Norway to Hide (17 page)

I felt a twinge of alarm, wondering if Jimbob had gotten tired of waiting and decided to help things along. But that wasn’t likely. He was a philanthropist, for crying out loud.

“The brochure covers all the important information, like housing costs, services, guidelines, clubs. There’s maps of Phases One through Eight, and pictures of the new mortuary and hospital wing. Did you know we have our own zip code?”

Vern hobbled back into the salon, accompanied by a crewman pushing a cleaning trolley. Guilt spread
across Nana’s face as the cleanup began. “I seen you over there when Vern dropped his cup,” she said to Joleen. “Was that on account a someone bumped into him?”

“Nope. He did that all on his own.” She wiggled her fingers discreetly. “Problem with his hand.”

Nana went ashen. “What’d I tell you? It’s all my fault.”

“Not unless you’re telekinetic,” Joleen said. “It’s because of his pain medication. Does the same thing to me. When I pop one of those pills, I get the tremors so bad, the only way I can eat soup is through a straw.”

Nana nodded thoughtfully. “You probably gotta avoid Chunky Chicken and Dumplin’s.”

“Yeah, I’m mostly stuck with consomme and tomato.”

“Do you have an extra brochure we can give Jackie?” George spoke up. “She might get rich enough on her royalties to retire early.”

“That wouldn’t surprise me at all,” said Joleen as she handed him another of the glossy leaflets. “That girl has so much going for her. Beauty, brains, talent. What did she do before she became a writer?”

“She was a Broadway actor,” Nana said proudly, “starrin’ in
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream-coat
.”

“I
love
that musical,” Joleen enthused. “What part did she play?”

Nana regarded me nervously. “She had one a them speakin’ parts, didn’t she, Emily?”

“She pinch-hit,” I said offhandedly. “She played the pharaoh, Asher, and even Joseph once, when the whole cast came down with the flu.”

Joleen’s jaw went slack. “How could anyone with a figure like Jackie Thum’s be made up to look like a man?”

I shrugged. “It’s show business. Everything is smoke and mirrors.”

“Wait ’til I tell Jimbob. He’ll never believe it. Too bad Jackie didn’t know about the ‘I’ve Got a Secret’ competition we had at the Hamlets. I bet she would have won hands down.”

Nana’s eyes brightened. “Back when my Sam was alive, we was awful fond a watchin’ that old ‘I’ve Got a Secret’ game show. You wouldn’t believe some a the crackpots that come on that show, Emily. It was real must-see TV.”

“That’s what our contest was based on!” cooed Joleen. “It was Portia’s idea. The person who revealed the most startling secret about himself could come on this trip free of charge, and let me tell you, the competition got pretty fierce.”

“I thought most folks wanted to take their secrets to the grave with them,” claimed George.

Joleen flashed him an “Aw, go on” gesture. “Not when there’s a free trip involved. International travel with all expenses paid? People will do anything to get something for nothing.”

“What’d I tell you?” said Nana.

“So who won?” asked Tilly.

“Geraldine Jordan, who started out life as Jerome
Jordan. Can you believe it? An honest-to-goodness transsexual living there among us, and we didn’t even know it. That’s some secret, isn’t it? You could have blown us over with a feather.”

I took mental inventory of our tour roster. “There’s no Geraldine Jordan traveling with us.”

“That’s because she had to cancel at the last minute. Emergency surgery.”

“Bunions?” I asked.

“Brazilian butt lift. Her plastic surgeon had a cancellation.”

“So who got her ticket?” asked Nana.

“No one. No substitutions allowed. The runners-up complained, but Portia said there was nothing she could do about it. Didn’t make them too happy that they’d blabbed their secrets and no one got rewarded.”

My brain started turning over like a jump-started engine. “Do you recall who the runners-up were?”

“Oh, sure. The Klicks came in second with their entry. Curtis used to own a girlie place in Las Vegas and Lauretta was one of his strippers.”

“You already knew that?” I squealed.

“That’s no great shakes. I worked in a sideshow; we’re all exhibitionists in one way or another. But I’ll tell you what surprised me more than the Klicks—Reno saying he’d once been accused of using performance-enhancing drugs.”

“You know that, too?”

“Honey, there’s nothing I don’t know anymore. Gus got ticked off that Reno didn’t mention the dop
ing incident for his big feature article, since scandals sell newspapers.”

This wasn’t fair. My whole case was going up in smoke!

“The Peabody sisters thought they had a lock on the free trip with their, ‘Our sister is in federal prison for embezzling Daddy’s fortune and driving us into poverty with only a million dollars to our name,’ but it didn’t have much curb appeal. If the sister had been a hotel heiress or a former
Survivor
contestant, interest might have been higher, but no one was wowed by a relative who cooked the books and deposited everything into Swiss bank accounts. Plots like that have been so overdone in the movies.”

“Did you and Jimbob participate in the contest?” asked Tilly.

“Shoot, no. We don’t need someone paying our way anywhere. Besides, Jimbob and me don’t have any secrets.” She glanced over her shoulder before continuing in a whisper. “Do you want to know Vern’s secret?”

“He was a cha-cha king?” I offered.

“Nope. Before he went into the military, his hair was so bushy, people used to call him Stein, for Albert Einstein. He won an honorable mention because no one could picture him without his buzz cut.”

George passed his hand over his bald pate. “I’ve been mistaken for Yul Brenner.”

“Where’s the other folks in your group?” Joleen asked, waving her brochures.

“They’re enjoying their refreshment in the library
and being standoffish,” said Tilly. “They figure that’s much more polite than being two-faced.”

“The library.” Joleen’s face brightened. “The perfect place to leave a few brochures. Which way do I go?”

“First door on the right,” I said, pointing aft. “The one with the porthole.”

“That’s mighty thoughtful of her to invite us to Florida,” said George when she’d trundled off. “Does she have a mustache?”

“Shhh,”
cautioned Nana. “It’s ’cause she’s got a skin condition what makes hair grow all over her body.”

He looked suddenly hopeful. “Is it contagious?”

I slumped in my chair, discouraged. “So much for our grand theory. Why kill someone to prevent them from revealing a secret that everyone knows?”

“Could I change my vote on the Klicks?” asked George.

“We have no clear motive as to why anyone would kill either Portia or Gus,” said Tilly, “so I believe that lands us back on square one again.”

“But it was such a great theory,” I complained. “I really liked it.”

“One a your better ones, dear,” Nana agreed.

“What do you propose we do now?” asked Tilly.

My head was so overloaded with useless information that I couldn’t see a clear path leading anywhere. “I’m stumped. We might already have the clue that opens everything up, but if we do, I don’t know what it is.”

“That’s unfortunate,” said Tilly. “Keeping our eyes on the Klicks wouldn’t have been so difficult, but
monitoring the entire Hamlets group will be next to impossible.”

“Good new, good news,” Jackie announced as she rejoined us.

“Your husband liked my idea?” Nana asked, beaming.

“I couldn’t get through to him—no signal. But I did run into Annika when I went down to the cabin to recharge my phone. She asked me to tell Tilly that they’ve found her luggage. Isn’t that great?”

“Sure is,” said Nana. “She don’t got no toothpaste and all’s I got is Polident, which don’t work real good if your teeth don’t come out.”

“Did she say where it was?” questioned Tilly.

“They accidentally delivered it to cabin three-thirty-six instead of three-sixty-three, and the elderly German occupants took it inside for safekeeping. When no one came to claim it, they notified reception, so it’s now sitting outside your cabin. Mystery solved. We’re on a roll!” She dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “So when do we nail the Klicks?”

In an effort to keep the group together, we joined them in the library, where I found a welcome stash of playing cards, board games, and jigsaw puzzles. The Dicks and their wives partnered up for euchre; Alice and Osmond worked on a jigsaw of a scenic fjord; Nana, George, and Tilly played Monopoly; and the rest of us played the game of global domination—Risk.

By the end of the evening, Helen was giving Dick
the silent treatment for stupidly trumping her winning tricks; Grace was giving Dick the silent treatment for spilling coffee on the table; Alice and Osmond finished their fjord and started working on a famous glacier before it melted; Nana had developed hotel empires on Park Place and Boardwalk; and Bernice, Margi, and Lucille were at each others’ throats in a dispute over Liechtenstein that was threatening to throw the country into civil war, destabilize the neighboring regions, and force them into a conflict to preserve civilization as we know it.

“That turned out well,” I mused when Jackie and I returned to our cabin. “Have you noticed how much more tolerant they are of each other than they used to be?”

Jackie pulled a face as she detached her phone from its charger. “Yeah. The only thing that could have made the evening more enjoyable is if we’d hit an iceberg and been forced to run around in our carrot suits.”

“C’mon, Jack. That couldn’t have happened.”

“How do you know?”

“Because Norway doesn’t have icebergs. It has glaciers.”

“Whatever.” She sat on her bed, fiddling with her phone. “Emily? Can I ask you something?”

Uh-oh.
“You know you can always ask me anything, Jack.”

She heaved a pathetic sigh. “Do you think I’ll ever be a successful novelist?”

“Of course you’ll be successful!” I sat down next
to her and gave her a sympathetic hug. “It could just take a little time for your name to become a household word.”

“How much time?”

“You want me to make an actual calculation?”

“Go ahead. Give it a stab.”

“I can’t do that. I don’t have any inside information. Don’t you have an easier question?”

Her shoulders sagged, as if she were bearing the weight of the world. “Mona refuses to return my calls. The company president won’t answer my emails. My name’s not on any bestseller lists. Amazon readers hate me. I got less rejection when I was an unemployed actor. Why am I doing this?”

I patted her back. “Because you won a contest?”

“I wish I’d never entered. I wish—” Her voice trembled with emotion. “Why do people think they have the right to treat other people so badly?”

“I don’t think they’re personal attacks, Jack. It’s just business. Hey, I wrote Mom’s number down for you. Do you want to call her to talk about the wedding? That might cheer you up.” Or induce a complete mental breakdown.

“What’ll I do if my book bombs?” she sniffed. “I’ll be humiliated. Disgraced. What’ll happen to me?”

“Nothing will happen to you unless you let it. You’ll shine no matter what you do. You’ve been blessed with some wonderful gifts.”

“Like what?”

Why did
I
always get stuck with the hard questions? “Well, you get along great with people. You even get
along with Bernice. That could earn you a position in the diplomatic corps.”

She nodded apathetically. “She really likes me, doesn’t she? What else?”

“You have wonderful insights into the male psyche.”

“I think it’s making me schizophrenic. What else?”

I regarded her, at a complete loss. “You…you’re really tall.”

“Mesdames et Monsieurs,”
announced a hushed voice over the cabin intercom. Four translations later, we learned we were about to make a fifteen-minute stopover in Berlevag.

“A port!” I encouraged. “Cell towers. I bet you’ll get through to Tom this time.”

Jackie nodded like a wounded puppy. “Do you need to use the phone while we’re here?”

“If we’re still in port when you finish your conversation, I’ll try Mom and Etienne.”

She exhaled a weary breath. “Maybe I should forget about writing. Maybe I should just stay home and have babies.”

“You could do that. International adoption has really taken off. You and Tom could adopt a Chinese baby, or a Romanian baby.”

“But I want to have my own.”

“I’m sure you know this already, Jack, but that would require a uterus.”

“Could I use yours?”

“No!” I pulled her off the bed and aimed her for the door.