7
Sebbie
The deck wanted me to follow my inner voice. My inner voice told me that no one at breakfast had killed Maggie.
Corbin shuffled the deck and held it out to me, and I pulled a card and flipped it over. The three of swords showed blades sticking into a heart, and it was reversed.
“It means that there is pain to be released in order to move forward. It’s a card that speaks of forgiveness,“
Corbin told us.
“Maggie,“
I asked, “is that card meant for you, or is it meant for your killer?”
Maggie crossed her arms, closed her mouth, and before I could say anything else, she was gone.
“She’s protecting someone,“
Corbin stated.
Crow cawed in agreement, then she flew off, out the balcony door.
We watched her go, and Corbin started to grumble. “I swear, they can’t even let us solve a mystery on our own. We’re perfectly capable of handling it.”
I laughed, then I stood up and put my head up for a kiss from Corbin.
He leaned down and gave me a peck, and then he grumbled, “Crow is on one of the higher decks, and she requires our presence, apparently. I believe she’s found Lisa.”
I thought briefly of getting Toby, because he really did have good murder mystery skills—he wrote them, after all—but I wasn’t sure we had time for that.
My intuition was telling me we had to hurry.
We took the elevator and ended up on a pretty quiet area of the boat—as much as any place could be deserted when thousands of people were on the ship.
There was a young girl, probably a teenager, and she was wearing a black tank top, lots of jewelry, and baggy black pants. Maggie was there, off to the side, and she was literally wringing her hands. Crow was standing on the top of the railing, and as we watched, the girl tried to move forward toward the rail. Crow cawed and pecked at her, and I gasped.
“Crow! Where are your manners?“
I asked as I walked up to the girl.
“Oh,“
she said softly. “Is he yours?”
“She, and she’s her own,“
Corbin said.
The girl nodded as if that made perfect sense, and then she looked right over at Maggie before looking at the deck railing again.
I had a bad feeling about this situation, and I thought Crow and Maggie did as well. If Lisa had been responsible for her grandmother’s death, would she try to jump into the sea to follow her? Teenagers were not known for being the most logical of creatures. I’d taken adolescent psychology to get my nursing degree, and I knew that teenagers were epically bad at decision making due to their brain not being completely developed.
“Lisa?” I asked.
She turned to look at us. Somehow, without really meaning to, I was in my pink cloak with my pink staff. I breathed out in relief—at least I wasn’t in my reaper clothes. Lisa wasn’t dying yet. She wasn’t dying at all if I had anything to say about it.
Because I could sense her now, and she’d be welcome on my party boat. She’d made mistakes and done some bad things, but that wasn’t the whole of her existence. If we were all judged on only the worst things in our lives, then no one would make it across the river. No, Lisa had a lot of good in her. She was a bright soul who had been dampened down and grayed out, and I wanted to know why.
Or maybe I already knew why.
“She killed you, didn’t she?“
I asked Maggie.
Lisa gasped. “You can see her, too? I thought I was imagining her.”
Maggie looked surprised, but she didn’t say anything.
“I’ve seen her all day, always around various family members. I knew it would be my turn soon, and then I’d have to atone for what I did,“
Lisa said.
Corbin coughed a little on the last statement, and I looked at him. He raised his eyebrows, and I could practically see his thought process. Yes, teenagers were dramatic, but really, killing your grandmother accidentally was a good reason to be dramatic.
Because I had no doubt that it wasn’t a premeditated murder. Whatever had happened had been an accident, but Lisa blamed herself.
Maggie made her way over, and Lisa stood totally still, staring at the ghost. When Maggie was within touching distance, she asked, “What happened, Lisa? What happened last night?”
Lisa looked out across the water, and then she began speaking. “Mom and Dad had an argument. They talked about divorce. I could hear them through our connecting rooms. Robbie was still out with our cousins, and it was just me.“
She looked at Maggie. “My mom thinks you hate her. She was talking about how you always have a problem with her, and how she can’t live like that, being second-guessed all the time. I couldn’t make out a lot of what Dad said, but I’d never heard them raise their voices like that.
“I left the room. I brought my big sketchbook with me, because I thought I’d go draw, but the more I thought about it, the madder I got. You were always nitpicking. You told Dad not to let me go to art school for college. You told him not to buy Robbie a car. I love you, Grams, but I was so mad.”
Lisa’s eyes were teary now, and Maggie went as if to wrap an arm around her, but of course that didn’t work out.
“Your door was open a bit—you’d apparently set a tray outside and blocked it from closing all the way—so I just went in. You were there sitting on your balcony, and I’m sure you were joking, but before you turned around, you said, ‘What useless family member comes to add to my headache?’”
Maggie frowned, then she looked at us. “Well, I was a bit drunk. I didn’t mean it.”
Lisa looked out across the water again, and this time Crow hopped over so that she could lean against the railing. “I don’t know what came over me. I just had this thought, like, oh, if she wants a headache, I’ll give her a headache. I was so mad. And I was hurt. And I was worried about my parents.”
She stopped talking, sniffles filling the air as tears rolled down her cheeks.
“What did you do, Lisa?” I asked.
“Grams always joked that art was fluffy nonsense, so I guess it’s kind of fitting that me hitting her with my sketchbook is what killed her.”
Maggie looked at us, murmuring, “It was a very big sketchbook.”
“I just”—Lisa made the motion of swinging—“hit her. And she fell forward onto the floor, and I was standing there seething, waiting for her to get up and yell at me, and tell me I was a useless art student, and whatever else she had to say.”
Lisa started full-on sobbing, and I reached out and put an arm on her shoulder. “Only she never got up, did she?” I asked.
Lisa just shook her head.
Well, we’d found her murderer, only it wasn’t quite as clear cut as I’d thought. Now what?