Mask on the Cruise Ship (16 page)

Used to insults from me, Talbot looked at me uncertainly from under his dark, soulful forelock of hair. But then I grinned, and he grinned back.

We were in the lounge where I sang every evening. It had been converted to a sort of emergency center. The emergency being, as far as I could tell, which adult could fuss over me the most. Dozens of them were milling around us, including, also wrapped in blankets, the two stewards who'd jumped in after me with life preservers when Talbot pulled the emergency alarm; the officer who'd let down the emergency ladder for us to climb; and Captain Heidgarten, Mother, Madge, Jack — oh, the list went on and on. All these grown-ups fussing and fuming and, in my mother's and sister's cases, closer to drowning in tears than I'd been in the ocean.

I ignored them. They had other stuff to talk about, anyway; namely, where was Peabody Roberts? The noise of my rescue — that is, the prolonged, frantic screams from onlookers — had alerted him to hide. The Coast Guard had even come aboard to help with the search.

“You saved me,” I marveled. I still couldn't believe it. After all, I'd almost drowned — but I wouldn't think about that now. Another time.

More fun to watch Talbot blush with embarrassment. Apparently he'd been about to jump in himself, until another steward forcibly restrained him.
Whaddya think that is
down there, a convention?
the steward had barked.

Mother, who was speaking through her sobs of relief to Captain Heidgarten, glanced tearily over at me. From her expression I could tell she was about to swoop down on me for the trillionth time with hugs. Ditto Madge.

“Let's go sit near Evan,” I murmured to Talbot. “If Madge says to me one more time that she's never going to find me annoying again, I'll be ill. I mean, we're
sisters
.”

I clutched my blankets around me and followed Talbot to the piano, where Evan was tinkling out his
dah
DAH
dah dah
DAH
dah
tune. “Don't even think about hugging me,” I warned him. “You've had two bear ones already, so you've used up your quota.”

Evan laughed. “I'm busy being in shock over your chatting in an apparently civilized fashion with Talbot … Dah DAH dah dah DAH dah,” he crooned.

Talbot and I pulled up chairs behind him. “The weird thing,” I confided to Talbot, “was that I could have sworn I heard myself singing. But it was impossible. I had no voice at all.”

The
Empress Marie
's head chef bustled up to us with a tray of fresh chocolate chip cookies, the chips so hot they were still dripping, and two tall glasses of cold milk. About every ten minutes the chef was showing up with more food.

“I'll have to go overboard more often,” I joked.

The chef removed his towering white hat and began weeping into it. “Don't say that,” he begged. “When I think of you in those dark, churning waves — !” He rushed out, his roly-poly frame trembling with emotion.

Talbot raised a glass of milk to me in salute. “You
were
hearing yourself, Dinah. It wasn't impossible. I — well, I have this CD of yours. Of yours and the rest of the cast of
The
Moonstone
, I mean. I was playing the track where you sing “Blue Moon,” and it was so moving I stuck my head out the porthole to see the real moon. Which is how I spotted you. So,” he finished, offering me the tray, “in a way you rescued yourself.”

“That's much too noble of you, Talbot,” I said. “Why not claim credit? I do, whenever possible. But hold on. You were listening to me? I thought you found me loud. As in, LOUD,” I corrected, remembering the conversation I'd overheard between him and Liesl.

“I do,” Talbot said enthusiastically. “I love loud. Er, LOUD. I have all these old albums of great belter-outers like Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, Judy Garland, Sarah Vaughan … and now you,” he added shyly. “My dad and I saw you in
The Moonstone
last fall. He's the one who introduced me to jazz and swing music. I've wanted to tell you how much I thought of you, except … ”

Except I've gone out of my way to ignore you, I thought. I just assumed you were a snob because Liesl Dubuque hung around you all the time, and
she's
one.

I began to see that masks weren't only put on by those wearing them. Sometimes people created masks that, in their minds, they put on
other
people. Masks that were their own wrong ideas about the other people. I'd put such a mask on Talbot.

“I did hear you tell Liesl the Weasel that I was enough to break the sound barrier,” I pointed out.

“Huh?” Talbot's deep brown eyes were puzzled. Then his face cleared. “Ah, pre-brussels sprout attack, you mean. No, I was trying to shake Liesl off. She kind of trails after me like an extra shadow.” Talbot grimaced. “Even e-mails me all the time — it's to the point where I delete her messages without reading 'em. Anyhow, that one evening I was starting to tell her off. To note that, speaking of breaking the sound barrier,
her
shrill tones would probably be able to crack it wide open. But then the volley of brussels sprouts began, and … ”

I wrapped the blankets over my head. “I am sooo sorry,” I said in anguished, muffled tones. “I didn't know. Please forgive me.” For more than you know, I thought. For even thinking at one point you might have shoved me into Mendenhall Lake!

“Friends tend to forgive,” Talbot returned. He chuckled, a nice, humorous-sounding chuckle not at all like Peabody's dead-leaves one. “Besides, it wasn't like you were throwing bricks or anything.”

“I'd like to meet your dad sometime,” I said, still too chagrined to emerge from under the blankets.

“Well, you have, Dinah. He's been with you for the whole cruise. Haven't you, Dad?”

“You bet,” came Evan's voice.

Chapter 19
The end of Lavinia's courtin' days

I
was still absorbing the news about Evan and Talbot the next morning when Peabody Roberts, a.k.a. Gooseberry Eyes, was caught.

He'd eluded the
Empress Marie
's crew and members of the Coast Guard right up till we docked in Juneau, our last stop before heading home. It was a maid who found Peabody, hiding under a jumble of sheets and towels in a hamper.

“Talk about airing the ship's dirty laundry,” growled Captain Heidgarten as several Coast Guard officers hauled Peabody along the main deck.

I elbowed Evan. “Why didn't you tell me you were Talbot's dad?” I demanded. It was all very exciting about Peabody, but, as Mother and Madge often say, when I get a bee in my bonnet, it's a queen bee. That is, I become a royal pain until I've had my curiosity satisfied.

“You said you couldn't stand Talbot. You didn't want to see him on the cruise,” Evan replied, wincing as Peabody squirmed to get loose and was gripped more tightly by his captors.

“Pardon me,” I said, “but is your name not Evan
Brander
?”

Evan grinned. “ ‘Evan Brander' is my stage name. Brander is actually my middle name. No way any self-respecting musician is going to appear onstage with the moniker ‘St. John.' Too pretentious-sounding!”

“Not to me,” I said — and it wasn't, not now that I knew Talbot, and not ever again.

I thought of the satisfying game of backgammon Talbot and I had already played that morning. The early game, since I'd had bad dreams all night. Talbot had been glad to play; he was an early riser.

I had a feeling I was going to be an early riser for a while too. In the daytime you can postpone horrible images, like icy black waves and blurry white ships that float out of reach. In the nighttime, dreams aren't so cooperative.

I changed subjects. “But how come you were prowling around Julie's room so much? I thought maybe you were after the mask.”

“Good Lord!” exclaimed Evan, trading startled looks with Talbot. “Nothing quite so diabolical, Dinah-Mite. Our stateroom is in that hall, next to Julie's. I was afraid that if I continued past her door to my own, and opened it, you'd glimpse Tal and be upset. I was also worried about that when he and I went to Mendenhall Glacier — though it turned out you had far more serious distractions to deal with there.”

“I'm upset at
myself
,” I moaned. So often in life I searched for complicated answers when there were simple ones handy. Come to think of it, Talbot's was the voice I'd heard when the steward knocked on the door for room service. I was dumb,
dumb
, DUMB.

I clutched my hair. I'd washed it that morning, and Madge, overcoming strong objections from me, had actually brushed it out — revealing, astoundingly, a burnished red color only a smidgen lighter than her own. Wow! I might use a brush myself, every few months or so.

The brisk wind was fast whirling my hair into untidiness again, and of course my grabbing it by the ends didn't help.

“Yes,
completely
uncontrolled, I'd say,” snapped a voice down at the far end of the deck.

It was the disapproving tanned, middle-aged woman. I jumped, probably because my nerves were still edgy. After the previous night's experience, I figured they'd settle down in, oh, about forty years. I jarred Talbot's hand, which happened to be holding a jumbo bag of ketchup-flavored potato chips — his
and
my favorite chip flavor, it turned out.

Chips poured over the railing to flutter onto the heads of the people on the deck below. I yelped with laughter.

Talbot, however, immediately got a solemn, conscientious look on his face and said he'd better go down and apologize.

“Don't be ridiculous,” I scoffed. Obviously this boy needed to be taken under my wing and trained.

There would be lots of time for that, because we were discussing the idea of forming a musical group, along with Pantelli. Talbot played guitar, electric guitar and drums; Pantelli was a piano prodigy; and of course I could supply the pipes. The only challenge would be wrenching Pantelli away from his tree studying, but we could always remind him that ebonies and ivories were made of wood.

Anyhow, that was for the future. Right now, Peabody was being dragged along in front of us. “
You
,” he snarled at me. “You were supposed to disappear.”

Reaching for a potato chip, I crunched into it as loudly as possible. “I always come back for encores,” I informed him loftily.

Farther along, the middle-aged woman continued to rant to her companion, who was wearing a floppy pink straw hat. Lavinia!

“Goodness knows, I've certainly tried to enjoy this cruise,” the middle-aged woman said. “However, a sandy-haired young man keeps playing practical jokes on me. Told me first that he was planning to marry a young girl and then
you
, an old lady!”

Lavinia drew back, offended. “I'm not that old,” she harrumphed. “Anyhow, I am planning to marry.”

“Well, I hope it's someone your own age. I've had enough of these distasteful jokes.”

“Oh, Ira is most definitely my age. A few years senior, perhaps.”

Evan, Talbot and I exchanged amused glances. Evidently news of Ira/Gooseberry Eyes/Peabody's capture hadn't quite got round to everyone.

The Coast Guard officers hauled Peabody along, and the next moment he and they were beside the middle-aged woman and Lavinia.

Leaning forward, I saw Peabody's long, thin profile twisting into a sneer. “Hi, Lavvy baby,” he jeered. “Don't you recognize your darling Ira? So when will our wedding bells ring, toots?”

Lavinia swayed and had to clutch the railing.

“I don't believe it!” the middle-aged woman spat at her. “You, as well!”

And she stalked off.

Chapter 20
The Raven and the songbird

T
albot and I headed off to play volleyball. “You're much too nice,” I lectured him. “That's why you haven't been able to shake Liesl the Weasel.”

“Oh yeah? Here's a not-nice shot for you, kiddo.” He lobbed a high one.

“Dang! It's the late birthday curse,” I lamented, having leaped for it in vain. “Someday I'll be tall like Madge. You wait!”

“Madge? Is that your sister?”

“Yeah.” I frowned at him. “You saw her at the Totem Park, remember? She was beside me when I was in yellow duck mode.”

“I saw you,” Talbot shrugged. “I didn't notice her.”

I dropped the ball, which I'd been about to serve. A male of the species —
not noticing Madge?!

“Let me get this straight,” I said feebly. “You noticed me and not my sister?”

“Yeah. So?” Talbot's brown eyes were puzzled. “What's the big deal, Dinah?”

“Ohhh … nothing. Just that my nerves will now be in shock for another
eighty
years.”

But where was
the Raven? A search of Peabody's room had yielded lists of wealthy art collectors he'd been busy contacting; tins of the thick, gooey makeup he'd been wearing; sets of false, wobbly, old men's teeth —

“That explains the clicking thing he was doing with his mouth.” Madge shuddered. “He had to keep pushing the teeth back into place.”

No Raven, though. Elaine, who'd flown down to Juneau at the news of Peabody's arrest, looked rather despairingly at Captain Heidgarten. We were all in his office, watching the spindly hands on his brass clock tick on and on. In the evening the
Empress Marie
would pull out of Juneau, and the Heritage Gallery still would not have its mask.

Elaine had cleared up one mystery, at any rate. As soon as she found out Gooseberry Eyes' identity, she buried her face in her hands. “Not Peabody. Not
Peebles
,” she moaned. “He's the high school friend Julie always told me about. The unpleasant prankster who let air out of the tires of teachers' cars when he didn't like his marks. Who dumped garbage on the lawns of kids who made fun of his clumsiness in gym class. Julie laughed at his pranks, comparing him to the tricky Raven. I refused to let her bring Peebles to the house. I'd heard too many bad things about him.