Page 33 of Without a Clue

“And what’s your full name?”

“Crystal.” In defiance she keeps her lips sealed as for her last name.

He lets the silence stretch between them.

“Well,” he says at last, “Crystal of a staggering twenty-two years with no last name, you can keep that mindset if you like, but I can tell you right now, I can’t count on one hand how many suspects of mine with your same . . . mentality, if you will . . . ended up in a less than favorable position when push came to shove, if you get my meaning. Do what you like, it’s your life, but just know, were it me, I’d be locking my doors at night. Now,” he says, looking to the rest of us, “like I say, we have nine days left on this ship, and I made a promise to the higher-ups to get off it with someone in some brand-new metal bracelets. Today I’ll question each of you.”

“And tomorrow?” Nash says.

“Tomorrow you all will return to your jobs while I do mine. Smile. Entertain your fans. And me? I’ll go find a killer.”

Chapter 7

Things can’t get any lower than this moment, right?

Right?

I, without question, am living out the exact second I’ll look back on and think, Yup, that was definitely rock bottom. Can’t get lower than discovering your boss murdered, twice, being a suspect while stuck on a ship with the real murderer, and still having to work.

The next three hours are a manic-induced blur.

And while everybody else kept to their rooms, I spent the majority of the day racing around, trying to come up with different activities for each of the authors’ workshops that sounded believable and totally not made up on the fly.

No time for grieving.

No time to hang out in the land of shock.

Creating a Fantasy World 101 Workshop from noon to 2 p.m. with Gordon?

Not anymore.

Now it’s a “Magical Scavenger Hunt” that ultimately results in women charging the decks and kitchens, scouring through pots and pans, pressing elevator emergency buttons, and, in one case, breaking into the captain’s bedroom, hunting for clues that mirror Gordon’s latest fantasy release. (For the record, all of my clues were in logical, legal places, and 85 percent of the ladies involved ended up looking in the exact opposite places. The crew was quite upset.)

It was hard going.

It was hard to convince three hundred avid readers who spent their hard-earned money to specifically see and interact with their favorite authors that no, they didn’t really want to shake hands with Ricky Gables and hear intimate details of the time several Romanian politia came upon him when he was sleeping on the floor of an abandoned Transylvanian castle for research, that instead it was very exciting to do this puzzle shaped like a hot-air balloon while talking about our favorite books. Isn’t that equally exciting? Isn’t that worth every penny?

Let’s just say I ended up pulling a lot of strings and making a lot of phone calls.

I don’t want to pat myself on the back too much given the circumstances and all, but the substitute activities turned out to be pretty great.

In Ricky’s case, Stephen King did in fact play chess virtually on a projector screen (with me, and as it turns out, I am really bad) while fielding questions about his writing life.

For Neena’s class? Debbie Macomber crocheted on-screen from her plump sitting chair overlooking Puget Sound and shared stories about all her Christmas books that became Hallmark movies.

Teen heartthrob Harry Bailes took fifteen minutes out of his day to video chat about his fiction-to-screen role from Crystal’s book Castaway City. Fifteen legendary minutes that made me realize I am indeed very good at my job.

I included a notice in the changes that Hugh was ill and would be kept to his room, although who knows how long I’ll have before I start hearing complaints about that.

All in all, by the time six o’clock rolled around and everyone was leaving to go into the dining hall for dinner, I finally stopped to realize I hadn’t eaten all day. In fact, I’d hardly taken a breath all day. Or had a moment to think. About much of anything. At all.

Which of course was partly intentional, a parting gift from what I experienced the last two months over Michael. I am now very good at stuffing emotions deep, deep down through the power of distraction.

A breakup, of course, is nowhere near as gut-wrenching as a murder. But at the same time, there is a certain kind of death to both. And in my case, in both cases, Hugh was critically involved.

“You primed the pump, so to speak, Pip. And for that I’ll be forever grateful.”

“I-I’m sorry, Michael?” I stammered into my phone exactly six weeks ago. “You’re leaving me . . . after everything . . . on public television, for a girl with a high ponytail you have never spoken to in your life, and the entire planet is deciding to root for it, and all you can say is, ‘Well, at least you can give yourself a pat on the back, Pip, knowing you PRIMED. THE. PUMP?!”