Free Sleepover Stakeout (9780545443111) by Kim Harrington Page B

Partners in Crime meeting, we should get going.”
    â€œYou’re coming?” Darcy said. Her jaw tightened. Something most people wouldn’t notice, but it didn’t slip past me.
    â€œYeah,” Fiona said. “Norah invited me along. I’m glad cheering got canceled today. I’m looking forward to chilling with you guys.”
    â€œMe … too,” Darcy said with a small smile.
    But the smile didn’t reach her eyes.

I didn’t know what Darcy’s problem was. Maybe I’d hurt her feelings over the whole glasses thing. But, obviously, Fiona’s opinion would matter more than Darcy’s when it came to style. Just like if I wanted to buy a new laptop, I’d ask what Darcy thought, not Fiona. And if someone needed to know how many moons Jupiter has, they’d ask me. (At least sixty-five, though we’ll probably discover more in time.) The point is, we know about different things.
    But I wasn’t about to bring it up again, especially now that we were at Darcy’s house and she was acting normal again.
    Well, normal for her.
    â€œMy mom and I baked cupcakes last night,” she said, taking the lid off a container.
    Fiona and I, seated at the kitchen table, leaned over to look inside. They were chocolate cupcakes with orange icing, plus a layer of black icing threaded across to look like spiderwebs. I smiled. They were so Darcy.
    Fiona sat back in her chair. “Is it Halloween and I just don’t know it?”
    I reached in and pulled out two cupcakes, handing one to Fiona. “Just eat it and thank me after. Darcy and her mom make great cupcakes.”
    Her hostess duties done, Darcy sat down and opened up the black notebook.
    â€œWhat do we have to add to the case file?” Fiona asked, licking a dot of frosting off her top lip.
    â€œWell,” I said. “We can cross off accidental interference. No one else has a baby monitor.”
    â€œNot necessarily.” Darcy lifted her pencil into the air. “No one has a baby .”
    I carefully peeled the liner off my cupcake. “What’s the difference?”
    â€œThe baby monitor is pretty cheap, right? Sixteen bucks? Someone could have bought one knowing Maya would hear the voices. Just to scare her.”
    I took a big bite and let Darcy’s words settle in. So that was her theory. It figured she’d go the conspiracy route, but she had a point. You didn’t have to have a baby to buy a monitor. And the voices had come through only on Saturday nights, when Maya was babysitting her brother and therefore would be listening. And the voice or voices were certainly creepy. It wasn’t just someone talking about nothing important, which is what accidental interference would probably sound like.
    I nodded slowly. “It’s a definite possibility. But who would do that?”
    â€œI think we have two strong contenders.” Darcy stabbed her finger at the notebook in two places. “Anya and Hunter.”
    â€œHunter, no doubt,” I agreed. “He loves messing with people. And he’s teased Maya before on walks home from school.”
    Fiona dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. “But this is a lot more involved than his usual pranks. And I doubt he’d spend his own money on a monitor just to mess with the girl next door.”
    Darcy tapped the end of her pencil on the table. “Then there’s always Anya: Worst Sister Ever. I wouldn’t put it past her.”
    â€œBut Maya insisted Anya was out when she first heard the voices,” I said.
    â€œShe could’ve just told her she was going out,” Fiona said. “Maybe she took the second monitor into the woods, and she and her friends did the spooky voice into it.”
    â€œThe woods are in range,” Darcy pointed out.
    I scooped the cupcake crumbs into a napkin and balled it up into my hand. Anya would know when Maya was home babysitting. When she’d be sitting