Sammy Keyes and the Killer Cruise (11 page)

Darren and Marko whip around to look. “Who’s busted?”

“Don’t!” I tell them, and kick them under the table.

Marko whips back around. “Hey, you can’t go, ‘busted,’ and have us not look!”

“That’s right!” Darren says, frowning at me like I’ve just spit in holy water or something.

Marissa’s keeping one eye on Bradley and the other on me. “Why busted?”

“That is one angry-looking man,” Marko says, glancing over his shoulder.

“Stop looking!”

He does, but he keeps talking. “Obviously, his mama didn’t let him play the drums as a child.”

Which, yeah, seemed about right. I couldn’t picture him—or any Kensington, for that matter—cutting loose on the drums.

“But why busted?” Marissa asks again.

“Uh … it’s supposed to be in the vault?” I say, kinda low.

Marissa’s eyes quit doing the splits as she focuses on only me. “How can you know something I don’t?”

Darren leans in, too. “You haven’t told her?” he asks, and it’s maddening the way he’s grinning.

Marissa punches a fist onto her hip. “Told me what?”

Marko zooms in, too, wiggling his eyebrows. “About your secret midnight rendezvous?”

“What?” Marissa asks. “With who?”

“You guys are terrible!” I tell Marko and Darren. “You’re total … troublemakers!”

Darren seems pleased. “That we are.”

“Now open the vault, matey!” Marko growls, giving me a piratey look.

So I do, telling them about Kip’s little Internet adventure and how his uncle Bradley’s daughters—and probably his wife—lied about being sick. And I’m just winding
down when I notice someone lurking on the other side of Dessert Island.

Someone paying way too much attention to pies and cakes without actually putting anything on his tray.

“What?” Darren says, looking over his shoulder.

“Stop!” I hiss at him.

“Well, stop looking over there!” he hisses back.

“It’s Kip,” Marissa tells him. “Spying on his uncle.”

Marko is actually
bubbling
. “Dude, don’t you feel like you’re back spying on the Flemings?”

“Only now we don’t get to see anything!” Darren grumbles. “We just get kicked and told to quit looking.”

“Who are the Flemings?” I ask.

“Neighbors,” they say at the same time. And they both shake their heads in the same way as they eye each other.

Like there’s no way they could even begin to explain.

“Finish your story,” Marissa says, but her eyes are doing the splits between Bradley and me again.

So I finish it quick, and remind them that I’d told Kip I wouldn’t tell anyone about his little computer find and that they need to close the vault about it.

“Who am I going to tell?” Marko says.

I can see the wheels turning in Darren’s head, though, so I ask him, “What?”

“What what?” he asks back.

“Don’t give me that. I can tell you’re thinking something.”

He sort of eyes me. “What I’m thinking is that kids are both stupider and smarter than we were as kids.”

Marko’s eyebrows go flying. “Stupider than us? Than
us
?”

“Well, it is
we
,” Darren says.

“Okay, Mr. Grammar.
We
hid from the principal on the roof of the school and then couldn’t get down, remember that?”

“Hey, that was
your
idea.”

“Whose idea was it to sneak into the Flemings’ basement? And why?”

Darren mutters something that none of us can understand.

“Say it!” Marko demands.

He sighs. “Because there was gold down there.”

“Gold. In the Flemings’ basement. They didn’t even own a car, and you thought there was gold.”

Darren gives a little shrug. “Or maybe maps to gold?”

Marko turns to us. “But instead we found gnats! Thousands of mean, biting gnats.”

Darren shudders. “They were no-see-ums. Invisible stealth biters.”

“The bites lasted weeks!”

“And
itched
 …”

“And you told everyone we’d been attacked by biting ghosts.”

“Biting ghosts!” Marissa and I cry.

Darren frowns. “I was eight, okay?”

“And then there was the time we were playing dodge, and we crashed our dirt bikes
into each other
fifteen miles from anywhere, remember that?”

“You can stop right there,” Darren tells him through his teeth.

Marko backs down. “Just sayin’. We had our fair share of stupid.”

Now, really, I want to say, Don’t stop! Because I’m having a really good time picturing the two of them as kids, getting into scrapes and trouble.

It makes me feel like … well, like we have something in common.

But then Marissa gets out of her seat and says, “Bradley’s leaving. Dessert time. You take the far end, I’ll come in from this side.”

The weird thing is, I know exactly what she means, but the real question is, Why?

So I ask.

“Why?”

“Kip heard everything!”

And for probably the first time in our friendship, I’m the one to go, “Who cares?”

But she gives me one of her stern looks and a scoopy little wave, so what can do? I roll my eyes and follow her.

“Watch out for gnats!” Marko warns.

“And biting ghosts,” Darren adds.

Which makes me laugh. I mean, how cool is that, to be able to make fun of your own dorky selves?

Anyway, Marissa circles Dessert Island from the left and I swoop in from the right, and Kip doesn’t stand a chance.

“Whoa!” he says, jumping back a little.

“Did you get all that?” I ask him.

His eyes dart back and forth as he death grips an empty tray. “Get all what?”

“Uncle Bradley’s intense conversation.”

“You’ve been spying on me?”

“Uh, I think
you
were the one spying?”

Marissa nods. “We were just observing.”

“And what we observed,” I tell him, “is that you were spying.”

He blinks. First at me, then at Marissa. Then all of a sudden I notice that his eyes are getting all glassy, and he’s all, like, choked up. Or maybe choked off. Or, you know,
trapped
. And in that moment I feel really sorry for him. I mean, who spends their cruise spying on some angry uncle? Why isn’t he hanging out with his cousin or his mom or some random teens in the arcade, or rock climbing or mini-golfing? Or at least eating some dessert!

Obviously, being part of a fragrance empire isn’t as easy as it seems.

So I grab a dish of chocolate mousse, stick in a huge strawberry, put it on his empty tray, and make my confession. “I told Marissa about last night.”

I’m expecting him to freak out, but he just shakes his head fast and says, “This isn’t about that.” He looks down. “This is actually really bad.”

Marissa and I both stare at him like, Well?

“Grandmother’s missing.”

Now, excuse me, but the first thing I do is laugh. I mean, come on. It’s a big boat. And when you’re rolling in dough and your nephew’s the cruise director, you could be anywhere!

“This is serious!” he says, all serious-like.

“Sorry,” I tell him, “but she’s got to be someplace, right? The casino? Having breakfast with the captain? Drinking champagne in the Cloud 9 Bar?”

Kip shakes his head. “They haven’t found her, and I don’t think they will.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t think she’s on the ship.”

“But we haven’t docked and—” I blink at him as what he said sinks in. “You think she
jumped
?”

He shakes his head super-fast. “Grandmother would never jump. And Grandfather’s urn is still in the suite.”

“So?”

“So if she did jump, she would have taken him with her!” He looks all around, then drops his voice. “I think she was pushed.”

“Pushed?” Marissa gasps. “As in overboard? As in
murdered
?”

Kip’s death grip on the tray sure isn’t getting any looser, and he’s shaking so much that the giant strawberry I’d jammed into his mousse is sorta falling over, and the shiny strawberry seeds suddenly seem like tiny windows on a big red ship to me. A big red ship that’s tilting over in a sea of foamy chocolate.

I shake off the thought and grab him by the arm, ’cause obviously he’s having a meltdown. “Come with us.”

But when he sees we’re headed over to Darren and Marko, he pulls back. “I’ve got to go.”

“You’ve got to sit,” I tell him, and kinda shove him into a chair.

His tray thumps and bumps and the Strawberry Titanic keels completely over.

“So we meet again,” Darren says with an eyebrow cocked.

“That’s one sad-looking dessert,” Marko tells him, eyeing the Strawberry Titanic.

I look Kip square in the eye and just come out with it: “They know, too.”

“About …?” He searches my face, but fear’s written all over his because he knows exactly what I’m talking about. “But you said—”

“That was before you ditched me in the hallway at two in the morning.”

“But … why did you tell them? Why didn’t you just make something up?”

Darren focuses on him. “What was that?”

Marko shakes his head and does a little tisk. “Kipster, that was a bad move.”

Kip tries to get up, but I pull him back down. “Look, I wasn’t going to
lie
, but you also don’t have to worry—it’s not like you did anything wrong. And it’s not like we’re going to be talking to anyone in your family about it.”

“You don’t understand!” he cries, jumping up.

I yank him down again. “What I
do
understand is that you’re sneaking around this ship all by yourself, spying on people, and freaking out about your grandmother.”

“The alien queen?” Marko asks.

Marissa and I cry, “Marko!” and Darren does his best to run interference by asking, “What happened with your grandmother?”

He’s asking sincerely, so I look at Kip like, Well? and finally Kip says, “She’s missing.”

Marko’s and Darren’s eyebrows go flying, and they say, “Missing?” Then they look at each other quick, the eyebrows come down, and they turn back to Kip and go, “Did you check the casino?”

“She’s not in the casino!”

“How about somewhere in here?” Marko asks. “It’s a big buffet.”

Darren nods. “Or the bars? The bars are always open.”

Now it’s my turn to run interference. I give Darren and Marko a cool-it signal, then tell Kip, “Look, you’re obviously upset about your grandmother, and you obviously need someone to talk to.”

“Well,
you’re
a bad choice!”

So yeah. He’s also obviously ticked off.

“Actually, she’s a great choice,” Marissa tells him.

He snorts. “Right.”

“She is. And I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have Sammy to talk to.”

“Likewise with Marko here,” Darren tells him.

“Dude!” Marko gushes, and blows him a kiss.

Well, after
that
has a few seconds to clear, I tell Kip, “The point is, if you think someone shoved your grandmother overboard—”

“Whoa! Wait!” Marko says. “What’s this?”

“Hold on,” I tell him, then turn back to Kip. “Who
can
you talk to?”

He just looks down and shakes his head.

“Your mom?”

He shakes it some more.

“JT?”

His head snaps up. “No way!”

“So …?”

There’s a long silence, and finally he says, “Grandfather was the only one.”

I just blink at him. “Uh … not much conversation happening there.”

“I know,” he says, and really, it looks like his eyes are about to bust loose with tears.

“Dude,” Marko says. “You want to come play my drums?”

Marissa and I turn on him. “Marko!”

“I’m serious! It’s great therapy.”

Darren slaps Marko on the back. “It would probably help if we left.”

“Dude, it’s just getting interesting!”

Darren stands and drags Marko out of his seat, then gives Kip a little smirk. “It’s not like I talked to my mother when I was your age, and I sure didn’t talk to other people’s parents. Mostly I talked to Marko here, even though he’s always given questionable advice.”

“Dude! I give great advice! This boy needs to bash on something, can’t you see that?”

Darren just pulls him along, telling us, “So maybe we’ll go catch some rays while you talk things through.” And since none of us are begging him to stay, he adds, “How about I meet you in that Lido Library at three o’clock? We’ll get you online.”

“That’d be great!” I tell him.

The minute they’re gone, I scoot around so I’m facing Kip better and look him square in the eye. “The person I love most in the world is my grandmother.”

“Hey!” Marissa cries.

“Sorry!” I turn back to Kip. “But it’s true. There’d be this huge hole in my heart that nobody could patch
up if she died. So I get what you’re saying about your grandfather.”

Which, big help, makes him actually cry. I hand him a napkin, but he wipes his face with his hands instead. And when he’s mostly dried up, I ask, “Your grandfather was your mother’s father, right? And Kate’s your mother’s mother?”

He nods.

“So your mom’s got to be upset about all this, too. She would understand how you feel, wouldn’t she?”

Only instead of nodding, he shakes his head. “She resents them. Maybe even hates them.”

My eyes squint down. “She
hates
them? Why?”

“Because of me.”

“You?”

“Grandfather brought me here from Kenya. He thought my mother needed a child.”

“Wait. Whoa.
What?
”

Kip nods. “That was pretty much my mother’s reaction.”

“Can you actually remember her reaction?” Marissa asks. “How old were you?”

“Eight.”

“But …” I shake my head. “What was he doing in Kenya? And why you?”

“He was buying a shea tree plantation.”

“A what?”

“You know—the stuff they make shea butter out of? For creams and stuff?”

“So …?”

“And I was an orphan and a …”

He just drifts off, so I say, “And a what?”

He looks away. “A thief. You know.”

“No! I don’t know!”

“You do what you have to do to eat, okay? There was never enough at the orphanage.” He shrugs. “But he caught me, and instead of punishing me, he hired me to help him. He taught me things, too. The second time he came, I was so happy to see him. I didn’t want him to leave.”