Sammy Keyes and the Killer Cruise (22 page)

“About
what
?”

I nod down the hallway. “There he goes.”

“So
what
?”

“So just watch!”

Sure enough, Bradley stops about midship and knocks on a door. Then he goes next door and knocks on another. And a minute later, Lucas steps out of the second room, and both men go into the first.

Teresa’s room.

At least, I figure, it must be.

“Wow,” I gasp after the doors are closed.

“ ‘Wow’?” Marissa asks. “Why ‘wow’?”

“Three of them, mortal enemies, all in one room?” I look at her. “This is big!”

She just rolls her eyes. “Who says they’re mortal enemies? They’re siblings. They fight. So what?” Then she does a smarty-pants hike of an eyebrow and says, “Kip’s mom and JT’s parents were in line together when we boarded the ship. They booked rooms right next to each other. That doesn’t seem like mortal enemies to me.”

“I’m pretty sure Kate’s the one who arranged everything. And since then one of their sons has punched the other’s son in the nose!”

Marissa’s eyebrows stay in smarty-pants position. “Seems like Teresa would be pretty apologetic about that. Especially since, according to Kip, she doesn’t act very motherly toward him.”

“Well, what about Bradley? They were barely talking when we saw them in the Royal Suite, and now he’s meeting with them, carrying a big ol’ sandwich of papers?”

She squints at me. “A big ol’ sandwich of papers?”

“Folder! Portfolio! Whatever! The point is, the three of them are meeting, and not in some public place.” I grab her by the arm. “Come on.”

“Come on where?” she cries as I drag her along.

“Up to the Royal Suite.”

“Why?”

“To see if Kip’s there!”

So up we go, back up to Deck 10, and this time we
don’t make like ice sculptures on the landing. We go straight to the Royal Suite door and ring the bell.

Now, I know the place is big and that it would take a little while to walk from, say, the living room to the door. So I’m willing to be patient, but Marissa is not. After five seconds she says, “No one home, let’s go.”

I yank her back. “Give it a minute.” Then I wait, like, two more seconds and ring the bell again, this time twice.

After a few more seconds, Marissa frowns and says, “Obviously, nobody’s here.”

“What if they’re on the balcony and can’t hear?” I ask.

“They? Who’re they?” Marissa asks while I jab the bell, like, twenty times.

“Kip or Ginger!”

She rolls her eyes. “Can we please go? We already missed the sail, but there’s still yogurt cones and sunshine calling our names!”

But just then the door pulls open, and we find ourselves face to face with Ginger.

She doesn’t smile when she sees us, that’s for sure. And all of a sudden I remember about Kensington Clue, and I’m pretty sure the frown’s not just because her sister’s still missing—it’s because I’m on her blacklist.

So instead of asking her if Kip has moved into the suite, I tell her, “We have news.”

She stares at me. “News?”

I nod. And I try to look very serious and a little mysterious, because now I want
in
so I can check for Kip myself.

“Well?” she asks.

So I look over both shoulders, then whisper, “Probably not a good idea to discuss it in a hallway?”

She stares at me some more, then calls, “Company!” over her shoulder and lets us inside.

Now, she’s not exactly
young
, but she’s walking so slowly that I can’t help but think that she’s trying to block us from getting down the hallway too quickly. And my mind is racing around, wondering why she would have to warn Kip that we were there, but then it hits me that they’re probably working on decoding the notes and she doesn’t want me to see them … which means they
haven’t
figured out what they say yet, which means that Kate is probably still missing, which means …

Only it’s not Kip we see when we turn the corner.

It’s Noah.

Noah and I both go, “Oh!” and do a little bob backward, but then almost right away, I hit him with, “Nice noose.”

“Noose?” Ginger says, and looks back and forth, back and forth between us.

“You didn’t think that was funny?” Noah asks me.

“You put it in my room! On my bed!”

“A noose?” Ginger asks. “In her room?” She blinks at him. “On her bed?”

Noah looks away. “Yeah, I thought later that it might not have been the best idea.”

“Noah!”

“Sorry, Mom,” he says, like a sheepish little boy.

“But why on earth would you do such a thing?”

All of a sudden, I feel kind of defensive of Noah. I mean, maybe grown men shouldn’t be putting nooses in girls’ cabins, but watching him be scolded by his mother?

It’s embarrassing.

And besides, we’d started it, right?

So I cut in and say, “It’s a long story. And we, uh, we gave him the rope to begin with, so …”

She does the whole back-and-forth thing again, and it’s obvious she wants to know what in the world this rope thing’s about, so Noah finally says, “I’ll explain later, okay, Mom?”

“Yes, you will,” she tells him, then turns a stern eye on me. “Now, what news do you have?”

I move a little deeper into the Royal Suite, saying, “First, have you seen Kip today?”

“Kip?” Ginger says, and when I look back at her, she’s just standing there, staring at me.

“Yeah, you know …,” I say as I edge toward the living room, “… your grandnephew?”

“Of course I know who Kip is!” She hurries after me, asking, “Why do you think he’s here?”

Now, the way she says it makes me think she’s hiding something. Either that or she doesn’t want me snooping around her sister’s fancy suite. So I do a quick scan around while I tell her, “I didn’t say that I did. I just asked if you’d seen him today.”

Noah steps in, saying, “It’s okay, Mom. They heard you offer to have Kip stay here, remember? I’m sure that’s why they’re looking for him here.” Then he looks at us and says, “Can we offer you something to drink?”

Just like that, Ginger seems to switch gears. “Yes,” she says. “Sorry for my lack of hospitality. There’s been so much … turmoil. But my sister would be mortified by my behavior.” She moves to the wet bar, saying, “What would you like to drink?” and it comes out kinda choked up.

“How about a round of pink lemonades?” Noah says. “And why don’t we talk on the balcony? It’s beautiful out there!”

Now, the first thing that flashes through my mind is, How does he know we like the pink lemonade? And the
next
thing that flashes through my mind is, There’s no way I’m going out on that balcony! I mean, didn’t Kip say that the balcony door had been open the morning after Kate went missing? So just the thought of going out there is giving me the creeps.

Only then my mind flashes back to Darren peeking through the deck dividers and telling me, “Don’t fall!” as I looked down a skyscraper of decks at the ocean below. And
that’s
when I connect the dots.

Or, I guess, the balconies.

All of a sudden, my heart is like a racehorse galloping away. I try to reign it in, try to tell myself,
Eeeeeasy, Sammy, whoa!
But I can’t help wondering if Bradley might have come back into the Royal Suite after the big fight by sneaking from his balcony to Kate’s, and then coming in through the balcony door.

What goes jolting through my mind is,
Wow. Yes. Murder
. So instead of telling Noah, Uh, no way I’m going out there, I say, “Sounds nice,” and head for the balcony so I can check it out.

“You think he wants us out here because they’re hiding something inside?” Marissa whispers as she follows me.

I blink at her. “Wow.”

She blinks back. “So what
are
you thinking?”

What I’m thinking is that I’m stupid, and that I should have listened to my gut about not going out onto the balcony. And I go to do a U-turn, only there’s Noah, standing in the doorway.

Noah, the guy with the key to any room.

Noah, the guy with the noose.

“So,” he says, corralling us like a couple of sheep, “what news do you have?”

I blink at him like, Oh, right, and then Ginger’s there with two glasses of lemonade. “Here you go, girls,” she says, as Noah lets her by and plants himself back in the doorway.

It feels like we’re trapped, and that any minute Noah’s going to charge and shove me overboard. I tell myself to calm down. I mean, it’s broad daylight! There are two of us! We would scream! People would see!

Besides, why would they kill us? We haven’t
done
anything.

But my mind’s also scrambling around, trying to figure out what we
might
have done. Or seen. Or heard.

Maybe we knew something we weren’t supposed to know and didn’t even know we knew it!

Maybe …

“Your news?” Ginger says, all sweetly.

I gulp down some lemonade. “Right. Well, a little while ago we ran into Bradley coming out of his suite.
His clothes were all rumpled, he was sweaty and blotchy-faced and his speech was slurred.” I look right at her. “He seemed drunk.”

Ginger gasps. “Are you sure?”

I look at Marissa, who nods and says, “Definitely drunk.”

“Oh, this is bad,” Noah mutters.

I turn to Noah. “We asked him about Kip, and he called him a conniving weasel, so I’m wondering … did you tell him about the printout? The one of the supposedly sick cousins?”

“No!”

“So why did he say that?”

Noah shakes his head like he doesn’t know, but what I’m picking up from him is that he
does
know but doesn’t want to say. And the way he’s still standing in the doorway is really starting to freak me out.

So I take a couple of casual steps toward Bradley’s balcony, thinking that moving away from Noah might lure him onto the balcony, so I can ditch it around him and get
off
the balcony. And after I’ve scooted away a bit, I tell Noah, “We followed him.”

“You followed
Bradley
?” Noah’s eyes get big, but he doesn’t budge. “That was not a wise thing to do.”

I take another step away from him and pretend to look out at the water. “You know where he went?”

Finally
, he comes onto the balcony. “Where?”

“To Teresa’s room. He and Lucas and Teresa are all in there right now, having a meeting.”

“Are you
sure
?” Ginger asks.

“Positive.”

At this point I’m all out of news. And Noah may be on the balcony, but there’s no way I’m going to be able to grab Marissa and duck around him. So I go over to the panel that divides the Royal Suite balcony from Bradley’s balcony and point to the big gap at the bottom of it. “Do you think he could have fit under here?”

“Who?” Noah says, coming toward me.

“Bradley. I’m thinking maybe he squeezed under and came in the balcony door after the big fight.”

Ginger is coming over now, too, going, “After the big fight?” and my heart is slamming around as I move aside and give Marissa a wide-eyed look.

Like, GET READY!

And the instant Ginger is far enough away from the door, I charge across the balcony, grab Marissa by the wrist, yank her through the balcony door, slam it shut, and lock it!

“What are you doing?” Marissa cries, and there’s Noah on the other side of the glass, all wild-eyed and manic-looking.

“Check the suite!” I cry to Marissa.

“For what?”

“For any sign of Kip! Or Kate! You go that way! I’ll go back here!” She’s just standing there, so I yell, “GO!”

So while she checks the bedrooms, I race through the rest of the suite, looking inside closets and under couches and in the bathroom and the kitchen and the trash baskets for any signs of Kip or blood or ropes or, you know,
foul play. And I’m scouring the living room when Marissa
screams
like she’s just found a corpse.

Only when I race over to her, I see that she hasn’t found a body.

Somebody’s found her.

It was Noah.

With Marissa.

In the hallway.

He had her by the arm and his face was all flushed and his eyes were zapping scary blue sparks.

“Let go of her!” I shout, and pick up the first thing I see that I can use to bean him with.

The urn.

Only the urn is really awkward. Heavy, with nowhere to really grab.

“Put that down!” he shouts, and blue sparks are flying!

“Let her go!” I shout back. Then I hear the
bam, bam, bam
of Ginger beating on the balcony door, and it clicks that the door is still locked and that Noah’s just proved my theory.

A grown man
can
fit under the divider.

Noah must have done that, gone in through Bradley’s balcony—which had to have been unlocked—gone out Bradley’s front door, and then come into the Royal Suite with his master key.

“Put that down
now
,” Noah shouts.

“Let go of her
now
,” I shout back.

Bam, bam, bam!
Ginger beats on the door.

And it looks like Noah’s thinking about hauling Marissa over to the balcony door to let his mother in, which would make it two people against us instead of just one. So I shout, “Hey!” then hurl the urn into the air, sort of toward him but over to the side a ways. And since it’s out of his reach and not the kind of thing you can catch one-handed, he lets go of Marissa to dive for it, and I leap over the coffee table and grab Marissa. I must’ve kind of misjudged where to hurl the urn, though, because as we’re escaping the Royal Suite, we can hear it crash to the floor.

“Are you crazy?!” Marissa screams as I haul her out the door. “Why’d we
do
that?”

“I was trying to figure out what might have happened to Kip! Or Kate! I was trying to keep us from getting killed!” Then I mutter, “But it all got kinda confused and messy.”

She yanks her arm free and storms toward the stairs. “I’ve been on a lot of cruises, and I have never wound up locking people out on their own balcony while I cased their suite. Never!”

I chase after her. “Sorry.”

“Sorry?
Sorry?
Sammy! It was the
cruise director
. And his
mother
. In the
Royal Suite
. You don’t think we’re getting kicked off the ship? Maybe
arrested
?”