Page 32 of Without a Clue

“So just what?” Jackie says, sniffing indignantly. “You want us to pretend nothing happened?”

“Ma’am, we have a murder on the ship in the middle of the Atlantic. Everybody’s stranded here with a murderer. Yes. We need not cause mass panic.”

The image of three hundred women in their late fifties in seashell flip-flops and tropical skirts screaming and running away from each other while gripping steak knives comes to mind.

At the word murderer, Crystal vomits into an umbrella bin, then slips out of the room.

“As I was saying,” he continues, but Neena, who has been loudly sobbing into one of Jackie’s hankies, jumps in.

“The police say it’s convenient to just . . . carry on?” Neena says. “How is that”—momentary pause for sobbing—“How can you be thinking of convenience when”—another pause for sobbing—“How is that in any way convenient for us?” (More sobbing.)

“Oh, not for you,” Carragan cuts in. “No. The convenience is on our end entirely. See, on land, we have the disadvantage of picking through thousands of miles to find a criminal. Here?” he continues, and the tiniest, almost imaginary flicker of a smile crosses his face. “Here you’re trapped.”

He says it like he’s not speaking to all of us but to the murderer directly.

Like he’s thrilled.

Because some idiot made the idiotic plan to kill someone while being trapped like a rat on a ship with no way out.

A silent electric shock jolts through the room.

So far we’ve all just been focused on the fact that Hugh is dead. It hasn’t registered to anyone—except perhaps Ricky sullenly regarding us in the corner—exactly how that death happened.

It feels like we just stumbled into a second death.

Because somebody here is our enemy.

Neena faints again, right on Gordon’s lap, to Carragan’s blistering groan of annoyance.

After two minutes of absolute silence, followed by fifteen minutes of sheer chaos—Gordon and me trying to revive Neena, everybody talking over one another about the insanity of that statement, defending themselves, defending each other, crying out about the impossibility of Carragan’s statement that a murderer is on board the ship, Crystal coming through the door, seeing the room in chaos, looking ill, and slipping out again—Carragan pulls Crystal back inside, shuts the door, turns, and in a loud voice says, “Quiet!”

He frowns. “This is seven of you,” he snaps impatiently. “Imagine what this level of chaos would be at three hundred. Now, here’s how it’s going to go. Today, your”—he waves a vague hand at me—“organizer will create a casual, believable message of a change of events on the calendar. Meanwhile, we will block off the front of the ship and the rest of this hall for your leisure. I will question each of you over the course of the day. You are to stay away from all other people. Except, and if you choose to risk it, one another.”

My eyes flicker down at the tiniest shift Crystal makes away from Gordon on the couch. Neena wordlessly offers back Jackie’s handkerchief.

Jackie jolts at the sudden movement.

I look to Nash and realize his hand is back on mine, and my arms, my whole body, in fact, is numb.

He’s the only one who looks resolutely defiant in this group, resolutely angry. “Nobody in this group did it.”

To which Carragan looks entirely unsurprised, as though there’s always someone in his slew of suspects who says so.

“Of course none of you did it,” he says dryly. “Then riddle me why we have a locked entrance on both sides of the authors’ hall and only the seven of you have the keys? There was no forced entry.”

“Someone could have stolen a key,” Gordon puts in.

Carragan steeples his fingers over his stomach. “Unlikely. The reality is, the killer is most often found in the path of least resistance. Follow the thread. Find your killer. And we don’t have a broken point of entry. We don’t have anyone who called the front desk complaining about stolen keys. But what we do have are seven people right here with a load of plausible motivations. Point is, you’re all guilty until proven innocent—”

“Shouldn’t it be the other way around?” Crystal interjects.

“What are you, a freshman criminal justice major?” he snaps. “In the courts, sure.”

“And shouldn’t you be following that mentality, if so?”

Carragan smiles at her. Momentarily drops his notebook to his side. “How old are you?”

Crystal raises her chin. “Twenty-two.”