Sammy Keyes and the Killer Cruise

  “And you’re not worried about Kip?”

  “Like I said, some of his things are gone.”

  “Like what ‘things’?” I demand.

  “Look, I overreacted once already on this trip. I’m not going to do that again.” Then she says, “I suggest you check the Royal Suite. I’m sure that’s where he’s staying. Ginger just loves to interfere.”

  And without another word, she hangs up.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Marissa did not want to go up to the Royal Suite. “Why can’t you just leave it alone?” she moaned as I dragged her up the stairs. “Or why not just call there like you called Kip’s room?”

  She already knew the answer to her first question, but I did answer the second one. “Because I don’t know the number. All it says on the door is ROYAL SUITE, remember?”

  “No,” she snaps. “I don’t remember. I don’t spend my life noting every little detail of every little door I see!”

  So yeah, she’s miffed, but as we reach the Deck 10 landing, an idea suddenly storms my mind. “Hey! You know how sometimes phone numbers are given as words—like 1-800-GET-RICH?”

  She’s obviously somewhere else in her head, too, ’cause she goes, “Get rich—what?”

  “Or GET-THIN or GET-FISH or whatever!”

  “Get Fish? Who would have a number that was Get Fish?”

  “A fishing company!” I shake my head. “Never mind! The point is, what number would Royal Suite translate to on the keypad of a telephone?”

  “What?”

  “Forget it. It’s stupid. It would be way too long to be a cabin number … unless maybe you used just Royal … which”—I tick off the letters on my hand—“would still be one number too long.”

  “Sammy, I’m sorry, but could you stop thinking out loud?”

  Which I do for all of three seconds.

  But then another thought hits me, and it’s so big that it stops me in my tracks, and I just know that Marissa will want to hear it. “What if the decoder to the Kensington notes is the keypad of a telephone?”

  Marissa squints at me. “The keypad of a phone.”

  “It could be, don’t you think?” I whisper, and even though we’d already decided LIONN didn’t decode to a phone number via the alphabet, something about using the keypad as a decoder has me all excited.

  “Sammy!” she whispers back, but instead of sounding excited, her voice comes out all fierce. “You said yourself he’s probably figured it out. Can’t you just let it go?”

  “But what if he hasn’t? And what if it’s as simple as decoding from a phone? What if—”

  “Sammy!”

  Well, I can’t believe she isn’t even a little bit excited and I’m about to tell her so, only right then the door just to the left of the Royal Suite opens and Bradley Kensington steps out.

  My first thought is Hide. But we’re standing right there with nothing to hide behind, so instead we just freeze.

  Bradley’s wearing the same kind of clothes we’d seen him in at the Schooner Buffet two days ago—they could even be the same clothes—but the shirt’s all rumpled and half untucked, the tie’s gone, and the black folder is now bursting with papers, sticking out like too much lettuce on a tuna fish sandwich.

  His jowls are kinda red, too.

  So is his nose.

  He closes the door, then tries the handle to make sure it’s locked, and pushes on the door to make sure it’s latched.

  Then he sees us and freezes, too.

  So there we are, like silly ice sculptures on the Deck 10 landing.

  I make myself thaw out and go, “Hi, Mr. Kensington. Any word on your mom?”

  His eyes sharpen down on me as he goes from frozen to dripping at the temples. “You know about that?”

  “Uh … yeah?”

  “Oh, right, right,” he says, wiping a hanky over his brow, “from the kids.” His voice is a little slurred, and I can tell he’s trying to act cool, but he’s rumpled and sweaty and, it hits me, drunk. “It’s not looking good,” he says. “But we’ve been told to keep it quiet so as not to worry other cruisers. Which is why I asked. Now if you’ll excuse me …”

  But I kind of follow him over to the glass elevators and ask, “We’re actually looking for Kip. Have you maybe seen him?”

  He punches the down button. “I have maybe not seen him,” he snaps—well, as much as you can snap when your words are sort of tumbling over each other. Then he jabs the elevator button a bunch and turns an angry eye on me. “And if I never see that conniving little weasel ever again, it’ll be a good thing.” And when an elevator opens, Bradley gets in without even looking at us.

  I race around so I can watch it go down, and Marissa follows me, going, “Well, that was … interesting.”

  The elevator stops just one deck down, and even though there are other people on board and I can’t be sure, I have a hunch Bradley’s getting off.

  “Come on!” I tell Marissa, and run for the stairs.

  “Wait! What? Why?”

  I laugh, “Who? Where? When?” Then I say, “It was Bradley! In the elevator! With a folder!”

  “You’re driving me crazy, you know that, right?” Marissa calls as she flies down the stairs after me.

  But when we get to the Deck 9 landing, I peek down our hallway and whisper, “Crazy, maybe, but I’m right.”

  “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 a
ll 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.

  TWENTY-THREE

  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.