Chapter 21
There’s no way Jackie is that crazy.
To murder one person is undeniably insane.
But to proceed to go on a rampage trying to knock off every. Single. Person who ends up hearing her little secret?
Absolutely unhinged.
Beyond unhinged.
Impossible.
I shake my head. No. It can’t be.
It just . . . can’t . . . be.
Crystal spouts out other names and dates and facts as I ask about them, but nothing is quite so interesting, or confusing,
as her announcement at the very beginning of our conversation. And she was so lackadaisical about it. That’s what was so concerning.
And so . . . so full of hate.
Crystal—or Mary, I should say—once brought me a crazily mangled croissant from my favorite bakery.
It was awful. The elaborate story of how the croissant traveled via electric scooter through wind and rain and passing taxis—even lore of a snatching tourist she beat down to get it back—became famously known in our little group.
Hugh laughed and laughed and made her tell it to us all again. I’ll never forget the boom of his laugh as it rattled through
the chambers of his belly and filled the room.
I can still hear it now.
It’s just so wild to imagine her as anything but precisely that—and yet the woman I saw today—she delighted in showing off her true self.
She delighted in hurting me.
Even down to the Michael comment.
It was a side of her I’d never seen, and yet another fact to chuck into the bucket to make me realize: It’s really possible
you don’t know anyone.
People who choose to lie, can lie fabulously.
People who choose to deceive, can deceive famously.
For long periods of time.
There’s never any true way to know who and when to trust, is there? Both in love and in hate.
“Well, that was . . . enlightening,” Nash says, standing in the doorway.
His eyes hold the same What on earth was that? expression as mine, and I nod to say, Right? See what I mean?
“Who’s up next?” Nash says.
“Ricky. Although he’s not answering his phone. I’m just going to have to hunt the ship to find him.”
There’s a squeak of a chair behind me.
“I’m . . . right . . . here.”
I scream.
Nash automatically reaches for a pool stick.
And out of the wingback chair in the corner rises none other than Ricky.
“How did you get in here?” I point. “How long have you been here?”
“I didn’t know . . .” he says slowly, “it was a confidential . . . meeting.”
“Of course it’s confidential!” I cry, moving my hands to my hips. Heart pounding. “You listened to our whole interview with
Crystal?”
“You mean . . . Mary.”
I nod. “Yes. Yes. Obviously, that’s who I mean. So you listened in.”
“Nash listened as well. I didn’t know”—his fingers run slowly over the top edge of a paperback book in his hands—“you wanted
a . . . select audience.”
How is he doing that?
He looks like his fingers are going to slice into papercuts any second.
It’s too creepy to watch.
“Alright, let’s get this over with. I’ll come to you.”
The power of mind talk is so strong between me and Nash that I don’t even need to look at him without knowing we both absolutely agree that this conversation is a keep-the-door-open-in-case-he-pulls-out-an-envelope-opener situation.
I move over to the second wingback chair in the corner.
“Penelope,” Ricky says in his low, formidable tone.
I wait.
I wait, as it turns out, for an eternity.
Ricky, if it’s possible, looks even more tired than usual. He’s always had hollow eyes that give off an I’m Dracula vibe. But clearly this trip has thrown him even more. He’s as pale as his white linen shirt.
“You’re not particularly . . . perceptive .
. . are you?” he says, sitting back down.
He’s crossed one knee over the other now and is looking at me like .
. . well, like someone who wants to eat you for lunch.
His knuckles are pearly white, strained with pressure as they clasp his knees.
“I would avoid dark alleyways . . . if I were you.”
My knees pinch together. Jackie should just see me now; I have no trouble sitting rail straight at the moment. How many times
have I sat alone with Ricky? Truly alone?
Does the eternal sixty-eight seconds together in the cab while waiting for Hugh count? “What does that mean?”
“Just that it would be such a pity if you were killed due to your own incapacity to . . . be aware of your . . . surroundings.”
He looks downtrodden, as though I’ve died already.
“Such,” he continues, “a pity.”
Stop doing that! I want to cry while waving at his face. Stop thinking about me dead.
“Is this some kind of threat?” I say.
“Of course. Threats are”—he sighs—“everywhere. We could fall off this ship . . . perish by the teeth of a hundred sharks . . .
get stuck in a wheel . . . poisoned by stale potatoes . . . all . . . in an instant.”
He sucks in a breath, shaking his head as though wondering how we could be so stupid as to have flipped ourselves off the
ship. “We could . . . eat some broccoli with . . . E. coli . . . We could—”
“I get it,” I interject, putting up a hand. “The world’s very scary and we’re all gonna die. Let’s just get this over with.
How long did you know Hugh?”
“Forty-two years.”
“Two years longer than everyone else,” I note.
“We are in a similar line . . . of work. Mystery . . . intrigue . . . murder . . . We were meant to find . . . each other . . .
and we did.”
“And you two became friends,” I finish.
Ricky gives a unique little pause, saying at last, “You could say that.”
I look up from my notes. “Can I say that?”
“You . . . could.”
“But can I?”
“I suppose.”
I purse my lips.
I can’t tell if he’s speaking sarcastically or sincerely. I can’t tell anything if there’s some darker underlayer to everything
he says.
Ricky could be talking about picking up laundry detergent and it would sound like it was code for gun.
“Right . . .” I say, trying to be exceedingly slow and clear. “So were you and Hugh friends all along?”
He gives me a look. “Forty years is a long time for friendship.”
Okay, but what does that mean?
Was he ready to throw him off the ledge?
Let’s change tactics.
Shoot for yes-or-no answers. “Do you think Hugh had people with the goal and intent to kill him?”
“Don’t we all?”
No, Ricky. We don’t all.
“Do you think . . . Hugh,” I say, changing course, “had a more than average number of people incentivized to kill him?”
“All the good ones do.”
“And you think that?”
“What do my thoughts . . . matter? What do . . . anyone’s . . . for that matter?”
Amazing. I am totally and sincerely at a loss.
Let’s be blunt.
I set the phone down.
“Did you murder Hugh, Ricky?”
“Ah. Oh dear.” Sure enough, one of Ricky’s white fingertips has slit on the corner of the book, and now a thick drop of blood
is leaking from it. “No. Although, has anyone ever . . . at this stage . . . said yes?”
“No, but . . .”
“Would be foolish . . . I assume . . . to finally get away with . . . the murder of your dreams . . . only to tell someone . . .
now.”
Yes, yes. I know. But I’m clueless here. I need to stick to the basics: securing a motive, means, and opportunity.
Problem is, we were all in our rooms the night Hugh was murdered.
We all had the means to slip in.
We all had access to a knife.
None of us have an alibi.
The only thing we don’t all have—well, except on this crazy ship where everyone has one—is a motive.
Stick to that.
“Have you ever had disagreements with Hugh over the way he ran the group?”
He pauses, thinking, looking up, for an enormous amount of time.
“I didn’t like the croissants,” Ricky says at last.
“The . . . croissants.”
“Yes.”
“The croissants we got catered to the room for lunches,” I say.
“Yes.”
“You didn’t like them.”
“I prefer Asiago bagels.”
“I get the croissants for the lunches,” I say.
“Oh. Then . . . nothing.”
So nothing.
I sigh.
“You’ve never disagreed with Hugh, over anything, in your entire life.” The lady at the CVS checkout line has had more disagreements, according to this man, than Ricky.
“I guess not. But that’s how . . . rage goes . . . isn’t it? The deadly ones . . . we just hold . . . inside.”
The grandfather clock opposite strikes three and begins to chime.
We stare at each other in silence.
“Are you harboring rage you aren’t telling me about?”
“Aren’t we all?”
“Well, yes, but that’s not the point. Are you?”
“I’ve already . . . discussed . . . the croissant situation.”
Okay.
It’s time to move on.
I suck in my breath, staring at his hand and the fact that blood is now running down his finger, apparently unbeknownst to
him.
Can he not feel that?
Is he not interested in doing anything about that?
“Why do you think someone would want to kill Hugh? Were you surprised when you heard the news?”
“I’m never surprised . . . by earthly death. It’s the fate . . . of us all. I am . . . however . . . continuously surprised . . .
that people are surprised . . . by it. Pip.”
He beckons me closer.
I hesitate, not daring for a moment to move, but the opportunity of the moment gets me.
I move forward until we are a foot apart. “Yes?”
“Do you think . . . there will be . . . those grits at dinner again?”
My brow knots. “Your friend died and you’re asking me about dinner choices?”
“Your friend also died . . . and you fell in love with the cowboy. Life stops . . . for no one.”
“Well . . . I haven’t said I love him.”
“What’s stopping you now?”
I look over to Nash, trying painfully not to blush right now. Is he hearing this? If he is, he’s graciously pretending not
to.
“They were . . . remarkable grits,” Ricky says. “It is . . . curious timing, though.”
I point to his finger. “Are you going to do something about that?”
“Nash falling so obviously smitten with you . . . now. Now that death is at our door and the buck must lie . . . with someone.
Are you . . . truly going to consider . . . Nash’s suspicious nature? Or, like my finger, will we both ignore . . . what is
right . . . before us?”