Fright Night Part 3
Hey snarkers! Apologies for not responding to earlier comments--I have had a week of computer/internet problems, floods, and people telling me what my manuscript needs is more pseudo-incest. Plus, my normally more standoffish cat is sitting on my chest and dominant typing arm. So let's wrap this "mystery" up tight.
Chapter 16
Mary Anne entry about the confusing confluence of clues.
The BSC-minus-Kristy are at Pickering Wharf, on a shopping trip semi-couched in learning about history. Abby is looking at some posters when two people bump into her; thinking she might be getting pickpocketed, she grabs her wallet and darts down a side street. Miss Taxi Cab NYC gets all condescending about how she’s an expert on pickpockets, having grown-up on the mean streets of the Upper West Side. Abby scolds her bad-luck pumpkin. Literally.
They go back to the inn and figure out Kristy’s double-crossing when she (shock! gasp! horror!) isn’t there for their stupid emergency meeting. Abby remembers Kristy saying she didn’t need to go to the wharf to shop for new clues, but she thought Kristy was making a terrible joke about shopping, and that’s Abby’s job. Mallory, of course, pulls out That Fucking Notebook to see if they can find something they missed.
Mary Anne notes that for all her Martha Kempner RPF, Mallory failed to write down that Martha is the only suspect who didn’t head to the museum when news of the theft broke out. Stacey speculates she was guilty and didn’t want to return to the scene of the crime, but Abby argues that if she was the thief, the smart thing would have been to go to the museum, eavesdrop on the investigation, and have an excuse to leave some fingerprints, just in case. Abby = smartest person in the book. Of course, that’s a pretty low bar. But Mary Anne is suddenly sure for. . .reasons that Martha could be the thief, and that she has kidnapped Kristy. I suspect that would pretty quickly lead to a Ransom of Red Chief situation.
Mallory calls the front desk and asks if Martha is in her room, and Mr. Blabbermouth Hewson tells her that Martha went to the newspaper archives to do more research on the diamond. They then call down and ask about Sean Knowles (gone to a famous tea-room with a fortune teller) and Harvey Hapgood (carriage tour of Salem), and it kind of creeps me out that front desk dude knows all this, and babbles it to anyone who asks. I would say especially when there’s already been one break-in, but who the hell knows if they ever bothered to report that.
The Nosy Parkers Club decides to check everyone’s “alibis” and find out that no one signed in as Martha at the archives, and no one matching her description was there. The tea-room closed early, so Sean isn’t there. And Harvey canceled his reserved ticket for the tour without even asking for his deposit back. So no one has alibis, and Abby wonders if they could all be in cahoots.
Mary Anne points out her Kristy still isn’t back and there’s an pathetic fallacy thunderstorm raging outside. She goes so blasphemously far to consider telling an adult K. Ron is AWOL, and is promptly punished for this heresy by the power going out. Thanks, Mary Anne.
Chapter 17
Shannon entry, back in the Brook, because you were on the edge of your seat about Jordan doing “magic,” weren’t you? Parades are the real magic.
Shannon arrives at Claudia and Claudia is happy to have an excuse to pack up her homework. Shannon says they could wait, if Claudia needs more time, but Claudia doesn’t want to discuss it, or let Shannon help her.
So Mrs. Kilbourne drives them over to Millionaires’ Row for the parade. Emily Michelle is dressed as a baby bunny. Karen is dressed as a jack-in-the-box, which seems fittingly annoying (I hate those things), especially as she plans to “pop” out every ten seconds or so along the parade route, which won’t be irritating at all. Poor Andrew and David Michael don’t even get a mention in their own damn house.
Lots of kids arrive, as well as parents with cameras and video recorders-I mention this because it just adds to the implausibility and arrogance of the sitters’ actions. Anyway. The Rodowskys show up with their piñatas and the Ramseys arrive. Becca is dressed as a princess, complete with high heels, so she can barely wobble along holding her dad’s arm. That makes TOTAL SENSE for a parade! That’s not unsafe or likely to end in tears at all. Seriously, I would start to think that “heels = The Devil” is the real moral of the story, except I’m the only one who seems concerned about Becca barely able to walk and wanting to be in a parade. Whatever. Squirt has a pot on his head and a potholder bib and is King of the Kitchen. That’s cute, but once again I’m fairly baffled as to whether literal toddlers are walking on their own in a parade.
The Pike convoy arrives, and Logan apparently does some weird, talking out of the side of his mouth thing that Shannon compares to a “gangster in an old movie” when he asks if they’re ready.
Shannon exposits that Jordan’s magic has gone TOO FAR-he is taking credit for anything good happening to his siblings, like good grades, and threatening to put curses on people who don’t do what he says. Vanessa refused to give him her dessert, and shortly thereafter, fell down, cut her knee, and requires a tetanus shot, and Jordan said “I told you so,” and perhaps this would have been an apt moment for Mrs. or Mr. Pike to do some fucking parenting. Anyway, Vanessa’s misfortune has convinced them all Jordan must be obeyed, so he has them enslaved to his whims.
Jordan is dressed as Merlin, natch, and when he realizes he left his wand in the car, he orders Claire and Nicky to fetch it. Shannon is appalled, simply appalled, he doesn’t thank them, and I’m pretty sure that has less to do with his mind control and more with general older sibling bossiness. But Shannon says smugly “we were stepping in just in time.”
Jordan orders the sitters to let him lead the parade, but Shannon tells him the youngest are going to go first. Jessi says they’ve already decided and he can’t make them do whatever he wants, clearly setting up some entrapment. Jorden glowers and rummages in his cape for his spell book. Shannon says his cape is an old choir robe, and I don’t know what kind of choir robes Ann envisions in those wacky Stoneybrook churches, but they a) generally don’t look like capes, since “cape” and “robe” are two different things and b) in my experience, they don’t usually have pockets, especially not big enough for books.
Anyway, he casts his stupid spell and the BSC stretch themselves to make their faces go blank and act like mindless zombies. Well, I said it was a stretch, but it probably is, without K. Ron. They chant flatly that Jordan must lead the parade. Claudia takes his arm and lurches to the front of the group.
Presumably dropping her zombie voice, Claudia announces the “First Annual Stoneybrook Costume Parade” and it’s nice to imply this is an official event open to every kid in the Brook and not just the BSC Elect. Oh, did I say nice? I meant obnoxious. But Watson did indeed drop everything to block off the street with less than twenty-four hours notice, like the S-Brook Don he is.
She motions Jordan forward, while behind him the other sitters gesture for the other kids not to move. Amazingly and unrealistically, none of them whine or ask loudly what the sitters are doing or are too busy poking each other to pay attention.
Jordan takes a few steps and realizes no one is following him, and tells everyone to “come on.” The sitters keep up their creepy zombie “you must lead the parade” “we have been ordered to let you lead the parade” shtick, which really doesn’t make much sense. If you’re going for literal, reverse psychology crap, it has to be somewhat consistent. Whatever.
He takes a few more steps and people watching-like, the adults? point and laugh at him. Stoneybrook, Land of Assholes. He orders them to start the parade, and they say they have, so then he says he changes his spell, but Logan is all “nope, spell didn’t change, lalalala” and tries to, idk, emasculate Jordan or something by asking whether the “mighty magician” lacks the power. Vanessa “helpfully” yells out for him to “look in your book and have the spell unmande/so we can join in the parade.”
Jordan opens and closes his book, and then quietly “confesses” he’s not really a magician. Vanessa is relieved he didn’t curse her to get a tetanus shot, and he says he was just pretending, for fun. AS CHILDREN DO.
Claire then goes into tantrum mode when she realizes Jordan isn’t going to make her fly, and Jordan seems genuinely miserable that she’s upset. Shannon narrates rather snottily that if she had a big brother who said he could make her fly and then said it was a joke, she would throw a tantrum too.
The thing is, my brother is four and a half years older than me, so pretty much the age gap between Claire and Jordan. And I was a pretty gullible kid, and he told me all kinds of crap I believed-that escalators were powered by trolls mining for emeralds, and if you stopped too long at the top of the bottom, they would drag you under and make you their slave-stuff like that. (We had epic fights over the pies at Bakers Square-which for non-Midwestern American readers, is a very run-of-the-mill family restaurant that sells a lot of pies. They usually have a refrigerated cases by the cash register filled with pies, and every time, we would argue about whether they were real or fake. I don’t even know why, except I felt genuinely offended he was trying to “trick” me and refuting all my logic, like why would they refrigerate FAKE pies, and why was some of the filling leaking or a bit of the crust too brown, and once the hostess even pulled one out to show us it was real, and he then insisted that was the decoy real one they kept in case they had to fool someone.) ANYWAY. My point was, by the time I was six, my parents would not have been very sympathetic to me throwing a tantrum over such an unlikely “joke” as my brother being able to make me fly with a spell. Apparently in Stepford Brook, this is like horrible sibling abuse, but Claudia’s constant passive-aggressive insulting of Janine is totes cool and sympathetic. Whatever.
Jordan very sweetly apologizes to Claire and offers to let her carry his magic wand and ride piggy-back on his shoulders for the whole parade, and the other triplets also very sweetly offer to help carry her part of the way. Aw. I’m a sucker for sibling hug-times.
Having now shamed Jordan in front of a freaking crowd-with God knows how many antsy children apparently standing in silent patience and adults poised with cameras wondering what the fuck was happening--while the BSC taught a Valuable Lesson, Logan can’t leave well enough alone and has to scold Jordan further. Because it’s not like actually seeing Claire be upset affected him and led him to immediately try to make amends, in a natural consequences kind of way, is more effective than a random barely-pubescent dude with a crappy Southern accent lecture you on morals.
Jordan picks up Claire, she waves the wand, the parade begins, and now that subplot is over.
Chapter 18
Mallory entry in which she claims to “know” the hotel is not haunted (because that is so much sillier than believing in curses), but zomg the kind of person who would steal the Witch’s Eye is like the scariest criminal ever. Kay.
The storm rages on and Coach Wu, who apparently is still working towards that “Closest to Competence” badge in the SMS staff division, comes by with candles. Mal goes on a long digression to explain that the candles have skirts for catching wax, “just like the ones they give you for candlelight services in church,” which is always weird in a BSC book. That said, the idea of handing out candles to a bunch of middle-schoolers unsupervised gives me the wig. I bet at least half those kids are tiny pyros.
Coach Wu tells them to stay in one place until the storm blows over, so of course they immediately start roaming the halls. Rules are for other people. Stacey then gets the felonious bright idea to break into people’s rooms, since if they’ve left since the power went out, the electric locks won’t have worked. They march over to Harvey Hapgood’s room, but the door is locked. Abby knocks and everyone freaks out, but no one answers. Abby says if he had been there, she would have said he was wanted at the front desk so they could sneak in afterwards, which just goes to show that even at petty crime, Abby is cooler than the rest of them.
They get to the stairs and then have to wait, because as Mallory snots “One of our theories about the suspects had been right: Mrs. Moorehouse could walk. But barely.” For fuck’s sake. Mrs. Moorehouse is slowly, painfully being helped down the stairs by Naomi the Nurse and Mr. Hewson the Front Desk Blabbermouth, because she’s afraid of being trapped in her room in case of a fire. Mallory says they can eliminate her as a suspect, since she clearly can’t flee a crime scene, but Abby says Mrs. M could still be the mastermind.
Then Abby says she feels like she’s being watched, but shrugs it off as nerves. But Mallory is now convinced they are being followed-and then Sean Knowles pops out in front of them.
Presumably this is the scene on the cover, so half a point for Hodges for depicting something with vague resemblance to an incident in the book, even if Sean is clearly behind them. Maybe he dealt the fart that Abby smelt.
Chapter 19
Kristy entry-this is WORSE than cold spaghetti down the back, y’all. She can’t even scream.
She dives into the antique featherbed, claiming to have gotten the idea from The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. It’s been a long time since I read that, but they just sleep in the bed, right? They hide in the bathrooms.
Kristy hears someone breathing “as if through his nose” and is all proud of herself for considering this a clue towards identifying him. WHAT. Also, way to be sexist, K. Ron. (I kid, but I’m kind of surprised they didn’t use an awkward his or her locution there.)
The person shuffles closer and strikes a match and ZOMG it is. . .
ALAN GRAY.
Kristy leaps out of the bed to scream at him and he more or less wets himself with fear. Kristy enjoys this, as the budding Domme she is.
After Alan gets himself together and lights a candle, Kristy snarks on him for being scared of her when he’s the one who lured her to the museum in the first place by planting a clue. OR IS HE?
Alan denies this and says Kristy set HIM up with a note saying he could solve the mystery if he went to the museum that afternoon, and Kristy prides herself on having gotten duped by a much more subtle clue, what with the conveniently dropped Evil To-Do List she found.
Kristy deduces from this that they were both pranked by Cary Retlin, who probably even fiddled with the locks on the door so they could get in and then be locked inside. Wow, shittiest museum security EVER.
They go around looking for an unlocked door that isn’t on an emergency alarm, until Kristy concludes that Cary must be coming to reap the rewards of his pranking and will be able to unlock a door so they don’t have to set off an alarm. And now, she and her archenemy will work together to prank Cary right in the ass. Or something.
Kristy (lol) uses Alan as “bait” to lure Cary in, which kind of makes me picture Alan in a pretty dress. Alan fake-screams when he “bumps” into Cary, and Cary offers to let him help scare Kristy. Alan says Kristy is baby-sitting, and Cary says no, Mary Anne is the one sitting for Nidia, and Kristy is impressed that he stalks them that closely. Or he lusts after Mary Anne. Anyway, Alan gives an elaborate story about how Mary Anne needed to do more research for her project, so Kristy took Nidia to the wax museum to make tomb rubbings.
Cary is disappointed, and ready to call it quits before they are missed, but Alan brags he pulled the same double-cross Kristy did, and Kristy is appalled and offended at the idea that the teachers trust Alan as much as her. Or they don’t give a shit about any of you. Hilariously, Kristy adds “no one would miss Alan, ever” just BEFORE realizing that he used the same ruse she did. Look in a mirror, K. Ron.
Cary and Alan start to leave when Alan claims to hear a noise. Alan asks if maybe Kristy might have come with Nidia, and Cary says “No way. Kristy is a totally responsible baby-sitter.” HAHAHAHAHA yeah right. K. Ron, of course, is almost ready to forgive him then and there, for properly hailing her creepiness.
Cary tries to open a door, but Kristy is holding it closed on the other side, and I don’t know how they could know for sure Cary would try that one. Whatever. Alan needles him about ghosts and Cary gets frustrated, since this is the only door he rigged. Finally, Alan suggests they both throw themselves against the door, and Kristy scampers away, and climbs up on a chair holding the bedcover. When the boys burst in, she drops the cover on top of them. Cary and Alan both scream, and Cary continues screaming as Alan wriggles out. Yeah, one of these days Kristy will totally have her own Red Room of Pain.
Kristy then impersonates a police officer, in “as deep a voice as I could manage from behind my hand,” which I’m sure is completely convincing. But Cary is still panicking as he pulls the cover off until he sees Kristy and Alan and they all have a jolly good laugh. At least Cary can laugh at himself, K. RON.
Chapter 20
Stacey entry about screaming. Screaming, screaming everywhere, and not a zombie in sight. Good thing, I guess. For the zombie.
(I am temporarily distracted by attempting to do a Zombie!Chapter 2, despite the fact that I don’t watch The Walking Dead or anything. “When Kristy was alive, every meeting she would sit in the director’s chair with her visor and give us the LOOK. It’s still pretty scary, even if she only has one eye left! Claudia still has silky black hair and is totally exotic looking, even with her flesh starting to rot. Today she was wearing a blood-stained t-shirt, but she’d tied a piece of torn muscle fiber around her waist and stuck a few bones in her hair. She looked totally dibble. Mary Anne’s the sensitive one. She’ll still eat your brains, but she’ll cry about it. Mallory and Jessi are besties, even though they’re totally different! Jessi used to be a ballerina, and you can really see it in her graceful lurching. They’re as close as sisters, but no one would mistake them for twins: Mallory used to be white and Jessi used to be black, even though now they’re both kind of gray.”
the circle of the undead.
Anyway. Mr. Blabbermouth Hewson asks WTF is going on, and Sean Knowles turns on his flashlight and says he just scared some of the students. Abby tells him he shouldn’t sneak up on people like that (but. . .he wasn’t?) and he apologizes, but points out they scared him, too.
He looks pale, and somehow this inspires Stacey to accuse him of sneaking around the inn and being around when the diamond was stolen, and Mal demands why he’s always spying on people. Hypocrisy is still spelled B-S-C.
Instead of yelling at the rude brats, Sean says he didn’t know he was being so closely observed, and reaches into his jacket pocket. Abby shrieks that he has a gun, and he’s like, “uh, no, I have an ID.” Also, a few minutes ago when they screamed everyone popped out of their rooms, but no one reacts to “He has a gun!”
“Good old Mary Anne” takes the ID badge, and we find out that his full name is Sean Colvin Knowles. Really? Weirdest mash-up ever.
+
x lolcat =
And he’s a licensed investigator for UltraInsurance. Mallory is awed that his badge number ends in 007, and he says it’s just a coincidence. I bet he totally uses it as a pick-up line, though.
They ask if he’s investigating the theft, and for a moment, it’s almost like a real professional passes through, since he declines to discuss his ongoing investigation with a pack of obnoxious teenagers. I’m amazed he isn’t killed off for his sins. He advises them to go back to their rooms and stop messing around, since a criminal is on the loose and said criminal is “more desperate than you realize.”
Abby and Stacey wonder if that was a threat, and Mary Anne thinks not, because he had such a nice smile. I worry about that girl. "His windowless van was so clean!"
Mallory, meanwhile, is in some kind of weird trance, musing over how quietly Sean walked away in his sneakered “little cat” feet.
Suddenly, all her creepy stalking of Martha comes to fruition, because she realizes that on the morning of the theft, and only that morning, Martha was wearing sneakers instead of stiletto heels. Not that said observation was ever mentioned before, because why put actual clues in your mystery? Stacey misses the point and says everyone has the occasional fashion faux-pas (except her and Claudia, obviously) and then, in Ann’s Misguided Feminism Bingo, deems the stilettos a “bigger fashion bomb.” But everyone else deduces that perhaps Martha wore sneakers that morning to make a fast getaway! Mallory is belatedly appalled at having found incriminating evidence against her girl-crush.
Stacey claims that the “logical” thing to do is to look in Martha’s room, and of course Creepy Mal knows exactly where it is. They find rows of high-heeled shoes, including high-heeled bedroom slippers, but no sneakers. They use the code Stacey memorized and open the safe. It’s empty, but this PROVES (sort of) a connection between Martha and the theft. Well, it’s more like evidence than anything else so far. Also, Stacey amuses me by whining about how the safe code and Sean Knowles’s ID numbers are permanently stuck in her head. Girl, please. Talk to me when you’re thirty and you’re still haunted by the word on which Karen Brewer lost her damn spelling bee and Claudia’s Ms. Frizzle outfit.
Mallory runs away to get That Fucking Notebook, which will be super-helpful IN THE DARK, and Stacey says the rest of them should try to find Martha and either trap or trail her. They put out all but one candle to conserve them.
They trudge upstairs and there’s some business about only certain doors opening and they get themselves lost on an empty floor that appears to be under going renovations. “The ribs of ghostly ladders loomed up from the darkness.” Wow, someone’s getting high-falutin’ with her prose. Did I just wander into a Twilight fanfic?
Oh hey, since despite everything this still isn’t really scary, I will tell you one of the scariest things I ever read was a Twilight fanfic where
[don't say I didn't warn you]
Edward cooked himself sous-vide so he would be warm for Bella when they fucked. Stuff of nightmares, that is.
Abby runs to a door at the other end of the hall. Stacey has a bad feeling about this as she “lurches” forward and the candle blows out. Mary Anne and Stacey shriek and feel each other up for a bit in order to “establish that we were in fact who we said we were.” Trust Mary Anne to be able to ID her friends by their boobs.
(Okay, okay, the book says she touched Stacey’s ribs, but we know what really happened.)
Anyway, Abby has run off with the only pack of matches. For once, Mary Anne remains relatively calm while Stacey freaks out more. They call out to Abby and hear various thumps and crashes, and then Abby answers with a “horrible, strangled cry.”
Chapter 21
Abby advises us not to go charging into dark rooms without a light source on an exit plan. I would give her points for developing some genre-savvy if I didn’t know they still had ten-plus mysteries of this shit to go.
So the door closed, and I guess locked, behind Abby and oh my god, none of this should work because FIRE HAZARD. She gropes around on the wall and has the feeling she’s being followed, in the dark, and rapidly considers the possibilities of vampires, ghosts, and werewolves. She also uses the phrase “my pert patter” when she says she was just whistling in the dark, so to speak.
She keeps moving as she remembers what Sean Knowles said about the criminal being “desperate.” She thinks she could take Martha, but what if she has a big, muscle-bound accomplice? Or is a karate black belt with a gun? Somewhere, I think Mallory just had her first orgasm.
She decides not to call for help, because she doesn’t want to draw attention to herself or to Mary Anne and Stacey, and touches her pet pumpkin (that’s what she said!) and silently asks it to be a good-luck pumpkin now. “The pumpkin heard me. At least about the luck part. I still haven’t decided if it was good luck or bad.” Kay.
A light flashes in Abby’s eyes and someone tackles her and tugs at her waist (um. . .bit of unfortunate implication there) and rips off pet pumpkin, which falls to the floor and cracks open. . .and SOMETHING falls out. ZOMG it is the Witch’s Eye!
Abby uses her leet soccer skillz to kick the diamond away, and then somehow hits Martha (the tackler, obviously) in the knee with her own knee, and Martha falls down, goes boom, and groans in pain. I don’t think “fight choreography” is one of Nola’s strengths.
Abby grabs the diamond and Martha’s flashlight and turns the flashlight off, so she can stumble around stealthily some more, I guess. But another light comes on! ZOMG! It is Harvey Hapgood, Martha’s accomplice!
He orders Abby to hand over the diamond, when all of a sudden ZOMG! Magic! “The diamond was glowing an eerie, horrible green.” Sure it was. Abby screams.
Chapter 22
Mary Anne insists the diamond was haunted or cursed or whatever, since there is no logical explanation for the glow. (Fluorescence what?) She can’t wait to tell Dawn, who will probably have to top her with a story about the possessed hermit crab she found on the beach.
Stacey and Mary Anne run towards Abby’s scream, as does Sean Knowles and Mallory, appearing from. . .somewhere. They burst through the door and then stop. Mary Anne says it wasn’t fear, but awe.
Harvey is staring at Abby, while Martha cringes on the floor. Something is still glowing in Abby’s hand, and Stacey “deduces” it must be the Witch’s Eye. Abby tries to psych out Harvey by claiming the curse will get him if he comes any closer to her. Martha yells impatiently that there is no curse, and tells Harvey to grab the thing and get them the hell out of Dodge. Harvey starts to close in on Abby, but conveniently, the lights come back on and someone yells “Freeze! Police!”
Harvey starts to run, but Abby “does something weird” (some kind of slide tackle) and makes him trip, and then Sean Knowles tackles him. Abby rolls out of the way while Martha moans about her knee.
The BSC reconvene and Abby still has the diamond clutched in her hot little hand. She says with a grin it was “excellent” and Mary Anne freaks a bit. They ask how she got the diamond from Martha and Abby gleefully explains about it being hidden in the pet pumpkin, so she had it the whole time.
The police start to haul Harvey and Martha away, Harvey yelling it was all her idea and Martha threatening to sue. . .someone. Sean Knowles unwisely interrupts Detective Frizell reading Martha her Miranda rights to ask where the diamond is, and as far as I’m concerned, Martha goes out on a high note by referring to the BSC as a “brat pack.” Martha, your plan was incredibly dumb and I suspect you are a shit writer, but you get a point for your BSC disdain.
She accuses Abby of breaking her leg and they glare at each other.
Sean approaches them and Abby begins to tell her story again, when Kristy bursts into the room with an “accusing gaze.” What a caring friend! Mary Anne says they were worried about her, and K. Ron blows her off to yell at them for DARING to solve the mystery without her, and literally says “Tell me you didn’t do this to me!” What a fine role model.
Chapter 23
Kristy entry in which she claims to have “almost” forgiven the others. Why are they friends with her, again? Plus, she got sweet, sweet revenge on Cary.
They all go to dinner, and Kristy smiles smugly at Mrs. M as they pass her. (Well, I’m assuming the smugness.) They chill at the inn and give their individual statements to the police. Cary skulks off to bed, Alan winks at Kristy a lot, and Eileen has wisely made friends with a non-BSC sixth-grader.
Mrs. M mysteriously invites them into the dining room and serves them cake shaped like a pumpkin, with a tiny gold pumpkin charm for each of them inside. Mrs. M says it was lucky the bakery was open late.
I’ll say. Does Mrs. M carry around pumpkin charms in case of emergency? She says the charms are to remember their “adventure and heroic deeds.” Abby says cheerfully-and accurately-that this crap happens to them all the time, so no big deal, and when Kristy scolds her, she points out they have The Fucking Notebook to prove it.
Mary Anne asks if Mrs. M will keep the diamond, and is there a real curse? Mrs. M says Martha invented the rumors because she had become “obsessed,” which is all the motive we’re going to get. Even K. Ron is dubious.
Anyway, Harvey called up pretending to be her insurance agent and saying because of the rumors they could no longer insure the diamond, so I guess the Valuable Lesson is always ask for identification? But when even that didn’t get her to sell, Martha resorted to “desperate measures.” She thought it would be less suspicious if she stole it from the museum (whatever) but the theft took longer than she planned, which is why she had to dump her disguise in the bushes, and when Mary Anne led the police to the inn, she panicked and left her pre-purchased, pre-cracked pumpkin in the gift shop, which makes even less sense, but whatever! Abby bought it, Martha stalked her, yadda yadda. Sean Knowles was on the scene because the insurance company thought Mrs. M planted the rumors to so she could steal it herself and get her pay-out. Mrs. M says there’s a “bit of a curse” on the diamond, but nothing like what Martha cooked up.
Mary Anne asks how the diamond glowed like that, if it wasn’t cursed, and Abby says it was just a trick of the light, but Mary Anne is dubious. Stacey is just happy it slowed Harvey down long enough for the police to come to the rescue, and Kristy jokes maybe it was saving Martha and Harvey from Abby.
Abby-the Wheezing Wonder Girl!
They all go to bed.
Epilogue
Abby says being around the BSC can be dangerous for your health, especially if you are a crook. Considering how much alcohol consumption and headdesking some of these snarks result in, that’s probably a fair claim.
They admire pictures from the parade and compliment the S-Brook contingent on “curing” Jordan. Abby wonders why there isn’t an official BSC photo album. Claudia is jealous of their awesome trip, but Kristy points out they still have papers to write, AND they didn’t get their pictures in the paper, since the powers that be in Salem don’t know enough to bow to the BSCult. Stacey suggests getting business cards and Abby points out they could advertise that “children and mysteries” are their specialties. She looks around the room and thinks there will be more mysteries to come, because that dead horse isn’t beaten to a pulp yet.
And on that lovely image, we say good-bye. I have nothing new in mind to snark, so I would love a suggestion or two. It makes me feel I have something to offer the world besides pseudo-incest.