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“No idea,” she said, looking sleepy and tousled but still mightily cute in her Finding Nemo T-shirt and matching panties. She slipped into a sweater as Chase pulled open the door to reveal… Garth Dagit, the security guy who’d so expertly dealt with kleptomaniac Ruby.

“I’m sorry to wake you up,” said the guy, “but you’re both cops, right?”

“I’m a cop,” said Chase, “and my wife is a police consultant.” He was only dressed in a pair of ladybug-pattern boxers at this point—presumably a present from Odelia.

“There’s been… an incident,” said the security guy, “and I was wondering if you would mind giving me a hand.”

“What happened?” asked Chase as he gratefully accepted a T-shirt from Odelia.

“You better come with me,” Garth suggested.

Odelia darted a quick look down at me, and I got the message.

“Dooley,” I said. “Let’s go.”

“Go where?” asked Dooley. “Is the cruise over already? Have we landed?”

“Boats don’t land, Dooley,” I said. “They dock into port.”

“So have we docked into port?”

“I don’t think so. Looks like something happened and this man needs our help.”

“I hope it’s not that kleptomaniac girl again,” said Dooley as we followed Odelia, who was following Chase, who was following the beefy security man. “Maybe she stole another phone and now she’s going to be in big trouble.”

But it wasn’t the kleptomaniac girl. If only it had been so easy. Instead we found ourselves entering the next cabin, and as we approached the bed, much to our surprise Mr. Lil Thug was sprawled out there… looking very dead indeed.

“Oh, my God!” said Odelia. “What happened?”

“You tell me,” said Garth as he dragged a weary hand through his mane. “We got a distress call but unfortunately the operator had just stepped out of her office. Luckily all calls are registered and can easily be traced to the phone they were made from, so the operator decided to wake me up so I could take a look, and this is what I found.”

“Is he… dead?” asked Dooley.

We’d both jumped up on the bed to take a closer look, earning ourselves a censorious frown from Garth in the process so we quickly jumped down again.

From what I could gather the man had been stabbed or shot in the chest, for there was a lot of blood around that area. And also, and more disturbingly: the twenty-million-dollar pink diamond that had been so nicely embedded in his forehead… was gone.

“Looks like a robbery,” said Chase as he examined the body with the kind of professionalism he likes to bring to his job. “Stone was cut from his face and he was probably killed for it.”

“Stone?” asked Garth. “What stone?”

“Lil Thug had a diamond implanted in his forehead,” Odelia explained. “It was worth twenty million.”

Garth whistled through his teeth.“Twenty million. Now there’s a motive for murder.”

“Only problem is: who took the stone and killed its owner?” asked Chase.

“It must have been someone on this corridor. Cause I already checked CCTV before I woke you up, and no one came or went after the last person arrived to go to their cabin.”

“There’s no CCTV in the corridor itself?” asked Odelia.

“No, unfortunately not. I keep asking management to install them all over the ship, but they’re reluctant and keep brushing me off with privacy concerns.”

“So… how many cabins are there on this corridor?”

Garth took out his notebook and frowned.“Well, there’s this cabin, then yours, then there’s Bertha Biles and her husband David Biles, next to her is her daughter Laura Matz, across from Miss Matz is Adele Brzeczek, next are the Ketterings—Ruby and her parents Cynthia and Charles, and across from Lil Thug are Chiquita K?n?nen and Oren Vittle. So how many is that?” He quickly counted on his fingers. “Um, eleven, you two included.” He gave our humans a quick grin. “I checked you out, though, and both your reputations precede you.”

“In a good way, I hope?” said Odelia.

“Absolutely. I wouldn’t have brought you in on this otherwise.”

“So… no one could have gotten in from the outside somehow?” asked Chase. “Dropped down to Lil Thug’s balcony and then returned the same way?”

“No way,” said Garth with a definite shake of the head.

“So then it looks like one of these people is the culprit. Only question is: who?”

“I also found this,” said Garth, and held up a little plastic baggie. In it we could see a single gold earring. “And unless this belonged to Mr. Thug, this is the killer’s.”

12

The next morning at breakfast we found ourselves seated at the same table as the Biles family again, and naturally there was only one topic of conversation: the sudden and shocking death of Lil Thug.

“Is it true?” asked Mrs. Biles. “Did Mr. Thug really get mugged and killed last night?”

“Unfortunately, it’s true,” said Odelia.

“I saw you talking to Garth Dagit,” Mrs. Biles explained, “which is how I figured you probably knew what’s going on, you being cops and all.”

Odelia didn’t bother to explain to the woman that she wasn’t a cop, per se.

“How did you hear about what happened?” asked Chase as he buttered a piece of toast.