Mystery 26, Dawn Schafer, Undercover Baby-Sitter
I’m doing this snark from the ebook files one of you so generously shared via Dropbox, and the abbreviated file name looks like Dawn Sc. . .y-sitter, and she certainly scares me. Actually, the second half of this book was more messed-up than I recalled.
Chapter 8
Abby is thrilled for a real life opportunity to say “the plot thickens.” Dawn whines more about how it’s raining again, and how unfair it is she hasn’t been able to swim in the Livingston House pool. But Abby’s Great Idea is to plan a treasure hunt for the kids as an excuse to poke around all over the house, and the ever-generous Claudia offers up an unopened bag of Tootsie Roll pops. No one says in Mrs. Lovejoy-esque tones “Teach them to gamble with their HEALTH?”
They get there and John Irving gives them towels and sends them up to the Keats-side playroom, but Dawn detours to hide the treasure, which Abby has wrapped up in brown paper and covered with stickers and ribbons to look more “impressive.” Dawn stashes it in the library, then heads up to the playroom, where the kids are happily playing clapping games and drawing.
Before Dawn even greets the kids, Abby pulls her aside to say OMG she found a clue, and Dawn decides it’s safe to ignore the kids and talk. Abby says Eliza unknowingly revealed Sister K’s clue, and Dawn puts on a martyr act because Abby likes telling the whole anecdote to get to the WHAM!line. No one who made me suffer through that first chapter should be complaining about people not getting to the point fast enough, DAWN. Anyway, Eliza innocently said she likes the house, but sometimes it feels too big, especially if you’re trying to find something, like a signature, because her mom told her to keep an eye out for anything with a signature, because “the signature tells all.” OMG ELEVENTY JONES!!!! Abby and Dawn deduce this totally sounds like what Jerk-Ass Crazy would say, even though neither clue makes a “speck of sense.” Uh, they’re actually kind of painfully more direct than the stuff Cary came up with in the previous book, which at least had a smack of creativity.
Jeremy dares to actually want the people paid to mind him to pay attention to him, and Abby announces the “so fun, so terrific, so splendiferous” treasure hunt. The older girls want to do it right, and make an organized plan to sweep through the house, which pleases Dawn and Abby since they can look for signatures at the same time. They stop in the kitchen and Dawn smugs nothing in there could be signed, until Abby runs over and checks all the pottery, writing down potters’ signatures in their mystery notebook. (I kind of imagine Abby making the Road Runner “beep beep!” wherever she goes.
Which makes K. Ron Wile E. Coyote, I guess.)
Then they freak out because they think they hear someone on the other side of the swinging door, but no one was there.
They find a few more signatures on a silver teapot, a designer umbrella, and a clock-and considering what we were told about how many [Spoiler (click to open)]paintings there are, they aren’t as thorough as they think. She also describes the youngest kids as “sniffing around everywhere,” and maybe she meant nosing, but I’m pretty sure they aren’t cats. Abby and the kids are having fun, but Dawn, who seemingly enjoys being disappointed so she has something to whine about, is annoyed that gee, they’ve looked for a whole HOUR and still haven’t solved the mystery! Also she keeps hearing mysterious noises, but I trust Dawn’s judgment on that about as much as I would trust a cat to guard the ice cream.
They get to the library and Dawn finds a big folder of financial records, and for some reason her scruples kick in here about it being wrong to snoop (although that hasn’t stopped them before), and hypocritically scolds Eliza and then gleefully observes Eliza has found a check signed by A. Livingston. There doesn’t seem to be anything special about it until egad! Abby notices it was signed two months ago, and Arthur Livingston has been dead almost a year. And has a daughter named AMY whom you’ve met several times, you morons.
They park the kids in front of a video their mothers had approved (because TV is the Devil until you want to spend your time snooping and gossiping), and Abby comes up with a “theory” that Dawn says explains the check, the noises, and the clean clothes in the attic: Crazy Arthur is Alive. Fail.
Chapter 9
Abby isn’t sure if Crazy Arthur staged his death to bring his family together, or just because he enjoys fucking with them. Dawn ponders this until Jeremy has the nerve to say he’s hungry, and Dawn heads off alone to the kitchen to rustle up snacks. Outside the kitchen she hears a man and woman arguing, and insists to herself she has to feed the children a snack RIGHT NOW because they are STARVING, even though they’ve been scarfing down Tootsie Pops. Once again, she randomly has an ethical conflict about eavesdropping and then totally does so anyway.
“We have to wait!” cried the woman.
“I don’t want to wait,” insisted the man. “I’ve waited long enough!”
. . .yeah, this still sounds like a secret romance to me.
Because obviously it’s John Irving the Cute Butler and Amy, who fake that they were planning dinner, and John Irving rushes to prepare the snack. Dawn figures out that something must be going on, but would rather speculate a creepy jerkass old man is live-haunting his children than summer romance shenanigans.
John gives her a tray with carrot and celery sticks and crackers and a huge pitcher of lemonade and glasses, all of which she insists she can carry by herself and then proceeds to spill carrots all through the hall. She’s daydreaming about “being a waitress at some really cool, trendy vegetarian restaurant out on the West Coast” when she spots Ms. Iorio creepily hanging out in the foyer staring at another Arthur portrait. Excellent and ambitious lawyer, my ass. She claims she came by to drop off some papers and no one heard her knock, so she just let herself in. Does NO ONE in Stoneybrook have any goddamn manners? Dawn offers to take the papers or find Amy, but Ms. Iorio declines and scuttles away. Dawn finds this suspicious, not because it’s rude and unprofessional, but because Ms. Iorio’s “shoulder bag” is too small to hold “important legal documents.” Um, they’re not carved into stone tablets, Dawn. But Dawn shrugs this off and treks off to the playroom where ohnoes! the kids are all yelling at each other.
And of course it’s the “family feud,” and not one of a thousand other things that can set off cranky, bored, and hungry kids in close quarters. Sister C told Katherine a little about why they were staying at Livingston House and the rest of them figured it out, which probably makes them smarter than the BSC. They argue over whose mom is selfish and whose mom is stubborn and Jeremy cries. Because Dawn is completely devoid of empathy, this is her reaction: “Ai, yi, yi!” I said to Abby. What a mess. It was as if the kids had slid back to square one, after all we’d done to keep them together.” Oh, shut it, soy for brains. Claudia was the one who came up with the activities the kids liked, and then they talked and bonded perfectly well on their own.
Dawn borrows a trick from K. Ron and whistles to shut everyone up, and the healing power of carrot sticks apparently soothes everyone’s nerves enough for a calmer conversation. The kids think it’s exciting there could be a treasure in the house, and stupid for it to be a competition, so they decide if they find it, they can make their moms share it (and shaft Aunt Amy, I guess.) Dawn gleefully tells them Amy’s clue about “the first is the most important,” and conveniently, just then the Sisters C and K come home. (I’m still all up on Orphan Black and keep wanting to call them sestras.)
Chapter 10
The kids run downstairs, screaming incoherently about treasure, and of course their mothers aren’t nearly as good at quieting them down as Saint Dawn of Superiority. She dissembles that the kids “think” there is a clue in the house leading to the inheritance, because she doesn’t want to admit that she already knew, thanks to their terrible lawyer, and has been blissfully snooping around their house all this time.
The Sisters C and K get all tense because the children weren’t supposed to know, and Katherine fesses up that she overheard Sister C talking to Amy about it. Sister K frowns, and Sister C gets all protective of Katherine as they bicker about who tried to be “Daddy’s little pet” and who acted like “Daddy’s sugarplum,” and which one of them loved him the most, and this is genuinely creepy, in a vaguely Thousand-Acres-esque, Electra Complex, incestuous kind of way. Maybe I’m just grossed out by sugarplum.
Amy leaps into the fray and tells her sisters not to dump all their old family baggage on their own kids, and Sister K snots about why she cares about the kids all of a sudden. Amy points out that she’s never really had the chance to get to know them or spend time with them before, and she doesn’t want them to get poisoned by the same toxic family stuff the sisters all have. Both older sisters are all “How very dare you!” and Amy is like, “Yeah, I’m calling a family meeting, fuckers, so there!”
Dawn and Abby invite themselves right along for the family meeting, which is in the sitting room she and Kristy were taken to on their first day, with the particularly ugly painting of Crazy Arthur. No point, no point at all, just valuable information that everyone should know.
Sister K says she understands and even agrees with Amy’s point about not poisoning the kids, but Amy can’t understand or criticize the relationship damage between Sisters C and K because “Daddy didn’t play the same games with you that he played with Sally and me.” Ew, ew, ew, I need a thousand showers. That is. . .a really unfortunate choice of words, Ellen Miles.
Sister C agrees that by the time Amy was born things had changed, but she and Sister K are so used to be pitted against each other that it’s a hard habit to break.
Katherine has been watching Oprah or something, because she tells them it’s time for them to live their own lives. Sister K is impressed by her niece’s maturity, and Sister C gushes her eldest daughter has always been wise and forgiving beyond her years, which causes Amy to quietly snark Katherine must have gotten that from her dad.
Anyway, Amy proposes they should all work together and split the inheritance and assures them there’s “enough for everybody.” The other sisters demand she put her money where her mouth is and cough up her clue first and there’s a very brief and boring Mexican Stand-Off until Sisters C and K give in. Amy tells her sisters their father would have been proud of them, and really did love them, even if he didn’t show it well, which I don’t find terribly moving in light of the asinine will, but whatever.
Katherine urges her mom to tell her clue, and when she hesitates, Dawn makes it all about herself and how frustrating it is for her, Dawn, not to know it this second. But we get the clues, not without the requisite whining about whose clue is the hardest.
Yeah, Cary’s clues were way better. I know in writing a middle-grade mystery you want to give the readers some chance to piece it together, but this just makes everyone look really dopey.
They puzzle over this all afternoon, and Dawn tells us over and over again how BAFFLING these clues are, how NO ONE could make any sense of them, how they added up to NONSENSE. Try “fruited purple waves for sea” and get back to me, oh super detective. Turtle Wexler > the entire damn BSC.
They go to a BSC meeting and of course, NO ONE can solve it. Dawn is exhausted by all her snooping and inserting herself into other people’s familial angst, and wants to go home, but Mary Anne asks brightly if Dawn is ready for their night out. D’oh! Dawn “promised her” a pizza a movie night, but now she wants to think of a nice way (ie, a way that won’t bring out Crazy Mary Anne) to bail on her again. (“Promised her” seems kind of patronizing, but I hate Dawn and Mary Anne’s being a passive-aggressive and needy freak, so whatever.) But before she can make the attempt, they get home and oh noes! Dawn also made plans to eat Chinese food and go bowling with Erica Blumberg. Seriously, since when does Erica luv Dawn so much? (Also, more and more I feel like Erica is the proto-hipster of Stoneybrook.) Dawn graciously groans out loud and cancels her plans with Erica, expecting Mary Anne to be touched by the gesture of dumping someone else for Mary Anne this time. Far from being touched, Mary Anne is outraged that Dawn fucked up her schedule again, seeing it as proof that MA isn’t important to her. They’re both touched. In the head. (Okay, I have felt exactly like Mary Anne a LOT-I tend to feel that IRL people find me pleasant but very forgettable-but I have more pride than to say it.)
Dawn insists it isn’t personal, she’s just become a total airhead, and she must have “messed up [her] color coding.” Uh, I don’t think that’s how color coding works, Dawn. Maybe she’s turning into Sharon, except that Sharon isn’t generally a rude, nasty, hypocritical, judgmental jerkass. I’d rather live with hedge clippers in the drawer any day.
Whatever. Dawn “convinces” Mary Anne they are still BFF, and Mary Anne offers to help with her schedule, since that is the one skill she’s allowed to have. (Oh, and knitting.) Then they get the “fantastic” idea to throw a “Friends Day” party before Dawn leaves, which they do EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TIME. It’s like getting invited to someone’s fifth wedding-do you seriously have to buy off the registry AGAIN? But this will be totes amazing because Mary Anne will help her organize a party for various BSC clients in the morning, another party for SMS students in the afternoon, and a sensible dinner BSC BBQ and sleepover. They spend the rest of the evening “planning,” although without setting an actual date. You both fail at scheduling forever.
Also, Dawn secretly decides she will ALSO stage a “Family Day,” because the Livingston debacle has taught her not to take her family for granted. That’s fine and all, although it kind of gives the impression she can be an asshole all she wants except for one designated day.
Chapter 11
We suddenly open to Tilly screaming for Dawn to “Tell us!” and Dawn freaking out about if she’s wrong about her solution to the mystery. Apparently she solved the ENTIRE PLOT in the space between the chapters. Ace writing, Ellen Miles. Solid.
Of course, Dawn didn’t actually solve it using her soy-soaked brain; she had a fucking quasi “paranormal” dream. This is so lazy I can’t even. So she’s staring at a painting of Crazy Arthur and zomg! he winks at her. Gross. He tells her the clue is right in front of her nose and to take a step closer, whereupon she falls into a trap door and hears him laughing like a maniac, at which point she wakes up, convinced the dream means something. She also feels like Arthur is still watching her, which is pretty solid Nightmare Fuel, especially with the winking. She whines about having to see SO MANY portraits of Arthur all day long and then has a Eureka! Moment and goes back to sleep.
The next morning she calls Amy and gets Richard to drive her over to Livingston House, and tells them the all goddamn dream in a longer, more annoying form. “Amy was pacing, and Mrs. Keats was still wringing her hands. The kids were all squirming with impatience. And Mrs. Cornell looked as if she were about to start foaming at the mouth.” There’s a lot of accidental creepiness in this thing. It’s all Gothic tropes crammed uncomfortably into StepfordBrook, and it gives me the wig.
Anyway, Dawn finally reveals the answer to Sister C’s clue is “I didn’t do it, I was FRAMED,” and everyone is agog at her brilliance. Even with that, the sisters are too dopey to connect “signature” and “first” to paintings until Dawn spells it out, and they go around checking all the portraits, with Katherine writing it all down. Nine-year-old Katherine is the smartest, most competent person in the book so far. She must get it from her dad. Dawn whines about how hard and boring it is to keep them all in order, especially when Crazy Arthur hits middle age, which makes no sense because all they are doing is WRITING THEM DOWN, they don’t actually have arrange them like a timeline. They finish and Katherine announces it’s the ugly one in the parlor, and Sister C chides her, saying their mother (the sestra mother, not Katherine’s mother) painted it. GOSH GOLLY GEE might that have been a tip-off?
It is indeed signed by Diana Livingston, so they call Ms. “Legal Ethics are for Chumps” Iorio and scour the painting until they find a series of numbers on the back. Ms. Iorio repeats she’s supposed to give the fortune to “whatever” sister finds the answer, but if they want to split it, that’s cool, too, and begins to open the very secret envelop when. . .a ghost sneezes. Yeah, we’re not done yet.
Chapter 12
Dawn confirms no one in the room sneezed, and while everyone else looks confused, Amy looks scared. Dawn wonders if she’s scared of the ghost or scared her father is going to reveal himself to be alive. I wonder(ed) if she’s scared she’ll be lose the inheritance for boinking the butler. Anyway, there is a loud creaking noise and gasp! the bookshelf begins to move revealing a secret passage. Dawn can’t decide which would be more awesome to her personally, seeing a ghost or finding out Crazy Arthur is alive, because all this family sturm und drang is just an amusement to her.
The “shadowy figure” is revealed to be John Irving, Hottie McButler, of course, and Sister C demands to know what he was doing there. He admits he was spying and Dawn butts in to ask if he made the noises she heard, and he evades by saying he never was in the attic, so it wasn’t him that time, just the other times. Mrs. K asks suspiciously why he would want to spy on “the girls” and Dawn and I agree for once that’s a good question, although for different reasons. Because ew. See what I mean about the yuck factor here? It’s not even joyful and hilarious double entendre like in Logan Bruno, Boy Baby-Sitter; it’s just icky.
John says he thought the girls might “stumble on the treasure,” which is pretty weak sauce, but Sister C ignores that to ask why he’s interested in their fortune, anyway.
And then Amy reveals he’s their little brother. The one who’s supposed to be dead. Also, the one I thought she was getting it on with.
Are they fucking kidding me with this?
Ms. Iorio shrieks Crazy Arthur told her the youngest son fell off a mountain. I think Crazy Arthur’s cleverness has been wildly overestimated.
Patrick, formerly known as “John Irving,” says he left home at 17 because he didn’t see eye to eye with his father, and Amy says she was 20 then, and it was because Patrick wouldn’t put up with Crazy Arthur’s shitty manipulative parenting. Sisters C and K left for college when Patrick was about five, and basically ditched him and eight-year-old Amy with their Jerkass Dad ever after. I have no idea where the mom was. I mean, she had to have been alive at least to pop out Patrick, but she seems to have had no bearing whatsoever on any of these relationships, which is pretty gross. I might feel bad for her (while also thinking she was a pretty fail mom) if I thought Ellen or Ann had given her the least amount of thought as a character and not a plot device to be discarded as soon as she’d pushed out enough heirs.
Anyway, Amy has been in touch with Patrick the whole time, but decided “adding Patrick into the equation might be a little too much. I bought him into the house as the butler, hoping that over time you’d come to know him and like him. Then we could reveal our secret.” That’s stupid and contrived on so many levels.
The kids think it’s funny their uncle is their butler, which is about as sane as any response to the situation, and Sister K says mistily they’ll find another butler, because Patrick is family. I’m so touched.
Ms. Iorio recovers from her shock that the Jerkass Old Man who set up a will to fuck with his kids was not completely honest with her and points out that according to the will, Patrick is dead. The kids point out Crazy Arthur was a “meanie” and Patrick boasts the old man was teaching him a lesson, but he emo-tastically flounced except now he kinda does want the money, and Amy promised to split it with him if he helped her solve the puzzle. He thought it would be easy, so he didn’t bring enough clean clothes, and chose to wear his dead dad’s togs instead of running outside the Brook limits to K-mart or something, if you really cared about that “clue.” But he’s also happy to get to meet his nieces and nephew, because he missed having a family. Sister C cries, and says she’s thought of Patrick so often over the years, but she believed Crazy Arthur saying Patrick had been “awful” to him and the sisters had better forget him if they didn’t want the same outcome.
Yeah, this dude really has no redeeming features. I kind of thought it might be revealed that in his old age, he realized how badly he’d fucked up his kids and dreamed this up as a really laborious and irritating way to bring them all together. Nope. He was just an asshole who wanted to fuck with his daughters once more, from beyond the grave, and I AM using “fuck with” intentionally.
Ms. Iorio still reminds them there’s still the little matter of the will, and they want to know if it can be split four ways. Yes. I’m glad it took this whole fucking production to get there. She confirms it matches the code in her envelope, and then out of nowhere says Diana Livingston was her BFF who thought “the world” of her children and would be so happy. The fuck? First of all, from the way Richard talked to her, I thought she was pretty young. Even if she was younger than Mrs. Crazy Arthur, she must still be in her late 40s. Also, what the fuck happened to Diana? Did Crazy Arthur stuff her in a drawer? Send her to the moon? If she was such a lovely person, why didn’t she try to do anything about her husband being such a piece of shit father? Oh, who cares. Dawn absolves Ms. Iorio of having ulterior motives of wanting the puzzle solved, because she just wanted to see the family together again. She’s still a terrible lawyer though.
And the family feud and mystery are over. Why are there three chapters to go? It’s a cruel, cruel world.
Chapter 13
Dawn writes her dad a boring and pointless postcard, basically saying “I did stuff! I’ll tell you later! I’m about to go do stuff! I’ll tell you later!”
Anyway, we aren’t so lucky as Jack Schafer, and have to go through Friends Day minute by minute. Morning. Kids. Jenny P comes and Dawn condescendingly says she’s a good kid, even if sometimes “it’s hard to remember that.” Stuff an organic wool sock in it, Dawn. And it’s bullshit to blame a four-year-old for what her mother dresses her in. Jenny brought her stuffed animal, Monkey Matthew, to give Dawn to keep her company on the plane ride so she won’t be alone. Yeah, that’s TOTALLY something a spoiled, selfish kid does. Fuck y’all, BSC, fuck y’all.
Dawn also reminisces about how “impossible” the Barretts used to be, but now their hot, scattered single mom is properly wedded to a dude.
Blah blah games, Vanessa rhymes, Claire silly-billy-goo-goos, Mary Anne insists that Dawn allow the kids the option of meat hotdogs, cupcakes (Jamie Newton ate three and proposed marriage), kids leave.
The BSC show up, minus Kristy, who is in Hawaii with her family, and “a few friends” from school. All this whining and double-booking and schedule snafu-ing seems to have been on account of Emily, Erica, and Mari Drabek. They give Dawn going away gifts, because it’s quite the racket she’s got going on there. Stacey gives her dolphin barrettes, Mal and Jessi give her stationery, Abby gave her a book on shells, Claudia gives her seaweed candy, Emily gives her sunglasses, Mari gives her vanilla-scented cologne, and Kristy, obnoxious even from thousands of miles away, gives her a record book for the We <3 Kids Club. Claudia also eats three cupcakes, matching “Nicky,” even though it was Jamie. It’s pretty impressive to fuck up continuity in less a page.
Blah blah BBQ with grilled vegetables for Dawn and they all eat Ben and Jerry’s “(I may be a health nut, but once in a while I give in to temptation),” and while I couldn’t care less, it’s pretty rich to go around whining all the time about how disgusting sugar is and how stupid everyone else is for not wanting to eat whatever ridiculous concoction she’s shilling. Scary movie, slumber party, blah.
Chapter 14
Jessi makes a really stupid joke as her dad drives her home. I guess she had a sleeping bag, but it’s pretty clearly a weekday, so either it’s pretty early or the world does revolve around them. Mary Anne is inside cleaning the kitchen, because they went for midnight snacks and left a huge mess. How classy of them, as a whole, and how classy of Dawn to leave the clean-up to MA, who also seemed to do the brunt of the work for the kids’ party.
Dawn goes inside and MA is cleaning, Richard is re-organizing his briefcase, and Sharon can’t find her scarf. Dawn says she as an announcement and starts off by saying how she didn’t always organize her time well, which kind of hilariously gets Sharon reassuring her, MA saying Friends Day went well, and Richard saying she’ll learn to be organized when she gets older. Burn, although I don’t know if it’s more of a burn on Dawn or Sharon. Anyway, Dawn sighs loudly and then makes her damn announcement, which is that today is Family Day, yay.
So she kicks everyone out and makes breakfast, which sounds mostly fine (although I don’t really get the point of tofu sausage) and says she wants to treat them to a dinner out, because she’s all flush from sitting for the Crazy Rich Family, but they decide to do pizza at home. Richard and Sharon leave for work, and after cleaning up, she and MA exchange gifts, and OMG, they each bought each other pinky rings! They start to cry and then Dawn proposes a shopping trip, which MA is up for, but she made previous lunch plans with Logan. Dawn says that’s fine, because she wants to surprise Sharon at work and take her to lunch, which is actually kind of sweet.
Blah blah Merry-Go-Round, Sew Fine, Rosebud Café, Tofu Express.
When Richard comes home, she invites him for a bike ride, saying he’s “pretty good step dad, and he’s become a real friend,” which would be sweet if there were any indication of that in the text ever. But they have a nice ride, and pizza, and now that chapter is over.
Chapter 15
Sister K invites Dawn to a pool party, and she brings along Mary Anne. (Amusingly, at first Dawn thinks Sister K wants a sitter and is going to tell her she has to call official HQ during official meeting times.) Dawn snottily approves of the pool, after reminding us that in California pools are “an art form” and Maggie has one shaped like a lagoon. The Livingston pool is “huge” and has a high dive. Doesn’t a pool need to be pretty deep to safely have a high dive? I’d think a pool that deep would be LESS fun for little kids, even if it’s only part of it. Also, Dawn says the water looks “clear and delicious.” Mmmm, chlorine. And possibly urine.
Amy shows them the pool house, which is “a smaller replica of Livingston House, right down to the pillars and the red front door.” I think that actually sounds tacky as hell.
Anyway, it has “three bedrooms (for guests, Amy explained), plus a full kitchen, two bathrooms, a game room with a pool table, and a changing room, which was carpeted in red, furnished with overstuffed armchairs, and outfitted with closets and shelves for guests clothes.” Good God. Dawn says she could live there, like shit, the Pikes could probably live there. But actually Patrick is going to live there while Amy lives in the big house, because the pool house is “cosier.” Although actually Amy might take a job in New York and Patrick has a girlfriend in Maryland (hey! Maybe it’s Abigail from the first edition of Mary Anne Saves the Day!). Dawn asks if they’re going to sell the house, but no, they’re going to keep it for family reunions, and that must be some sweet inheritance if they don’t even have to consider selling a multi-million dollar property, and can afford to pay upkeep and taxes and all that. Amy is wistful about all the years they wasted, and then they all do cannonballs.
They rehash the mystery, although what there is to rehash I don’t even know, and they give Dawn a t-shirt with a picture of the ugly portrait that says “I helped solve the mystery!” They thank Dawn for reuniting the family (oh, please) and Mary Anne starts to cry, but Ms. Iorio waltzes in with more legal papers-Dawn can tell, because she’s carrying a briefcase for Important Legal Documents. Dawn watches Amy sign something and “figures out” that she’s A. Livingston, and was perfectly able to write checks two months ago. Amy is like, “duh” and Dawn at least has the tact not to say she thought her crazy, jerkass, creepy dead dad was alive in the attic. Ms. Iorio says Amy has an account to cover the household needs, and Dawn thinks it’s “as if she knew I needed to tie up all the loose ends of the mystery. And that detail did it.” Uh, no. No one but you and Abby considered that a loose end, and Abby believes six batshit things before breakfast every day, on principle. Whatever.
BSC meeting, sans K. Ron. Apparently Watson has invited his family to stop off at California on the way back home and stay at Dawn’s house. Holy shit. I really hope he means maybe Kristy will stay with Dawn and Mr. Millionaire will take the rest of his family, including a child in diapers and the hell on wheels that must be Karen after a five-hour flight, to a damn hotel. Dawn says she will take the whole town to California in her heart, so I hope no one ate any meat!
The end. Okay, part II was significantly more ridiculous than part I. It looks like it’s probably Aloha next, unless anyone has any other requests. Requests are love!
Chapter 8
Abby is thrilled for a real life opportunity to say “the plot thickens.” Dawn whines more about how it’s raining again, and how unfair it is she hasn’t been able to swim in the Livingston House pool. But Abby’s Great Idea is to plan a treasure hunt for the kids as an excuse to poke around all over the house, and the ever-generous Claudia offers up an unopened bag of Tootsie Roll pops. No one says in Mrs. Lovejoy-esque tones “Teach them to gamble with their HEALTH?”
They get there and John Irving gives them towels and sends them up to the Keats-side playroom, but Dawn detours to hide the treasure, which Abby has wrapped up in brown paper and covered with stickers and ribbons to look more “impressive.” Dawn stashes it in the library, then heads up to the playroom, where the kids are happily playing clapping games and drawing.
Before Dawn even greets the kids, Abby pulls her aside to say OMG she found a clue, and Dawn decides it’s safe to ignore the kids and talk. Abby says Eliza unknowingly revealed Sister K’s clue, and Dawn puts on a martyr act because Abby likes telling the whole anecdote to get to the WHAM!line. No one who made me suffer through that first chapter should be complaining about people not getting to the point fast enough, DAWN. Anyway, Eliza innocently said she likes the house, but sometimes it feels too big, especially if you’re trying to find something, like a signature, because her mom told her to keep an eye out for anything with a signature, because “the signature tells all.” OMG ELEVENTY JONES!!!! Abby and Dawn deduce this totally sounds like what Jerk-Ass Crazy would say, even though neither clue makes a “speck of sense.” Uh, they’re actually kind of painfully more direct than the stuff Cary came up with in the previous book, which at least had a smack of creativity.
Jeremy dares to actually want the people paid to mind him to pay attention to him, and Abby announces the “so fun, so terrific, so splendiferous” treasure hunt. The older girls want to do it right, and make an organized plan to sweep through the house, which pleases Dawn and Abby since they can look for signatures at the same time. They stop in the kitchen and Dawn smugs nothing in there could be signed, until Abby runs over and checks all the pottery, writing down potters’ signatures in their mystery notebook. (I kind of imagine Abby making the Road Runner “beep beep!” wherever she goes.
Which makes K. Ron Wile E. Coyote, I guess.)
Then they freak out because they think they hear someone on the other side of the swinging door, but no one was there.
They find a few more signatures on a silver teapot, a designer umbrella, and a clock-and considering what we were told about how many [Spoiler (click to open)]paintings there are, they aren’t as thorough as they think. She also describes the youngest kids as “sniffing around everywhere,” and maybe she meant nosing, but I’m pretty sure they aren’t cats. Abby and the kids are having fun, but Dawn, who seemingly enjoys being disappointed so she has something to whine about, is annoyed that gee, they’ve looked for a whole HOUR and still haven’t solved the mystery! Also she keeps hearing mysterious noises, but I trust Dawn’s judgment on that about as much as I would trust a cat to guard the ice cream.
They get to the library and Dawn finds a big folder of financial records, and for some reason her scruples kick in here about it being wrong to snoop (although that hasn’t stopped them before), and hypocritically scolds Eliza and then gleefully observes Eliza has found a check signed by A. Livingston. There doesn’t seem to be anything special about it until egad! Abby notices it was signed two months ago, and Arthur Livingston has been dead almost a year. And has a daughter named AMY whom you’ve met several times, you morons.
They park the kids in front of a video their mothers had approved (because TV is the Devil until you want to spend your time snooping and gossiping), and Abby comes up with a “theory” that Dawn says explains the check, the noises, and the clean clothes in the attic: Crazy Arthur is Alive. Fail.
Chapter 9
Abby isn’t sure if Crazy Arthur staged his death to bring his family together, or just because he enjoys fucking with them. Dawn ponders this until Jeremy has the nerve to say he’s hungry, and Dawn heads off alone to the kitchen to rustle up snacks. Outside the kitchen she hears a man and woman arguing, and insists to herself she has to feed the children a snack RIGHT NOW because they are STARVING, even though they’ve been scarfing down Tootsie Pops. Once again, she randomly has an ethical conflict about eavesdropping and then totally does so anyway.
“We have to wait!” cried the woman.
“I don’t want to wait,” insisted the man. “I’ve waited long enough!”
. . .yeah, this still sounds like a secret romance to me.
Because obviously it’s John Irving the Cute Butler and Amy, who fake that they were planning dinner, and John Irving rushes to prepare the snack. Dawn figures out that something must be going on, but would rather speculate a creepy jerkass old man is live-haunting his children than summer romance shenanigans.
John gives her a tray with carrot and celery sticks and crackers and a huge pitcher of lemonade and glasses, all of which she insists she can carry by herself and then proceeds to spill carrots all through the hall. She’s daydreaming about “being a waitress at some really cool, trendy vegetarian restaurant out on the West Coast” when she spots Ms. Iorio creepily hanging out in the foyer staring at another Arthur portrait. Excellent and ambitious lawyer, my ass. She claims she came by to drop off some papers and no one heard her knock, so she just let herself in. Does NO ONE in Stoneybrook have any goddamn manners? Dawn offers to take the papers or find Amy, but Ms. Iorio declines and scuttles away. Dawn finds this suspicious, not because it’s rude and unprofessional, but because Ms. Iorio’s “shoulder bag” is too small to hold “important legal documents.” Um, they’re not carved into stone tablets, Dawn. But Dawn shrugs this off and treks off to the playroom where ohnoes! the kids are all yelling at each other.
And of course it’s the “family feud,” and not one of a thousand other things that can set off cranky, bored, and hungry kids in close quarters. Sister C told Katherine a little about why they were staying at Livingston House and the rest of them figured it out, which probably makes them smarter than the BSC. They argue over whose mom is selfish and whose mom is stubborn and Jeremy cries. Because Dawn is completely devoid of empathy, this is her reaction: “Ai, yi, yi!” I said to Abby. What a mess. It was as if the kids had slid back to square one, after all we’d done to keep them together.” Oh, shut it, soy for brains. Claudia was the one who came up with the activities the kids liked, and then they talked and bonded perfectly well on their own.
Dawn borrows a trick from K. Ron and whistles to shut everyone up, and the healing power of carrot sticks apparently soothes everyone’s nerves enough for a calmer conversation. The kids think it’s exciting there could be a treasure in the house, and stupid for it to be a competition, so they decide if they find it, they can make their moms share it (and shaft Aunt Amy, I guess.) Dawn gleefully tells them Amy’s clue about “the first is the most important,” and conveniently, just then the Sisters C and K come home. (I’m still all up on Orphan Black and keep wanting to call them sestras.)
Chapter 10
The kids run downstairs, screaming incoherently about treasure, and of course their mothers aren’t nearly as good at quieting them down as Saint Dawn of Superiority. She dissembles that the kids “think” there is a clue in the house leading to the inheritance, because she doesn’t want to admit that she already knew, thanks to their terrible lawyer, and has been blissfully snooping around their house all this time.
The Sisters C and K get all tense because the children weren’t supposed to know, and Katherine fesses up that she overheard Sister C talking to Amy about it. Sister K frowns, and Sister C gets all protective of Katherine as they bicker about who tried to be “Daddy’s little pet” and who acted like “Daddy’s sugarplum,” and which one of them loved him the most, and this is genuinely creepy, in a vaguely Thousand-Acres-esque, Electra Complex, incestuous kind of way. Maybe I’m just grossed out by sugarplum.
Amy leaps into the fray and tells her sisters not to dump all their old family baggage on their own kids, and Sister K snots about why she cares about the kids all of a sudden. Amy points out that she’s never really had the chance to get to know them or spend time with them before, and she doesn’t want them to get poisoned by the same toxic family stuff the sisters all have. Both older sisters are all “How very dare you!” and Amy is like, “Yeah, I’m calling a family meeting, fuckers, so there!”
Dawn and Abby invite themselves right along for the family meeting, which is in the sitting room she and Kristy were taken to on their first day, with the particularly ugly painting of Crazy Arthur. No point, no point at all, just valuable information that everyone should know.
Sister K says she understands and even agrees with Amy’s point about not poisoning the kids, but Amy can’t understand or criticize the relationship damage between Sisters C and K because “Daddy didn’t play the same games with you that he played with Sally and me.” Ew, ew, ew, I need a thousand showers. That is. . .a really unfortunate choice of words, Ellen Miles.
Sister C agrees that by the time Amy was born things had changed, but she and Sister K are so used to be pitted against each other that it’s a hard habit to break.
Katherine has been watching Oprah or something, because she tells them it’s time for them to live their own lives. Sister K is impressed by her niece’s maturity, and Sister C gushes her eldest daughter has always been wise and forgiving beyond her years, which causes Amy to quietly snark Katherine must have gotten that from her dad.
Anyway, Amy proposes they should all work together and split the inheritance and assures them there’s “enough for everybody.” The other sisters demand she put her money where her mouth is and cough up her clue first and there’s a very brief and boring Mexican Stand-Off until Sisters C and K give in. Amy tells her sisters their father would have been proud of them, and really did love them, even if he didn’t show it well, which I don’t find terribly moving in light of the asinine will, but whatever.
Katherine urges her mom to tell her clue, and when she hesitates, Dawn makes it all about herself and how frustrating it is for her, Dawn, not to know it this second. But we get the clues, not without the requisite whining about whose clue is the hardest.
- The first is the most important
- The signature tells all
- “I didn’t do it, I was ----“
Yeah, Cary’s clues were way better. I know in writing a middle-grade mystery you want to give the readers some chance to piece it together, but this just makes everyone look really dopey.
They puzzle over this all afternoon, and Dawn tells us over and over again how BAFFLING these clues are, how NO ONE could make any sense of them, how they added up to NONSENSE. Try “fruited purple waves for sea” and get back to me, oh super detective. Turtle Wexler > the entire damn BSC.
They go to a BSC meeting and of course, NO ONE can solve it. Dawn is exhausted by all her snooping and inserting herself into other people’s familial angst, and wants to go home, but Mary Anne asks brightly if Dawn is ready for their night out. D’oh! Dawn “promised her” a pizza a movie night, but now she wants to think of a nice way (ie, a way that won’t bring out Crazy Mary Anne) to bail on her again. (“Promised her” seems kind of patronizing, but I hate Dawn and Mary Anne’s being a passive-aggressive and needy freak, so whatever.) But before she can make the attempt, they get home and oh noes! Dawn also made plans to eat Chinese food and go bowling with Erica Blumberg. Seriously, since when does Erica luv Dawn so much? (Also, more and more I feel like Erica is the proto-hipster of Stoneybrook.) Dawn graciously groans out loud and cancels her plans with Erica, expecting Mary Anne to be touched by the gesture of dumping someone else for Mary Anne this time. Far from being touched, Mary Anne is outraged that Dawn fucked up her schedule again, seeing it as proof that MA isn’t important to her. They’re both touched. In the head. (Okay, I have felt exactly like Mary Anne a LOT-I tend to feel that IRL people find me pleasant but very forgettable-but I have more pride than to say it.)
Dawn insists it isn’t personal, she’s just become a total airhead, and she must have “messed up [her] color coding.” Uh, I don’t think that’s how color coding works, Dawn. Maybe she’s turning into Sharon, except that Sharon isn’t generally a rude, nasty, hypocritical, judgmental jerkass. I’d rather live with hedge clippers in the drawer any day.
Whatever. Dawn “convinces” Mary Anne they are still BFF, and Mary Anne offers to help with her schedule, since that is the one skill she’s allowed to have. (Oh, and knitting.) Then they get the “fantastic” idea to throw a “Friends Day” party before Dawn leaves, which they do EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TIME. It’s like getting invited to someone’s fifth wedding-do you seriously have to buy off the registry AGAIN? But this will be totes amazing because Mary Anne will help her organize a party for various BSC clients in the morning, another party for SMS students in the afternoon, and a sensible dinner BSC BBQ and sleepover. They spend the rest of the evening “planning,” although without setting an actual date. You both fail at scheduling forever.
Also, Dawn secretly decides she will ALSO stage a “Family Day,” because the Livingston debacle has taught her not to take her family for granted. That’s fine and all, although it kind of gives the impression she can be an asshole all she wants except for one designated day.
Chapter 11
We suddenly open to Tilly screaming for Dawn to “Tell us!” and Dawn freaking out about if she’s wrong about her solution to the mystery. Apparently she solved the ENTIRE PLOT in the space between the chapters. Ace writing, Ellen Miles. Solid.
Of course, Dawn didn’t actually solve it using her soy-soaked brain; she had a fucking quasi “paranormal” dream. This is so lazy I can’t even. So she’s staring at a painting of Crazy Arthur and zomg! he winks at her. Gross. He tells her the clue is right in front of her nose and to take a step closer, whereupon she falls into a trap door and hears him laughing like a maniac, at which point she wakes up, convinced the dream means something. She also feels like Arthur is still watching her, which is pretty solid Nightmare Fuel, especially with the winking. She whines about having to see SO MANY portraits of Arthur all day long and then has a Eureka! Moment and goes back to sleep.
The next morning she calls Amy and gets Richard to drive her over to Livingston House, and tells them the all goddamn dream in a longer, more annoying form. “Amy was pacing, and Mrs. Keats was still wringing her hands. The kids were all squirming with impatience. And Mrs. Cornell looked as if she were about to start foaming at the mouth.” There’s a lot of accidental creepiness in this thing. It’s all Gothic tropes crammed uncomfortably into StepfordBrook, and it gives me the wig.
Anyway, Dawn finally reveals the answer to Sister C’s clue is “I didn’t do it, I was FRAMED,” and everyone is agog at her brilliance. Even with that, the sisters are too dopey to connect “signature” and “first” to paintings until Dawn spells it out, and they go around checking all the portraits, with Katherine writing it all down. Nine-year-old Katherine is the smartest, most competent person in the book so far. She must get it from her dad. Dawn whines about how hard and boring it is to keep them all in order, especially when Crazy Arthur hits middle age, which makes no sense because all they are doing is WRITING THEM DOWN, they don’t actually have arrange them like a timeline. They finish and Katherine announces it’s the ugly one in the parlor, and Sister C chides her, saying their mother (the sestra mother, not Katherine’s mother) painted it. GOSH GOLLY GEE might that have been a tip-off?
It is indeed signed by Diana Livingston, so they call Ms. “Legal Ethics are for Chumps” Iorio and scour the painting until they find a series of numbers on the back. Ms. Iorio repeats she’s supposed to give the fortune to “whatever” sister finds the answer, but if they want to split it, that’s cool, too, and begins to open the very secret envelop when. . .a ghost sneezes. Yeah, we’re not done yet.
Chapter 12
Dawn confirms no one in the room sneezed, and while everyone else looks confused, Amy looks scared. Dawn wonders if she’s scared of the ghost or scared her father is going to reveal himself to be alive. I wonder(ed) if she’s scared she’ll be lose the inheritance for boinking the butler. Anyway, there is a loud creaking noise and gasp! the bookshelf begins to move revealing a secret passage. Dawn can’t decide which would be more awesome to her personally, seeing a ghost or finding out Crazy Arthur is alive, because all this family sturm und drang is just an amusement to her.
The “shadowy figure” is revealed to be John Irving, Hottie McButler, of course, and Sister C demands to know what he was doing there. He admits he was spying and Dawn butts in to ask if he made the noises she heard, and he evades by saying he never was in the attic, so it wasn’t him that time, just the other times. Mrs. K asks suspiciously why he would want to spy on “the girls” and Dawn and I agree for once that’s a good question, although for different reasons. Because ew. See what I mean about the yuck factor here? It’s not even joyful and hilarious double entendre like in Logan Bruno, Boy Baby-Sitter; it’s just icky.
John says he thought the girls might “stumble on the treasure,” which is pretty weak sauce, but Sister C ignores that to ask why he’s interested in their fortune, anyway.
And then Amy reveals he’s their little brother. The one who’s supposed to be dead. Also, the one I thought she was getting it on with.
Are they fucking kidding me with this?
Ms. Iorio shrieks Crazy Arthur told her the youngest son fell off a mountain. I think Crazy Arthur’s cleverness has been wildly overestimated.
Patrick, formerly known as “John Irving,” says he left home at 17 because he didn’t see eye to eye with his father, and Amy says she was 20 then, and it was because Patrick wouldn’t put up with Crazy Arthur’s shitty manipulative parenting. Sisters C and K left for college when Patrick was about five, and basically ditched him and eight-year-old Amy with their Jerkass Dad ever after. I have no idea where the mom was. I mean, she had to have been alive at least to pop out Patrick, but she seems to have had no bearing whatsoever on any of these relationships, which is pretty gross. I might feel bad for her (while also thinking she was a pretty fail mom) if I thought Ellen or Ann had given her the least amount of thought as a character and not a plot device to be discarded as soon as she’d pushed out enough heirs.
Anyway, Amy has been in touch with Patrick the whole time, but decided “adding Patrick into the equation might be a little too much. I bought him into the house as the butler, hoping that over time you’d come to know him and like him. Then we could reveal our secret.” That’s stupid and contrived on so many levels.
The kids think it’s funny their uncle is their butler, which is about as sane as any response to the situation, and Sister K says mistily they’ll find another butler, because Patrick is family. I’m so touched.
Ms. Iorio recovers from her shock that the Jerkass Old Man who set up a will to fuck with his kids was not completely honest with her and points out that according to the will, Patrick is dead. The kids point out Crazy Arthur was a “meanie” and Patrick boasts the old man was teaching him a lesson, but he emo-tastically flounced except now he kinda does want the money, and Amy promised to split it with him if he helped her solve the puzzle. He thought it would be easy, so he didn’t bring enough clean clothes, and chose to wear his dead dad’s togs instead of running outside the Brook limits to K-mart or something, if you really cared about that “clue.” But he’s also happy to get to meet his nieces and nephew, because he missed having a family. Sister C cries, and says she’s thought of Patrick so often over the years, but she believed Crazy Arthur saying Patrick had been “awful” to him and the sisters had better forget him if they didn’t want the same outcome.
Yeah, this dude really has no redeeming features. I kind of thought it might be revealed that in his old age, he realized how badly he’d fucked up his kids and dreamed this up as a really laborious and irritating way to bring them all together. Nope. He was just an asshole who wanted to fuck with his daughters once more, from beyond the grave, and I AM using “fuck with” intentionally.
Ms. Iorio still reminds them there’s still the little matter of the will, and they want to know if it can be split four ways. Yes. I’m glad it took this whole fucking production to get there. She confirms it matches the code in her envelope, and then out of nowhere says Diana Livingston was her BFF who thought “the world” of her children and would be so happy. The fuck? First of all, from the way Richard talked to her, I thought she was pretty young. Even if she was younger than Mrs. Crazy Arthur, she must still be in her late 40s. Also, what the fuck happened to Diana? Did Crazy Arthur stuff her in a drawer? Send her to the moon? If she was such a lovely person, why didn’t she try to do anything about her husband being such a piece of shit father? Oh, who cares. Dawn absolves Ms. Iorio of having ulterior motives of wanting the puzzle solved, because she just wanted to see the family together again. She’s still a terrible lawyer though.
And the family feud and mystery are over. Why are there three chapters to go? It’s a cruel, cruel world.
Chapter 13
Dawn writes her dad a boring and pointless postcard, basically saying “I did stuff! I’ll tell you later! I’m about to go do stuff! I’ll tell you later!”
Anyway, we aren’t so lucky as Jack Schafer, and have to go through Friends Day minute by minute. Morning. Kids. Jenny P comes and Dawn condescendingly says she’s a good kid, even if sometimes “it’s hard to remember that.” Stuff an organic wool sock in it, Dawn. And it’s bullshit to blame a four-year-old for what her mother dresses her in. Jenny brought her stuffed animal, Monkey Matthew, to give Dawn to keep her company on the plane ride so she won’t be alone. Yeah, that’s TOTALLY something a spoiled, selfish kid does. Fuck y’all, BSC, fuck y’all.
Dawn also reminisces about how “impossible” the Barretts used to be, but now their hot, scattered single mom is properly wedded to a dude.
Blah blah games, Vanessa rhymes, Claire silly-billy-goo-goos, Mary Anne insists that Dawn allow the kids the option of meat hotdogs, cupcakes (Jamie Newton ate three and proposed marriage), kids leave.
The BSC show up, minus Kristy, who is in Hawaii with her family, and “a few friends” from school. All this whining and double-booking and schedule snafu-ing seems to have been on account of Emily, Erica, and Mari Drabek. They give Dawn going away gifts, because it’s quite the racket she’s got going on there. Stacey gives her dolphin barrettes, Mal and Jessi give her stationery, Abby gave her a book on shells, Claudia gives her seaweed candy, Emily gives her sunglasses, Mari gives her vanilla-scented cologne, and Kristy, obnoxious even from thousands of miles away, gives her a record book for the We <3 Kids Club. Claudia also eats three cupcakes, matching “Nicky,” even though it was Jamie. It’s pretty impressive to fuck up continuity in less a page.
Blah blah BBQ with grilled vegetables for Dawn and they all eat Ben and Jerry’s “(I may be a health nut, but once in a while I give in to temptation),” and while I couldn’t care less, it’s pretty rich to go around whining all the time about how disgusting sugar is and how stupid everyone else is for not wanting to eat whatever ridiculous concoction she’s shilling. Scary movie, slumber party, blah.
Chapter 14
Jessi makes a really stupid joke as her dad drives her home. I guess she had a sleeping bag, but it’s pretty clearly a weekday, so either it’s pretty early or the world does revolve around them. Mary Anne is inside cleaning the kitchen, because they went for midnight snacks and left a huge mess. How classy of them, as a whole, and how classy of Dawn to leave the clean-up to MA, who also seemed to do the brunt of the work for the kids’ party.
Dawn goes inside and MA is cleaning, Richard is re-organizing his briefcase, and Sharon can’t find her scarf. Dawn says she as an announcement and starts off by saying how she didn’t always organize her time well, which kind of hilariously gets Sharon reassuring her, MA saying Friends Day went well, and Richard saying she’ll learn to be organized when she gets older. Burn, although I don’t know if it’s more of a burn on Dawn or Sharon. Anyway, Dawn sighs loudly and then makes her damn announcement, which is that today is Family Day, yay.
So she kicks everyone out and makes breakfast, which sounds mostly fine (although I don’t really get the point of tofu sausage) and says she wants to treat them to a dinner out, because she’s all flush from sitting for the Crazy Rich Family, but they decide to do pizza at home. Richard and Sharon leave for work, and after cleaning up, she and MA exchange gifts, and OMG, they each bought each other pinky rings! They start to cry and then Dawn proposes a shopping trip, which MA is up for, but she made previous lunch plans with Logan. Dawn says that’s fine, because she wants to surprise Sharon at work and take her to lunch, which is actually kind of sweet.
Blah blah Merry-Go-Round, Sew Fine, Rosebud Café, Tofu Express.
When Richard comes home, she invites him for a bike ride, saying he’s “pretty good step dad, and he’s become a real friend,” which would be sweet if there were any indication of that in the text ever. But they have a nice ride, and pizza, and now that chapter is over.
Chapter 15
Sister K invites Dawn to a pool party, and she brings along Mary Anne. (Amusingly, at first Dawn thinks Sister K wants a sitter and is going to tell her she has to call official HQ during official meeting times.) Dawn snottily approves of the pool, after reminding us that in California pools are “an art form” and Maggie has one shaped like a lagoon. The Livingston pool is “huge” and has a high dive. Doesn’t a pool need to be pretty deep to safely have a high dive? I’d think a pool that deep would be LESS fun for little kids, even if it’s only part of it. Also, Dawn says the water looks “clear and delicious.” Mmmm, chlorine. And possibly urine.
Amy shows them the pool house, which is “a smaller replica of Livingston House, right down to the pillars and the red front door.” I think that actually sounds tacky as hell.
Anyway, it has “three bedrooms (for guests, Amy explained), plus a full kitchen, two bathrooms, a game room with a pool table, and a changing room, which was carpeted in red, furnished with overstuffed armchairs, and outfitted with closets and shelves for guests clothes.” Good God. Dawn says she could live there, like shit, the Pikes could probably live there. But actually Patrick is going to live there while Amy lives in the big house, because the pool house is “cosier.” Although actually Amy might take a job in New York and Patrick has a girlfriend in Maryland (hey! Maybe it’s Abigail from the first edition of Mary Anne Saves the Day!). Dawn asks if they’re going to sell the house, but no, they’re going to keep it for family reunions, and that must be some sweet inheritance if they don’t even have to consider selling a multi-million dollar property, and can afford to pay upkeep and taxes and all that. Amy is wistful about all the years they wasted, and then they all do cannonballs.
They rehash the mystery, although what there is to rehash I don’t even know, and they give Dawn a t-shirt with a picture of the ugly portrait that says “I helped solve the mystery!” They thank Dawn for reuniting the family (oh, please) and Mary Anne starts to cry, but Ms. Iorio waltzes in with more legal papers-Dawn can tell, because she’s carrying a briefcase for Important Legal Documents. Dawn watches Amy sign something and “figures out” that she’s A. Livingston, and was perfectly able to write checks two months ago. Amy is like, “duh” and Dawn at least has the tact not to say she thought her crazy, jerkass, creepy dead dad was alive in the attic. Ms. Iorio says Amy has an account to cover the household needs, and Dawn thinks it’s “as if she knew I needed to tie up all the loose ends of the mystery. And that detail did it.” Uh, no. No one but you and Abby considered that a loose end, and Abby believes six batshit things before breakfast every day, on principle. Whatever.
BSC meeting, sans K. Ron. Apparently Watson has invited his family to stop off at California on the way back home and stay at Dawn’s house. Holy shit. I really hope he means maybe Kristy will stay with Dawn and Mr. Millionaire will take the rest of his family, including a child in diapers and the hell on wheels that must be Karen after a five-hour flight, to a damn hotel. Dawn says she will take the whole town to California in her heart, so I hope no one ate any meat!
The end. Okay, part II was significantly more ridiculous than part I. It looks like it’s probably Aloha next, unless anyone has any other requests. Requests are love!