Kitty Kitty (6 page)

But I wasn’t.

¹

What I’d realized was that if even a tiny dollop of what Polly said was true, there could be nothing Badder than going to meet Arabella. I was pretty sure that the Someone she thought was threatening her would turn out to be as innocent as the gondolier earlier—whose lips I had totally stopped thinking about (THANK YOU, MAKING-OUT TEENS)—but she still seemed like a good person to stick around if you were looking for Action. Or rather, BADction. Especially BADction that was so bad it got you in the papers.

I’d just touched up my lip gloss in case any reporters were loitering around, when someone pounded on my door and said, “Open up or I’ll kill you, Jas.”

Only one kind of creature has such a winning way about itself, so I wasn’t surprised to see the Evil Henches through the peephole. However they’d totally lied because opening the
door was what almost killed me. With the agony of trying not to burst into laughter when I saw what they were wearing.

Alyson was sporting brown fur boots, a brown fur micro-skirt, brown fur vest, and brown fur hat with earflaps, and carrying a brown fur muff. Veronique was ensconced in a nearly identical ensemble, except in gray fur.

“I told your dad I’d check on you,” Alyson sneered.

“And we wanted to give you this.” Veronique extracted from her muff a piece of construction paper with a gold rock glued to it. “It’s the card the seventh graders made you. The crystal is supposed to help with your healing. It’s really important to be in touch with the vibrations of the universe.”

“I feel better already,” I told her. “But you didn’t have to skin some Ewoks and get all dressed up just to give me this.”

“Oh, we didn’t. Sapphyre and I are going to meet Reggie at a club called Centrale. Do you think you could give us directions?”

My interest was piqued. “Reggie? Is he the two-comma kid?” When Veronique nodded, I said, “I’ll do better than give you directions. I’ll take you myself! I happen to be going there too.” I hadn’t planned on having companions on my journey, but we Bad are always happy to bestow the pleasure of our company upon others, especially others who want nothing to do with us.

Alyson shook her head. “Um, that was ‘we,’ meaning the two of us”—gesturing at the two people wearing fashions
from a galaxy far, far away—“not ‘we’ meaning ‘And friend.’”

I gave her one of the wide-eyed looks of gratitude and surprise I’d been practicing. “You consider me a friend? I’m so touched!”

She was too speechless to even make the “in the head-slash-brain” comment that under normal circumstances would have oozed out without her even thinking, but Veronique pulled it together enough to ask, “Are you sure it’s good for you? To come out with us?”

“Tiger’s*Eye, it’s so like you to think of my well-being, but don’t worry, my social standing can take being seen with Alyson—”

“Sapphyre.”

“—even if she is dressed like an extra from
Star Wars on Ice
.”

“What are
you
wearing?” Alyson demanded. “You look like you’re ready to attend a comic-book convention as Catwoman, version two-point-loser. Are those leather pants? I can’t believe Polly would let you have white leather pants.”

“She isn’t aware of them, but I’m sure she’ll learn to love them as I do. But tell me, how do you know about comic-book conventions? You seem to be very knowledgeable. Do you have a secret life, cuz?”

Veronique gave an audible gasp but whether it was because of what I said or because of the elbow that Alyson planted in her ribs, I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that this was turning
into the Best. Night. Ever. WWMrTD was definitely an excellent life motto.

Things just kept improving.

We went Badly out via the back stairs of the hotel, and wended our way toward Centrale. Veronique had just explained that their faerie names were part of a larger program of spiritual awakening adopted from
Spirituality for Dummies
, which included talking to the spirits of the departed, when I noticed a spotlight with a large group of people crowded around it on the edge of a canal. Correction: a large group of people, most of whom were in police uniforms.

For six weeks a sight like this would have been a dagger in my eye. I would have forced myself to look and then skulk away, never wondering why there were members of both the police and the coast guard there, or what they were doing with the crane mounted on the back of the ambulance boat.

But not BadJas.

Little Life Lesson 15: Bad loves a crime scene.

Without my even having to suggest it, my feet drifted in that direction until I was standing at the edge of the group. The light was focused on an object, and as I peered over the heads of shorter people, I saw that the object was a body. A body wearing black leggings, a black sweater, and black motorcycle boots with shiny silver buckles.

Arabella’s body.

As I watched, they pulled a sheet over Arabella’s head.

My heart started to pound and my knees got weak and I felt tears pricking at my eyes. I couldn’t believe it. Arabella
dead?
Oh. My. God.

For a moment my brain went completely silent trying to take it all in. Then I blurted in Italian, “This is my fault, officers. I want to make a statement.”

Or that’s what I meant to say.

What I actually said was “I’m the guilty one, Fuzz. I want to confess.” Which, while close, is not exactly the same thing in several crucial ways.

Little Life Lesson 16: Announcing you want to confess to a murder is an excellent way to go from Invisible to It Girl when surrounded by a group of police officers.

Little Life Lesson 17: Referring to the police as “Fuzz” also does wonders for your popularity.

What I meant was that I felt
responsible
. That if I’d taken
Arabella seriously from the start and gone to the police or been more encouraging or something, none of this would have happened. But as a meaty hand closed around my upper arm, I had time to think that watching
CHiPs
, while very educational, might not be the best way to master the subtleties of a foreign language.

Still, it was enough for me to understand it when the voice attached to the arm said, “You again,” and I looked up and saw I was staring into the eyes of Officer Allegrini. Whose gaze wasn’t quite an application for the leadership council of the I-Heart-Jas fan club. In fact his expression was a bit on the ferocious side.

A woman in a suit said, “Take her in for questioning,” and before I knew it I was being dragged away from the crime scene to Points Unknown.

Little Life Lesson 18: If you are ever in a Bad situation, you can always count on the support and understanding of your loved ones.

I’m not sure if there’s a
How to Behave When Your Friend or Relative Gets Arrested for Dummies
book, but if there is I don’t think Alyson read it closely. Unless it advises running alongside the person in question as she is dragged away, hissing, “This is uncalled for-slash-ridiculous-slash-lame, even for you, Jas. Wait until your father finds out.”

I should have been cheered by her words. I mean, if it came down to Los Angeles, where I had never once been arrested (that he knew about), or Venice, where it appeared I
was going to be held for murder, surely even Lo Zilla would see Los Angeles as a safer locale. Except I had a suspicion that being arrested wouldn’t simply get me transferred back to LA, it would get me chained forever to a post in a locked room atop a special turret my father would have constructed for this sole purpose. No, from my perspective, things were looking a little bleak.

Because I am blessed, the Evil Hench One wasn’t done showing her Support & Understanding. “If you think we’re going to hang around waiting for you, you’re wrong,” she said.

“Did you know that your eyes glow red in this light?” I asked her.

“It’s not that we don’t care, it’s just that we’re already late to meet Reggie,” Veronique explained over her shoulder as she followed Alyson.

I said, “Have a great time! If you hear from the dead, call me!” and if Officer Allegrini hadn’t chosen that moment to drag-slash-lead me away I would unquestionably have added that they were heading in the complete wrong direction.

Depending on your definition of “un.”

The San Marco precinct headquarters, which is where Officer Allegrini took me, looked a lot like police stations in America (hypothetically), except that instead of a Mr. Coffee they had an Espressione! machine on which you could push a button and get an espresso or caffè latte for a euro. Where by “you” I mean, “all those people who were
not handcuffed to Officer Allegrini’s desk.”

I guess that’s what I got for confessing to murder, but it was kind of frustrating because everyone in the place was running around chicken-minus-head style, and I couldn’t do anything. Or understand what they were saying, because they talked too fast. Except for Officer Allegrini, who seemed to be telling anyone who would listen that I had, in his words, “a brain like a squash,” which I think was his polite way of saying I was mentally disabled.

Sitting in a police station when no one is talking to you turns out to be much more boring than you would think. On TV, there are brawls and stuff, but in reality, at least in Italy, it just involved me at a desk watching people—and hours—go by. I was left alone with my thoughts, which were pretty much:

As entertaining as these thoughts—now with bonus reel images of Jack and Candy eating chocolate crème puffs together in a candlelit bathtub—were, they only occupied me for about thirty-eight seconds. I tried to think of other things to do, but practicing my moonwalking didn’t seem very appealing (HELLO LEATHER PANTS) or possible (AND HELLO TO YOU AS WELL HANDCUFFS) so I turned to studying my surroundings.

Which roughly equaled Officer Allegrini’s desk. This proved more interesting than it at first seemed, because in addition to a pack of Brooklyn chewing gum, there were some case files on it. Since he seemed to have disappeared and since I was being unjustly held and also because I had just remembered that I was trying to be Bad and therefore would not exactly be cooperating and rolling over like a trained dolphin, I decided to do something Bad and started flipping through them. I know! How Bad is that? Reading classified police documents! Really, really Bad!

I hadn’t just thrown caution to the wind. I’d hoisted it up like a flag and set fire to it.

My secret fantasy was that they would be about Arabella, but of course they weren’t. Venice isn’t exactly the Wild Wild West, so most of the reports were of incidents in which tourists got lost and fell into canals. The most interesting files I read were about an eight-year-old who was suspected in more than a hundred thefts but kept eluding the police, and a robbery that happened in broad daylight with no signs of forced entry and in which all that was stolen were teapots. This allowed me to add some choice phrases to my vocabulary like “pickpocket,” “bag snatcher,” and “inside job,” but even the pursuit of knowledge could not hold my interest forever. I’d just decided that getting to go home, even if it meant someone calling Dadzilla, was better than becoming one with Officer Allegrini’s furniture, when I realized someone was talking to me in English.

It was the plainclothes detective lady I’d seen next to Arabella’s body, and she was asking, “What do you mean when you say you killed this girl? Do you mean that you actually murder her?”

Finally a chance to explain myself! And in my native tongue! The Fates, for once, were smiling upon me.

Little Life Lesson 19: Ha ha ha with a side of ha-sauce.

“No,” I said, “I meant that she’d told me she was in danger but I thought she was just being paranoid. And maybe if I’d taken her seriously, she wouldn’t be dead.”

“Bene.
It is as I thought.” She turned to Officer Allegrini
and said something too fast for me to understand, but it made him unlock my cuffs. Turning back to me, she said, “You are free to go.”

Although this was an exciting development and I do have a fairly trustworthy air about me, it seemed a bit abrupt. “Just like that?” I asked. “Don’t you have any other questions?”

She was already walking but paused to say: “No.”

“Does that mean you know who killed her?”

She nodded. “No one. She killed herself. Suicide.”

I think part of me had known that was coming and had been trying to deny it. Because what if my not believing Arabella earlier, and hedging on the phone, had been the things that pushed her over the edge? “You’re sure?” I asked.

“
Sì
. A girl wearing all black with a large diamond pin is seen leaving her apartment at nine-oh-five. She often wears this pin, yes?”

“Yes, always,” I said.

“Exactly. So we know it is her. At nine fifteen the same girl is seen on the bridge. One or two minutes later there is a splash. And then at nine thirty-three the body is found. There can be no question. The
medico-legale
—the medical examiner you say?—confirms there was water in her lungs. She died from drowning.”

I sat up abruptly. How had I missed this before? “No way,” I said. “She died too early.”

“I know it is always hard when someone so young—”

“No, I mean, she thought she was going to meet me at ten.
If she was going to kill herself, it would have been after that, if I didn’t arrive. Don’t you see? She wouldn’t have lost hope until after ten. Someone must have pushed her.”

“No, Signorina Callihan, no one pushed her. Three witnesses saw only one person on the bridge. And then no people. And then the body in the canal. Also, there is no sign of a struggle and no one heard a struggle. She committed suicide. You must believe me.”

But I couldn’t. “Someone must have done something to her,” I said. “There has to be another explanation. This just doesn’t make any sense.”

“No, there is no logic with the suicide.”

“No, but—”

“You yourself thought she was crazy, no? Didn’t you tell my officers this today? That she thought an assassin was after her but he turned out to be a gondolier?”

“Yes…”

“
Bene
, you were right. No one was after her. But the voice in her head, they were too much.” She came closer and put a hand on my shoulder. “She was
instabile
. Unstable. There was nothing anyone could do.”

But Arabella hadn’t been crazy. Someone really had been after her. I was positive now. And not just because I didn’t want to feel responsible for her killing herself. “It’s all wrong,” I tried again. “I swear to you, she didn’t commit suicide. Not before ten.”

“You have proof of this?”

“No, I just
know
it,” I told her, and even as I said it, I heard how the words sounded. Like I was le bOnKeRs.

Like I was Arabella.

But it didn’t matter because I was talking to empty air. The detective had already walked away.

I turned to Officer Allegrini, who was sitting at his desk. I had to make one last attempt. “You’re wrong, man,” I said in CHiPs-talian.

“We in the Venice police are not in the habit of asking the opinion of schoolgirls,” he said in regular Italian without looking up.

Maybe it was his tone that brought out the extraBadness in me. Or maybe it was because my leather pants were cutting off oxygen to my brain.

Whatever caused it, I couldn’t stop myself. I hit him with some more
ChiPs
-talian, saying, “You’re wrong about the teapot-snatch job too, my main man. That wasn’t no inside job. You should be looking for a left-handed guy with a limp who’s trying to quit the cigarettes. Feel my vibe?”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw that the female plainclothes detective had circled back, and was now looking at me with tears in her eyes. And I am sure the noise she was making only sounded like repressed hysterical laughter but was really some kind of Italian version of awe.

And she wasn’t the only one. Officer Allegrini was staring at me wordlessly, no doubt stunned by my deduction and my incorporation of my new vocabulary words—
snatch
AND
inside job
. Double bonus score! Indeed, judging by the several appealing colors of red his face was turning, I think he was really moved.

But then I noticed how he was clenching his fists, and I decided maybe it was me who should be really moved. Like toward the door. “I’ve got to hit the pavement, guy,” I said, standing up, “but you’ll see. I’m right about this and I’m right about Arabella.”

I was halfway across the room when he yelled, “You read the files on my desk? She read the files on my desk! You had better pray that I never set eyes on you again, Signorina Callihan!”

Little Life Lesson 20: Some people are very rude about taking help from others.

His boisterous bon voyage followed me out of the station and into the foggy Venetian night. My heart was racing with the thrill of my exit, but halfway back to the hotel it had slowed, and I suddenly felt drained of energy. Along with the will to live, the ability to function any longer without food, and the desire to ever wear leather pants again.

Mostly what I kept thinking was: This was my fault. If only I’d been less worried about being a Model Daughter and more worried about believing Arabella, if only I’d helped her, maybe then she wouldn’t be dead.

I was convinced she hadn’t committed suicide. Even if she were going to kill herself, she wouldn’t have done it fifteen minutes before we were supposed to meet. And that
wasn’t the only thing wrong.

But knowing something is wrong, and knowing what it is, are like Ugg boots and Cuteness: unrelated. I had no idea who would want to kill her, or why, or how they could have done it. I was the only person who thought she’d been murdered, which meant I was the only one looking for her killer. And not only did I have no leads, I didn’t even know where she lived. All I needed was one piece of evidence to show the police, one thing to convince them. But I didn’t have le clue where to start looking.

Not that it would matter, I realized. The fact that I had not been arrested but merely spent part of the night at the police department would not, I felt, do anything to calm the Dadzilla Wrathphoon that was headed for the Isle of Jas as soon as I encountered him the next morning. Or sooner, since, as I reached the door of the hotel, someone cleared his throat in the alley next to me and stepped out of the fog.