Chapter 26
The Blue Lagoon Lounge is exactly as I’d pictured it would be at ten o’clock on the final night on the ship. The room smells
of sautéed basil and steak simmering in buttery garlic—probably because a waiter just walked past with a steaming set of steaks
on a platter.
There is no shortage of dishes being passed around the tables.
On one table, a gigantic centerpiece consists entirely of crab.
And of course . . . there’s music.
Nash and I step farther into The Blue Lagoon, and sure enough, the person holding a microphone while singing right at this
moment is not dead Hugh, but very much a live Hugh.
Onstage.
Dipping the microphone attached to a stand like he’s Frank Sinatra himself.
People clap when he dips again, and again when he gives an upbeat little twirl. Nobody looks surprised to find him here. In fact, everyone looks tremendously pleased.
Almost as though . . .
“Hey, has he been here all week?” I say to a table full of ladies.
“Of course he has, honey,” says a woman with a tint of blue in her silvery hair. “Ten o’clock on the dot. Hugh’s Nightly Special.”
Somebody elbows the woman in the ribs with a specific look my way. “That’s Penelope Dupont,” she hisses.
The woman in blue looks up sharply. “Although . . . I don’t know . . . precisely. I just got here . . .”
Seriously?
They’re in on it too?
EVERYBODY’S IN ON IT?!
“What has he been doing?” I say. “Just singing?”
“Well, and the workshops—”
She gets elbowed again and amends, “But I couldn’t be sure.”
I roll my neck. Face Nash. “Oh my gosh. That’s why I didn’t get a thousand angry emails. He told everyone to just not talk to me. I mean, I emailed everyone that he was ill, but still, I knew that was weird. People aren’t that considerate when it comes
to money. Dozens of demands should have come through for a refund. You know what? I bent over backwards the past week working to find replacement authors for those workshops and have them call in. I pulled a dozen big, huge strings.
And here he was all this time, giving workshops and a show.”
“It’s fine to ask for favors.”
“I begged Trudy Louis, Nash. Like on my knees begged. On FaceTime.”
Nash tucks in his lower lip to keep from smiling.
I swing back to the dinner party of ladies.
“Tell me something. Did he tell you not to talk to me? What’d he say, exactly?”
The blue-haired lady opens her mouth, but the one with the crab legs smacks her and interjects. “He’s right up there, sweetie.
If you’ve got questions, you just need to ask him yourself.”
“Oh, believe me, I will.”
I straighten.
Hugh’s blue eyes meet mine now. They positively twinkle as he carries on singing his tune.
Does he not fear me?
At all?
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the rest of the gang.
Neena calls to me, but I flash her a deeply intense glare, the kind of glare that says Oh, don’t worry, I’ll be talking to you five in a second, and zero back in on Hugh.
He puts a hand up.
The music stops.
“And for our workshop finale in this greatest and most highly anticipated book tour, I’d like to invite up our special guest
to help us finish our time together. Ladies and gentlemen, the woman we’ve all been waiting for,” Hugh announces. “Let’s give
a round of applause.”
Claps go around the room, and he puts out a hand to help me onstage. I pointedly don’t take it and pull myself up.
“I should be ripping that microphone out of your hand and hitting you on the head with it,” I snap.
The room stills.
It’s just me and Hugh in the circular blue spotlight onstage.
Like an act.
A few people laugh, thinking it’s all a bit.
“For the record,” I say, “I’m livid.”
“But?”
“You had no right.”
“But?”
“This was entirely over the line and you will be paying me back handsomely.”
Hugh tilts his head. Waits. “But?”
“But . . .” I wait for ten long seconds, then at last I hold out my computer, open, to chapter 1. “I’ll give you this.”
Hugh’s eyes float over the document for a brief, confirming moment. “Is this a . . . full chapter?”
“Yes.”
“About this?” he says, pointing around us.
“Yes.”
“And has our Pip . . . found her voice?”
And this time I can’t help it. I let slip a tiny smile. “Yes.”
“Aw, Pip. I knew you would.”
The room swells. People begin clapping.
Neena, perfectly as expected, begins to cry.
Gordon puts a comforting arm around her.
Jackie looks stiff and uncomfortable as she puts forward a couple of tight claps.
Crystal. Where is Crystal?
I freeze, then point to two men-—one older, one much younger—sitting at a round table. “Is that . . . Pogache and Carragan?”
One of them, the burly Carragan, raises a frothy glass of beer at me. “I’m Bob, actually. And you’ve met my son, Trent. Not
too bad for a seventeen-year-old, was he?” he says, proudly grinning as he elbows his son at the table.
Hugh jumps in. “Pip, I don’t think you’ve met Bob Moore, one of my old buddies down at the station. Good sport, wasn’t he, for helping us out?”
“Thank you for the free trip,” Bob says, raising his ale again.
“Fake security?” I say, dazed.
That certainly helps things make sense.
“Well, it would have been exceedingly challenging to pull it off without him, wouldn’t it?” Hugh says, like of course. “I certainly couldn’t have taken my own body away on a stretcher. I certainly couldn’t have interrogated you poorly enough
to make you do it yourselves.”
The world truly does make sense again.
“I knew he was an awful detective,” I say, pointing. “I mean, innocent until guilty, yes, but letting murderers just roam free in secret? And two people dead?”
Hugh laughs. “Without some incompetence, the competent don’t rise to the occasion.”
I guess that’s true.
I guess . . . everybody’s mind-numbing, absolutely infuriating carefree attitude about everything is precisely what drove
me to solving this thing.
“Tell us,” Hugh says, “what was the final clue that led to your breakthrough?”
He swings the microphone on its stand my way, like we’re in a lecture hall now and not exactly where we are. Onstage. In a
basement. Of a cruise ship.
I hesitate. This really is the finale of his workshops, and the finale of the cruise, and here I am, the finale guest. “I . . .
I don’t know where to begin,” I say. “There were several clues. The knife in Nash’s bag, for one. I remembered the same weapons
found in different hands played out in your book Twice Down the River.”
Hugh wags a finger as he grins at me, then the audience. “She’s a smart one, folks. This, my friends, is the brain behind all my research. She can tell you more about my books than I can. Alright, so go on. What else led you to the discovery?”
“Well, in this case, everyone had a bloody knife on their person or property that could be linked to them. Everybody was guilty;
ergo, nobody really was. At first I found the knife in Crystal’s room and initially was led to believe she was guilty, but
then after I realized Neena had lied about her anxiety medication and it was really mints, I went hunting in Nash’s room.
Soon enough, it became clear everyone had the weapon.”
“Good. And . . . ?”
“And then,” I begin tentatively, “there was the strange way everybody reacted during the trip. At first they were devastated,
but one by one they all took on surprising characteristics. Almost as though they wanted to be guilty. Neena hinted that she was deeply hurt, possibly to the point of committing murder, after you ditched her years
ago from engagement—”
Hugh laughs at that. “I liked that one.”
“And yet I realized she’s in love with Gordon.”
Neena makes an uncomfortable grunting sound, and I swivel my head to her to see she looks openly embarrassed by the public
announcement. “Well,” she says, fanning herself, “guess the cat’s out of the bag.”
“Jackie claimed you had discovered she has a ghostwriter—”
“I do not,” Jackie calls out tersely for all to hear.
“And that perhaps you would have used that information against her. Except for the fact Jackie is the most rigidly academic
person I know.”
Jackie’s chin tips up. “Thank you.”
“Ricky was terrifying in general—”
“Ricky didn’t have a character role,” Hugh interrupts. “Ricky was just Ricky, except for his task of handing you the fake letter.”
So Ricky is just in general terrifying. That tracks.
“The security was funny. Pogache had a hard time stringing together an investigation and was grossly overinterested in hoverboards
while missing actual weapons entirely—”
“Again,” Bob calls out in a give him a break way, “seventeen.”
“There were just several things.”
“Tremendous. The murder mystery that ends in a karaoke party. A riot of an end. Now. As for this book.” Hugh gently takes the computer from my hands. He swivels it around. “Let’s take a look, shall we? Let’s see what our
future great American mystery writer has in store for us.”
Hugh brings the laptop over to a barstool and sits down onstage, resting the laptop on his knees.
It’s the oddest of experiences. Everybody, all the fellow book lovers and readers and novice writers, wait with bated breath
while we watch Hugh’s expression shift from the laughable, easygoing man I’ve known day in and day out for five years to what
I term “professor mode.”
Laser focused on the manuscript.
Tiny ripples of seriousness on his forehead.
Eyes that remain in a permanent squint as he reads line by line.
Professionally speaking, Hugh’s fellow authors, publicists, and editorial team love when he does this.
I always love when he does this. It’s as fascinating as watching a rare, nearly extinct animal in its natural habitat.
These are the moments when Hugh’s insights are crystal clear, and when they come out, they come out with incredible accuracy.
These are the moments when you realize you are in the company of brilliance.
Hugh, for all his faults (of which clearly there are many), is rarely wrong when it comes to manuscripts.
He’s guided every single one of The Magnificent Seven over the years, and that one-on-one consultation alone has been worth
millions.