by Maddy Hunter
“Dinner will be served in fifteen minutes. We have assigned seating at the window tables on the port side, so please sit within the designated area. After dinner, coffee and tea will be served here in the bar. Do plan to partake of the refreshments. It’s quite rude not to. And if any of you are prone to suffer from motion sickness, I would advise that you take a prophylactic to ensure your continued good health.”
Nana’s eyes rounded in shock. “Usin’ a condom can prevent seasickness?” She raised her hand. “What size?”
“She’s talking about Dramamine,” April jeered. “Get a dictionary.”
“Does anyone have further questions or comments?” Annika interrupted.
Curtis stood up. “Lauretta and me have been going over our notes real carefully, so we have new information that the group might enjoy hearing.”
“Very good,” said Annika, looking relieved not to be refereeing another fightfest or shouting match. “We encourage outside reading, especially guidebooks that point out areas of local interest. Go on.”
“The world isn’t going to end in a few days.” He smiled broadly as he took Lauretta’s hand. “It’s going to end tomorrow.”
“Lauretta was one a them hoochie-coochie girls?” Nana asked after dinner. “I’ll be.” She took a sip of her tea as she considered this latest revelation. “You s’pose that pays good?”
“I imagine the income is based largely on tips,” said Tilly. “A woman with a Colgate smile and breasts the size of kettle drums could do quite well for herself.”
Nana glanced across the room to give Lauretta the once-over. “She’s kinda lackin’ in the kettle drum department.”
“Maybe she had breast reduction surgery,” suggested George.
Jackie stared at Tilly in confusion. “Did you say tips or tits?”
We were once again in the Fembfiringen Bar, gathered in a cozy corner, dazzled by the scenery outside the port window. Rocky headlands. Solitary beacons perched on lonely islands. Waterfalls. Snowcapped peaks. Unexpected homesteads in the middle of nowhere. The five of us hadn’t been able to sit together at dinner, so I’d related my earlier conversation with Mom as we oohed and aahed over the Norwegian coastline.
Nana drained her teacup and set it on a nearby table. “Don’t sound to me like we know much more now than we did before, except Vern was a cha-cha king, Lauretta couldn’t keep her clothes on, and April and June deleted May from their family calendar. You know what I think?” She cast a wary look at the guests seated throughout the salon. “I think they’re tryin’ to confuse us.”
“We know a little more than that,” Tilly spoke up. “If Curtis and Lauretta both had checkered pasts, they each had a stake in wanting to keep their secret buried.”
“So they’re probably working in cahoots,” said George.
“What’s to prevent ’em from walkin’ off the boat tomorrow and never bein’ seen again?” asked Nana.
“I hope the world does end.” Jackie sagged deeper into her chair, pouting. “That should wipe Amazon off the Internet, right?”
“Emily, you s’pose Portia knew about the Klicks and was holdin’ it over their heads?” asked Nana. “You said she sounded like she was threatenin’ ’em back in Helsinki. Maybe they had an understandin’. Portia wouldn’t tattle on ’em if they’d stop scarin’ folks with their end a the world talk.”
“Makes sense to me,” said George. “They knocked off Portia to keep her quiet, then they popped Gus because they probably figured he was the fella who told her. I say they did it.”
“It puts the nail in their coffin for me, too,” said Tilly.
“You want Osmond to take a formal vote?” asked Nana.
“Would anyone care to hear about my reviews?” Jackie said in a small voice.
“It could be the Klicks,” I agreed, “but how are we going to prove it before they disappear? And I’m still not convinced they’re tall enough to strangle anyone.”
“Son of a bitch,” growled Vern as the room echoed with the sound of crashing china.
Laughter. Razzberries. “Steady Eddie strikes again,” teased Reno.
“Step around the mess,” ordered Vern, directing traffic away from his broken coffee cup and saucer. “Let me find someone to clean this up.”
“Uh-oh,” Nana lamented as he left the salon. “You s’pose him dropping that cup is my fault?”
I gave her a puzzled look. “Why would it be your fault?”
“On account a when I drop-kicked him. Maybe he hurt his hand. You think he’ll sue? If it was Bernice, she’d sue.”
Jackie sucked in her breath like a Darth Vader action figure. “Oh, my God, Emily, you’re right. Women blame themselves for everything. This is so cool!” Settling back down, she continued in a more subdued tone, “I have new reviews on Amazon, if anyone is interested in hearing about them.”
“Do not play the heavy in this,” I begged Nana, rubbing my bruised hand. “Someone probably ran into him.”
“Is that where the Frisbee run into you?” Nana fussed, wincing at the color. “Looks like one a them inkblot tests what tells you if you’re nuts.”
“The Wombai in New Guinea played Frisbee,” Tilly said reflectively. “With human skulls. Poor creatures had no concept of aerodynamics.”
“I have three new reviews,” Jackie burst out. “All one stars. I need sympathy!”
“Oh, no!” I leaned over to pat her knee. “I’m so sorry, Jack. Who knew that being a published author could be so traumatic? Is there anything I can do to make you feel better? I have chocolate in the cabin.”
“You could write a nice review,” she whimpered. “Pleeeeease, Emily. I’m going down in flames.”
“Are them one stars the bad ones?” asked Nana.
Jackie dabbed her eyes, sniffing delicately. “For an author, there’s only one thing worse than getting a one-star review.”
“Having your book go out of print?” asked Tilly.
“Getting four one-star reviews,” she sobbed.
“Isn’t there nothin’ you can do to make ’em disappear?” asked Nana.
Jackie shook her head. “Bad Amazon reviews don’t go away. The only time they’re deleted is if a reviewer reveals whodunit, or if the person being reviewed is married to the vice president.”
“Why don’t you write yourself a review?” George offered. “I bet other authors do that all the time.”
Jackie looked horrified. “But that’s so lowbrow. I’d much rather have you guys do it.”
“Seems to me you need lots a folks writin’ good reviews if you’re gonna get your average up.”
“Would you write one for me, Mrs. S.? I’d pay you…or…or I could have Tom give you a free cut and style the next time you’re in Binghamton. You’d look really hot with another choppy cut.”
Oh, God. The last time she’d gotten the choppy cut, she’d ended up looking like the losing poodle in a cockfight.
Nana’s eyes crinkled in thought. “What you need is for that nice husband a yours to offer discounts to folks who’ll post nice reviews for you on Amazon. Marketin’ 101. Everyone loves discounts and free stuff. You think that’d work?”
Jackie’s gaze froze on Nana’s face. “It’s brilliant. Absolutely brilliant!” She peered out the window at the iron-ribbed coast. “Do you see any cell towers out there?”
I dug her phone out of my shoulder bag and handed it back.
She punched the power button, cursing under her breath. “Maybe I can get a signal if I go outside.”
George consulted the ship’s schedule. “If that doesn’t work, our next landfall is in four hours.”
“I’ll give it a try.”
“Doesn’t Amazon recommend that you actually read the book before writing a review?” I asked when she’d gone.
Nana eyed me curiously. “I never thought I’d be sayin’ this, dear, but I think you got some a your mother in you.”
“Would you like brochures over here?” Joleen asked, waving th
em enticingly. “They’re the latest literature on the Hamlets.” She lowered her voice as she handed them out. “The community could use an infusion of new blood. Might make it less stuffy, which would be a whole lot easier on me and Jimbob. You folks seem real nice. You ever thought about moving south?”
“I been thinkin’ about buyin’ an island off the coast a the Bahamas,” said Nana, “but my accountant hasn’t worked out the tax implications yet.”
I stared at her, dumbfounded. “You’re going to buy an island?”
“I gotta get rid a my money somehow, dear. I’m makin’ it faster than I can spend it.”
“Well, if the deal falls through, you come down and visit Jimbob and me. We’ll give you the grand tour, take you to all the golf courses, and list a hundred good reasons why life in the Hamlets is so much better than life in the snow belt.” She lowered her voice again. “It’ll be even better if we can force the bad eggs out. But like Jimbob likes to say, ‘Everything comes to those who wait.’”
I felt a twinge of alarm, wondering if Jimbob had gotten tired of waiting and decided to help things along. But that wasn’t likely. He was a philanthropist, for crying out loud.
“The brochure covers all the important information, like housing costs, services, guidelines, clubs. There’s maps of Phases One through Eight, and pictures of the new mortuary and hospital wing. Did you know we have our own zip code?”
Vern hobbled back into the salon, accompanied by a crewman pushing a cleaning trolley. Guilt spread across Nana’s face as the cleanup began. “I seen you over there when Vern dropped his cup,” she said to Joleen. “Was that on account a someone bumped into him?”
“Nope. He did that all on his own.” She wiggled her fingers discreetly. “Problem with his hand.”
Nana went ashen. “What’d I tell you? It’s all my fault.”
“Not unless you’re telekinetic,” Joleen said. “It’s because of his pain medication. Does the same thing to me. When I pop one of those pills, I get the tremors so bad, the only way I can eat soup is through a straw.”
Nana nodded thoughtfully. “You probably gotta avoid Chunky Chicken and Dumplin’s.”
“Yeah, I’m mostly stuck with consomme and tomato.”
“Do you have an extra brochure we can give Jackie?” George spoke up. “She might get rich enough on her royalties to retire early.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me at all,” said Joleen as she handed him another of the glossy leaflets. “That girl has so much going for her. Beauty, brains, talent. What did she do before she became a writer?”
“She was a Broadway actor,” Nana said proudly, “starrin’ in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream-coat.”
“I love that musical,” Joleen enthused. “What part did she play?”
Nana regarded me nervously. “She had one a them speakin’ parts, didn’t she, Emily?”
“She pinch-hit,” I said offhandedly. “She played the pharaoh, Asher, and even Joseph once, when the whole cast came down with the flu.”
Joleen’s jaw went slack. “How could anyone with a figure like Jackie Thum’s be made up to look like a man?”
I shrugged. “It’s show business. Everything is smoke and mirrors.”
“Wait ’til I tell Jimbob. He’ll never believe it. Too bad Jackie didn’t know about the ‘I’ve Got a Secret’ competition we had at the Hamlets. I bet she would have won hands down.”
Nana’s eyes brightened. “Back when my Sam was alive, we was awful fond a watchin’ that old ‘I’ve Got a Secret’ game show. You wouldn’t believe some a the crackpots that come on that show, Emily. It was real must-see TV.”
“That’s what our contest was based on!” cooed Joleen. “It was Portia’s idea. The person who revealed the most startling secret about himself could come on this trip free of charge, and let me tell you, the competition got pretty fierce.”
“I thought most folks wanted to take their secrets to the grave with them,” claimed George.
Joleen flashed him an “Aw, go on” gesture. “Not when there’s a free trip involved. International travel with all expenses paid? People will do anything to get something for nothing.”
“What’d I tell you?” said Nana.
“So who won?” asked Tilly.
“Geraldine Jordan, who started out life as Jerome Jordan. Can you believe it? An honest-to-goodness transsexual living there among us, and we didn’t even know it. That’s some secret, isn’t it? You could have blown us over with a feather.”
I took mental inventory of our tour roster. “There’s no Geraldine Jordan traveling with us.”
“That’s because she had to cancel at the last minute. Emergency surgery.”
“Bunions?” I asked.
“Brazilian butt lift. Her plastic surgeon had a cancellation.”
“So who got her ticket?” asked Nana.
“No one. No substitutions allowed. The runners-up complained, but Portia said there was nothing she could do about it. Didn’t make them too happy that they’d blabbed their secrets and no one got rewarded.”
My brain started turning over like a jump-started engine. “Do you recall who the runners-up were?”
“Oh, sure. The Klicks came in second with their entry. Curtis used to own a girlie place in Las Vegas and Lauretta was one of his strippers.”
“You already knew that?” I squealed.
“That’s no great shakes. I worked in a sideshow; we’re all exhibitionists in one way or another. But I’ll tell you what surprised me more than the Klicks—Reno saying he’d once been accused of using performance-enhancing drugs.”
“You know that, too?”
“Honey, there’s nothing I don’t know anymore. Gus got ticked off that Reno didn’t mention the doping incident for his big feature article, since scandals sell newspapers.”
This wasn’t fair. My whole case was going up in smoke!
“The Peabody sisters thought they had a lock on the free trip with their, ‘Our sister is in federal prison for embezzling Daddy’s fortune and driving us into poverty with only a million dollars to our name,’ but it didn’t have much curb appeal. If the sister had been a hotel heiress or a former Survivor contestant, interest might have been higher, but no one was wowed by a relative who cooked the books and deposited everything into Swiss bank accounts. Plots like that have been so overdone in the movies.”
“Did you and Jimbob participate in the contest?” asked Tilly.
“Shoot, no. We don’t need someone paying our way anywhere. Besides, Jimbob and me don’t have any secrets.” She glanced over her shoulder before continuing in a whisper. “Do you want to know Vern’s secret?”
“He was a cha-cha king?” I offered.
“Nope. Before he went into the military, his hair was so bushy, people used to call him Stein, for Albert Einstein. He won an honorable mention because no one could picture him without his buzz cut.”
George passed his hand over his bald pate. “I’ve been mistaken for Yul Brenner.”
“Where’s the other folks in your group?” Joleen asked, waving her brochures.
“They’re enjoying their refreshment in the library and being standoffish,” said Tilly. “They figure that’s much more polite than being two-faced.”
“The library.” Joleen’s face brightened. “The perfect place to leave a few brochures. Which way do I go?”
“First door on the right,” I said, pointing aft. “The one with the porthole.”
“That’s mighty thoughtful of her to invite us to Florida,” said George when she’d trundled off. “Does she have a mustache?”
“Shhh,” cautioned Nana. “It’s ’cause she’s got a skin condition what makes hair grow all over her body.”
He looked suddenly hopeful. “Is it contagious?”
I slumped in my chair, discouraged. “So much for our grand theory. Why kill someone to prevent them from revealing a secret that everyone knows?”
“Could I change my vote on
the Klicks?” asked George.
“We have no clear motive as to why anyone would kill either Portia or Gus,” said Tilly, “so I believe that lands us back on square one again.”
“But it was such a great theory,” I complained. “I really liked it.”
“One a your better ones, dear,” Nana agreed.
“What do you propose we do now?” asked Tilly.
My head was so overloaded with useless information that I couldn’t see a clear path leading anywhere. “I’m stumped. We might already have the clue that opens everything up, but if we do, I don’t know what it is.”
“That’s unfortunate,” said Tilly. “Keeping our eyes on the Klicks wouldn’t have been so difficult, but monitoring the entire Hamlets group will be next to impossible.”
“Good new, good news,” Jackie announced as she rejoined us.
“Your husband liked my idea?” Nana asked, beaming.
“I couldn’t get through to him—no signal. But I did run into Annika when I went down to the cabin to recharge my phone. She asked me to tell Tilly that they’ve found her luggage. Isn’t that great?”
“Sure is,” said Nana. “She don’t got no toothpaste and all’s I got is Polident, which don’t work real good if your teeth don’t come out.”
“Did she say where it was?” questioned Tilly.
“They accidentally delivered it to cabin three-thirty-six instead of three-sixty-three, and the elderly German occupants took it inside for safekeeping. When no one came to claim it, they notified reception, so it’s now sitting outside your cabin. Mystery solved. We’re on a roll!” She dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “So when do we nail the Klicks?”
In an effort to keep the group together, we joined them in the library, where I found a welcome stash of playing cards, board games, and jigsaw puzzles. The Dicks and their wives partnered up for euchre; Alice and Osmond worked on a jigsaw of a scenic fjord; Nana, George, and Tilly played Monopoly; and the rest of us played the game of global domination—Risk.
By the end of the evening, Helen was giving Dick the silent treatment for stupidly trumping her winning tricks; Grace was giving Dick the silent treatment for spilling coffee on the table; Alice and Osmond finished their fjord and started working on a famous glacier before it melted; Nana had developed hotel empires on Park Place and Boardwalk; and Bernice, Margi, and Lucille were at each others’ throats in a dispute over Liechtenstein that was threatening to throw the country into civil war, destabilize the neighboring regions, and force them into a conflict to preserve civilization as we know it.