’re twins, you fool! We both have the same better side!”
“Which is the right.” Pressing her lips together with determination, Libby adjusted her halo to the right as well.
“Can’t you both wear them on the right?” Ernestine called up as she passed beneath them.
“Hello, dearie!” They wiggled their fingers down at Ernestine. Then Mora remembered that she was mad and huffed. “Don’t be ridiculous! The point is for us to be mirror images of each other!”
“Which we will be, if Mora would just put her halo off to the left!”
Shrugging, Ernestine went to find her landlady.
Standing next to the cat-sized coffin, Mrs. MacGillicuddie wore a black sequined dress, fur coat, long black gloves, a veil, and enormous sunglasses that seemed rather unnecessary given that it was both night and she was already wearing the veil. Ernestine went up to give her condolences, only to have Mrs. MacGillicuddie grab her and drag her behind a massive hydrangea bush.
“This funeral is going to be a disaster!” her landlady hissed, throwing up her veil and tearing off her sunglasses to reveal her elaborately made-up face. “No pope! Only a bishop! No white doves to release, only pigeons! Just four thousand roses when I specifically ordered five! I bet they thought I wouldn’t count!”
“I’m sure Fluffy would approve of how miserable Rodney and Aurora Borealis look out there,” Ernestine said encouragingly. “Would you like me to sneak Fluffy’s favorite pillow under Rodney when he goes to sit down? That way he could cover his suit in white cat hair one last time.”
“No, Eduardo already has that under control. What I need you to do is cause a scene. Something that will make the eleven o’clock news. Or get retwitted on Snoopchat or whatever on earth it is you crazy kids do these days.”
“What?” Ernestine exclaimed as Mrs. MacGillicuddie shoved her back out from behind the bush.
“Go accuse someone of murder! That always causes a sensation!”
“But I don’t know who tried to do all of the murdering yet!” Ernestine had no problem at all causing a scene. She was more than happy to cause a scene if it meant she got to be the center of attention while it happened. However, if she was going to accuse someone of murder, she’d prefer it be the correct person, and she still couldn’t decide whether it was Aurora Borealis or Rodney framing Aurora Borealis. Without further evidence, it could be either one of them. Or Lyndon or Mr. Sangfroid or Eduardo.
“I don’t care! We can always bail them out tomorrow morning if you’re wrong! Just pick someone. Preferably my son. I think Fluffy-Wuffy-Kins would have liked it that way.”
“Oh, all right.” Jerking her arm away, Ernestine smoothed down her coat and looked around for someone to accuse.
Rodney now stood next to the tiny pink coffin that held Fluffy-Wuffy-Kins’s earthly remains. He sneered down at it in disgust, clearly revolted by all of the money being thrown into mourning the feline. Money he probably felt he should be able to spend instead. Probably on awful skyscrapers with his name on them or possibly a casino or two.
Ernestine supposed he could be the would-be murderer, but then her eyes fell
on Aurora Borealis standing right next to him in a pair of bright pink stiletto heels.
Heels Ernestine recognized as being part of the flamingo costumes the Swanson twins had worn to Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s New Year’s Eve party a few weeks before.
The twins had been right. She had stolen more than one pair of shoes from them.
Just like she’d broken in and stolen the zombie makeup from Mr. Bara.
As Aurora Borealis lifted her phone up to take a selfie with the coffin, a loose coat sleeve fell backward, revealing red scratches crisscrossing the skin of her forearm.
Scratches that couldn’t possibly have been made by the diamond bracelet on her wrist.
Scratches that could, however, have been made by the claws and beaks of several very angry chickens.
Perhaps Mr. Sangfroid’s photo of the girl had nothing to do with the murder attempts after all. Perhaps Mr. Sangfroid had been on his way to threaten Mrs. MacGillicuddie with the revelation of a missing MacGillicuddie sibling when Aurora Borealis had run into him while escaping Ernestine and her fighting chickens. Maybe knocking him out and thrusting the shoe on his foot had been a spur-of-the-moment attempt to throw suspicion on someone else.
Detective Kim arrived, taking up residence toward the back of the crowd, and then the service started. Facing each other and moving together in perfect time as though puppets controlled by the same string, the Swanson twins descended midway down toward the standing crowd, strumming their harps and softly singing “Ave Maria.” They would have been the mirror images of each other, if they hadn’t both had their halos cocked off to the right, which somewhat ruined the effect.
The bishop prayed for God to welcome Fluffy-Wuffy-Kins’s soul to heaven, preferably right onto His lap. Mrs. MacGillicuddie wept daintily, dabbing at her eyes with lace-trimmed handkerchiefs from the stack Charleston thoughtfully held out for her. He also held her flask until Ernestine glared at him. Then he hastily passed it off to Mr. Ellington, who took a swig and then tucked it into his saxophone.
When the bishop finished, Ernestine stepped up to the podium. As the Swanson twins continued to swing overhead and strum their harps, she looked out over the crowd and wished she had a microphone. This was her big moment, and she wanted to be sure that everyone could hear her.
“Murder,” she began, gesturing at the rose-covered coffin, “is a dreadful business. Not, perhaps, as dreadful as forgetting someone’s birthday, but dreadful just the same. That should seem obvious, should it not? Yet here we all stand because to someone it was not obvious at all. To that someone, what was obvious was that murder would be the perfect solution to any number of problems.
“While the most logical explanation might seem to be that these murder attempts are the work of zombies, the most logical explanation in this case is not true. What is true is that a member of Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s own family has been trying to murder her!”
With dramatic flair, Ernestine pointed her finger at the family in question, all of whom recoiled in horror.
“The child is mad!” Rodney cried, flinging his arms around Aurora Borealis while Lyndon started looking around for a way to escape in case she meant him. “What morbid nonsense!”
“Morbid, yes, but not nonsense,” Ernestine shot back. Gosh, this was fun. No wonder people hung out in murder mysteries where everyone around them dropped like flies, even though the sensible thing to do would be to get the heck out of town. “You, madam, have been impersonating a zombie. You stole the costume from Mr. Theda and Mr. Bara, dressed yourself up in it to resemble the undead, and then broke into your grandmother’s house to murder her!”
“No!” Mr. Theda cried and fainted dead away. Or at least pretended to. He didn’t get enough chances to break out his acting skills these days, so he probably needed to warm up for next weekend’s convention at the Palace. Mr. Bara, apparently expecting this, caught him before he could tumble into the open grave. What Mr. Theda was so upset about, Ernestine didn’t know. It wasn’t like she’d accused him of murder.
“You’re crazy!” Aurora Borealis looked around at all of the appalled faces, her gaze finally landing on the nearby bishop, who decided to scoot away in case Ernestine was correct. “Ew, I’d never wear anything so gross as zombie scabs!”
“Yet you would wear shoes stolen from the Swanson twins!” The entire congregation strained to get a good look at Aurora Borealis’s feet. Above them all, the Swanson twins craned their heads downward so they could see, too.
“Not another pair!” Libby cried, dropping her harp onto the drummer for the Hep Cats. Unnoticed by anyone except for Ernestine, he keeled over backward but at least avoided both the koi pond and marble bench that had been taking out so many other people lately.
“You filthy little thief!” Chucking her harp to the side, too, Mora did an impressive somersault down off of her swing and landed—very nimbly on her feet for someone sixty years old—next to Aurora Borealis.
Libby followed her sister, dropping like a heavenly ninja on the girl’s other side. As Mora grabbed Aurora Borealis, Libby tried to pry the shoes off her feet. Once again, feathers flew everywhere. As did a dozen homing pigeons dyed white.
“What? No! Ow! Get off me! You gave them to me, remember?” Aurora Borealis tried to kick away the elderly twins. In doing so, she lost her balance, knocking over Fluffy-Wuffy-Kins’s pink coffin. It toppled into the hole, followed by Aurora Borealis, Libby, and Mora.
“Oh, my,” Maya gasped.
“Get her, Libby! She’s not getting away with another pair!”
“Give them back to me, you old biddy! They’re mine!” Aurora Borealis kept a tight grip on one of the sparkly pink shoes.
“Oh, this is lovely!” Mrs. MacGillicuddie clasped her hands together. “Fluffy-Wuffy-Kins would have loved this!”
Rodney tried to pry one of the Swanson twins off his daughter, only to have her slug him. Lyndon dove out of the way, accidentally elbowing the bishop into the koi pond as he did so. Mr. Ellington’s entire band sprang forward to fish the holy man out, but by then, half the residents of MacGillicuddie House were brawling with Rodney, Aurora Borealis, and Lyndon as they all tried to make their escape.
“Isn’t this fun!” Mrs. Talmadge called cheerfully to Mr. Talmadge as she swung a chair at Lyndon’s head, which he just managed to avoid.
“Just like old times, luv!” Mr. Talmadge chucked another chair into the hydrangea bush Mrs. MacGillicuddie had dragged Ernestine behind earlier, which had started this whole mess. “Ah, I feel young again!”
Ernestine felt in danger of losing various body parts she was very attached to. Fortunately, Maya snatched her backward just as a very muddy, very bedraggled Aurora Borealis launched herself at Ernestine.
“You!” she screamed, taking a swing at Ernestine’s head with the stiletto heel still in her hand.
“Leave my daughter alone!” Maya whacked her in the knees with the shovel hard enough to send her sprawling backward into the bishop just as the Hep Cats got him onto his feet. They all fell into the pond with a splash that sent frozen koi fish flying everywhere as though the universe was raining kitty treats in Fluffy-Wuffy-Kins’s honor.
As Charleston ran about trying to collect the fish, Detective Kim snagged Aurora Borealis and pulled her back onto dry land. He immediately slapped handcuffs onto her wrists as Maya stuck the shovel back into the ground, apparently satisfied that she’d kept Ernestine safe.
Ernestine seized this opportunity to yank up the sleeve of Aurora Borealis’s coat so everyone could see the scratch marks on her arms. “The chickens I threw at the zombie attacking Mrs. MacGillicuddie scratched up its arms. Scratches that perfectly match these marks!”
The crowd gasped.
“Aurora Borealis!” Rodney cried, fighting his way through the crowd to reach her side. “Tell me it isn’t true!”
“Daddy! I didn’t do it!” Aurora Borealis tried unsuccessfully to tug herself free of Detective Kim. “Grammy’s just being an old biddy!”
“I am not a biddy!” Mrs. MacGillicuddie straightened up in outrage. “And forty-five is not old!”
“You’re eighty,” Charleston pointed out, hands full of frozen fish.
“Hush up, darling, and let the grown-ups talk.”
Rodney had gone quite white and stiff in the face. Of course, as he was always very white and stiff, most people wouldn’t notice a difference, but Ernestine did. It didn’t look like his usual outrage, either, which was pretty much the only emotion she’d ever actually seen him show. Ernestine was sure she must be wrong, but it almost looked like fear.
“She didn’t do it! It was me!” he shouted, commanding the crowd’s attention.
Charleston was so surprised, he dropped his fish right onto the heads of the Hep Cats as they struggled up out of the pond.
“What?” As one, everyone in the crowd swung their heads from Rodney to Mrs. MacGillicuddie. She staggered backward and for support, had to grab the shovel used to dig Fluffy-Wuffy-Kins’s grave. For all her casual talk of her son trying to murder her, the revelation that he actually had seemed to be quite a blow to her. Eduardo scooped the flask out of Mr. Ellington’s saxophone, but she waved it away when he tried to hand it to her.
Ernestine, Catastrophe Queen Page 16
