“Do you have Carl Norton’s number? He was supposed to be here with the truck and float by now.”
“I thought you had that all set up.”
“I did have it set up, little miss. But he’s not here. That’s why I need to call him and see what the delay is.”
“Where’s your phone? Don’t you have his number?”
“It’s either in my office or my car. I don’t have it on me.”
“Oh. Great, Dad.” My dad likes to “lose” his phone. If someone really needs me, they’ll find a way to get to me, he’s said before. I don’t know how he can say this stuff to me and then act all bumbling and innocent when I need him to be reachable. Unfortunately, I didn’t have Carl’s number.
“Okay. You look in your car and I’ll look in your office. Okay?”
“Sure, Ivy,” Dad replied.
I tried to sprint across the Food Zone to the admin building, but sprinting was nearly impossible in my Elsa dress. I pulled it up to run up the stairs to my dad’s office. It’s a big room that used to be a hall of mirrors about twenty years ago, before Mr. Moyer bought Fabuland and took the older, cheesier stuff out and made it his big personal office space.
I nearly slammed into Chris at the top of the stairs.
“Is everything okay?” he asked.
I tried to catch my breath. “He wants me to look in his office for his phone.”
I realized a second later that I didn’t say my dad. But Chris didn’t look confused at all. There was only one he I could possibly be talking about.
“Anything I can help with?” he said.
“He’s going to the south lot to look for his phone in his car, if you want to talk to him. He’s trying to get in touch with Carl Norton. You have Carl’s number, by chance?”
“No…but…” Chris grimaced. “I’ll go to the south lot and try to find your dad, see what I can do. Everything set for the parade?”
“Everything but Carl Norton, I think….”
I pushed open my dad’s office door. “But maybe ask him if he needs anything else. Everything’s okay on my end. I’ve got the princesses ready to go. Although I’m not sure if the horse guy is in the north lot yet with the three horses. I don’t know if my dad has checked up on that.”
“Uhh…okay.” Chris started down the stairs.
“Oh! Chris!” I called. “I forgot. There is one thing.”
He turned and looked up at me, his pale eyes weary, his buzz cut a bit flat on one side as if he’d slept on it and forgotten to fix it. He was probably as tired of this princess stuff as I was. There was definitely a possibility that all the stuff Dad had told me he’d “done”—the horses, the float, updating the shared spreadsheet—he’d accomplished by telling Chris to do it.
“How many light-blue sparkle scorpion paperweights were there total, in all the game booths?” I asked.
Chris screwed his face up. “Excuse me?”
I sounded crazy, probably. Still, I quickly explained about the paperweights. Not the part about Morgan finding the one that was likely Ethan’s, but everything else. About how Ethan had coveted what he thought was the one blue one.
Chris’s face pinched up tight with either confusion or curiosity—I couldn’t tell which. “I don’t know how many there were of each color. I bought them as part of a big bulk order of prizes. The prizes came in a random mix and I selected the scorpions as part of it, but I didn’t specify colors. I don’t think that was an option.”
“Okay,” I said. “Just wondering.”
“There’s one more box of those prizes on the bottom shelf of the second supply closet, if you want to look in there. There’s probably a handful of the paperweights…for what it’s worth.”
“Okay, thanks.” I wished I had time to go rummaging through the supply closet now. But I didn’t. Nor did I think that would supply me with a definitive answer. Even if that box had twenty blue sparkle scorpions, it didn’t mean the boxes opened earlier in the summer did as well.
Chris nodded vaguely and continued down the stairs.
I heard the door close. Up in Dad’s office, I avoided looking at the three leftover fun house mirrors displayed near his desk. One made you look like you had stilt legs, and one gave you a stretched-out head and neck. The one farthest from his desk made you look really short. Whenever I saw the squished, stubby version of myself in it, I thought of my dad saying, I’ve always known that about you. That you wanted to stay small. I think he said that to me the first time I came to the office to look at the mirrors and say hi to Mr. Moyer when I was a kid. I don’t remember exactly why he said it, but it must have been an attempt to make me laugh. About fifty percent of Dad’s jokes are flops, but I guess it’s nice that he’s always trying.
I scanned the big oak desk, then riffled through the papers on it. His phone wasn’t there. I opened a drawer. Then I realized I ought to call the phone so I would hear it ring.
I pulled my phone from the little silky Elsa purse knotted around my wrist and called his cell but didn’t hear anything. I wouldn’t put it past my dad to turn his phone off, though, since he got such a kick out of being unreachable. I opened another drawer. It was full of little snack packets, chips and Cheez-Its and licorice bites. I rummaged through them, but only for a second, because, of course, on second thought, he wouldn’t have put his phone with that stuff. I shuffled through the papers on his desk again. I called his phone a second time.
This time it didn’t go straight to voice mail.
“Hey, Ivy,” Dad said when he picked up. “Got the phone. I just figured out that I’d left it in the john in the Food Zone. In fact, right as I was about to call Chris, Carl comes tooling into the south lot. The float looks fantastic, superb. He’s really outdone himself. You should see it. Looks like a wedding cake. And the sprinkles. So many sprinkles. Fabulous.”
Dad has always been way into sprinkles.
“Awesome,” I said, and mumbled goodbye. After hanging up, I started to straighten the desk papers when something caught my eye. It was a big three-sided plastic picture frame. When I was a kid, there was a picture of me on one side, Jason on another, and my mom on the third. Now it was just Jason and me, with a picture of a pretty stack of Cork’s doughnuts on the third. It was dusty. I picked it up to get a closer look at the picture of Jason—he was wearing his cute blue glasses in first grade, way before he got contacts. As I picked up the frame, there was a thunk. A small, heavy black-and-gray object had fallen out of the triangular space inside the frame. It looked like a phone—but an old-fashioned phone, not a smartphone. It had a small screen, with the word REC on it. There was a power button, which I pressed. REC disappeared.
I felt my breath catch for a moment. It was a recording device, and someone had tucked it away inside the three-sided frame. Why would my dad have set a recorder up in his office? That didn’t seem right. I had a sinking feeling it wasn’t him who’d set it up. I thought about the surprised expression on Chris’s face when we’d run into each other by the stairs. Why would he want to eavesdrop on my dad, though? Either way, I was taking the recorder with me. My Elsa dress didn’t have pockets and my little purse couldn’t hold two devices without bulging and looking ridiculous, so I shoved the recorder into my bra. I’d figure it out later. For now, I had princesses to line up.
* * *
• • •
Carl was doing a surprisingly good job with the mic at the parade, announcing each princess as she marched, floated, or rode into the Food Zone.
“Everyone let’s welcome…BELLE….”
“Put your hands together for…ANNA and ELSA.”
“And coming in on her noble steed…Cinderrrrrrr…ELLA!”
I snorted and turned to watch Winnie’s reaction to this grand introduction.
She smiled and waved. She had the pouch of princess jewelry I’d given he
r to toss to kids. I saw her take out one of the bigger pieces I’d put in it, a set of purple and blue beads with a giant clear plastic heart pendant—the kind that costs a whole dollar at Dollar Tree, not the cheaper ones that are six for a dollar. She placed it in her palm and looked over the crowd for a second. Then I saw her expression change. I wondered for a moment if she had spotted a sad or sickly-looking little girl whom she planned to toss the necklace to. Wow, I thought. Winnie was really taking this shit seriously. And then I saw her arm wind up like a baseball pitcher’s. And I watched that huge plastic heart pendant fly out of her hand as the smile left her face. A man cried out in pain. Still waving at the crowd, I looked to my left, and there was Chris holding one hand to his temple. My dad was standing by him, holding one hand to his own back as if it had suddenly started hurting, the other hand on Chris’s shoulder.
I couldn’t hear him with all the noise, but the words forming on my father’s lips looked like Are you okay?
I looked back at Winnie and thought I saw shock on her face. She seemed to be trying to recover her smile as she reached into her sparkly handbag again. She tossed a small beaded bracelet to a curly-haired little girl who was jumping up and down.
It took me a moment to take my eyes off Winnie. Something about her expression unsettled me. This was a person trying so hard to smile that it looked like it hurt. A person trying really hard to cover something. I could tell that much. I could even relate. Because I hated playing an ice princess.
But what was Winnie’s something? Grief about Ethan? Or something more on top of that?
EIGHT
Dad decided we should treat ourselves to dinner out after the success of the parade. While I was hoping for Chinese food because I was craving egg rolls, he drove us right to Danville Pie. I decided not to tell him that I was sick of the summer food trinity of hot dogs, hamburgers, and pizza. I ordered a salad.
“Ivy, it was a great event,” he said, after he’d finished most of his medium pepperoni. “We did a fantastic job. In general. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you know how to get shit done. We’ve got that in common.”
“Thanks, Dad.” That was something Dad used to say more about Jason than me. But I guess that now Jason was gone, he needed to say it to someone.
“I think the real highlight was the rainbow flower float. I sure heard a lot of oohs and aahs when that went by. I’m glad I thought of that.”
“Yeah, that was pretty impressive,” I said, spearing my last cherry tomato.
Dad had asked Carl’s wife to fashion a little rainbow arch out of different-colored flowers—kind of Rose Bowl–inspired. Amy Townsend sat under it as Belle, waving. I’d barely gotten a glimpse of it with everything else that had been going on. The arch had been smaller than I expected—Amy had had to scrunch down to fit under it—but pretty.
“You might not have noticed since you were in the parade, but that was what really wowed the parents while all the kids were staring at you princesses.” Dad took a gulp from his beer bottle. “But what were you thinking, making the Malloy girl Cinderella?”
“I don’t think she meant to hurt Chris.” I said it quietly, because I knew I might be lying. There’d been something vicious in Winnie’s throw. And I still couldn’t forget the look on her face.
“Oh, don’t worry about poor Chris. That’s not what I’m talking about.”
I looked down at the limp remains of my salad. Chris was in his early thirties, and my dad sometimes called him his right-hand man. He’d worked for my dad for several years, starting in the Doughnut Dynasty days, and probably was his highest-paid employee. So it wasn’t clear to me why my dad always called him “poor Chris.”
“Then what are you talking about?” I asked.
“You know about that girl, right?”
I assumed he was referring to the unusual number of guys Winnie had “dated” over the years. I glanced at the booths around us, hoping he’d remember not to bad-mouth one of his employees loudly in public.
“I know you trust her with the carousel and the Rotor,” I reminded him. “So why not with Cinderella duty?”
“They used to have a word for girls like her. I’m not gonna say it, but people still think it.”
“Not four-year-old girls who want to see a pretty princess. Winnie actually fits the part well, don’t you think?”
Maybe I was looking for a compliment on my casting skills. Somehow, after all the work of putting together the parade, I was perhaps looking for more thanks than Fantastic job. In general.
Dad stared at me, pulling his lips into a pout. “Their parents think it.”
“So what? So she can’t be Cinderella?”
“Ivy,” he said firmly. “I mean, really. With that boob tattoo all crusty with pancake makeup?”
“Really, that bothers you? A tattoo?”
“Actually, it makes people uncomfortable, seeing that on such a young woman.”
“Seeing a tattoo?” This seemed weird, coming from my dad. Danville has its share of tattoos. There’s not much to do around here, and getting a tattoo is one fairly harmless way to spice up your life. “It’s just a little flower, right? It’s not like it says Born to kill or whatever.”
Dad sipped his beer, then folded his arms. “It says Zach under the flower, actually.”
“Ohhh.” I didn’t know what to say to that. Zach Crenshaw. Who had maybe been flirting with Morgan when they were working at the Pizza to the Rescue booth. “Huh. Why…?”
“I think they used to date a couple of summers ago.” Dad shrugged. “That’s what I heard, anyway. It can be hard to keep up with all the Fabuland romances.”
I nibbled a piece of baby spinach, trying to hide my surprise. If Winnie was enamored enough with Zach to tattoo his name on her body, and if Morgan and Zach had been recently flirting, this could shed a whole different light on the “Morgan crying with Winnie” incident. Maybe Winnie had been jealous and said something that upset Morgan? It seemed weird in the immediate aftermath of Ethan’s death, but it was certainly possible.
“If you have that many boyfriends, it’s kinda not smart to put the name of one of them on your boob,” Dad continued, apparently oblivious to my preoccupation. “I mean, what are the chances the romance is gonna last?”
That seemed like reasonable advice, but I wished my dad would stop saying boob.
“Just don’t put her in the parade lineup again, okay?” Dad said.
“Okay,” I murmured, resigning myself to the fact that Dad had decided to focus on the one thing about the event that had bothered him. Sometimes he did that, sometimes he didn’t. You never knew which way it was going to go.
“Probably by next time Morgan will be back anyway, so it won’t be a problem,” he added, as if that would cheer me up.
“Maybe,” I said. I was beginning to wonder if we’d ever get the old Morgan back. Or—given her plans to leave—if we’d get any version of her back. It was a depressing thought.
“Let’s hope for the best, honey.”
“Umm…Dad?”
Now that the parade was over, I could focus on my silent promise to Morgan. To fill in some of the holes about the night of Ethan’s death. Or at least get an explanation about the sparkly scorpion.
“Why was it you, not Chris, closing the Thursday night that Ethan died?” I asked, thinking back to the schedules I had checked and how Dad usually only closed Mondays and the occasional Saturday.
“Chris has been a little tied up lately. He and his wife are having kind of an…issue, is the bottom line. So I’ve been giving him some flexibility. The day before, he came and asked me to switch his night off. I said okay.”
Usually my dad spoke of Chris’s wife Trisha in an unflattering way, so I was surprised at how neutral he sounded. Usually he complained about Trisha’s “sour expression” and wondered a
loud why the two of them didn’t have any kids yet. I’d never met Trisha, so I didn’t have an opinion about her.
“So, I wonder who really was the last to see Ethan. Like, did you see him leave that night?” I asked.
“I was in my office most of the night.” Dad’s expression was sheepish. “Left most of the actual locking-up duties to Reggie, I’m ashamed to admit. I was on my computer, shopping for our next big marquee ride for next summer. Bigger-picture plans, you know?”
Yes. I knew. I knew he wanted me to ask about those plans, but I plowed forward with my questions instead.
“It just seems so weird that Ethan would say he was going to call his mom and not do it,” I said. “But then leave in such a hurry that he didn’t bring his backpack. It just feels like there’s something someone’s leaving out. Right?”
Dad stared at his beer for a moment, considering the question. He lifted the bottle, almost took a drink out of it, but then put it down and started talking instead.
“Well…something not everybody knows, Ivy, and that Chris and I explained to the police, is that Ethan had a lot of trouble opening his locker. He struggled with the combination sometimes. At one point, just about a week before he died, Chris had given him a new locker, because we thought his locker maybe kept getting stuck. But it turns out opening those locks was hard for him. I think instead of asking for help that night, he just decided to leave it be and go home, poor kid.”
“Huh,” I said. “That’s sad to think about.”
I thought about Ethan, usually so smiley, maybe a little embarrassed and distracted by failing at opening his locker on his own, and regretting the temporary loss of his backpack. Not really reason to be distracted enough to fall off a trestle, I didn’t think. But it made the picture of his last night just that much grimmer.
“It is,” Dad said, and shook his head solemnly.
“Did you hear anything about Ethan maybe planning to quit his job soon, or his family being about to move away, or anything like that?”
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