The Many Mysteries of the Finkel Family

by Sarah Kapit

  Ugh. There was no way Lara could concentrate on Georgia’s adventures.

  Glancing around the room, Lara’s eyes landed upon her brand-new FIASCCO notebook. She’d only intended to use it for real mysteries, but of course she didn’t have a real mystery yet. Besides, this was a mystery of sorts, wasn’t it?

  Before she could talk herself out of it, Lara grabbed her favorite purple pen and started scribbling in the notebook. Maybe Caroline wasn’t a mystery exactly, but she might as well get in the practice of making detective-ish observations.

  Lara began to write.

  LOCATION: Pinecone Arts Academy, approximately 3:00 p.m.

  EVENT: I, Lara Finkel, attempted to rescue C. from potential criminals (rude middle school students, which is practically the same thing). C. very irritable in response.

  ADDITIONAL OBSERVATION: C. also mad that she wasn’t included in establishment of FIASCCO. This suggests that she does, in fact, want to do things with me. Except she also said she doesn’t need me.

  CONCLUSION: C. makes no sense.

  QUESTION FOR FURTHER INVESTIGATION: Why doesn’t my sister realize that I am trying to help her?

  CHAPTER FOUR:

  SHABBAT RUCKUS

  Caroline waited for Lara to apologize, but no such thing occurred. The day after their fight, Lara admitted that she “could have handled the whole situation a little better, maybe.”

  It was something. But she still didn’t say the words Caroline really wanted to hear: “I’m sorry.” She certainly didn’t say “I’ll try not to do that again.” Apparently, such words were not in Lara’s otherwise large vocabulary.

  Whenever Caroline thought about it, she just got mad all over again. So she tried not to think about it. She had far too much to worry about as it was. In less than a week, she’d be going to middle school for real. For now, she preferred not to continue fighting with Lara. She wanted to enjoy these last few days of summer.

  Tonight’s order of business: Shabbat dinner with the whole family.

  The state of the kitchen could be fairly described as a ruckus. Caroline usually preferred to avoid ruckus. But ruckus with family and good food was another matter, and so she always looked forward to Shabbat dinners.

  In one corner of the kitchen, her little brother played with his toy trucks. Despite the fact that Dad and Ima didn’t allow toys in the kitchen, Benny vroom-vroomed in what most certainly was not an inside voice. Benny didn’t have an inside voice.

  Dad was busy at the stove, muttering to himself as he stirred at the pot. That was pretty Dad-like, though Caroline noticed his curly hair was sticking up and his shirt was all wrinkly. Ima wouldn’t like that.

  Caroline herself sat on top of the kitchen table. This too was against family rules, but Dad never enforced them as rigorously as Ima did. Her tablet sat to the side as she cradled her sketchpad.

  Chewing on the end of her pencil, Caroline considered her drawing. She’d had every intention of sketching a rhinoceros, but so far it resembled a weirdly shaped cloud. She could do better, if only—

  “What are you drawing, Lina-Lin?” Lara asked.

  Caroline looked up and smiled at her sister. Maybe this time Lara would really, truly apologize. And then things could be good again, couldn’t they?

  “Just a practice drawing, and obviously not a good one,” Caroline replied. Unable to bear the sight of the malformed rhinoceros any longer, Caroline shut her sketchbook. “How is the detective agency?” she asked Lara.

  When she first discovered that Lara had plastered the whole neighborhood in FIASCCO flyers, Caroline had felt a slight—okay, maybe not so slight—pang. That was just the sort of thing they used to do together, as Lara-and-Caroline. She didn’t understand why Lara wanted to be just Lara, on her own. Caroline decided she would get involved with FIASCCO business anyway. As soon as FIASCCO got its first case, Caroline would be there to offer her assistance to a grateful Lara. That was the plan.

  If FIASCCO got its first case. Caroline didn’t often doubt Lara, who had a way of making impossible things seem not only possible, but likely. Yet when it came to FIASCCO, Caroline wasn’t so sure.

  “That’s not really any of your business,” Lara said shortly. “But it’s fine. Going great.”

  Well, that confirmed the doubts. Normally Lara loved the opportunity to talk about anything related to Georgia Ketteridge and detecting in general.

  “I have ideas for mysteries for you to solve,” Caroline said. “I made a list. Do you want to see?”

  “No! I mean, it’s nice of you to try. But I want to find a mystery on my own. It probably took Georgia Ketteridge a while to get her first mystery, too. I’ll find one soon.”

  Caroline just sighed and tapped the “okay” button. There wasn’t much use arguing with Lara when she got into one of her moods.

  A loud voice sounded from the direction of the stove—and the words definitely were not Ima-approved.

  “Dad used a bad word!” Benny chanted. “What’s your punishment gonna be?”

  Wincing, Dad wiped a layer of sweat off his forehead. “I know, I know. That was bad, very bad. It’s just . . . NOT THE STRING BEANS!”

  Everybody stared at Dad, and Caroline felt her pulse quicken.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine!” Dad said quickly. “Don’t worry about me. Every culinary masterpiece requires some sweat and tears.”

  Caroline wasn’t so sure, but she turned her attention away from Dad and toward her sister. Lara still looked decidedly grumpy. Caroline studied her sister’s pouty lips, the slight crinkle to her nose.

  Even before the current FIASCCO fiasco, Caroline had sensed that Lara was in a never-ending bad mood. The cause of said mood remained a mystery, but it was hard to ignore the facts.

  Fact #1: Lara had developed a habit of glaring at people for seemingly no reason whatsoever. By Caroline’s count, she glared three times per hour. At least.

  Fact #2: For the past several months, Lara had stopped reading excerpts of the Georgia Ketteridge books to Caroline before bed. They’d left off at an exciting scene where Georgia was interrogating the top suspect, but Lara didn’t care. Caroline had eventually borrowed the book and finished it for herself.

  And, of course, there was Fact #3: Lara didn’t seem particularly excited about Shabbat, even though a big white cheesecake box was in the back of the refrigerator. This was in spite of the fact that Lara loved cheesecake more than any other Finkel.

  Clearly, something was wrong with Lara. Caroline suspected that the beginning of Lara’s grumpiness coincided with the arrival of their cousin Aviva from Israel. It didn’t make much sense. She herself was quite fond of Aviva. Lara would be too, if she’d just give Aviva a chance and stop being weird.

  As if to prove Caroline’s suspicion, Aviva strolled into the kitchen and Lara’s lips gave an unhappy twitch. “Hello, cousins!” Aviva said, smiling brightly.

  Since Aviva was from Israel, she spoke with an accent. Caroline thought it sounded cool. She’d even tried to see if she could switch her voice app to an Israeli accent instead of a British one, but the app had a rather limited number of voices to choose from. She’d been using the tablet since she was five, but a few months ago Caroline had switched to the British-lady voice because it made her sound grown-up. When you were an eleven-year-old girl who talked with a tablet, sounding grown-up was a very good thing.

  “Hi,” Caroline said.

  She nudged Lara, who mumbled a greeting. Caroline barely repressed a sigh. Really, her sister’s treatment of Aviva embarrassed her. She knew it embarrassed Ima, too.

  “How is your detective agency going?” Aviva asked. “Fiasco?”

  “Actually, it’s F-I-A-S-C-C-O,” Lara corrected. “And it’s going great, thank you!”

  “That’s nice. Do you have a case?”

  “Not that it’s any of y
our business, but yes. I can’t talk about it to you, though. Top secret information!”

  Caroline stared at her sister. She felt reasonably certain that Lara had just made the whole thing up. Otherwise known as lying.

  Lara was many things, but Caroline had never thought of her sister as a liar. Frowning, Caroline opened her sketchbook. Wrestling with the not-rhinoceros was more appealing than trying to make sense of her sister and Aviva’s relationship.

  She glanced out the window. Sunset wouldn’t be for another few hours yet, but they’d probably start Shabbat dinner soon anyway. Technically, people weren’t supposed to start Shabbat until sunset on Friday night. But Ima said that Seattle summers had so much daylight that dinner couldn’t possibly wait for the sun to finish its business. Caroline’s growling stomach quite agreed.

  As Ima and Noah and Aunt Miriam joined everyone else in the kitchen, Caroline relaxed her shoulders. Yes, Lara was acting weird, and yes, she and Aviva had some kind of ridiculous feud going on. But for now, Caroline just wanted to enjoy Shabbat with her family.

  She’d watch out for a good mystery during dinner.

  CHAPTER FIVE:

  IN WHICH A MYSTERY PRESENTS ITSELF

  LOCATION: Kitchen (5:00 p.m., Shabbat)

  EVENT: Dad got angry about something that involves string beans. Very Bad Words were involved.

  QUESTION FOR FURTHER INVESTIGATION: Probably nothing. I really wish there was a better mystery around here. It’s been days since I put up my flyers and absolutely nothing has happened yet. Blech!

  The Finkels chanted the Hamotzi their way. Which is to say that Benny was a half-beat faster than everyone else, while Caroline’s British-lady computer voice strayed several measures behind. Just about everyone sang in a different key, making it impossible to say who was or was not in tune. (Lara thought Aviva sounded even more out of tune than the rest of them. Very nicely, she kept the thought to herself.)

  Once they completed the blessings, pandemonium broke out as everyone rushed for the food. Lara placed a generously sized helping of brisket on her plate. On the other side of the table, Aviva frowned at the food.

  Lara glared at her cousin. It would be just like Aviva to say something nasty about Dad’s undoubtedly delicious food.

  In the Finkel household, it was an established fact that whenever Dad made Shabbat dinner, it would taste good.

  “More Ashkenazi food, I know,” Dad said. “I’m still working on perfecting my Sephardic cuisine so I can make it for you guys. In the meantime, no one wants to eat deconstructed spanakopita.”

  He looked at Aviva and Aunt Miriam as he spoke. Ever since arriving from Israel six months ago, Aviva hadn’t exactly been subtle in expressing her opinions about American food. Or anything else, for that matter. According to Aviva, the falafel was warmer in Israel. The street music, livelier. The pillows, fluffier. (Well, okay, so Aviva hadn’t actually said that last one. Yet. It was probably only a matter of time.) Personally, Lara thought Aviva should just go back to Israel if everything was so much better there.

  “The food is excellent, I’m sure,” Aunt Miriam said in her melodic accent. “We are becoming used to America, and that means Ashkenazi food.”

  Aviva coughed from her end of the table, and Lara glared at her once more.

  Lara knew that brisket was an Ashkenazi food. So was matzo ball soup and noodle kugel and all of the other Jewish foods Dad made for them using Grandma Lynne’s cookbook. Since Ima and Aunt Miriam were Sephardic Jews, they had recipes for grape leaves, walnut spice cake, and other delicious things. The difference was that Dad’s grandparents came from Russia, while Ima had immigrated to Israel from Turkey as a child. Ima told Lara that they were descended from Jews who were expelled from Spain and Portugal in 1492. Dad’s family came from a different group of Jews. “We are different branches from the same tree,” she had explained.

  That meant that the Finkel children—Lara and Caroline and their brothers—were like the base of the tree, where the Ashkenazi branch and the Sephardic branch came together. Lara always thought that was pretty cool. Noah called them “Ashkephardic.”

  Regardless, Lara could not understand why Aviva had to be such a snob about brisket. So maybe moving to a new country at the age of twelve wasn’t easy. Fine. But that didn’t give Aviva the right to be so very annoying.

  “I’m sure your food is absolutely delicious, Dad. It always is.” Lara made sure to look in Aviva’s general direction as she spoke.

  Yet when Lara put the first forkful of brisket into her mouth, it took all of her willpower to avoid spitting it right back out.

  Biting into the meat felt like chewing on a dirty sock—not that Lara had ever done such a thing, of course. But she imagined that a sock might also flap around unpleasantly in her mouth, infecting her taste buds with its foulness.

  The brisket tasted too salty, yet it also lacked flavor. The meat felt too dry, the sauce too watery. The edges of the brisket were completely hard, while the center looked practically raw. The whole thing was, quite simply, disgusting. Horrible. Gross.

  A quick look around the table revealed that everyone else knew it too. Noah downed a glassful of water. Caroline pushed her plate several inches away. Aviva twisted her face up into an unmistakable grimace.

  As usual, Benny said what everyone else was thinking. “Dad, this stuff tastes like something Kugel spit up. Guh-ross.”

  Dad didn’t deny it. “I’m so sorry, everyone. I have no idea what happened. Probably just a bad ADHD day for me.” His eyes darted around the table, a weak smile struggling to stay on his face. “Lucky that we have so much other food here!”

  Only they didn’t. Not really. The noodle kugel turned out to be overcooked, while the string beans reeked of lemons. That left them with a whole lot of salad and not much else. Lara held the very sensible opinion that only having salad for dinner was a full-fledged tragedy.

  “I’m sorry, guys,” Dad said, over and over again.

  “It is all right, Joseph,” Ima said. But her accent thickened, as it always did whenever she was worried. Lara frowned. None of this felt quite right. “How about we order pizza?”

  “On Shabbat?” Aviva said.

  Lara’s irritation with her cousin flared up again. Okay, yes. Pizza wasn’t exactly traditional. But so what?

  “Pizza is absolutely delicious,” Lara pronounced.

  A slight frown lingered on Aviva’s face, but she didn’t say anything else. Good.

  In truth, Lara thought pizza on Shabbat felt a little weird too, but she wasn’t going to say so. Not when Dad still looked so out of it.

  Ima squeezed Dad’s shoulder. “Pizza Shabbat will be a new experience, yes?”

  “You know how I love doing new and weird things,” he replied. He smiled slightly, staring at Ima with one of those lovey-dovey looks that bordered on gross.

  And so it was decided that this would be the first-ever pizza Shabbat. After some heated debate, Ima placed an order for three large pies with vegetarian toppings, therefore making their pizza a kosher meal. Even Aviva no longer seemed bothered with the change in the menu.

  By the time the pizza arrived, everyone was chattering happily. As Lara took a big bite of her first slice, Caroline bounced over. Her own cheeks were puffed out with food. Caroline tapped away on her tablet while she chewed. One of the advantages of Caroline’s communication method was her ability to talk and eat at the same time without subjecting anyone to the sight of half-chewed food.

  Caroline’s face hardly moved at all while she typed. “You want a mystery to solve.”

  “Yes,” Lara said through a mouthful of cheese. “Why?”

  “I have one for you. A very important mystery.”

  Her little sister had some big mystery? Hmm. Lara couldn’t imagine it would be any good, on account of Caroline being eleven and not an expert detective a
t all. She was pretty sure Caroline hadn’t even read all the Georgia books!

  Still, it wasn’t as though FIASCCO had a ton of cases to choose from at the moment. Lara had exaggerated when she’d told Aviva she was already working on a case. Just a bit! Aviva being Aviva, she’d probably ask about it soon and then Lara would have to lie again. Not great.

  Lara considered. She needed all the leads she could get.

  “Okay. What’s the big mystery?” she asked.

  Caroline’s mouth was pressed into a thin line as her fingers flew across the screen.

  “You need to find out why Dad made yucky brisket tonight.”

  CHAPTER SIX:

  YOUNGER SISTER PROBLEMS

  Caroline saw things. Some people failed to recognize this rather basic fact, mistaking her lack of mouth-words for a lack of thoughts. Caroline actually had loads of thoughts, thank you very much. Sometimes she typed them out on her tablet, sometimes she kept them to herself. But she always saw things.

  That’s how she knew that Dad’s mistake with the brisket might be worthy of investigation.

  Lara, however, looked doubtful. “I don’t think bad brisket is exactly mysterious. He said he was having a bad ADHD day. Case closed. Besides, would Georgia Ketteridge spend an entire book investigating brisket?”

  “She’s not Jewish,” Caroline pointed out. She was pretty sure that brisket was a Jewish thing.

  “I don’t think Georgia would investigate bad ham, either,” Lara insisted.

  Caroline sighed. No matter what Lara thought, she’d known the moment she’d bitten into the gross brisket that it meant something. She just didn’t know what.

  Why wouldn’t her sister listen to her? Just because she was a year younger and couldn’t take charge of things in a Lara-like way didn’t mean she couldn’t do anything. As much as Caroline loved her sister—and she did!—sometimes she couldn’t help but feel like Lara thought she lived in a Georgia Ketteridge novel. Lara, of course, was Georgia. Caroline? She was lucky to be a sidekick.