Mask on the Cruise Ship (17 page)

“I was so relieved when he and his parents moved back to Alaska — and so disappointed when I recently heard he was back in Vancouver. Such a bad influence on Julie!”

I didn't point out that Julie herself was hardly the type to exert a Mother Teresa-like influence. Instead I repeated “Peebles?” and from somewhere I heard the gentle click of a jigsaw puzzle piece falling into place. “I get it. ‘Peebles' is Peabody's nickname. You told Julie not to talk to
Peebles
, not people, about the mask.”

“When Julie persisted in her friendship with Peabody, I'm afraid I lost my temper with her. Told her she knew nothing about people.” Elaine shook her head.

“Maybe our first theory was correct,” Captain Heidgarten was commenting thoughtfully. “Maybe Peabody did stow the Raven somewhere on land.”

“I dunno,” Jack said. “A priceless mask isn't exactly the type of thing you stuff in a public locker.”

Talbot was sitting just outside the office's open door, on the
Empress Marie
's suggestion box. Mr. Trotter, who kept dabbing at his forehead with an
Empress Marie
hanky, had told Talbot he could only stand to be with one kid in a small, enclosed space at a time. “The Captain's cabin isn't small,” Talbot had argued — but, polite as he was, he stepped out and switched on his CD player.

Now he piped up, in the unnaturally loud voice you tend to use when wearing headphones, “PEABODY LUGGED — sorry. Peabody, in his Ira disguise, lugged a huge shopping bag back on board the
Empress
after our first visit to Juneau. Myra and I were right behind him. I offered to help him carry it, but he just shouted, ‘STUFF AND NONSENSE!' and scuttled away from me. Betcha the mask was in the shopping bag.”

“Since he'd grabbed it that morning in his thief disguise.” I nodded. “Yup, it's gotta be aboard.”

The “Myra” Talbot had referred to was the sharp-faced woman who'd been accompanying him on excursions. She wasn't his mother at all — his mom was at home, as Evan had once told me, with a wee daughter. Myra was an assistant of Mr. Trotter's, an official companion to under-aged tourists.

Mr. Trotter was regarding Talbot with pursed lips, as if there were an extremely bad odor sitting outside on the suggestion box, rather than a twelve-year-old boy. “This whole episode has been so distressing,” he mourned, patting his mustache. “Imagine — Peabody Roberts! He seemed so quiet. So well-behaved. Just what we like at Happy Escapes. Though he did rip off my egg sandwich — that I'll never forgive,” the program director said darkly, as if this were a far worse crime than ripping off the Raven.

Captain Heidgarten sighed. “Dinah, was there anything at all Julie or Peabody said that referred to the Raven's whereabouts?”

I'd thought about this myself, endlessly. “Mostly Julie and Peabody were congratulating themselves on how clever they were,” I said. “Julie had this fascination with how clever the Raven was — she was sure she'd out-clevered him with her schemes.”

Those fools haven't the faintest hint
, Julie had laughed into her cell phone.

Captain Heidgarten and Mr. Trotter then got into a debate about whether the passengers' staterooms should be searched for the mask. The program director was indignant at the idea; the more he argued, the more he sweated, which made his mustache ends droop inch by inch.

“HEY, DINAH — er, sorry. Hey, Dinah,” said Talbot. He beckoned to me, and, glad to escape the rising tempers, I joined him outside the door.

He placed the headphones over my ears. “Get a load of this. It's a compilation of stuff Dad and I burned on a CD. You were asking about Peggy Lee — here she is.”

Peggy's velvety tones poured into my ears: “Is that all there is?” I could see why Dad liked her. Mellow and moody! A hint of mischief as well.
That
would've appealed to him especially.

A hint of mischief.

Hint.

That word was coming up a lot lately. Julie, with her
Those fools haven't the slightest hint.
And Peabody, giggling,
That idiot Heidgarten will never get the hint!

“Is that all there is?” crooned Peggy.

“YEAH, THAT IS ALL THERE IS,” I said slowly. Or shouted slowly. I removed the headphones and lowered my voice. “All there is, is a hint,” I announced to everyone. “That's all we need.”

By now the program director's mustache was hanging straight down, he was sweating so badly. “I'll tell you what
I
need,” he fumed. “A long,
long
vacation. I — ”

“Just a minute, Lionel,” Captain Heidgarten interrupted. “I think I espy a large light bulb switching on above our sensational singing redhead. Dinah?”

“I know where the Raven is,” I gulped. “Talbot's sitting on it.”

“Huh?” Talbot leaped off the suggestion box as if it had suddenly caught fire.

The, pardon me, Happy Escapes Helpful Hints suggestion box.

The Raven grinned
up at us from his bed of dozens of Helpful Hints suggestion forms. He was radiantly red, bold, bright — and cleverer than Julie and Peabody after all. He'd be going home to the Juneau Heritage Gallery, and they'd be going to jail.

Not that Julie and Peabody hadn't been clever to come up with the Helpful Hints suggestion box as a hiding place. The box was the one spot nobody checked on until after the end of a cruise — and Peabody, with the key he'd filched from the Happy Escapes office, had put the Raven inside, intending to remove it as soon as he found a buyer in Alaska. Then, still in his Ira Stone disguise, he'd return to Vancouver a much wealthier man, and no one the wiser.

Now I grinned back at the Raven. He always made me grin. I thought,
Hey, Dad, you should see this!

Elaine hugged me. “Thank you so much, Dinah! You
found
him!”

I was growing pretty Raven-red myself. “It's okay,” I mumbled as everyone crowded around. “It's — ” What could I say? I hated this kind of thing.

Then I remembered what Talbot had said to
me
. “It's what friends do for each other,” I told Elaine.

Talbot and I ran
into the lounge, where Evan was tinkling out his
Dah
DAH
dah dah
DAH
dah
number.

“We got the mask!” we yelled.

“No,
I
got the mask,” Evan said happily. “It's been right in my face the whole trip. Y'know, the mask this, the mask that, and I didn't get it till just now.”

Talbot raised his eyebrows at me. “Uh, sorry, Dinah, musicians are a bit eccentric sometimes … ”

“Listen, guys,” glowed Evan. “It's Dah DAH dah dah DAH dah no more.”

He began to play and sing:

The mask on the cruise ship
The stranger at sea —
Is it my true love,
Waiting for me?

Ms. X. on the ocean
Too shy to reveal
Her name, her face, yet
Love's what I feel.

Love, I thought. Trust a grown-up! But I quite liked the song. Love wasn't so bad. Maybe I'd give Madge and Jack some slack. A teeny amount, anyway.

“Why don't we practice it together?” I suggested to Evan. “I'll sing it tonight.”

He beamed. “I'd be honored. What a friend!”

I turned to Talbot, who was beaming as well. “Er, Talbot. About friendship. What you said, that friends tend to forgive each other.”

“Yeah, definitely they do.”

“Um … ” Now that the end of the cruise was drawing near, I was picturing Liesl Dubuque's sharp, and very likely furious, face under her newly close-cropped hair. A face that would all too soon be thrusting itself into mine — and screaming abuse.

I said, “I was wondering if, well, if you could sort of promise me in advance one more forgiveness. You know, like Club Z points against a purchase.”

Talbot stared at me from beneath his dark forelock of hair that no longer seemed the slightest bit soulful or silly to me. It was just him. “Sure. I guess. I don't exactly — ”

“Would you promise, though? One free forgiveness?”

“Uh, okay. You got it.” Then, abruptly, he grinned at me. “You're one of a kind, Dinah Galloway.”

Which he could have meant as an insult, but somehow I didn't think so. In fact, I felt very happy all of a sudden. Raven-happy. Sometimes the Raven did good things, and sometimes not so good at all, but he loved life with an enthusiasm as bright as the sun he stole for Earth.

Hey, this love stuff was making more and more sense — and especially, as Mother had said, in an uncertain world.

“I'd love to do your song,” I told Evan. “Let's try it right now!”

Hey, Dad …

The Spy in the Alley
A Dinah Galloway Mystery
Melanie Jackson

Meet Dinah Galloway: eleven years old, headstrong and impulsive, with a voice that can raise the roof and an appetite to match. Confronting a prowler in the backyard, Dinah is determined to find out why someone has taken an interest in her older sister and herself. Who is the bucktoothed burglar? Why are the Rinaldis' tomatoes always involved? And what is the connection between Madge's boyfriend and GASP, a group of well-intentioned anti-smoking activists?

Dinah gets by on pluck, courage and an irrepressible sense of humor as she is catapulted into a mystery that twists and turns from the blackberry patch to the corporate boardroom.

1-55143-207-2 •$8.95 CDN • $6.95 US

The Man in the Moonstone
A Dinah Galloway Mystery
Melanie Jackson

Dinah Galloway, fresh from her adventures with spies and bucktoothed burglars, is back in a hilarious new adventure.

Chosen for a lead role in the musical version of Wilkie Collins'
The Moonstone
, eleven-year-old Dinah – amateur detective, budding singer and unabashed owner of a huge appetite – is once again embroiled in a mystery that puts her in peril and offers plenty of opportunities for humor and good food.

Assisted by her long-suffering friend and ardent tree lover, Pantelli, and her overprotective, glamorous older sister, Madge, Dinah brings down the house in this second installment of the Dinah Galloway mystery series

1-55143-264-1 • $8.95 CDN • $6.95 US