The two women got up and left the bathroom. They found Mr. Hamstead had arrived. He explained that Mr. Canis wasn't feeling well and had gone to bed.
"Ernest," Granny Relda said. "I'm afraid we're going to be staying through tomorrow at least. Mustardseed has asked us to find his father's killer."
"Of course we'll help," Mr. Hamstead said.
Daphne clapped her hands. "What's the plan?"
"The plan, Daphne, is to get some rest. Tomorrow we're going to track down a killer."
"Where are we going to start?" Sabrina asked as she looked out the window at the massive city.
"At your old apartment," Granny replied.
*
The plan for the morning was to split up. Hamstead would search the lower part of the city and the Grimm family would handle the upper part. Mr. Canis was staying at the hotel for the day. When they had knocked on his door, he'd opened it just a crack and told Granny Relda that he needed time to meditate. She agreed that he should rest. Sabrina wondered if she'd noticed the new wolfish whiskers on the old man's chin.
When the group finished breakfast and met in the lobby, they were surprised to find they had a visitor. Bess was sitting in a chair by the fireplace. She had on a long winter coat and a silver backpack. She also had the coats Sabrina and Daphne had abandoned at the Golden Egg.
"Care for a little help?" Bess asked as she smiled at Hamstead.
"Of course," Hamstead stammered. "But won't this cause some waves with your boyfriend?"
Bess winked. "Ernest, I don't have a boyfriend anymore."
"We're happy to have the help," Granny said, shaking Bess's hand. "Why don't you team up with Ernest?"
"An excellent plan," the blonde woman said.
As the group stepped out of the hotel, they found that two feet of snow had fallen in the night, turning the city into a winter wonderland. Hamstead and Bess went in one direction while Granny, the girls, and Moth searched for a cab. After ten minutes without success, they caught a bus that took them uptown to the girls' old neighborhood on the Upper East Side. Unfortunately, where Moth went, Puck's smelly cocoon went, too. No one wanted to sit next to the slimy thing, which had begun to leak a funky gas not unlike rotten eggs, so the family spent the trip avoiding the angry looks of other passengers.
"Well, it seems as if your mother had a secret life," Granny Relda said as the bus headed up Madison Avenue. "Several of us have gotten into the family business through marriage. I'm a very good example, myself. So, if Veronica was working with Everafters like every other Grimm since Jacob and Wilhelm, she probably also wrote down what she was experiencing."
"You mean a journal? Do you think she kept one?" Daphne said. It was the family tradition to write one's adventures down so that future descendants might learn from them. Sabrina had a journal, too, though she rarely kept track of what she had encountered. Writing it down made it real. Daphne on the other hand was working on her second volume.
"I bet she did," Granny said. "And I suspect Veronica kept her activities secret from your father. When he left Ferryport Landing, he was dead set on building an Everafter-free life. If she had a journal she probably hid it. So it might still be in your old apartment."
"Is this place nearby?" Moth groaned. "The constant jostling of this vehicle is upsetting my delicate constitution."
"What did she say?" Daphne asked her sister.
"She's complaining," Sabrina explained. "Again."
After several stops, they finally reached the corner of Eighty-eighth Street and Madison Avenue and started walking east, toward York. This was a quiet little nook of the city filled with families, dogs, and older people. As Sabrina looked around, a wave of memories flooded over her. There was the little deli that sold the roast beef and gravy sandwiches her father snuck out to buy late at night. Down the street was Carl Schurz Park, where her family had spent many afternoons looking out on the East River or playing with the puppies in the little dog run. Across the street was the luxury apartment high-rise their mother often dreamed they'd live in one day. Sabrina spotted Ottomanelli's
Italian Eatery with its amazing meatball pizza, the dry cleaner where the Cuban lady always gave her lollipops, and the magazine store owned by the guy who let his three cats sleep on stacks of the
New York Times.
Sabrina could even smell the world's best brownies from Glaser's Bakery a block away. Little had changed, except that the old skateboard store was now a manicure shop.
They walked up Eighty-eighth Street, past a group of five-story brownstones, and quickly reached their old apartment building at number 448. It had recently been painted a gray-blue in place of the dirty yellow she remembered.
"We can't get in," Sabrina said, as they climbed the freshly salted steps. "The police took our keys when they sent us to the orphanage."
"Sabrina, those old keys wouldn't work anyway," her grandmother said. "There's a new family living here and I'm sure they've changed the locks."