The Pennypackers Go on Vacation

by Lisa Doan

  “We’ll sneak up there and hear everything they talk about when they think nobody is listening,” Gunter said.

  “Yup,” Charlie said. “And if any of them are in league with the captain, we’ll find out about it.”

  Olive turned from Jimmy and said to Charlie, “I get to come to the crew meeting, too. I have to be included in everything. Mommy said so.”

  “She did not,” Charlie answered.

  “Take me or I’ll cook you like a French fry and not get blamed.”

  Charlie stared at his sister. The whole “I can’t be blamed” idea was bringing out the worst in her. Since she had a lot of worst to bring out, somebody was bound to get hurt. Jimmy Jenkins took the opportunity to slide down his seat and disappear under the table.

  “You’re not cooking anybody,” Gunter said to Olive.

  “Maybe I can’t do it,” Olive said, “because I’m not allowed to use the stove, but the evil witch from Sleeping Beauty can. Her name is Maleficent and she does what I say. That’s how I won’t get blamed.”

  “Your sister is creepy,” Gunter said.

  “Yes. Yes, she is,” Charlie answered.

  Olive’s eyes widened at this betrayal of family loyalty. She said, “You’re gonna be in big trouble, Charlie. I’m telling and you will get blamed.”

  As Olive began a diatribe of all the ways that Charlie would be punished for suggesting she was creepy, most of which involved serious physical injury, Gunter stood up and said to Charlie, “Well? Are you coming? Because I’m going.”

  Charlie glanced at Olive, who had just mentioned ordering sharks to tear him to pieces. Jimmy Jenkins sobbed under the table.

  Charlie was definitely going.

  * * *

  Charlie and Gunter passed Claire taking a selfie in front of the Elsie and Annie cabin. “Hashtag: girls on vacay.”

  The twins nearly knocked Charlie over as they marched down the hall, having a heated debate in their mother tongue.

  Cinderalla and Micky Mouser strode toward them, and Charlie pretended to admire the drawing of Don Ducky. Gunter leaned against the wall and hummed a tune.

  “What do you suppose the old heathen wants now?” Cinderalla asked as she passed by them.

  “Probably wants to tell me that he sent all my money to the House of Pancakes, so my girlfriend can have more pancakes while she curses my name. She’s as thin as a rail, but you can never fill her up!”

  “Did anybody ever tell you you’re a drama queen?” Cinderalla asked.

  Cinderalla and Mickey Mouser disappeared up the stairs.

  Gunter pressed his index finger over his lips, and they tiptoed forward, leaving Claire and the twins behind.

  The voices coming from the bridge were faint and then grew louder and clearer as they climbed the stairs. The door was shut and the shade drawn. Charlie and Gunter crept up to it and pressed their ears against the metal.

  “What do you mean, walk there?” Cinderalla asked from behind the closed door to the bridge. “Why can’t they just get a taxi?”

  “No taxis,” Captain Wisner said. “The booking says I provide one free excursion per port, but I have to keep the costs down.”

  “Well, so far you haven’t made it to any port, so that’s kind of beside the point. Plus, this is the stupidest excursion I’ve ever heard of,” Cinderalla said. “How did I ever get involved in this operation?”

  “I believe,” the captain said, “you got involved in this operation shortly after you were fired from Norwegian Cruise Line. Spending all your time sunbathing, drinking piña coladas, and telling guests you were a beloved lounge singer instead of cleaning the cabins was always going to end badly.”

  “Did you send all my money to the House of Pancakes?” Mickey asked.

  “Once again,” the captain said, “no, Fred, I did not send your salary to the House of Pancakes or any other nationwide chain specializing in breakfast. I suppose I should inquire why you keep asking me that?”

  “Because you can’t fill her up,” Mickey whispered desperately. “Not ever.”

  “I have to get out of this costume,” Cankelton said. “I don’t even look like a cricket.”

  There was a long silence. Then the captain said, “We’ve got to pull it together. Just a few more trips like this and I am back on track.”

  “But the antennae keep falling in my face. I feel like I’m getting hit with spaghetti. What am I supposed to do about that?”

  “I’ll lend you a hair clip,” Cinderalla said to Cankelton. “Cap, some of the kids keep asking me why those men were chasing you down the dock in Miami,” she said. “You know, those two guys in suits. I’ve been wondering that myself, actually. And then they say those two guys were at Nassau, too.”

  “I know which two guys in suits, but which kids are asking?” the captain asked.

  Charlie and Gunter looked at each other. Even though they had attempted to interrogate the captain, it somehow didn’t seem like a good idea for the captain to know that they had been asking Cinderalla questions.

  Chapter Ten

  “The two older boys are the ones asking questions,” Cinderalla said. “One of them has that nightmare little sister that has an opinion on everything.”

  “Shark girl,” Cankelton said. “And, Cap, didn’t I say you can’t mess with guys like that?”

  “The two boys,” the captain said in a thoughtful tone. “Well, at least it’s not the twins. They have their own secret language, but they won’t teach it to you even if you beg. Who knows what they talk about.”

  “I’m cutting off these wings. Nobody expects me to fly anywhere anyway,” Cankelton said.

  “I don’t even like kids,” Cinderalla said. “And here I am, pretending to be a delightful princess for their enjoyment. Who was my princess when I was a kid? Why didn’t I get a fairy godmother?”

  “She can never be filled up,” Mickey said. “There aren’t enough pancakes in the whole world. Where will it end?”

  “Everybody,” the captain said loudly, “stop wallowing in your own personal nightmares. If I want to wallow in nightmares I conveniently have enough of my own. Let’s get back on topic. Myra, according to my map, it will take you less than half an hour to walk the guests to the excursion. Now, be ready to depart at ten sharp tomorrow morning. Cankelton, keep doing whatever it is you do on this boat. I assume at some point I will discover what it is. All of you, don’t forget you’re supposed to throw around some Disney-like sentiments when you’re with the guests.”

  “Like what?” Cinderalla asked.

  “I don’t know!” the captain said. “Believe. Or something like that.”

  “Believe what?” Cinderalla asked.

  “Believe in … miracles, or fairies, or something,” the captain said.

  “I believe I’m ill-treated,” Cankelton said.

  “And Fred, cut it out with the eggs. I heard there was practically a mutiny just to get some cereal. I bought cereal because everybody in the whole world likes cereal.”

  Fred, or Mickey Mouser as he was more commonly known, was finally jolted out of his morose House of Pancakes musings. “I am a chef,” he said. “Serving Lucky Charms and Cap’n Crunch will not get me any closer to a Michelin star. I might have been able to do something interesting with Shredded Wheat, but I suppose we’ll never know. Tomorrow’s breakfast will be scrambled eggs, and let’s see if the six-year-old she-devil or her crybaby boyfriend complain about it.”

  Captain Wisner let out a long and protracted sigh. “Whatever,” he said. “All right, gang, back to work.”

  Charlie motioned to Gunter and they slipped down the stairs ahead of Captain Wisner’s crew. Charlie pointed to a bulkhead, and they hid behind it.

  Cankelton climbed down the stairs, his antennae gently slapping his face as he trudged past them. Cinderalla and Mickey Mouser came down together and paused at the bottom. Charlie leaned forward to listen.

  “Why don’t you just dump her?” Cinderalla said. “Ho
w did you ever get yourself involved with Madam Pancakes anyway?”

  Mickey adjusted his ears and said, “It crept up on me all slow-like. I was the chef at Mr. Luigi’s Cottage of Spaghetti, and she started coming in and ordering two or three plates at a time. Naturally, I was flattered. At first, I’d go out to dinner with her and she’d finish hers and start working on mine and I thought it was great that my girlfriend didn’t live on salads. Then she started insisting that we only go to all-you-can-eat buffets. Then we had to go early and stay late. She actually got banned from Panda King; they said she ate enough fried rice to feed a province in China. The cook was having a nervous breakdown—he couldn’t shake those Woks fast enough! Then, I started noticing that no matter how much food I brought into the apartment, it seemed to vanish overnight. I even tried an experiment once: I left a ten-pound bag of potatoes on the kitchen counter. It was gone the next morning.” Mickey’s voice dropped to a whisper, “Who eats ten pounds of potatoes overnight?”

  “I guess she does,” Cinderalla said. “She was supposed to be my second stewardess and play Minnie to your Mickey. Now I’m stuck cleaning all those cabins by myself and you’re half of a team. Why did she storm off the boat the morning we were leaving?”

  Mickey ran a hand through his hair, knocking his mouse ears back around his neck. “I caught her in the galley. She was heating up a pan full of butter and six dozen eggs were on the counter. I said, for the love of all that’s holy—see a doctor. She threw an egg at me and said she was going to the House of Pancakes.”

  Cinderalla snorted. “And I thought my love life was bad. I’m going to my cabin. I know I’m supposed to go back to the mess hall, but I’ve been Olive Pennypackered enough for one morning.”

  Charlie winced. His sister had become a verb.

  Cinderalla and Mickey walked across the deck and disappeared down the stairs.

  “The coast is clear,” Gunter said. “Now we do a debriefing. We have to go over everything we’ve heard and figure out what we’ve learned from this spying mission.”

  “Obviously,” Charlie said.

  “Good,” Gunter said.

  “Good,” Charlie answered back. “I don’t think we heard anything that will tell us what the captain did to make the Mafia mad, but every clue could be important later on. What we know is that Cinderalla is Myra and Mickey is Fred and there really is a girlfriend that can’t stop eating, cause unknown.”

  “Right,” Gunter said. “And we know that we’ll be walking somewhere tomorrow morning because the captain wants to keep costs low on the excursions.”

  “That is, assuming we actually land on the Turks and Caicos, which would be a miracle at this point. If we do make it into a port, we should go on the excursion—they might have Wi-Fi and we’ve got to see if we can find any information about the captain online.”

  “Right,” Gunter said.

  “Okay, so we also know that Myra was fired from Norwegian Cruise Line because she’s obsessed with being a lounge singer, Cankelton doesn’t like his cricket costume, and not even the captain knows what the guy’s job is.”

  “Cankelton was on all the other trips I took when the boat was the Kingfisher,” Gunter said. “He always carried the bags on and off but I never saw him otherwise, so I guess the captain has been wondering what he does for years.”

  “What about when the captain said that after a few more trips like this one he would be back on track? Did he mean a few more Disney-like trips? Why? The characters are terrible.”

  “But they don’t know that,” Gunter pointed out. “Remember? Cinderalla described herself as a delightful princess.”

  “I guess,” Charlie said. “Hey, did you notice that the captain totally dodged the question about the men in suits? He turned it around to wanting to know who had been asking.”

  “He’s a slippery one.”

  “You don’t suppose he’ll try to make us walk the plank because he thinks we know too much, do you?”

  “Well, there’s no plank and your parents would probably start asking where we were, so I would say no.”

  “I meant figuratively,” Charlie said, his cheeks flushing.

  “He might make Olive walk the plank, though,” Gunter said with a snort.

  Charlie ignored that comment and said, “Cankelton.”

  “What about him?” Gunter asked.

  “Forget interrogating the captain, he won’t tell us anything,” Charlie said. “But like you said, Cankelton has been with the captain right back to when it was the Kingfisher. He said he warned the captain not to mess with guys like that. He must know they’re Mafia. If anybody can tell us why they’re after the captain, it’s Cankelton.”

  “Cankelton,” Gunter said softly. “We’ll just have to get him alone.”

  “I doubt getting him alone will be the hard part. We’ve got to find him first. We’ve got to figure out where he spends his time between meals. He disappears like a ghost.”

  * * *

  They had arrived at the Blue Haven Marina on Provo, Turks and Caicos, at dawn. As the sun crept higher in the sky, Charlie lay in bed, amazed that they had actually landed somewhere. As the man from immigration boarded the boat to stamp all the passports, Charlie wondered how long it would be before the mobsters figured out where they went. It might be a couple of days. The men had gone to Eleuthera on a ferry, not their own boat. Hopefully there was no airport there and they’d have to return on the ferry to Nassau. Then they’d have to figure out where to look for the Aladdin’s Dream next. Maybe those wise guys had just made a fatal mistake. They’d put themselves so far behind the Aladdin’s Dream that they might not be able to catch up.

  Olive provided a repetitive backdrop to his thoughts as she complained in the adjoining cabin that one hundred of the Dalmatians were still missing. It was her current theory that the dogs had been left behind in Miami and they should go back and get them because they were lost and nobody would feed them. Mrs. Pennypacker was gamely explaining that since everybody loved Dalmatians, they were no doubt eating three square meals a day. Mrs. Pennypacker only hoped they would not get spoiled from all the food and love.

  As Charlie thought about the captain’s situation, he became more and more convinced that the most important thing he and Gunter had heard the day before was when the captain had said that after a few more trips like this one he would be back on track. It must have some important meaning because it made absolutely no sense. His Disney-like cruise was awful, and he was on the run from the mob. What was going so great about that? How did the captain expect to keep running these trips with the mob on his heels? Did he have a plan to get rid of them? How many passengers could he actually convince that Cinderalla was a charming princess? The Yelp reviews would kill him off faster than the mob. What was going on that Charlie couldn’t see?

  Cankelton had to be the key. Whatever the captain was up to, Cankelton would know. Charlie and Gunter would just have to force him to spill the beans.

  The crackle of the loudspeaker interrupted his thoughts. “Good morning, folks,” the captain said, “and what a beautiful morning it is here in the Turks and Caicos. Not a military coup or cholera outbreak in sight. If you will make your way down to the dining room, Chef Mickey is preparing a marvelous breakfast of his world-famous scrambled eggs. Also, cereal will be available, no matter what he says. At ten o’clock sharp, you will meet Cinderalla on the aft deck and be off on an exciting excursion. After an invigorating hike where you will view the native flora and fauna, you will experience what few have done before you—a conch safari. That’s right, you will view conch of every size and description at an actual conch farm. Would you get this rare opportunity if you were on a bigger ship? No, you would not. There, you would find yourself stuck with zip-lining, kayaking, scuba diving, and shopping. Ho and hum. But here on Wisney Cruises, we are dedicated to taking you off the beaten path. None of your friends have ever visited a conch farm, and none of them ever will. Enjoy your day, over and out!”


  A conch farm? What were the chances that a conch farm would have Wi-Fi? They had to see if they could find out anything about the captain. Charlie had heard his mom talk about digging up dirt when she was getting a case ready. He remembered that she always looked at court records to see if the defendant was in the habit of living a life of crime. She also searched social media, hoping to find incriminating posts. One time, she prosecuted a guy for stealing a television, and it was a slam dunk because he’d Instagrammed himself kicking back and watching it. All they had to do was find something like that on the captain and the whole mystery of what he did would unravel. If they knew what he did, they could start coming up with ideas to fix it.

  In the dining hall, breakfast was the usual plate of eggs and the usual complaints about eggs. Though the captain had said cereal would be available, Jimmy Jenkins had finished the box of Cap’n Crunch and Mickey Mouser claimed all the other boxes had been attacked by weevils. Charlie began to think that Mickey might want to stop complaining about his girlfriend’s obsession with pancakes and start worrying about his own obsession with eggs.

  Olive’s plate was a layer of ketchup with eggs buried somewhere underneath. “I can’t look at all these dead baby birds,” she said. “I’m going to tell Maleficent to curse Mickey Mouser and turn him into an egg, and then we’ll see how he likes getting cracked open and fried.”

  Charlie sighed. “What is it with this witch stuff?” he asked. “Why all of a sudden are you so interested in Maleficent?”

  Olive laid down her fork and said, “Because she has magical powers. I need magical powers. I’m in charge of her, so now I have magical powers. Duh.”

  Charlie was tempted to mention that if Olive was so sure she was in charge of a witch, maybe she should tell that witch to bring back the hundred missing Dalmatians. He decided not to when he remembered he’d be debating a six-year-old.

  Jimmy Jenkins had crept to the opposite end of the table, clearly hoping that Olive would not notice the arrival of her elusive fiancé. He had become skilled at dodging his frightening betrothed. Jimmy was assisted by the twins, who threw themselves down at the table and blocked Olive’s view while firing back and forth in Cucuchara. They sounded like deranged dolphins.