Mask on the Cruise Ship (7 page)

He proceeded to lecture everyone about how sports were meant to build teamwork and friendship. How that was way more important than the actual score.

Yup, Jack was a natural to be a teacher, all right.

Meanwhile, my natural curiosity was acting up. Who had Evan seen to make him bolt like that?

To me, curiosity is like a huge bowl of chocolate ice cream. You can't resist it — especially if no one is noticing how much you indulge.

I slipped out of the huddle of arguing volleyball players. An advantage to being short was that I was beneath their line of vision.

I plunged down the stairs after Evan.

Chapter 8
Talk about your bad-hair days

W
hen I reached the bottom of the stairs, Evan was whisking around a corner. Whatever he was up to, he was in a tremendous hurry about it.

“Loved your show last night,” a deep voice rumbled behind me. It was a handsome, grinning steward, wheeling along a trolley of trays and dishes that he'd been picking up outside people's doors.

Evan looked around. He was beside the fourth door down.

“Thanks,” I told the steward and gave Evan my bared-teeth phony smile.

“What are you doing here, Dinah?” Evan asked — with a tinge of impatience.

“I...uh...” Panicky memo to self: Have excuses ready
before
these awkward moments occur. I brightened. “I thought we could work on some lyrics for your song. For dah DAH dah dah DAH dah.”

“Oh.” Evan seemed to thaw. “That's nice, Dinah. Not right now, though.” He swiveled away from the door and walked off.

Why hadn't he gone into his room? I wondered. He'd been about to twist the knob.

Weirder and weirder.

“They're still arguing,”
Julie greeted me, with a nod toward the huddle of players.

She noticed my expression. “Is something wrong, Di?”

I told her about Evan. “I had problems with my last pianist,” I mourned. “My fault, I admit it. This time I really wanted things to be different.”

Julie was gaping at me. “Did you say four rooms down? That's
my
room!”

I gaped at her in return. One of the ever-present stewards glided by with a tray. Assuming our mouths were open in readiness for food, he held out the tray.

For once my appetite failed me. “So Evan was skulking outside
your
room,” I said faintly.

“Preparing to pick the lock, you think?” Julie asked. She clutched her spiky hair. “This is too melodramatic, Dinah. Can't be true!”

Nevertheless, like a couple of anxious moms, we went down to check on the Raven. “I won't breathe easy until tomorrow's over,” Julie confessed, unlocking her stateroom door.

A fat, squat gray safe sat against the wall. “Want to see the Raven again?” Julie invited. “After all, he'll soon be at the Juneau Heritage Gallery, secured behind thick, unbreakable glass rigged with all kinds of alarms.”

A moment later, peeling away bubble wrap, Julie revealed the Raven. Over his red-rimmed beak, his sharp black eyes were bright with mirth, as if at his own cleverness. I couldn't help grinning back at him.

Julie noticed and nodded in understanding. “As with any art, masks never stop giving pleasure to the beholder,” she said. “In fact, masks are part of a giving
ceremony
, if you will: the potlatch. That's a meeting of the tribal chiefs and other high-ranking members — but they're also feasts for everyone. Gifts abound. Dances, masks, songs and stories that celebrate the tribe, giving everyone a sense of belonging,” Julie finished, rather wistfully.

She wrapped the Raven up again. “I'm afraid that's where my relationship with Elaine is flawed. She never accepts that I have talent at painting. To her, there's room for only one Hébert sister to be famous.”

Dang it, Julie was off on
that
again. I was getting awfully tired of hearing about Elaine.

“And I do love art,” Julie continued. “How about you, Dinah? Who's your favorite artist?”

I considered this. “Adams.”

“Ansel?”

“Scott.”

Julie smiled. “Perhaps you'd like to see one of my paintings before you go.” After locking up the Raven, she lifted a placemat-sized canvas off the top of her night table.

I gasped. From the canvas, a madwoman leered out at me! Her eyes blazed. Her lips stretched way back from her gums. Her teeth loomed, huge, sharp and menacing, like knives.

Julie patted the canvas proudly. “I still have to do some work on it. Can't wait to show it to that dealer who was so interested in my work.” She pointed to the lower right-hand corner. “ ‘
Medusa
, by Julie Hébert.' Do you like it?”

I gulped. Mother had told me fibs were okay, even desirable, to avoid offending people. “I — I, ” I began. The problem is, I find it unnatural to be anything except blunt.

“You've done interesting things with her hair,” I got out finally.

Which was true. Julie had formed her subject's black locks of hair into snakes.

When I told Madge
about it the next day, she shuddered. “Medusa was a character in Greek mythology. Snakes billowed out of her head, and everyone who made eye contact with her turned to stone.”

“I guess that wrecked any chance of her getting beauty salon appointments,” I huffed and puffed.

Along with a lot of other
Empress Marie
passengers, we'd taken the thirteen-mile bus trip from Juneau to the massive Mendenhall Glacier. Madge, however, had insisted on our leaving the rest of the group at the Visitors' Center to hike up the West Glacier Trail for a better view. Like Jack, Madge had an annoying athletic streak.

Jack would be taking a later bus to the glacier, when he got a break from work. Mother and Julie would be coming with him. First, though, they were escorting the Raven to the Juneau Heritage Gallery.

Madge was still shunning Jack, though I didn't see how she could keep on with it. I mean, what was one barfing episode between sweethearts?

At the moment, Madge was thinking about Julie Hébert's painting. “Too bad she doesn't paint happier mythic characters. Like Persephone, who signifies spring. Or Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty.”

“Weird,” I agreed, puffing.

“Dinah, please stop saying ‘weird' so much. It's annoying.”

After a while we flopped down in a meadow shimmering with color. Madge figured out the plant names from the wildflower guidebook she'd brought. The clusters of tiny white flowers were Indian rhubarb; the magenta sprays of blossom were shooting stars; and we already knew the lupines, exactly the brilliant blue shade of Madge's eyes.

Lucky Madge. I had ordinary old hazel eyes, a jumble of green, gray and brown that suggested nature hadn't been able to make up its mind about me.

On the other hand, the jumble of colors sort of reflected my personality. I did tend to barge off in all directions at once.

As I sat feeling, as usual, dissatisfied with my appearance, Madge astounded me by saying: “You're getting to be quite attractive, Dinah. That intensity, that fierceness, you've always had in your expression — in a bizarre, unexpected way, it's turning into prettiness.”

Me, pretty? We'd climbed high; maybe the thin air was affecting my sister's brain.

Madge had her sketchbook out and was drawing the flowers around us. She'd note “magenta” or “royal blue,” depending what flower she was doing, for water-coloring in later.

I was content just to gaze at the Mendenhall Glacier. Twelve miles long, one-and-a-half miles wide, it sits in the middle of Mendenhall Lake like a humongous blueberry Popsicle. Madge had been right to bring us up the trail. The glacier was brighter and clearer from here.

Ditto the 5,900 emerald peaks of the Mendenhall Towers, each with snow perched on top, trickling down here and there like a melting scoop of vanilla ice cream.

I tended to think of things in terms of food. Madge, however, was murmuring that the glacier resembled an aquamarine ring Dad had once given Mother.

A romantic gesture — except that Mother had to pay for the ring when the bill came in. Dad was off on one of his drinking binges. With Dad, the fun was offset by the frustrating. Which made the memories of him a teeter-totter. I would recall his encouragement about my singing — and then remember his binges.

I knew Madge was also thinking of how that particular romantic gesture had ended, because she gave a slight frown and immediately replaced it with a determined cheery smile. “Shall we eat?” Her long, slim fingers unclasped the wicker latches of the picnic basket the
Empress
's chef had packed for us.

Madge had carried the basket up in her knapsack. I saw that another item she'd brought was binoculars. Reaching for these, I lay down on my stomach and trained them on the Mendenhall Glacier Visitors' Center. I wanted to see if Mother and Julie had arrived yet.

“There's Ira,” I exclaimed, swirling the lenses into better focus. “He's hobbling off a tour bus, along with the doting Lavinia. Guess the bus we took was too early for them. STUFF AND NONSENSE!” I shouted. I found Ira amusing.

He couldn't hear me, of course, but a couple of mountain goats did. They were grazing in some clover, across the meadow from Madge and me. The goats glanced up, beards wagging as they chewed, and regarded me with scorn.

“STUFF AND NONSENSE!” I shouted again.

“
Please
, Dinah,” begged Madge. “What have my eardrums ever done to you?”

“There's Mother getting off the bus. And Jack! Wait — where's Julie? I thought she and Mother were both coming … Nope, Julie's not there. Weird.”

“Dinah, PLEASE stop saying ‘weird.' ”

Chapter 9
A chilling experience

I
spent the next minutes eating my favorite banana-honey-peanut-butter sandwich and watching Jack through the binoculars. Somebody had pointed him up the trail after us.

“He's sprinting all the way up,” I informed Madge. “Can you believe it?
Sprinting!
”

Madge was looking annoyed and pleased at the same time. “There's no need to report on him, Dinah. This isn't ABC's
Wide World of Sports
.”

When I'd finished my sandwich, I started bellowing “STUFF AND NONSENSE!” at Jack. It was a scientific experiment, you might say. To find out how far up the trail Jack would have to be before he heard me. “STUFF AND NONSENSE!” Yup, I was a regular Albert Einstein.

“DINAH!”

I lowered the binoculars. Madge was standing and glowering.

Then, to my amazement, her face crumpled and she burst into tears. By the time Jack reached us, I was trying to explain, “But, Madge, this is
science
… ”

Jack gathered her in his arms for a bear hug. After all that sprinting, he was only slightly out of breath. That wasn't athletic, in my view. It was unnatural.

Jack noticed my disapproving frown and winked at me. “So tell me,” he murmured to Madge, “is it my personality that upsets you? Or should I just be switching deodorants?”

Madge giggled through her tears. That was the great thing about Jack. Being beautiful, my sister had always been fussed over by everyone. Spoiled, really. But Jack laughed at her instead of fussing.

With a shaky breath, Madge told him, “It's — well, sometimes having a younger sister is so
stressful
.”

“WHAT?” I couldn't believe the unfairness of this. “Madge, you got on an emotional teeter-totter just now because of Dad, not me! You won't admit to thinking about Dad — it'd make things less than perfect, wouldn't it?”

Madge wouldn't look at me. Jack, however, was glancing back and forth from one to the other of us with the beginnings of understanding in his gray eyes.

“It's the Mendenhall Glacier's fault,” I finished dramatically. “That's what started it all.”

“Ri-ight,” said Jack. Then, unexpectedly, “You're a sensitive kid, Dinah. I bet that's part of what reaches people when you sing. It's not just the voice.”

Me, sensitive? That was the second shocking observation made about me within the hour. Beneath my annoyance at Madge, I felt the faint stirrings of pleasure.

“All right,” said Madge, dabbing at her eyes with one of the blue-imprinted-with-white-ship napkins from the picnic basket. “I will acknowledge that my sister is stressful
and
sensitive.”

She fished a brownie out of the basket and handed it to me. A peace offering. We gave each other tight, suspicious smiles and narrow-eyed frowns; it was what we did when making up. All in good humor — sort of. It's a sister thing, difficult for outsiders to understand.

“You should have some of this lunch with us,” Madge told Jack, who was indeed looking bemused. “The chef packed enough for ten people. Or at least for Dinah and two friends.”

“Can't, my one-and-only.” Growing somber, Jack picked up the basket. “We should head back down to your mom. She's been through a bad shock.”

With his free hand he pulled me close for my turn at a bear hug. Then he explained: “Your mother and Julie delivered the Raven by cab to the Juneau Heritage Gallery. Or tried to. When they stepped out of the cab, a young man in a black balaclava and ski suit rushed Julie. He grabbed the box and peeled down the street, out of sight.”

“You mean — the Raven's gone?” I squeaked.

“Gone with the brisk Alaska wind. To use your favorite word, young Di, there's something even weirder. Your mom caught a glimpse of the guy's eyes as he was wrestling the package away from Julie.

“
His eyes were gooseberry-colored
.”

You could definitely
call Jack's news a cliffhanger. We were near a cliff and my mouth was hanging open.

Jack didn't have a lot to add. Julie was giving a statement at the police station. The Juneau Heritage Gallery had announced that its famed Raven mask would not be returning soon, maybe ever.