DOUBLE KNOT Page 13

  “Don’t you even breathe hard, Poppy, or I’ll take your ass down.” Fantasy yanked one more notch in the belt and had the gun, a Hi-Point C-9 semi-automatic 9mm with seven of eight rounds in it, tucked in the waistband of her jeans.

  “It was a good shoot.” Poppy tested her constraints. “He was going to kill me.”

  “Good shoot,” Fantasy scoffed. “Who are you?”

  She wasn’t emotional, that much was for sure. I couldn’t believe my unborn children were witnessing this. I was shaky, dizzy, and covered in blood. “Where’s the gun he pulled on you, Poppy? He doesn’t have a gun.”

  “I took his gun.” She had no remorse. Zero. “Then I shot him with it before he could shoot me.”

  “You’re a liar.” Fantasy took a step to the left, her eyes darting around as she mapped the door and the body. “You walked in here and took him out in cold blood.”

  “You made a big mess too.” If my mother saw this she’d flip. And I was making it worse—digging, tossing every drawer, every inch of the small space. I found it in his nightstand.

  I used the wall to hold me up as I studied Burnsworth’s Mississippi Bureau of Investigation identification, his last words ringing through my ears with so much truth I was almost blind with it.

  “Fantasy.” I held out the ID.

  Fantasy took it, then showed it to Poppy. “You’re never going to see the light of day. You just took the life of a federal agent.”

  “He’s state, not federal,” she informed us, “and we’re in international waters. Good luck.” Then she laughed.

  I looked into Poppy’s eyes, cold metal blue, and knew she’d kill every one of us and never look back. Who was this girl?

  Fantasy made sure this girl wasn’t going anywhere, then sat down in front of her to find out. Nose to nose. She waited a long beat, long enough for Poppy to get antsy, which she didn’t. Nerves of steel, this one. “Right here and right now, Poppy,” Fantasy said. “What’s this about?”

  Poppy declined to answer.

  “Whatever it is,” I, good cop (never works except for in the movies) said, “maybe we can help.”

  “You can’t even help yourself, Davis. And who says I need your help?”

  Fantasy leaned in closer. She whipped out the gun and let the barrel rest on Poppy’s smooth forehead. “If that’s how it’s going to be, fine by me. You can hold that chair down for as long as you want, but shut the hell up. Not one more word. And call her Mrs. Sanders.”

  Mrs. Sanders needed to sit down.

  “So?”

  Jessica—she might have been sleepwalking—found us. Her eyes rolled around the room and landed on the pillows, the huge red oval of blood on the white carpet under them and Burnsworth’s splayed legs sticking out from them. She opened her mouth so wide we could see her tonsils, then she let out a hair-raising scream, the stuff of Hitchcock, she broke the sound barrier, I’m surprised Anderson Cooper didn’t hear her. She collapsed into a puddle on the floor, fainting dead away, or sudden-onset sleeping, and in her place stood my mother.

  I tried so hard to say something, anything, to Mother about the scene she’d stumbled upon, but there were no words. I think I said, “Bububububu.”

  “Davis?” Mother demanded. “Where are the dishes? There are only four dinner plates in the whole kitchen. And I guess I know one of us who doesn’t need one. Is he dead?”

  It took everything I had to nod.

  “All the way?”

  I nodded again.

  Mother pointed to Poppy in the chair. “She did it?”

  I nodded.

  “Jiminy Cricket.” Hands on hips, Mother said, “Davis, pull that bedspread off the bed and roll him up in it. I’ll get some white vinegar.” She shook a finger at Poppy. “You’re not coming to dinner either and you can scrub this carpet.” To the rest of her stunned audience she said, “What? You think I don’t know what’s going on right under my nose?”

  * * *

  The pièce de résistance of Bianca Sanders’s brand-spankin’ newly commissioned Louis Vuitton luggage was the large trunk. It was silk lined, thirty-six by twenty-five by nineteen, and fabulous. It took a half hour to secure Poppy, who promised us we’d never walk out of 704 alive, and afterward, as if we hadn’t been through enough, we had to dispose of a dead man. My own mother helped Fantasy drag Burnsworth’s linen-wrapped body up three steps, down the hall, through the salon, down another hall to my sitting room, through my bedroom, and into my dressing room. After much further ado they got him in Bianca’s trunk. There was no dignity in the process—(“If you hold up his arm, I can get his leg in,” and “How’s it going to hurt to break his foot if he’s already dead?”)—and we would surely all face abuse of a corpse charges before this was over, but it’s not like we could lay out his dead body on one of the white sofas and throw a blanket over him. My only contribution was being helpful from the safety of the ottoman. (“Try rolling him in a tight ball and put the trunk on top of him.”) (“Yeah? Then what?”) (“Slide something under him and flip him over.”) (“Davis, just sit there and be quiet.”)

  Not a bad idea, but then I noticed it was too quiet. “Do you hear that?”

  “What?” Mother stared at a smear of dark dry blood on her forearm.

  “Nothing,” I said. “That’s just it. I don’t hear Jessica.”

  The whole time we’d been figuring out what to do with Poppy and transporting poor Burnsworth, Jessica had run a loop through the salon, Probability robe flying, screaming her lungs out. And she’d kept it up. When her trail brought her around to this end of 704, we could hear her shrieks as they swelled then faded. Now we didn’t hear a thing.

  “Maybe she fell asleep.” Fantasy said every word on a grunt as she got the last of poor Burnsworth inside the trunk.

  “That one’s cheese has slid right off her cracker,” Mother said.

  “I’ll do the honors.” Fantasy stared down at the trunk. “I’ll check on Poppy while I’m at it. Maybe you two can figure out what to do with this.” She gave the trunk a pat.

  “Why do we need to do anything with it?” Mother asked.

  “Mother, I’m not sleeping twenty feet from a dead man.”

  “Well, he can’t hurt you, Davis.”

  “I’ll let you girls work it out.” Fantasy stretched her achy arms. “Be right back.”

  “Would you mind checking on my chickens?”

  The request stumped Fantasy, who hadn’t given dinner the first thought, and certainly wasn’t thinking of it then. “What exactly is it you want me to check for?”

  “Golden brown skin and clear juices running in the bottom of the roaster.”

  Fantasy shook the chicken juice details into her head.

  “The roaster?”

  “Did you make potatoes, Mother?”

  Fantasy’s head swiveled between us. “We’re covered in blood.” (We were.) “We have a killer in the laundry room.” (We did.) “And you two are talking about chickens and potatoes like we didn’t we just pack a dead man into a trunk.” (Yes.)

  “And I’m not sleeping with that trunk,” I said.

  “There’s the walk-in refrigerator.” Mother scratched just above her left eyebrow. Her thinking move. “But then I might trip over him going in and out.”

  “Let’s take the trunk outside for now,” I said. “It’s closer than dragging it to the kitchen.”

  “And we have dinner in the kitchen at six. I’ll check on the chickens myself.” Mother was on her way out of the dressing room when she noticed the gauntlet gray rubble on the floor beside the mirror. She gave us the suspicious eyeball. We shrugged innocence. She didn’t believe a bit of it and stepped around the mirror to see for herself.

  “Oh, boy.” She turned to me. “Did your cat do this?”

  I
rubbed my babies bump.

  “Answer me, Davis.”

  “No,” I said.

  She turned to Fantasy. “Did you do this?”

  She whistled Dixie.

  “You two,” she rocked a finger back and forth between me and Fantasy, “don’t necessarily bring out the best in each other.”

  “Mother, we have a situation.”

  “Davis, we have several situations.”

  Fantasy was tugging on her earlobe. “How about I run check those chickens.”

  I patted the ottoman. Mother sat down. I started at the beginning, and for the first time since the day I was born, I told my mother everything.

  * * *

  We changed clothes. We stuffed the bloody clothes and bedding into Bianca’s Sirus 45, one of my favorites in her new Louis collection, price tag $3,800, a zipper bag with rounded leather handles that Delta approved as a carryon. We approved it as an overboard.

  “Watch this, Mrs. Way.” Fantasy tossed the Louis. The wind caught it and swept it out to sea.

  Mother said, “That’s a crying shame.”

  “I know,” I said. “Bianca’s going to kill me.”

  “I meant the clothes, Davis. It’s a crying shame to throw away good clothes. There are naked children in Africa.”

  “There will always be naked children in Africa,” Fantasy said. “It’s the hottest continent in the world.”

  “It’s hot in Pine Apple too, Fantasy, and the children don’t run around naked.”

  It had taken Fantasy just one day to figure Mother out: Let it go.

  The three of us stared out to sea. “I’m down to four or five pieces of that luggage,” I said. “I hope I can stuff everything in the small trunk.”

  “Let’s worry about Poppy right now.” Fantasy checked her watch. “She’s had plenty of time to think about it. We’ll worry about luggage later.”

  “Be careful,” Mother said. “That girl is the devil in disguise.”

  We didn’t leave Poppy in poor Burnsworth’s room scrubbing the carpet with white vinegar. We dragged her and her desk chair to the laundry room. Between Burnsworth’s and Jessica’s rooms was a utility closet. Easy to miss with its flush pocket door. It was small and square, with a low ceiling and white oak hardwood floors. One wall held a stacked washer and dryer and a long folding table. Bolted to the opposite wall was a wire shelf unit. The long silver shelves were full of 704 sundries: glass cleaner, linens, paper products galore, and wouldn’t you know it—dish soap. We strapped Poppy’s chair to the wire shelves. She was secure in the chair and the chair was secured to the shelves and the shelves were bolted to the wall. It was all very Boy Scout—Burnsworth’s leather belt and six Probability Egyptian cotton bathrobe belts tied in figure-eight knots. She wasn’t going anywhere.

  Mother took a left for the chickens and Fantasy and I took a right past Jessica, passed out on one of the white sofas.

  “Anderson Cooper is in the dressing room with a dead man.”

  “Who’s locked in a trunk, Davis. It’s fine.”

  “Promise me you’ll help me get that trunk out of my room, Fantasy.”

  “I promise.”

  “Or let me sleep with you tonight.”

  “I am not sleeping with Anderson Cooper. No way.”

  We stopped at the door leading to the crew’s quarters. I had The Compass and Fantasy had the Hi-Point 9mm in the waistband of her jeans and a bottle of water poking out of her pocket.

  “Okay.” Her hand was on the doorknob. “We give her a two-minute break, then we interrogate her.”

  “We’re not going to get anything out of her.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  We stumbled down the steps.

  “Fantasy, she’s like Special Forces cold. And she’s strong as an ox.”

  Fantasy’s hand was on the laundry room door. “We’ve gone up against worse.”

  True.

  “You ready?”

  I nodded.

  I felt my babies nod.

  Fantasy slid open the door and said, “Oh, holy shit.”

  Special Forces Cold and Strong as an Ox had managed to rip the metal shelves away from the wall. There were gaping holes in the plaster and the whole unit was down. Poppy was somewhere underneath.

  “Poppy?” It came out several octaves higher than I intended it to.

  Fantasy kicked through Clorox and Bounty Select-A-Size. “Stay out of the way, Davis.”

  Poppy hadn’t made a peep.

  “You can’t lift the whole thing by yourself, Fantasy.”

  “The shelves are empty.” She had a grip on the wire rack and she assumed heavy-lifting posture. She heaved it with a loud grunt and got the wire shelves several feet off the floor. “I can hold it for three seconds. Can you get her out?” Fantasy’s voice was strained beyond recognition.

  “Oh, dear Lord, Fantasy. Her head is—”

  “What, Davis? I can’t hold this thing up forever! Hurry!”

  Poppy was still strapped to the chair and the chair was still secured to the wire shelves. The problem was Poppy’s head. Or, more specifically, her neck.

  “DAVIS!”

  “Something’s wrong with her neck, Fantasy. It’s hanging there like a little bird neck. It’s,” terror collected in my throat, “flopping. Her neck is floppy. Her neck is broken.”

  “Is she—POPPY?”

  “Fantasy, she’s gone!”

  My words rang out through the lavender-scented air.

  “Get that, Davis.” Sweat rolled down Fantasy’s face.

  I tore my eyes away from dead Poppy. “What?”

  “That.” Her eyes were on a large canvas-covered laundry bin she spotted under the folding counter. I rolled it out and positioned it under the racks of shelving and Fantasy let the shelves fall. The laundry bin caught them with a thud.

  I backed up and let the wall hold me, fanning my face with Probability hand towel, while Fantasy bent to see for herself. “Good God, she’s dead.”

  And there went the smaller of the two Louis Vuitton trunks.

  We had to get out of 704 before it killed us all.

  FOURTEEN

  We each took a sofa in the salon. We came clean with Jessica. She took it pretty well, considering she was sure she was next on our hit list. “So, is this what you do at the Bellissimo? You kill people? Are you going to kill me? Are you going to wait until I microsleep and smother me with a pillow? SO?”

  “Jess, we didn’t kill Burnsworth or Poppy,” Fantasy said. “Poppy killed Burnsworth, her death was an accident, and we don’t like it any more than you do.”

  “How are we ever going to explain this?” I asked.

  “That’s mighty hopeful of you, Davis,” Mother said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “That we’ll actually speak to another human to explain it to.”

  “This is so cray.” Jess had twirled a length of her hair so tight it looked like twine twisted around her finger. “So cray.”

  “What?” Mother asked. “What’s she going on about now?”

  “Crazy,” I explained. “Jessica is saying this is crazy.”

  “I’m with her,” Mother said. “This is plum crazy. I don’t know what your father is going to say.”

  We untangled Poppy’s body and stuffed her in the smaller of the Louis Vuitton (caskets) trunks, and Jess helped Fantasy haul them to the sundeck, a secluded step-down enclosed space on the other side of the pool. It had a gate that locked from the inside and a double sun chair with a retracting canopy. Built for privacy. Which is something you need when you’re stashing Louis Vuitton trunks full of dead people.

  Jessica helped without complaining. She was too afraid not to and somewhere in
the middle of lugging dead bodies, she made the decision to cross over and become a team player. I don’t know if it was because she was sick of herself or petrified of us. Whichever; when we explained we’d never get out of 704 if we didn’t work together, she went along wholeheartedly.

  “Now that we have all our cards on the table, Jessica, I want to ask you a few questions.” I opened The Compass; Fantasy let out a sigh. “What, Fantasy?”

  “Skip the book, Davis. Get to the husband.”

  The second body in one hour had our tempers taut.

  “Hey.” Mother stepped in. “Weren’t you just now telling Ding Dong,” she shook a crooked finger at Jess, “that we have to work together? Cut it out, Fantasy. Let Davis show her the book.”

  “My name isn’t Ding Dong.”

  “Well.” Mother was suddenly very invested in examining her lap. “You’re right and I take it back.” We could barely hear her. “I apologize.”

  Words my mother very rarely spoke.

  Before they had a chance to hug it out, I gave The Compass a spin so it was facing Jess. “Do you know this girl? Do you know who she is?”

  “What the hell?” Jessica leaned in and read the fine print. “She is not our stateroom attendant! She isn’t anyone’s stateroom attendant!” Jess stabbed The Compass. “She’s a pilot! A craybitch pilot. She’s a hellabitch pilot!”

  “A what?” Mother asked.

  Jess looked up to Mother. “She drives airplanes.”

  Why in the world would a pilot be listed as our stateroom attendant? “How do you know her, Jess?” I asked.

  “She’s Max’s pilot.” Jess turned to me. “Max’s craybitch pilot. So, what is going on?”

  “What in the world does a pilot have to do with anything? We’re on a boat.” Mother asked. “And who is Max?”

  “Jessica is married to Max,” Fantasy explained.

  “Another hellabitch,” Jess said.

  “Is Max a woman?” Mother asked. “You’re married to a bitch named Max?”

  Jess carefully weighed Mother’s questions.

  “Time out.” Fantasy’s hands slapped her knees and she spoke to Mother. “Max is a man. He’s Jessica’s husband. Davis’s book says the woman in the picture is our stateroom attendant, but we know she’s not. As it turns out, the woman in the book is Max’s pilot. Which means somehow, someway, she’s in on it.” Fantasy took a breath to let Mother catch up. “This means we were set up to be locked in our suite before we ever stepped in the door. Poppy was in on it; she was here to hurt us. Burnsworth wasn’t in on it; he was here to keep us safe. Max’s pilot is in on it, which means Max is probably behind it.”