“Am I a suspect?” asked Swan.
“Hell if I know. I’m not the police,” I told him. “But you had some sort of secret plan with Chul-Moo, and you’re telling people that you were afraid that he was going to betray you. So maybe you killed him? I’m just putting that out there.”
“No,” said Swan, suddenly anxious. “Don’t put that out there. Reel that back in.”
“Well, I find that solving crimes is a lot like Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret. I just put theories out there for the Universe to take hold of.”
“I didn’t kill Chul-Moo, and I don’t think that’s how The Secret works.”
“Well, by the Universe, I sort of mean ‘the Police.’”
“I’m really sorry about everything,” said Swan. “I didn’t mean to mislead you.”
This was a complete lie, obviously, because Swan did mean to mislead me. His entire plan was misleading me. That was the plan, period. But it was a good thing to say, nonetheless. Sometimes bald-faced lies can be almost sort of nice.
“The person you should apologize to is Imogen.”
“No,” said Swan. “Don’t tell her. She’ll kill me.”
And I was inclined there, for a moment, to think: What a fucking knucklehead. But then I remembered how anxious Chul-Moo was about getting killed yesterday, possibly by Imogen, and I began to wonder if perhaps Swan wasn’t onto something.
I realize that the last time I saw Mike and Imogen in a bar, it was a different bar—but they somehow managed to be sitting in exactly the same places. They also, and I watched them closely, did not display any signs of being kicked—no wincing, or stitches in the side, or footprints across their faces, which I really feel ought to be a clue in a book, even if not here. But exactly the same places. They were creatures of habit, I was guessing. Maybe this was a fighting-game thing, where players are rewarded more for execution than creativity? Or maybe they’re just cold, robotic creatures. I told you earlier that Imogen smelled like a cyborg.
“Dahlia,” said Imogen, inexplicably happy to see me, “tell me you aren’t here to accuse us of more murders?”
“Why are you wet?” asked Mike.
These were not my favorite questions, because (1) I was here, if not to accuse them of murder, at least to float the idea by them, and (2) I was getting tired of answering the question about being wet.
“Well,” I said, not really knowing the best way to do this, “as it happens, those two questions are somewhat related.”
“Oh God, is she going to start a story?” asked Imogen to Mike.
“I think she’s going to start a story.”
It was difficult to imagine that someone who had tried to kill you earlier would then snark their way through your confrontation with them, but who knows? I didn’t know if they were guilty or not, but I did know they were snarky.
“The story is that someone tried to kill me, and that I had to dive into the river to escape.”
“That’s terrible,” said Mike, looking genuinely shocked. “But how are those questions related?”
“She doesn’t know who tried to kill her, and she really has come here to accuse us of another murder,” Imogen said, then sighed.
“Seriously?” said Mike, who was less sad today and more put out. “Why would you think that I would be murdering people? At a tournament with a ten-thousand-dollar prize. It’s actually insulting.”
“I don’t think you’re involved, Mike,” I told him. “I just have some questions for Imogen.”
Mike looked immensely pleased by this, and any minor concerns he might have felt for his fighting-game partner were drastically dwarfed by his surging excitement about being deemed innocent.
“Whoop, whoop!” said Mike. “Who’s innocent? I’m innocent!”
“Oh Jesus,” said Imogen grimly.
“Chugga-chugga-chugga—Oh, hey Imogen, do you know what that sound is?”
“You saying chugga-chugga-chugga like a jackass?”
“It’s the murder train, and it’s coming into the station! Watch out! Watch out, Imogen! You’re gonna get hit by the murder train.”
Fighting-game players, I will observe here, are a bizarrely competitive group of people. These were teammates, I want to point out.
“I am not going to get hit by the murder train,” said Imogen.
“Should I step away?” asked Mike. “So you can ask Imogen these murder questions?”
“Don’t step away,” said Imogen. “I’m happy for you to ride the murder train along with me.”
While I’m pointing things out, I’m also just going to put out there how unconcerned these two were about my nearly getting killed. No one was overly alarmed by this development. I didn’t even get a hug. But I digress.
“So, Imogen,” I said. “The reason that I wanted to talk to you is that the guy who got killed was Doctor XXX—who had been threatening you.”
“Karou had been threatening me? He seemed like such a sweetheart,” she said, and she looked appropriately shocked.
“No, not Karou: Chul-Moo.”
And now it was Mike’s turn to look shocked. “Wait, what happened to Chul-Moo?”
“Karou was yesterday’s killing, Chul-Moo was today’s.”
There was a long pause. A very long one. I watched their faces gradually transform to anger.
“That’s awful!” said Mike. “Why would you tell us this?”
“We have more matches to fight,” said Imogen. “That’s terrible. We just don’t need this bad news right now.”
“Jesus,” said Mike. “I feel like I should have a drink.”
“No drinking until the tournament is over,” said Imogen. “Seriously, though, why would you bring this to us?”
The answer, I felt, was pretty obvious, but I was feeling more and more like a jackass as I developed it aloud.
“Well, Imogen—a man threatens you, tells you you should have never been born, apparently has a plan to discredit you, and then winds up dead. I’m not trying to be the boogeyman, but the police are eventually going to connect those dots themselves.”
“Dahlia,” Imogen said, “I really don’t want to seem glib about this, like I’m perfect or unstoppable or some sort of superheroine, but—if every guy on this ship who had threatened me or said something terrible to me got killed today—it would be like we were on the Black Pearl.”
“Even I’d be dead,” said Mike.
“You wouldn’t be dead,” said Imogen dismissively.
“I guess not. But my legs might be broken.”
Imogen thought for a moment, quietly, and considered. “You know, that might be true.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
I felt both sort of satisfied from the explanations from Imogen and Mike and yet also supremely bummed. When your alibi is that you get so many threats that none of them actually has any currency—well, it’s hard to not find that a little depressing. Keep on, Imogen Morland, at least assuming that you didn’t try to kill me, at which point, burn in hell.
Also contributing to my sorrow were my pants. I needed dry pants. I needed them badly. Now that my boyfriend was off on a mission to depants some poor woman—hopefully he would charm the pants off her—the fact that I was still wearing wet pants seemed even more intolerable.
I sat down next to the shrub. It had been a hell of a long day. The question that had occupied my mind was not one of mysteries, but was more medical and practical. Is alcohol good for a concussion? I mean, I’m sure it’s not GOOD for a concussion—I doubt doctors are at the ER plying victims of head trauma with shots of tequila—but maybe it wasn’t bad. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt me. Because I would have loved a drink.
I wanted to look this up on my phone—God knows what the engineers at Google must think of me, but of course, it was still missing. I should have had Nathan call it—although presumably whoever had been savvy enough to take it in the first place had taken care of this issue. Probably my beloved phone was in the briny deep. Or the freshwater deep
, I suppose. Or the freshwater shallow, at least relative to the ocean. I’m getting sidetracked.
I didn’t notice when the guy came up to me, because I was fiddling with my pants, which were a problem. I was wearing pants that were seemingly made of sponge. I was SpongeBob SquarePants. Even after being dry all this time, I was just leaking water everywhere. And my pants were sagging terribly—I was showing a lot of waistline. More panty than I was comfortable with—which was, generally, to be clear—any panty at all, but I was moving past slightly seductive and straight into drunk crazy woman. With my pants sagging this much, I could have been the sort of youth that Bill Cosby would lecture about, and also roofie.
So that’s why I didn’t notice him. Not because I’m a lousy detective, okay? The answer is wet pants.
“Hey there, pretty lady,” he said, “are you here for the tournament?”
It’s a dangerous thing to straight-up call a stranger a beautiful lady, but he had a couple of things going for him. For one, I was soaking wet, still, and felt like some sort of monstrous merwoman. Like a naga, or a sahuagin. So, in that particular moment, I didn’t mind hearing that I didn’t look sahuaginesque. He was lucky. Another thing he had going for him was that he didn’t say: “Hey there, pretty lady—why are you at this tournament?” which I had gotten once already. And not to be discounted, he was a good-looking fellow himself, with a surfer vibe and a tight black T-shirt I approved of. I know that it shouldn’t matter, but it kind of did. Wet pants. Concussion.
And he had a laptop.
He even opened it up, very suddenly, and seemed to be filming me.
“Are you streaming?” I asked him.
“Yes, indeed,” said the guy. “I’m Reynard, and this is live on Twitch.”
“Hi, Twitch,” I said. “You might know me as Sunkern, or Louise Granger. Probably Louise.”
“Did you watch the last round of the tournament—what a beat down!”
“It has been a really exciting tournament so far—nonstop action,” I agreed.
“How far did you get in the tournament?” he asked.
“You know,” I said, “I’m not really sure. I sort of forgot to attend some matches somewhere along the way.”
This made me sound like an airhead, but that seemed preferable to victim. “I was blacked out for a while” just wasn’t a good answer. Or at least, it was something that would require a better segue.
And then Remy came moping up to me. He seemed utterly unconcerned that he was being filmed, or that I was soaking wet. He just sat down next to me and drooped.
“Hey, Dahlia,” he said, then added, with even less enthusiasm, “Hey, Reynard. We lost.”
Then he whispered to me:
“And your plan didn’t work out. Nobody did anything with their phone.”
Right, that plan. Ah, the ambitious designs of an undrowned woman.
Reynard didn’t catch any of this, though, and just wanted to talk about the match. “I saw that bout,” said Reynard. “What an upset! Nice Guy Kyle was not playing his best.”
Reynard, if that was his real name, was using a fake newscaster-y voice that would have been irritating in any circumstances, but especially when one has been nearly murdered and completely concussed. But mostly I was thinking: How can I steal this chump’s laptop?
Remy was leaning on me, which was not cool, Remy, but remarkable in that he was unconcerned about getting wet.
“I just thought we would win,” he said. He wasn’t crying, but he was a few doors down. He looked heartbroken, and so I hugged the kid with my soggy arms. Maybe I was trying to make up for my cold demeanor with Swan, who was probably just staring out at the water still, saying “what” over and over again. Or maybe I’m just nice.
Reynard was droning on about what a drubbing Remy had taken, which was not cool—and hug or not—laptop or not—I suddenly did not want to be around these two. I should be at the bar, getting a drink. Or at home. With a towel. Thousands of towels. I should just drive to Target and run up and down the bathroom aisle decadently wiping my body over all their towels.
This fantasy was interrupted because I noticed Kyle and Tricia (and Undine) sneaking down belowdecks, probably for yet another bathroom emergency. I was half expecting Tricia to try to pawn her baby off on me. She was holding Undine in her carrier, one-handed—although I noticed that she had a brightly colored Minnie Mouse bandage on her fingers.
And then I solved the murder.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Okay, plan time.
“Remy,” I said, hugging him closer so that only he could hear me. Reynard must have assumed I was being nurturing. “I have a plan for catching the person who murdered Chul-Moo.”
“Wait, what? You mean Karou?”
“Yeah,” I said, suddenly deciding that this was not the time to mention murder number two to a fourteen-year-old. “I misspoke. But I need your help.”
“Yes?” said Remy, instinctively whispering in response, even though I didn’t strictly tell him so. He was an eighth grader. He knew how secrets worked. “What do you need me to do?”
“Distract this goon. And get him away from his computer, which I plan to steal. Then, a few minutes after I’ve made my escape, find Nathan and Shuler, and hell, Charice. Detective Weber. Whoever you can get ahold of.”
“I don’t know any of those people!”
“Just look for a policewoman. Tell them I’m belowdecks. Probably in the engine room,” I said, suddenly sounding a lot more like Gandalf than I intended. “Now, GO!”
I finished the hug, and Remy, who was a much better actor than I had given him credit for, wiped away an imaginary tear.
“You know, Reynard,” said Remy, busting out Kewpie doll’s eyes that would have worked on an animated bunny, “I’m really interested in learning about streaming. I need to do a report about it. For school.”
“Just google it, dude,” said Reynard.
Remy, having immediately decided that guile was not going to work, changed plans all at once, jumping on Reynard’s back and noogying him in a way that would have made Dhalsim proud.
“Steal his computer!” yelled Remy, subtlety now gone out the window.
This was not how I imagined this scene going down, but I take my opportunities wherever they come up. I picked up Reynard’s laptop and even filmed a bit of the noogying so that this friendly moment might be shared and remembered forever.
And there were viewers—nearly seven thousand of them, which was WAY out of my league. I was originally planning on switching the laptop to my channel, but hell. All I needed were witnesses, and here were seven fucking thousand of them.
And they were furious. It was like I had picked up a beehive filled with swarming angry insects.
Tag24569: What the fuck is this? Where are the games?
Attica1: KIDNIPPING
CHAr43: Ugly Wet Lady, bring back Reynard.
Gerry26: FINISH HIM!!!!
Mondo13422: Call police now. Crazy lady steals computer.
And they went on like this, for pages. Commenting on Twitch was sort of like live tweeting #Sharknado, except that it’s less being arch about #Sharknado. It’s just all Sharknado, all the way down. Being stupid is part of the experience.
“Bring back my stream,” shouted Reynard, who did look rather ridiculous. He was down on his knees, and Remy was on his back and was holding him in a sleeper hold. Or what a fourteen-year-old imagined was a sleeper hold.
“Yoink!” I said. And then I took the stream and went belowdecks.
I walked purposefully down the stairs, and kept the stream going with me. I talked to them all the way. I didn’t just have a partner in crime; I had seven thousand of them, and it gave me courage.
“Hi, guys,” I said. “So this is I guess a kind of kidnapping. My name is Dahlia Moss,” I told them. “You can follow me on my own stream at Sunkern. And I’m dragging you to the basement of the Major Redding. Do boats have basements?”
I glanced at the
stream.
WTF??!!!?!?
What? Is? Happening?
FUCK YOU. THIS B**** stole our stream.
Reynard cry now.
The bilge.
WTF.
It’s just belowdecks, dumbass.
BILGE. It’s bilge.
Take off your shirt!!!
About the responses I expected. I continued on, walking farther into the darkness, and heading purposefully toward the engine room.
“Okay so this is the story. Karou was murdered earlier, and I think I know who did it. I’m going to lay a little bit of a trap here, and I just want you fellas to keep watch in case I get killed. Right?”
OMG, you’re that woman.
It’s not a bilge.
Belowdecks.
Is it a cabin?
Take off your shirt!
How’s your head?
Why is she wet?
THIS IS THE DEAD WOMAN. SHE’S BACK.
What the fuck is even happening?
I just got here. Is this EVO, or?
It’s not a cabin.
Karou got murdered?
DEAD WOMAN BACK!!!!
Yoga murdered.
A++ Would Watch again.
She hasn’t had any complaints.
DEAD WOMAN HAS RETURNED!
These guys were going to be incredibly helpful, I could tell. Honestly, they might not be horrible. If I got murdered, presumably one of them would call the police. Probably. They’d snark about it first, sure, but police would eventually be called. I’m 80 percent sure of this.
I was getting close to the engine room now, and I could hear noises coming from inside. It was a baby crying.
Okay, I thought. Now, how was I actually going to do this? I needed to set up the stream somewhere so that I would be visible. Right? There couldn’t be an end table or something anywhere? I could put the laptop on the floor, but then the stream would just be people’s feet. The laptop camera arched, so I tried to swivel it as far back as I possibly could so that hopefully the stream would be able to see me.
The Astonishing Mistakes of Dahlia Moss Page 22
