Mask on the Cruise Ship

by Melanie Jackson

  Mr. Wellman punched in 911 on his cell phone. He had to plug a finger into his free ear and retreat inside the house to make the call, though, because at that moment our beefy neighbor stomped outside.

  “WHO’S BEEN ATTACKING MY TREE?” yelled Liesl’s uncle, Mr. Dubuque. He waved a hairy, white-knuckled fist at the fir tree.

  He had a point. The tree was now bent slightly back, out of line with the orderly row of the rest of the trees. The Dubuques, I knew, did like to be orderly.

  “You’ll need a gigantic splint for the tree,” Pantelli called down helpfully. “And don’t forget to talk to the tree while you prop it back into place. Trees hear, you know.”

  Doubtless Pantelli meant well, but Mr. Dubuque only grew angrier. He spluttered out some words that Madge and I had always been strictly forbidden to use.

  Meanwhile, the masked burglar was hobbling into the Dubuques’ backyard.

  “Him!” Mother, Madge and I shouted, pointing along the side of our house at the burglar.

  “Her!” shouted Liesl, pointing at me.

  In fairness, from where she stood, Liesl probably hadn’t seen the burglar. But there was nothing fair in her expression. In Liesl’s sharp white face, her dark eyes glittered with malicious pleasure.

  What was worse, Talbot then laughed.

  “I might have known,” wailed Mr. Dubuque, glowering up at me.

  “Don’t be silly, Albert,” said Mother, a rare impatient note in her voice. “Dinah isn’t Hercules. She’s not able to twist trees out of shape.”

  Trust Mother, in a crisis, to respond with a literary reference. Mother loved books — in fact, she was finishing her last course before getting her library science degree.

  However, the reference was lost in the approaching wail of police sirens. The masked burglar hobbled out the Dubuques’ back gate into the alley.

  I glared at Talbot — and at Liesl, who, smirking at all the commotion, was pulling at her wedge.

  Chapter 4

  A simply smashing launch

  PULL ONLY IN CASE OF EMERGENCY.

  I studied the sign over the glass-encased, red fire alarm on the Empress Marie’s deck. One of her decks, to be precise. There were eleven on the 91,000-ton ship that had initially reminded me of a fat white bar of soap. Some bar of soap. Steel, glass and marble a thousand feet long, with a beam (that’s nautical for width at a ship’s very widest part) of 105 feet wide.

  “There won’t be any emergency, small fry,” Jack assured me, his gray eyes amused. “Not with Mr. Trotter around, running the Empress like a drill sergeant.”

  We’d already seen the program manager. He’d fluttered by us, patting his waxed mustache agitatedly and snapping out orders to every ship’s steward he passed. Such as: “Make sure the Helpful Hints suggestion box is polished every day!”

  “What if Julie’s masked burglar follows her on board?” I demanded.

  I leaned on the railing and surveyed the two thousand or so people sardined into Vancouver’s cruise ship terminal below. Being a performer, I’d got to board early, bringing Mother and Madge with me. Like Jack, for this one week I was a member of the Happy Escapes Cruise Lines staff.

  The regular passengers faced a longer wait, what with checking in their luggage and getting through U.S. customs. I could tell they were growing impatient; a lot of the faces below me were scrunched into grimaces.

  But was the masked burglar anywhere among those faces? All I knew about him was that he was slight, about five nine — and had gooseberry-colored eyes.

  And that he loathed brussels sprouts.

  After showing up at our house, the police had found one witness, the next block over, who’d spotted a man in black hobbling into a battered Volkswagen van. The man had, the witness said, been chewing something — with his mouth pursed in utter distaste.

  Okay, so his taste buds were normal even if his morals weren’t, I thought. I scanned the crowd, admittedly a useless exercise since I couldn’t see eye color from here.

  “That and the sea air will soon put our masked trellis-breaker out of your mind,” Mother was saying — not without a certain pleading note in her voice. She knew me too well.

  I hadn’t heard the first part of what she’d said. “What and the sea air?” I demanded.

  Madge treated me to a sweet, sadistic smile. “Why, the swimming lessons Jack’s going to give you, Di. He’s signed you up. A private half-hour lesson every day of the cruise.”

  At long last passengers were being allowed up the gangway. I’d intended to scrutinize each of them for gooseberry eyes, but this horrifying pronouncement distracted me.

  “WHAT? No way. You know I have a phobia about water.” And I did. With my glasses off, everything was a frightening blur, the sides of the pool vanishing while the water engulfed me.

  Mr. Trotter had bustled to the top of the gangway to greet passengers. “You’ll love it here,” he assured them. “At Happy Escapes we pride ourselves on the soothing quality of our vacation.”

  “Everyone should learn to swim, Ms. Dinah-mite,” Jack was saying.

  “We offer card games, afternoon movies …” Mr. Trotter went on.

  “An important skill,” Jack continued to me.

  “Hot chocolate, massages … ”

  “Sadism,” I corrected Jack, scowling.

  Mr. Trotter nodded happily at the oncoming passengers. “Sadism … WHAT!?” He whipped round, mustache curls bobbing, to glare at me.

  Jack grinned. “Sorry, Mr. T. Dinah was just complimenting me on my poolside manner. In her own jesting way, of course.”

  The program director narrowed his rather beady black eyes at the four of us. “No trouble,” he said through gritted teeth. “Is that understood?”

  Then he jabbed a forefinger close to Jack’s freckled nose. “And NO HUMOR, young man.”

  “Right,” said Jack.

  Mr. Trotter reminded me of the producer of the play I’d been in last fall. He’d been humorless too. And he definitely hadn’t liked me. I seemed to have trouble with authority figures.

  A heavily perfumed and made-up woman in a mink coat stepped off the gangway. Mr. Trotter put on his most fawning smile, clapped his hands and oozed, “So sorry not to pay attention to you, Mrs. Figg. I was trying to deal with one of my performers. Sometimes they’re not quite … ” He tapped the side of his head and shrugged.

  “Preparing to sing?”

  A man with shiny black hair tied into a ponytail was peering down at me. He wore faded green sweats and had wonderful, deep laugh lines around his eyes and mouth. He looked ready to start laughing now.

  I realized my own mouth was still hanging open in response to Mr. Trotter’s rudeness. What a horrid man! Now I wasn’t sorry about eating his sandwich at all.

  “You were people-watching, I bet,” the man said. “I don’t blame you. Look at that strange fellow.”

  At the bottom of the gangway, Empress officers were checking people’s tickets. Just beyond the officers, a slight, fair-haired young man was glancing around impatiently. Waiting for someone, I guessed. He kept twitching around and bumping into people — “OW!” exclaimed a short, bald man, his head rammed by the young man’s shoulder.

  I didn’t blame the bald man for being upset. His otherwise smooth dome now sported a red mark.

  The young man twitched in our direction and happened to look up. He saw me and the black-haired man looking at him.

  I stared — really stared — back.

  The young man’s eyes were gooseberry-colored.

  He was the would-be thief, all right; he’d plainly recognized me. Whipping round, he charged into the cruise ship-terminal crowd, crashing into many more passengers.

  “Clumsy guy,” observed Jack.

  “Yes!” I exclaimed. “Gooseberry-eyed and klutzy: that proves it. That’s Julie’s inept thief. Everything he touches, he damages.”

  Jack looked confused. Obviously he hadn’t heard about the attempts to steal the Raven mask. (
I knew Madge never talked about anything interesting to him.) He began sniffing the air. “Avast, me hearties! Is this another Dinah Galloway mystery I smell on the wind?”

  “No,” Madge told him coolly. “It’s my Chanel No. 5. I put it on this morning thinking someone might appreciate it.”

  “Hey,” said Jack, and beamed adoringly at her.

  I rolled my eyes away from them — and met the amused blue ones of the man with the black ponytail. “Hi,” I said in surprise. I’d forgotten about him.

  “Hi,” he smiled. He put out his hand. “I’m Evan Brander, your pianist for the cruise.”

  “Oh, wow,” I said and shook his hand vigorously until it occurred to me that maybe you weren’t supposed to do that to pianists. They probably had to be careful of their fingers. “Sorry,” I said. “Next time I’ll give you my special dead-fish handshake.”

  I put on my nicest smile. I really wanted to get along with my pianist this time. The last pianist I’d had, a large Scot named Graham, I’d completely alienated. Without meaning to, of course.

  Mother blurted out to Evan, who was regarding me with surprise, “We’re so pleased to meet you, Mr. Brander. I’m Suzanne Galloway, Dinah’s mom. I’m afraid we must seem … ” She hesitated, surveying me, Madge and Jack in confusion. “Well, you know what Tolstoy said. I mean, about happy families all being the same. Well, we Galloways are quite happy. But I’ve often wondered if Tolstoy didn’t overlook happy families that were a bit odd … I can’t imagine another family being the same as mine.”

  “Mother.” Madge was furious.

  “Madge doesn’t like being described as ‘odd,’” Jack explained to Evan. “Hi, I’m Jack French. A devotee of the Galloway family, odd or not.” He reached over to shake Evan’s hand — much too hard, I thought critically. I’d have to speak to Jack about this later.

  “It’s obvious you guys have a lot of fun together,” Evan said. Then, apologetically, to Mother, “Do you mind if I borrow Dinah for a while? I thought we might go over some tunes for tonight.”

  “A very sensible idea,” Mother nodded — and I knew she was hoping work would distract me from my suspicions.

  I took one last glance down at the terminal. I was able to spot Gooseberry Eyes because he was the only person trying to get out instead of in.

  Bash! He tripped against an elderly woman, knocking her glasses off. She fell to her knees and began groping around blindly. Having often misplaced my own glasses, I understood what she was going through.

  “Wow,” observed Jack. “I’ve heard of smashing champagne glasses at a launch, but eyeglasses?”

  Rather than stay to help, Gooseberry Eyes gave a panicky look back at the Empress Marie. He scanned the gangway and the deck. Briefly his gooseberry eyes met mine again.

  Flinching, he bolted through the nearest door marked EXIT.

  Which happened to lead into a stairwell. His legs flew up behind him and he went tumbling.

  Chapter 5

  A whale of an encounter

  Julie joined Evan and me in the lounge where we were rehearsing. I told her about Gooseberry Eyes while Evan warmed up the songs from Oliver! that we’d be performing.

  “Don’t worry about the clumsy thief,” Julie soothed. “Now that we’ve sailed, I’m not going to worry. Hey, get a load of that view!”

  Vancouver was sliding by, and the blue-violet Coast Mountains; we were steaming into the Strait of Georgia to follow the rugged British Columbia coast north. The Empress would eventually build up to an average cruising speed of twenty-four knots.

  Evan tinkled out a last few warm-up notes. “Ready?”

  He and I were to perform from 5:00 to 7:00 every evening, with short breaks in between for him to rest his fingers and me my voice.

  The lounge was more a place for people to have appetizers than meals. There were plenty of those in the main dining room, seating 1,200 at a time and open from 6:30 a.m. till after the midnight buffet. You could also order food to your stateroom round the clock.

  And if all that wasn’t enough, waiters roamed the decks with gleaming silver trays of nummy snacks. I’d tucked back several sweet biscuits piled with fluffy salmon pâté.

  How appropriate that “Food, Glorious Food” was to be one of our songs! As I finished the last notes, I decided it should really be the Empress Marie’s theme song. Huh. Maybe I could make that joke during my performance. I’d seen old TV shows of my idol, Judy Garland, in concert, and she used to wisecrack between songs.

  “Dinah, glorious Dinah,” murmured Evan, tinkling out some random notes of a non-Oliver! song. “Where’d you get that voice, kiddo? It’s a mixture of stardust and sweat.”

  “Uh … ” I said. All I knew was that Mother referred to my voice as a godsend. The man she was seeing, Jon Horowitz, who’d been the director of the play I was in, said my voice made him think of the earthbound human heart expressing heavenly longings.

  I thought both their opinions were daft. “All I do is sing,” I said, shrugging.

  “If people are born with talent, they should use it,” Julie commented.

  I hoped she wasn’t going to get goopy about my voice too. But then I noticed her faraway expression.

  She smiled apologetically. “I was thinking of myself. Of how the art dealer I told you about praised my work. Said it was so stark — so melancholy — and yet so beautiful.”

  “Great,” I said politely, though sad stuff didn’t really appeal to me. Madge had once shown me a picture of a painting called War, full of dead bodies. She’d enthused about how brilliant the painting was. Like, give me a break, Madge.

  “Keep trying, and your talent will be appreciated,” Evan advised Julie. He trilled some more notes up the keyboard — boy, that was a catchy tune. “One day you’ll be discovered.”

  I thought of how I’d been “discovered.” I was stuck in a broom closet and had to sing my way out. Mr. Wellman had heard me and signed me on as a client.

  However, it was not a career strategy I could recommend for Julie. The broom closet had been dark and musty.

  I was able to say, in all honesty, “Know what, Julie? Evan’s right. Keep on with your painting. Look at my sister. She paints and sketches almost nonstop, even when you’re talking to her.”

  “And what about you, Dinah?” Evan inquired. “Would you have kept singing if you’d never been discovered?”

  “You betcha,” I said promptly. “In the kitchen, on the street, wherever. When I was three, my dad brought me downstairs and plunked me in front of some dinner guests. He started playing the piano, and I started belting out. ‘Frog, He Went A-Courtin’’ I think it was, though exact wording wasn’t my strength at the time.”

  I stopped to scowl away some tears that had been forming. I’d realized for a while now that, in a way, I was still singing for my dad — even though he was no longer around. He’d died a few years back in a car accident. His own fault, because he’d been drinking. As in, drinking a lot.

  “Anyhow, if you gotta sing, you gotta sing,” I mumbled.

  “You’re a true artist, Dinah,” Julie told me in her soft voice. “And, unlike me, you have family who appreciate your talent. It’s so unfair when a person doesn’t.” She gave my hand a squeeze and said she’d better go unpack.

  She walked rather slowly and sadly across the velvety-carpeted lounge to the double doors, which were blue and imprinted with the Happy Escapes Cruise Lines logo of a fat white ship.

  I thought, Julie sure broods about her stepsister a lot. Why does she bother?

  I should’ve gone to unpack too — my Game Boy, my Deathstalkers comics, my CDs — but I was enjoying Evan’s playing too much to leave.

  “What is that tune?” I demanded.

  “I don’t know yet,” said Evan. Idly, he tinkled some more of the refrain.

  “You mean you wrote it? Wow!”

  “Oh, I’m always writing songs.” Evan gave me a rueful grin. “I love writing music — it’s my second-favorite occ
upation, after being a dad.”

  “I bet you’re a great dad,” I said sincerely. “Did you bring your kids along?”

  “My daughter’s too young,” Evan said with regret. “She’d need too much looking after. So my wife’s at home taking care of her.”

  “You must miss them,” I said sympathetically.

  He started to tell me more about his family — but the double doors opened. Madge and Jack appeared.

  Madge had a shopping bag with the words Bathing Boutique on it. With a sweet — read, sadistic — smile, she pulled from it a brand-new girl’s bathing suit.

  My size, not hers.

  “That’s nice, Madge,” I said, surveying the one-piece, emerald green suit with frilly black trim. “But are those really Jack’s colors?”

  I then tried to sprint between them, to escape. However, Jack’s hand descended on my shoulder so that I ended up running on the spot and escaping nowhere. “As a friendly reminder, small fry, this was the deal you made with your mom. You could miss a week of school — if you agreed to take swimming lessons aboard the Empress Marie.”

  “I sort of remember that,” I grudgingly admitted. I continued running on the spot, just in case he let go —

  He didn’t. “There was much pleading, I recall, especially in light of a certain social studies test you’d got back that day. Consisting of a map of Canada on which you were supposed to have labeled the major rivers, lakes and bays.”

  Jack lowered his freckled face to my level. His gray eyes were not amused. “A space alien, visiting Earth and seeing what you handed in, Ms. Galloway, would deduce that we Canadians hadn’t got round to naming any of our bodies of water.”

  I ceased my running on the spot. I remembered that test very well. Pantelli and I had been busy trading Deathstalkers cards. “Fine,” I sulked, grabbing the suit from Madge. “I’ll meet you at the Empress Marie’s pool.”

  “In half an hour, small fry.”