Null Pointer

CWE20: Part I :: The Glove Is Not Mysterious

It all started with a pink glove lying on the ground, almost covered by the trailing vines from a nearby planter. Trixie’s eyes honed in on it immediately. It was out of place, a winter glove on the pool deck of a Caribbean cruise liner. A child carelessly losing their things was explainable, but the glove was an adult size. Plus, the warm weather for the duration of their adventure. Plus it was still morning of their first full day at sea, which didn’t leave a lot of time for the glove to have been dropped. All together it was odd… mysterious.

“No,” a voice interrupted her thoughts. “Trixie, no. You are not finding a mystery on this cruise,” Dan said. Begged. Prayed.

“It wouldn’t be a Bob-White vacation if I didn’t,” Trixie pointed out reasonably.

The seven friends had splurged on this trip together, understanding it might be their last chance to do such a thing with all seven of them and no one else. In less than a month, Brian would begin his residency, and a ten day vacation, including a week-long cruise, was unlikely to be feasible. Jim was already stretched thin working to get his boys’ school open, but when the first students started, in the fall, Trixie doubted he’d be willing to leave it anytime soon. Dan had just graduated from the police academy and would be starting his new job the Monday after they returned home. Mart and Di had gotten married earlier in the year and, though she wasn’t pregnant yet—at least as far as she knew—if there wasn’t a Belden baby by this time next year, no one would be more shocked than Diana Lynch Belden. Along with Di, Honey and Trixie had just graduated from college. They would soon start jobs that would get them the experience they needed to someday start Schoolgirl Shamuses, Inc.

“Jim is going to kill me,” Dan muttered.

“Perhaps you should have declined when he asked you to baby-sit and told him I’m a grown woman, who is perfectly capable of taking care of herself,” Trixie said absently, crouching down to see if there was any other evidence.

“Perhaps you should have sent me to check out the wave pool, or the rock climbing wall, or anything that would have given me plausible deniability, before you found a mystery,” Dan retorted.

Trixie glanced up at him, not trying to conceal the excitement she felt at the start of a mystery. “Come on, Dan. Don’t you want to get this glove back to its rightful owner?”

“I want to turn it in to Lost and Found,” Dan replied. “Sun, surf, hot babes in bikinis, good friends—all of these things were on my cruising checklist. Mysteries were not.”

“Some detective you’ll be,” Trixie tried to huff, but she couldn’t manage to sound serious.

“I’m off the clock—and so are you,” Dan reminded her easily.

“Spoilsport,” Trixie complained, handing him the glove as she got back to her feet.

“Did we pass Lost and Found yet?” Dan asked.

He and Trixie had been exploring their ship from end to end. Brian had said they could give him the highlights later; he wasn’t wasting what might be his last chance ever to sleep until noon. Honey and Di had abandoned them at the spa for facials and massages. They’d ditched Mart at his third stop to try the available food. Jim had headed for the quieter reading lounge—where they’d all agreed to meet before lunch—after eliciting Dan’s promise to stay with Trixie.

Trixie perched on the arm of Jim’s chair. “Hey, we’re on vacation. No working,” she chided, seeing what he was reading.

“I’m not working, not really. Just reading over some paperwork. And you’re one to criticize.”

“What do you mean?” Trixie asked, honestly puzzled. “I’m not doing anything work-related.”

“So that’s not your I-found-a-new-mystery glow?” Jim asked, one eyebrow cocked. Dan snickered from the chair he’d flopped into. Jim turned a mock-glare on his friend. “Thought you were supervising so we could avoid this.”

“I tried,” Dan replied, trying to sound morose but mostly sounding unrepentant.

“Dan, what’d you do?” Brian asked suspiciously, walking up with Honey and Di. He frowned at how close Trixie was sitting to in-Jim’s-lap. Then he noticed the same thing Jim had. “Trixie, no. I sleep in for a couple hours and you found a mystery already?”

“A mystery?” Honey asked eagerly. “Well? What happened? I want all the details!"

Trixie launched into the explanation about the glove.

Brian and Jim both turned accusatory looks on Dan the second Trixie uttered the word “mysterious.” He held his hands up in surrender. “I thought I was doing a good thing. Talked her into taking it to Lost and Found, not hunting down the owner ourselves.”

Brian nodded approval.

Jim sighed. “But?”

Dan shrugged. “We got to the desk and no one was there, which seems normal—there’s a staff office behind the desk and a bell and all—but as we approached, two women came out of the employee only door.”

“They were talking quietly. One was dressed like most of the staff we’ve seen—she’s the one who stopped at the desk and helped us. The other looked like a passenger, maybe even a little overdressed for this early in the day. Dress, heels, purse, makeup, jewelry—the works. We didn’t hear much, but we heard the dressed up one tell the other, ‘There was nothing he could do to escape me. Not with this lipstick and that bag. Oh, and the tazer.’”

Brian shook his head. “You must have misheard. There’s no way a passenger got a tazer through security, and why would staff have one?”

Dan tilted his head to the side. “I mean, all the marketing for this ship talked about it being a ‘city on the sea’. They’re not going to say it in the marketing material, but every city needs a police force. Petty theft’s just something to be taken for granted. Given the vacation stress—and confinement when we’re at sea—and the prevalence of alcohol, and gambling happening on board, assaults have to happen way more often than the cruise lines want to admit, and whether the cruise line or its employees are involved or not, I’d put good money on smuggling, fraud, and scams as a matter of course. Statistically speaking, the odd suicide or murder is likely. And it’s also hundreds of people trapped in a single place. I doubt pirates are going to trouble a ship this close to territorial waters, but I hope someone on the cruise line’s staff is at least considering the appeal to terrorists. It’s in the cruise line’s best interest to handle any issues, from the smallest the biggest, discretely, which means this floating city’s police or security force isn’t using anything that fires bullets. Tazer’s going to be their go-to.”

Now it was Trixie’s turn to glare at Dan. “Are you trying to freak them out, and make them wrap us in bubble wrap and lock us in our rooms?”

“Cabins,” Mart corrected absently, finally joining them. “Why are the eldest Bob-Whites showing their overprotective colors? You didn’t find a mystery already, did you?”

“I agree with you, Dan,” Honey admitted, ignoring Mart’s interruption, “but that still doesn’t really fit with what you two saw and heard. I mean, the person Trixie described doesn’t sound like security to me.”

Trixie grinned at her partner. “That’s the mystery!”

Brian groaned. Jim looked resigned.

“If you interfere with my tanning time on the pool deck…” Di warned.

Mart nodded agreement with his wife, though not on the tanning part, beyond that he knew better than to stand between her and her tanning. “And I signed us up for laser tag before dinner.”

“Oh, good, plenty of time for me to challenge you to a rock climbing contest,” Dan replied.

“You’re going down, Mangan,” Mart accepted the challenge.

“Of course,” Trixie agreed, sounding exasperated. “We’re on vacation. We’re still going to do all our vacation things, just like we planned, just like we always do. Honey and I are just going to solve a small mystery along the way.”

“It’s never small when you’re involved, Shamus,” Jim pointed out.

“I’m not making anyone do anything they don’t want to do.”

“Oh, no,” Brian and Jim said in the same breath. “No way are you investigating on your own. You get into too much trouble.”

Trixie and Honey frowned at their brothers. “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Honey said drily.

Janice's Part II