“Mmmflgtch,” I commented, and I landed a good kick on Peabody’s shins.
“OWWW! C’mon now. My back is still sore from falling down along with your crummy trellis. What’s the matter with your family, can’t they afford decent building materials?” Peabody complained.
We reached the bottom of the slope. Peabody paused, his free hand on the doorknob. “You’re probably wondering how I got Ira Stone’s passport,” he smirked. “Broke into the old geezer’s house. He’s in the hospital — that’s why he canceled out on the cruise. I got his American Express card, too!
“At the terminal, you thought I’d left — but I changed into my old-man duds in the stairwell and hobbled aboard as Ira. Sweet, huh?”
“Mmmflgtch!”
“Thank you,” Peabody said modestly. He swung the door open and we passed into a hallway with stateroom doors on both sides — but, sadly for me, with no one going in or out of them.
As Peabody had said, everyone was at the show.
Peabody stumbled into his stateroom, or rather Ira Stone’s, and sank back against the door, panting anew. I wrenched myself loose and I sprinted for the phone — but never made it. Peabody hoisted me again.
“One thing you have to say for thieves,” he smirked. “We stay in good shape.”
He bore me out to the balcony.
Balcony! I forgot to yell for the moment. I hadn’t been on an Empress balcony before. How nice it would be to sit out here, well bundled up, of course, with a steaming mug of hot chocolate, under the glittery stars and yellow, buttery moon.
Somehow I didn’t think a nice evening was what Peabody had in mind. A considerate host would not, for example, be dangling his guest over the balcony’s edge. And giggling while he did so.
I was shaking all over. “You won’t get away with this,” I chattered through my nervously hip-hopping teeth. A clichéd observation, to be sure, but wit and originality seemed to have fled.
“Oh yes I will,” Peabody giggled. “Julie got busted, but I’m free as a bird — ha! free as the Raven bird. That idiot Trotter will never get the hint about who I am. And that old hag Lavinia — I told her the only way I’d consider marrying her is if she stopped jabbering about the guy who crashed into her at the terminal. I told her if there was one thing I couldn’t stand, it was a whiner. That’s why Lavinia clammed up about Gooseberry Eyes. By the way, that’s not a very flattering nickname,” he added, pouting.
Great. A villain with hurt feelings. “What do you want, a written apology?” I chattered.
“Hee-hee! Always with the wisecracks! But you see what I mean? Julie always said she was as smart as the Raven. Turns out I’m the one who is! There’s no evidence against me, no evidence at all!”
He giggled yet again, a habit that was really starting to grate on me.
“I’m evidence,” I snapped.
Probably not the wisest remark to make, in the circumstances.
“There is no you, not anymore,” Peabody pointed out.
And dropped me into the ocean.
Chapter 18
The unexpected rescuer
Cartwheeling down, I went in left elbow first. The cold SMACK of the waves was so fierce that I couldn’t breathe. I could only stare hopelessly up at the fat white bar of soap, which the Empress Marie resembled more than ever through my blurry, sopping glasses. The Empress was moving briskly by and would soon sail beyond me. It’s at night that cruise ships pick up their speed.
I gasped hoarsely and finally took something in — a huge mouthful of icy seawater. Coughing it out, I yelled, “HELP!”
And went under. Till then, without realizing it, I’d been treading water. Round, flat, rhythmic strokes, just as Jack had taught me.
Now, panicking, I reverted to my old, pre-lessons, freaking-out ways. I chopped and thrashed at the water while gasping with fright.
And sank under a huge black wave.
Down, down it pushed me. I couldn’t swim; no point in trying. I was going numb. In a second I’d see Dad again, with his black eyes bright and full of life. Maybe this time he’d actually play me a Peggy Lee song.
Because this time I knew “Is That All There Is?” was my song, all right. That’s all there was going to be for me.
I saw Dad — but he wasn’t smiling and reaching for an album to play. He was saying, C’mon, you gotta try harder than that. What did Jack teach you?
I pushed myself up through the waves and forced my limbs into the strokes I’d learned. Forced them pretty clumsily at first, but I bobbed into place on the water’s surface. I surfed the waves instead of being rolled by them.
But the fat white bar of soap was streaming on by. Even through my watery glasses I could see the stern approaching.
Your voice, Dinah! You’ve got this great gift, Dad would say to me. He’d add teasingly, This great LOUD gift. Only now, he was speaking impatiently.
Your voice, darlin’. It’ll save you.
My voice had saved me in the past. Once I’d been able to summon help while trapped in a broom closet; once I’d prevented a jewel thief from escaping a crowded theater.
Three times not lucky. My throat was swollen and dry from the salt. My limbs needed all the energy I could muster to keep treading water. “I … can’t,” I croaked.
The stern was almost alongside me. No one would see. No one would hear.
Sure they will, kid.
“They won’t,” I croaked and started to cry. “Dad … ”
Then, incredibly, I heard my voice belting out into the night.
A face appeared in a porthole. “Help!” I gasped. Since there was minuscule volume attached to my voice, this plea for help went nowhere. I raised an arm in a frantic wave. Which ruined my semi-smooth strokes, and I sank.
I emerged, hacking out my latest intake of salt water. The face was still there! I squinted through my blurred lenses. The face was — it was looking down at me!
“DINAH!” bellowed Talbot St. John. “OH GOD, DINAH! STAY THERE — I’LL GET HELP!”
“Stay there?!” I regarded Talbot shakily over the largest mug of hot chocolate I’d ever seen, plus folds and folds of the snug blue-and-white blankets I was wrapped in. “So you’re a comedian as well as a lifesaver.”
Used to insults from me, Talbot looked at me uncertainly from under his dark, soulful forelock of hair. But then I grinned, and he grinned back.
We were in the lounge where I sang every evening. It had been converted to a sort of emergency center. The emergency being, as far as I could tell, which adult could fuss over me the most. Dozens of them were milling around us, including, also wrapped in blankets, the two stewards who’d jumped in after me with life preservers when Talbot pulled the emergency alarm; the officer who’d let down the emergency ladder for us to climb; and Captain Heidgarten, Mother, Madge, Jack — oh, the list went on and on. All these grown-ups fussing and fuming and, in my mother’s and sister’s cases, closer to drowning in tears than I’d been in the ocean.
I ignored them. They had other stuff to talk about, anyway; namely, where was Peabody Roberts? The noise of my rescue — that is, the prolonged, frantic screams from onlookers — had alerted him to hide. The Coast Guard had even come aboard to help with the search.
“You saved me,” I marveled. I still couldn’t believe it. After all, I’d almost drowned — but I wouldn’t think about that now. Another time.
More fun to watch Talbot blush with embarrassment. Apparently he’d been about to jump in himself, until another steward forcibly restrained him. Whaddya think that is down there, a convention? the steward had barked.
Mother, who was speaking through her sobs of relief to Captain Heidgarten, glanced tearily over at me. From her expression I could tell she was about to swoop down on me for the trillionth time with hugs. Ditto Madge.
“Let’s go sit near Evan,” I murmured to Talbot. “If Madge says to me one more time that she’s never going to find me annoying again, I’ll be ill. I mean, we’re sister
s.”
I clutched my blankets around me and followed Talbot to the piano, where Evan was tinkling out his dah DAH dah dah DAH dah tune. “Don’t even think about hugging me,” I warned him. “You’ve had two bear ones already, so you’ve used up your quota.”
Evan laughed. “I’m busy being in shock over your chatting in an apparently civilized fashion with Talbot … Dah DAH dah dah DAH dah,” he crooned.
Talbot and I pulled up chairs behind him. “The weird thing,” I confided to Talbot, “was that I could have sworn I heard myself singing. But it was impossible. I had no voice at all.”
The Empress Marie’s head chef bustled up to us with a tray of fresh chocolate chip cookies, the chips so hot they were still dripping, and two tall glasses of cold milk. About every ten minutes the chef was showing up with more food.
“I’ll have to go overboard more often,” I joked.
The chef removed his towering white hat and began weeping into it. “Don’t say that,” he begged. “When I think of you in those dark, churning waves — !” He rushed out, his roly-poly frame trembling with emotion.
Talbot raised a glass of milk to me in salute. “You were hearing yourself, Dinah. It wasn’t impossible. I — well, I have this CD of yours. Of yours and the rest of the cast of The Moonstone, I mean. I was playing the track where you sing “Blue Moon,” and it was so moving I stuck my head out the porthole to see the real moon. Which is how I spotted you. So,” he finished, offering me the tray, “in a way you rescued yourself.”
“That’s much too noble of you, Talbot,” I said. “Why not claim credit? I do, whenever possible. But hold on. You were listening to me? I thought you found me loud. As in, LOUD,” I corrected, remembering the conversation I’d overheard between him and Liesl.
“I do,” Talbot said enthusiastically. “I love loud. Er, LOUD. I have all these old albums of great belter-outers like Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, Judy Garland, Sarah Vaughan … and now you,” he added shyly. “My dad and I saw you in The Moonstone last fall. He’s the one who introduced me to jazz and swing music. I’ve wanted to tell you how much I thought of you, except … ”
Except I’ve gone out of my way to ignore you, I thought. I just assumed you were a snob because Liesl Dubuque hung around you all the time, and she’s one.
I began to see that masks weren’t only put on by those wearing them. Sometimes people created masks that, in their minds, they put on other people. Masks that were their own wrong ideas about the other people. I’d put such a mask on Talbot.
“I did hear you tell Liesl the Weasel that I was enough to break the sound barrier,” I pointed out.
“Huh?” Talbot’s deep brown eyes were puzzled. Then his face cleared. “Ah, pre-brussels sprout attack, you mean. No, I was trying to shake Liesl off. She kind of trails after me like an extra shadow.” Talbot grimaced. “Even e-mails me all the time — it’s to the point where I delete her messages without reading ’em. Anyhow, that one evening I was starting to tell her off. To note that, speaking of breaking the sound barrier, her shrill tones would probably be able to crack it wide open. But then the volley of brussels sprouts began, and … ”
I wrapped the blankets over my head. “I am sooo sorry,” I said in anguished, muffled tones. “I didn’t know. Please forgive me.” For more than you know, I thought. For even thinking at one point you might have shoved me into Mendenhall Lake!
“Friends tend to forgive,” Talbot returned. He chuckled, a nice, humorous-sounding chuckle not at all like Peabody’s dead-leaves one. “Besides, it wasn’t like you were throwing bricks or anything.”
“I’d like to meet your dad sometime,” I said, still too chagrined to emerge from under the blankets.
“Well, you have, Dinah. He’s been with you for the whole cruise. Haven’t you, Dad?”
“You bet,” came Evan’s voice.
Chapter 19
The end of Lavinia’s courtin’ days
I was still absorbing the news about Evan and Talbot the next morning when Peabody Roberts, a.k.a. Gooseberry Eyes, was caught.
He’d eluded the Empress Marie’s crew and members of the Coast Guard right up till we docked in Juneau, our last stop before heading home. It was a maid who found Peabody, hiding under a jumble of sheets and towels in a hamper.
“Talk about airing the ship’s dirty laundry,” growled Captain Heidgarten as several Coast Guard officers hauled Peabody along the main deck.
I elbowed Evan. “Why didn’t you tell me you were Talbot’s dad?” I demanded. It was all very exciting about Peabody, but, as Mother and Madge often say, when I get a bee in my bonnet, it’s a queen bee. That is, I become a royal pain until I’ve had my curiosity satisfied.
“You said you couldn’t stand Talbot. You didn’t want to see him on the cruise,” Evan replied, wincing as Peabody squirmed to get loose and was gripped more tightly by his captors.
“Pardon me,” I said, “but is your name not Evan Brander?”
Evan grinned. “ ‘Evan Brander’ is my stage name. Brander is actually my middle name. No way any self-respecting musician is going to appear onstage with the moniker ‘St. John.’ Too pretentious-sounding!”
“Not to me,” I said — and it wasn’t, not now that I knew Talbot, and not ever again.
I thought of the satisfying game of backgammon Talbot and I had already played that morning. The early game, since I’d had bad dreams all night. Talbot had been glad to play; he was an early riser.
I had a feeling I was going to be an early riser for a while too. In the daytime you can postpone horrible images, like icy black waves and blurry white ships that float out of reach. In the nighttime, dreams aren’t so cooperative.
I changed subjects. “But how come you were prowling around Julie’s room so much? I thought maybe you were after the mask.”
“Good Lord!” exclaimed Evan, trading startled looks with Talbot. “Nothing quite so diabolical, Dinah-Mite. Our stateroom is in that hall, next to Julie’s. I was afraid that if I continued past her door to my own, and opened it, you’d glimpse Tal and be upset. I was also worried about that when he and I went to Mendenhall Glacier — though it turned out you had far more serious distractions to deal with there.”
“I’m upset at myself,” I moaned. So often in life I searched for complicated answers when there were simple ones handy. Come to think of it, Talbot’s was the voice I’d heard when the steward knocked on the door for room service. I was dumb, dumb, DUMB.
I clutched my hair. I’d washed it that morning, and Madge, overcoming strong objections from me, had actually brushed it out — revealing, astoundingly, a burnished red color only a smidgen lighter than her own. Wow! I might use a brush myself, every few months or so.
The brisk wind was fast whirling my hair into untidiness again, and of course my grabbing it by the ends didn’t help.
“Yes, completely uncontrolled, I’d say,” snapped a voice down at the far end of the deck.
It was the disapproving tanned, middle-aged woman. I jumped, probably because my nerves were still edgy. After the previous night’s experience, I figured they’d settle down in, oh, about forty years. I jarred Talbot’s hand, which happened to be holding a jumbo bag of ketchup-flavored potato chips — his and my favorite chip flavor, it turned out.
Chips poured over the railing to flutter onto the heads of the people on the deck below. I yelped with laughter.
Talbot, however, immediately got a solemn, conscientious look on his face and said he’d better go down and apologize.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I scoffed. Obviously this boy needed to be taken under my wing and trained.
There would be lots of time for that, because we were discussing the idea of forming a musical group, along with Pantelli. Talbot played guitar, electric guitar and drums; Pantelli was a piano prodigy; and of course I could supply the pipes. The only challenge would be wrenching Pantelli away from his tree studying, but we could always remind him that ebonies and ivories were mad
e of wood.
Anyhow, that was for the future. Right now, Peabody was being dragged along in front of us. “You,” he snarled at me. “You were supposed to disappear.”
Reaching for a potato chip, I crunched into it as loudly as possible. “I always come back for encores,” I informed him loftily.
Farther along, the middle-aged woman continued to rant to her companion, who was wearing a floppy pink straw hat. Lavinia!
“Goodness knows, I’ve certainly tried to enjoy this cruise,” the middle-aged woman said. “However, a sandy-haired young man keeps playing practical jokes on me. Told me first that he was planning to marry a young girl and then you, an old lady!”
Lavinia drew back, offended. “I’m not that old,” she harrumphed. “Anyhow, I am planning to marry.”
“Well, I hope it’s someone your own age. I’ve had enough of these distasteful jokes.”
“Oh, Ira is most definitely my age. A few years senior, perhaps.”
Evan, Talbot and I exchanged amused glances. Evidently news of Ira/Gooseberry Eyes/Peabody’s capture hadn’t quite got round to everyone.
The Coast Guard officers hauled Peabody along, and the next moment he and they were beside the middle-aged woman and Lavinia.
Leaning forward, I saw Peabody’s long, thin profile twisting into a sneer. “Hi, Lavvy baby,” he jeered. “Don’t you recognize your darling Ira? So when will our wedding bells ring, toots?”
Lavinia swayed and had to clutch the railing.
“I don’t believe it!” the middle-aged woman spat at her. “You, as well!”
And she stalked off.
Chapter 20
The Raven and the songbird
Talbot and I headed off to play volleyball. “You’re much too nice,” I lectured him. “That’s why you haven’t been able to shake Liesl the Weasel.”
“Oh yeah? Here’s a not-nice shot for you, kiddo.” He lobbed a high one.
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