Unforgettable

Hope had never thought much of people who loved inanimate objects. How could you love a car or a truck? But she could see that the crew loved Lady Hope, and somehow, moving gently in the rising tide, tugging on her ropes, Lady Hope did not seem inanimate. She seemed a living lady, with power and strength and beauty of her own.

  “I hope I get to sail on her,” said Hope, staring out the windows into the sun. The bay was impossibly beautiful, as if a net of gold had been drawn over it.

  “You’ve sailed on her many times,” said her father quietly.

  The captain and chef exchanged looks and withdrew.

  “Hope,” said her father, “I’m going to level with you.”

  He took her hands in his and examined them, lightly stroking each finger with his thumbs, in a cool doctor-like way. As if she had arthritis and he wanted to heal it with touch. “I want you to tell me the truth, too,” he said. He looked into her eyes now, his searching look just like his searching fingers: cool and careful and loving.

  Hope burst into tears.

  “I know that you can do tears on demand,” he said, still gently. “You’re very good with tears. But tears are not going to help you now.”

  Kaytha giggled.

  She continued to fondle the ivory comb. She pressed her thumb down, and the comb clicked, metallically, and opened and closed.

  It was not a comb.

  It was a knife.

  When it came to girls, Mitch had trouble with detail.

  The girl he had taken to his high school senior prom was typical. One week prior to the prom, he bought her a beautiful pair of earrings.

  “We’ve been dating for six months,” she said dangerously, “and you haven’t noticed that I do not have pierced ears?”

  Mitch looked at her earlobes. Untouched by holes. “Oh,” he said. “I thought everybody had pierced ears.”

  “Oh,” she mimicked him, “and are you dating everybody? Or just me?”

  “Well,” said Mitch, trying to redeem himself. “We could go get them pierced.”

  “If I wanted them pierced, I’d have done it by now, wouldn’t I?” said his girlfriend, smacking the earrings down in his palm hard enough to pierce his hand. And breaking one, so he couldn’t even return them to the department store. “Furthermore,” she said, “that isn’t even real silver, Mitchell.”

  You knew you were in trouble when they called you Mitchell. The senior prom was more a night to forget than a night to remember.

  Detail-wise, girls had continued to be a problem.

  Boats, however, were easy. Mitch always knew and always remembered the details of boats.

  Starry Night, old girl, thought Mitch, I need to check you out.

  Every few weekends, Mitch went home for R & R. College was very wearing and a person liked to be waited on. Mitch’s parents were among the few he knew who had never even contemplated divorce, who adored each other, whose hobbies matched, and whose interests jelled. Mitch’s departure for college made his parents happy. Now they could spend time together undiluted by a son. Mitch, as he always explained, came home to get in the way. Remind them they were parents as well as boyfriend and girlfriend. Yeah, yeah, his father would say, tousling his hair as if he were six years old, well, I have a date with your mother, so make yourself scarce.

  The family had sailed Starry Night for years—trips to Bermuda, the Florida Keys, islands off the coasts of Maine and Canada. Once they had crossed the ocean, although that had been a little hairy, because she was big sitting in port, but very, very little riding ocean waves.

  Then one day they lost interest, didn’t want a captain and a steward, a first mate and an engineer and a chef. They bought a much smaller sailboat that they could manage between the two of them, and took up racing at the Yacht Club.

  Mitch missed Starry Night.

  I’ll buy her back, he thought. I’ll call her Starry Night again, because that’s the kind of night Hope and I will have. It’ll always be clear, and the stars will always shine.

  Mitch never talked this way to anybody.

  People, especially boys, would laugh hysterically.

  He knew that Hope would not laugh. She would love.

  He phoned home. “Dad? Listen. Who bought Starry Night?”

  “I thought you only phoned home when you needed money,” said his father.

  “I’m rich. I sold a billion T-shirts this weekend. No. I called home because I need to know who bought Starry Night.”

  “We sold her to a corporation. We never met the buyers and I don’t even know if there are individuals involved. Why?”

  “I think,” said Mitch, “that she’s docked right here on Long Wharf in Boston. Her name’s been changed. I’m not a hundred percent sure, Dad. But I’m ninety-nine.”

  “Just go aboard and ask,” said his father. “Crews are always friendly. It probably has some of the same crew.”

  “No. Crew’s all different. Paint’s different. Decor’s different.”

  “I don’t want to hear another word,” said his father. “I want to remember Starry Night exactly as she was.”

  “Would you look it up for me?” said Mitch.

  “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  “Dad. You have a staff. Assign it to somebody.”

  “Is it urgent?” said his father, sighing.

  “No, it’s not urgent,” said Mitch.

  But he was wrong.

  The glass slipped in Hope’s hand.

  She had designed a daydream, but it had turned on her. The action characters she had sketched now lived, and had muscles, and tense jaws and angry eyes.

  “Tell me,” said Kender Senneth, “what happened to your purse.”

  She choked on her own air. “I don’t know who I am. Maybe I’m not Hope Senneth. Maybe I’m Susan Nevilleson. I can’t be both. I want answers, too. But I don’t have any. I think maybe I should go to the police.”

  She had meant to phone the police when Mitch and Kaytha were on the swan boat, and been equally glad and sorry to be interrupted. Now she was wholly sorry.

  “I think maybe you should sit here and tell me what is going on,” said Mr. Senneth.

  The room changed.

  He was still distinguished and elegant, but full of rage and fear.

  Kaytha had become the snake of her skull.

  “Start with morning,” said Mr. Senneth. “What did you do yesterday morning?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Tell us where you were before we found you.”

  “But I don’t know!”

  “It doesn’t matter anyway. All that matters is your purse.”

  She held up her flat hands, as if using sign language would help. Shook her wrists, to show emptiness.

  “Where did you put your purse?” Mr. Senneth was not breathing. Not blinking. He was a statue, a computer screen.

  The smile on Kaytha’s lips was as thin and sharp as a razor blade.

  Chapter 9

  EVEN THOUGH IT WAS Saturday, and prime tourist time for hours to come, Mitch had closed up the T-shirt wagon and gone back to his apartment. He had to change his clothes, he said.

  Derry sat on a bench with Ben Franklin. “Listen up. Susan is on board Lady Hope.”

  “You’re kidding! Oh, thank god. She did get a new job. I can stop worrying.” Then he worried again. “Did she take your job, Derry? Gee, I’m sorry about that,” said Ben, but already he was thinking about how terrific Susan would be as a yacht hostess, and what fun he would have visiting on board when the Senneths were out of town, and how he would definitely want to strip down and get in the upper deck Jacuzzi with her, and—

  “The hot dog seller saw Susan carried aboard Lady Hope. She was drunk.”

  “She was not,” said Ben indignantly. “She—”

  “Of course she wasn’t,” said Derry, leaning forward. “I totally agree with you, Ben. They forced her aboard.”

  All these melodramatic people. Half the world was acting out some play. He was e
ven beginning to feel normal in a beard and granny glasses and wool waistcoat. “I thought you just said she took your job.”

  “You said that. I know better. They can’t have a stranger on board.”

  “Why not?” said Ben. “Besides, if they took her on board, then they can and do have a stranger on board.”

  Derry was wearing bib front, shoulder-strapped overalls. Her figure was entirely gone. She’d fastened her hair in a topknot high on her head and jammed a Red Sox cap down over it. The bill of the cap was sagging, the dye faded. She was difficult to recognize as the white-and-gold stewardess with the puppy attitude. She had changed personalities like …

  Like a spy, thought Ben Franklin. This nonsense is infecting even me. I suppose everybody has spy fantasies. Of course, all the good countries are gone now. Either they’re submerged in submachine guns and disease, or nobody cares about them anymore. You’re stuck with industrial spying, worrying about people’s computer chips.

  “You’re boarding the boat, Ben, and taking Susan off,” said Derry firmly. “I can’t crash the party, because they know me. But you can.”

  You, too, can be a spy, thought Ben Franklin. You too can crash parties and whisk unwilling girls off in your arms. He said, “Derry, Susan didn’t even let me telephone her, never mind take her off a yacht the first time in her life she’s ever been on one.”

  “Trust me,” said Derry, as if he knew her, as if he had the slightest idea whether she was trustworthy. “I know these people. They are not people of violence. All you have to do is board the boat, find Susan, and leave. Now here’s the layout of the boat. She has to be in my bunk, because there’s no place else to stash her.”

  “What do you mean, stash?”

  “I told you, she’s their prisoner.”

  Even though Ben had been frantically worried all day that something terrible had happened to Susan, now that Derry was describing it, he knew it was absolutely ridiculous. This was Boston. Nobody had been taken prisoner here in hundreds of years.

  “How could they keep her quiet?” said Ben skeptically. “Susan has lungs.”

  “I’ll bet she does. They could have drugged her, or gagged her, or be sitting there with a knife.”

  “Derry, I can’t believe,” said Ben Franklin, “that that beautiful boat is manned by people who kidnap waitresses. I mean, what’s the point? There has to be a purpose.”

  Derry paid no attention to him. This happened a lot to Ben Franklin. “Mr. Senneth entertains a great deal on Lady Hope. He’s one of the finer con artists I’ve ever seen. He can’t allow anything to go wrong at this stage.”

  “This stage of what?” said Ben Franklin.

  “Everyone coming tonight will be very, very rich, and very very influential. That’s the only kind of person he cultivates. And people love being invited aboard yachts. They’ll have some fabulous dinner on board, probably take a brief sunset sail, and then drink the night away. He can’t change his plans just because he’s taken prisoners.”

  “Taken prisoners,” muttered Ben Franklin. “That’s ludicrous.”

  “You’ll look wonderful in a tux,” said Derry. “Nobody will confuse you with Ben Franklin. You’re handsome and debonair.”

  “Me?” said Ben Franklin.

  “You. In a tuxedo, you know, you’re so solid and successful. Thin doesn’t make it in men’s evening clothes; thin looks like a weakling. You’re stocky and broad, Ben, and anybody can tell you have millions of dollars and a great deal of influence.”

  Ben liked that. “What if they catch on to what I’m doing before I find Susan?”

  “They won’t. They have a boatful of guests. This is a big important party because he’s involved in a big important event. You’re going to circulate. They always do tours, because people love to see a big yacht. But they’ll leave out crew quarters, which is where Susan has to be. I know everyone on the crew and I’ll describe them to you, so you’ll quickly figure out if any crew member is not showing up, and then you’ll know that crew member is probably guarding Susan. But my guess is, Susan is just tied up in there.”

  Ben could absolutely not imagine Susan, tough little Susan, allowing anybody to immobilize her.

  “But even if she is tied up, and even if I manage to untie her,” said Ben Franklin, “what happens when we go through the salon? Cross the deck? It’s a big boat, but it’s not the QE II. The Senneths will notice.”

  “Mr. Senneth absolutely cannot have a fracas during his gala event. He can’t have people issuing death threats or yanking out weapons or chasing his passengers. So when you find Susan, you just saunter out with her on your arm and leave the boat.”

  Ben could see some real problems here. Like, what if this was not what Susan had in mind? “What if I crash the party,” he said, “and Susan’s right there, serving drinks, or something, and she’s absolutely fine?”

  Derry shrugged and smiled. “Then I was nuts, and you’re on board a magnificent yacht during the party of the year with the girl you adore.”

  Ben had a vision of himself as hero: the kind of role Mitch always got, while he, Ben, was the buffoon, the sidekick, the comic. Do you learn to be a hero, he wondered, or are you born one?

  “I tell you, these are not violent people. Just greedy. They can’t risk their cover for you or for Susan.”

  Derry made it easy and even logical. As if he ought to do this.

  What he ought to do, he knew perfectly well, was sit down and think.

  If Susan mattered so little that he could wander in and wander off with her, why kidnap her in the first place? What had ever made such an idea cross Derry’s mind in the second place? Had she witnessed such things when she crewed? And if Susan was in danger, and Derry knew it, why not just call the police?

  “Why not just call the police?” said Ben, but even as he said it he had a hideous vision of Susan letting him know what she thought of him, interfering with her job selection by calling in the Boston police force!

  “You’ll look so suave in evening clothes,” coaxed Derry.

  He wanted to be coaxed. If it was a con, he wanted to be conned. Everyone, everywhere, wants to be the hero, the dashing one in the best clothes, who saves the day.

  He did not wonder if, instead, he might lose the day.

  Or his life.

  “I am older than my cousin,” explained Edie, in the voice of one telling a cozy bedtime story, “and we did not grow up together. I spent much of my life in boarding schools in Switzerland, of course, and our paths rarely crossed. The occasional holiday only.”

  Susan marveled at how Edie said, in Switzerland, of course. “Of course,” she said, just to fit in.

  “I had no idea how Uncle Ken maintained his wealth,” said Edie. “I suppose I foolishly thought he had excellent investments. Well, of course, he did. It was just that the investments did not belong to him.”

  The bunks were very close, the quarters incredibly cramped. How did you make such a bed? Where did you get the sheets and how did you tuck them?

  But being close had a distinct advantage: Edie, whose feet were free, had stuck out a foot and with her long curly toes managed to open the little curtain that kept Susan in the dark.

  Susan stared at the woman. T-shirt, platinum-dyed hair that either Edie had planned to let go back to brunette or had missed the last ten hair appointments for, shorts, and bare feet with remarkably long toes. They were so unlike Susan’s little stubby toes (all of me is stubby, thought Susan with her usual regret) they didn’t seem like the same part of the anatomy.

  “I,” said Edie, “was brought to America as a tutor for Kaytha. She can’t go to school because her jealousy turns violent, and she likes knives.”

  Oh, wonderful, thought Susan. And I suppose it seemed reasonable to live with Kaytha after you found that out? Did you say to yourself, Ah, at last! My dream job! “Peachy,” muttered Susan. Who is going to rescue me? she thought desperately. They made me telephone Michael and say I was quitting. Michae
l believed me. There was no way to let him know he should worry. He won’t call Mitch or Ben Franklin and say, we’ve got to find Susan and rescue her. He’ll just be furious and instead of searching for me, he’ll be replacing me.

  Edie said, “The Senneths have tremendous wealth. Actually, they use other people’s wealth. The very, very rich are also very, very careless. Very easy to use. Kender Senneth is a brilliant con artist. There’s something terribly attractive about fabulous wealth, you know, Susan. A person wants some of it for herself.”

  Susan was trying to stay calm, but a person tied up on a boat, after being kidnapped at knife-point does not manage to stay calm. She thought, I do not care about money. I do not care about the Senneths’ appealing lifestyle. I just want to go home and stay alive. I have to plan our escape.

  “Where are we?” Susan asked. “I mean, within the boat? Whose bunks are these?”

  “Crew. The staterooms are magnificent. They aren’t wasting those on us. A little puppy of a girl, named Derry, was bunked in yours, and I’m in Billy’s. The big event occurred on little Derry’s day off. When she got back, what with her bunk filled by me, they had to fire her. She’s dumb. She won’t suspect anything. She won’t go to the police, if that’s what you’re thinking, and save us.”

  Susan tried to think who would save them, but no list came to mind.

  Susan had yanked at the plastic handcuffs that attached her to the brass fittings around the bunk enough times to leave her wrists raw and painful. “But why me?” she said. “I still can’t understand what I have to offer them, or how I fit into anything.”

  “You’re Susan Nevilleson.”

  “So what?” cried Susan. “How would they know me? Kaytha did have lunch a few times in the restaurant, and I remember thinking I would never ever give myself a crewcut, never mind carve snakes in it afterward, but what’s the point in kidnapping me?”

  “You’re Susan Nevilleson.”

  They’re all insane, thought Susan. Edie’s just as crazy as Kaytha, she just hasn’t shaved her head yet.

  “Your cousin Edie,” said Mr. Senneth, giving it one more try, “took a beautiful piece of family history. A magnificent necklace that belonged to your mother, and her mother before her, and her mother before that.”