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“Shit,” I said.
“Is she in trouble?” Jere asked.
Christy shook her head left and right. “I don’t think so. They said they wouldn’t rat us out, and they showed me some moves so I can hold my own today. Mr. Mackey told Echo the private room is booked. That means there are VIPs coming tonight.
“VIPs, huh?” Mason asked. “Like who? Moby Dick? Nemo? Mr. Limpet?” He grinned at his own humor. I snort-laughed and smacked his shoulder in appreciation. We found each other hilarious.
“Who the fuck is Mr. Limpet?” Christy asked.
Jeremy shrugged. “Damned if I know.”
Mason opened his arms toward me and said, “You see?”
“I know. I know, baby. We tried. They grew up before we could force feed them every classic.”
“Antique.” Christy coughed the word as if to disguise it, but not really, and it made Jeremy smile a little bit, which I thought had been the whole idea.
“The Incredible Mr. Limpet,” I said. “Google it. Meanwhile, let’s see this clue you dragged us out of bed for.”
“You got it.” We followed her up the noisy metal staircase to the reinforced steel door, where Christy inserted a key. She led us into the pool room, with its chlorine-scented, too-warm air. The pool lights were off, and the water looked dark. I hadn’t seen the phantom mermaid again and was rather surprised she wasn’t jumping at the opportunity to appear and splash water into my face. Maybe she didn’t need to. Maybe I was doing what she wanted me to do.
Christy crossed the room, went through a door with a much nicer staircase, and down to the dining room where chairs were up on tables and the floor gleamed under a fresh shine. The curtains were drawn over the front of the mermaid tank.
The place was dark. It had only a few windows, and those bore light-blocking shades hiding behind sheer blue curtains. I imagined sunlight reflecting off the glass tank would mess with the audience’s ability to see the mermaids inside.
We didn’t step into the main restaurant though, just entered a door at the end of it. “This is the private party room,” Christy said. “There are photos of every mermaid who ever performed here.”
The room had its own little bar and soft leather chairs mounted to the floor around small tables, a sectional sofa took up two walls, and it looked as if every seat reclined.
The fourth wall was glass, the end of the mermaid tank, but the other three were lined in photos; rows of them in matching frames, perfectly spaced. Every shot was a mermaid in some enchanting full-body pose, eyes open, smile wide, tail glittering. Underneath was a first name— the mermaid name, anyway— followed by a favorite quote or thought.
There was a shot of Misty floating with her tail curled up around behind her, her hair like cornsilk tendrils in the clear water. Not a wig, I was sure of it. Not for the photo. The plate underneath read; Misty; still in search of her catchphrase.
“She didn’t use a mermaid name,” Christy said. “Said she couldn’t have come up with one better for it than her own. I concur, by the way.”
There was Echo, dark as night in her pristine white-and-silver tail. And next was Jasmine, pale as a milk, with a black tail that flashed purple when the light hit it at the right angle. Then came Toby with his orange hair in tall spikes all over his head. His flame-red and neon-orange tail looked like pure fire. “Let it be” was his quote.
And the parade continued. “There must be a fifty of them,” I said, moving slowly around the room as the shots grew progressively older. You could tell the photos’ age by the hair, makeup, and amount of skin covered. Also, by the quality of the tails and of the photos themselves. But what a collection of beautiful people, mostly women, a handful of men, floating and twirling, or basking on beaches or rocks. Their tails were every shade in existence. The sayings underneath had been a recent addition. More and more just had their names.
I walked slowly around the room, taking in every single photo. I wanted to feel them, in that way I sometimes could, but I would have to close my eyes and I couldn’t. It was like something out of a fantasy, this gallery of mermaids.
And then she was there. The tag on the frame said Esmeralda, but the face was the same one in my dream.
“This is her,” I said. “The mermaid from my vision. And the one from the podcast.” I pressed my fingertips to the glass over her face, and then thinking fast, I snapped a photo of the photo with my phone. “According to the podcast, Esmeralda was her mermaid name.” Beneath her name were the words, “Under the sea, where I long to be.”
“How odd,” Christy said. “I wonder why the podcast didn’t mention her rather dark catch phrase?”
“Probably saving it for the next episode,” Mason said.
“The next episode,” Jeremy said slowly. “You know they’ve been checking on the whereabouts of the people who knew and worked with Eva Quaid. Maybe that’s where Misty is now. Verifying an alibi.”
“The alibi of a killer, maybe,” Mason said, his expression turning dark.
“I don’t want you guys to panic,” Christy said. “But they left their phones behind.”
“What are you talking about?” I demanded while trying to process her words.
“Misty and Zig both left their phones locked in a desk drawer in their dorm room. I know because I decided to track her phone, and it pinged to a locked desk drawer in her dorm room.”
