The Crims #3 Read online

  The captain rummaged around in the hold and pulled something out. He handed it to Henry.

  “What’s this?” said Henry, looking at it.

  The captain of the Golden Bounty looked at his first mate. “I told you we needed a better marketing campaign,” he said. “It’s all about blueberries these days. Kids don’t even know what a pineapple is anymore!”

  “I know it’s a pineapple,” said Henry, looking at the pineapple. “Duh! I just mean— Is that all you’ve got down there?”

  “There’s no ‘just’ about it, young man,” said the captain. “Don’t you know how much vitamin C a single pineapple contains? And we have twenty thousand of those bad boys on board!”

  “But . . . don’t you have any treasure? Aren’t you pirates?” asked Uncle Clyde.

  The captain laughed. “Good one!” he said. “No—we’re in the fruit transport business.”

  Imogen felt a flash of satisfaction. Her guesses had been pretty close. But then she saw the disappointment on her family’s faces, and the fury on Ava’s, and the satisfaction faded.

  And then she heard a scream. It seemed to be coming from the sky. . . . She looked up and saw something zooming through the air toward them. . . .

  “Is it a bird?” said Nick.

  “Is it a plane?” asked Nate.

  “Is it a hallucination caused by eating too much brie at the buffet?” asked Josephine.

  But it wasn’t any of those things. It was a man, wearing a jet pack and a strange, lumpy gray costume that looked a bit like a shell. He swooped just above the Crims’ heads and sprayed them all with high-powered squirt guns. And then he caught sight of Imogen, Ava, and Delia on the cruise ship, and he swooped down to attack them too.

  “COMING IN HOT!” he shouted as he sprayed them with water.

  “Is he a superhero?” Imogen whispered to Ava as they ducked behind a safety buoy.

  Ava nodded. “More of a B-list one, though. Such a pathetic catchphrase. That water isn’t even warm.” She sighed. “This is the Mussel,” she went on, over the shouts and screams of the Crims on the Golden Bounty. “He’s the Gull’s sidekick.”

  9

  AVA, IMOGEN, AND Delia crouched below the side of the cruise ship while the strange, gray superhero continued his attack on the ship below.

  “Is he, like, supposed to be . . . seafood?” asked Delia.

  “Yep,” said Ava. “It’s a pretty ridiculous brand. But the potential for puns is phenomenal, so that should make your family happy at least.”

  “Congratulations for using the letter P so many times in that sentence,” said Imogen.

  “Thanks.”

  They ducked again as the Mussel jet packed in their direction and aimed another spray at them.

  “Ugh,” said Imogen, squeezing water out of her T-shirt. “It’s salty!”

  Down on the ship below, the Crims were chattering excitedly.

  “Did you hear that?” asked Uncle Clyde. “We’re so terrifying and dangerous that an actual superhero has come to battle us!”

  “But that’s marvelous!” cried Josephine. “Maybe we’ll finally get to appear on Britain’s Got Talented Criminals!”

  Ava tutted. “That says everything you need to know about your family,” she said. “They aren’t ambitious enough. We should be insulted that the Gull sent only his loser of a sidekick after us. Can’t he be bothered to attack us himself?”

  “I didn’t think we wanted him to attack us, though,” said Imogen. “I thought we were supposed to be raiding his island without him noticing?”

  “But he has noticed, or the Mussel wouldn’t be here,” said Ava. She peeped over the railing of the cruise ship to see what he was doing. “Look at him,” she muttered. “What a loser.”

  But the Mussel didn’t actually seem like a loser to Imogen. He had used his squirt gun to force the Crims—and the unfortunate crew of the Golden Bounty, who were just trying to transport their pineapples—into a group on the Golden Bounty’s deck. It was a bit like watching a sheepdog herd sheep. Except that instead of a dog, he was a flying human-shellfish hybrid who kept shouting things like “Mussel power!” And instead of sheep, they were a group of hardened criminals and confused fruit salespeople who kept shouting things like “Just WAIT till Conman Weekly magazine hears about this!” and “Remember when everyone used to serve cheese and pineapple on sticks at cocktail parties? Those were the good old days. . . .”

  The Mussel pulled out a huge club-like weapon from deep within his shell and threatened the Crims with it. “No funny business,” he said. “Or I’ll scallop you!”

  “What’s scalloping?” Delia whispered to Imogen.

  “Scalp, scallop,” said Imogen. “It’s another terrible pun.”

  “Really terrible,” agreed Ava. “That thing is way too blunt to scalp people with, anyway. Want to see my scalping knife?” She pulled it out of her pocket and handed it over to Imogen and Delia to admire.

  “Wow!” said Delia. “It’s so cute and sharp!”

  Then they heard another shout from the Golden Bounty, and they peered over the railing again.

  “WOULD YOU MIND NOT WAVING THAT CLUB SO CLOSE TO MY FACE?” Uncle Knuckles was saying. “I’VE BEEN USING A FACE MASK EVERY NIGHT TO REDUCE THE NATURAL REDNESS OF MY SKIN TONE, AND BEING SMASHED IN THE FOREHEAD WOULD REALLY UNDO ALL MY HARD WORK.”

  “This isn’t a club,” said the Mussel, scowling (at least, he sounded as if he were scowling—his face wasn’t really visible beneath the strange shell costume). “It’s a foot.”

  “Mussels don’t have feet,” said Sam, still holding the (very unhappy-looking) ship’s cat.

  The Mussel (probably) rolled his eyes. “Shellfish anatomy is so misunderstood!” he said. “Every mussel has a foot—a muscular organ shaped like an ax that it uses to pull itself across sand.”

  Big Nana shook her head. “If a superhero has to explain his weapon, he’s using the wrong weapon,” she said. “You never have to explain a machine gun.”

  “SHUT UP!” shouted the Mussel, aiming the “foot” at the Crims, as if he wanted to knock them into the sea. “IT’S TIME TO TAKE OUT THE TRASH!”

  Imogen frowned. “That’s quite a weird thing for a mussel to say,” she said.

  Ava nodded. “The Gull and the Mussel need a refresher course at staying on brand.”

  “I think you could do with a better catchphrase,” Sam said to the Mussel. “What about, ‘It’s time to show you my mussel?’ Or ‘If you’re selfish, you’ll have to answer to the shellfish.’ Or ‘I’ll make you a shell of your former self’? Or ‘Things are about to get salty!’ Or—”

  But the Mussel didn’t seem to like any of Sam’s ideas, because he swiped his foot at them again.

  “Fair enough,” said Sam, ducking just in time.

  “What shall we do?” Imogen hissed to Ava as the Mussel swung the club toward the Crims again.

  Ava shrugged. “I say we let the Mussel kill them all. They were stupid enough to attack the Golden Bounty. And stupid people deserve to die. Survival of the fittest, and all that.”

  “You really think the Mussel is the fittest?” said Imogen, and she had a point; the foot-club was obviously heavier than it looked, because the Mussel was now panting and slightly out of breath.

  “Whatever,” said Ava, shrugging again. “The point is, we don’t need your family. Apart from Big Nana, obviously. We’ll get her to tell us where the treasure is, and then we’ll kill her too.”

  Imogen panicked. “We do need them . . . ,” she said, hoping that she’d think of a convincing reason by the end of the sentence. And then she thought of something. Thank you, brain. I promise to feed you lots of Brazil nuts and fish if I get out of this alive. “Big Nana has a plan to stop you from killing us or maiming us or throwing any of us overboard,” she continued. She stood up and looked down at Big Nana, who was squashed between Uncle Clyde and Delia on the deck of the Golden Bounty, like a very old, evil sandwich filling. “Isn�
�t that right, Big Nana? Each member of the family knows one line of the directions to the buried treasure. So if even one Crim dies, we won’t know where to dig. . . .” She widened her eyes as she looked at her grandmother. Please catch on. . . .

  Big Nana beamed up at Imogen like a bedside lamp that you’ve forgotten to turn off. “That’s right, my salty piece of feta cheese!” she said.

  Ava stood up and crossed her arms. “But if you’ve taught each member of the family one line of the directions to the treasure, then you must know all the directions yourself. So, like I said, you’re the only one I need to keep alive.”

  “I’d anticipated that, you nasty boiled egg!” said Big Nana. “Which is why I hypnotized myself to forget all of them. Except the line I assigned myself, obviously.”

  Ava turned to look at Imogen, her eyes narrowed. “Is this true?”

  “It’s true,” said Imogen.

  “Extremely true,” said Delia.

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” snapped Ava. She sighed. “Fine,” she said. “I guess I’ll help you defeat the Mussel, then.” She pulled out her anti-aircraft gun and fired it at the Mussel.

  “Oh yeah,” said Imogen. “I forgot there was a cannon on this ship.” She ran over to it and started firing at the Mussel too.

  The Mussel ducked and weaved as the Crims cheered Ava and Imogen on, but then his jet pack started to sputter.

  “He’s running out of fuel!” said Imogen, reloading the cannon. “Let’s get him!”

  But the Mussel wasn’t stupid enough to stay and fight. He jetted slowly off into the distance like a nasty case of food poisoning.

  “He’s gone!” cheered the Crims.

  “Bravo!” The cruise ship passengers applauded, leaning out over their deck—they still thought the whole thing was a show for their entertainment. Cruise ship passengers can be very self-centered.

  “That guy playing the Mussel was amazing!” said Kevin. “You couldn’t even see the wires holding him up!”

  Sam went down to the Golden Bounty’s hold and came back with an armful of pineapples. “Let’s go to the cruise ship and celebrate with piña coladas!”

  The Crims swarmed back from the Golden Bounty to the cruise ship—Uncle Knuckles gave Big Nana a hand, because her arthritis was acting up—and they headed straight for the bar on the pool deck.

  “Hey!” shouted the captain of the Golden Bounty, stumbling onto the deck of the cruise ship. “Those pineapples are ours!” But then he stopped complaining and looked around. The cruise ship was a lot more luxurious than the Golden Bounty. He opened the door to one of the luxury cabins and saw the individual chocolates on the pillows and the Jacuzzis in the bathrooms. “I take it back,” he said. “You can have the pineapples. As long as you don’t mind me and my crew tagging along with you for a bit. . . . If our boss asks why we abandoned our boat and went on a three-week cruise to Aruba, you just tell her you kidnapped us. Okay?”

  “No problem at all,” said Uncle Clyde, who, as we know, enjoyed taking credit for crimes he hadn’t committed.

  Sam handed Uncle Knuckles the pineapples, and Uncle Knuckles smashed them with his bare fists to make pineapple juice. They mixed up fifty piña coladas and handed them out as the tourists and the pineapple sailors and the Crims all mingled together by the pool. The captain of the Golden Bounty played a game of blackjack with Freddie and ended up losing all his money, but he’d had a couple of piña coladas by that point, so he didn’t really mind. After everyone had finished their drinks, Sam clapped his hands. “Please join me in the cabaret theater for my one-man performance of Chicago!” he said.

  Everyone sang along and tapped their feet as Sam high-kicked and bowler-hatted his way through the entire musical, single-handedly. Sure, his voice was so low that no one could actually hear all the notes, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

  Imogen took a seat next to Delia in the back row. “See?” she whispered to her cousin. “All’s well that ends well.”

  Delia turned to her and scowled. “Don’t quote Shakespeare at me, you overeducated traitor,” she whispered. “And don’t think I’m going to forgive you for choosing Ava over your family.”

  Imogen stared at her. “But we were getting along fine during the Mussel’s attack!”

  “Of course we were getting along fine!” said Delia. “Ava is a literal psychopath, and she was holding an anti-aircraft gun at the time! You know what Big Nana always says: ‘When someone is pointing a large gun at you, it’s best to be polite.’” She put on the whiny, high-pitched voice she used when she was making fun of Ava, and said, “‘I say we let the Mussel kill them all.’”

  Imogen’s stomach grew cold. “You heard that?”

  “Of course I heard,” said Delia. “You know hearing tests are the only tests I ever pass.” She shook her head. “You’ll be sorry. Ava’s not actually your friend.” And she got up and walked away, leaving Imogen feeling scared and guilty and angry at the same time—her three least favorite emotions.

  10

  LIFE ON THE cruise ship carried on as normally as life on a cruise ship that’s been hijacked by criminals and filled with pineapple shippers can be. Aunt Bets tried to disembowel Barbara with pineapple spikes, because Barbara told her she “liked her wig;” Isabella taught herself to drive the cruise ship by watching a couple of YouTube videos and took over as captain. (The real captain kept hearing people saying the word “and,” which meant he kept thinking he was a chicken, which meant he was not very good at steering.) Isabella made a fantastic captain, although she did have to stand on a box full of pineapples to reach the steering wheel, and her announcements were mostly her blowing raspberries and singing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”

  Imogen felt almost happy again. Everyone seemed to be getting along brilliantly—the crew of the Golden Bounty played water polo in the pool with the tourists, Uncle Clyde and Kevin started playing table tennis together every night after dinner, and Barbara began teaching a line dancing class in the cabaret theater every evening, which was very popular with Josephine and Uncle Knuckles. Several of the tourists had played so many games of poker that they now owed Freddie money, but Freddie was in a relaxed, happy vacation mood, and he decided not to use violence to collect their debts. Plus, Ava hadn’t mentioned murdering any of Imogen’s family members for at least three days. The only thing bothering her was the fact that Delia was still ignoring her.

  But soon, Delia would become the least of Imogen’s problems.

  One afternoon, Imogen was in the Jacuzzi with Big Nana, who was very fond of bubbles, when she overheard Kevin muttering about how it was oddly warm for the North Sea. “I mean, it could be global warming,” he said to Barbara, “but surely it shouldn’t take two weeks to get to Oslo?”

  “Wait,” said the captain of the Golden Bounty. “You think we’re going to Norway?”

  Imogen’s heart sank like the glass full of virgin piña colada she had just dropped in the Jacuzzi. She pulled herself out of the Jacuzzi and ran, swimsuit dripping, to the control room. She had to try something, anything, to distract the passengers. . . .

  She grabbed the microphone and made an announcement. “Attention, passengers!” she said. “I’m pleased to say that we’re starting happy hour three hours early today! And the first people at the bar get free chips!”

  But she could still hear Kevin muttering to Barbara on the deck below: “The chips are free, anyway. Something fishy’s going on. And not fishy in a good way, like a delicious fillet of salmon. . . .”

  Barbara shaded her eyes against the sun and looked up at Imogen. “Hey! Yes, you, young lady!” she said. “I’m hearing rumors that we’re not headed to Norway! If that’s so, I insist that you turn this ship around at once!”

  Imogen ran to the beauty lounge, where her mother was giving Ava a manicure.

  “Darling!” said Josephine. “Have you come to get a pedicure? Very sensible. Your toes are looking disastrous at the moment. Like shriveled peas!�
�

  “No,” said Imogen, sitting down on the swivel chair next to Ava. “We have a major problem on our hands.”

  “You might,” said Josephine, “but Ava has cuticle oil on her hands.”

  Imogen ignored her mother and turned to Ava. “The tourists have figured out that we’re not going to Norway. They’re beginning to revolt.”

  “They’ve always been revolting,” said Ava, admiring her newly painted nails.

  “That’s a really old joke,” said Imogen. “You can do better than that.”

  “I prefer to think of it as vintage,” said Ava. “Anyway, isn’t this something you can deal with on your own? Try distracting them or something. These are people who are voluntarily spending three weeks on a boat with an all-you-can-eat buffet. They’re easily pleased. Throw them some peanuts, or something.”

  “I’ve tried that— They’re not having any of it. They’re shouting at us to turn around. You might not know how Uncle Knuckles gets when people shout, but—”

  From somewhere on the boat, they could hear Uncle Knuckles wailing. “WHY CAN’T EVERYONE JUST LOVE ONE ANOTHER AND GET ALONG?”

  Ava sighed and flicked her shiny ponytail. “Fine,” she said. She took out her smartphone and loaded a map. “Oh, we’re going to be fine,” she said, studying it. “We’re almost at Barbados. I have a plan. Don’t worry.”

  Josephine laughed. “That’s like telling Aunt Bets not to murder innocent people with household objects! Or telling Al not to do so many crosswords! Or telling me not to be a style icon!”

  Ava pushed back her chair and stood up, flicking her hands to dry her nails.

  “Wait!” said Josephine, rushing over to her with another bottle of nail polish. “I haven’t put the topcoat on! Big Nana always says: ‘Always finish what you’ve started, especially murders and manicures.’”

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” said Ava. “I just need to go and make an announcement to the passengers. . . .”

  “Good morning, ladies, gentlemen, and Henry.” Ava’s voice crackled over the ship’s loudspeaker. “I am pleased to tell you that we’ll be docking in Norway in just a few hours. As you all know, it’s extremely hot in Norway at this time of year, and this is palm tree season in northern Europe. The traditional Norwegian carnival will be starting in a few hours, so don’t be surprised if you hear reggae music and see people drinking rum cocktails. . . .”