DOUBLE KNOT (15 page)

My words rang out through the lavender-scented air.

“Get that, Davis.” Sweat rolled down Fantasy’s face.

I tore my eyes away from dead Poppy. “What?”

“That.” Her eyes were on a large canvas-covered laundry bin she spotted under the
folding counter. I rolled it out and positioned it under the racks of shelving and
Fantasy let the shelves fall. The laundry bin caught them with a thud.

I backed up and let the wall hold me, fanning my face with
Probability
hand towel, while Fantasy bent to see for herself. “Good God, she’s dead.”

And there went the smaller of the two Louis Vuitton trunks.

We had to get out of 704 before it killed us all.

FOURTEEN

We each took a sofa in the salon. We came clean with Jessica. She took it pretty well,
considering she was sure she was next on our hit list. “So, is this what you do at
the Bellissimo? You kill people? Are you going to kill me? Are you going to wait until
I microsleep and smother me with a pillow? SO?”

“Jess, we didn’t kill Burnsworth or Poppy,” Fantasy said. “Poppy killed Burnsworth,
her death was an accident, and we don’t like it any more than you do.”

“How are we ever going to explain this?” I asked.

“That’s mighty hopeful of you, Davis,” Mother said.

“What?” I asked.

“That we’ll actually speak to another human to explain it to.”

“This is so cray.” Jess had twirled a length of her hair so tight it looked like twine
twisted around her finger. “So cray.”

“What?” Mother asked. “What’s she going on about now?”

“Crazy,” I explained. “Jessica is saying this is crazy.”

“I’m with her,” Mother said. “This is plum crazy. I don’t know what your father is
going to say.”

We untangled Poppy’s body and stuffed her in the smaller of the Louis Vuitton (caskets)
trunks, and Jess helped Fantasy haul them to the sundeck, a secluded step-down enclosed
space on the other side of the pool. It had a gate that locked from the inside and
a double sun chair with a retracting canopy. Built for privacy. Which is something
you need when you’re stashing Louis Vuitton trunks full of dead people.

Jessica helped without complaining. She was too afraid not to and somewhere in the
middle of lugging dead bodies, she made the decision to cross over and become a team
player. I don’t know if it was because she was sick of herself or petrified of us.
Whichever; when we explained we’d never get out of 704 if we didn’t work together,
she went along wholeheartedly.

“Now that we have all our cards on the table, Jessica, I want to ask you a few questions.”
I opened
The Compass
; Fantasy let out a sigh. “What, Fantasy?”

“Skip the book, Davis. Get to the husband.”

The second body in one hour had our tempers taut.

“Hey.” Mother stepped in. “Weren’t you just now telling Ding Dong,” she shook a crooked
finger at Jess, “that we have to work together? Cut it out, Fantasy. Let Davis show
her the book.”

“My name isn’t Ding Dong.”

“Well.” Mother was suddenly very invested in examining her lap. “You’re right and
I take it back.” We could barely hear her. “I apologize.”

Words my mother very rarely spoke.

Before they had a chance to hug it out, I gave
The Compass
a spin so it was facing Jess. “Do you know this girl? Do you know who she is?”

“What the hell?” Jessica leaned in and read the fine print. “She is
not
our stateroom attendant! She isn’t
anyone’s
stateroom attendant!” Jess stabbed
The Compass
. “She’s a pilot! A craybitch pilot. She’s a
hella
bitch pilot!”

“A what?” Mother asked.

Jess looked up to Mother. “She drives airplanes.”

Why in the world would a pilot be listed as our stateroom attendant? “How do you know
her, Jess?” I asked.

“She’s Max’s pilot.” Jess turned to me. “Max’s craybitch pilot. So, what is going
on
?”

“What in the world does a pilot have to do with anything? We’re on a boat.” Mother
asked. “And who is Max?”

“Jessica is married to Max,” Fantasy explained.

“Another hellabitch,” Jess said.

“Is Max a woman?” Mother asked. “You’re married to a bitch named Max?”

Jess carefully weighed Mother’s questions.

“Time out.” Fantasy’s hands slapped her knees and she spoke to Mother. “Max is a man.
He’s Jessica’s husband. Davis’s book says the woman in the picture is our stateroom
attendant, but we know she’s not. As it turns out, the woman in the book is Max’s
pilot. Which means somehow, someway, she’s in on it.” Fantasy took a breath to let
Mother catch up. “This means we were set up to be locked in our suite before we ever
stepped in the door. Poppy was in on it; she was here to hurt us. Burnsworth wasn’t
in on it; he was here to keep us safe. Max’s pilot is in on it, which means Max is
probably behind it.”

“Well.” Mother crossed her legs. “Somebody could have said so.”

Confusion and angst had been Jessica’s only two channels since we’d walked in the
door of 704 and they crashed into each other right then and there on the white linen
sofa as Fantasy’s words hit home: Her husband was the reason she was trapped in 704.

“So, what is Max
doing
?” Jess’s dark eyes made several rounds against ours, seeking answers none of us had,
finally landing on mine. “What is going
on
?”

“That’s just it, Jess,” I said. “We have to work together to figure out what he’s
doing and what’s going on.” I placed the picture of No Hair in front of her. “Do you
know this man?”

Her head bobbed. “Mr. Covey.”

“Right,” I said. “He’s our boss.”

Jessica’s head continued to (spin) bob.

“They have him, Jess. Your husband and his pilot, whatever they’re up to, they need
you, us, and our boss out of the way.”

Jessica picked up the picture of No Hair and examined it. “So, why isn’t Mr. Covey
locked in here with us? Why is he in the submarine?”

And just like that, we located No Hair.

“So?” Jess shook No Hair’s picture. “What is going
on
?”

“Jessica.” I took the picture from her. “You’re the only one who knows.”

“
What
?” Her arms flailed through the air. “I don’t know!”

She knew more than she thought she knew. She just told us where No Hair was. “Think,
Jessica,” I said. “If this is your husband’s pilot, and together they’ve locked us
in here, it means Poppy,” I pointed to the sun deck, “was working
for
or
with
your husband. Maybe if we can connect her to him, we’ll figure it out. Think, Jess.
Think.”

“Think?” She bounced balled fists off her temples. “I can’t.”

“Picture Poppy in a different place,” Fantasy suggested. “In different clothes, with
different color hair. Think about her voice. Have you ever heard it before?”

“She’s someone your husband is associated with, Jessica,” I said. “Maybe she was one
of his clients. Think. Think hard.”

“You two hold your horses.” We’d forgotten Mother. “She can’t
hear
herself think. Give her a minute. And you,” she said to Jess, “stop hitting yourself
in the head.”

Time stopped and the ship stopped.

We stared at each other in disbelief.

The Caribbean Sea calm,
Probability
an engineering masterpiece, the weather fair, it was easy to forget we were in constant
motion. Until we weren’t. It wasn’t a jolt, a halt, or anything discernable. It was
utter and complete stillness.

“It’s so quiet.” Jessica’s eyes drooped, her head began wobbling, then boom. Fantasy
jumped up and caught her before she face planted into
The Compass
. She eased her back. Jessica’s tongue lolled.

We stared.

“If that doesn’t beat all.”

Mother reached for a fifth of whiskey on the table between us and drank straight from
the bottle, then passed it to Fantasy, who tipped it back. I fell against the sofa
cushions, giving the babies more room. They took advantage of it and one pushed the
other into my ribs. I let out a woof of surprise.

“What’s the matter with you, Davis?”

I waved her off. Nothing, Mother. Just your two grandchildren fighting for space in
your daughter’s body.

The silence and calm were disquieting; the silence and calm were welcome.

We waited patiently on Jessica. She woke abruptly, her legs flying up and out, then
she bolted upright. “Poppy works at the bank.”

Yes, she did. As soon as the words came out of Jess’s mouth, I realized I’d seen Poppy
too, and I remembered when and where. An image of her posture, her athletic prowess,
her speed, and her blonde ponytail pushed its way from the back to the front of my
memory. Six weeks ago, I’d spent that hour with the Knot on Your Life slot machines
at the Bellissimo. No Hair and I walked in the front door of the slot staging room,
which held wall-to-wall slot machines being programmed by the Cayman bank. I remembered
the Pea in a Pod sweater I was wearing that day (I grew out of the next), and a ponytailed
flash running across the room and out the back door that had caught my eye. The flash
was the broken-neck blonde we just stuffed into the lesser of Bianca’s two trunks.

* * *

We tore up Poppy’s stateroom. We tossed it like a crime scene. We found a laptop between
the mattress and box springs, a Beretta PX4 with LaserMax sights in a lockbox under
the bed, and central nervous system depressants in a zipper bag between towels in
Poppy’s bathroom: Temazepam, Paxil, and Ketamine.

“What is all this?” Mother shook the amber containers.

“Knockout drugs,” Fantasy told her.

“Good thing she wasn’t making our drinks.”

I sat beside Mother on the foot of the bed with the laptop. I cracked it open and
pushed the power button. The screen lit up with nothing. The laptop had power, but
no operating system. I tried a little of everything.

“What’s wrong?” Fantasy asked.

I turned it over. I shook it. I cast a spell on it. (No, I didn’t.) “Everyone look
for a flash drive.”

“Who?” Mother asked.

“This?”

Fantasy held up a ScanDisk Cruzer USB flash drive.

“Where’d you find it?” I held my hand out.

“Inside her pillowcase.”

Smooth move. Poppy had separated the hardware from the software on the off chance
one of us found her laptop. I popped in sixty-four gigabytes of computing and began
what would be a slow crawl to the deep web. Not so I could shop for a kidney or join
a crime ring, but so I could hide. If ever there was a time I didn’t want anyone tracking
my cyber movements, it was right now. I was in a desperate hurry to communicate with
anyone in any position of authority, anyone on this ship who could help us, not to
mention my husband, but not at any cost. Because the cost would be our lives. I had
to work smart and slow, which meant the deep web, off the grid, far below the surface,
and don’t ever go there. Mother watched me while Fantasy shook out Poppy’s
Probability
uniforms. We had Jess pilfering through the closet. “So, what am I looking for?”

“Anything.”

“Anyone recognize this?” Fantasy shook a black cord.

“That’s my phone plugger,” Mother said.

“Look at this.” Jess opened a thick red folder she found in the closet. “It’s me.”

“What about you?” Mother asked.

“Everything.” She turned a page. “So, everything. Even about my father.”

“Tell me what it says when you get to me.” Fantasy was halfway under the bed.

“Don’t tell me what it says about me.” I was back in the laptop.

Jess turned another page, then spoke to my mother. “So, are you sick?”

I moved as quickly as my bulky body would let me. “Let me have that, Jess.”

* * *

Mother stirred whole milk with a wooden spoon in a saucepan. She folded in chocolate
sauce. She whipped cream. She served it up in a beer mug, and cradling it in both
hands, held it out to me. My eyes tingled with nostalgia. “Oh, good grief,” she said.
“You’re crying over cocoa?”

No. And if I actually let go and had a good pregnant cry, it would be for the babies
I was sure I’d give birth to in
Probability
704. It would be for my husband, halfway across the world, who had no idea. It would
be for my father, who didn’t know my mother was in danger. Or for my mother, standing
in front of me. I could have easily cried right then for her, for the thirty-four
years we’d wasted sniping at each other, for what she’d been through, for what she
might still have to go through. Or for No Hair, speaking of going through, who was
somewhere near me and, at the same time, as far away from me as anyone else was and
I hadn’t found a way to get to him yet. Or maybe I’d cry for Fantasy, throwing in
the towel on her marriage, or maybe for the two dead people on the sundeck, or for
Jess, who was just as much a victim as the rest of us, or for the naked African children.
All brought on by a hot mug of chocolate kindness from my mother. But the truth is,
if I did let my guard down and have a good cry in my cocoa, it would be out of weariness.
I was worn out. I was exhausted beyond all reason. I was dead on my (fat) feet. Which
was preferable to being dead in a Louis Vuitton trunk.

We were fresh out of trunks.

It was eight o’clock and the four of us were lined up in sun chairs as far away from
the private sun deck as possible and under blankets and a million stars. I’d never
seen so many stars in my life. Ever.
Probability
remained at a standstill in the middle of the Caribbean Sea and we had no idea why.
The chickens were in the refrigerator; even I had no appetite. My three companions
were sipping whiskey—bourbon, Scotch, and tequila. I think they’d have been shooting
doubles if we didn’t have such a long night ahead of us, but seeing as how we did,
they were comfort drinking only.

“So?”

“So, what?” Fantasy asked Jess.

“What’s next?”

“We have several possibilities.” I was at the bottom of my hot chocolate and all over
the laptop we’d found in Poppy’s room. We had our resources on the tables between
the chairs: Mother’s useless but charged cell phone, the dead V2s, $50,000 in
Probability
casino chips, and, of course,
The Compass
.