Sammy Keyes and the Killer Cruise (29 page)

I head for the stairs. “Ginger! And your mother!”

“How can you know where our mother is?” Bradley asks, chasing after me.

“Maybe
she’s
the one who made the codes!” Lucas cries.

“Or that damn kid put her up to it!” Teresa says. “I’d bet my last dollar he’s behind
all
of this!”

“Who are you talking about?” I call up to her. “JT? Or your little brother?” Then I add, “And I don’t think any of you have much of a last dollar to bet, do you? Trust funds all gone?”

“Shut up!” she screeches.

“Hey!” Marko yells, whipping around with his sticks. “Mind your measly manners.”

I keep pounding down the stairs, my hands snugging my backpack straps tight so it won’t bounce, while Marissa, Marko, and Darren form a protective U around me. “Where are we going?” Darren whispers.

“Down to Deck 3,” I whisper back.

“Where are we going?” Bradley shouts, and he’s already lagging about half a flight behind.

I ignore him and keep flying down the stairs.

“Answer me!” Bradley shouts. “Where are we going?”

Marko looks back up at him. “I know where
you’re
goin’, dude. Better get your heat suit on!”

Marissa snickers. “Get me a corn husker!”

“Hey, it was funny, didn’t you think?” Marko whispers.

“It was right next to funny,” Darren tells him.

“Sorta like the sidekick of funny,” Marissa adds, and Darren and Marissa actually reach over my head and slap five on each other.

“I’m takin’ that as an extreme compliment,” Marko says. “ ’Cause sidekicks are always funnier than the main guy.”

“It’s true,” I tell him over my shoulder. “And by the way,
I
thought it was funny.”

“See?”

I grin at him. “You can be my sidekick anytime.”

“I’m there!” he cries.

We’re a whole deck ahead of the Kensingtons now, and Lucas yells, “You people are rude and crude and inconsiderate.”

“And you’re selfish and shallow and
slow
,” I shout up to him, which for some reason makes Marko and Darren crack up.

And then there we are on Deck 3. I turn to Marissa and ask, “Where would cabin 3877 be?”

She thinks for a nanosecond and says, “Interior cabin, port side, aft.”

“Lead on!”

So she does, and behind us I hear Lucas cry, “There they go!” as we disappear down a hallway.

“You realize we have no idea what you’re doing, right?” Darren asks.

“I’m just glad you’re with me,” I tell him. And then there it is—cabin 3877.

Trouble is, there’s a note taped to the door.

A note I was not expecting.

I’d have recognized the handwriting anywhere. And by the time I’ve peeled the note off the door, the Kensingtons are swarming around.

Lucas reads over my shoulder, “ ‘Go back to the Royal Suite’? What
is
this?!”

“A wild goose chase, obviously!” Bradley pants.

“Tell us what the note says!” Teresa demands.

So I shove Kip’s note at her and say, “Here. See if you can manage to decode it.” Then I push through all of them and head for the stairs.

“Not
this
note!” Teresa cries, like
I’m
the idiot.

Darren, Marissa, and Marko are right behind me, and as we charge back up the steps, Darren says, “Do we know why we’re going back to the Royal Suite?”

“No,” I tell him quietly. “I thought for sure Kate was down here, but that note was in Kip’s handwriting.”

When we make the first turn, I notice that the Trust Fund Trio are jabbing at the elevators.

At
all
the elevators.

Which means that the race is on, and with us having to go seven decks up, it’s going to be close.

“I’m not sure I want to go back to the Royal Suite,” Marissa says as we charge up the steps. “Not after what happened earlier!”

“What happened earlier?” Darren asks.

I look at Marissa like, Uh-oh, which Darren totally catches.

“Out with it,” he pants. “What don’t I know?”

“Uh … we were looking for Kip and things got kinda …”

“Kinda what?”

I pull a face. “Kinda out of control?”

“Now,
that’s
an understatement,” Marissa says.

“Marissa!”

“Well, it is!” Then she totally rats on me. “She locked Noah and Ginger out on the balcony so we could case the joint.”

“We weren’t casing the joint!” I tell him as I huff and puff along. “We were looking for Kip! And Kate! And any sign of … you know, foul play!”

“She locked Noah the Noose on a balcony?” Marko asks. “You’re serious?”

“As a heart attack!” Marissa says. “Which is what he practically gave me when he appeared out of nowhere and grabbed me by the arm.”

Darren looks at her, kind of wild-eyed. “How could he do that when he was locked out on the balcony?”

“He escaped,” I tell him. “He must have gone under
the balcony divider, through Bradley’s suite next door, and back in through the Royal Suite’s front door.”

“He was fast, too,” Marissa pants. “Like,
poof
, there he was. It was scary!”

Darren’s face seems to be frozen in some painful contortion as he asks me, “So how’d you get away?”

Again, Marissa blurts out the answer. “She hurled the urn through the air!”

“What urn?”

“The one with the grandfather’s ashes in it!”

Darren’s face is even more pained than it was before. “You hurled an urn of ashes into the air?”

“So Noah’d let go of Marissa to catch it!” I cry. “So we could escape! Which we did!”

We’re now at the Deck 8 landing, and as we charge up the next flight of stairs, Darren mutters, “I’m starting to understand your grandmother better.”

Which actually makes me feel terrible. “Look, I was just trying to find out what happened to Kip, okay?”

“Well, obviously, he’s fine,” Marissa says.

“Ginger must’ve called down there when the others raced to meet us at the library,” I pant out. “How else could they have known we were coming?”

“They?” Darren asks.

My brain’s racing as fast as my feet. “I’m thinking that Kate must’ve been down there, too, and that Kip figured out the code and found her.”

“So you think the Diamond Dame is behind all this?” Marko asks.

“From what’s in the message, I’d say she has to be.”

“We haven’t even seen the message, you know,” Darren says, and he’s sounding kinda disgruntled.

So I hand it over and tell him, “The periodic table turned out to be the decoder. I figured it out while I was doing my homework.”

He reads it and frowns as he hands it over to Marko. “
You
figured it out. A family of chemists, and you’re the one who decodes it for them?” He gives me a proud-papa look and says, “My child is a genius!”

I can feel my cheeks flush, and I’m about to say something about the Kensington “kids” not actually being chemists, when Marko hands the note back to me and I notice that while the rest of us are gasping for air, he’s not breathing hard at all. He’s just jogging along while we’re all dying. And apparently he can read minds—or faces—because he grins at me and says, “I’ve basically run in place a couple of hours at a stretch several nights a week for my entire life. This is a nice little warm-up for tonight.”

And that’s when I remember.

They’ve got two shows to do!

“Have you even got time for this?” I ask Darren as we come to the Deck 10 landing.

“I haven’t got time to miss this,” he says back. And even though I’m not sure what that means, I like the way it sounds.

“The Troublemakers take it by a mile!” Marko announces, pumping a fist in the air when he sees that there are no Kensingtons in sight.

So we beeline for the Royal Suite door and ring the bell, and while we’re waiting for the door to open, one of the elevators dings open, and over my shoulder I see Bradley step out, followed by Lucas and Teresa.

And then the Royal Suite door opens and I find myself face to face with a man.

A man I’ve never seen before.

And I’m about to say, “Who are you?” because all of a sudden
nothing
is making sense—only then it hits me that, yes, I
have
seen him before.

In the picture that was next to the urn.

And,
click
, using the periodic table of elements as a decoder now makes
total
sense.

“Dr. Kensington?” I gasp.

“Sammy,” he says with a kind smile. “Kip has told me all about you.”

Behind me I hear gasps and “It can’t be,” and “What
is
this?” and a breathy “Oh, no!” come out of the Kensington kids.

Now, maybe Dr. Kensington’s not a young guy anymore, but his hearing must still be sharp, because he raises an eyebrow and says, “Oh,
yes
. And what this
is
, Bradley, is a test. Which you all failed miserably.” Then he moves aside and tells his kids, “Your mother and brother are waiting. Get in here.”

“Who’s this guy?” Darren whispers to me as the Kensington kids file past us without a word.

“The dead dad,” I whisper back.

When Darren realizes what we’re actually dealing with, the cool rocker in him disappears. He locks eyes with
Dr. Kensington and says, “You faked your death? What kind of sick thing is that to do to your kids?”

Dr. Kensington’s eyebrows both go for a stretch now. “They’re grown adults,” he tells him. “And desperate times call for desperate measures.” Then he adds, “And they’re clearly more upset to discover I’m alive than they were when they thought I was dead.”

“And what does that say about
you
?” Darren says, totally not letting him off the hook. “My poor daughter here has been really worried about Kip. You’re saying he’s been with you this whole time? And your wife’s just fine, too? What kind of sick game was this?”

I hold out Bradley’s deciphered code to the Walking Dead Guy and tell him, “Yeah, I’m wondering whose idea the ‘kindness is essential’ part was? Because there’s nothing nice about any of this.”

“What are you doing with Bradley’s copy?” he asks, taking it from me.

“It sorta fell out of his pocket when he was passed out drunk in the casino.” I swing off my backpack and dig up the forged suicide note. “Along with this.”

His face flushes red when he realizes what he’s looking at.

Kate comes up behind him and says, “I’m so very sorry about all of this. Won’t you come in?”

Dr. K. looks at her like, What? Are you crazy? And he actually says, “Kate, this is a family matter.”

But she gives him a stern look and tells him, “Not anymore. Our children couldn’t be bothered to figure out your message, but she did. She and Kip were the only ones
who cared enough to even try.” She reaches out and pulls me in while she keeps looking at her husband. “As hard as it was, and as much as I didn’t want to, I went along with your charade. Now you’re going to allow this. We owe her and her family an explanation.”

“All of them?” he gasps.

“If you think we’re letting her inside without us, you’re certifiable,” Marko tells him.

But then I realize that I don’t want to go inside. I don’t care about their stupid family feud. I don’t want to hear them bicker and blame. Besides, Darren and Marko have a concert to put on!

So I tell Kate, “Thanks, but maybe it’s better if we don’t.”

“But we owe you an explanation! And an apology!”

I step back outside. “Tomorrow’s probably better.”

“That’s fine,” she says with a smile. “Anytime that works for you. But promise me you’ll come back.”

I can see Kip sort of hovering a few steps behind Kate now. And although I probably should be mad at him, it hits me how the poor guy’s really stuck in limbo. His best friend and mentor is a man who faked his death to teach his other kids a lesson, he’ll never really be a real brother to the other Kensington kids, and they’ll probably resent him forever for things that weren’t his fault.

And since I don’t really know what happened or completely understand the situation, it doesn’t seem fair to snub him. So I give him a little wave, and when he gives me a grateful smile and a little wave back, I turn to Kate and ask, “Uh, does Kip have to be at your meeting?”

She sort of stares at me, and I can tell she’s not sure how she should answer.

So I say, “I think after everything he’s been through, you should let him go to a rock concert.”

“A rock concert!” Dr. K. says, like it’s the most absurd thing he’s ever heard of.

But Kate puts an arm around Kip’s shoulders and asks him, “Would you like to?” and when his head bobs, she says, “I think that’s a fine idea.” Then she asks him, “You’re staying here, right? You’ve got your key?” and when he nods again, she tells him, “Well, have fun.”

“Dude,” Marko calls over to him, and holds up his sticks.

Dr. K. looks at his wife like she’s lost her mind. “Dude?”

But Kip’s already busting out of the Royal Suite with a total kid grin all over his face. “Awesome!”

“Awesome?” Dr. K. says, with his eyebrows all haywire.

“Come on, dear,” Kate says, pulling her husband away from the door. “We’re in for a long night and I think Kip’s been locked up with us long enough. Besides, he already knows everything we’re going to tell the others, so let him enjoy some time with his friends.” Then she waves at me and calls, “Don’t forget to come back tomorrow!”

So Kip escapes with us, and when we get to the stairs, I ask, “Is anyone else hungry?” because all of a sudden I’m starving.

Darren shakes his head. “Marko and I have to get ready for the show.”

“Dude, we’ve got time,” Marko tells him.

“No, dude, we don’t.” Then Darren turns to me and
says, “You’ll be at the show, right?” like he’s worried something else might happen.

“We’ll be at both of them,” I tell him. And since he’s looking kinda doubtful, I laugh and say, “No sidetracks or falling overboard.”

“Or locking crazy people on balconies?”

I laugh, “Promise.”

Then Marissa puts on her best puppy-dog face and begs, “Can we pleeeeeease be backstage during the second show?”

Darren laughs, “Of course,” which makes Marissa pump a fist and go, “Yes!”