Bad Grrlz' Guide to Reality: The Complete Novels Wild Angel and Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell (49 page)

“A little confusion over his cruise card,” Tom said easily. “An identification problem, that’s all.” She was still frowning.

“But I think you’re right—he’s certainly not a gentleman. Unfortunately, that’s not considered a crime on the
Odyssey.”

There was a dragon in the cave, she was sure of that. But she knew the monsters name. And that gave her a certain advantage
.

—from
Here Be Dragons

by Mary Maxwell

Susan had the Promenade to herself. Tom had sat and talked with her while she finished her beer, then offered to walk her to her stateroom. She had declined his offer. Too restless to sleep, she thought she’d walk around the Promenade once before heading up to her stateroom.

The ocean was dark. Beside the doors that led from the ship’s interior to the Promenade, electric lightbulbs set in fixtures designed to look like antique lanterns glowed brightly. Near the doors, light shone on the fat white bellies of the lifeboats that hung overhead, glistened on the damp, wooden boards of the deck. Away from the doors, the deck was thick with shadows. Here and there, a window cast a bright rectangle of light, but the stretches of deck between the windows were dark.

Susan walked briskly, moving from light to shadow and back to light again. As she walked, she thought about how Tom had a knack for appearing at just the wrong time. “What happened?” he had asked her, and she had told him everything.

He must think she was a complete idiot—lying about being engaged, having a drink with a man who was some sort of criminal. But Tom had simply listened to her. And he had done his best to reassure her that she had done nothing wrong. “Just relax,” he had told her. “Have a good time. Why let one encounter with a jerk spoil your vacation? It seems like you need a vacation.”

She did need a vacation, and she was perfectly willing to have a good time. But it seemed that in five years of marriage, she’d forgotten how. Maybe she could remember.

At the stern of the ship, she forced herself to stop walking. The air felt warm and tropical. In the morning, they would make port in Hamilton, Bermuda, one of the ship’s two ports of call on the way to London. She leaned against the railing, looking out at the ship’s wake. Illuminated by lights at the stern of the ship, the wake made a white path in the dark water.

Relax, she told herself. Why let one jerk spoil your vacation? She imagined telling Pat about her encounter with the man in the bar. Pat would laugh, Susan thought. Pat would approve of Susan’s lie—Pat felt that Susan needed to cut loose and make trouble. Pat would be amused that Susan had lied to a liar. Pat wouldn’t waste any time stewing about her lies—or about the arrogance of the man she had met.

Behind her, Susan heard a burst of music from one of the ships bars. Someone had opened a door that led onto the Promenade. The music was muffled again as the door swung shut, drowned out by the hum of the engines.

Susan did not look around. She did not want to talk with anyone. She watched the churning bubbles of the wake. From behind her, she heard a thump—as if something had struck the side of the ship. Then she saw a dark object bobbing and swirling in the ship’s wake. Startled, she glanced behind her. No one was there. She looked at the wake again, but the object, whatever it was, was out of sight.

Hesitant, but curious, she walked along the railing in the direction from which the sound had come. On the side of the ship, just around the corner from where she had stood, she noticed a bright smear of red. It looked like blood, she thought.

Then the lights went out.

Tom was heading for his cabin when he got a radio call from Don, requesting assistance. “Possible 245 in the Games Room.” That was the code for aggravated assault.

When Tom reached the Games Room, he found Don sitting with a male passenger on a bench in the corridor outside the room. The passenger, a large man in his fifties, was pale. His face was wet with sweat and his hands were shaking. “It was a friendly game,” he was telling Don. The man was drunk, and Tom could tell from Don’s expression that this was not the first time the man had told him about how friendly the game had been.

“This is Mr. Perkins,” Don told Tom. “He’s reported the incident. I’ve called for backup and I’ve secured the room, but I thought I’d better stay with Mr. Perkins until you got here.”

Tom nodded. Mr. Perkins started talking again.

“Patrick said Weldon was cheating, and then Weldon stabbed him. Just like that. Not a bit of warning. Just stabbed him. He killed him; I’m sure he killed him. Then he looked at me like I might be next.” Mr. Perkins looked like he might be about to cry. “I ran out the door before he could go after me.”

“I was coming by to check on the Games Room,” Don said. “I found Mr. Perkins running down the corridor. By the time we got back here, the other poker players were gone. I secured the room and called you.”

Tom flicked on his radio to call the ship’s doctor to see if the victim had come in for medical treatment. And then the lights went out.

Susan froze in the sudden darkness. She couldn’t see a thing. The ship’s engines still rumbled underfoot; she could hear the rush of water past the ship’s hull, far below. She could hear her own heart pounding. She was alone in the darkness. She felt cold, despite the warmth of the air around her.

She turned away from the sound of rushing water. Arms outstretched, she took a few tentative steps in what she thought was the direction of the doors. Her hand brushed against the wall, and she groped her way along the wall to find a door.

She pulled the door open a crack and heard voices, people shouting and laughing. “Hey, who turned out the lights?” “Anyone have a flashlight?”

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, but I can’t find my drink.”

Susan opened the door and stepped into the corridor. In the distance, she could see a light. Someone was holding up a cigarette lighter, which cast a pool of flickering light, and people were gathering around, talking and laughing. No one seemed particularly alarmed.

She headed toward the man with the cigarette lighter. “We should go to our muster stations,” he was saying to the people who had gathered around him. “That’s what we’re supposed to do in an emergency.”

Susan’s eyes were beginning to adjust to the dark. She could make out the people surrounding the man with the cigarette lighter.

“Is this an emergency?” a woman asked.

“Where are our muster stations?” asked someone else.

“Hello,” Susan said to the group gathered around the cigarette lighter. “Does anyone know what’s going on?”

“Hello! Hello!” A bright flashlight beam shone from the far end of the corridor. The young man holding the flashlight wore the red jacket that designated him as a member of the purser’s staff. People peppered the young man with questions.

“Is something wrong with the ship?” “Should we have our life jackets?” “What should we do?”

“Just a little problem with the electrical system,” the young man said. “No big deal. The engineering staff is busy fixing it right now. You could go to bed. Or you could come to Apollo’s Court, if you like.”

“That’s our muster station,” said the man with the cigarette lighter in a satisfied tone. He seemed to be the sort of fellow who liked knowing what was going on.

There was much discussion then—with some people going to bed and some deciding to accompany the crew member to Apollo’s Court, the large buffet-style restaurant not far from where they were.

Susan hesitated, her arms wrapped around herself. She didn’t know what to do.

“Are you all right, ma’am?” the crew member asked her.

She bit her lip, thinking about what she’d seen. A splash of red on the railing. Blood? More likely a strawberry daiquiri, spilled by a drunk. She weighed the odds and decided on the innocent explanation. It couldn’t have been blood.

“I’m fine,” she said and followed the man with the flashlight to Apollo’s Court.

Sitting in the darkness, Mr. Perkins told Tom that a man named Patrick Murphy had been stabbed by a man named Weldon Merrimax during the course of a poker game in the Games Room. Patrick Murphy, according to Mr. Perkins, was a tall fellow with a mustache. Patrick had been dressed in what Mr. Perkins called “old timey” clothes. “Maybe he’s one of those historians,” Mr. Perkins suggested. Mr. Perkins’ description of Weldon matched Frank Bender’s description of Weldon Merrimax.

Mr. Perkins had met Weldon in the lotus Eaters’ lounge, the bar closest to the Games Room. Weldon had seemed like such a friendly sort, Mr. Perkins said. The conversation turned to cards, and Patrick Murphy, who was also sitting at the bar, had joined in. Patrick was the one who had suggested a hand of poker, Mr. Perkins said. Weldon was the one who suggested that they go to the Games Room.

The ship’s procedures offered little guidance in this matter. Most fights aboard the ship were simple matters. Someone smacked someone else around; Tom separated the protagonists and usually that ended the matter. There had been knife fights between members of the crew, but the combatants in those had been easily identified, fired, and removed from the ship at the first opportunity. This was another matter.

During the confusion of the blackout, Tom did what he could. He ascertained that no stabbing victim had visited the ship’s doctor. Security staff conducted a flashlight search of all the open decks, service areas, and public areas. They found no victim, but one guard found the cause of the blackout in the course of the search. An electrical panel in a staff area had been tom open and shorted out. “Smells like Scotch,” said the guard who found it. According to Mr. Perkins, the poker players had all been drinking rather heavily. Weldon had supplied them with Scotch.

Tom nodded. So the man calling himself Weldon had tom open the panel to turn off the lights, giving himself plenty of time to get away.

Tom secured the Games Room. There was some evidence of a fight in the room: a chair had been knocked over; drinks had been spilled, cards scattered on the floor. But no blood stains on the carpet; no bloody knife left conveniently behind. In Tom’s experience, the little old ladies had left worse messes after a rubber of bridge.

Apollo’s Court was illuminated by candles. As Susan walked across the restaurant, she heard Max calling to her.

“Hey, Susan.” The writer was sitting at a booth with a young woman and a little girl. “Come join us,” Max said. “This is Jody.” He gestured to the little girl, who sat on one of the benches, a blanket draped around her shoulders like a cape “And this is Nancy, Jody’s nanny.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Nancy said. Her voice had an Irish lilt. In the candlelight, both Jody and Nancy looked young and frightened. “Do you know when they are going to turn the lights back on?”

Jody asked Susan. “I don’t like this. I’m scared of the dark.”

“Now, Jody,” Nancy said. “There’s nothing to be scared of.”

The little girl looked up at Nancy, her eyes round. “I’m scared,” she said again.

Susan sat on the bench beside Max. She agreed with Nancy—there was nothing to be scared of. But she sympathized with Jody. Susan didn’t much like the darkness either.

“What are you scared of?” Max asked Jody. “Monsters,” the little girl said.

Max nodded. “Yeah, I’m scared of monsters, too.”

Susan watched the little girl’s face in the candlelight. She seemed puzzled by this grownup who believed in monsters. “Where do your monsters live?” Max asked.

The little girl frowned, thinking about her answer. “Under the bed,” she said. “In the closet.”

Max nodded. “Places where it’s dark. Monsters like to hide in the dark.”

The restaurant was filled with shadows. The candles on the tables created pools of light, but the room was dark between the tables. As the candle flames flickered and danced, the shadows wavered and moved. So many places for monsters to hide, Susan thought.

“You know where the monsters come from?” Max asked. The little girl shook her head.

“Out of your head. You make them up.”

“No!” Jody protested She had obviously been through this before. She could see what was coming: your monsters are imaginary so they’re nothing to be afraid of. “They’re real!”

“Of course they’re real,” Max said. “Just because you make them up doesn’t mean they aren’t real.”

Susan glanced at Nancy. The young woman was leaning back, half asleep, paying no attention to Max and Jody.

“I make things up all the time,” Max said. “And some of the things I’ve made up are very real. You know why?”

“Why?” Jody asked.

“Because I believe in them. That’s what makes them strong. Your monsters are strong because you believe in them and you think they’re strong.”

“Really strong,” agreed the little girl.

“That’s the power of the imagination,” Max said. “If you believe in something, you can make it real.”

“The monster under the bed is real,” Jody said. Max nodded. “What does that monster look like?”

“All covered with scales,” Jody said without hesitation. “Lots of teeth and big claws. It wants to grab me.”

“What’s its name?”

Jody hesitated. Susan guessed that the little girl had never considered being on a first name basis with her monsters. “I don’t know.”

“It’s good to name your monsters,” Max said. “Maybe we should call him Henry.”

Susan watched as Jody thought about this for a moment. She guessed that the little girl was considering the possibility, perhaps thinking that this man seemed to know a lot about monsters. “Okay,” Jody agreed after a moment.

“So Henry lives under the bed,” Max said. “That’s not a very big space. Especially not on this ship. That’s where I put my suitcases.”

Jody nodded. “That’s where Nancy put my suitcases.”

“How many suitcases do you have?”

“Two.”

“Hmm. That doesn’t leave much room under there. Could you get under the bed when your suitcases are there?”

Susan remembered that there was just a foot or so to spare after she shoved her own suitcases under the bed.

Jody shook her head. “There’s not enough room.”