Bad Grrlz' Guide to Reality: The Complete Novels Wild Angel and Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell (53 page)

Susan was drenched when she boarded the ship. She took a hot shower and by the time she was dry, the sun was out again. After her adventures in Hamilton, she was content to settle down by the pool with
Wild Angel
and read about Sarah McKensie and her life among the wolves. She had just started reading when she was interrupted.

“Hi.”

Susan looked up to see Jody standing by her chair. Water dripped from the little girl’s long brown hair and her red swimsuit.

“Good afternoon, Jody. How are you?”

“Nancy says I can’t go swimming unless a grownup goes with me, and she’s tired of swimming.” Jody studied Susan with dark brown eyes, obviously sizing up her possibilities as a swimming partner. “Want to go swimming?”

Susan could see Nancy at the far end of the pool, toweling herself dry. The nanny waved cheerfully.

“No thanks, Jody. Not right now.” Susan smiled at the girl. She had been in charge of the children’s reading hour at the library, and she had always liked children.

Jody perched on the end of the lounge chair. “What are you reading?” she asked.

Susan thought for a moment about how to sum up the plot. “A story about a little girl named Sarah. She lived in California a long time ago. Her mother and father are killed by a very bad man, and Sarah is adopted by a pack of wolves.” She stopped there, giving Jody a chance to digest this information. “Do you know what wolves are?”

Jody nodded solemnly. “I’ve seen pictures of them.”

“Sarah lives with the wolves and learns to hunt with the wolves.” Susan said.

“I’d like to live with wolves,” Jody said.

“Really?” Susan smiled. Like Jody, she wanted to run off with the wolves. That was one reason she liked Mary Maxwell’s work. It always seemed to address a desire that she hadn’t realized she had. “You think it would be fun to live with wolves?”

Jody nodded.

“So do I.”

“Yeah,” Jody said. “Wolves can go swimming whenever they want.”

Susan nodded. “I suppose they can.”

“Where’s that man?” Jody asked. “What man?”

“The man who knows about the monsters.”

“You mean Max,” Susan said. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him this afternoon.”

“I wanted to tell him about Henry,” Jody said. “He’s not so scary after all.”

“That’s good,” Susan said. “Max will be glad to hear that.”

“Yeah,” Jody said. “Not all monsters are scary.”

“Jody!” Nancy was calling from the other side of the pool. “You need to get dried off.”

Jody gave Susan a look that communicated her disdain for Nancy’s rules, for being dried off, for all the things that were required of little girls but not of wolves.

“Jody!”

“Bye, Jody,” Susan said and watched the little girl trudge around the pool. Jody’s body language made it clear that Nancy’s demand was a great and unwarranted imposition on her time.

Susan returned to
Wild Angel.
In an improbable but compelling series of events, Sarah McKensie was captured and jailed. Then she broke out of jail (with the help of an elephant and a mob of Clampers).

The sun was low in the sky when Susan closed the book with just a few chapters to go. She was eager to find out how the story would turn out, but reluctant to finish the book and leave the world of the wild girl just yet. Jody was right—wolves could go swimming whenever they wanted. So could wild girls.

Susan had always been a good girl. She had done her best to please her mother; she had excelled in school; she sat up straight and ate her vegetables. Sitting by the pool, thinking about the wild girl, Susan wondered exactly when she had realized that being good wasn’t making her happy. It was a realization that had sneaked up on her. Maybe she had started to realize it when Harry had announced that he was leaving. She had been unhappy for a while before that, but she had thought that was because Harry was so unhappy. She had tried to deal with that by making Harry happy. She had cooked lovely dinners; she had taken care to look nice, even when she was just hanging around the apartment. But Harry hadn’t even noticed and the effort didn’t make Susan any happier.

Thinking about it now, she realized that being good had never made her happy. And it hadn’t really kept her safe, either. She had been good, but Harry had left her.

Sitting by the pool, she decided that she might be better off trying to please herself. She might not be good, but perhaps she would be happier.

“Hey, Susan!” Pat was back from her scuba class, looking tired but cheerful. “I thought I might find you here. What are you doing?”

“Thinking about how being good has been a waste of time,” Susan said.

“I told you that years ago,” Pat said. “Well, I’ve finally decided to listen.”

Pat waved to the waitress and ordered a beer and French fries. “Now this is living,” she said.

Susan told Pat about her adventures in Hamilton; Pat filled her in on the joys of scuba diving. Then Susan saw Ian standing by the pool bar. “Hey, there’s Ian.” She waved to the computer programmer, who came over to join them.

“You look comfortable,” he said, pulling over a chair.

Pat nodded, smiling. “Any more notes from Weldon Merrimax?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No more notes. But an interesting development. Our pal Weldon seems to be making trouble.” He told them about the poker game. “Mr. Perkins originally claimed that Weldon Merrimax had stabbed this other fellow, Patrick Murphy. Then he changed his story and said it must have been some kind of joke.” Ian shrugged. “In any case, there’s no way Tom can do much about it. No one can identify the alleged perpetrator nor the alleged victim.” He grinned. “It’s all quite mysterious.”

Susan felt a chill, remembering the splash of red on the side of the ship. “That’s weird,” she said.

“What’s weird?” Ian asked.

“Well, I was at the stern of the ship last night. And I saw something floating in the wake.” She shrugged. “It probably wasn’t anything.”

Ian studied her face. “Sounds a little vague,” he said.

“It was a little vague,” she agreed quickly. “But there’s another thing: What did you say the name of the victim was?”

“Patrick Murphy.”

Susan frowned. “That’s the name of a character in
Wild Angel,”
she said. She flipped through the pages. “Yeah, here he is: ‘Patrick Murphy, an agent of the recently formed Pinkerton National Detective Agency …’ Weird coincidence.”

“What does Patrick Murphy look like in the novel?” Ian asked.

“What difference does that make?” Pat asked.

Ian shrugged. “Just thought it would be interesting if the description matched.”

“As I recall, he’s a tall guy with a mustache,” Susan said.

Ian laughed. “That’s perfect. He matches the description of the victim. So a man who doesn’t exist may have stabbed a character out of Mary Maxwell’s novel.”

When Tom arrived in the Ithaca Dining Room, everyone else was already at the table. Apparently Alberta and Bill had joined an official tour of the island. Alberta seemed miffed that Susan had gone off on her own.

“Don’t you think it’s dangerous go wandering around in a foreign city alone?” Alberta asked Susan. “Anything could have happened.”

“There was nothing to be afraid of,” Susan said. Tom noticed that she hadn’t answered Alberta’s question. She had evaded i.t rather neatly by stating a fact, rather than discussing how she felt.

Alberta had not noticed Susan’s evasion. “Well I would have been afraid,” she said. “I’ve heard so much about purse snatchers and pickpockets. You just can’t wander about here like you can back home.”

“Actually, armed robbery is more common in most American cities than it is in Hamilton,” Tom interjected. “I had to do some research on the subject when the company was putting together a brochure on shore side safety for passengers. You can wander about in Hamilton and be statistically safer than you are back home.”

Alberta frowned, shaking her head, but Susan gave him a grateful smile. Then, as was so often the case, the conversation turned to food. Among the appetizers that night was a selection of caviar, which led Charles and Bill into a lengthy and tedious discussion of fish eggs.

Charles was apparently something of an expert on the subject.

He treated the table to a prolonged discourse on the caviar of the spoonbill, a peculiar prehistoric fish that thrived in the waters of the Mississippi River. According to Charles, the caviar was quite delectable, but Tom wasn’t convinced. To him, all fish eggs seemed better used as bait than dinner.

At last, they placed their orders and Charles turned to Tom. “So what was the story with that blackout last night,” he said. “That sort of thing would never happen on Celebrity Lines.”

“It appears to have been an act of vandalism,” Tom said. “Someone went into a crew area, found a fuse box, and tore all the wires, blacking out three decks for just over an hour.”

“Long enough to be quite inconvenient,” Charles said.

“I thought it was fun,” Susan said. “We went to the Apollo Lounge and had hot chocolate. But why would anyone rip out the wires in a fuse box?”

“I’ll bet it was those dreadful Clampers,” Alberta said. “Clampers?” Susan looked startled, Tom thought. She glanced at Max. “Members of E Clampus Vitus? The society that’s in
Wild Angel
?”

Max looked up from his brandy and nodded. “That’s right,” he said. “It seems there’s a group of Clampers on board.”

“They say they’re interested in history,” Alberta said in a disapproving tone, “but as far as I can tell, they are only interested in drinking.”

Susan glanced at Max. “I thought you made them up.”

“No need to do that,” Max said. “The Ancient Order of E Clampus Vitus has been active in California since the Gold Rush. They’re an historic drinking society.”

“Or a drinking historic society,” Tom said. He had had a few problems with the boisterous group already. “They do seem very fond of drinking.”

“They were in the casino last night,” Alberta said. “Gambling and drinking and raising a fuss.” She shook her head, looking at Tom as if hoping that he would volunteer to do something about it.

Tom just smiled and nodded. According to Company Policy, there was nothing wrong with gambling and drinking in the Casino, that being the purpose of the establishment. Whether the Clampers had been “raising a fuss” was a judgment call. Alberta’s judgment as to what constituted an unacceptable fuss clearly differed from that of the security staff.

Tom leaned on the railing of the Promenade deck, staring out at the waves. He was feeling restless, unsettled, and he thought a stroll might relax him.

Tom watched the lights of Hamilton sparkling in the distance.

The pilot boat was gone and the
Odyssey
was I leaving Bermuda behind, heading for the Azores. Ordinarily, Tom felt a sense of relief when the ship left a port. Usually, he felt most comfortable at sea, where the ship was a self-contained system, isolated from the rest of the world. But this departure was different. He felt uneasy, off-balance.

After dinner, Pat and Ian went out for a drink. They asked Susan to join them, but she decided to go back to the stateroom. It had been a lovely day. She went to bed early. Rocked by the gentle movement of the ship on the swells, listening to the soft humming of the ship’s engines, she fell asleep.

She dreamed that she woke up. She did not really wake up, but she dreamed that she did. In her dream, she opened her eyes.

The stateroom was dark except for the moonlight shining through the glass door leading to the balcony. In the moonlight, she could see the outlines of the stateroom furniture: the desk, the chair, the closet.

Something wasn’t quite right. Susan lay in bed, trying to figure out what had wakened her. The ship continued its easy rocking; the engines still hummed softly. She heard some people laughing as they walked down the corridor—drunks heading for bed after a late night in the bar, she thought. She looked toward Pat’s bed, but it was still empty. Susan sat up in bed, sniffing the air. She caught a faint scent of flowers—perhaps a floral perfume. Jasmine, she thought; it reminded her of jasmine tea.

Blinking in the dim light, she saw something draped across the back of the desk chair. She leaned over and switched on the bedside light.

She was alone in the cabin. A silk scarf hung over the back of the chair. It wasn’t hers and it didn’t look like the sort of thing Pat would wear.

She noticed that the closet door was ajar, as if someone had dressed in a hurry and not stopped to close it. Through the opening, she could see a brightly colored dress, a blouse patterned with tropical flowers. Not her clothing.

Tentatively, she got out of bed and picked up the scarf, wanting to reassure herself of its reality. The silk was cool and smooth against her fingers. The sensation increased her unease. She did not belong here. This wasn’t her cabin. How had she gotten into someone else’s cabin?

She glanced at the papers scattered on the desk, ruled sheets torn from a spiral-bound notebook. The hand writing was sprawling and untidy, with looping, rounded letters that crossed the lines as often as they rested on them.

One sheet of paper caught her eye. At the top of the page was a set of lines, arranged like this: