Sammy Keyes and the Killer Cruise (12 page)

“So he brought you back with him?” Marissa asks, and when he nods, we both just stare until Marissa finally says, “So it was your grandfather’s idea and your grandmother went along with it?”

“That’s the way it always was. I never saw her disagree with him.” He shakes his head a little. “And I spent a lot of time with them. Grandfather seemed to really like having me around. And Grandmother has always been very kind to me.”

“But not your mother?” I ask as gently as I can.

“She hasn’t been unkind,” he says with another little shrug. “She just never wanted a child. She travels a lot and is really into her fashion business.”

Marissa shakes her head. “So why didn’t she just tell him no?”

“None of them ever told him no.”

Now, he doesn’t actually have a sneer on his face, but I can sure hear one in his voice. So my brain races around and finally out of my mouth comes, “Because he was so … powerful?”

He eyes me. “Because he was so rich.”

My brain races around some more. “So he could, what,
bribe
her into taking you?”

He frowns. “Right before he and Grandmother took that last trip where he had his heart attack, I overheard him begging my mom to become a real mother to me—to stop doing it just for the money.” He shakes his head. “Everything started making sense.”

“Wow,” I say after a minute. “That’s awful.”

“Still better than my life before,” he mutters. “By miles.”

“Okay, but back to your grandmother,” Marissa says. “Why would anyone want to push her overboard?”

“Things were always tense between my uncles and my mother, but since Grandfather died, it’s been really bad—especially since Grandmother was so mysterious about the will.”

Marissa scoops out a bite of chocolate foam. “We overheard that she wants to sell the company and build a hospital in Africa last night at dinner.”

“You did?”

She nods. “It didn’t seem to go over too well. And why get everyone on a cruise to tell them what’s in the will?”

Kip takes a deep breath. “Grandfather wanted his ashes to be scattered at sea, and Grandmother used the will as a bribe to get everyone together. She said a week at sea would tell her things she needed to know.”

“Like whether Bradley should run the company?”

His eyes pop. “How do you know about
that
?”

So I tell him how JT’s parents had come storming down the hall all angry about what Bradley had said, and at
first Kip’s kinda stunned, and then he shakes his head fast and says, “There’s no way Grandfather said Bradley should run the company. It’s just another one of his lies!” Then he kind of scowls and says, “It’s true about Uncle Lucas and Aunt LuAnn, though. I don’t think either of them has ever had a job.”

“But still,” Marissa says. “None of this means anyone pushed Kate overboard!”

Kip looks at me, then at Marissa, then back at me. And I can tell he’s weighing something in his head, so I say, “We’re obviously trying to help, right? So just tell us.”

He gives a little nod and keeps his voice low as he says, “Last night when I finally got up the nerve to slip that printout of my cousins under Grandmother’s door, I could hear voices. There were people in there, yelling.”

I lean in a little and drop my voice, too. “Could you tell who?”

“No. But for their voices to make it through that cabin door? They had to be pretty loud.”

“Could you tell if the voices were male or female?”

“Both. But I didn’t stick around! Or leave the paper. I was afraid of getting caught, so I came running down, and that’s when I bumped into you.” He looks down. “Which is why I was so freaked out. I’m sorry I just ran off.”

I study him a minute and ask, “Was your mother in your cabin when you got back to your room?”

“No. She snuck back in at two-thirty.”

“So she could have been one of the people fighting in the Royal Suite, which means if your grandmother really is missing, she might have had something to do with it.”

He covers his eyes with a hand. “I was so grateful to her. I tried so hard to please her! But then I found out about Grandfather paying her, and now this?” He gives me a pleading look, then says, “But she is a night owl. She works on her designs on her laptop clear through the night sometimes. So maybe that’s what she was doing.”

“You didn’t ask her?”

He shakes his head. “She wouldn’t have told me anyway.”

Now, I’ve been trying to avoid telling him something else, because when you line up all the “overhearing” I’ve done, well, it sounds like I’m the world’s worst snoop. But it just doesn’t seem fair
not
to tell him, so I finally fess up about Kate and Ginger in the Cheesy Say-Cheese Aisle and about, uh,
accidentally
overhearing Kate say she was going to call a midnight meeting to discuss the rest of the will.

At first Kip does look at me like I’m the snoop monster. But then he focuses on what’s important. “So they were
all
in there?”

I give a little shrug. “Your grandmother seems like someone who can get people to show up at midnight meetings.”

Kip thinks a minute, then goes, “Wow. Whatever else is in the will must be really bad.”

“Is the hospital actually written in it?” Marissa asks.

Kip shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“What else is there besides the company?” she asks. “Stocks? Bonds? Cash? Real estate? Valuable art?”

“I don’t know! It’s not like I sat around talking about
it! Grandfather and I talked about things like astronomy and chemistry and physics … not money!”

“Okay,” Marissa says, scraping out the mousse dish, “so let’s assume that the company is the main thing, and that selling it to build a hospital is
not
actually in writing. What happens if your grandmother dies before that gets carried out?”

Kip looks a little lost. “It depends on what’s in Grandmother’s will?”

“And if what’s in her will is that the kids inherit everything, then getting rid of your grandmother would mean your mother and uncles would go from getting whatever’s left over after the hospital is built to getting
everything
.”

Kip stares at her a minute, then looks over both shoulders. “They can’t know we suspect them,” he whispers. Then he looks right at us and says, “And they can’t know
you
know.”

“Us?” I try to laugh it off, but the truth is, I do have the creeps.

The big-time, don’t-ignore-me creeps.

And I can’t help looking around, too, and feeling worried that we’re being watched. Because as big as the ship is, I’m realizing we’re trapped.

Trapped on the high seas, with psycho-rich killers who are not afraid of tossing their problems overboard.

I’m feeling totally paranoid as I’m checking around everywhere, but then I realize something.

It’s only about noon.

What if Kate was just … shopping?

So I take a deep breath and say, “Okay. Back up.
Why
do you think Kate is missing?”

“Aunt Ginger called everyone together and told us she was!”

“Well, how does
she
know?”

“She said Grandmother’s bed was not slept in, and that when she got up to use the bathroom at six o’clock, she had to close the balcony door, because it had been left open.”

“Wait, so your great-aunt is staying in the Royal Suite, too?”

Kip nods.

“Well … she must’ve been there, then! And she wouldn’t let someone throw your grandmother overboard!”

“I don’t
know
that she was there! After she told us Grandmother was missing, my mother made me leave. I said I wanted to help, but she made me leave, and I haven’t seen her since.”

I think about that a minute, then ask, “What did you hear Bradley say when you were over by Dessert Island?”

“Dessert Island?”

“You know …” I wave over to where he’d been standing. “Over there!”

He covers his face, and at first I think that, after all this, he’s still worried about telling us, but it turns out he’s just trying to remember. “He kept saying, ‘Find out. Find out and get back to me.’ He said it over and over.”

“Who do you think he was talking to?”

“A lawyer. I’m pretty sure it was a lawyer.”

“Why?”

“Because he told him, ‘I’ll litigate it all the way to hell, if that’s what it takes!’ ”

“Wow.” I think about it a minute, then ask, “What
do
they do if someone goes missing on a cruise? Ginger’s reported it, right? If they think she’s overboard, wouldn’t they turn the ship around and look for her floating in the water?”

“You don’t just turn a cruise ship around,” Marissa says. “It’s like turning an island around.”

“Then what do they do if someone falls overboard?”

Marissa gives a little shrug. “Put out a life raft? Throw out a buoy? Call the Coast Guard?”

“Have they done that?” I ask Kip. “Have they done anything?”

“I don’t know!”

We’re all quiet a minute, and then Marissa gets us back on track with, “What about Noah? Could he help figure out where your grandmother is?”

“Noah,” he says, and it comes out all breathy. Then he stands up, saying, “Noah’s a great idea. Let’s go!”

We hurry to keep up with him as he hightails it out of the Schooner Buffet and down the stairs. Trouble is, he stops after one flight and heads for the hallway.

Right for the Royal Suite.

“Wait!” I cry, grabbing his arm.

“We’re not going in
there
,” he whispers, then takes off down the hallway to the front of the ship.

“Then where?” I ask when we’re past the alien hive.

“Noah’s room is up by the bridge.”

Marissa zips ahead of me to catch up with him. “Is it by the captain’s quarters?”

I try to walk next to her but there are trays of dirty dishes and cleaning carts in the way, so it’s not easy. “How do you know where the captain’s quarters are? And what’s the bridge?” I was picturing something arching over water.

“You know—the control center?” Marissa throws over her shoulder. “It’s full of computer screens and monitoring systems and stuff. My parents were platinum club members and we got a tour once.”

We’re passing by the forward sets of stairs now, plowing straight ahead, and Kip says, “Uncle Noah told me his room was second from the end on the port side.”

“That’s the left side, right?” I ask, and he goes, “Right, the left,” and actually grins over his shoulder at me.

It turns out that the door to the room second from the end on the port side was open. So Kip sticks his head inside and calls, “Uncle Noah?”

But there’s a cleaning cart out in the hallway, and
instead of Noah, a woman with black hair pulled back into a bun comes to the door. “Mr. Marlowe is not here,” she says, flashing top teeth that are outlined in silver. She pulls a paper from her smock’s pocket, unfolds it, and shows it to Kip. It’s today’s Cruzer Calendar, and she points to the events column and says, “Mr. Marlowe is at bingo now.”

I glance at the list of activities scheduled for the day and ask, “He has to be at
all
those things?” Because there are events listed from seven in the morning until eleven at night.

“Oh, yes,” she says. “Mr. Marlowe is a hardworking man.”

We tell her thanks, then do a U-turn and zip down the stairs to Deck 3, where bingo is already in full swing inside the Poseidon Theater.

Now, compared to how sunny and bright it had been at the Schooner Buffet, the theater seems really dim. There’s a big digital board with lit-up numbers and letters in front of the closed stage curtains, and the room is speckled with players—not packed, but with the size of the auditorium, there are actually a lot of people, maybe two hundred? But they’re all spread out and … quiet.

And mostly old.

There is someone on the stage announcing squares, but it’s not Noah, and after we’ve scanned the room for a minute, I ask Kip, “Do you see him?”

He shakes his head, and Marissa pipes up with, “Usually the cruise director opens and closes shows and activities. He doesn’t stick around for the whole thing.”

“Maybe he’s backstage?” I look at Marissa. “Do you know what’s back there?”

She shrugs. “Never been.”

Well, that was a first. And for once I was wishing she
did
know all about it already, but since she didn’t, I started thinking that there had to be a door off to the side of the stage, and that going through it would be like sneaking through an employees-only door at the Santa Martina Mall—you go in, look around, and either find what you’re looking for or get kicked out.

So I start cutting through an empty aisle of seats, heading over to where I figure the door must be.

Right away, Kip gets nervous. “Where are we going?”

I whisper, “Backstage, I hope,” and keep on moving.

“Why don’t we just wait for bingo to finish?”

Behind me, I can hear Marissa whisper, “Because that would be too easy.”

I glance at them over my shoulder. “Do you really want to watch old people play bingo for an hour?”

Well, the answer’s obviously
no
, because they follow me.

And I’m right about there being a door.

Actually, there are two.

Trouble is, both of them are latched and have key-code pads.

“Look at you,” Marissa whispers as I scout out the area. “Your eyes are all bright, your cheeks are all flushed, that crazy brain of yours is off to the races trying to figure out how to get back there.” She leans in toward me and says,
“Of all the things you might get for your birthday, nothing’s going to compete with this, is it?”

“What are you talking about?”

She just snickers. “You know what I’m talking about.”

“So we wait?” Kip asks, not really tuning in to what Marissa’s teasing me about.

Marissa snickers again, but this time she doesn’t actually
say
anything.

And she’s right.

I’m terrible at waiting.

So I do the only thing I can think to do when I’m blocked by a locked door.

I knock.

“What? No!” Kip whispers.

“Why not?” I ask him, and knock again.