Free Set Sail for Murder by R. T. Jordan

lodged in your teeth. His left eyeball just sorta randomly moved, like a glob of that stuff in lava lamps.”
    Tim crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head. “I hate to say it, but Polly’s right. You wouldn’t last a week if we reintroduced you back into the wild. You’ve lived among eccentrics for too long. You’re one of us now.”
    Polly clicked her tongue. “Everyone thinks that beds are warmer on the other side of Beverly Hills. Trust me, that’s only because
normal
people are bored with their lives. They use sex and drugs and porn and these pseudocelebrity cruises for escapism from dreary jobs and kids who they may love but don’t necessarily like. They’d kill to be in your shoes, as much as you think you’d kill to be in theirs.”
    Placenta rolled her eyes then stopped a waitress who was passing by with a tray of smoked oysters. “We’ll take those off your hands, dear,” she said.
    Tim said, “‘Normal’ people don’t like smoked oysters!”
    Placenta looked at Polly, whose vacant eyes now seemed to be staring into the abyss of Madame Destiny’s domain. “Daydreaming about a shipload of suspects?” Placenta asked, after she’d swallowed two oysters.
    Tim waved his hand in front of his mother before she blinked and returned to the moment. Polly suddenly bolted upright, picked up her champagne glass, and knocked back the remaining bubbly. With a river of adrenaline gushing through her system she gloated, “I’m brilliant! I should get one of those Genius Awards! I’ve been waiting for an amazing idea to come to me, and it just did! I know where to get the name of the killer!”

C HAPTER 7
    I n the next moment, Polly and her troupe were racing out of the lounge and tearing along the Upper Promenade Deck to the glass elevators. As Polly impatiently jabbed at the call button, Placenta nervously tapped a foot and Tim cracked his knuckles. “You’d think this was the Sears Tower instead of a twelve-story ship,” Polly complained. When the car finally arrived, they smiled to conceal their irritation as they waited for the packed car of ancient passengers to shuffle out and argue about whether or not they were on the correct deck.
    “You’re an idiot,” said one old man to another.
    “It’s this way.”
    “You’re turned around.”
    “I have a sixth sense.”
    “It’s called dementia.”
    Just as one old man with more liver spots on his bald head than bruises on an overripe banana peel convinced the others that indeed they had gotten off too early, Polly, Tim, and Placenta slipped into the glass box and frantically pushed the button to close the door. One of the women in the group tried to step back inside. “What goes down, must come back up. Like heartburn,” Polly trilled as she nudged the ladyout and pushed away the flailing arms of a dozen octopuses trying to keep the door from closing. The elders looked on with dumbstruck faces as the door panels slipped across the threshold and cut them off from Polly.
    Swiftly dropping to the main deck, Polly, Tim, and Placenta exited past another queue of withered old-timers eager to ride up to the casino or dining rooms. Polly’s son and maid were in lockstep behind the star as she flew past the Armani, Cartier, Dolce & Gabbana, Ferragamo, and Mont Blanc boutiques. Ordinarily, each of these shops would have lured Polly away from whatever appointment to which she may have been en route. But not this time. Halfway down the main concourse, Polly came to an abrupt halt in front of the All Bound Up bookstore. “This is it,” she said.
    There, in the display window was a giant poster of the famous Hirschfeld caricature of Polly with her exaggerated large eyes and lashes, and prominent overbite. Below the poster was a pyramid of boxed sets of
The Polly Pepper Playhouse
collector’s edition DVDs. Polly smiled.
    As they entered the store, Polly instantly spied a young woman wearing the uniform of the ship’s employees. The girl was