Chapter 18
“I find you concerningly good at that. What other secrets have you not told me about?”
We are standing just inside Crystal’s room.
I’ve just shut the door behind us.
The room is pitch black but for the dim light of a muted television screen.
And yes, I did just use a variety of household goods to break into the room in under a minute.
“I’ve practiced breaking into everything for Hugh,” I say. “I can pick 90 percent of the locks in New York City in under fifteen
minutes. Ninety-five percent if you give me an hour.” I pocket the pin I pulled from the hair dryer and wind up the cord.
“And this is your party trick?” Nash says. “Something that really wins the guys over? Your ability to break into things.”
“Hey, apparently I won you over, didn’t I?” I say, tossing my head back.
A little slip of a smile moves up his lips. “I will say, watching you know your way around a lock was oddly attractive.”
“Weird, but I’ll take it.” I grin, flick on a light, and cast my eyes around the room. “You man the door,” I say. “I’m going to check for clues.”
“Which are?”
“I’m not sure yet. Hence the vague term clues. Now make sure not to touch anything.”
“Okay, Edward Scissorhands. Noted.”
I give him a sarcastic thumbs-up—though at the moment, my thumb, like the rest of my fingers, is tied up in an elaborate twist
of elastic bands and a plain T-shirt. It took me a couple of minutes (longer than the lock, if I wanted to brag, and I don’t
mind if I do) to get the makeshift gloves in place, but once they were all together, my fingers fit snugly, and except for
the excessive number of rubber bands, they’re a pretty decent pair of gloves. Nothing to see the opera in, but here in the
silence of this suspect’s room (a.k.a. little old Crystal . . . which is super weird, but I gotta stay focused), there are
no fingerprints to be found.
I slip off my shoes and begin my light step on tiptoe in my socks around the room.
“What are you doing?”
“Leave no trace,” I say, moving around a lamp. “It’s not just a motto for the woods.”
The room is in disarray (no surprise there). Clothes are dumped from her massive backpack suitcase and are strewn about the
room in various piles. Multiple hair appliances clutter the desk. The remote rests on the unmade bed around a pile of open
chip bags. At least three little gummy men litter the formerly perfectly white sheets, staining the white in colors of blue,
green, and red.
I clench my teeth.
I’m going to be the one who hears about this.
A woman holding a stinky sock in her hands goes on elaborately about the power of her laundry softener in a commercial on the television inside her mirror. Her mirror. I had no idea we had a television inside the gold frame of our mirrors.
I look at the ring on the desk made by a coffee mug.
Oh, I’m definitely going to hear about this.
I tread lightly around stacks of her books. A few Sharpies (one notably open) sit inside and around the books. What is she
even doing with all of these in here?
I purse my lips, trying not to be really ticked now.
I told everyone to sign five hundred copies in the conference room, at the book table.
If I wanted them to drag five hundred copies of their books to their rooms to be stained by gummy worms, I would’ve said that, now, wouldn’t I?
I bend down and shut the open Sharpie.
Fine.
So I’m going to leave a trace.
I can’t help myself.
The thought of the slowly drying out Sharpie staining her sheets will be running through my mind all night if I don’t. (And
honestly, does Crystal ever notice anything?)
“Find anything yet?” Nash whispers.
“No,” I say.
“How much longer?” he says, looking through the peephole.
“Not much.” I tiptoe around beside tables and look through piles of clutter. “You’d think for a two-hundred-square-foot room,
we’d see anything in a second, but there’s a lot of stuff here. Honestly, how can she live this way? How did she fit this much stuff in that backpack suitcase?”
“You think she went out for ice or something?”
“Do people go out for ice at two in the morning?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s Crystal. You never can tell what she’s off to do.”
“She probably went skinny-dipping. You know she told me just before we got on this ship that she was going to go skinny-dipping.”
“She wouldn’t get away with it.”
“She taunted me with the plan.” I look over my shoulder. “How much do you think all this is going to cost me?”
“In fines? Nothing for you. But she’s going to be handing over her next check to the ship . . .”
I quicken my step, sensing the urgency to hurry up.
“What is even open right now? Nothing on the deck,” I say.
“All the entertainment on the lower floor. We could . . .”—he hesitates, then says with less certainty—“go down again.”
“I’m not going down there. You can go down there.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Then who is going to find out what she’s doing?” I say, squatting down, opening the bottom drawer of a dresser. “Better to find out
she’s partying and is a total narcissist in the face of murder”—Note: I hear it. I hear how hypocritical that sounds given
my romantic patio dinner just now—“than the alternative.” I pause, looking at a wound-up cloth covered in red.
Gingerly, I pick up the long, heavy, stained bulk of fabric.
My hands are already starting to tremble.
I unwind the fabric slowly.
And there is the knife.
Covered in blood.