Norway to Hide (19 page)

“I hope you’re having better luck than we are,” said Margi Swanson as she walked by with Grace. “We’re heading down to the library.” She tapped her watch. “Fifteen minutes until showtime, Emily. Are you going to make it?”

“You bet.” I took the stairs two at a time and, finding no bulkhead door on deck six, raced up to deck seven. I hurried through the lounge and bar area and
pushed open the aft door, stepping out onto the sundeck, where a score of passengers in matching navy blue hooded windbreakers reclined in deck chairs, apparently impervious to the cold. Damn. Who were these guys? Eskimos?

“Ahoy there!” called Joleen, waving enthusiastically.

Good Lord, they were Floridians! I glanced at the jumble of deck chairs, spying Vern and Reno, Jimbob, April and June, Lauretta and Curtis. They must have eaten breakfast really early so they could claim the best chairs on the sundeck.

I tapped the arm of April’s chair as I walked by. “A little cold up here, isn’t it?”

She lowered her sunglasses so she could look me in the eye. “Doesn’t matter what the temperature is. Once a sun worshipper, always a sun worshipper.”

“Have any of you seen Jackie this morning?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard above the wind.

Heads shook. Shoulders shrugged. Reno looked up from the miniature Scrabble board in his lap, his windbreaker embroidered with the word
Hamlets
in bright gold lettering. “I saw her last night as we were about to dock in that place that starts with a B, but I haven’t seen her since.”

The Klicks came to attention like bird dogs on the scent. “Is she missing?” asked Curtis, holding onto his video camera.

“Yes, she is,” I said, watching all of their faces for a reaction.

“I
told
you we should have come up here earlier,” Lauretta scolded, whacking her husband with a tube
of sunblock. “She was probably up here at the crack of dawn and got raptured before us.”

“Lighten up on the poor guy,” chided April. “In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s crack of dawn all the time around here.”

“You need some help looking for her?” asked Vern.

“Thanks, but—” I gave them a stony look, not trusting a single one of them. “We have everything under control.”

“We’ll tell her you’re looking for her if she walks by,” said Jimbob.

“Triple word score,” said Reno, handing the board to Vern. “Add fifty-seven points to my score, ole buddy. And do it before your hand freezes up.”

I marked the time as I wended my way around the chairs. I had six minutes to make it down to the library with one last outdoor area to check.

I descended the metal stairs of the aft companion-way, aware of the kind of
hrrrm
ing you’d hear in a sewage treatment plant or a kitchen with a really big refrigerator. The Jacuzzi at the base of the stairs was still covered with a tarp, but when I turned to the port side, I saw that the cover had been removed and—

“OH, MY GOD!”

“
P
ut a sock in it, would ya?” Bernice griped as she adjusted her bathing cap. “It’s called old age. Deal with it.” She lowered herself into the Jacuzzi, the water bubbling over her black thong bikini and Tyson chicken flesh like a steaming witches’ brew. “And close your mouth before drool starts running down your chin.”

I snapped my mouth shut, but I wasn’t sure what to do about my eyes. I might have to pluck them out.

“Five-ninety-nine at Wal-Mart,” she boasted, lifting the shoulder strap of her bikini top. “Though it’s not even worth that much, since they only sell you half the suit these days.”

I nodded like an Emily Andrew bobble head.

“What’s wrong with you? Cat got your tongue?”

I shook my head no.

She flicked water at me. “My Harold would have loved seeing me in this suit. Did you know I used to be a model?”

I nodded again.

“Those were the days when women were shaped like hourglasses instead of number two pencils.” She angled her head coquettishly. “My Harold was a butt man. Some men like legs, others like chests, but my Harold liked butts. Especially mine. You know what he used to call me?”

Euw boy. Way too much information. “We have a group meeting in five minutes, Bernice.”

“Not for me. I’m playing hooky.”

I gave her an exasperated look. “Did you even bother looking for Jackie?”

“Deck two. It’s only half as long as the other ones, so we finished fast. That lower level is really creepy.”

“Aren’t you even curious to find out if someone else found her?”

“Alice said she’d take notes at the meeting. Don’t worry; I won’t get left out of the loop. Alice takes good notes.”

I locked my jaw, too irritated to speak.

“There you go, giving me that ‘I’m put out’ look of yours. Here’s the deal. My son paid a whole lot of money for me to take this trip, so if I’m given a choice between attending a boring meeting or taking advantage of an unoccupied hot tub, guess which one I’m gonna choose?”

“Jackie really likes you,” I spluttered, unable to contain my anger. “If you were missing, she’d be the
first one out looking for you. And she’d attend all the meetings!”

“Sure, sure. If I went missing,
no one
would look for me. I’m old, but I’m not stupid.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, whose fault is that?”

She gave me a squinty look from beneath the rubber flowers on her bathing cap. “Whose fault is what? That I’m old, or that I’m not stupid?”

“Whose fault is it that none of your friends would look for you?”

“Shoot, they might call themselves my friends, but they don’t really like me. If
you
disappeared, they’d tear the boat apart to find you, but not for me. They’re your friends, not mine.” She shrugged a bony shoulder. “I don’t really have any friends.”

It was Bernice—crotchety, irascible, pain-in-the-neck Bernice. She made all our lives miserable. I shouldn’t feel sorry for her, but I did. “So…did you ever have friends?”

“Harold was my friend. Can’t say I’ve had one since he passed on. Money got tight, and when money’s tight, it leaves a sour taste in your mouth. It’s hard to like yourself or anyone else when you’re just scraping by. I almost had to declare bankruptcy once. That was a real low point. If I’d had to appear in front of a judge and admit to the world that I didn’t have a pot to piddle in, it would have been all over. I’ve got pride, you know.”

I came to attention as if electrified. “Bankruptcy—that’s it.
That’s
the motive! What is wrong with me? I am
so
blind.” I hopped onto the Jacuzzi platform,
rabbed Bernice’s face, and kissed her on the mouth with a loud smack. “Thank you, Bernice! You are absolutely brilliant!”

“Euuuuuuw!”
she sputtered as I wrenched open the bulkhead door. “Hey! I’m not that way!” The echo of her voice followed me down the passageway. “Not that there’s anything wrong with it!”

I ran down four interior staircases, my feet in a footrace with my brain. I needed to call Mom. With any luck she’d be able to verify—

I checked my watch. 10:01. It was the middle of the night in Windsor City. Waking people up from a sound sleep was so jarring, but—

I collapsed against the reception counter on the gangway deck, gasping for breath. Man, I really needed more cardio in my daily routine. “Is there a phone I can use to make a call to the United States?” I asked, wheezing pathetically.

The crewman behind the desk eyed me curiously. “The public phone is behind you.”

I swung around. The wall opposite me was hung with large-scale maps, brochures in wooden pockets, and a solitary phone framed by a privacy cubicle. “That’s a real public phone? I can dial the States on it?”

The crewman nodded. “If you have the proper phone card.”

“I don’t
have
a phone card.”

He pointed upward. “Ship’s store. Deck four.”

“It costs
how
much?” I asked the store clerk when she rang it up.

“Six hundred kroner.”

“How much is that in American dollars?”

“Approximately one hundred U.S. dollars. It is not profitable for us to sell the cards in smaller units. My apologies.”

I checked my cash reserves and sighed. “Do you accept credit cards?”

I plugged the card into the phone and dialed, flinching at the ship’s clock. 10:16. I was really late for the meeting. They were going to kill me. “Mom!” I said when she answered. “
Pleeease
forgive me for bothering you and Dad at this hour of the morning, but it’s really important.”

“My goodness, Emily,” she said in a froggy voice, pausing to yawn. “You’re never a bother. Why, it’s—Just a second, I can’t see the clock. It’s quarter past three here. I was just about to get up.”

She was so sweet, and such a bad liar. “Mom, did you have time to check out those names I gave you?”

“Yes, I did, but can I run something by you first?”

The second hand on the ship’s clock kept eating up precious time. “Real fast, okay?”

“Accordions.”

“Excuse me?”

“For the wedding. The synagogue doesn’t have an organ, so I found four accordion players from the Myron Floren Institute who’ll play music for the service and the reception. Do you remember Myron Floren, Emily? He was on Lawrence Welk with the Lennon Sisters, and Jo Ann Castle, and Wayne New
ton when he was just a little nipper singing ‘Danke Schoen.’ Do you remember Lawrence Welk? A one-uh and a two-uh. Such a nice man.”

“Accordions?”

“I’ve asked them to play lots of polkas.”

“AT THE SERVICE?”

“At the reception. Your grandmother loves a spirited polka.” A thoughtful pause. “We’ll have to remind George to strap his leg on extra tight.”

Oh, God
. “Accordions sound wonderful, Mom. Are you anywhere near the information you have for me?”

“It’s in the office. Hold on. I’ll pick the phone up in there.”

I watched the second hand on the ship’s clock tick away more time. I also noted that it was 9:20 in Rome, 8:20 in London, and 5:50 in Newfoundland.
Huh?

“Who do you want me to start with?” Mom asked when she picked up again.

“Portia.”

“I found a lot of archived material about her from the
Boston Herald
web pages. Did you know she was a debutante? Van Cleef was her married name, but Pingree was her maiden name. I think she’s one of those Eastern blue bloods. She married a fella who spent a lot of time playing polo and sailing in his yacht, but he died some years back when he fell off a horse. They owned several vacation homes, but she put them on the market after she was widowed. They were both on the board of directors for a bunch of charitable organizations. Can you imagine the commitment of
time, Emily? Sitting in all those boring meetings and attending all those fancy benefits? We don’t give rich folks near enough credit.”

“Did Portia and her husband own a home in Las Vegas?”

“Yes, they did! How did you know that?”

“Lucky guess.”

“Do you suppose they ever got to see Wayne Newton perform? After he left Lawrence Welk, he grew a mustache and became the King of Las Vegas.”

“What about August Manning? Did he have a Vegas connection?”

“Not that I remember. Let me see. He won a Pulitzer Prize for journalism and spent most of his life in Washington, D.C. He was a member of various professional societies and organizations and served as president of the Atlantic Journalists Foundation for almost a decade. He was involved in an accident some years back and was laid up for a long time. No mention what the accident was, but I’m thinking vehicular. He isn’t married, doesn’t have kids, and never seems to do anything except work. On paper, he looks pretty dull. Maybe he should play polo or bowl, or something like that.”

“No Vegas connection that you can see? Are you sure?”

“Do you think he has a gambling habit? I wouldn’t have any way of checking, but maybe his idea of the perfect vacation is to fly out to Vegas to hit the casinos.”

That prompted a burst of inspiration. “What about
his Atlantic Journalists Foundation? Organizations have conferences and conventions. Is your computer on? Can you check to see if they ever meet in Vegas?”

Tick…tick…tick
…

“They don’t sometimes meet in Vegas, Emily. They
always
meet in Vegas. It’s an annual event held at a different hotel each year.”

“Yes!” I did the jump-around and would have started the wave if there’d been other people around.

“Do you want to hear about May Peabody now?”

“Don’t need to. You’ve given me all the information I need. Thank you
so
much, Mom. Love you!”

I ran up the main staircase to the dining deck. It was ten thirty, and I was screwed. I burst into the library—to find it empty.

“Aw, come on, guys. Where are you? Why is everyone disappearing?”

I stood outside the library door, looking both ways, relieved when I spied them shuffling around the corner in a tightly packed clump.

“Where’ve you been?” Dick Teig huffed, looking happy to see me despite his indignant bluster. “We’ve been all over this tub looking for you.”

“Did you know there’s an infirmary on deck two?” asked Margi, waving a Polaroid snapshot. “Your grandmother let me borrow her camera because my battery died.”

Nana gave me a hug. “When you didn’t show up on time it gave us a fright, so the Dicks said we oughta form a search party.”

“No kidding?” I smiled at the Dicks. Bernice had
been right. Despite their sometimes gruff facades, these guys really liked me. I blushed at their adulation.

“We’d be up a creek without you,” admitted Dick Stolee.

“Aw, that’s so sweet.”

“It’s because you’re carrying our plane tickets,” Helen spoke up.

“Did you find Jackie?” Nana asked me.

“No. Did you?”

Her mouth drooped woefully. “None of us seen no sign a her. She’s got swallowed up like a golf ball on the last green a one a them miniature golf courses.”

“We did, however, find all the Floridians on the sundeck,” said Tilly, “so they’re all present and accounted for, and if the world ends in the next few hours, they won’t have to worry about being diagnosed with skin cancer. One tube of sunblock among them. Ridiculous.”

“I have pictures,” enthused Margi, waving more snapshots.

“I’m happy to find all of you in one place,” Annika said as she joined us. “I have just received word on Mrs. Thum, so please”—she opened the library door and held it wide—“it will be more quiet in here.”

We filed in and took seats at the room’s many tables, my heart ready to burst from my chest in expected dread.

“The purser has just informed me that the captain radioed every port where Mrs. Thum might have been left behind, and no one reports having seen a six-foot brunette in a miniskirt and stiletto heels.”

“That’s not exactly the right description,” George objected. “She’s a lot taller when she’s wearing those spike heels.”

Nods. Rumbles of assent.

“George is right,” said Osmond. “She’s at least six-feet-four in heels. Maybe six-feet-five.”

“I bet everyone was looking for the wrong person,” Margi concluded. “Do you think they’d mind looking again?”

Annika regarded us with a blankness that was probably borne from guiding one too many tours with American guests. “She was not left behind. She has not made her presence known at the ship offices in Berlevag, Mehamn, Kjollefjord, Honningsvag, or Havoysund.”

“When did we visit all those places?” snorted Dick Teig.

“In the early morning hours,” said Annika.

“How come I didn’t hear the ship stop?”