Chapter 2 #5
It just pops out of my mouth.
A self-invitation.
There’s an obvious pause.
“Yes. Can’t miss this,” Nash says, but there’s something in his tone that carries a slight stilt. A wordless distancing. His
boot ever so slightly shifts an inch away on the stool. “I can . . . knock on your door—”
What is that?
Is that too far over the line?
Daytime work friends, not alone-beneath-stars-at-night memory makers. I mean, what did I expect? I haven’t seen him or heard
from him in two months.
Immediately a warmth spreads across my neck, and I rub it subconsciously.
Stupid of me.
“No, no,” I say in a casual rush, over-grinning. “I’ll just meet you here. We’ll have to duke it out with our elbows against the
elderly to get a couple of chairs most likely. Don’t worry about me.”
“We’re baaaaack,” Neena says in a singsong voice, shimmying up to the two of us with the rest of the group trickling in behind. The time for Rhubarb and Rosewater is over.
“Did people break into your room and steal your clothes?” Hugh asks the group. “I went to the bathroom, came out, and it was
all gone.”
“Check your drawers,” Gordon says cheerily. “They put everything away. Down to a very tidy arrangement of my hats by color
and size.”
Jackie sniffs. “They wrinkled my tweed blazer.”
“It’s been ten minutes. Can tweed really—” I begin.
“Sixty seconds,” Jackie hisses. “You can ruin a whole wardrobe in sixty seconds—”
“Oh! Somebody grab me some pearls to clutch! The tea is boiling!” Crystal announces cheerily. “What’ll be next at this diabolical luxury cruise? Unwashed slices of lemon in the water glasses?
Lint on the bathrobes?”
“A dangerous thing . . . to do,” Ricky murmurs in his painfully cryptic voice. “Breaking in . . . to the room of . . . a man
so closely acquainted . . . with murder.”
Nash gives me a look.
I give him one back.
“Okay, okay, everyone,” I jump in before the conversation snowballs down this looooong hill. “In good news, Hugh didn’t attack
anyone trying to fold his laundry. I’ll personally head over to your closet with an iron later, Jackie. And I have a tour
to go over with you all. Move along.”
I shepherd the group through a tour of the cruise ship in terms of workshops, meals, planning sessions, and free time. I lose
Crystal to the slip and slide at some point and end up backtracking a fair bit to drag her back, but ultimately the day is
smooth sailing (pun intended).
The big group introduction session goes as planned (except for Gordon, who loses his pet rabbit and spends the rest of the session checking under tables for a missing Holland Lop), and by dinnertime, we’re all enjoying a feast of every meat under the sun in one of the big ballrooms.
The room is loud and jubilant with first-night energy. Nothing but sea and sunshine to the ends of the earth.
As dessert plates are being cleaned up, Hugh steps over.
“I need a word, Penelope. Just you and me,” Hugh murmurs quietly with a touch to the elbow.
“We’re just about to head to Coffee and Conversation in the parlor,” I say with a can it wait? tone, but he just shakes his head.
“Okay,” I say, swinging my head to the others.
Jackie is already halfway out of the room.
Neena, not even in view, is probably already there.
“They’ll wait,” he says, pressing me toward the back door.
There’s no humor as we walk briskly down the hall, away from the others.
Which is odd, because Hugh always looks like he’s on the brink of hearing a big joke.
I follow along the intricately patterned dark blue carpet, our feet making no sound. We twist this way and that until even
I am turned around, and just when I think I may recognize an elevator in the distance, he pulls me into an empty room.
He switches on the light, illuminating gilded spines of books all around. Six stuffed red lounge chairs and couches circle
the interior of the room, the blackness of night of three portholes soaking the view. A room of red, gold, and black. Fitting
for the sense of dread coming over me.
I move next to one of the standing lamps, like a moth hunting for light.
He looks both ways down the hall, then shuts the door with particular care.
When he turns, I’m frowning.
“Is this about Jackie telling you not to eat the ice cream? I know she can be overbearing, but she’s just worrying over you.
It’s the freakish way she shows she cares.”
“No,” he says, exhaling as he moves to a chair. He drops into it and beckons me to sit on the couch opposite. “No. But I wish
it was.”
He waits until I’m fully settled on the couch. Gives a look around as if expecting someone to be peeking out from behind the
velvet curtains.
“Hugh,” I say, because honestly, it’s almost nine o’clock and everyone is waiting on us.
And he’s starting to creep me out.
Working for Hugh, for the record, is not like other PA jobs. Other PAs print off copies. I print off copies while testing
out how many seconds it takes me to snap the bullets of a .44 Magnum into place as research for his new mystery (he realized
early on I was a handy amateur in all things crime, making me the perfect test subject for most of the characters who had
normal jobs and lives before randomly murdering someone in his books).
Other PAs bring coffee. I bring Hugh three cups of coffee with sedative in one to see if he can guess which one knocks him
out. And then test exactly how long it took him to actually be knocked out (oh, the pizza delivery guy who walked in on that
one).
I keep him to his calendar. I remind him of deadlines and then drag him away from fun to lock him in his room to hit those
deadlines. (Literally. His request.)
I pull the bayonet out of his sleeping hand and bring him his pills in the morning to keep his blood pressure down.
I am, essentially, the mother of an eccentric seventy-five-year-old author.
And now he needs reining in.
“We at least have to message them—” I begin, still thinking about how to salvage the event we’re late for.
“I have reason to believe someone is trying to murder me. And it’s one of The Seven.”
I pause from reaching into my pocket for my phone. Squint at him.
“Hugh,” I say again. “Come on. What’s this really about?”
“I’m serious, Pip. I think my life is really and truly in danger.”
The idea is so preposterous, so out of nowhere, that I laugh.
And yet he doesn’t chime in, and after a few seconds, my laugh dies out.
“You can’t be serious,” I say.
He brushes a hand over his face, looking away to the left, somewhere in the distance. “I am,” he says, more to the drapes
than to me. “Incredible to believe, but I am.”
I sit back, leaning against the upholstered pinches in the couch. Cock my head. Sit in silence for some moments.
“No,” I say at last.
Can’t be.
Not them.
“You have been working too hard, Hugh,” I continue. “That’s my fault a bit. I haven’t been as attentive the past couple weeks,
and you’ve gone . . .”
Mad is the word I want to say.
Manic.
Because that’s another thing with Hugh. I learned early on that part of my job is to keep him from spending both too little and too much time writing. It’s a thin line to balance and a long fall on either side if he missteps—and with Hugh, he tends
to fall off the line every time without me.
Too little writing and pushing too far past the deadlines and the publishers come threatening.
Too much writing and escaping into his little office hole and he forgets to eat, sleep, bathe, and comes up with the most
insane conclusions and ideas.
And the past six weeks, well, I’ve been chasing a rabbit down my own little rabbit hole.
I reach forward. Pat his knee and move to standing. “Come on. Let’s do this recap and go straight to bed. You’ll feel better
in the morning—”
“I found a note.”
That’s when I notice Hugh’s hands. Are they shaking?
“What did it say?” I ask.
“I went out yesterday from the office. Left my door unlocked as I always do.”
Sure. And probably wide open.
“And when I came back, I saw the other door was open.”
“What other door?” I say, brows rising.
“The secret door,” he says, as though this was obvious. “The one we don’t talk about.”
“Wait. There actually is a secret door?”
“Have you not found it by now?” he returns, with a mild look of disappointment in me. “The point is, it was open. And on the
round table—”
There’s a round table? The gang meets up around a round table like medieval knights?! There is so much to unpack here!
“—was my book. With a knife stabbed right through it. And a note.”
A chill runs up my spine. “What did it say?”
“‘Off to sea but never stay, you will go home another way.’”
Okay. That is terrifying.
But.
But.
“But, and to go back to that note in a moment, that could be written by anyone—”
“It was signed. ‘Of The Seven.’”
I stare at him.
“Where’s the note?”
“In my top desk drawer.”
“Did you take a picture?”
“No.”
I rub my face.
Rub my face again.
He’s expecting me to say something.
“Hugh . . .” I begin. “I don’t know what to say. Maybe it wasn’t one of them. Maybe it was someone else—”
“Who knew about the secret room? Come now,” Hugh says, hands outstretched, “even you didn’t know.”
“But why would they do something like that? It makes no sense.”
Warnings in mysteries, for that matter, never make sense. If you wanted to kill someone, go on and do it.
“Someone must’ve found out I know their secret.”
“What secret?”
“I never should’ve allowed myself to get caught . . .”
“What secret?” I say with more urgency.
“I need you to do something for me,” he says, grabbing me by the elbow. In his hype he’s not listening. “Promise me, Pip,
whatever happens, should anything happen, you’ll get the note from my desk the second you get back to New York. Get to it. Hide it. It’ll be little evidence, but there just might be something there for the investigators to go by.”
“Stop it, Hugh. If this is some kind of twisted joke . . .” I say, winding my arm out from his.
“And no matter what, don’t tell a soul. Pretend you know nothing. Keep yourself away from trouble. Not a soul, you hear me?
That’ll give you time to deliver it to the police without putting yourself in harm’s way. But no matter what, don’t put yourself in harm’s way. I would never be able to forgive myself if I put you in a dangerous place because of my actions.”
He rubs his lips.
His eyes dart back and forth, like he’s reading through an invisible manuscript and watching this all play out. And he doesn’t
like the ending.
Hugh leans himself back suddenly. “You know what? Never mind. This is all too dangerous for you as it is.”
He stands.
“Hugh. C’mon.” Now it’s my turn to grab his elbow.
“You heard nothing,” he says. “Stay out of whatever comes.”
I purse my lips. “Well, now I obviously can’t, Hugh. This is all insane.” I stand too.
“Never mind, Pip. Just let it go.” He pauses, his milky blue eyes roving round the room. “Just the ramblings of an old man.”
I tilt my head as I look at him.
When did this transformation happen? How long has he been this pale and I haven’t noticed?
Wasn’t he laughing this afternoon?
There’s a piercing look in his ice-blue eyes as I weigh the question.
The clock strikes nine on the wall, and he jolts his head up. “Ah,” he says and pulls out his medicine from his chest pocket. The medicine he is specifically supposed to be taking at 9 a.m. every morning. He pops one into his hand and I grab it.
“These are for a.m.,” I say. “Take one in the morning.”
“Ah. Right.” He grabs the pill back.
“Oookay then,” I say with an exhale. My blood pressure is starting to drop. The black spots in my vision begin to clear. “Fine.
Fine, Hugh. Should you mysteriously disappear by one of your lifelong best friends in a freak incident of the world flipping
upside down, I promise I won’t tell a soul. Happy?”
He swallows the pill dry.
There’s a terrible dry gulp as it goes down and he opens the door.
Motions for me to go through.
“Tremendously.”