by Cindy Brown
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Like you don’t know. They’re putting me off in Honolulu.” She balled up a dress and stuffed it into a suitcase. “Oliver can get away with anything, but I play one—maybe two—harmless pranks, and that’s it. Good riddance, Ada.”
“Harmless pranks?”
“Come on. You know that knot would’ve never come untied. It was just meant to slip.”
“The silk knot.”
“Duh. And stupid old Harley would never have even sprained her wrist if she’d used good technique.” Ada grabbed a duffle bag and swung it up to my top bunk, missing my head by inches.
“Alrighty then. Good luck,” I said, backing out of the cabin. “Guess I’ll head down to the crew bar.” I closed the door just before Ada’s suitcase hit it.
I did go to the bar, just because I could, but had a cup of coffee at the counter. I’d just stirred some sugar into my cup when a hand placed a Russian nesting doll in front of me. I turned to see David. “For you,” he said. I unscrewed the yellow doll until I found a scrap of paper wrapped around the tiniest doll. It read, “Nice work.”
“Thanks. So the first doll was from you?”
Madalina had told me the other two nesting dolls were from her. She got the idea when she went to my dressing room to leave me a “back off” note and saw the first doll. “I come up with doll with no head by myself,” she’d said with misplaced pride “Scary, yes?”
David sat down on a barstool. “Yeah, it was me. I wanted to encourage you to find out what happened to Harley. I really liked her—she was one of my best friends onboard—but things changed when she started going out with Val. He didn’t kill her?”
“No,” I said. “Sudden Unexplained Death in Epilepsy,”
David was quiet for a moment. “Val didn’t seem like a killer, but from watching him, I was pretty sure he was in on the theft ring. I didn’t have any proof though. It seemed like you were getting close to the truth, so I sent the nesting doll as a sort of clue.”
“That I was on the right track with the Russian thing.”
“Yeah. I had no idea it would be so dangerous. I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Just part of the job,” I said in a tough guy voice.
“About that. I’m confused. Are you an actor or a detective?”
“Both,” I said. “I’m both.”
CHAPTER 65
How Things Come About!
A little while later, I made my way to the bowels of the ship and the onboard jail. I really hoped Jonas hadn’t put too much stock in any kind of future with me. Sure, he was sweet, good-looking, and now incredibly rich, but he just wasn’t for me.
I slowly pushed open the door of the Marshalsea Prison. Jonas talked quietly with Val, who stood behind the iron bars of a Victorian-looking jail cell.
A similar scene played out a few yards away, where Bette huddled outside Madalina’s cell.
“Ivy!” said Jonas and Val, almost in unison as I walked toward them.
“Perfect timing.” Jonas put an arm around my shoulder, while Val looked longingly at us throughout the barred wall that separated the free from the imprisoned. “I have something to say that concerns you both. Ivy, you know how I’ve been talking to you about our future?”
“Actually, I wanted to ask you about—”
“I mean, since you helped me get Theo’s money, it’s only fair that—”
“I helped you get Theo’s money?”
“You certainly did. That kiss on deck during the captain’s dinner? It was just what I needed to convince Theo I’d been cured of my ‘moral weakness.’”
“Gluhh,” I said, not because I was disappointed that Jonas was gay—au contraire—but because, once again I was wrong about someone.
“Oh, Ivy.” Jonas squeezed my shoulders. “You never thought I was interested in you, did you? Romantically, I mean? I just assumed you knew.”
Oliver’s mom burst into the room, towing her little rat by the arm. “I want you to lock him up,” she said to the security guy (thankfully not Brick this time). “He just broke the straw on the camel’s back.”
“It’s about time,” I said to her. “That Dramamine overdose could have been serious, you know.” A big waterlogged spider crept out of the corner of my mind. I swept it away with a shake of my head.
“Drama-banana-meene,” Oliver said.
“That’s not Dickens,” I pointed out.
“We’re not here because of that,” said Oliver’s mother, who again wore horizontal stripes. This knit top was black and white. She looked like an overfed zebra.
“Maybe it’s because of all the stuff he stole?” I said. “Or the vandalism?”
The security guard looked back and forth between the two of us, waiting.
“That was all in preparation for his role.” His mother stood up straight.
“My poisoning too?” I said.
“Dickens’s characters poisoned people,” said Oliver.
“None of that. It’s this.” She grabbed a magazine from her bag and flung it to the floor. Inches. Timothy’s porn magazine. The one where we’d hidden the “whiteboard.”
“Lock him up.” She pushed Oliver toward the security office. “I’m sure it’s illegal for young children to possess pornography. And while you’re at it, I think you should arrest whoever gave this to my son.”
“Yes. Arrest Fagin,” said Oliver. “He’s a criminal.”
I grabbed the little bugger by the arm and wrangled him to a corner. “I won’t press charges for the Dramamine overdose if you’re straight with me about one thing,” I whispered fiercely.
“Press charges?” Oliver’s face puckered in perturbation. It would have been cute if he wasn’t such a snot.
“Even though you’re a minor, and even if you didn’t mean your prank to go as far as it did, it’s still assault, and enough to send you to juvie.” I sounded sure even though I had no idea.
“Okay. What one thing?”
“Is Timothy a thief? Did he really teach you how to steal?”
A smarmy smile spread across Oliver’s face. “I never said that.”
“Yes, you did. When we were talking on deck, right after—”
“I said Fagin taught me to steal. Can’t you tell when an actor’s in character?”
I pushed him back toward the jailer. “Lock him up.”
Oliver whined. “But you said—”
“I lied. They do that in Dickens.”
The security guy pursed his lips. I winked at him and he looked to Oliver’s mom, who nodded.
“Good thing we’ve got one place left.” He led Oliver to a cell. “You can come get him in an hour, ma’am,” he said quietly to Oliver’s mom.
“I’m not sure I will.” She swept out of the brig.
“Wait, what?” Oliver’s face turned red as the jailer locked him behind bars. The entire jail erupted in a cheer.
I turned back to Val and Jonas. “Boy, that felt good.”
“Yes, very nice. Can we talk about our future?” said Val. “I want to know I have one.”
“Right,” said Jonas. “Now that I have Theo’s money, I can produce my play.”
“Oliver! At Sea!?” I said.
“Lord, no. Haven’t I told you about it?” Jonas said. “I could have sworn I did.”
I shook my head.
“For the last year, I’ve been working on a farce-slash-murder-mystery called, wait for it…” Jonas held his hands with a flourish. “Grave Expectations.”
“Wow,” I said.
“I know. I think it’ll be big.” Jonas twiddled his fingers in excitement. “And there are perfect roles for you both. Val would play Pep, and Ivy, you’d be Esmella.”
&nb
sp; Maybe I could talk him out of that later.
“I had planned to workshop the show in L.A., but…” Jonas turned to Val. “I suspect the judge will go easy on you, but you’ll probably serve some time. And I know how hard prison is, especially on creative types.”
Val hung his head.
“But,” Jonas bounced on his toes, “you’ve heard about Shakespeare Behind Bars? I’m going to mount Grave Expectations in prison. Starring you, of course.” Val’s mouth dropped open. “It’ll give you something to hang onto while you’re inside,” he said to Val. “It’ll look great to the parole board, and who knows, maybe you’ll even be famous by the time you get out.”
“Why?” Val backed up, like a child who was afraid to take a present for fear it’d be yanked away. “Why you do this for me?”
Jonas stopped bouncing. “I understand you better than you know. I didn’t know my father. My mother was stoned for most of my childhood. I haven’t heard from her in years. The only other family I had was my stepfather, and you saw how he was. After everything I’ve gone through with my relations, I decided that my friends are my family. ‘Family not only need to consist of merely those whom we share blood, but also for those whom we’d give blood.’”
“It’s Dickens,” Oliver whispered from his cell.
Val pressed his lips together, his Adam’s apple working.
Jonas wrapped his hands around the bars that separated Val from him. “Sound good, brother?”
Val swallowed. “Yes. Okey-dokey.” He smiled. “Brother.”
Later, I waved to Jonas as he zipped away on the back of a Harley, his arms around the big bearish guy in front of him. “My Hawaii husband,” Jonas had said. “I don’t dally onboard, but I do have a man in every port.”
I wove through the chattering tourists and joined Timothy, Bob, and Bette at a table under a thatched umbrella. I listened to them debate the best way to get sand out of your shorts. I sipped a cold slushy Blue Hawaiian, complete with a slice of fresh pineapple and a pink cocktail umbrella. I breathed in the warm humid air, perfumed with salt spray and flowers and a whiff of coconut tanning lotion. I watched happy bronzed people run across the white sand and splash in the surf. It was truly a tropical paradise. And it was all wrong.
After two deaths and sending two people I liked to jail, I wasn’t in the mood for sand and surf and drinks with little umbrellas. “I want to go home.”
“You’re kidding, right?” said Timothy. “The islands are the best part of the cruise.”
“Nah. I don’t really like cruising. All that water.” I felt like I’d worked through my phobia, but still, dry land felt wonderful. “We’re done here, right?” I asked Uncle Bob. “Job-wise?”
“Yeah. And there’ll be a nice bonus waiting for us.”
“Great. Then I want to go see my family.” I smiled at Bette, leaned down and kissed Timothy on his hairy cheek, then bussed my uncle on the top of the head. “Besides you guys, I mean.”
CHAPTER 66
Home Again Straight
After eight hours of traveling and stops in San Francisco, L.A., and Yuma, I finally arrived at Sky Harbor and dragged myself to baggage claim. Staring at the carousel in a daze, I felt a tap on the shoulder.
“Olive-y?”
I turned around. “If it isn’t Brad Pitt,” I said as I hugged Cody. He did look like the film star—tall and blonde and handsome. Plus open-mouthed.
“I wasn’t sure it was you,” he said, still gawping after our hug. “Your hair. It’s…it’s…”
“It’s sexy hair,” I said.
“I think so.” Matt, a few inches shorter than my brother, smiled at me over his shoulder. “Welcome home.”
I felt it then, when Matt smiled. Home.
“But how did you know when I was getting in?”
“Uncle Bob told us,” said Cody.
“Those are my suitcases.” I pointed at two bags now customized with gold polka dots, courtesy of a metallic Sharpie.
Matt grabbed the bags off the carousel. “A matched set. Nice.”
On the way home, I sat with Cody in the backseat. “Since it’s almost midnight, I’m going to drop Cody off first.” Matt met my eyes in the rearview mirror. “Then I’ll take you to your apartment. Sound good?”
“Sounds wonderful.” I leaned back against the seat and closed my eyes.
Cody punched my arm. “No way. You can’t go to sleep before you tell us about your case.”
I gave the two of them the shortened version of my adventures, ending with Jonas’s idea about a prison theater production. “Cool,” Cody said. Matt didn’t say anything, but then again, he was driving. He turned into the Coronado neighborhood. Cody’s group home was just a few blocks away.
“Now it’s your turn,” I said to Cody. “I want to know everything about Stu and—”
“I already told you everything.”
“Nuh-uh.” I could finally ask Cody the question that had plagued me ever since he had disappeared. “Where did you sleep all those nights when you were gone?”
“In Uncle Bob’s garage.”
Phew. Uncle Bob’s nice safe garage.
But wait. “How did you get in? Didn’t he lock the doors?”
“Yeah.” Cody managed to swagger, even sitting down. “But I remembered that video you showed me. ‘How to Break into a Garage in Sixty Seconds.’”
Research for a case, I swear. “You remembered that?”
“I watched it on the computer at our house a couple of times. Stu too. He helped me practice.”
“On our garage?” said Matt, pulling in front of the group home.
“Cody.” I hugged my brother. “You may be shaping up to be a criminal, but you’re a hero to me.”
“And Stu,” Matt said. “And me.”
“I’m not a hero. Or a criminal.” Cody let me go, done hugging. “I’m a detective.”
Must run in the family.
I switched to the front passenger seat for the ride to my apartment, leaning back against the headrest and watching the streetlights flicker across Matt’s face like moonlight on a lake. We rode in companionable silence until he parked in my lot. “I’ll walk you to your door.”
“That’d be nice.”
We got out and he grabbed my suitcases out of the trunk. Matt was quiet as we climbed the Astroturf-covered stairs to my second-floor apartment. When we got to my place, I unlocked the door and turned to thank him.
He put down my bags. “Ivy.” The porch light glinted off his glasses, so I couldn’t see his eyes, but his voice sounded serious. “This prison theater thing sounds like a great project, but it’s not here in Arizona, is it? You’d have to leave, right?”
“It’s not in Arizona,” I said, “but I don’t think I’ll take it. I want to stick around here for a while.”
“Good.” Matt stepped closer, but he didn’t pick up my bags.
The air was suddenly filled with electricity, like before a thunderstorm, but I went on, “In fact, I think I’m going to recommend Candy. She’s not the same type as me, but she’s a great actress and—”
I couldn’t say any more because Matt’s lips were on mine and his arms were around me and he was kissing me and I was kissing him back and oh. Oh. Oh.
We finally stopped to breathe. Matt’s face, that face I’d known but never really seen, was just inches from mine. Heat and joy flooded my body. Matt cupped my face in his hands. “Ivy, should we—”
I placed a finger on his lips, opened the door to my apartment, and took him by the hand. “Please, sir,” I said. “I want some more.”
Reader’s Discussion Guide
In Oliver Twisted, author Cindy Brown takes readers on a literature-themed cruise filled with characters influenced by Dickens’s famous novels.
Ivy Meadows, actress and part-time PI, has to navigate this new world of thieves and orphans while working with her detective uncle to expose a theft ring. The job is tougher than she expected: in her undercover role as an actress, she has just days to learn to perform on the aerial silks; her uncle is sidetracked by a suspicious blonde; and her brother in Phoenix has given her a long-distance mystery to worry about. As always, Ivy’s world is slightly screwball, but in Oliver Twisted she also explores the definition of family, and of criminal behavior.
Topics and Questions for Discussion
Would you like to take a literature-themed cruise? What book or author would you choose to cruise with? What details would you like to see included—which characters, what types of food, what types of activities?
Why do you think the author chose a cruise ship as the setting for Oliver Twisted? What other settings might reflect the world Dickens wrote about?
Jonas uses a Dickens quote to explain his feelings for Val: “Family not only need to consist of merely those whom we share blood, but also for those whom we’d give blood.” Are there people not related to you whom you consider family? Who are they? Why do you feel so close to them?
Ivy thinks she’ll never be able to perform aerial dance in such a short time, but she manages to do it. Have you ever accomplished something you once felt impossible?
In the original Oliver Twist, Oliver’s half-brother Monks is a greedy, sinister man who has seizures. How do you think our view of epilepsy has changed since Dickens’s time?
If you attended the costume ball onboard the S.S. David Copperfield, which Dickens character would you want to dress as? Why?
What do you think of Theo’s “Positively Powerful” philosophy? Has positive thinking influenced your life? What are its benefits? Its downsides?
There are several famous Dickens lines parodied throughout the book. Can you find them?