Page 6 of Without a Clue

And Hugh. My boss. Incredibly intelligent. Charming. Risk taker. Founding father of the group, whose brain is constantly whirring, taking in every speck of detail from the moment. Casually chatting with you about the tarragon in the sauce while mentally solving real live murders. Still works part-time for the police department. Voluntarily. As a “mental exercise,” he says. Just to “keep his mind fresh” at seventy-five while being a benefit to society. Writes mystery. Not the kind with an apple pie on the cover beside an illustrated cat, but Agatha Christie. Dorothy Sayers. Convoluted stories. Surprising, sometimes bitter, sometimes bittersweet ends.

Nobody in the group fights.

There are no arguments. Not really. Not actual, shout-to-the-rooftops arguments over anything more substantial than where to eat dinner.

Just pure support year in and year out.

In my five years as Hugh’s assistant and, by extension, assistant to The Magnificent Seven, I’ve never seen anything like it.

Honestly, if I didn’t know them better, I’d say they were hiding secrets.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say they had to be.

After all, they’re human.

“Come along, Pip,” Neena chirps. “Even through our mental breakthroughs, we cannot dawdle.”

It takes approximately twelve more honks and thirty more minutes, but at last here we are, halfway up the gangplank with our luggage, sweat carving streaky paths down our sunscreened faces. My skirt is mostly dried. My hair is knotted in the ugliest let’s-just-keep-everything-together bun alive. My blouse is missing a button.

I feel terrible they all followed me down to the beach, but as Neena says, “Once we saw the whole thing through Ricky’s binoculars”—another question for another time: Why was Ricky watching me through binoculars?—“what choice did we have but to save our baby?”

(I’d ignore the reference to my babyhood and assert myself as a capable adult, except for the fact that at the time, I was indeed acting like a child and did indeed need a capable adult.)

Neena has put on her gigantic floppy beach hat, which looks like it weighs approximately forty pounds. She turns toward me, and despite being a full three feet ahead, it whacks me in the face.

“He was gross. And,” I add pointedly, “he was inconsiderate.”

A far worse crime.

Somewhere along the way, driven by guilt mostly, I’ve added Neena’s suitcase to my load.

It’s not easy dragging our bags, considering her suitcase is not only one hundred pounds of glow-in-the-dark purple with a thousand stickers of her book covers smashed all about, but also twice the height of mine with a dodgy wheel. I’m lopsided, pulling along her protesting suitcase beside my modest (and personality-less) beige one.

And while I’m kicking myself while I’m down, I must note it reflects well who I am though, doesn’t it?

“Of course he was inconsiderate. As men so often are,” she says in a we of the female population have resigned ourselves to this fact singsong voice.

Hugh ahead raises his brow.

“Quite the statement for the romance author,” I say.

It’s funny because, for one thing, she’s surrounded by the most trustworthy, upstanding men in the universe (minus Ricky?), and for another, her specialty is writing utterly unrealistic, nearly nauseatingly self-sacrificing and noble firemen-type males.

“Gordon and I are the same, honey,” Neena says. “We both write fantasy.”

Now it’s Gordon who jerks his head back.

She’s just trying to make me feel better. I’ve suffered from a male, ergo, she, too, will strike her fist in the air. I appreciate the move of solidarity. Even if it’s a bald-faced lie.

She stops and turns, and I dodge another whack of her hat to the face. “Would you like me to write him into my next book, sweetheart? I’ll kill him off, if you like. Just for you.”

Golly gee. What a treat.

“I appreciate the gesture, Neena. But that’s more Hugh’s genre.”

“The Pineapple Murder,” Hugh announces cheerfully. “Has a ring to it.”

“How would you . . . have them . . . do it?” Ricky says with morbidly piqued curiosity. “I just read . . . a cyanide toxicity report in . . . fruit juices. Watch out, everyone,” he says, casting a foreboding look at each of us. “It’s too easy.”