by Cindy Brown
“You teach me?” Madalina tried to sound cynical, but I heard the plea underneath. Then she laughed, a hard bitter sound. “No. We are not the same. Maybe it was the time I spent in dark rooms. Or the cigarette burns. Or…” Even I heard her swallow. “Or the men.”
I crept to the place where my silk was looped up out of sight.
“Where there is life there is hope,” said Val.
“Ha. You sound like Theo: ‘Think positive and all will be good.’ Do you know what he said when I told him I knew about the children? He believed he was giving them better life. And because he believed, it must be so. His power of positivity would keep them safe.” She snorted. “Even as he handed little girls over to bad men.”
I tugged on the knot in my silk and tried to remember how many carabiners to check.
“So you killed him?” Val said.
“I did. I did not feel bad. I hoped I would. When I heard what he did with children, my heart cracked. It hurt, but it was feeling. I thought my heart was healed, that I feel again when I kill Theo. But I did not. And I do not want to go to jail, so I must kill you. And Ivy.”
I unlooped my silk.
“You are going to kill me with that knife? I am too strong for you.”
“I thought you would be Ivy and I would surprise her. But do not worry. I have seen much in my life. I know other ways to kill. You and she, you are dead by morning.”
“No.” Valery started toward her, his hand held out. “It is over. Give me the—”
“Ivy!” Timothy flew in the backstage door. Val turned to see, Madalina lunged at his back with the knife, and I jumped off the catwalk and into the air.
CHAPTER 62
A Brief Reputation for Undaunted Courage
“Did so,” Timothy said.
“Did not,” I said.
“Did so.”
“Kids, could you stop arguing about whether Ivy yelled like Tarzan and tell me exactly what happened?” Uncle Bob had arrived with Bette just seconds after Timothy’s entrance. We were all still onstage waiting for security to take Madalina and Val to the brig.
“I swung down on my silk,” I said.
“And she gave a Tarzan yell.”
“Did not.”
“Did so.”
“Are you guys like five years old?” said Uncle Bob. “Cut it out.”
Mr. Brick Bungalow from security walked in. His eyes got big when he saw me.
I said to Uncle Bob, “So I swung down and hit Madalina.”
“It hurt.” Madalina rubbed her neck.
“Hello? You were going to kill me and Val.”
“Yes. Okay.” She shrugged.
“And when Madalina fell, the knife flew out of her hands,” I continued.
“Nice work,” said Val.
“Thank you.”
Uncle Bob sighed.
“And then Timothy charged onstage—”
“Charged. Has a nice manly sound to it,” said Timothy.
“And wrapped up Madalina in duck tape.”
He’d done a pretty decent job of it, too. She sat on the stage like a duck tape-trussed goose.
“I keep a roll of it handy now,” said Timothy. “Just like Ivy.”
“You keep a roll of duck tape handy?” Brick asked me. I remembered his dog collar and declined to answer.
“Timothy tried to duck tape Val,” I said. “But I stopped him.”
“It was smart,” said Val. “I would punch him.”
“I thought I should subdue him since Ivy said he was the thief,” Timothy said to Uncle Bob.
“One of the thieves,” Val said.
“About that,” I said.
“Later,” said Uncle Bob. “So you stopped Timothy from subduing Val because…”
“Because Val was trying to protect me,” I said. “And because except for maybe wanting to punch Timothy, Val isn’t dangerous.”
“What about Harley?”
“Pretty sure she died because of her epilepsy.”
“Sudden unexplained death in epilepsy.” Val sounded as if he’d committed the words to memory.
Bette, who had been silent up to now, said, “And Valery didn’t kill Theo.” It didn’t sound like a question.
“No. I am not killer. I am thief. Also lover.” Val slid closer to me.
“I am killer,” said Madalina. “But I do not care. Theo deserved to die.”
“You used the vaping liquid, didn’t you?” I asked.
“Yes. I put some in his drink and pour some on his mask.”
“Were you one of Theo’s orphans?” Bette asked gently.
“I do not think so.”
“But you killed him because of the children?” said Bette.
“I kill him for the children. Now maybe more can feel.”
I nodded. Bob and Brick looked at me.
“I’ll explain later,” I said.
“Me too,” Bette said.
“I will explain now,” Val said. He told everyone about how he’d been duped by his fake cousin. “I thought I steal to help my family. But I have no family.” He shook his head sadly.
“You kept saying you were ‘one of the thieves.’ What did you mean?” I glanced at Timothy, who was twirling his roll of duck tape around his finger and looking as unlike a thief as you could get.
“There are ten, maybe more, on this ship,” said Val.
“You know who they are?” asked Uncle Bob. Timothy still looked innocent. Pretty sure I had that one wrong.
Val shrugged. “Sure.”
“You willing to give them up?” said Uncle Bob.
Val’s eyes traveled the darkness above the stage. “I think they know Nikolay is not my cousin. Some even tell him about my eyes. They let me think I steal for family, when I do not have any.” He brought his gaze down to meet mine. “I give them up. “
“Time to go then,” said Brick, hauling Madalina to her feet.
“One more question,” I said. “Val, the rest of the booty is hidden in the library, right?”
“Booty. Ha.” Val slapped my ass.
“I’m serious.”
“Yes. Look for the ugliest books.”
Ah. The books where I found the stash were dog-eared with scarred covers. “Is that why you thought no one would find the stuff? Because people only check out the best-looking books?”
“No one likes ugly books. Also,” he said as he followed Brick out the backstage door, “most guests don’t check out Dickens’s books. They like BBC DVDs.”
CHAPTER 63
The Foulest and Most Cruel
I was quiet as I followed Uncle Bob and Bette down the hall, partly because I was distracted by the way my feet sank underneath the surface of the carpet (was this Dramamine stuff ever going to wear off?), but mostly because life felt particularly unfair. Madalina and Val had nightmare childhoods and now they were going to prison.
My companions were quiet too, but right before we came to Bette’s cabin, Uncle Bob stopped and turned to her. “I guess you’ve figured out that Olive isn’t my niece’s third cousin.” Bette nodded. “She’s my niece.” Another nod. “And my employee.” Bette didn’t nod this time, but raised her chin in a question. Uncle Bob sighed. “I’m not Bob Stalwart and I’m not a rancher. I’m Bob Duda, private investigator. Olive and I were hired to find out the story behind all the thefts onboard this line.” He looked at Bette, whose eyes were downcast. “I’m really sorry I lied to you. Please. Say something.”
He’d just given Bette the perfect opportunity to come clean about her real identity. But she kept her eyes averted as she swiped her keycard in the cabin door lock. “Come in.” She opened the door.
Bette guided us to the cabin’s l
oveseat and sat in an armchair across from us. No one said anything for a minute. We needed to talk, but how to start the conversation without putting any of us on the spot? I began by telling them about Madalina, what she meant when she said she wanted to help the children feel, about how she shut down her emotions in order to survive.
“It’s not just her,” said Bette. “Many children raised in orphanages grow up without the ability to form emotional bonds.” Bette had dropped her accent. Uncle Bob didn’t seem to notice. All his attention was focused on her face. “Those who grew up in the really awful places in Romania and Eastern Europe had it especially bad,” she continued. “A lot of them have severe reactive attachment disorder. Some never learned to function outside an institution.” This vocabulary didn’t belong to the Bette we knew, but my uncle seemed unfazed. “Many grew up without a sense of right and wrong. They were often beaten, and whoever was strongest was the ‘winner.’ I should have thought more carefully about all that before I talked to Madalina, but I was so angry with Theo.”
“What exactly did you tell her?” I asked.
“That Theo was selling children. He had been for years. Called himself an adoption broker. Pretended he was giving children better lives. Or maybe he convinced himself, I don’t know. He started with the Rumanian orphanages. Moved on to a wider area. Then he started buying children from their parents.”
“You found this out when you were on that trip with Theo? When you thought he was selling drugs?”
She nodded. “Remember when I said I found out about a meeting? I followed Theo to the poorest section of town. His contact met him in a tavern, then took him to an apartment building, a horrible bleak place, concrete blocks held together by mold. I watched from a hiding place below. The building’s doors all opened onto outside walkways, so I saw Theo and his contact go into several apartments. Each time they came out, they emerged with a child, who was handed off to another person who led her—they were mostly girls—to a white van. Six children in all. And that was just that one apartment building.”
Bette stood up and paced. “It took years before I had enough evidence to expose Theo. I came on this cruise to give him one more chance to repent before I exposed him. After all, he was rich. He could start to fix some of the damage he’d done, maybe fund a foundation or give the money to legit adoption agencies. But when I told him I was going to tell the world about his dirty secret, he just laughed at me. ‘Who’s going to believe you?’ he said.
“He was wrong about that, but I couldn’t wait. So I started poisoning the well close to home. I told Madalina first.” She shook her head angrily. “I’m not sorry Theo’s dead, but I am sorry it was her who killed him.”
She sat down. I waited. Nothing. What was up with this woman? She sounded like some sort of avenging angel, but how could we trust anything she said if she was pretending to be someone else? I couldn’t stand it any longer. “Don’t you have something else to tell us? About your name?”
She looked at her lap. “Yeah. Um. I’m not really Bette Foxberry.”
The color went out of Uncle Bob’s face.
“I’m Bernadette Woodward, but you might know me better under another name.”
“Wait,” I said. “You have three names?”
“Sometimes I need to go undercover.”
“Don’t tell me you’re a PI too,” said Uncle Bob.
“When Theo fired me, I finally knew what I really wanted to do, to make sure that creeps like him didn’t get away with murder. I’m not the cop type, and I didn’t want to study law, so I went back to school and became an investigative journalist. Then I started my own online news site, ‘All Bets Are Off.’”
I was speechless. “All Bets Are Off” was huge—the biggest investigative news website in the country, if not the world. They broke big stories about corruption in government and corporate misdeeds and hushed-up environmental disasters.
“I write under the name Bernie Woodard. Sort of a nod to the real guy.” Bette turned to me. “You know, from Watergate? Woodward and—”
I gave her an “I’m young but I’m not stupid” look. She shut her mouth.
“So you’re not really an oil widow,” said my uncle, shaking his head in wonder. “Had me fooled.”
She shook her head. “Bob, I’m really sorry.”
Suddenly Uncle Bob laughed. “Bette. Bette. From ‘All Bets Are Off.’”
“Gotta love a little pun.” She smiled hesitantly.
“This is great!” Uncle Bob jumped up and grabbed both of us. “See, Olive was right. You were suspicious. I mean, this whole time you were pretending to be somebody else. Sort of like an actor.” He slid a look at me. “And I was right, because you are a good person. A good woman.” The top of his cheeks flushed light pink as he looked at Bette.
“And a member of the media.” I wasn’t willing to give up the fight just yet.
“An investigative journalist,” said Bette. “Note the adjective. It’s not unlike—”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” I said. “You’re like an actor and a PI.” Now I gave up the fight. I had to. I had a grudging respect for the woman. And Uncle Bob was looking at her like she was his favorite sandwich and a beer.
CHAPTER 64
Restored to Pleasant Company
I met the two lovebirds for a late breakfast the next morning. I’d just sat down at their table with a blood pudding-free breakfast (I was still out of sorts) when my cell rang. I looked at the display.
“My parents,” I said to Bob and Bette. Wait, my parents? They never called. “Oh crap.” I picked up, putting the phone on speakerphone so Uncle Bob could hear too. “Is everything okay?”
“Hello to you too. Everything’s fine,” said my dad. “Just wanted to call and let you know that. And to thank you for helping Cody.”
I hadn’t really helped Cody, but a “thank you” from my parents was so rare that I wanted to keep it. “Thank you for going down there. Matt said you were the ones who got Cody into Costco.”
“Cody called us from there. They wouldn’t let him in after hours, so we explained the situation and they let him in. So, you’re on a ship?”
Another one for the books. My parents never took an interest in what I was doing. “Yeah. But I think Uncle Bob and I are wrapping up this job.”
“Good,” said my dad. “We’d like to take you to dinner when you get back.”
“Me too,” said Cody’s voice behind him.
“You too,” said my dad. “See you soon, Olive. Love you.”
I stared at the phone.
I hadn’t heard that since…since before Cody’s accident. My throat felt thick.
“Olive-y!” Cody had picked up the phone. “Are you coming home soon? I miss you. And we get to go to the Old Spaghetti Factory when you get here. When are you coming?”
“In just a few days.” We’d arrive in Honolulu today, cruise the islands, and then fly home.
“Good. I love you. Hey, did you want to talk to Olive-y?” he said to someone there.
“I love you too,” I said before I realized Cody was off the line. It didn’t matter. What did matter was the way my heart warmed at the thought of him.
Val and Madalina never had this, never felt this rush of love. Yeah, my parents had been horrible to me since the accident, but they had also given me Cody. And to be fair, they’d given us a good childhood. I hadn’t realized how good until now. I suddenly wanted to be off the ship and back in Phoenix right away, to see my beautiful brother and maybe hear “I love you” from my dad again.
“Ivy?” It was Matt. “I’ve been worried about you.”
“You have?”
“Last time we talked, you said something about a murder. And you haven’t been answering your calls.”
“Bad cell connection.” I’d tell him ab
out getting overdosed, catching a thief, and clonking a killer later.
“Okay. Glad you’re all right. Enjoy Hawaii.”
“You don’t sound like you mean that.”
“I am very glad you’re all right.”
“About Hawaii, I mean.”
“Busted. I’d rather have you back here.”
“I’ll let you know as soon as I’m in town. It’ll be good to be home. See you soon.” I hung up to find Uncle Bob and Bette sharing a smile. “What?” I said.
“That guy on the phone,” said Bette. “Sounds like a real nice guy.”
“One of the best,” said Uncle Bob.
My cell bleeped: a text from Jonas. Reception had stayed surprisingly good, probably because we were nearing port in Hawaii. “Need to talk to Val about our future plans. Meet me at the brig in an hour?”
“Sure.” Needed to squelch that whole our-future-plans thing. “See you guys later,” I said to Bob and Bette. “I need to freshen up before I meet Jonas at the brig.”
“I’ll probably see you down there,” said Bette. “I want to talk to Madalina.” Bette was going to release Madalina’s story in a few days and she was putting together a defense fund for her. I guess Uncle Bob was a pretty good judge of character after all.
“Brig,” he said. “Did you know that’s not just an onboard jail? It’s also a type of two-masted ship.”
“Did you know,” said Bette, “that our ship’s brig, the Marshalsea Prison, was named after the debtor’s prison in Little Dorrit?”
“Which was based on the one that Dickens’s family was sent to,” said Uncle Bob. They grinned at each other. A match made in heaven.
I went back to my cabin. I’d only slept about five hours, so my idea of freshening up included closing my eyes for a few minutes. But as soon as I opened the door, I knew that wasn’t going to happen. Ada filled the cabin, both literally (her clothes were everywhere) and figuratively (her anger bounced off the walls).