The Caribbean Cruise Caper (4 page)

“That must be the signal for dinner,” David said, getting to his feet. “You fellows go ahead. I'd better find my kid and make sure he washes his hands.”

The dark, glossy table in the forward section of the main salon glittered with china and silver for twelve. The flames of two candelabra wavered in the light breeze from the deck.

Everyone waited near the entrance for somebody to go in first.

Bettina came in and stood near the head of the table. She had changed again—this time into a light green dress decorated with sea horses and anchors. “Please sit anywhere you like,” she said. “We're going to be quite informal.”

Cesar eyed the table. In a loud whisper he said, “If this is ‘quite informal,' I sure hope she doesn't decide to get formal. I left my white tie and tails back in Albuquerque.”

Sylvie went to a seat halfway along the far side of the table. Jason and Boris rushed over to grab the chairs on either side of her, then glared at each other.

Lisa came up to Joe. “May I sit next to you?” she asked sweetly. “I want to hear all about the mysteries you've solved.”

Frank gave Joe an amused look. Joe wrinkled his nose at him.

Elizabeth took the seat next to David and asked him his views on the future of the American
theater. From his expression, David would probably have rather been discussing the NCAA Final Four.

The first course was a salad with asparagus stalks and orange slices. The look Evan gave it cracked Joe up.

Everyone ate the salad in a tense and uneasy silence. Joe decided the problem was mostly the formality of the dinner table, but the tensions between some of the contestants didn't help the atmosphere.

The only one who seemed totally unaffected by the atmosphere was Evan. After eating his orange slices and sliding his asparagus under a convenient lettuce leaf, he looked around and said, “I know a riddle.”

“Evan . . .” David said in a warning tone.

“What's your riddle?” Joe asked.

Evan took a deep breath. “Why did the boy throw his alarm clock out the window?”

Joe put on a very thoughtful expression. “Um, let's see . . . Because it went off too early and he didn't want to wake up yet?” he suggested.

Before Evan could respond to this, Elizabeth said, “Don't be ridiculous. Because he wanted to make time fly, of course.”

“That's right,” Evan said, crestfallen. “Wait, wait—I've got another one. How many balls of string would it take to reach to the moon?”

Not allowing enough time for anyone to speak, he said, “Give up? One, if it's big enough.”

That got a chorus of groans from around the
table. Encouraged by the response, Evan continued. “Here's a good one. Where did Napoleon keep his armies?”

“In France?” Jason said.

“No, no,” Boris cut in. “In Russia. You know what happened to Napoleon. Once his armies went to Russia, they never returned.”

“You're both wrong.” Evan chortled. “You know where Napoleon kept his armies?
In his sleevies!”

• • •

After dinner Frank and David went to put the final touches on the first mystery. Joe stayed with the contestants in the salon. No one talked. Sylvie sat on the couch with a magazine open on her lap, never turning a single page. Boris paced around the room, pausing now and then to stare out at the darkness. The others simply sat, gazing vacantly into space. Joe decided they must be psyching themselves for the contest.

David and Frank returned. David was holding a baseball cap upside down.

“I've put five numbered slips of paper in here,” he announced. “You'll each take one to determine the order of play.”

He went around the room. Jason drew number one, followed by Cesar, Sylvie, Boris, and Elizabeth.

“Joe will take each of you in turn to the scene of the crime,” David continued. “You'll have five minutes to look around. Don't touch anything. Afterward you'll fill out a report explaining your interpretation of the crime, the culprit or culprits,
and the evidence. Your score will be based on how close you come to the official version . . . in other words, mine.”

That drew a slight, nervous laugh from everyone.

“Okay, let's go,” David concluded. “And may the best detective win!”

Joe led Jason out of the salon and up a flight of stairs to a door marked Private.

“This is the captain's cabin,” he explained. “As background, you should know that the yacht's owner asked the captain to keep a file of securities in his safe. Their value is over a million dollars.”

“I can guess what comes next,” Jason said.

Joe didn't reply. He pushed the door open and stood aside. He glanced at his watch. Then he followed Jason into the cabin.

The first thing he noticed was a body sprawled on the floor in front of the open safe. It was dressed in oil-stained khakis and work boots. A length of electric cord was knotted around the neck.

“That's a dummy, right?” Jason asked. His voice quavered.

“Right,” Joe said. “And that is the only question I'm allowed to answer. Your five minutes started fifteen seconds ago.”

Jason set to work. He studied the dummy from head to foot, then peered into the safe. The papers spilled on the rug occupied him for a minute or more. Then he moved around the cabin. He looked closely at the files on the desk and the overturned glass on the end table. A wrench half-tucked into a
chair cushion didn't seem to interest him. He spent what was left of his five minutes getting down on his hands and knees to sniff the barrel of a snub-nosed .38 revolver peeping out from under the dummy's leg.

“Time,” Joe announced. He escorted Jason back to the salon and returned with Cesar. Unlike Jason, Cesar kept up a running stream of comments as he examined the crime scene. Some of them were to the point. Others were so wacky that Joe had to work not to laugh.

Each of the other contestants also had a different style. Sylvie acted like an airhead, but she noticed as many important details as anyone else. Boris spent the first half of his time posed just inside the doorway. Only his eyes moved. Then he went around the cabin counterclockwise, pausing to check each clue in turn. As for Elizabeth, she stood as if she were there for a social engagement with the captain. Joe half expected her to send him off for tea and pastries.

After all the contestants had had their turns, they were given half an hour to complete their crime reports. Frank and Joe collected the five papers and took them to their cabin. Frank stuck the folder inside his suitcase for safekeeping. Then they returned to the salon. They expected that the others would want to party on their first night at sea, but the only one still there was Lisa.

“Everybody pooped out,” Lisa told them. “It
has
been a pretty long day. But how could anyone give up the chance to watch the moon rise over the water?”

“When does it rise tonight?” Joe asked.

“Oh, I don't know,” Lisa admitted. “But it has to come up sooner or later. Why don't we just go out on deck and wait for it?”

Pointedly, Frank picked up a magazine and sat down on one of the two leather sofas.

“You promised to tell me about some of your cases,” Lisa added. “For my
Teenway
story.”

Joe didn't recall making such a promise, but it was a reasonable request. He went out on the afterdeck with Lisa and told her about the time he and Frank had gone undercover as actors in a Broadway musical. It took a while. When he finished, he looked around. The moon still wasn't up. Or had it already set?

“I'd better turn in,” he said, getting to his feet. “Big day tomorrow.”

He said good night to Lisa and collected Frank from the salon. As they went down to their cabin, Joe noticed a line of light across the floor coming from the door to their cabin.

“Frank!” Joe whispered urgently. He grabbed his brother's arm. “We didn't leave the door open or the light on. Somebody has been in our cabin!”

Frank instantly flattened himself against the wall on the near side of the door. Wordlessly he pointed to the far side of the door. Joe nodded and moved silently into position.

Frank took a deep breath and held up his left hand with three fingers showing. As he folded them, he counted down under his breath.

Three . . . two . . . one . . .

On zero, he shoved the door open, darted through the opening, and dodged to the right. He finished in a martial crouch, hands poised for either offense or defense.

At the same time Joe sprinted inside and took up a position to the left of the door.

Frank quickly scanned the room. No one was there. He jerked open the closet door. At the same
moment, Joe pulled open the door to the bathroom and peered inside.

Frank straightened up. “All clear,” he said, shutting the closet. He stepped over and eased the door to the corridor closed.

“Frank, look at this,” Joe said. He pointed to Frank's suitcase. It was unzipped. The folder of questionnaires lay on the floor next to it.

Frank started to bend down to retrieve the folder. Then he stopped himself.

“This doesn't make sense,” he said.

“Sure it does,” Joe said. “One of the contestants decided to improve his or her chances by changing their entry . . . or by changing other people's entries.”

“That's what we're supposed to think,” Frank replied. “But if that's so, why was the folder left where we'd see it and know that someone had fiddled with it? Why were the lights on and the door open?”

“Nervousness?” Joe suggested. “Somebody came along before the intruder could put things back?”

Frank considered that and nodded slowly. “It's possible,” he said. “I'm not sold. I have a strong hunch this is some kind of setup. But what kind, and why? See if you spot anything else.”

While Joe circled the cabin, Frank checked the crime reports. Had any been altered? Each of the contestants had made some changes in what he or she had written. As far as Frank could see, however, the insertions and crossings out were done in the
same ink as the rest of the entry. There were no obvious signs of tampering.

“Frank?” Joe said. “Come here a sec.”

Frank stood up and crossed the cabin to where Joe was standing.

“Sniff,” Joe told him.

Frank sniffed. “I smell something flowery,” he reported. “Perfume?”

“I think so,” Joe replied. “And I think I smelled it before, earlier today. Sylvie was wearing it. She must be the one who came in here.”

Frank frowned. The thought of Sylvie playing burglar surprised him. His experience as a detective had taught him not to rule out suspects simply because they “weren't the type.” Still, some people were more likely to carry out certain kinds of actions than others. Sylvie did not strike him as being very adventurous or daring.

Frank looked around. Set into the wall above Joe's bunk was the rectangular metal grill of a ventilator. On the other side of that wall was the cabin shared by Elizabeth and Sylvie. Could the scent have seeped in through the duct? And if so, what about sound? Could the girls hear what he and Joe said?

They had better be more careful about where they discussed anything sensitive. Frank tapped Joe on the shoulder, put a finger to his lips, and pointed up at the ventilator. Joe nodded grimly. Grabbing a pen and a piece of paper, he scribbled, “Tell David? Bettina?”

Frank glanced at his watch and shook his head. “Not now, it's too late,” he said in a low voice. “We'll catch them first thing in the morning. This isn't news they'll want to hear.”

• • •

Frank's prediction was right. Early the next morning he and Joe knocked on the door to David's cabin. Still in pajamas, he listened to their account of the intrusion. His expression grew more and more unhappy.

When the Hardys finished, David said, “We'd better let Bettina in on this. Just a minute while I throw some clothes on.”

Once dressed, David took Frank and Joe up to the main deck, to the owner's cabin. It ran the full width of the yacht, with big windows facing the bow and both sides. There they repeated their story to Bettina.

She looked over the folder of entries. “Let me be sure I understand,” she said. “Someone may have altered one or more of these, but you can't tell whether or not, or which one. Is that it?”

“ 'Fraid so,” Frank said. “If only we'd looked at the papers when the contestants turned them in . . .”

“Spilt milk,” Bettina said, with a wave of the hand. “So—what do we do about last night's mystery? Keep it? Scrub it?”

“I looked over the entries last night,” Frank said. “They're all pretty good, but I didn't see any that seemed outstandingly good . . . or bad. My
guess is that they would all earn roughly the same score.”

“In other words,” Joe added, “whether we keep the first puzzle or drop it won't make that much difference to the final result.”

“Hmm . . . I'd rather not cloud the contest with unnecessary controversy,” Bettina remarked. “David? Any thoughts?”

“I see two possibilities,” David said slowly. “One, somebody improved his own entry. Two, somebody sabotaged someone else's entry. Or both possibilities, of course.”

“Okay,” Bettina said. “What then?”

“I'm not sure how we could prove or disprove the first possibility,” David continued. “But the second should be easy to check. We post all the entries for the contestants to look over. Then we listen for anyone's complaining that someone changed his entry. If we get any complaints, we decide then whether to honor the results. If we don't, we let it ride.”

“And we'll be a lot more careful from now on,” Frank said.

“Good point, Frank,” Bettina said. “How are we going to secure the contest materials in the future?”