by Cindy Brown
“God bless us,” Jonas said, implying the opposite. He ran his hands through his hair. “I was afraid of this.”
I started to apologize but was distracted by the fact that my arms were on fire.
“I don’t think your muscles will be in shape in time for the show, so we won’t have you climb like Ada.”
Phew. Maybe I’d just wind the fabric around me while I danced or…
“We’ll just have a pulley haul you up.” Jonas pointed at a spot far above the stage. “And you can dance from there.”
CHAPTER 7
A Decided Propensity for Bullying
“Can you die from falling forty feet?” I asked my uncle over the phone as I walked back to my cabin.
“Sure. Hey, can I call you later? I’m in the middle of something.” This was uncle code for “Olive, I asked you not to call unless it was absolutely necessary.” I knew I shouldn’t have used the phone, but after my debacle of a rehearsal I wanted to hear a reassuring voice.
After determining that we could do the routine with a minimum of climbing, Ada had taught me another basic, a single foot tie-in, which was basically using my feet and legs to tie a knot around one foot in the silk. A footlock, she called it. Thank heavens I learned that one pretty quickly. But I performed just four feet off the ground. For now.
My phone buzzed. A text from Uncle Bob: “Forty feet? Depends on how you land. Do you think H. fell?”
“No. Maybe I will,” I texted back.
“?”
“Never mind. Good night.”
As I neared my cabin, yellow “do not enter” tape crisscrossed over the door reminded me I had bigger things to worry about than aerial dancing. An envelope addressed to me was taped to the door. I opened it. “Due to the earlier unfortunate circumstance, you will need to change rooms,” read the note inside. “Your things have been moved to Cabin 234 on Deck B2. Please pick up a new keycard at the front desk. Sorry for the inconvenience.” Good thing I hadn’t unpacked. And good thing they’d moved my luggage for me. My arms were already so sore it hurt just to text.
After picking up my keycard, I headed down the stairs. My new accommodations were on a different deck, one for crew members. I opened the stairwell door. A different deck indeed. Now I knew why Val was enamored with my previous floor. The passenger part of the ship was luxurious, with tufted velvet furniture, thick carpets, and stained glass lamps. The crew section looked like the ship had taken off its makeup and was older and more tired than it first appeared. Fluorescent lighting did no favors to the stark white hall, instead highlighting the plumbing pipes overhead and the scuffed linoleum underfoot.
I unlocked the door to Cabin 234 and stepped into an empty room the size of a Kleenex box. A set of bunk beds took up less space than the twins in my former room. My suitcases sat on the lower bunk. There wouldn’t have been room for them anywhere else. The beds, a small desk/dresser, and two mini wardrobes took up the entire space, leaving just a three-by-six space to maneuver in. I took two steps, opened a door, and peeked into the bathroom. If I wanted to, I could shower my feet while sitting on the pot.
“What the hell?”
I backed into the bedroom to see Ada staring at my bag, hand on her hips, her face nearly the color of her hennaed hair.
“They moved me,” I said. “Sorry.”
“Whatever. But no way do you get the bottom bunk.” She heaved my suitcases onto the top bunk, then flung herself onto the bottom. “I thought you had the fancy room with Madame De-fart. Or did she scare you away?”
She sorta did, but I suspected Ada wasn’t talking about her being dead. “What do you mean?”
Ada snorted. “Harley’s freaky. Makes weird noises when she sleeps. That’s what her last roommate said.”
“Is that why she gets a whole room to herself?”
“She has the room to herself because she has a ‘special arrangement’ with management. They must be making a lot of money off her.”
I put on my ditz face. I’d found it helpful for investigating. “A lot of money?”
“Omigod, are you really going to pretend you don’t know? They’re pimping her out.”
I’d only had a minute or two with Harley alive, but she didn’t seem the type. That said, prostitution could provide another explanation for her death. Maybe someone got too rough with her. Maybe she knew too much about a client’s sexual predilections. Or maybe she was blackmailing someone. Hmm. But if management was Harley’s pimp…“Why did they put me in with her?”
“We all thought you had a special arrangement too.”
I kinda did. Was Harley also in on the investigation?
Ada flounced up off the bed, pushed past me in the tight space, and yanked a short dress off a hanger in the closet. “Isn’t that why you’re playing my role?” She pulled the dress over her head.
“What?”
“They promised me Nancy. I had the lines memorized and everything. Then out of nowhere, it was you. Now I have to play Whore Number Two in the magic show and Little Dorrit the rest of the time.”
“Who?”
Ada laughed. “Someone said you might have gotten the job because you really knew your Dickens. Others said it was because you were a great dancer. I thought you must be sleeping with somebody important. Looks like I won the bet.” She swiped on some red lipstick. “I’m going to the bar.” She opened the cabin door, then stopped. “Listen up, girlie.” She spoke without facing me. “You got my role. You screwed up my living arrangements. Don’t come to the bar. It’s my territory, and I don’t want any fresh meat there.” She looked at me over her shoulder, eyes glittering like broken ice. “Got it?”
“Got it.”
CHAPTER 8
In the Dead Time of the Night
Ada was right. I wasn’t a great dancer and I didn’t know my Dickens. Not much I could do about my lack of upper body strength at the moment, but I could remedy the other problem—and maybe find a clue to Harley’s murder at the same time.
Though I was exhausted, I dragged myself to one of the onboard internet cafes. No. Too many people and too public. I tried the others—same deal. Finally, I hauled my tired ass to the ship’s library, hoping it would still be open. I was in luck: a sign on the door said, “Open twenty-four hours for your reading pleasure.” I pushed open the door and…wow. I walked in, my footsteps muffled by thick carpet. No fluorescent lights or banks of computers here. Instead mahogany-paneled walls gleamed with reflected light from a gas fire. Two leather wingback chairs flanked the fireplace, and a heavily carved antique desk occupied a corner of the room.
The rest of the room was filled with books. They lined the walls and filled several standalone shelves that looked like library stacks. Hundreds of books, maybe thousands. Brass plaques mounted above each of the built-in bookshelves announced their contents. “Nonfiction” filled one wall, “Contemporary fiction” lined another, and “Victorian fiction” and “Dickens-themed fiction” occupied the two niches on either side of the fire.
All the other books were by Dickens. The stacks, built of the same warm wood that paneled the walls, held his books in a variety of shapes and sizes, including paperbacks. And the longest wall in the library was filled with gorgeous books with leather covers in deep blues, browns, and burgundies. The plaque above these shelves simply read, “The Inimitable Boz.”
It made sense. Since Get Lit! was a literature-themed cruise line, of course they went all out with the library. And since this was the S.S. David Copperfield, they went overboard (pun intended) with the English manor house theme. Still, I felt as if I’d truly been transported to a Victorian home, complete with flickering fire and the heady smell of books and old leather. Wow again.
But the no-computers thing threw me a little. I’d intended to do my research online. Now I needed a different plan. I
dropped into one of the leather chairs, just to think for a minute. Ahh.
I stood up right away. Too comfy. I slapped my cheeks lightly to wake myself up and sat in the hard wooden chair at the desk. A sheet of paper on the desktop said, “Back in the morning. Help yourself to a book, but be sure to sign it out.” I picked up the pen next to the sign-out sheet and found an extra sheet of paper. I pulled out my phone, played back the notes I’d made while searching Harley’s room, and wrote down what I’d found:
1. An underlined passage in Great Expectations.
2. An empty bottle of Keppra.
3. A personally signed book from Theo Pushwright.
Where to begin? Maybe I could find a medical book where I could look up Keppra. I went to the nonfiction section. Oh. The books stuck with the ship’s theme, with titles like Gin and Juice: The Victorian Guide to Parenting, and Daily Life in Victorian England, and hey, a medical book: Dying for Victorian Medicine. Pretty sure it wouldn’t mention Keppra, but it might be useful somehow, and besides, I was curious. I slid it out of its place anyway—and immediately wished I hadn’t. A half-dissected corpse accosted me from the cover of the book, under the subtitle: English Anatomy and its Trade in the Dead Poor. I turned the book over, partly to hide the body on the front and partly out of a grim curiosity. “A detailed analysis of the body-trafficking networks of the dead poor that underpinned the expansion of medical education from Victorian times” read the back cover copy.
Body trafficking. Death. Autopsies. I shivered and deposited the book back in its place, but not before my brain served up a vision of dead Harley on a slab, waiting for the coroner to…
Wait. A noise from behind one of the stacks—a quiet rustle of paper. Was someone in the room with me? I crept around the stacks. No one. So where did the noise come from? Did ships have mice?
I went back to the nonfiction section, listening hard. It was so quiet in the library, so hushed and insulated and isolated. If I screamed, would anyone be able to hear me? Had Harley screamed?
I shook my head. There was work to be done. I forced my eyes back to the titles in front of me. Dickens and the Workhouse: Oliver Twist and the London Poor. Then Fagin’s Children: Criminal Children in Victorian England. Next, Dickens and The Business of Death. Not helping my mood. I started to turn away when I saw Dickens for Dummies. I took it off the shelf and searched through the index. Oh. Little Dorrit wasn’t just the name of a character; it was also the title of a book. Yeah, really didn’t know my Dickens. That was something else I needed to do, brush up my Dickens, so I would know when people were acting as characters as opposed to being themselves.
I went to the “Inimitable Boz” section (I did know “Boz” was Dickens’s pseudonym) and ran my finger over the gold-lettered spines until I found a burgundy leather-bound copy of Little Dorrit, and then a blue copy of A Tale of Two Cities. Maybe the character of Madame Defarge could tell me something about Harley or why she was murdered. A long shot, I knew. Harley’s murder was probably connected to the theft ring. I mean, what other reason…
Oh. The room felt cold in spite of the fire. If the thieves killed Harley, they might not look kindly on two undercover detectives either. Maybe this job was more dangerous than I thought. Get Lit! was paying us awfully well for just finding a few thieves.
Stop it, Ivy, I told myself. That kind of thinking is not going to help you solve anything. Right. I carried the books back to the fireplace. This time I couldn’t resist the siren’s call of the leather chairs. I sank down into the deep comfort of one, tucked my notes inside Little Dorrit, and opened A Tale of Two Cities. I flipped to a random page, trying to keep my eyes open. “Death is Nature’s remedy for all things,” I read. Not helpful in terms of Harley, and not making me feel any better. I flipped again. “The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the street-stones, and when the stain of it would be red upon many there!”
Bloody cobblestones. I shut that page but quick. One more try: “Liberty, equality, fraternity…” So far, so good. “…or death—the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!”
Gee, thanks, Boz. I slammed the book closed and shut my eyes tight, but the firelight penetrated my closed eyes, dancing blood red behind my lids.
CHAPTER 9
A Prophetic Misgiving
A few minutes later, I felt a tap on my shoulder. “Miss?” said a voice. I opened my eyes to see a kindly looking woman in a black dress with a high Victorian collar. She smiled at me. “I’m the librarian. I wasn’t sure if I should let you sleep.”
I stretched. Wow. And I thought my arms were sore earlier.
“But I thought you might like to know it’s morning.”
“Morning?” I yelped, propelling myself out of the chair. “What time in the morning?”
The windowless room held no clues.
“Seven.”
“Thank you!” I grabbed my books, started for the door, then stopped. I ran the few steps to the desk, where the librarian was fanning out a sheaf of papers that highlighted the ship’s Daily Dickensian Delights. “Last night I thought I heard—” A listing on the day’s events page distracted me. “Wait. Theo Pushwright is speaking today?”
“At ten this morning. I’d go early if you want to see him. He’s very popular.” She said “popular” like some people say poop. “You said something about last night?”
“I heard a noise. Do you have…mice?”
The librarian looked me up and down. “You’re a crew member?”
I nodded.
“Then you’ll understand that officially, we don’t have mice onboard.”
“Thanks.” I pushed open the door.
“No bats on the lower decks either,” she said. “Officially.”
I dashed down the deck, books under my arm. Jonas had told me to be at the ship’s hair salon by seven so they could take care of me before they opened for passengers. I race-walked to the salon, hoping there would be coffee. Not only did I need the caffeine boost, I hoped it might cover up what I suspected was pretty bad morning breath.
Coffee might also help my Dickens hangover. Bloody images from Two Cities flickered in the back of my mind, like scenes on a big screen TV in a bar, with Harley’s imagined autopsied body interspersed between reels like an especially gruesome commercial. I wished I had time to talk to Uncle Bob. He always made me feel better.
I shoved open the door to Sweedlepipe’s Salon at five past seven. Just one stylist at work this early, dressed like a Victorian barber in a white coat over a vest and tie.
I felt an unwarranted sense of relief. It could have been the genteel normality of the scene, or it could have been the coffee. He was drinking coffee.
It smelled better than anything ever.
“Coffee,” I croaked.
The stylist opened his mouth as if to say something, then thought better of it. He poured me a cup from a coffeemaker and carried it over to a barber-style chair. I took the hint and sat in the chair, where I was rewarded with the elixir of life.
“Jonas sent me.”
“Ah, the new girl. I’m Martin. Welcome aboard…I guess.”
“What?” I craned my head to look at him.
Martin leaned toward me conspiratorially, even though there was no one else in the salon. “I mean, maybe this isn’t the luckiest ship to be on right now. You did hear the news? About the dead body?”
Oh no. Just when I’d banished those horrible images. But maybe I could learn something. “No,” I lied. “Who died?”
“A crew member named Kawasaki.”
“Really? How did he die?”
“Someone found him locked inside a freezer.”
I froze too. Could we have a serial murderer on our hands?
“I heard he was stuffed inside it, dressed in costume like a girl.”
> Stuffed inside…dressed in costume…wait. “Kawasaki,” I said. “Like the motorcycle?”
“I think so.”
“You know him?”
“Nah. You know how many crew members are onboard?”
“Anyone you know a personal friend of his?”
“No, but it was all anyone talked about in the canteen this morning: Kawasaki stuffed in the freezer.”
Phew. I was pretty sure it wasn’t a serial murder, just a bad case of got-the-info-wrong gossip-itis, where Harley stuffed in a closet turned into another motorcycle-named guy crammed into a freezer. Like that Telephone game we played as kids. Still, now I really wanted to talk to Uncle Bob, to see if any news was circulating among the guests. I checked my phone. No reception.
A weird noise behind me, like someone zipping up a tent flap over and over. I turned. Martin grinned at me as he ran a straight razor up and down a leather strap clipped to the counter. “You’re an actor, right?” He stopped sharpening the razor and lifted it to the light, eyeing its edge. “I always wanted to be an actor. I’d be a great Sweeney Todd.” He regarded the gleaming razor with a rapt expression. “The demon barber of Fleet Street,” he sang.
So much for genteel normality.
“Just kidding,” Martin said. Of course. Still, I was relieved when he put down the razor. “I don’t actually like straight razors, and I really can’t sing.” He couldn’t. “So what are we going to do with you today?” He lifted my orange and blonde hair by the ends. “Oh, honey. Were you trying to look like a cantaloupe?”
“I do not look like a cantaloupe,” I said. “I look like a sexy Creamsicle.”
“You were nearly a Bald-sicle. What in the world did you do to yourself?”