Falling Stars (Shooting Stars 5)

It was very still in the house. The lights had been dimmed. Steven and Howard's doors were shut and no one else but us was about.

When we entered Rose's room. Cinnamon shut the door behind us quickly. Rose was on her bed. Ice beside her, embracing her. It was obvious Rose had been crying.

"What's wrong?" I asked. We drew closer to the bed. "Where is it?" Cinnamon demanded.

Ice nodded at a chair on the right, near the window opening to the fire escape. I looked and saw what appeared to be a scarf.

Cinnamon held it up and nodded. "Recognize it?" she asked me.

Rose and Ice fixed their gazes on me to see my reaction and hear my reply. It was familiar.

"It's someone's scarf, isn't it?"

"It's an ascot," Cinnamon explained.

"Ascot?"

"What Edmond Senetsky wears instead of a tie," she said. "After Rose sensed someone at her window, she got up enough nerve to go to it and spotted this out there. She came for me. and I went out and brought it back inside."

A small ball of ice rolled down my spine. I jerked my head toward Rose, who started to cry again.

"What does that mean?"

"It means," Ice said slowly. "that Mr. Senetsky was on that fire escape, peeping in Rose's window tonight while she was getting undressed and everything."

I shook my head.

"Can't be," I said. "He would really do that?"

"I feel so violated," Rose cried. "About a year ago," she said, after sucking back a sob. "I was in a beauty contest. My father got his boss to sponsor me. I was brought to the dealership to meet Mr. Kruegar, a balding forty-year-old man who had inherited the business from his father. It was the first time I was paraded in front of someone who looked at me like a product-- maybe in his case like a brand-new car. He even said I had nice bumpers," she said, a bit of fury replacing the fear in her face.

"After that. I could feel his eyes on me all the time I was in the contest. He even tried to get me to come work for him and wear a bathing suit. Men who do that to you make you feel... molested with their eyes," she said. "That's how I feel right now. I want to go under a hot shower for hours."

"She's right about that," Ice agreed.

I was glad I had never told them how my Uncle Simon used to sit and watch me through my bedroom window, especially when I practiced the violin. They would surely make something nasty out of it when there wasn't.

But I understood what Rose was feeling. No one liked to be spied upon, especially like this and by someone we thought was so sophisticated and important.

"Howard must be right," Rose said. "He has some other sort of sick and perverted interest in me."

"Maybe we're jumping to conclusions too quickly," I said. "It could have blown out of another window or something."

Rose looked up quickly, her eyes filling with some hope. She turned to Cinnamon, who held the scarf and then brought it to her nose.

"I recognize the scent of the nauseatingly sweet cologne he wears." she said. "It's his for sure."

She offered it to me and I smelled it. It did have the same aroma.

"I'm not saying it's not his. It might be, of course. I'm saving there might be another explanation as to why it was out there. He doesn't live here. It seems so weird that he would come back to the house to do this."

"That's true," Cinnamon said cautiously.

"Well, what should we do about it?" Ice asked. "Should we go tell Madame Senetsky?"

No one replied for a long moment.

"If we're wrong about this or if there is another explanation, she's not going to like us making such accusations," I suggested.