by Maddy Hunter
George let out a frustrated sigh. “Curtis owned a girlie joint and Lauretta worked for him.”
“Euuw.” Helen curled her lips in disgust.
“I knew there had to be another reason why they’d kill two people in cold blood,” I continued breathlessly, “and it all boiled down to—”
“I know, I know,” burbled Margi. “They didn’t want anyone to find out their secret!”
We fired collective stares at her. She looked confused. “Has someone already guessed that?”
“Revenge!” I said, thrusting my finger into the air.
“Why’d they want revenge?” asked Osmond.
“Because,” I announced in my best theatrical voice, “August Manning was the reason Curtis had to declare bankruptcy.”
More gasps. Clueless stares.
“Bless my stars,” said Nana. “You mean Gus was the fella what slipped on that girlie feather and sued ’im?”
“What’s a girlie feather?” asked Alice as she frantically scratched out notes on a writing pad.
“She’s talking about a feather boa,” explained Tilly.
“Boas have feathers?” puzzled Margi. “Seriously?”
I let out one of my signature whistles, which widened eyes and closed mouths simultaneously. “Hear me out.” I began ticking off points on the tips of my fingers. “Curtis’s strip club was in Las Vegas; Gus visited Las Vegas every year for a conference. Curtis was sued by a patron who ended up in traction; Gus was involved in an accident that laid him up for a long time. Both Curtis and Gus end up in the same retirement community, and Curtis bides his time until he can get even. It fits! Because of Gus and his lawsuit, Curtis lost everything. Think how devastating that must have been.”
Nana nodded sagely. “Durin’ the Great Depression, folks didn’t fret about bankruptcy; they just jumped out windows.”
My confidence faltered as I eyed the wary expressions on everyone’s face. “Don’t you think it fits?”
“I think it fits, dear,” offered Nana.
“Me, too,” said George.
“I don’t think the little guy is tall enough to commit a crime,” argued Dick Stolee.
Lucille fluttered her hand for attention. “If Curtis and Lauretta were working together, they’d almost be as tall as a real person, wouldn’t they?”
“Show of hands,” prompted Osmond. “How many people agree with Emily that—”
“I don’t understand what connection this has to Mrs. Van Cleef,” Annika protested. “Did Mr. and Mrs. Klick kill her as well?”
“Yes!” I squealed. “Portia and her husband owned a vacation home in Las Vegas. I don’t know all the details yet, but I’ll bet you anything her husband was involved in that lawsuit of Gus’s.”
“Do you suppose Mr. Van Cleef might have witnessed the incident?” asked Tilly.
“And testified at the trial?” said Nana.
“And been the deciding factor that turned the judgment against Curtis?” offered George.
“Ooo,” cooed Helen. “Did the two of them kill Portia’s husband, too?”
“He fell off a horse,” I said.
Dick Teig grew thoughtful. “They couldn’t kill the husband so they knocked off the wife.” He stuck out his bottom lip and shrugged. “I like it. All those in favor of throwing the book at the Klicks, raise your hand.”
Horrified gasps. Horrified stares.
“No one calls for votes except Osmond,” Alice wheezed, staring at Dick’s upraised hand as if it had been five hundred pounds of goat intestines.
He dropped his arm like a plummet. “Oops. I got so caught up, I forgot myself.”
“All those in favor of throwing the book at the Klicks, raise your hand,” repeated Osmond.
Every hand in the room shot into the air.
“Opposed?” he followed up, waiting a beat. “There’s no one opposed. The motion carries.”
“Wait a minute,” Lucille said suspiciously. “We never have unanimous votes.” She scanned the room. “Where’s Bernice?”
Heads swiveled in confusion. “I could have sworn she was with us when we were searching for Emily,” said Grace.
“She’s in the hot tub,” said Alice, switching to a fresh sheet of paper.
“What hot tub?” asked Helen.
“There are two of them on deck six,” said Alice. “Some fella coming out of the fitness room told us about them when we were looking for Jackie.”
Helen stared at me accusingly. “You never told us there were hot tubs.”
“Well, I—”
“Show of hands,” said Osmond. “How many folks would rather soak in a hot tub than do the port walk in Hammerfest and get left behind like Jackie?”
A bunch of hands shot enthusiastically into the air.
“It’s not unanimous,” he declared, “but close enough. Last one into the tub is a rotten egg!”
They scrambled out of their seats like passengers on a downed plane, leaving all their valuables behind. They funneled through the doorway with curses and grunts and a painful entangling of limbs. “Tell me honestly,” Margi cried as the door swung shut behind her. “Have you ever seen a snake with feathers?”
“Osmond’s slippin’,” Nana announced to the near empty library. “He didn’t ask if no one was opposed.”
Annika stood up, jaw squared, eyes determined. “Emily, do you honestly think the Klicks are responsible for Mrs. Thum’s disappearance?”
“I think there’s a good chance they are. I don’t know why they would harm Jackie, or what they did to her, but if someone doesn’t make them talk, I’m not sure we’ll ever find her. Can’t you do something?”
She checked the time. “Yes, there is definitely something I can do. Please wait here for me. I’ll be back in a moment.”
“Where do you s’pose she’s goin’?” Nana asked when she’d gone.
“Maybe she’s going back to her cabin for a weapon,” George said, the color suddenly draining from his face. “I hope it’s not a gun. A bullet ricocheting off steel plating is not a pretty sight. Pepper spray would be okay, though.”
“Maybe she’s gonna fetch duct tape,” suggested Nana.
“That’s an interesting concept,” mused Tilly. “Duct tape as a weapon?”
“A weapon of restraint,” Nana explained. “It works real good. A couple a strips around the ankles and wrists, and your captive’s not goin’ nowhere.”
I gave her a measured look. “How would you know that?”
George cleared his throat and stared at his shoe lacings. Nana looked sheepish. “Court TV?”
I struggled not to smile. “I’ll bet.”
Tilly clucked at the disorder on the tables and set about tidying things, pausing to study Alice’s forgotten notepad. “Does anyone know why Alice was writing the minutes of our meeting?”
“She was doing it as a favor to Bernice,” I said, pitching in with the cleanup. “She didn’t want Bernice to be left out of the loop.”
She considered the notes thoughtfully. “It defies logic, doesn’t it, that no one’s handwriting matched the handwriting on the killer’s note?”
“You don’t think it was Alice what wrote the note, do you?” asked Nana.
“No, no,” said Tilly. “It’s just perplexing.”
I gathered up discarded pamphlets of Hammerfest and Bergen and stacked them next to Joleen’s Hamlets brochures, then collected odd scraps of paper, a couple of paper clips, and Margi’s photos. “Don’t forget your camera,” I said to Nana, handing it back to her. “Margi obviously did.”
“That’s all right, dear. Margi’s got other things on her mind.”
“Like what?” asked George.
“I dunno,” said Nana. “Walkin’. Rememberin’ to breathe. Stuff like that.”
The door flew open and Annika appeared, her face flushed with emotion. “I’m taking them off the ship,” she said, fighting for breath. “I’ve just phoned Jukka-Pekka and he instructed me to—”
/> “Who’s Jewka-Pecka?” asked Nana.
“Officer Vitikkohuhta.” Annika flashed a shy smile. “We’re on a first-name basis. He’s instructed me to escort Mr. and Mrs. Klick off the ship at Hammerfest and to deliver them to the police station. That seems the best solution for everyone involved. We walk directly past it on our port walk, so I hope it won’t enter their minds where I’m taking them. Jukka is calling ahead to explain the situation to the local authorities, but it falls upon my shoulders to make sure the Klicks accompany the rest of the group off the ship. So first, I need to find them.”
“We seen ’em on the sundeck just a little while ago,” said Nana. “You want me to show you where they’re at?”
“I would very much appreciate that, Mrs. Sippel.”
“I’m going with you,” said George. “You might need backup.”
“And a weapon,” said Tilly, making a sword out of her cane and stabbing it into the air.
Nana grabbed Annika’s arm. “But we better hurry on account a—”
“MESDAMES ET MONSIEURS,” the familiar voice rang out over the speaker system, deafening us.
“We’re almost there,” Nana said as she whisked Annika out the door. “Come on.”
They were gone before I had a chance to ask Annika if the captain still wanted to speak to me. So what was I supposed to do? Stay here? Go down to my cabin? Go up to the bridge?
By the time the announcement that we were arriving in Hammerfest was repeated in all its various incantations, I’d decided the surest way to track down the captain was to show up on the bridge. However, the main staircase was clogged with so many passengers streaming down from the upper decks that I returned to the library to wait for the crowd to clear. Antsy with nervous energy, I straightened books on the shelves, pushed in chairs, resisted the urge to alphabetize the fiction collection by author, and finally forced myself to sit down at a table, where I leafed mindlessly through the pile of stuff the group had left behind.
Margi’s photos weren’t exactly ready for National Geographic, but they showed potential. She’d taken one close-up of bold black lettering that read Sykestu, which I assumed was the infirmary on deck two, and the rest were candid shots of the Floridians. April Peabody scowling at the camera beneath her sunglasses and hood. Vern and Reno, dressed in their matching navy blue windbreakers, concentrating on their Scrabble game. Joleen proudly showing the Hamlets insignia on her jacket. Vern catching a tube of sunblock midair. Wow. That was quite a comeback from a guy who hadn’t been able to hold onto his cup last night. Curtis, with his expensive video equipment in his lap, waiting for the heavens to open up so he could—
“I’m going to sue their tight little Norwegian butts right off them!” Jackie raged as she burst into the room. “I’m going to sue the shipping line, the designer, the captain, the country of Norway, the…the—”
“The crew,” suggested Bernice, trailing behind in her flip-flops and chenille coverup. “Negligence on their part might be worth a few hundred thousand extra kroner.”
“Jack!” I leaped out of my chair and threw my arms around her, gushing little sounds of happy surprise and blinking away tears. “You’re safe! I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again. I thought you might be dead! What a relief. I’m so glad you’re okay!” I stepped back and clasped my hands in breathless gratitude. “So where the hell have you been?”
“I’ll tell you where I haven’t been,” she blustered. “Berlevag, Mehamn, Kjollefjord, Honningsvag, or Havoysund. Are you surprised I can recite them in order? I can even spell them.” She braced her fist on her hip and lengthened her eyes to slits. “I can spell them backwards.”
“You were studying the ship’s schedule all night?”
“No, no. I had other reading material.” She fished inside her shoulder bag and slapped a Hamlets brochure on the table. “For what it’s worth, I have memorized every freaking word in this freaking brochure and could offer my services as a human website for the freaking place. What would you like to know about the Hamlets, Emily? Ask me anything. Average age of resident? Average number of golf carts per household? Average number of clubs the average resident belongs to?”
“WHERE WERE YOU?”
“In an emergency supply room, dammit!”
“Where?”
“On the car deck!”
“All night?”
“Well, I’m sorry I didn’t phone you to come get me out, but it’s hard to pick up a signal when you’re locked inside a steel-plated room!”
“I was really worried, Jack!”
“Hey, I had to spend the night in a janitor’s closet with gunked-up engine parts and motor oil. How do you think I felt?” She seized the hem of her miniskirt. “Do you know how impossible it is to get grease stains off delicate fabric?”
Bernice pulled her bathing cap off her head with a noisy snap. “Can you skip over all this emotional crap and get to the part where I come to the rescue?”
I regarded her in disbelief. “You went to the rescue?”
“She most certainly did,” Jackie said proudly, hanging an arm around Bernice’s shoulders. “I yelled until I was hoarse for someone to let me out, but there’s so much reverberation and rattling on that car deck, not one person heard me—until Bernice arrived. Yo, Bernice,” she hooted, squeezing tightly.
“It was nothing,” Bernice demurred.
Bernice to the rescue? Bernice Zwerg? The Klicks were right: the world really was ending. “How did you happen to be on the car deck, Bernice?”
She looked at me grudgingly. “I—uh, I remembered looking through that partition door when Alice and I were searching deck two, but we didn’t go in because of the fumes. All that was in there was cars, anyway. But I got to thinking after I talked to you that Jackie might have ended up in there somehow, so I went back to check it out.”
“And I’m ever so grateful you did,” Jackie cooed, bending over to plant a big sloppy kiss on her mouth.
“What is it with you two?” Bernice squirmed out of her embrace, scrubbing her lips with the back of her hand. “Get this into your heads: I only bat right handed! You understand what I’m saying? Oh, never mind. I’m leaving. I’ve had colonoscopies more comfortable than this damn thong.”
“Thong?” asked Jackie when she’d left.
“Don’t ask. So how in the world did you get locked in an emergency supply room?”
“Faulty hinge or something. The door opened easily enough, but when I went inside to look around, it locked behind me. They had to use a blowtorch to get me out.”
“What were you doing on the car deck in the first place?”
“Exploring. After I got hold of Tom, I went back to the cabin and you were sawing logs, so what else was I supposed to do? Talk to myself? I thought I’d look around to see if I could find a really cool place to hide a dead body.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m so excited, Emily.” She jiggled from head to toe. “Tom said we always lose so many guests on your trips that for my next project, I should write a murder mystery! Isn’t that fun? So I was officially doing research. See?” She dragged a travel journal out of her bag and flipped it open. “I even took notes.”
Uh-oh. “Jack, about your writing career.”
“Do you want to write it with me? Ooo, we could be writing partners! Come on, Emily. The fame. The fortune. And think of the fun we’d have picking out a pen name!”
“I hate to have to tell you this, Jack, but you’re going to learn it eventually. I heard on TV a little while ago that Hightower Books has just declared bankruptcy. They’ve closed up shop and let go all their employees.”
Her eyes glazed over. She appeared to stop breathing.
“Jack? I know. It really sucks.”
She staggered to the nearest chair and fell into it. “Closed up shop? You mean, no one’s there to handle orders? To add sales numbers into the computer? To answer my freaking phone calls?”
Her voice became a wail. I kneaded
her shoulder in sympathy. “I bet there are plenty of other houses who’d love to publish a Jackie Thum novel. Don’t let this discourage you.”
“Discourage me?” She whooped with laughter. “Emily, this is the best news I’ve had in days! Don’t you see? It’s not me, it’s them. They don’t hate me. They’re not deliberately ignoring me. They’ve closed up shop! They’re not there! It’s not about me; it’s about them. I’m so relieved.”
There was one conclusion I could draw about Jack with some authority: She was either the most resilient or the most delusional person I’d ever met. “But…what about your book? Your career?”
“Screw the career. I hate deadlines.” She unfolded her Hamlets brochure and poked her finger at a glossy picture. “See this building? It’s the Hamlets clubhouse. I’ve decided I want to work there.”
“Won’t you have to wait about thirty years to meet the age requirement?”
“I don’t want to live there; I want to work there. A clubhouse like that has to have a director. Don’t you think I’d make a crackerjack social director?”
I felt an almost imperceptible jolt as the ship bumped against the quay. “Welcome to Hammerfest,” I said, glancing out the window.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” She flipped the brochure over. “Did you see these pictures of the board of directors? The mini-interviews are very insightful.”
“Is there anything about Lauretta Klick?”
“Yup. It lists all the clubs she belongs to, how long she’s been on the board, and her proudest accomplishment. She’s president of the fox-trot club because she’s their best dancer, and vice president of the dominoes club because she’s their second-best player. It looks like they have a rule that if you’re the best, you get to be president, and if you’re second best, you get to be vice president. Portia and Gus were president and vice-president of just about every club, so I predict a major reshuffling of power when everyone gets back.”
I scanned the text over her shoulder, curiosity turning to alarm when I reached the end. “Holy crap.”
“What?”
“Why didn’t Joleen hand these things out sooner!” I grabbed Margi’s photos and spread them out over the table. “It was so obvious, nobody picked up on it.”