Curse of the Arctic Star

  Bess gave her a sour look. “Very funny.” Then she glanced back at me. “I do remember Hiro being nearby with the kids when we got there. I’m not sure he could’ve sneaked away from them long enough to loosen the bolts, but I guess you never know.”

  I nodded. “I’ll have to ask Becca about him when I get a chance. Anybody else we should think about?”

  “What about him?” George was staring at the action out in the pool.

  I followed her gaze. The water volleyball game was in full swing. As Vince spiked the ball over the net, one of the cameramen leaned in to capture the action shot.

  “Baraz,” I murmured thoughtfully, watching him. “Yeah, that was kind of weird how he disappeared right after the accident.”

  “And that director made it sound like it wasn’t the first time,” George recalled. “What if he was off tossing his monkey wrench overboard?”

  “Anything’s possible. But why? What’s his motive?” I sighed, realizing that sentiment was becoming a refrain for this case. I realized something else. “It’s also possible that the moose thing was just an accident. Like someone said, it’s a brand-new ship. We might have been the very first ones to test out the course. Maybe the screws didn’t get tightened enough and they just let go.”

  “That’s probably at least as likely as some eight-year-old supervillain being strong enough to loosen a bunch of bolts,” George said. “Especially when he was supposed to be on a tour with a bunch of other kids and Mr. Nanny at the same time.”

  “True. But I’m not ready to totally cross Tobias off the list yet, given what just happened at lunch. Anyway, maybe we should move on to something we know wasn’t an accident—namely the mannequin stunt.” I glanced at a lounge chair across the pool, where Lacey was lying on her stomach, watching her new husband and the others. “I think I’ll go ask Lacey a few questions about what she saw.”

  I hurried over to her. She squinted up at me when I arrived. “Hi,” Lacey said. “It’s Nancy, right?” She smiled apologetically. “Sorry, there are so many new names to remember!”

  “Yeah, it’s Nancy. Hi, Lacey.” I perched on Vince’s empty chair beside hers. “Listen, I was just thinking about what happened yesterday. It kind of gave me the creeps. Maybe we should notify the police. Were you the first person to see that mannequin in the pool?”

  “I guess so.” Lacey visibly shuddered. “Vince was with me, of course, but he didn’t notice it at first. It was so horrible! I couldn’t help screaming my head off, even though I felt like an idiot afterward.”

  “Nobody thinks you’re an idiot,” I said with a smile. “Did you notice anyone else near the pool at the time? Any kids, maybe?”

  Lacey didn’t seem to hear me. She was staring out at the pool toward the spot where the mannequin had been floating. “I’ve had the strangest feeling ever since then,” she said softly, seeming to speak more to herself than to me. “It’s like I’m waiting for the next terrible thing to happen.” She shuddered again. “I’m really beginning to think this whole cruise is cursed!”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Following Leads

  I YAWNED AS I QUIETLY PULLED THE SUITE door shut behind me. The early wake-up call I’d requested had come right on time, though Max had seemed as chipper and wide awake as ever when he’d knocked on my door. Meanwhile all I’d wanted to do was crawl back into bed, let my head sink into my special buckwheat pillow, and go back to sleep for another hour or two.

  But I hadn’t. The ship would be arriving in Ketchikan in a few hours, and I wanted to get some investigating done before then. Or before something else happened. Thinking back on Lacey’s gloomy prediction yesterday, I couldn’t help shivering a little myself.

  It’s a good thing she doesn’t know about the rest of the bad stuff that’s happened, I thought as I hurried through the silent hallways. If the passengers find out about all that, it could be a disaster for this ship. Not to mention Superstar Cruises.

  I quickly banished the thought. I was going to make sure that didn’t happen. First on the agenda? Talking to Becca. I wanted to ask her about Hiro, and maybe take a look at that threatening e-mail.

  I’d already texted Becca to check that she was awake—and alone. When I arrived at her office, she was bent over her laptop at the desk again.

  “Hi, Nancy,” she said, sounding tired as she glanced up. “Give me some good news. Did you figure out what’s going on around here?”

  “We’re working on it,” I said, leaning against the doorframe. “I just need to ask you . . .”

  I let my voice trail off as I heard footsteps hurrying along the hallway. Glancing out, I saw a familiar figure clicking toward me on high-heeled navy pumps.

  “Tatjana!” Becca said in surprise as the woman brushed past me into the office. “What’s wrong?”

  “Big problems,” Tatjana barked out.

  Becca sat up straight, weariness replaced by wariness. “Oh, no. What now?”

  “We’re getting tons of reports from levels five through seven,” Tatjana replied. “The passengers have been calling since midnight to complain that their temperature control systems are going haywire. Half the cabins are boiling hot, and the other half are freezing.”

  “I’d better go deal with this.” Becca sounded dismayed. She headed for the door, pausing beside me as if belatedly remembering that I was there. “Sorry, Nancy,” she added. “Talk later?”

  “Sure.” I turned to follow her out of the room, only to find Tatjana staring at me. Again.

  “May I help you?” she asked. “I report directly to Becca. I’m sure I could answer whatever questions you have for her.”

  “That’s okay.” I pasted on a bright smile. “It’s nothing important.”

  As soon as I was safely out of sight around the corner, my smile faded and I collapsed against the wall. Unless I missed my guess, those haywire heating systems were no accident. Our saboteur had struck again—and the voyage was just getting started. I was no closer to guessing his or her identity.

  Chewing my lip, I mentally ran through my suspect list. But it was pathetically short, and some of the people on it were laughable. An eight-year-old boy? Really? Was I that desperate?

  I wandered up the stairs to the promenade deck, where many of the ship’s shops were located. Pausing in front of a clothing store, where several expressionless mannequins posed in the window like giant creepy dolls, I flashed back to the pool incident. Unbidden, a chilling question popped into my head: That body was fake, but what if the next one’s real?

  My mind jumped to that ominous note in my suitcase, and then to the moose antler crashing down inches from me. The latter could be a random accident, maybe, but not the former. Was someone targeting me as well as the ship? But how had they found out about me?

  The promenade deck was almost deserted at that hour, since most of the shops were still closed. I wandered past one darkened storefront after another as I thought over the suspect list. Hiro was a big question mark. Yes, he’d been around for the moose incident—and the pool one too, come to think of it. And being an employee, he’d have easy access to the mannequins and such, as well as to the heating and cooling system. But what was his motive? Could there be a clue in that weird look Becca had given him? I would have to wait until I talked to her to find out.

  Then there was the disappearing cameraman, Baraz. He’d been nearby during the moose incident too. The other members of the camera crew? I had no idea. But I guessed that the crew had nearly unlimited access to the ship. Probably even the “backstage” parts, which meant he could also be involved in that heated argument I’d overheard.

  And what about Wendy the blogger? I paused, noticing the ship’s Internet café right across the concourse. Some of her behavior had been sort of suspicious, and she seemed pretty serious about her blog. Was that enough of a motive for her to want to ruin the cruise?

  There were lights on in the Internet café, so I walked over and peered in the window, wondering if she c
ould be in there right now, sending off her latest entry. Instead I saw an even more familiar face bent over one of the terminals.

  “George!” I called, hurrying inside. “What are you doing up at this hour?”

  She glanced up at me with a yawn. “Trust me, it wasn’t my idea,” she said, sounding cranky. “Alan woke me up with all his crashing around in the bathroom. Remind me again why we let him come?”

  I ignored that. “I’m glad you’re here,” I said. “Feel like taking a peek at our favorite travel blogger’s work?”

  “You mean Wendy the weirdo? Sure.” George’s fingers flew over the keyboard.

  Within seconds, Wendy’s Wanderings was up on the screen. The blog’s top entry was titled “Terror on the High Seas.”

  “Uh-oh,” I said, shoving George aside so I could perch on the chair with her. “That doesn’t sound good . . . .”

  I leaned forward to read. It turned out to be a funny entry about the tarantula incident. Wendy had even done some research, discovering that Tobias and his parents lived in Vancouver, which was why Hazel hadn’t been confiscated by customs agents or noticed at all until yesterday. The boy had hidden the spider’s cage in his suitcase and Hazel herself in his pocket as they boarded, then kept her presence a secret from his parents until she’d appeared on the buffet, telling them he’d left her with a school friend for safekeeping. The way Wendy told it, the whole thing came across as a humorous episode.

  “She’s actually not a bad writer,” George said as she read.

  “Yeah.” I scrolled down, checking out the next latest few entries. There were about half a dozen so far about the cruise, mostly short ones describing the food, entertainment, and lodgings. But there was one more that caught my attention: “Blood (Sort of) in the Water.”

  “Hey, she wrote about the pool thing,” George said as she spotted it too. “Wow, she even got a picture of the lifeguard dragging the mannequin out of the water!” She leaned closer, peering at the photo. “The blood looks a lot more lifelike in the picture.”

  I nodded as I scanned through the entry. This one read more like a news report, describing what had happened and saying that ship employees claimed it was a prank. I winced when I read the last few lines: But seeing a dead body in the pool—even a fake one—isn’t the best way to start a relaxing cruise to glacier country. More like an epic fail, actually. Is it enough to sink this brand-new cruise line before it leaves the harbor? Only time will tell . . . .

  George pointed to the bottom of the entry. “She got a bunch of comments on this one,” she said. “That means a lot of people read it.”

  “That could be our motive right there. It’s pretty suspicious that she happened to be close enough to get photos before they shooed everyone away.”

  George scrolled back up. “Let’s see if we can find out more about our happy blogger . . . .”

  But the “About Me” section of the blog didn’t have much information. It just gave Wendy’s name and age and mentioned that she lived in Seattle when she wasn’t “traveling the world in search of the next adventure.”

  “Should I run a web search, see if I can find out more about her?” George suggested.

  I was about to tell her to go ahead when my phone buzzed. It was Bess.

  “Are you with George? We’re saving seats for you two at breakfast,” she said. In the background, I could hear Alan chatting with someone, though I couldn’t tell who. “You’d better hurry up—we don’t have much time to eat before we dock in Ketchikan.”

  “Drat,” I muttered as I hung up. “I guess more research will have to wait.”

  We found Bess and Alan sitting with Vince and Lacey in the café. “There you are!” Vince greeted us with a smile. “Your friends were worried that you’d fallen overboard or something.”

  “Nothing that drastic, just taking a walk.” I sat down and smiled politely at Vince and Lacey. “So are you guys looking forward to Ketchikan?”

  Lacey glanced up from buttering her toast. “Oh, we’re not going ashore,” she said. “We decided to skip Ketchikan and stay on the ship.”

  “Really? Why?” George asked.

  “I’m not really in the mood for sightseeing,” Lacey said softly, shooting a look at her husband.

  Vince explained, “She’s still a little shaken up over what happened the other day. We figured we’d just hang out on the ship, have a quiet day on our own while everyone else is away.”

  I was a little surprised, since this was Alaska, after all. But . . . this was their honeymoon, and it was no wonder that the brand-new husband and wife might want to spend some private time together rather than surrounded by a bunch of strangers with nowhere to really get away. I was feeling some of that myself, actually.

  Maybe I should stay on the ship too, I thought as I chewed the bagel I’d grabbed from the buffet. That would give me a chance to investigate without having to dodge Alan or make small talk with random other passengers or whatever. I might even find a moment to sit down with Becca and really talk about the case without being interrupted every two seconds.

  It was a tempting thought. But I wasn’t sure it was worth the trouble. How would I explain to Alan why I wasn’t going ashore? It was probably too late to fake an illness. Besides, most of the trouble so far had been very public. If the saboteur was going to strike again, it seemed more likely to happen where the passengers were than where they weren’t. In other words, if there was any action today. it was probably going to happen in Ketchikan, and I didn’t want to miss it.

  “Yo, Scott!” Alan shouted just then, jumping to his feet so fast he almost upended his orange juice. He waved his arms vigorously. “Over here, bro!”

  I glanced over and saw the shore excursion specialist we’d met on the first day. He was carrying a clipboard and a stack of envelopes.

  “Hi,” he said when he reached our table. “Everyone ready for some big fun in Ketchikan today?” He shuffled through the envelopes. “Alan, I got your message. You four are signed up for the deluxe town tour, followed by the lumberjack show, and then a floatplane ride to the Misty Fjords.”

  “What?” George looked up from her french toast. “I mean, wait—what?”

  I couldn’t have said it better myself. “You signed us up for all that stuff?” I asked Alan. “When were you planning to fill us in?”

  Alan grinned. “You’re welcome,” he said. “Some of these shore excursions fill up early, you know. You girls have been so busy running off getting facials and stuff that I was afraid we’d get shut out.”

  “Oh.” I traded a look with George and Bess. Being stuck in a bunch of structured tours and activities wasn’t exactly the Ketchikan experience I’d had in mind. How was I supposed to check out our suspects that way, unless they happened to have the exact same itinerary?

  “It’s okay,” Bess said, giving Alan’s shoulder a squeeze. “We appreciate it, Alan. It’ll be fun. Right, girls?”

  “I wanted to go kayaking,” George grumbled. But seeing Bess’s glare, she shrugged. “But whatever.”

  “Um, actually I was thinking it would be fun to just wander around town on our own,” I said. “From the tour books in our suite, it looks like there’s a ton to see and it’s all pretty close together. But I don’t mind doing that by myself if you guys want to do the other stuff.”

  Scott was still standing by, his hand holding a pen poised over his clipboard. “So that’s down to three for the activities?” he asked.

  “No!” Alan protested before I could respond. “Come on, Nancy. I put a lot of thought into these activities—I really think you’ll enjoy them.” He grinned. “And I won’t take no for an answer!”

  I hesitated, trying to figure out a way around this. But looking at Alan, I could tell it was no use. I pasted on a smile, though it felt a little weak around the edges.

  “Okay,” I told Scott. “Put us down for four.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Stalling Out

  “THAT WAS COOL,??
? BESS SAID. “ I NEVER thought I’d see a bald eagle up close like that, let alone a whole bunch of them!”

  “See?” Alan slipped an arm around her shoulders. “I told you guys this would be great.”

  I tucked my camera back in my pocket, squinting a little in the midday sunlight. It was a beautiful day with hardly a cloud in the sky, despite Ketchikan’s nickname being the Rain Capital of Alaska.

  “This way, people!” Scott called out. “That concludes the deluxe tour, so those of you who aren’t signed up for anything else today are free to go shop, eat, or sightsee on your own. However, anyone who’s signed up to see the world-famous Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show should stick around. It’s just a short walk from here, so if you’ll follow me . . .”

  Most of us fell into step behind him, chattering about the things we’d seen over the past couple of hours. There were about a dozen people on the tour. Unfortunately, none of our suspects were among them. The only people we’d known before the tour started were the ABCs.

  “I’ve heard this lumberjack show is a real hoot,” Babs said, falling into step beside me.

  I nodded and smiled, though I was feeling distracted. Yes, the tour had been fun. We’d taken a carriage ride through the picturesque town, visited a salmon hatchery, and then toured a place where people took care of injured bald eagles and other wildlife. All that had sidetracked me from the case for a while, but now I was getting restless.

  When Babs turned to talk to Coral, I sidled away toward my friends. Bess and Alan were walking hand in hand, but George had slowed down to fiddle with her camera, so I was able to pull her aside.

  “We’re wasting time here,” I whispered.

  George glanced up. “What do you mean? Alan actually came through for once—that tour was cool.”

  “I know. But I was really hoping to get a chance to check out some of our suspects today, like Wendy or maybe Tobias.”