Sammy Keyes and the Killer Cruise (17 page)

“Look, I—”

“I’ll be right there.”

“Wait!”

But he’s already hung up the phone.

“Great,” I grumble, then I dial Darren’s room and hear a gravelly, “Hello?”

Obviously, I’m waking up the rocker boys, so I get right to the punch line. “It’s Sammy. We’ll have a visitor here in about seven seconds. A boy.”

That wakes him up. “A boy?” And now I can tell that it’s Darren on the other end.

“Kip. I tried to tell him not to come because I agreed to the no-boys rule, but he’s on his way over anyway.”

“So am I,” he says, and hangs up the phone.

Sure enough, seven seconds later, Kip’s there, knocking on the door. And sure enough, by the time I’ve answered it, Darren and Marko are stumbling out of their room into the hallway.

“Oh, good!” Kip says when he sees them.

Darren and Marko look at each other like, Oh good? but Kip’s already inside, at the desk, scribbling like mad on a piece of notepad paper.

“What are you doing?” I ask him, but all I get is a frantic little head shake. So I look over his shoulder and watch him write:

When he’s done, he stands up straight and lets out a huge sigh of relief. “There. That’s it.”

Now, I know Kip said it was a coded message, but to me it looks like some complicated order-of-operations problem that Mr. Tiller might have assigned us in math.

Well, except for the
LIONN
part.

But still. I didn’t understand how he could have held anything that long and complicated in his head. I would have had trouble with just one line of it. So I stare at him and say, “That’s impossible. No one can do that.”

“What is it?” Darren asks him.

“A coded message!” Kip gasps. “Copies of it were under Uncle Lucas’ and Uncle Bradley’s doors, with their names and
TICK TOCK
typed on the front.”

“Whoa,” Marko says, clicking into what just happened. “You mean to tell us you
memorized
it?”

Kip looks down and gives a little nod.

“Sammy’s right,” Marko says. “That’s impossible.”

And then we all stare at his bowed head until it’s totally awkward, and he finally volunteers, “Grandfather taught me. He called it Picture and Pattern.” He shrugs. “I’ve worked at it for years, but this is bigger than anything I’ve ever done before.”

We stare at him some more. “Do the others know you can do that?” I ask.

“Uncle Bradley might.” He eyes me. “Either that or he’s just naturally paranoid about his passwords.”

We all raise eyebrows and sort of mentally look around for things we should be hiding from view, but nobody says anything until Darren finally asks, “So what’s this about?” He sits on the edge of Marissa’s bed and says, “And start at the beginning, would you? No skippin’ around.”

“Yeah,” Marko says, plopping down next to him. “Our sleep-addled brains can’t take you skippin’ around.”

So Marissa and I sit on the edge of my bed, and Kip starts pacing a little, going, “It was a weird night. I couldn’t sleep. The phone rang at one-thirty, and after my mother answered it, she said, ‘I’ll be right there,’ and was gone until three-thirty.”

“Do you know who called?” I ask.

“The only person she really talks to is Lucas, but I can’t be sure.”

“What about Ginger and Noah?”

“Oh.” He sort of frowns and says, “She’s fine with them, too.”

Darren shakes his head and says, “We’re skipping around.” He looks at Kip. “You couldn’t sleep, the phone rang, your mom disappeared for two hours, and then what?”

“In the morning, there was a note shoved under our door.”

“Who found it, and at what time?” Darren asks.

“I did. Around seven.”

Darren focuses on him. “From what you said before, I’m guessing the note was folded, with your mom’s name
and
TICK TOCK
typed on the outside of it?” And after Kip nods, Darren says, “But you opened it anyway.”

“She was sleeping! And it wasn’t in an envelope or anything!”

“So why not just copy it? Why memorize it?” Marko asks.

Kip looks away. “You don’t understand Kensingtons.” And then when we all just stare at him, he says, “Because if she’d caught me, she would have taken it away! And now she can’t!” We’re quiet a minute, and finally I ask, “So what did your mother do when you showed her the note?”

“She freaked out and got mad at me for looking at it. She called me a sneaky punk kid.”

“Your
mother
did?” we cry. And then Marissa asks, “Because you looked at some weird coded note?”

He gives a little shrug. “Like I said, she never wanted me.”

I eye him. “Or maybe she thinks you planted it.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Did you?”

“No!”

“Well, you’ve been known to slip anonymous messages under doors, you know.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Sure it is. There was the one you wanted to put under the Royal Suite door the night of the big fight, there was the non-apology you left slipped under our door—”

“Non-apology?!”

Marko interrupts with, “If you ask me, this is a classic case of skippy-doodlin’ around,” and Darren nods and
goes, “You’re definitely skippy-doodlin’ around. There are big holes in this story, and Marko’s right—our sleep-addled brains can’t handle it.”

Marko gives him a happy bro grin, then makes a little rewind motion with his hand and goes, “You couldn’t sleep, the phone rang at one-thirty, your mom disappeared for two hours, then returned and went to bed. Around seven in the morning you found a note shoved under your door, she freaked out and called you a sneaky punk kid, and
then
what? How and when was there a convergence of Kensingtons?”

I blink at him. “A convergence of Kensingtons?”

Marko nods. “You know—how’d they all decide to get together?”

Marissa eyes me and kinda mutters, “So much for being sleep-addled.”

“No kidding,” I mutter back.

“Hey,” Marko says. “I like things sequential. No rushing, no skipping beats, no jumping to the bridge before you finish the chorus.”

Darren adds, “And absolutely no breaking into the chorus before you finish the verse.”

“You can
start
with the chorus, though,” Marko says, looking at him. “Like we do in ‘Echo Man’?”

I blink at him. “You’re accusing
us
of skippy-doodlin’ around?”

“Right, right,” he says, then turns back to Kip. “So tell us about the convergence of Kensingtons.”

Kip kind of nods and then goes, “My mother called
Lucas, Lucas called Ginger, Ginger called Noah, Noah called Bradley, and they all met in the Royal Suite. It was at around eight.”

“Did you go?”

He shakes his head. “My mother wouldn’t let me.”

I zero in on him. “So you stayed in your cabin?”

He toes the floor. “Not exactly.”

“You listened through the suite door?”

He nods. “But I couldn’t hear anything!”

“Back to the notes,” Darren says. “What
are
they?”

Kip gives a kind of wild shrug. “I don’t know! Threats? A sick joke?”

“Hmm,” I say, eyeing Marissa. “We happen to know that at least one of those people likes sick jokes.…”

“Right,” Marissa says. “The noose.”

“The noose?” Kip asks.

So we tell him about the noose, only—dopey us—that means we have to back up and explain about the rope and playing Kensington Clue.

Kip looks horrified. “You were playing Kensington Clue? And Grandmother was Mr. Boddy?”

“She was actually Kate, the Diamond Dame,” Marko tells him.

Darren nods and says, “And the culprit turned out to be Noah, in the library, with a rope.”

“Only that last time, though,” Marko adds. “The time before, it was Lucas, in the—”

“Stop!” I cry, then tell Kip, “Sorry! But … none of us really thought she was dead. Just, you know,
misplaced
.”

“Misplaced,” Kip says, like it’s the stupidest thing anyone’s said all day.

Which it actually might be.

“Skippy-doodlin’ around again,” Marko warns, which definitely
sounds
stupider than saying someone’s misplaced, but I still feel bad, so I tell Kip sorry again, and Marissa adds, “And we don’t
know
she’s dead, right?”

Darren picks up the paper with the code on it. “This would seem to indicate she’s not.”

Marko shrugs. “Or maybe it indicates that time is running out for one of the three heirs. Or maybe all of them!”

Marissa and I look at him like, WHOA! and Kip nods and says, “That’s what Bradley, Lucas, and my mother think.”

“What about Ginger?” Marissa asks. “What does she think?”

“Noah said she tried to talk everyone into working together, but it started another yelling match.”

“Whoa. Wait,” I say, putting up a hand. “How do you know any of this? When did you see Noah?”

“Skippy-doodlin’ around,” Marko mutters with a little tisk.

Kip frowns. “Noah sorta caught me spying.”

I eye him. “Sorta caught you?”

“He came storming out of the suite.”

“Because …?”

Kip shrugs. “He said Bradley called him a dim-witted sycophant.”

“What’s a sycophant?” Marissa whispers, and when
I shrug, Marko goes, “A toady,” and Darren adds, “A kiss-up.”

“Ouch,” we both say, and Kip frowns and says, “Exactly.”

“But what’s the deal with the codes?” Marko asks. “Maybe they’re from the Diamond Dame?”

Kip shakes his head. “It’s not her style. Not at all. She’s basically allergic to numbers.”

“So maybe they
are
a threat. Or a scare tactic?” Darren says. “But who has something to gain from this?”

Kip just shakes his head some more, and then Marko says, “
Tick Tock
does sound pretty ominous.”

Kip looks right at me. “Can I borrow your calculator? I’m hoping I can decipher the code.” Then his forehead goes all wrinkly and he says, “Because what if it
is
a threat? Or a ransom note? And what if there’s a time limit? I don’t think the others are going to do anything but fight and if—”

“Dude!” Marko says, putting up a hand. “A ransom note wouldn’t be in code! It would say,
Fork over a billion bucks at the big clock at midnight!
”

Kip looks around at us. “So … you think it’s a threat?”

“Who would threaten them?” I ask. “I mean, who are their enemies?”

“I don’t know!” Kip cries. “Each other!”

That zaps us quiet for a minute. Then I try, “So maybe one of them did the codes, and gave himself one, too, just to cover it up?” And Marissa throws in, “Or what if it’s just a distraction? What if someone’s trying to get them
to quit thinking about Kate by making them worry about themselves?”

Kip gives me a pleading look. “Can I
please
just borrow your calculator?”

So I dig it out of my backpack and hand it over. “I need it back tonight, okay?”

“Sure.”

“I’d try to help, but we’re going into Mexico today.”

He shakes his head. “I need to think and I do that better by myself anyway.” He gives me a halfhearted smile. “But thanks.”

Then we all just kind of watch as he takes my calculator and his code and hightails it out of the room.

As much as I tried to tell myself to stay out of it, the whole time Darren and Marko were downing coffee and eating breakfast, I kept thinking about Kip.

Worrying
about Kip.

And it kept creeping back into my mind that if it was Grams who’d gone missing, I’d be going crazy trying to find her.

Plus, maybe my mother never called me a sneaky punk kid, but I
do
know what it’s like to think that your mother never wanted you.

So when everyone’s finally ready to go,
I’m
the one who winds up lagging behind.

“Hey!” Darren calls over his shoulder. “Something wrong?”

We’re barreling down the stairs, and I feel really stupid saying it, but I blurt out, “I’m worried about Kip.”

“Oh,” Darren says, stopping.

“We are
not
not going ashore because of Kensingtons,” Marissa says, and, boy, does she look serious.

“I know,” I tell her. “I just feel really bad.”

We all stand on the stairs for a minute until Darren finally says, “So what do you want to do about it?”

I give a stupid little shrug, and then Marko pipes up with, “I say we take the Kipster with us.”

“No!” Marissa cries. “The two of them will spend the whole time with that stupid code and a calculator and not want to do anything!”

“Hey,” I tell her, “I’ve never been to Mexico. You think I’m going to spend the whole time with a
calculator
?”

“Yes!”

I roll my eyes and then we stand around some more until Darren asks again, “So what do you want to do?”

And that’s when my gut takes over. “I want to invite him to come with us.”

“Nooooo!” Marissa wails. “Besides, can you even take someone else’s kid into a foreign country?”

“Let’s find out.” Darren says.

I give him a grateful smile. “He’s probably in the library. Or his room, if his mom’s not there. Or in the Royal Suite.”

“He could be anywhere,” Marissa moans.

“All those places are close by,” Darren tells her. “Let’s just check.”

We’re almost down to Deck 8, so we start by looking in the library, and the first person I see is the Puzzle Lady.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I mutter, ’cause while the rest of the ship is off exploring Mexico, here she is in a windowless room, putting together a boring brown puzzle.

“Hi, there,” she says with a little smile, then nods
toward the other side of the room and whispers, “Back there.”

So yeah, I get hit with that same weird combination of feeling bad and feeling creeped out, and I wind up doing what I did before—smiling and telling her thanks.

Marissa hangs back while Darren, Marko, and I pass by the computer tables and find Kip hidden away in the very back of an alcove, punching numbers into my calculator. “Hey,” I tell him, and even though we hadn’t exactly snuck up, he looks at us like we’ve got butcher knives ready to slash and jab.