Free Fatality by Caroline B. Cooney Page A

of Chrissie’s would have equally low standards of phone etiquette. “Yeah, hello?” she said.
    “Chrissie, it’s Anjelica Lofft.”
    The Pop-Tart all but fell out of Chrissie’s mouth. “Anjelica?” she repeated stupidly. “Lofft?”
    “Yes. How are you, Chrissie?”
    Sugar and crumbs stuck to her tongue and throat. She felt choky and anxious.
    “May we talk?” said Anjelica.
    Chrissie loved to talk. Talking was the reason for life. The problem with school was that during those forty-five-minute stretches of class, only the teacher was supposed to talk. Chrissie had never been able to cope with that. She could think of a million things to ask Anjelica. “Well? Did he murder her? Were you there? Did you see? How’s boarding school? Do you like being a zillionaire? Want to share a million or two?”
    But what came out of her mouth was, “You never invited me for a weekend.” Chrissie was humiliated and astonished to hear herself say that out loud. Four years later she was still so crushed that she actually admitted it? Yikes, thought Chrissie. Time for self-improvement.
    “If we hadn’t moved away, I would have,” said Anjelica. “I was envious of the close friendship you had with Rose.”
    Rose, thought Chrissie. This is about Rose. How strange.
    “The nightmare is back,” said Anjelica. “Once again, the police are convinced that my father murdered his partner. They are equally convinced Rose saw it happen. Rose could not have seen it happen because it didn’t happen. Rose and I saw exactly the same thing because we were waiting in exactly the same car at exactly the same time.”
    “So why aren’t you calling Rose?” asked Chrissie.
    “I thought she might have discussed something with you.”
    “Rose is a very closemouthed person.”
    “I guess so. I heard about the police-car stunt.”
    It wasn’t a stunt, thought Chrissie. It was an unavoidable act of courage. But that was most certainly not the business of snippy snobby Anjelica Lofft, so Chrissie said, “How could you possibly know what Rose Lymond is doing in her spare time in a town you haven’t visited in years?”
    “We’re living at the lake estate again,” said Anjelica. “We’re only ninety miles north.”
    But the car theft hadn’t been on the news or in the papers. Rose’s astonishing act had become common knowledge only when the police questioned the diary names, and Halsey and Jill and Erin had been up half the night on e-mail and phone, making sure everybody knew. But the “everybody” they notified were kids in school. How could Anjelica know? With whom was she still friends?
    “The police were here,” said Anjelica, as if the very soil on her property would have to be cleaned now.
    Chrissie frowned.
    The police were hoping to arrest Mr. Lofft for murder. Why tell him about Rose? Shouldn’t they be a little more protective of somebody they wanted as their star witness? This did not sound protective of Rose. It sounded protective of Milton Lofft.
    “What did Rose tell you about her weekend with me back when it happened?” asked Anjelica.
    Chrissie reverted to seventh-grade behavior. “That you were barely polite, hadn’t arranged a single activity, and didn’t even sleep in the same room.”
    “That’s true,” said Anjelica. “I think we had other things on our minds.”
    “We?” repeated Chrissie Klein. “You and your father? Like, what could have been on your little mind, Anjelica? Murder?” she said cruelly, remembering the pleasure of finding out, as all seventh graders did, how easily you could hurt somebody. Power was when you slashed somebody down.
    Anjelica hung up on her.
    Chrissie expected to feel remorse but didn’t. She poured Froot Loops into a bowl and tried to decide what Rose would want her to do next. It didn’t make sense to Chrissie that Anjelica was pursuing this.
    She was pouring milk on her Froot Loops when it came to her that there must be something else in the diary. Not just