Oliver Twisted (An Ivy Meadows Mystery Book 3) Read online

  Get Lit! cruises tried to appeal to families seeking to further their children’s education, so each ship had a few kid-friendly activities onboard. The S.S. David Copperfield featured a Curiosity Shoppe that hosted scavenger hunts, Scrooge’s Haunted House (occupied by the three Christmas ghosts plus a pretty spooky Marley), and an arcade that featured Dickens-themed video games, like Betsey Trotwood’s Donkey Kong (David Copperfield’s great-aunt Betsey hated donkeys).

  “I need some cash,” said the kid.

  “Again?” said his mother.

  “I wouldn’t, if Dad would let me have a sail-and-sign card.”

  “Buddy, you’re the last person who needs a sail-and-sign card,” his dad said.

  I stood up from the table and walked a few feet, trying to see if any bars magically appeared on my phone, so I was close enough to see the guy’s ruddy face turn pale.

  “Damn,” he said, standing and patting his pockets. “My wallet’s gone.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Still Improving

  “So what do you know about Valery?” I asked Timothy as we ran down the stairs to the crew cabin area. My stomach lurched with every step, but we had to move quickly in time for me to grab a change of clothes and get to rehearsal.

  “Not much. Russian, good actor, ladies’ man.”

  “Really?” Val was nice in a goofy sort of way, but his ghostly pale skin, muddy-colored dark hair, and creepy-colored eyes put me in mind of an anemic vampire.

  “He’s got something going for him,” Timothy said as he opened the stairwell door to the hall. “Rumor is he’s got a big—”

  “Heart,” I said before Timothy could say more. Didn’t really want the image of a naked Val in my head. I mean, maybe all of him was pale, even the nether bits, which would be weird since…Dang. Guess the image was already imprinted on my brain.

  “Also, he tends to take his clothes off when he gets drunk. Just a warning.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Just a sec.” I unlocked my cabin door and went in while Timothy waited in the hall.

  I took off my wig and gown and changed into a t-shirt and pair of leggings. I hopped the two steps to the bathroom, popped my last two chewable Tums in my mouth, met Timothy in the hall, ran to the theater, and jumped onstage just a few seconds before Jonas and Ada walked on from the backstage area.

  “Hey,” said Jonas, “you look great.” He sounded surprised and impressed at the same time. “First time I’ve seen you without a wig since the cut. Short hair really shows off your long neck. I can even see a little Audrey Hepburn in you.”

  Audrey Hepburn! I stretched my neck like a preening swan.

  “Yeah, if Audrey Hepburn had orange hair and a butt like a sack of potatoes.” Ada flopped a mat under one of the silks.

  I whipped my head around to check out my butt, just in case.

  “Ivy has a delicious ass,” Jonas said to Ada.

  Delicious! It was a pretty nice ass, but no one had ever called it delicious. Was Jonas interested in me? “Start stretching,” he said. “The way Ada showed you last time.” He turned away. Not interested then.

  I dropped to the floor and went into a modified lunge, one leg bent in front with my foot flat on the floor, and the other stretched behind me.

  Jonas tugged on a rope, and the second silk fell from its place in the fly space. “Timothy, David,” he said to the guys who sat in the front row. “We’re going to go over the basic moves with Ivy. You don’t have to be here for another hour.”

  “Moral support,” said Timothy.

  “Just watching,” said David.

  “What about Val? Will he be at rehearsal later?” I stayed in the lunge position and put my palms flat on the floor. It felt good to stretch my sore muscles.

  “No.” Jonas looked at me strangely, probably since Val wasn’t in the magic show. I knew that, but wanted to find out what they knew about him.

  “He’s a great actor.” I lowered my front leg to the floor and bent it so that it tucked in front of me. “Sends shivers down my spine when he talks in his Bill Sikes voice.”

  “He’s got a great Cockney accent,” Jonas said. “Maybe he could give you a few pointers.”

  I made a mental note to work on my accent and persevered. “It’s crazy that he’s so good at acting in English. Did he study here in the U.S.?” I reached back and grabbed my leg, pointing my toe toward the ceiling.

  “I don’t think he’s had any formal training. Do you know, David?”

  David shook his head.

  “David is his roommate,” Jonas said. “Valery used to work onboard as a busboy. He came to me one day after an actor quit. Said he used to act in school and asked if he could audition. Blew me away. I hired him on the spot.”

  “Did he go to drama school in Russia?” I watched Ada climb up her silk like Jack scaling the beanstalk.

  “I didn’t ask.” Jonas tilted his head, considering me. “Why so interested?”

  “Ivy’s got a crush,” sang Timothy.

  I spun around and glared at him. “Do not.”

  “Do too.” He winked at me, unseen by everyone else. I glared at him and he winked again, slower this time, like he was conveying a message. Oh, he was helping me out. I had been sounding a little investigator-ish.

  Jonas waved me over to take my place underneath my silk. “Okay. Time to learn some dance moves.” He held the silk out to me.

  “Tie yourself in, using your left foot,” Ada said from above me. I gripped the silk, pulled myself a few feet above the stage and wrapped the silk around my foot, securing my position with a footlock. My arms, still shaky from yesterday’s rehearsal, burned with the effort, and my foot felt bruised from my former attempt at climbing. “Now separate the two pieces with your arms, keeping your elbows at head level.” The fabric was attached in the middle to a beam above me so that its two tails hung down. I separated them. “Now lean forward through the silk.”

  “Whoa.” I flailed in the air. Must have leaned too far.

  “Like this.” Ada did exactly what she told me, but leaned forward in a fluid motion, ending up in a position that looked like a figurehead on a ship. I was never going to be able to do that. Never. But I was an actor and dancer and a stubborn one, so I smiled and persevered. I tried the move again. “Ohhh.” I actually got it. Nowhere near performance quality, but a start. “Cool.”

  “Now bring your right leg up to your knee in a jazz passé.”

  I did. Now I looked like a figurehead about to leap off the prow of the ship.

  “It’s called The Ship’s Lady,” said Jonas.

  I performed the move again, more gracefully this time.

  “Bravo,” Timothy said from the audience.

  “Nice,” Jonas agreed.

  “Please.” Ada rolled her eyes.

  She whipped through a few more moves. Jonas clapped his hands together, not in applause. “That’s great, Ada. Now slow down into teaching mode, all right?”

  The look on Ada’s face did not say it was all right, but she did stop showing off. She taught me several more moves, mostly dance poses done in mid-air. They took a lot of strength, especially arm strength, but they were familiar moves I’d performed for years, just not in the air. Maybe I could do this.

  “Good work,” said Jonas as I touched down on the mat. “Just one more piece of business. Let’s go up to the catwalk.”

  Ada began climbing the steel rungs set into the side wall of the theater. I followed. Jonas climbed the ladder behind me. Good thing I had a delicious ass.

  I reached the catwalk and walked out on it, the metal grating cool beneath my bare feet. “I’m not going to have to get on the silks from here, am I?” Being hauled up into the air by a pulley was bad enough. Stepping off a catwalk forty feet in the air wo
uld feel like walking off a cliff.

  “Oh no,” said Jonas. “That would be much too dangerous. We’re up here so you can see how the silks are rigged. We have certified riggers, like Ada here,” he nodded at my roommate, “but you need to check your own equipment too.”

  “Each silk is secured to a beam by a span set,” said Ada, pointing to a black band that wrapped around a metal beam in the fly space. “Then you’ve got several pieces of hardware connected by carabiners.” Those were the little metal hook thingies that climbers used. “First of all, check that all carabiners are locked. There are three. One that connects the span set to the pulley.” She pointed at the carabiner and looked to me for confirmation that I understood. I nodded.

  “A second one that connects the pulley to the swivel.” She indicated a figure-eight-shaped piece of hardware that swiveled in the middle of the eight. “And a third one that connects the swivel to the Rescue Eight.” This piece of equipment, the Rescue Eight, was about the same size as the others, but was nearly covered by the silk knotted around it so I couldn’t see it well.

  “Check your equipment carefully every time you use the silks,” Jonas said. “You really don’t want to fall from this height.”

  CHAPTER 15

  A Notable Plan

  “Thanks so much for doing this,” I said to David as I followed him down the hall to the crew cabins. “And thanks to you too,” I whispered to Timothy, beside me.

  Timothy’s white lie about me having a crush on Val was proving useful. After rehearsal, I’d said to David, “You know, I think I should ask Val about helping me with my accent. Do you think he’s in your room?” Everyone would think this was an excuse to get close to Val. It was, but not for the reason they thought.

  “Either there or the bar,” he replied. Ada looked at me when she heard “bar” and pantomimed slitting a throat.

  “I’d like to check his room first,” I said. “Would you show me where it is?”

  David shrugged a slight shoulder. “Sure.”

  I conferred with Timothy before we left the theater. “Here’s the plan. If Val isn’t there, I’ll say I want to leave a note for him. You offer to buy David a Coke so that I have a few minutes alone in their room.”

  “A Coke?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe go to the arcade and challenge him to a game of Donkey Kong? Or a round at George’s Shooting Gallery? Whatever you think will keep him away for a few minutes.”

  “What if Val is in the room?”

  “I’ll just see what I can. Maybe ask to use the bathroom.”

  “Be careful. He’s a thief, remember?”

  I snorted. “I can handle Val.”

  Luckily, Val wasn’t there. I played my “I just need a minute alone so I can write him a note” card.

  “I’m not sure—” began David.

  “I’ve known Ivy for years,” said Timothy. “She’s harmless as a drag queen without heels.”

  I waved goodbye to Timothy and David and got to work as soon as they shut the door. I went to one of the wardrobes and pulled open the door. Just clothes in the wardrobe, clean ones folded and on hangers, and a few dirty ones on the floor, judging by the mingled smell of detergent, aftershave, and feet. I rifled through the hangers in the closet. Definitely Val’s clothes. Though he and David both wore shabby-looking Victorian costumes, David was a good foot shorter and maybe fifty pounds lighter than Val. Nothing interesting in the closet. I shut the door and went into the bathroom. Nothing of interest there either, except for a large box of condoms. Pretty sure they didn’t belong to David.

  I went through the drawers. Nothing that piqued my interest, and again, pretty easy to see what stuff belonged to who. Or Hu. Ha.

  One of the shelves above the desk held a TV and a few books in Russian. The other shelf was bare except for a photo of an Asian family, a serious-faced David tucked in between his two smiling parents.

  I’d heard that Oliver stayed with his parents onboard in some sort of family suite. I suspected David’s family wasn’t here or else he wouldn’t be rooming with Val.

  I finished my investigation of the room.

  I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for, but I certainly didn’t find it. Oh well. I’d just write the note to Val about helping me with my accent and be off. I grabbed a pen and piece of paper off the desk and sat on the lower bunk.

  Huh. A piece of yarn crept out from underneath the pillow. I tipped up the pillow. A gray knitted scarf lay underneath. I felt a tingle of familiarity, but nothing concrete. I picked it up. A subtle pattern was woven into it, using gray yarn just a shade lighter than the rest of the scarf. I peered at it. Was that a bear? Yes. And a name. Val.

  Someone dear to him must have knitted the scarf, or why would he have it under his pillow? I carefully tucked it back in its place when it hit me. I knew where I’d seen that gray yarn. In Harley’s hands, the last time I saw her alive.

  CHAPTER 16

  The Intricacies of the Way

  “I found something. I’m following up on it.” That’s what I texted Uncle Bob the next morning as the ship pulled into Ensenada. What I didn’t say was that I was going to follow Val. I was pretty sure my uncle would say it was too dangerous. I was also pretty sure I knew how to tail someone (thanks to Uncle Bob and my PI handbooks), and that I wouldn’t look too suspicious if I got caught, since I was supposed to have a crush on Val and everything.

  The S.S. David Copperfield had a four-hour stop in Ensenada, thanks to some maritime law that required a stay-over in a foreign port. We actors were given the time off to explore and blow off steam. Before leaving, I put on big sunglasses and a floppy hat to hide my strawberry blonde buzz cut. It wasn’t really a disguise, just something to make me a little less identifiable at a glance. Thus prepared, I pretended to gab with Timothy at the end of the hall so I could keep an eye on Val and David’s cabin. We’d only been talking a few minutes when Val emerged, wearing a t-shirt and cargo pants, a canvas messenger bag slung across his body. I waited until he opened the door to the stairwell, then took off after him.

  “Be careful,” Timothy said after me.

  “I won’t drink the water,” I covered.

  I ran quietly up the stairs just in time to see Val exit onto the next deck. I did too. Once there, it was easy to lose myself in the line of employees waiting to get off, and easy to keep sight of Val. His white arms nearly glowed against the sleeves of his black t-shirt. I hoped he was wearing sunscreen.

  As soon as he debarked, he lit a cigarette and headed off with a purposeful stride, as if going to a familiar destination. I joined the throng of people heading to Ensenada’s main drag, keeping Val firmly in sight. If he were involved in this theft ring, maybe he’d meet up with his contact. I almost lost him once on a busy street lined with busy shops made busier by their brightly colored signs advertising mariscos, cerveza, and Viagra. I caught sight of him again, partly obscured by a knot of tourists. He looked over his shoulder, then ducked down a small side street. I sped up and peeked around the corner in time to see him enter a small cantina. I pulled my hat down to hide my face and slowed, walking nonchalantly past the open door, facing straight ahead but looking sideways behind my sunglasses. Val approached a big man facing the bar and tapped him on the shoulder. The man spun around, a scowl on his pale face until he caught sight of Val. Then he broke into a grin, pulling Val into a bear hug.

  Huh. Not the way I’d greet my criminal contacts.

  “There’s no business like show busine—” Shit, I forgot to turn off the ringer on my cell. And it was on the loudest setting. Nice detecting style, Ivy. The two men turned toward the sound. I ducked away, scrambling in my bag to turn off my phone.

  When I was a couple blocks away, I stepped into a souvenir shop. After a few minutes browsing huarache sandals and scorpions encased in plastic, I d
etermined that I hadn’t been followed. I took out my phone, turned the ringer off, and redialed the number that had interrupted my spying.

  “Ivy, where are you?” my friend Candy asked in her unmistakable Louisiana drawl. “Don’t tell me you forgot your best friend drove four and a half hours into another country just to see you.”

  “Of course not.” Actually, I didn’t think Candy really meant it when she offered to meet me in Mexico. Sure, she’d mentioned it last week on the phone, but she said it kind of offhandedly, the way people do when they think something is a nice idea but they don’t really believe it will happen. Plus, Ensenada wasn’t that much closer than Phoenix and she hadn’t visited there once since moving to L.A. four months ago.

  “Well, I’m here,” she said. “I’m at Hussong’s and there’s a nice icy margarita on its way, just for you.”

  “Good. I could use it. And I could use you too. Want to help solve a murder?”

  “Girlfriend,” Candy said, “what are friends for?”

  CHAPTER 17

  Old Companions and Associations

  There was no mistaking Candy, even from the back. Her curly brown hair had the same optimistic energy as the rest of her. When she jumped up from the table at Hussong’s and ran toward me, all the men in the area turned in her direction. She had that effect. I don’t know if it was the brilliant smile spread across her face or the fact that she looked like she might bounce right out of her sundress. Probably both. Candy radiated a sunny sexuality.

  “Ivy girl!” Candy hugged me so hard my hat fell off. Then, “Omigod—your hair.”

  “Audrey Hepburn, right?”

  “The spittin’ image.”

  We chatted as we walked to our table, catching up on our lives. I felt so good with Candy. Like I was on solid ground again.