The Many Mysteries of the Finkel Family

of the kitchen could be fairly described as a ruckus. Caroline usually preferred to avoid ruckus. But ruckus with family and good food was another matter, and so she always looked forward to Shabbat dinners.
In one corner of the kitchen, her little brother played with his toy trucks. Despite the fact that Dad and Ima didn’t allow toys in the kitchen, Benny vroom-vroomed in what most certainly was not an inside voice. Benny didn’t have an inside voice.
Dad was busy at the stove, muttering to himself as he stirred at the pot. That was pretty Dad-like, though Caroline noticed his curly hair was sticking up and his shirt was all wrinkly. Ima wouldn’t like that.
Caroline herself sat on top of the kitchen table. This too was against family rules, but Dad never enforced them as rigorously as Ima did. Her tablet sat to the side as she cradled her sketchpad.
Chewing on the end of her pencil, Caroline considered her drawing. She’d had every intention of sketching a rhinoceros, but so far it resembled a weirdly shaped cloud. She could do better, if only—
“What are you drawing, Lina-Lin?” Lara asked.
Caroline looked up and smiled at her sister. Maybe this time Lara would really, truly apologize. And then things could be good again, couldn’t they?
“Just a practice drawing, and obviously not a good one,” Caroline replied. Unable to bear the sight of the malformed rhinoceros any longer, Caroline shut her sketchbook. “How is the detective agency?” she asked Lara.
When she first discovered that Lara had plastered the whole neighborhood in FIASCCO flyers, Caroline had felt a slight—okay, maybe not so slight—pang. That was just the sort of thing they used to do together, as Lara-and-Caroline. She didn’t understand why Lara wanted to be just Lara, on her own. Caroline decided she would get involved with FIASCCO business anyway. As soon as FIASCCO got its first case, Caroline would be there to offer her assistance to a grateful Lara. That was the plan.
If FIASCCO got its first case. Caroline didn’t often doubt Lara, who had a way of making impossible things seem not only possible, but likely. Yet when it came to FIASCCO, Caroline wasn’t so sure.
“That’s not really any of your business,” Lara said shortly. “But it’s fine. Going great.”
Well, that confirmed the doubts. Normally Lara loved the opportunity to talk about anything related to Georgia Ketteridge and detecting in general.
“I have ideas for mysteries for you to solve,” Caroline said. “I made a list. Do you want to see?”
“No! I mean, it’s nice of you to try. But I want to find a mystery on my own. It probably took Georgia Ketteridge a while to get her first mystery, too. I’ll find one soon.”
Caroline just sighed and tapped the “okay” button. There wasn’t much use arguing with Lara when she got into one of her moods.
A loud voice sounded from the direction of the stove—and the words definitely were not Ima-approved.
“Dad used a bad word!” Benny chanted. “What’s your punishment gonna be?”
Wincing, Dad wiped a layer of sweat off his forehead. “I know, I know. That was bad, very bad. It’s just . . . NOT THE STRING BEANS!”
Everybody stared at Dad, and Caroline felt her pulse quicken.
“I’m fine, I’m fine!” Dad said quickly. “Don’t worry about me. Every culinary masterpiece requires some sweat and tears.”
Caroline wasn’t so sure, but she turned her attention away from Dad and toward her sister. Lara still looked decidedly grumpy. Caroline studied her sister’s pouty lips, the slight crinkle to her nose.
Even before the current FIASCCO fiasco, Caroline had sensed that Lara was in a never-ending bad mood. The cause of said mood remained a mystery, but it was hard to ignore the facts.
Fact #1: Lara had developed a habit of glaring at people for seemingly no reason whatsoever. By Caroline’s count, she glared three times per hour. At least.
Fact #2: For the past several months, Lara had stopped reading excerpts of the Georgia Ketteridge books to Caroline before bed. They’d left off at an exciting scene where Georgia was interrogating the top suspect, but Lara didn’t care. Caroline had eventually borrowed the book and finished it for herself.
And, of course, there was Fact #3: Lara didn’t seem particularly excited about Shabbat, even though a big white cheesecake box was in the back of the refrigerator. This was in spite of the fact that Lara loved cheesecake more than any other Finkel.
Clearly, something was wrong with Lara. Caroline suspected that the beginning of Lara’s grumpiness coincided with the arrival of their cousin Aviva from Israel. It didn’t make much sense. She herself was quite fond of Aviva. Lara would be too, if she’d just give Aviva a chance and stop being weird.
As if to prove Caroline’s suspicion, Aviva strolled into the kitchen and Lara’s lips gave an unhappy twitch. “Hello, cousins!” Aviva said, smiling brightly.
Since Aviva was from Israel, she spoke with an accent. Caroline thought it sounded cool. She’d even tried to see if she could switch her voice app to an Israeli accent instead of a British one, but the app had a rather limited number of voices to choose from. She’d been using the tablet since she was five, but a few months ago Caroline had switched to the British-lady voice because it made her sound grown-up. When you were an eleven-year-old girl who talked with a tablet, sounding grown-up was a very good thing.
“Hi,” Caroline said.
She nudged Lara, who mumbled a greeting. Caroline barely repressed a sigh. Really, her sister’s treatment of Aviva embarrassed her. She knew it embarrassed Ima, too.
“How is your detective agency going?” Aviva asked. “Fiasco?”
“Actually, it’s F-I-A-S-C-C-O,” Lara corrected. “And it’s going great, thank you!”
“That’s nice. Do you have a case?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but yes. I can’t talk about it to you, though. Top secret information!”
Caroline stared at her sister. She felt reasonably certain that Lara had just made the whole thing up. Otherwise known as lying.
Lara was many things, but Caroline had never thought of