Mystery #31: Mary Anne and the Music Box Secret
I’m truly not sure how Ellen Miles got this book past the gatekeepers (well… I guess they fell asleep before they could gate keep?) but good for her getting that paycheck. In this snooze-tery, Granny and Pop-Pop are away on a cruise when the basement level of their house (containing a rec room, bathroom, office, etc.) floods. Since they’re not around, Mary Anne and the BSC help Sharon clean shit up. (Luckily not literal shit, just a bunch of soggy debris.)
Behind a panel in a record-storing cabinet, Mary Anne finds a small package wrapped in a note that says:
Mary Anne labors over whether or not to open it up. (Good lord, Goody-Two-Shoes, OF COURSE you open it. Duh.) Turns out it’s a small, intricately engraved music box that plays “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” This is what amounts to a thrill for Mary Anne Spier. I want to feel bad for her but I’m too annoyed.
Somehow the BSC blows this up into a “mystery” and develop a list of suspects (suspects of what?!):
Jim, the plumber who’s working at Granny and Pop-Pop’s house. He grew up on the same street and used to spend a lot of time at their house, and Mary Anne thinks she catches him poking around in a weird way. Kristy also thinks she overhears Jim say he’s looking for something and that it’s got to be around “unless that old man is lying.”
Eddie and Jake are the contractors/construction workers working on the Barrett/DeWitt addition and they’re also helping out at Granny and Pop-Pop’s. Kristy catches Eddie looking shady in the Barrett/DeWitt shed and basically performs a citizen’s arrest. (She wishes.)
Esther and Hank, Granny and Pop-Pop’s neighbors, who seem nervous when Jim says they’re going to have to dig up the lawn to replace some pipes.
When Mary Anne is showing the rest of the BSC the music box, she notices a hidden inside compartment, within which is a photo of a young sailor and a note. Mary Anne almost has a cardiac event because the sailor boy looks like one she’d had a very realistic dream about the night before, but she doesn’t tell anyone about that. Mary Anne hedges about whether to read the letter or not, so Queen Stacey just takes it out of her hand and reads it:
“Dearest L.S., they’re playing our song. Think of me whenever you look up at the night sky. I’ll be on the other side of the world, thinking of you. And, before long, I’ll be back and we can look at the stars together, forever. H.I.W.”
It sounds like early-draft Taylor Swift lyrics, so I’m obviously into it. Mary Anne dives into some of Granny’s old letters, since Granny used to live next door to the house she and Pop-Pop live in now. Turns out Granny and her friends were obsessed with the forbidden romance of Lydia, the teen girl who lived next door, and her boyfriend Johnny who did NOT have the approval of Lydia’s father. (Which is rich — pun intended — considering Lydia’s parents has stolen money from the bank where her mother worked.) From her window, Granny watched Lydia and Johnny sneaking around and one night saw and heard someone burying something in the backyard. Anywho, Mary Anne thinks that the music box may have been a gift from Johnny to Lydia, and Lydia hid it away because their romance was frowned upon.
The gals whip up a plan to trick Jim and his dad to dig up Granny and Pop-Pop’s backyard looking for treasure, and they find a buried box but it just has a bunch of papers in it — no money and no clue to the owner of the music box. But Stacey and Mary Anne do figure out something important — they couldn’t find anyone with the initials L.S. and H.I.W., but the music box plays “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” so L.S. might stand for Little Star and H.I.W. for How I Wonder (obvious but ridiculous). Then Mary Anne finds an ID bracelet engraved with stars in Sharon’s jewelry box (gifted from Granny a long time ago), and it’s the same ID bracelet the BSC noticed in the photo of the sailor boy.
At Granny and Pop-Pop’s anniversary party, Mary Anne finds out that Granny was Little Star, and How I Wonder was her first love Frank, who got killed in the war after he gave her the music box. Granny and Mary Anne agree to keep the music box secret to themselves, and I giggle at the thought of Kristy finding out that Mary Anne didn’t fess up and having a rage blackout.
