by Maddy Hunter
Uh-oh. I’d expected Bernice to give me flak, but never Tilly. “I wouldn’t have expressed it in exactly those words, but I guess that’s what it all boils down to.” I flashed a self-deprecating smile. “Every team gets a pony.”
She thumped her walking stick on the floor. “Good. Timed events completely unnerve me.”
“Does this mean you’re pulling the plug on the whole operation?” asked George.
“No, no. You can still search for the cache; I’m simply making it less stressful by eliminating the time limits, the scoring, the opposition, the—”
“The fun,” hollered Bill.
The fun, the hostility, the resentment, the spitefulness.
He snorted with indignation. “Who cares about finding the next cache if it can’t be dog-eat-dog?”
Two dozen hands shot into the air.
“Let me get this straight,” said Helen. “Even if we don’t find the cache, we’re still in the running for the prize?”
I nodded. “You got it.”
“This is great!” said Dick Teig. “We can screw up all we want and still score an all-expenses-paid trip. I like the way you think, Emily.”
Smiles. Laughter. Gasps of relief.
Well. I smiled inwardly. That hadn’t been so bad.
“If you’re changing the rules, I want back in,” demanded Bernice.
I shot her a withering look. Of course she did.
“You can’t get back in,” taunted Dick Stolee. “Once you’re out, you’re out. Right, Emily?”
“Well—”
Osmond popped out of his seat. “How many people think Bernice is entitled to participate in the contest again despite the fact that she threw the two surviving members of her team under the bus yesterday?”
Eyes narrowed. Jaws hardened. Hands remained folded in laps, except for Alice’s.
“I think we should let her back in,” she suggested in a tentative vibrato. “It’s the only Christian thing to do.”
“Taking up a collection is Christian,” argued Dick Teig. “How ’bout we do that instead?”
“My cell phone is back on!” cried George, prompting gleeful outcries and general pandemonium throughout the bus.
“Mine, too,” whooped Tilly. “And I have a message from Marion!”
“Me, too!” cried George.
Tilly adjusted her glasses. “‘Greetings from Big House. Jail not so bad. Pizza from Chinese take-out place last night. Pepperoni, snow peas, and squid. Would have preferred thicker crust.” Tilly grinned. “What did she send you, George?”
“Nothin’.” He shoved his phone back into his pocket. Red-faced and flustered, he stumbled into the aisle. “I could sure use a cup of coffee. Are you through with us, Emily?”
“She better be,” Dick Teig warned. “If that boat over there is our ferry, folks are lining up already.”
That’s all it took for the stampede to begin. The doors opened. Seats emptied. And before Calum could even clear the stairs to assist with deboarding, everyone disappeared through the rear exit.
Everyone, that is, except Bernice, who remained in her seat, staring at me without blinking, which disproved the popular myth that all septuagenarians suffered from dry eyes.
“I don’t care about the stupid vote,” she bellyached. “I want back in, and if it doesn’t happen, you’ll be hearing from my lawyer.” She gathered up her things and stepped into the aisle. “And furthermore, if my name isn’t in the pool for a free trip, I promise you one thing: you’ll never see Bernice Zwerg’s face on a Destinations Travel tour ever again.” Pulling the hood of her slicker over her head, she marched down the rear stairs, leaving me to smile giddily at Wally.
“I’d hold her to her promise if I were you.” He raised his hand for a high-five. “Make sure you get it in writing, signed and dated. Notarized if possible.”
I hesitated just long enough for him to give me an anguished look. “Oh, come on, Emily! You’re not seriously thinking about letting her back in. You’re this close to being free of her.” He did the thumb and forefinger thing. “We’re all this close to being free of her.”
“I know.” My shoulders slumped as my gut tilted with my conscience. “It’s just that … the part of me that doesn’t want to kill her feels sorry for her. She has no friends, no social skills—”
“And no redeeming qualities.” He glanced out the door as a howling gust of wind shook the coach. “Other than she can apparently fly. Holy crap.”
He was down the stairs and out the door before I realized Bernice was being blown across the pavement with such force, she was practically airborne. Calum and Wally grabbed her as the wind splayed her against the front of a late-model minivan—a fortunate landing place considering the hood ornament on the Jag parked beside it.
I looked toward the waterfront, alarm twisting my stomach into figure eights. Wally hadn’t been kidding about the seas being choppy. If the wind didn’t let up, our ferry ride across the channel would turn into—I yanked a package of pills out of my shoulder bag and snugged the hood of my raincoat over my head as I charged into the parking lot—an absolute nightmare.
The terminal area was a practical little place that looked to have been constructed on a shoestring budget. Two spurs of a no-frills concrete pier hugged the waterfront like arms, creating a small inlet for rowboats and motorized rafts. Lobster pots and trash bins cluttered the side of the road. A sign advertising wildlife cruises hung from the hexagonally shaped ticket office, along with scores of postcards in metal dumps, and a painted mileage post informing us that the North Pole was 2,200 miles to our north and New Zealand 12,875 miles to our south. Our ferry was moored alongside the pier, and waiting to board it were the wind-battered guests of Destinations Travel, clumped together like a massive clog in a kitchen pipe.
“Does anyone need motion sickness pills?” I asked as I circled the perimeter of their huddle. My goal today was to keep a watchful eye on Erik and Alex, but when I didn’t see them in the scrum, I figured they were probably shopping, which is exactly where I’d be if I didn’t have to play pharmacist. “They’re the chewable kind. And they’re more effective if you take them at least a half-hour before departing.”
Stella Gordon eyed me with suspicion. “Where’d you get them? In the same place where your grandmother got hers?”
My mouth fell open. “Stella! I would not offer you tainted pills … and neither did my grandmother.”
She shrugged. “How should I know? Maybe deviant behavior runs in your family.”
Deciding not to dignify that with a reply, I moved on, waving the package in the air. “Motion sickness pills, anyone?”
“Dick and I could use a couple,” Helen spoke up as she angled her head away from the wind. “But we’ll wait for George. He’s picking up a package at the gift shop.”
“Take mine.” I opened up the box. “They’ll be in your system quicker if you take them now.” I popped two tablets out of their foil-backed panels.
She stared at them self-consciously before driving her elbow into the small of Dick’s back.
“What?” He shuffled around to face her.
“Emily has motion sickness pills.”
Dick stood paralyzed for a moment, flattening his kilt against his thighs with both hands. “George is buying a new batch at the gift shop,” he said guiltily. He nodded toward the long red building attached to the ticket office. “So … we’re good.”
Was it my imagination, or was I being boycotted? “Suit yourself.” I turned next to Osmond, whose eyes widened desperately before waving off my offering.
“Thanks anyway, Emily, but … George is buying some hot off the shelf … in tamper-proof packaging.”
Oh, my God. It wasn’t my imagination. My own group didn’t trust me any longer! “My pills came in tamper-proof packaging.” I flashed the sheet with
its eight bubbled compartments at him.
“There’s two missing.”
“They’re in my hand.”
“Aha.”
“So would you like one?”
“Nope. I’ll wait for George.”
Rattled by this unexpected show of mistrust, I forced the pills back into their compartments and blared out an announcement for my own sake as well as the groups’. “You don’t have to stand out here in the wind! You can wait in the gift shop until it’s time to board!” Considering the wind was rippling the flesh across everyone’s cheeks and cleaving permanent parts in hairlines, I thought it was a rather practical suggestion.
“Can’t,” balked Dick Stolee as he slapped his kilt down against his legs. “Don’t wanna miss the boat.”
“The gift shop is twenty feet away!”
Grace tilted her head toward her husband and lifted her eyebrows. “She just doesn’t get it, does she?”
Frustrated by my failed attempt to save them from themselves, I shortened the cord on my hood to draw it closer around my face, and scurried up the stairs that fronted the gift shop.
The shop was called First and Last in Scotland, and was the official waiting area for ferry passengers not hailing from Iowa. It was a typical tourist trap that specialized in Scottish crafts, souvenirs, books, maps, umbrellas, T-shirts, flags, stuffed sheep, and ice cream served in either cups or cones. I wandered down the aisles, dismissing any idea of purchasing anything, until I ran across a clearance sale on scarves. They weren’t the prettiest things I’d ever seen, but if Orkney turned out to be as windy as John O’ Groats, guests who didn’t have hoods on their jackets might be thankful to have them.
I grabbed a dozen and continued to the end of the aisle, spying George as I turned the corner, his back to me as he stood chuckling before a display of miniature thimbles and tea cups. “Aren’t you afraid the ferry is going to leave without you?” I teased as I came up behind him.
Choking back his laughter, he fumbled to dump his cell phone in his pocket, dropping it on the floor instead.
“Balls,” he said under his breath.
“I’ll get it.”
“No!”
But I’d already bent down and snatched it up. “Easy, George. It didn’t break. In fact, I don’t see as much as a scra—” I turned it over to check the screen. “Yikes.”
He tucked in his lip and lowered his little bald head.
I stared at the screen, wide-eyed. “Oh, my God. Is this from Nana?”
He nodded as best he could with his chin perched on his chest.
“She sexted you from jail?”
He nodded again.
The photo was an extreme close-up of flesh that was soft, and plump, and resembled a Brown ’n Serve roll before the baking process. I knew it belonged to Nana, but that’s all I knew. I rotated it a hundred and eighty degrees. “Okay, I give up. Big toe?”
He raised his chin. “What?”
“Elbow?”
He leaned toward me and smiled affectionately as he mooned over the screen. “She probably shouldn’t have zoomed in quite so close, but the macro setting on our camera’s a real good one.”
“Chin?” Though I wasn’t sure which one of the three.
“It’s her earlobe.” He let out a tender sigh. “Your grandmother’s lobes are so perfect, Emily. They’re like little pillows. All soft and white and floppy. Sometimes when she’s feeling frisky, I—”
“STOP.” I stiff-armed his phone back at him and winced. “Too much information. Is the signal still up?”
“For now.”
I pulled my phone out of the side pocket of my shoulder bag and powered it on. “If Etienne hasn’t turned his phone off, maybe I can—”
“Come on, you two.” Margi gasped out the words as she collapsed against the display table. “They’re letting us board early because of the weather … and Wally’s already handed out all the tickets … except yours.”
“Margi?” I scraped her off the table and propped her back up on her feet. “Why didn’t you let one of the Dicks come find us?”
“Couldn’t.” She sucked in a deep breath. “They don’t know what the indecent exposure laws are in Scotland … so they’re trying to lay low. I mean, there’s kids in line.”
I drilled a look at George. “Do you have the motion sickness pills?”
He shook his head. “All they have is breath mints.”
Which would be fine if the aim is to prevent halitosis, but not so fine if the aim is to prevent yourself from hurling on the passengers sitting around you.
I quickly paid for my scarves and chased behind George and Margi as they headed for the boat. Wally handed me my ticket at the gangplank.
“You’re welcome to sit inside or out, but I don’t recommend ‘out’, unless you’ve become seriously unhinged.”
I grinned. “Not yet, but I’m working on it.”
The main passenger cabin was a large room with windows on all sides, a snack bar astern, and rows of permanently attached chairs all facing in one direction—kinda like a movie theatre, only without the movie. Dick Stolee intercepted me as I entered, his expression suggesting that something was terribly awry, and it was serious. “Can I talk to you?” he said in a gruff voice. “In private?”
Please don’t make it about erectile dysfunction. Please don’t make it about erectile dysfunction. “Sure, Dick.”
As passengers lined up at the snack bar, we skirted around them, pausing near the last row of seats. “What’s up?”
“It’s about the cable programming back at the hotel. If there’s a fee added to my bill for that adult entertainment network, I’m not payin’ it. There was no prompt warning me that the program I was about to view was X-rated, and not only was it in Russian, it didn’t even have subtitles. So … I’m not payin’.” He crossed his arms, punctuating his tirade with an emphatic nod.
“Okay.”
He dropped his arms. “Really?”
“Yup.”
“Hot damn.” He scrubbed his hands in anticipation as he scanned the room. “Wait’ll I tell Dick.” He paused. “Same thing applies to him, right?”
“You got it.”
“Hey, Dick! Hubba-hubba, baby!”
I hoped the hot news announcer slipped into something revealing tonight to make their viewing worthwhile.
I pulled my phone out of my bag again. Yes! The signal was still up.
“I understand why you changed the contest,” Mom said as she came up behind me, “so I just wanted to tell you that in spite of the fact that you kept me in the dark, annihilated the rules, nullified my time charts, rendered my graphs useless, and altered the entire focus of the trip, I’ll adjust.” She exhaled a long-suffering sigh.
“Aww, I knew you would.” I circled my arm around her shoulders and gave her a hug.
“Do you still want me to hand out the coordinates, or have you decided to trash that step in favor of having teams run around in circles in a random field someplace?”
“I’d like you to do everything you were doing before, Mom—the coordinates, the time charts, the graphs. I just don’t want you to let on to the teams that you’re still doing them. Creating the charts and graphs—that’s the fun stuff, right?”
“Well, it is for me.”
“So there’s no reason why I need to spoil your fun. Keep doing what you’re doing. The only thing you need to do differently is keep the results to yourself.”
She lifted her brows. “I suppose it’s possible.” I could see her brain kicking into gear behind her eyes. “I could even add another graph that plots time as affected by weather and temperature changes.”
“Go for it.”
“Maybe I could compile all the documents into a book.” She grabbed my arm in excitement. “And assign it a Dewey Decimal number!”<
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“Mom?” I bobbed my head at the person who’d queued up behind her. “Lucille is waiting in line to speak to me.”
“Sorry, Lucille,” Mom apologized. “I don’t mean to hog my little girl.”
Oh, God.
Mom gave me a wink and mouthed, “Our secret,” before hurrying away.
With a clanking roar from the engine, the ferry nosed away from the pier. I caught Lucille’s arm as the sudden movement sent her lunging for the nearest seat back.
“Whoa!” I cautioned. “How about I escort you to your seat?”
“I’ll be fine. I just thought I should tell you that I’m not in the least upset that you eliminated all the skill elements from the contest.”
“You’re not?”
“Nope. I’m not even upset that you’ve turned the whole thing into a sham by offering prizes to practically everyone—like we’re all first graders who can’t handle losing.”
I swallowed slowly. “About that, Lucille, I thought if—”
“And the really odd thing is, I don’t even know why I’m not upset.” She laughed with the delight of a schoolgirl who’d just received multiple invitations to the prom. “I’ve done a lot of reassessing about the important things in life since my Dick died, Emily. In the scheme of things, this is just a minor blip, so I’m giving you a pass.”
“That’s very kind of you.” If Bernice hung out with Lucille more, maybe we could get an osmosis thing going there.
She shrugged. “Just thought you should know.”
“Okay then. Thanks for the heads-up.”
Giddy with relief, I watched her return to her seat. Was I on a roll, or what? Three with one blow. Dick, Mom, and Lucille. Problems solved. Crises averted. Order restored. I squared my shoulders and straightened my spine. Emily Andrew Miceli. Tour escort extraordinaire. Like my updated Tour Escorts Manual said in glossy black and white—Every guest’s concerns should be confronted head-on and resolved as quickly as possible by exercising logic, compassion, and restraint.
With the manual’s directive fresh in my mind, and my success rate boosting my confidence, when I saw Bernice elbow her way through the line at the snack bar and head in my direction, I realized there was only one responsible thing I could do.
