While Sigismund waited for Marvella to arrive, he tried to figure out how much straightening up he could do before she arrived.
It was almost 2:00 now. He stuffed a few empty popcorn bags in the wastebasket and gathered up some newspapers and circulars from Shop Til You Drop Supermarket for the recycling bins. Next he discovered an overdue bill for his credit card, and under that was "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"

There wasn't time to see all of Roger Rabbit, but maybe he could squeeze in the first half hour of it. As he pushed the video into the DVD player, he remembered that Betty Boop was, indeed, one of the characters in the film. So that was why Renfrew had said "You'll see!" Come to think of it, there was more than one mystery in the movie. Wasn't it suspicious that Betty came out of retirement after 39 years to appear with Roger? Could Betty be the real culprit? All the other toons were in color, Betty was still black and white. Hm! Betty had worked very hard in the thirties, but never achieved as much success as Roger did in the 1980s. So, she had reasons for being jealous. Plus, Betty had more brains and beauty than Roger's wife Jessica. Did Betty have the hots for Roger? Did he reject her? If so, was it Betty who framed Roger Rabbit? Very suspicious, and well worth another viewing.

Sigismund turned on the TV and settled back to watch the video. Something was wrong, though. Instead of Roger Rabbit, he saw Marvella Risingstar on the screen. Oops, he had the TV turned to the wrong channel. He reached for the remote, but thought better of it when he saw another familiar face on the screen, that of Lanny's daughter Tintinella.

Uh-oh! Lanny had told Sigismund that Tintinella and her sister Tamboria would be competing in a talent contest, but Sigismund had forgotten to keep track of his granddaughters' progess. They hadn't told him that Marvella would be involved, or maybe they did but he wasn't listening. On the screen Marvella was interviewing them now, describing them as contest finalists. Drat! Sigismund should have arranged to be in the audience watching them. Maybe Lanny wasn't snubbing him after all. He had to be there for them. The camera panned over the audience. Sure enough, Lanny was there.

"I'd like to play a video of Tintinella and Tamboria's contest-winning performance," Marvella said. "They put on a puppet show about a magical kingdom ruled by Princess Zassapoonia and Prince Stromdoddle. Watch closely! You'll love the Princess's magical cape with its shooting stars and trails of rose petals...."

The camera showed a beautiful watercolor setting of a slavic-style castle. In the background, someone was playing a flute and piano arrangement of Borodin's "In the steppes of Central Russia."

"I might also add that the girls recorded the music themselves. Quite a talented pair!" Marvella gushed.

Now Princess Zassapoonia entered, wearing a cape. Sigismund blinked in disbelief. The "cape" looked like one of Marvella's bathmats.

Paulh