The Cinderella Cleaning Caper (4)

Lilly looked down at the address and map written on the piece of paper Miss Miller had given her, then back at the street she was standing on. She could instantly tell that Nina lived in a part of Veritas City’s West Side that was more working-class than upper class. Nina never talked about her family, but from what Lilly could glean from her classmates’ parents’ gossip, it appeared that she lived only with her mother, and her father was not involved in their lives. Nina’s mother apparently worked long hours, and the money she got from the job was just enough to keep food on the table for her and her daughter. It was kind of sad.

Lilly wasn’t prepared for what she saw. Nina’s house was a simple, one story house, which looked very shabby on the outside. Many of the shingles were broken, there were cracks on one of the windows, and the other window was crudely patched with tape. Lilly hesitantly walked up to the front door and knocked loudly.

The door was opened by a harried looking woman whose wrinkles made her look twenty years older than she was. She was wearing a dress made of cheap calico, covered by a dingy white apron with rips covered in darning. Her eyebrows raised as she saw Lilly looking up at her. "Yes? Who is it?" she asked.

"Mrs., um…" Lilly tried to remember how to pronounce Nina’s last name, but then decided to abandon trying. "I’m one of Nina’s friends from school and I have homework for her."

"Oh, thank you," Nina’s mother said. "I’ll take that right now." She reached out her hand for the folder, but Lilly held it back to herself.

“Is she better? Can I come in and talk to her?”
"Ah, her stomach bug…" The tone of her voice made Lilly suspect that she had just gotten caught in a lie. "It was a twenty-four hour bug, but the doctor said she needed some more time to recover. It’s not contagious or anything."

"So can I come in?"

Nina’s mother hesitated for a moment, but then there was the sound of footsteps from behind. "Mama, who’s there?" she asked, as Nina ran out of her bedroom and went to stand behind her mother. Her eyes widened and she smiled as she saw Lilly. "Oh, Lilly!"

"Hi Nina," Lilly said. "I got your homework from Miss Miller. Can we talk about the project, too?"

"Yeah, sure! Come right on in!" Nina grabbed Lilly by the hand and started to lead her inside, past her mother who was just opening her mouth to protest. As Lilly passed through the kitchen, she noticed a lumpy black velvet bag on the kitchen table. It was really pretty and seemed out of place in that shabby little house.

"So what happened in school today?" Nina asked as she and Lilly arrived in Nina’s bedroom, which was tiny. It was probably only about as big as the bathroom at home.

“We’re almost done with our part of the project,” Lilly said as she handed Nina her homework folder. “Are you going to be at school tomorrow?”

Nina’s expression changed, and her face looked downcast. She got close to Lilly and whispered. "I don’t know. Mama says that she doesn’t want me out of her sight."

"What? Why?" Lilly whispered back.

"I don’t know, but…she talks to a man on the phone…she always sounds afraid." Just then, Nina’s mother approached the door to the bedroom. Lilly realized that she may have been eavesdropping, and changed the subject.

"Did you do your part about the pyramids yet?" she asked.

"Yeah! I have it all done right here," Nina said. She went over to a very small table and picked up a stack of papers along with a book from the school library. "Can you return this for me? I don’t want to stay in for recess again."

”Yep!" Lilly said. She turned to Nina’s mother. "Thank you, ma’am. I’m sorry to bother you.”

"No, that’s perfectly fine," said Nina’s mother.

Lilly clutched the book and papers close to her and headed towards the front door. She glanced for a second at the kitchen table, but noticed that the black bag was gone. She turned to Nina’s mother, who looked as if she was ready to push Lilly out the front door and onto the sidewalk, and noticed that she seemed to be concealing something under the top of her apron—something dark, that could be faintly seen behind the fabric.

"Thank you, ma’am," Lilly said as she opened the front door and left the house. She started to walk towards the intersection, then turned a corner and stopped at the middle of the next block. The way the houses were built, it was just a straight shot through several backyards to Nina’s house.

Something was worrying her about her friend. Nina’s mother was behaving bizarrely, and how come she was concealing that black bag under her apron? And Nina looked fine. Why had she lied about her daughter’s absence from school?
This calls for Papa’s detective work, Lilly thought. She tucked the books and papers into her bookbag and slung it across her back. She crept through the backyards until she reached the back of Nina’s house. The windows were just at the right height to look inside without being detected—for once, it was a good thing that she was very short—so that as long as she kept low and close to the house, no one would notice that she was eavesdropping. She kept her back to the house and carefully made her way around the corner to the window that looked into the kitchen, then stood on her tiptoes to peek inside.

Nina’s mother was standing up at the telephone, with the receiver in her hand. She appeared to be talking to someone, and while Lilly couldn’t quite make out the words, her expression was fearful. The black, drawstring bag that had been hidden behind her apron was on the table again—but it was open. A silver ring, set with a yellow gem, was lying outside of the bag, on the kitchen table. Lilly’s eyes widened, and her gaze rested on the jewelry. What was it doing in such a shabby house? Nina’s family looked like they were too poor to afford such finery.

Inside, Nina’s mother hung up the receiver, and Lilly immediately ducked underneath the window. She waited for a count of five, then slowly made her way back towards the backyard. She could make out the voice of Nina asking her mother for something, and took that as her cue to get off their property. Lilly dashed back towards the main street as fast as her legs could carry her, her head swimming with thoughts.

Something strange was definitely going on.

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By the time the dinner hour rolled around, Riley had managed to speak to eight of the women that Mr. LeClair had mentioned being at the cotillion. Six of the eight told him that they, too, had been missing a small piece of jewelry from their armoires. Two of them had discovered the jewelry missing before the cotillion, and four discovered their missing jewelry after. The pieces missing included an emerald brooch shaped like a four-leaf clover, a couple of pearl necklaces, a silver ring set with a yellow crystal, and a few plain rings with engravings. Riley had made a list of the missing jewelry organized by person, what was stolen, and when the discovery was made, managing to finish just as Lilly finished her homework and announced that she was hungry.

“Ready for nouilles et fromage en casserole avec des saucisses?” Riley asked Lilly, as he poured a box of Happy Home Foods’ Macaroni into a pot of boiling water.

“Just because you say it in French, doesn’t mean it’s French food!” Lilly muttered, striking the table with her fist for emphasis. “If I become a detective, I’m going to hire a French chef and have him make good food for us three times a day.”

You’ll never earn that much money, Riley thought as he filled a pot with water and added three hot dogs, two for himself and one for Lilly. "So how was school today?”

"It was okay," Lilly said. "We’re almost done with our project, and…" She trailed off, wondering if she should tell Riley about what happened with Nina.

"And what?" Riley asked, adding the powdered, golden yellow "cheese" sauce to the boiling macaroni.

"Well, Nina was sick this weekend, and when I went to visit her and give her the homework, her mother was acting really strange.”

Riley nodded. "Strange as in how?"

"Like she did something bad and was trying to hide it." It was the best way Lilly could describe that feeling. "She didn’t even want me to come into the house when I went in."

Riley stirred the macaroni and cheese in the pot, then speared a hot dog on a serving fork, placed it on Lilly’s plate, and added a heaping spoonful of macaroni and cheese to it. He placed the plate in front of Lilly, who looked down upon the food with utter disdain. She begrudgingly picked up her fork and began to cut the hot dog with the side of it.
"What about you? What were you working on when I got home?" Lilly asked, her mouth full of macaroni.

“Gathering information. I received a case today.” Riley smiled; there was excitement in his eyes that Lilly noticed for the first time in months.

Lilly swallowed a mouthful of food, her eyes wide. “What? Really? What happened?”

Riley sat down next to Lilly, his own plate full of food, and explained the visit from the two women, and what he discovered upon his investigation. “I’m going to investigate that cleaning company that the butler mentioned, but first, I’m going to find out what else was stolen. I have a lot of ground to cover tomorrow.”

Stolen jewelry…Lilly looked down at her food silently, remembering the scene she spied on at Nina’s house. One of the many lessons that Jasper Rowley had instilled into Riley and Lilly was to trust their feelings, especially whenever they witnessed anything that seemed suspicious or out of place.

“Are you all right?” Riley asked, as he saw Lilly’s expression subtly change.

“Um.” Lilly looked up, suddenly startled. “Hey, Bro…I have to ask you something,” she said. “Did they tell you what was missing?”

“Well…little things,” Riley said. “Nothing like priceless gems or platinum or anything like that. Something that you would wear on a special occasion. Like the cufflinks Papa wore. Rings and necklaces and such.”

Lilly’s gaze suddenly seemed far away. “A silver ring with a yellow jewel…”

Riley’s fork clattered to the table top. “Lilly. What are you saying?”

“I saw one.”

“Where? Where did you see it?” Riley looked into his sister’s eyes in disbelief.

“There was a black bag on Nina’s kitchen table. It was sitting next to it.”

Riley dashed into the office and came back with the list of the stolen jewelry he had compiled. “What else did you see,” Riley asked.

“Nothing but that,” Lilly said. “But when I was talking to Nina, her mom was hiding the bag. She saw me looking at it when I went to the house, and she hid it, and then she had it out on the table when I was spying—I mean, looking through the window at her.” Lilly knew it wasn’t polite to spy.

Riley scanned the list. The ring with the yellow jewel was definitely one of the missing jewelry items, and the behavior of this woman certainly warranted suspicion. Riley was about to tell Lilly of his feelings when she spoke up first.

“Bro,” Lilly asked, “do you think Nina’s mom is a thief?”

“Well,” Riley said, “it…may just be a coincidence.” He set the list down on the table, staring down at the names and the stolen jewelry. “But if she is a thief…we have to find out how she’s connected to this person, here.” He pointed at the name of the woman who reported the silver ring with the yellow jewel stolen. "And what bothers me the most is that all of the women who had missing jewelry went to the same cotillion. Some of them found their jewelry missing before they left, and the rest of them found out after...so we can rule out the cotillion. There's got to be some way that these people are connected."

Lilly looked at her brother, concern marking her face. “If Nina’s mom is a thief…she’s going to have to go to prison, won’t she?”

“That depends,” Riley said. “If she did somehow steal the ring, then she’d be in prison if it’s appraised at a certain amount.”
“Five years if it’s over ten thousand lorians, right?” Lilly asked.

“What?” Riley was surprised for a second, but remembered that Lilly had been illicitly reading her father’s diaries. “Yes. That’s exactly right.”

“I want to help Nina,” Lilly said. “She needs a good detective right now.”
“Then do me a favor,” Riley said. “Tomorrow, if Nina comes into school, can you ask her if she can come over to our house for dinner? Tell her that you want to rehearse your part of the project together. I’ll talk to her and find out what’s happening with her mother.”
Lilly nodded. “Roger, bro! Maybe I can’t be a detective, but I’ll be a detective’s assistant!” She smiled, holding out her fork as if she was holding her Imperial insignia in its case.

Riley chuckled. “You have a long way to go before you can even think of becoming a detective,” he said. “You haven’t even graduated elementary school yet.”

“So? You didn’t graduate from high school, and you became a detective,” Lilly said.

“I had to study for months and months,” Riley said. “It’s a very tough process.”
“But you weren’t doing it by yourself,” Lilly said. “You had Papa helping you…and now that he’s gone, you’re doing everything alone. You need someone to help you.”

Riley sighed. It was tough, doing everything by himself. There was a moment earlier that day, when he was compiling his records, when he almost called out to his father to get him the pencil sharpening knife.

“All right. Lilly, you can be my assistant,” Riley said, “but next time, don’t do anything that might get you in trouble with adults. Promise?”

Lilly nodded. “Sorry, Bro,” she said. Riley reached out to his younger sister and ruffled her hair.

“We’ve got to depend on each other now,” he said.

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The next morning, Lilly opened the front door to remove the newspaper and the milk bottle from the delivery box. As she unfolded the newspaper, her eyes opened wide.

Riley was just sitting down at the table with some breakfast toast when Lilly approached, holding the newspaper and the milk. "Lilly, what's happening?" he asked as he noticed Lilly's expression. Instead of answering, Lilly handed him the newspaper so that the headline was showing.

PRICELESS BLUE DIAMOND DISAPPEARS!
“Ocean Diamond” Missing From Worthington Estate
Riley grabbed it from Lilly's hands and opened it, reading the story with his eyes opened wide.

"'The diamond was reported missing as Mrs. Worthington was dressing for a night at the opera with Mr. Worthington. It is not known when the diamond disappeared, and the family's house detective has remanded this case directly to the Imperial Police, and potentially the Magistrate.'"

”It’s the same as you said! It’s the same as you said!" Lilly said, excitedly, as Riley put the newspaper down onto the table.

“You’re exactly right. I'd better place a call,” Riley said. “Lilly, you be careful on your way to school. Remember to invite Nina over for dinner." Lilly nodded back, and grabbed her book bag. "Okay! Good luck!" She dashed out of the front door.