Hula Done It? (20 page)

Alice coaxed her hat off her nose and latched onto my arm again. "Listen, Emily, Gjurd is going through the meat buffet right now, dressed like Hagar the Horrible, and Osmond is hot on his trail. Or is that tail?"

"Trail," said Darth.

Alice squinted up at him from behind her mask. "Do I know you?"

He shot to attention and clicked his booted heels together. "Darth," he said, offering her his gloved hand.

Alice continued to squint. "Not Batman? You look a lot like Batman. Or Zorro. But Zorro's cape is shorter, and he has a sword."

Darth whipped a cylindrical rod off his belt. "I have a light saber," he said in a digitalized monotone.

Alice hovered over the weapon, nodding. "Does this have one of those new fluorescent bulbs in it? They're supposed to save you lots of money, but personally, I don't think they give off enough light. It's a scam, if you ask me."

"Alice," I asked, troubled by a sudden niggling concern. "Which dwarf is Osmond dressed as?"

"Sleepy."

SLEEPY?
EHHH! If behavior patterns stayed true to form, that could spell disaster! I grabbed Alice by her shoulders and spun her in the right direction. "Look, Alice, you've gotta get back to the meat buffet right away. Stay close to Gjurd and, whatever you do, keep Osmond awake!"

"Who's Gjurd?" Darth asked, bending so close to my ear that I could feel his hot breath on my cheek.

"He's --" My attention got diverted as Catwoman sashayed away from me with a plate piled high with greens, her tail dragging on the floor behind her like a broken exhaust pipe.
Uff da
. There was too much happening all at once! "Would you save my place in line for a minute?" I asked Duncan, unwilling to lose sight of her.

I darted, bobbed, weaved, and threaded my way through the crowd after her, relieved when she finally sat down at a table that was within view of the table where I'd planted Jonathan. Scurrying back to Duncan, I hopped in front of him and within two minutes, filled an ice-cold plate with enough fresh fruit and salad to feed the state of Florida. When I exited the line, Duncan remained close on my heels, but unlike me, he wasn't carrying a plate. I stared at his empty hands. "What seems to be the problem? No straws or no appetite?"

A torrent of unsettled air swirled around him as he cradled the small of my back with his huge vinyl glove. "I have an appetite. But not for food."

Unh.
I locked my knees to prevent them from buckling. Never having been hit on by an evil warlord with a retractable light saber before, I didn't realize how titillating it could be.

Removing his hand suddenly, he clicked his heels together again and bowed dramatically at the waist. "I've just remembered something I've forgotten to do, Emily. Will you excuse me? I'll rejoin you in a few minutes. Where will you be sitting?"

I nodded toward Jonathan. "Over there, with the broccoli spear. Don't be long, okay?" For some reason, the thought of that light saber was making me frisky.

"Holy cow," Jonathan exclaimed when I set his plate down before him. "I don't know if I can eat all this."

I pulled out a chair and sat down beside him, shoving aside some orange flyers with spiders and skeletons and lots of writing on them. "Pace yourself. This is only the first course. Open wide." I forked a few leaves of spinach into his mouth, keeping one eye on Catwoman and one eye on the rest of the room while he chewed.

"Aren't you eating?" he mumbled around his spinach salad.

"I'm focusing on you first."

He sighed regretfully. "I wish Beth could have been more like you. I bet you'd never run off with another man, or get a tattoo, or sign up for gourmet-cooking lessons with a famous Indian chef whose name is long as my arm. I bet you don't even like Indian food."

Indian cooking? Hadn't someone else talked about Indian cooking recently? I shoveled a couple of supersized croutons into his mouth as I tried to recall the conversation. "I interrupted your story earlier, Jonathan. I'm sorry. What were you saying you overheard while Jennifer was being outfitted in a new costume?"

Crunch. Cruuunch.
"Oh, yeah. Remember when I told you that the blonde's tattoo was just like Beth's? You want to know why they looked so much alike?"
Crunch, crunch.
"Because they had it done in the same tattoo parlor! Tattoos Unlimited, close to the Penn State campus. The same artist probably did it using the same pattern. Can you believe that? The blonde lives in University Park. We're probably neighbors and don't even know it."
Crunch, crunch.
"Could I try some of the avocado salad?"

I speared an avocado slice and fed it to him thoughtfully. "You never mentioned you live in University Park." And I wasn't exactly sure why the news bothered me.

"I don't actually live
in
University Park, just outside the city limits. And don't ask me what a Nittany Lion is. I've lived there for six years, and no one's ever been able to tell me."

"Well, you're on the right cruise ship to find out. The woman Jen confronted outside the infirmary the other night? I bet you anything she'd know. She's working on a Ph.D., so she probably knows everything. But you'd better hurry up and find her because she's getting ready to leav --"

My fork clattered to the plate as the conversation I'd forgotten lasered back into my brain.
Bailey!
That's who'd mentioned Indian cuisine. The day when we'd visited her in the infirmary. She'd informed us that Professor Smoker's only vices had been golf and Indian cuisine. I stared at Jonathan, my mental connect-the-dots picture suddenly exploding with an impossible notion.

"Jonathan, I don't mean to be insensitive, but I remember you telling us at dinner that Beth ran off with someone in her gourmet-cooking class. Was it the Indian cooking class you were just talking about?"

He waggled his florets. "Yeah. The campus union offers minicourses to the staff and public every semester. Specialty cooking. Self-defense. Origami for dummies. They only last six weeks, but I guess six weeks was all it took for Romeo to lure Beth away from me."

Dorian Smoker, a beautiful, dissatisfied, gold-digging wife, and a shared love of exotic cuisine that was spicy enough to strip the enamel off your teeth? Was I grasping at straws, or had I just stumbled upon the ingredients of a toxic cocktail? "The man she ran off with, Jonathan. Did you ever learn his name?"

He averted his eyes. "She didn't stick around to tell me his name. Um, look, even though I was the one who mentioned Beth first, is it okay if we don't talk about her anymore tonight? I'd rather sit here with you and pretend that Beth and her boyfriend never happened. That's old history. I'm more into current events now." He slanted a ravenous look at the mounds of food on his plate. "Is that white stuff ambrosia? That looks pretty good. How about a bite of that?"

The white stuff on the plate was indeed ambrosia, but the more critical question was...Who was the guy in the broccoli suit? Was he an aggrieved husband who was finding ways to mend a broken heart? Or was he a not-so-mild-mannered computer geek who, like thousands of cuckolded husbands before him, had found an ingenious way to get even with the man who'd run off with his wife?

N
UTS! I didn't want Jonathan to be involved in this. I didn't even want to
consider
his being involved. I didn't need another last-minute suspect; I already had a full roster. Jonathan couldn't be guilty. I didn't even have his photo to hand around! Damn. I...I needed to prove myself wrong about this.

Yeah. That's what I'd do. I'd prove myself wrong. I smiled at the simplicity of my scheme, then frowned. How exactly would I go about doing that?

"I signed up for one of those minicourses a few years back," Jonathan chattered between bites of ambrosia. "I ended up being the only man in a whole roomful of women. Not that any of them ever noticed."

"What were you taking? Beginning macrame?"

"Self-defense," he mumbled around a couple of mandarin orange slices. "I don't want to brag, but by the end of the course, I could take down our instructor with one hand tied behind my back."

Proving that having a broken arm was no impediment to him? Ehh! I
so
did not want to hear this! I turned my head as someone tapped on my bare shoulder.

"If you're looking for Shelly Valentine, she's the one in the white tights over there dressed like the Sugar Plum Fairy." Bernice swung her pickaxe toward the nearest buffet island. "But you're gonna have to do something about those two dumb Dicks, Emily. You see them giggling over there at the end of the line? Well, they're supposed to be following those two Limeys around, not sniffing around that girl's tutu."

I executed an eye roll of epic proportions. "Bernice, would you please march over there and tell the Dicks that if they don't shape up, I'll...I'll..."I'd what? How did you threaten a dwarf? Revoke permission to whistle while he worked?

"I'd rather have you speak to them," Bernice demurred. "You're much better at handling disciplinary issues than I am. I don't want to give the appearance that I'm overstepping my authority or being pushy."

Whoa! This from the woman who delighted in being the thorn in everyone's side? The pain in everyone's neck? THE BANE OF MY PERSONAL EXISTENCE? I checked out the name on her costume.

Aha!
That
explained why she was being so nice. She wasn't Bernice Zwerg any longer; she was
BASHFUL!
Damn. What were the chances we could get her to wear that thing permanently? "Um, Bernice, do you know if the Dicks at least
found
Percy and Basil?"

"Yup. One of them's duded up like Sherlock Holmes, and the other one's got a really long scarf wrapped around his neck."

A really long scarf? That was a no-brainer, but a little odd. "One of them's dressed like Isadora Duncan?" Who knew that cross-dressing was as popular with the English as it was with New Yorkers?

"I'll give you another clue. He's accessorizing his scarf with a flight jacket, aviator goggles, and a leather helmet."

"Charles Lindbergh?"

"A good guess, dear, but his name tag says he's the Red Baron."

Dear? Bernice Zwerg called me dear? I snapped my mouth shut to prevent my jaw from dropping off the planet. No way was I ever going to let her out of that costume. I'd staple it to her body if I had to!

The floor suddenly quaked beneath us, causing Bernice and me to dart looks at the gigantic lug who was bounding past our table. He looked about twelve feet tall, broad-backed, and bare-chested, a gladiator's trident in one hand and a net in the other. Leather shin guards rose above his sandaled feet. A spiked helmet hugged his bearded face. And below the metal belt that girdled his waist was a loincloth of gold lame that fit him like a diaper. He ate up the floor as if he owned the place, the quickness of his strides creating a definite problem for the Three Little Pigs who were chasing after him.

"Nils," I whispered to Bernice, indicating the gladiator.

"Helen, Grace, and Lucille," she whispered back, nodding toward the pigs.

I checked their names off my mental list. That accounted for just about everyone. I loved it when a good plan came together.

Bernice motioned toward the opposite end of the room with a head bob. "Sherlock and the Baron are slopping either mincemeat or lumpy grape jelly on crackers in the cold fish line. You can check them out if you want, but Doc is charting everyone's location and movements on her clipboard, so she'll be giving you the lowdown on what's happening every fifteen minutes or so. No need for you to run yourself ragged."

"Which one of you is Doc?"

"Margi. And she's taking our vital signs in her spare time. The person with the lowest average heart rate at the end of the evening wins a prize."

I stared at Bernice, realizing that I'd been transported to some weird parallel universe but not knowing how to react. I cast a long look across the room at Shelly and the Dicks, grappling with my next move. "Look, Bernice, would you mind taking over with Jonathan while I talk to Sneezy and Dopey? I'll only be a minute."

"But Emily," Jonathan whined.

"You go right ahead, dear." She plucked the fork gently from my fingers. "Take all the time you need. We'll be fine right here, won't we?" she asked Jonathan as she sat down beside him. "So what kind of tree are you anyway? Crab or apple?"

Eyes narrowed, boot heels pounding, I strutted across the floor, circling around the giggling Dicks to grab them by the scruff of their fat little necks. "What's this I hear about you deserting your posts?" I whispered as I herded them out of line and steered them toward an open space on the floor. I spun them around to face me. "Do you have anything to say for yourselves?"

Dick Stolee thundered out a sneeze. Dick Teig went curiously rigid. He parted his lips and pointed a pudgy forefinger at me, garbled sounds bubbling up from his throat as he looked me up and down.

"Balls," snarled Dick Stolee as he dried his eyes. "I think my allergies are kicking up a --" His mouth fell open as his gaze collided with mine. He seized Dopey's arm, leaning into him for support. "Geez, Emily, that's...that's some outfit." Dopey mouthed something into his ear.

"What's he saying?" I asked.

"Sounds like
'Gaaaaaaaa.'"

"Listen, you two: enough with the detours to follow Shelly. You're on Percy and Basil. Got it?"

Dick Stolee hitched his wide leather belt up over the round mound of his belly. "Say -- uh, Emily, do you need anyone to follow you around? Bodyguards? We could change assignments with someone. You give the word, and we could be all over you, couldn't we, Dick?"

Dopey nodded enthusiastically before gasping out more sounds.

"Is he suffering a stroke?" I asked, concerned.

Dick Stolee shook his head. "Nope. He's volunteering to be a guinea pig for any demonstrations you'd like to give with your lasso."

"Come on, you two. Get going. I'm counting on you."

"Bernice sent you over here, didn't she?" Dick Stolee grumbled as he thundered out another sneeze. "Damned tattletale. Even when she's being nice she's a pain in the butt."

As they waddled off, I turned back to the buffet line, getting a bead on the Sugar Plum Fairy as she exited the queue, her tutu fluttering around her hips like a many-layered halo. "Shelly," I called, catching up to her.

"Awesome getup," she said from behind her feathered mask. She doubled her fist to butt knuckles with me. "Girl power. What's up? Were you as sick as I was last night? Man, I was just looking for the right hole to die in."

"I spent the night in the infirmary. Something in my eye. Say, I have a quick question. Do you happen to know if Professor Smoker ever signed up for an Indian-cooking course at your college union?"

"Oh, sure. He signed up for those things all the time. He was a real paragon of virtue. Golf and Indian cuisine were his only vices."

I guessed boinking a large percentage of the student population wasn't considered a vice. "Okay. Thanks." I turned on my boot heel, only to wheel around again. "One more question. Did you happen to speak to Bailey yesterday before you ran off to your manicure appointment?"

The eyes beneath her feathered mask went blank for a moment before refocusing. "I didn't see Bailey yesterday. In fact, I don't think I've seen her since Dori's lecture." She shrugged her flawlessly white shoulders. "It's a big ship." She twirled on her toe shoes, sizing up available seating. "Things are really starting to get crowded. Do you have room for me at your table, Emily?"

"Sure. The more the merrier." Could I make this any easier for Bernice?

"Oh, good. Where are you sitting?"

"The table at two o'clock."

She followed my gaze. "With the dwarf and the broccoli spear?" Her mouth turned down at the corners. "Mmm...I don't think so. Thanks anyway."

"She's a terrific little dwarf!" I called after her. "You'd really like her!" But Shelly kept walking until she found an empty spot at a table with a couple of pirates, a Roaring Twenties flapper, and a bald-headed Friar Tuck who was sporting a full beard. Marking the location of her table on my mental map, I directed my gaze back to Jonathan, disheartened by my own success.

This was just great. All the puzzle pieces were there. Time. Place. Location. Opportunity. All I had to do was nudge them together. So why was it that the one time I wanted to be wrong about something, I was dead on? Except for figuring out what happened to the treasure. Was that Jonathan's work, too? Had he offed Professor Smoker
and
stolen Tilly's box? Was he the one who'd Maced me? Could he do that with two arms in a sling, or had he enlisted someone else to help him with his dirty work?

I heaved a frustrated sigh. How come all my answers were only producing more questions?

"I'm fetching Jonathan course number two," Bernice announced as she crab-walked around me, bent beneath the weight of her dowager's hump. "He's the nicest fella. If he was a half century older, I'd take him home with me. I've always wanted to know what it'd be like dating a younger man."

Oh, no, they were bonding. This was terrible! "Thanks, Bernice," I said distractedly. "I owe you."

She paused before scuttling back to me, looking up at me with her grizzled little ex-smoker's face. "You got anything on you for general malaise, Emily? I don't know what's wrong with me tonight, but I'm not feeling quite myself."

I should have seen this coming -- being agreeable was making her sick. "I don't have anything on me, Bernice, but I could run back to the cabin. I have lots of over-the-counter stuff."

She waved off the suggestion. "I don't want to take you away from anything, dear. Never mind. I'll survive."

As I bolstered my courage to head back to the table, I looked toward the entrance to find Darth making his way back to me, cloak flying, shoulders squared, looking like an evil lord with an agenda. I gave him a little finger wave, feeling an inexplicable thrill when he cupped his gloved hands around my head and droned, "You're so beautiful. You should be illegal." I suspected he might have kissed me then if his mouth hadn't been trapped behind the grill of a Dodge Ram truck. "Have I given you time enough to think about my question, Emily? Will you give me your answer?"

His question? Oh, my God. It was
Duncan
who'd popped the question? But...but how could I give him an answer? I was in the middle of a criminal investigation! I was on the trail of a killer! Was he completely blind to the fact that I was a little preoccupied at the moment?

"We've had a little incident at our table," Nana said as she scampered breathlessly toward me. "We done just what you said, Emily. Snow and me come right out and asked Bailey if we could join her for dinner, and she seemed real pleased to have us, so all of us was sittin' there eatin' when it happened."

I blinked numbly. "When what happened?"

"When a little chain she was wearin' slid right down her bosom. She had a devil of a time findin' it 'cause she wasn't wearin' no push-up bra, but she eventually fished it out. It was the little ring on the clasp what come apart. She was so upset, I offered to fetch her some tweezers so she could fix it, but then Margi come along, so I didn't need to. It was real strange though, Emily. It was like Bailey didn't want no one touchin' it."

"Margi had tweezers?"

"Forceps. Trust me. That ring'll never come apart again. Oh, look, dear. Isn't that Shelly, dressed like the Sugar Plum Fairy? Looks like she's callin' it a night."

Shelly? I poked my head around Darth just in time to see her tutu disappear behind a small swarm of killer bees.
Oh, no!
No one was tailing her! Where was Bernice?

"Emily," implored Darth, in his answering machine monotone.

Nana squinted up at him. "Are you s'posed to sound like that, or is your mask defective?"

"I'm supposed to sound like this." He paused. "Why? Do you think I'm too nasally?"

"Where's Bernice?" I ranted, standing on tiptoe to scan the nearest buffet islands. When I couldn't find her, I grabbed Nana's arm. "Follow Shelly. I'll send Bernice to take over as soon as I find her."

"Roger that," she said, saluting me with her axe handle.

Darth stepped in front of me, blocking my view with eight towering feet of
Made in China
polyester and plastic.
"WHAT
...is going on?"

"Wait! There she is. S'cuse me." I raced after Bernice, breathless when I reached her. "Shelly's gone. Nana's tailing her. If you hurry, you can catch both of them."

She shoved a plate of hot entrees at me. "Give this to Jonathan. Which way did they go?"

Which way did they go?
People actually said that? "Out the main entrance. Hurry." I took a deep breath as Sherlock Holmes and the Red Baron sauntered casually past me -- "A -- CHOOOO!" -- with Sneezy and Dopey nipping at their heels.

I rushed back to Darth, my heart leaping into my mouth when I saw Catwoman prance idly by him, she and her overlong tail looking to be headed for the nearest exit.
Uff da!
What was going on? Why were people leaving so early? What was I supposed to do? Follow Jennifer? Stay with Jonathan? DAMN!

I dished off the plate to Darth and nodded in the direction of my table. "Please. Would you deliver this to the broccoli spear over there?"