Chapter 20
“Why would Hugh do something so stupid? He must have millions.”
Nash, at last, has moved to standing from his seat at the door. Too many questions are running through both of our minds.
Too many ideas gnawing at us. Too many problems with those ideas.
Dead-end trails.
“I’m telling you, this is tough,” I say. “Everyone’s suspicious.”
The coffee maker gurgles in assent as Nash stands over the little golden coffee bar in the corner of the room.
Seems we’re going to have another long night. Both of us too frazzled, both of us feeling the weight of anxiety hanging over
us.
He has taken off his hat entirely now. It rests hooked on the golden cart.
The coffee maker gives a merry little (and ultimately very expensive-sounding) ding.
He rubs his weary face and proceeds to pour.
“Dozens of millions,” I say.
“And all of it . . . ?”
“Some of it will go to charities. But yeah, the rest—”
“His property?”
“To Gordon.”
“His investments?”
I laugh. “It’s Hugh. What investments? We’re lucky he didn’t bury his money in gold under a sewer cap on Thirty-Third Street.”
“Or unlucky . . . depending on how you want to see it,” Nash murmurs.
He hands me a steaming cup of coffee.
Gold-rimmed teacups in a hotel room. That’s a first.
I grip the cup of coffee in my hands, knees pulled up beneath the covers to my chin.
“How many interviews do you have left?”
“Three.”
Nash sits on the end of the bed. “Okay, Pip. Break this down for me. All the way.”
And I do.
For the next two hours, I go moment by moment, detail by detail over every single conversation, look, and gesture I’ve experienced
over the past three days. Eventually I take to referencing Hugh’s books, and I go from mentioning the way suspicious things
parallel certain scenes to pulling up said scenes on my laptop and sharing them out loud. Soon enough I’m taking a page from
This Side of Destiny and typing up a brain dump of instances, both noteworthy and not. Just getting everything down.
Nash eventually nods off.
While Nash sleeps, I break down the brain dump into categories in an Excel sheet, organizing things into lists and those lists
into other lists and those lists into more lists.
Then, against Pogache’s wishes, I go back again through every single reader who joined the book cruise, searching through their email confirmations and hunting down each of the cruisers in more detail one by one.
By the hum of Nash’s deeply sleeping chest, I write it all out in meticulous fashion, color coding anything fishy with mild
yellow, medium orange, or highly suspicious red, and when my hand aches and my eyes refuse to stay open and my head eventually
sinks onto my chest, the alarm clock reads 5 a.m.
To say it was tough to wake up is an understatement.
Nash had to shake me like a level 4 earthquake to get me moving.
“I’m up, I’m up,” I murmur, my head sandwiched between two pillows.
Soft pillows too.
“Pip,” Nash whispers, shaking my shoulder again. “You can sleep in and I’ll message the group. Or you can get up. But I’m
going to miss my session, and you seem to care about that—”
“I’m up,” I say, jolting up with the realization I was drifting asleep again.
I look around, disoriented.
I’m sitting on top of my bed, surrounded by papers and my computer and tablet. My hair is in a high bun flat on top of my
head. My glasses are crooked since I slept in them. I look like I was plotting a heist. An Ivy League law student who forgot
to study for the final exam. A corporate executive in one of those movies who ends up leaving the life of the city to find
her huntsman in the woods.
I reach up.
Nash, quite unjustly, looks remarkably well.
He stands in front of me holding out a cup of coffee.
“Thank you,” I say, which, unfortunately for me, comes out far more like a croak than in the sultry tone I would have preferred.
Let’s just say, it would be very nice to be more put together than I am right now.
“No problem, Kermit,” he says with a smile. He gestures to the pile surrounding me. “So. Are you . . . pulling off a heist?”
“I kept brainstorming after you fell asleep,” I say, adjusting my glasses.
“And this is the method to your madness?”
“Little bit, yeah.”
He picks up one of the handwritten pages I obliterated with haphazard writing.
Turns the page horizontal.
Turns it another ninety degrees.
“Hugh always said you were a mad author waiting to happen. This is definitely mad author behavior.” He looks to his right.
“Did you pin notes to the wall?”
“I’ll tag it to Crystal’s bill.” I take a restorative sip of my coffee.
“Did you”—he squints at a sheet on the wall—“make up your own personalized background check for the guests on board? ‘Donna
Richardson. Fifty-eight. Two dogs. Questionable son. Could be link. Martin Richardson, son of Donna Richardson. Twenty-nine.
Norton, Indiana. Second DUI in 2007 . . .’”
His voice fades as he looks at me.
It’s the face of someone who saw their crush pick a lock with a dryer pin the night before and then woke up to said person
hanging stalker-level research on the walls.
Like I say, it’s good Nash knew me through my more composed season of life.
I shrug. “I realized something fully last night. I can’t trust Pogache as far as I can throw him. So I’m going to do my best
myself.”
“How many people have you gone through?”
“One hundred and seventy-three. Twenty-two are on the highly suspicious list. I’m going to dig deeper into them today when
I’m not interviewing.”
He drops the page from his fingers and it flutters to the top of the bed. Picks up another.
“Hugh has gotten at me plenty of times for how much I research. But this—”
“That’s why Hugh needed me. At least, that’s why he said he needed me. I like to see things up close and personal, from every
angle, before making a decision. And once I make it”—I swallow, remembering the years dedicated blindly to Michael—“it’s final.
For better or worse. So. I like research.”
I look around the room that yes, more so than usual, looks like the science laboratory for Frankenstein.
“Did you find new suspects?” he says.
“Only about a hundred.”
“A hundred? And you found new motives?”
“Only about a thousand.” I hold out my coffee cup. “Alright, hold this. I’m going to try to get out of my bed of papers,”
I say, unwinding my legs from beneath the covers.
Ten minutes later, we head into the library, where everyone is already gathered. The rising sun shines bright over the glassy
sea out the windows. It’s bizarre, actually, seeing everyone sitting so near each other, looking for just a moment like the
old team I knew, and with a heart swell, I taste the bitter sensation of old times gone.
I shut the door behind me.
Neena stops talking as everyone turns momentarily and looks at me, then back at each other.
“You’re going mad over those pills,” Jackie says with a sniff. “There’s no whale out the window.”
“I saw what I saw,” Neena says, wiggling through the crowd to get a closer view through the window. “There was a whale, and it was beautiful. It leapt right out of the water.”
Jackie throws back her head with a phff. “A one-hundred-thousand-pound whale. Jumping right out of the water.”
“It can be done.”
“A pod of killer whales,” Ricky says slowly. There’s a monumental pause. “Attacked and sank a fifty-foot yacht.” The clock
on the wall ticks. “In the Strait of Gibraltar. Seems . . . plausible . . . that with enough collaborative effort . . . they
could take this ship down.”
Reliably grim as always.
“It could be pirates,” Crystal says.
Gordon perks up, squints out the window.
Jackie folds her arms. Shifts her attention with the perma-scowl of hers on me. “Enough wasting the day. Let’s get on with
it. I want breakfast.”
“Okay,” I say and tap on my tablet for the day’s schedule. “Obviously we’ve had a rough patch lately.”
“Did you figure out the killer yet?” Jackie says, scowling pointedly at me.
“I . . .” I begin.
“Because my nerves are running on thin ice here,” she says. “I can’t express enough how much I want this to be over.”
“I have a few more people to interview.”
“We’re going to be on land in a matter of four days,” Jackie says, throwing her hands in the air. “And I don’t care what anyone says—I’m getting off this thing when we get there, heading straight for the airport, and flying myself home. This entire experience has been unbearable.”
“Something to take the heat off?” Neena says, opening up her purse.
Jackie pushes her away.
“So we’re continuing with our morning workshops today,” I say, “followed by lunch and an afternoon all-group event in the
ballroom. I will help however you need, and plan”—I give a pointed look to Jackie—“to squeeze in the last interviews as I
can. It’s a tight schedule, though, people. The itinerary is only getting busier and busier as we near the end of the trip.
Please stick to groups. Three if you can. Anybody else need help with anything for this morning session?”
Gordon raises a hand meekly. “I was trying to get my computer to open today . . .”
Neena pats his hand. “You and technology, darling. It’s agonizing.”
In good news, it was just a stomach virus that took hold of me the next seventy-two hours and gave me the shakedown of my
life. Not attempted murder. And when I’m back on my feet, I go straight to Crystal.
“Does he really think I’m going to pound your head with an eight ball while you’re in here with me? Does he really think I’m
that stupid? For Pete’s sake, Nash, shut the door. Let the girls talk.”
Crystal, standing on a hoverboard no less (her “backup,” she says), pulls back on the pool stick as she eyes the white ball
down the line of the pool table. We’re in some kind of game room I didn’t know existed.
Apparently there’s a lot of the ship I didn’t realize existed.
But then again, that’s how it goes when your boss is murdered while on vacation, I guess.
She shoots.
I jump.