Part One may be found on Julie/JStar8’s site, Sleepyside Bytes.
After lunch, they split up once more: Dan and Mart to their rock climbing contest, Diana to the pool deck, Trixie and Honey to get started on solving the mystery, with Jim and Brian trailing along behind to ensure they stayed out of trouble. The latter two wore matching long-suffering looks.
“How are we going to find her again?” Honey asked Trixie, as they strode back towards the Lost and Found desk. “I mean, it’s not likely that she’ll be where you last saw her, since she left there before you did and there was no reason to think that she might come back.”
Trixie shrugged. “I’m sure we can think of something. But we need to see if we can get some more clues. Dan was extremely uncooperative when I was there the first time and wouldn’t let me do anything.”
“Yes, all of the boys are like that,” Honey agreed, nodding. “I don’t even understand why, when some of our best times together have been while solving mysteries.”
Behind them, Jim and Brian both began choking.
“You mean,” spluttered Brian, “like the time you were tied up and left to die on a riverboat?”
“Or the time you went to that New York City diner by yourself and nearly got captured by the jewel thieves?” Jim added.
Brian grimaced. “Or perhaps the time you hid in the trailer to try to catch Di’s uncle’s imposter?”
Trixie rolled her eyes. “Of course not. We weren’t all together any of those times.”
“No. Because we never would have agreed to any of those things,” her brother replied.
She waved the matter away. “But all of those were years ago. We’re much more responsible now, aren’t we Honey?”
“Oh, yes, definitely. So much more that it’s almost like we’re almost completely different people, who aren’t like the people we were, except that in some ways we’re really quite the same, but definitely not in the getting-into-trouble department, which has permanently closed due to how totally responsible we now are.”
“You hear that?” Trixie pointed to her best friend. “This is the way things are, now. And we can definitely solve this without involving being caught by any gun runners, or jewel thieves, or imposter uncles.”
Honey nodded her agreement, then looked around in confusion. “Which way now?”
Trixie pointed to a set of stairs. “It’s just down here. Come on!”
She jogged down to the next deck, nearly colliding with a middle-aged man and letting out a frightened “Oh!” before apologising to him, her face tinting red. He stood barely taller than she did, stockily built but carrying a little extra weight in the form of a paunch at his middle. But the thing that stood out to her was his face. A scar puckered his lip at one side, revealing crooked and yellowing teeth. The eye on the same side of his face seemed to have a permanent squint. The two things together gave him a leering expression.
“Not at all,” he answered, in heavily-accented English. “Perhaps you can help me?”
She smiled. “I’ll try.”
“I was looking for the swimming pool. There is a swimming pool, correct?”
“Yes, there’s more than one,” she replied, then gave him some directions.
His answering smile looked more like a sneer. “Thank you very much. Good day.”
“Now that was mysterious,” Trixie whispered, as soon as he was out of earshot. “Did you see how he was dressed? What does he want with a swimming pool?”
“Maybe he has his swimwear under his clothes,” Brian suggested, looking distinctly unimpressed.
“He didn’t have a towel,” Trixie pointed out. “And he was wearing a suit! You don’t put a suit over swimwear!”
Jim shrugged. “Towels might not be important to him. And he might not have any more casual clothes. Or maybe he just wanted to see where it was.”
“And why did he ask me? I don’t work here.”
Brian shook his head. “Do you think it might be because you nearly knocked him over and that you were already talking to him? Are you that desperate for a mystery that you have to invent one at every single turn?”
She rolled her eyes. “We’re nearly there. You two stay here while we go and talk to someone, okay?”
Not waiting for an answer, she and Honey approached the desk and rang the bell. The same woman who had served Trixie earlier appeared from the office behind.
“How can I help you?”
“Oh! I think, just maybe, I might have misplaced my watch,” Honey explained, waving her bare wrist, “and I wondered whether anyone might have handed it in.”
“I don’t believe so, but I’ll check,” the staff member answered. “What does it look like?”
Honey launched into a description of the oft-misplaced heirloom while the other woman nodded understanding and looked sympathetic.
“Excuse me a few moments and I’ll check.”
She disappeared into the back office once more.
“We need to get her talking,” Trixie muttered, next to Honey’s ear. “When she comes back, I’ll ask her a question and you try to keep the conversation going, okay?”
Jim cleared his throat. “Uh, Trixie?”
“Not now,” she answered. “I’m busy.”
The woman returned, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, but we have not received anything of that description. Would you like to register your details and we can contact you if it’s found?”
“Oh. Maybe later,” Honey looked around, as if for inspiration. “I think I might check my room–”
“Cabin,” Brian corrected, from behind her.
“Sorry. Yes, in my cabin. I’ll check there again, before I bother you with recording anything. But thank you for offering.”
“I suppose you get a lot of lost and found things every day,” Trixie commented. “And I guess some of them are pretty strange.”
“Like the glove you brought this morning?” the woman answered, smiling. “Yes. That’s very true.”
“Has the owner turned up, yet? I’d really like to know what that was all about.”
The staff member shook her head. “No, that one hasn’t been claimed yet, but sometimes it takes people a while to realise they’re missing something.” She turned to Honey. “Please feel free to come and register your details if you don’t find the watch in your cabin.”
“Yes, thank you, of course.” Honey glanced at her best friend, who cast her a desperate look. “I might be back soon, if it doesn’t turn up.”
Before either of them could say anything else, the woman walked back into the inner office, effectively ending the conversation.
“How do you like that?” Trixie muttered, frowning. “She could hardly get away from us quick enough.”
“Trixie.” It was Jim, again.
Honey nodded. “And I couldn’t think of another thing to say to stop her.”
“Trixie.”
She ignored him. “But at least we know that no one’s claimed the glove yet.”
Honey frowned. “Wait. I thought we were investigating the woman. I thought we decided the glove is not mysterious.”
“Trixie!”
She turned to Jim. “What is it? Can’t you see we’re trying to have a conversation here?”
He held up a glossy flyer. “Is this the woman you saw this morning?”
Her jaw dropped. “Yes! But how did you know?”
He pointed to the headline.
She stared at it for a moment, then looked back at him. “Despicable Me 2: The Stage Show? I didn’t know that was a thing!”
“I seem to recall something about a lipstick and a tazer in the movie.” He shrugged. “I think she was talking about her part in the show.”
Trixie groaned. “You know, that makes a whole lot more sense than any of the scenarios we were talking about.”
“And it explains why she was in the staff-only area, if she is in a show, because then she is staff,” Honey added. “I just knew that passengers wouldn’t be allowed in there.”
“Exactly. But anyway, I didn’t decide that the glove is not mysterious; that was Brian and Jim and Mart and Dan and Brian.”
“Did I decide that twice?” her brother teased.
“Probably.” She grabbed Honey’s arm. “But let’s not just stand here. Let’s get up to the pool deck to see if we can find some more clues.”
“Why?” asked Brian. “What other possible clues could you find there?”
She set off at full speed, calling over her shoulder, “We won’t know unless we look.”
Before they had gone more than half-way up the same flight of stairs where Trixie’s earlier near-collision had occurred, the same thing happened again only this time it was not Trixie’s fault. A man in a lavender shirt and dark brown trousers swerved from one side of the stairs to the other, right into her path.
“Do be careful of where you are going,” he chided, even as she struggled to keep her balance.
He disappeared down the stairs, bumping Brian with the suitcase he carried as he passed. As he walked, glimpses of navy-blue socks could be seen above his black shoes.
“That was m–”
“No!” Brian interrupted his sister. “The m-word does not, in any way, belong in this situation.”
Honey stared after the man, shaking her head slightly. “He was very strangely dressed. And isn’t it a bit strange for him to be carrying a suitcase?”
“Strange and mysterious are not the same thing,” Jim pointed out. “And I thought we were going to the pool deck. Why don’t we drop by out cabins first and get changed? We could swim while we’re there.”
“Maybe a little later,” Trixie answered, turning and heading back down the stairs.
The others followed. They retraced their steps almost all the way to the Lost and Found Desk, where the strangely-dressed man was busy berating the woman behind the counter.
“How would I know?” he ranted at her. “That’s your business to find out.”
“Is this your name, sir?” she asked him, pointing to the label. “And your cabin number?”
“Yes, of course it is. I told you that already.”
She unzipped it. “It has the same name on the label inside.”
“That’s impossible,” he told her. “This is not my suitcase.”
“So, you don’t recognise any of the things inside?”
“No, of course I don’t.” He began to rummage wildly and a pink glove popped out. “Never seen these things before in my life. Unless…”
He picked up the glove and examined it. “Now that you mention it, I do own a pair of yellow gloves like these. I took them on my last trip, to Alaska.”
“Might you have dropped the other one on the pool deck this morning?” the staff member asked, not correcting his description of the item in question. “I’ll just go and get the one that was handed in.”
She only took a few moments to return. Comparing the gloves, they matched perfectly.
“It’s the wrong suitcase,” the man muttered, shoving the contents back in and zipping it almost closed. “What am I going to do with the wrong suitcase?”
He hauled it off the counter and walked away, not even acknowledging the woman who had helped him. She disappeared into the back room, as the man bumped his suitcase into Jim.
The four Bob-Whites shared a look.
“Okay, so absent-minded, colour-blind men with no manners weren’t actually on my radar when I started this,” Trixie admitted. “But I think we can definitely say now that the glove is not mysterious.”
They headed back the way they had come.
“Excuse me, sir!” Honey called when they reached the top of the same stairs where they had first encountered him. “I think you’ve dropped something.”
He turned and stared at the silicon ice cube tray which lay on the deck just behind him.
“Oh. Yes.”
He picked it up and stuffed it back into the suitcase. Honey helped him zip it properly before he walked away again without thanking her.
Brian frowned. “Why would anyone take an ice cube tray on a trip to Alaska?”
“You know what?” Trixie asked him. “I think I’ve had enough mysteries for today.”
“Those words are music to my ears,” her brother answered, while Jim nodded approval.
“I completely agree, Trixie,” Honey added. “And you never know. We might come across a better mystery tomorrow.”
The two men only groaned.
The End
Author’s notes: This is a two-year-late addition to the second part of CWE#20: Finishing Unfinished Trixie Business. The idea of the challenge was for people to post unfinished stories and then for different people to finish them off. I did a couple during the time of the challenge, but I also started another and collected some ideas. I have been focussing on finishing things during 2021, and this fitted the bill really well. I also have a second one nearly ready, which will be out soon.
Thank you to the CWE team for the inspiration and especially to Julie/JStar8 for writing the beginning of this story. Thank you, also, to Mary N./Dianafan, who very kindly edited it for me.
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