The flipped lounge chair deposited her on the cement pool deck, in a sprawled out, unladylike pile with the chair on top of her. The sudden jolt of motion woke her out of her just-woke-from-a-nap daze.
Charlie and Betty jumped up to assist her to her feet. She thought of many things as she reached for Betty’s hand, and then Charlie’s. The thoughts fired off so rapidly, and with such organization, that they formed a neat little list in her mind. It was almost as though she had her notebook and pen in hand and was crafting a much-needed list.
What is Charlie hiding? Could it be related to Raul’s criminal activities?
What do Ana and Paula have to do with it?
What is the relationship between Ana and Paula?
And, lastly… 4.) Where in tarnation is my broomstick?
At that very moment, her broomstick was only seven and two-thirds miles away, battling gusts of wind as it fought to make it to her side. If Lorna had known of her broomstick’s heroic efforts against gale upon gale of gusting wind, she would have felt gratitude instead of mounting frustration over the broom’s tardiness.
Lorna brushed off her knees, and then her elbows.
“That sounded like quite a spill!” Betty said.
“See, Charlie?” Lorna said. “You’re not the only clumsy one around here.”
“I suppose not. Are you all right?”
Lorna’s spill seemed to jolt Charlie out of his self-pity as well. The big-hearted man was now fretting over his new friend. “Smacked your knees against that cement right hard,” he exclaimed.
“I’m okay,” Lorna said again. She brushed her knees off a second time, noting that they did indeed smart a bit as she ran her fingers over the fabric of her linen pants.
“We’d better move to the couches,” Betty suggested, leading the way off of the pool deck. “These lounge chairs are unstable.”
Lorna looked sideways at Charlie as they crossed the pool deck. “Charlie, whatever it is that you’re worried about is probably not worth fussing over. You’re a good man, inside and out. I can see that. You wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
“No, no I wouldn’t,” Charlie agreed. He stopped walking then. Betty was already in the seating area, but Charlie and Lorna had lagged behind. Now they had a moment alone, and Charlie spoke sincerely. “I like you and your friend, Betty,” Charlie said, glancing over at the white-haired Betty “I’ve been working on this ship for years, and it’s rare to have guests that I get along with as well as you two. There’s something about the both of you. Something different,” he said. “I don’t quite understand it.” He shook his head.
Lorna grinned. She knew that Charlie was sensing the magical and psychic abilities that she and Betty both had. “Thank you,” she said. “And you’re a fine man yourself.”
“I wish that was the case,” Charlie said ruefully. “But I think I’ve messed up sorely.”
“How so?” Lorna asked. She looked around, making sure that no one could overhear them.
The only other person in sight was Betty, and Lorna did not mind if Betty’s attuned ears caught the conversation. It was the murderer she did not want eavesdropping. Seeing no one besides Betty in hearing-range, she continued in almost a whisper. “Charlie, I know that Raul’s business is not aboveboard.”
Charlie looked surprised. “You know that?”
Lorna nodded. “Yes,” she said. “And I take it that you did, too? Is that what you were turning a blind eye to?”
Charlie looked off into the distance as he spoke. “Raul…he paid me twice what my salary was in London at the police force. I think I told you that already. All I had to do was turn my head in the other direction when he unloaded crates of booze or cigarettes when we landed at ports. He had quite a black-market going, but I’m sure you know all about that.”
Lorna nodded as if she did. She tried to keep her surprise from showing. So Raul’s been selling alcohol and cigarettes, she thought. That’s what his criminal activity is all about.
Apparently, Charlie did not pick up on Lorna’s astonishment. As you know, he wasn’t the most observant of men. How he got into the police force to begin with is altogether a mystery—but not one that we will solve here. Let’s just say that it had much to do with a strong family history with the London PD—two uncles, a father, and a grandfather on the force—and very little to do with his talent or skill.
Charlie continued nodding in Lorna’s direction. “Yes, you knew all about the smuggling, didn’t you? You’re a smart woman, Lorna.”
Lorna felt herself blush. She had never dated much, and it felt good to receive a compliment from a man. There had been Cliff, of course, back in Tallahassee, but he’d never been one to dole out compliments. Quite the opposite, in fact. He was fond of telling her when the clams had been overcooked in her clam chowder, or when one of her outfits looked on the drab side.
Charlie continued, oblivious to the way his compliment had affected Lorna. “I don’t know how you figured it out, but I see that you did. I suppose I can’t hide it anymore.”
“Not now that there’s a murder investigation going on,” Lorna said. “It seems that should take precedence.”
“Precedence! See? Speaking with you is like getting a vocabulary lesson. Yes, Lorna, you’re right. The murder has to take priority. I’m going to have to come clean with the police.”
“It will be best,” Lorna said.
“All I did was look the other way,” Charlie said. “I never profited from the sales—if you don’t count my salary.” He scratched the back of his head and looked quite uncomfortable.
“I’m sure you did a great deal to earn your keep aboard, besides just ignoring Raul’s smuggling of goods,” Lorna said. “For example, you did a very high-quality job of keeping guests calm this morning when the body was discovered. That could have led to panic. And again, when Lou went overboard, you helped to keep the staff and guests from becoming unruly. I think that crowd control is one of your strong suits.”
Charlie’s chest puffed up a bit. He continued walking, and Lorna fell into step with him. “Yes,” he said. “Right you are. Crowd control! Always been good at it. It’s my voice. A deep, powerful voice can help a great deal when corralling the masses.”
“Of course,” Lorna said. Now she was buttering him up a bit, but where’s the harm in a bit of butter? Lorna could find nothing wrong about it. “You have a voice of authority. I’m sure it served you well when you were on the police force as well. I see that the people aboard this ship have a great deal of respect for you. They always look in your direction when things go awry.”
“It’s true,” Charlie said.
“For instance, I’m sure that’s why Ana and Paula wanted to speak with you. What was it that you were saying about them? That they were speaking with you last night?”
Charlie nodded. They reached the cluster of couches and armchairs where Betty had found a seat.
Lorna remained standing. Charlie plopped down next to Betty. “Yes,” he said with a sigh. “Ana Almeda and her assistant Paula came round to my quarters last night just as I was dressing for the ball. That all seems so long ago.”
“It does,” Betty agreed with a sympathetic nod. “That was before things went all wonky. The ship was sailing, and everyone was alive.”
“Alive and having fun,” Charlie said. “Remember that? What fun was like?”
“What did they want to talk about?” Betty asked.
“Oh, they were asking questions. Seemed they got wind of the smuggling racket too, and they wanted to know more. I don’t know why a wealthy Spanish woman and her assistant would want to know about bootlegged liquor, but…” Charlie shrugged. His gesture seemed to perfectly express the way he felt about many aspects of his job: what do I know, and what can I do about it?
Lorna pressed him. “They must have had some sort of an angle,” she said. “What sorts of things were they asking you? Maybe they’re his competitors, looking to win over his customers. Maybe Ana’s been smuggling for years�
�”
“And that’s where her wealth comes from!” Betty finished.
Lorna nodded. “It’s a possibility,” she said. She looked at Charlie. “What do you think? Do you think that Ana could be trying to steal Raul’s customer’s right from under his nose?”
“I couldn’t even venture a guess,” Charlie said with another shrug. “All I know is that she asked a lot of questions. Had a lot of information about Raul, too, though the details escape me at this moment. I was thinking more about the celebration than her questions and was right distracted. Already sipping a cocktail and all that.” He blushed apologetically.
“Try,” Lorna said, placing her hands on her hips. She’d started pacing back and forth in front of the seating area, and now she started walking faster. Her scraped knees no longer hurt. She was far too excited about the new progress they were making on the case. Could Ana be the murderer? Did she run a ring of smugglers of her own?
She spoke as she paced. “Try, Charlie. Try to put yourself in Ana’s place. Why was she questioning you? What did she want? Ana told me that Leon may have been involved with Raul’s criminal activities. That means that Raul’s smuggling business could have something to do with the murder. Ana was interested in the smuggling, so Ana could be the killer. This is important, Charlie. You’ve got to try!”
Lorna’s pep talk had an immediate effect on Charlie. It also affected Betty, who bounced up from her seat in a way that Lorna had never seen her bounce before. “Try, Charlie! Try!” Betty cried out enthusiastically while doing something that looked a bit like a rain dance.
Charlie squeezed his eyes shut. He looked (not to be crude, but in all honesty) more like he was sitting on a toilet and trying to go to the bathroom than like he was trying to think. His efforts—however awkward they may have been or made the two women with him feel—paid off. “I’ve got it!” he cried out, as his eyes popped open. He sprung up out of his seat.
“What?” Lorna and Betty asked in unison.
“I put myself in Ana’s shoes!” Charlie said with excitement.
“True empathy can be so insightful!” Betty said, clapping her hands gleefully.
“What did you discover?” Lorna asked.
“I hate heels,” Charlie said. “I could imagine it in such detail. My feet were jammed all the way to the front of the heel. My toes were cramped. I couldn’t wiggle them at all.” Charlie wiggled his toes in a wave-like motion, all the way from one pinky toe, through to his big toe, to the other big toe, and then to his pinky. It was just like the wave that Lorna had seen when she went to a baseball game with Cliff.
Betty and Lorna focused on Charlie’s feet. Charlie saw their attention and wiggled his toes in the wave-formation again. Betty sensed this with amazement. She suddenly felt very disappointed with her own lack of dexterity in her toes. She promised herself that she would learn to wiggle her toes just as the sandal-wearing security guard could.
This took years of practice, but on a rainy spring day three years later, while sitting in her recliner and feeling into her toes with intensity, she perfected the move. She then gave a discreet whoop of victory and promptly forgot to practice toe-wiggling ever again.
Back to our story… Lorna was disappointed in Charlie’s empathic abilities. “That’s what you got?” she said, unable to hide her exasperation. “That heels are uncomfortable? Every woman knows that heels are uncomfortable!”
“But I’m a man,” Charlie said proudly. “And yet, I figured it out.”
“You did,” Lorna said. She had to give him that. “Was Paula with Ana? Was she acting meek? Or more like Ana’s equal?”
“More like her equal, I’d say,” Charlie offered. “I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful. I’m simply not as good at this as you two are—though it pains me to say it.”
He retreated to the couch. Lorna and Betty remained standing.
“You’ve been very helpful,” Betty said. “Now, we can tell that you’re knackered, just like we were after our meal. Have a rest, why don’t you? A nap always helps.”
“I do need to prepare myself for the arrival of the police. Here’s to hoping that they get here soon. I’d like to get all of this over with as quickly as possible.” Charlie propped his feet up on the couch and began reclining. He looked more than ready to settle in for a nap.
“Any idea on the arrival time?” Lorna asked. She didn’t have high hopes for a definite answer, but she had to try anyway.
Charlie answered with his usual shrug, which was no surprise. As Lorna and Betty walked off, after having a quick telepathic talk about what to do next, Charlie called out, “Where are you off to?”
“Below deck!” Lorna called over her shoulder. She and Betty had decided that it was high time to revisit the crime scene. They’d learned all that they could from the friendly guard.
“Be safe!” Charlie called out.
“We will!” Betty promised happily.
Lorna pressed her lips together, holding back from disagreeing with her friend. She didn’t know how safe it was to visit, unarmed, the place where a man had been brutally killed less than twelve hours earlier. But she didn’t want to worry Betty. Instead, she took the lead as they began descending the stairs that led to the first level of the ship.
She wasn’t sure what kind of defenses she could offer up if she and Betty came upon a dangerous position, but she at least wanted to try to protect her friend.
Lorna reached the bottom stair. The sun had sunk below the horizon at about the moment that Charlie was mining his consciousness for the fact that women’s heels were uncomfortable, and the sky was now indigo and blue. Inside the stairwell, the dark blue sky provided only a faint illumination.
At the bottom of the flight of stairs, the light bulb overhead was out, and the space was ominously dark. Lorna’s heart pounded in her chest as she took hesitant steps down the narrow hallway, towards the scene of the crime.
Chapter 13
Lorna wanted to be the strong one, offering up protection for her older friend Betty as they approached the crime scene. She wanted to go first—so that if someone jumped out at them, she could take up some kind of defensive stance.
Briefly, she recalled the way her father had mentioned once that a punch would land stronger if one clutched a roll of quarters in one’s fist. For a split second, Lorna wished that she had a roll of quarters handy. But then she quickly realized that she had no idea how to punch, and her attempt at hitting someone would fail whether she had extra weight in her hand or not.
Betty reached forward and grabbed Lorna’s trembling elbow.
“It’s dark here, isn’t it?” Betty asked, pausing to sense her surroundings.
“Very,” Lorna said. Her voice quivered.
“Welcome to my world,” Betty said in a breezy tone. “Always a trifle dark, unless I’m focusing on particularly bright thoughts. Not to worry. I can navigate without sight.”
So the two women walked arm-in-arm down the dark hallway, and with each step, Lorna’s confidence grew. Surely Betty would be able to sense danger if it lurked; there was no need to fret over a surprise attack.
When they reached the end of the narrow hallway, they stepped out onto the deck. It was a bit brighter in the natural late-evening light, and Lorna felt even more relieved.
She was relaxed enough to chuckle when she saw the crime scene. Charlie had been unable to find his crime-scene tape, so he’d improvised. Lorna saw Hawaiian shirts, strung up on a bit of clothesline proffered from the staff laundry room. The shirts provided an effective barrier around the dead body because Lorna saw that the scene looked untouched.
“What’s so funny?” Betty asked.
“Charlie’s put up his Hawaiian shirts around the body instead of crime-scene tape,” Lorna said. “I see at least ten of them strung up on clothesline. It makes for a good barrier.”
Betty laughed. “Well, at least he did something.”
They walked towards the line of shirts and Lorna pulled
two apart, creating a gap in the barrier that she and Betty could slip through.
Once inside the area, Lorna kept talking. “I see that the body’s been left untouched,” she said. “He looks just as he did this morning. Face down, blood on the floor next to him. I can see how it splattered on Sandy—there’s quite a lot of it.” She stepped carefully over a puddle of it and then guided Betty over it as well, saying, “Step carefully just there… there’s a bit of a splat.”
“My, my,” said Betty. “Poor fellow. He’d have been better off if that blood stayed where it was in his noggin rather than being painted all over the floor.”
“Right you are,” said Lorna. She looked all around the body. “The floor’s very clear around him, except for the blood,” she said. “I don’t see any tracks or anything.”
“What would there be tracks for?” Betty asked. “We’re on a ship. No dirt, mud, or grass in sight. Everything is so clean out here, isn’t it? Or at least it smells so clean.”
“Absolutely,” Lorna said. “Spotless. Sparkling. No mud to track in or out. So we haven’t got footprints to work with.” That was a real disappointment. It seemed that the detectives on television always had footprints to work with.
“What’s the floor like?” Betty asked.
“Looks like some sort of non-skid flooring,” Lorna said. “Like a linoleum. Not the polished wood that we have above deck. The designs in the tiles aren’t fancy, either. Plain gray.”
“Well, now they’re decorated with maroon,” offered Betty.
“Jackson Pollock would be proud,” Lorna said. She remembered the exhibit at the Florida Museum of Modern Art in ’89 that had featured the artist's work. His splatters of paint looked much like the maroon splatters on the Mariasca’s deck.
“There are less chairs down here,” Lorna noted, looking around. “It’s so bare. None of the fancy cushioned furniture of the second level. The walls are white. There are some splatters of blood on the wall behind him, too.”
“That makes sense,” Betty said. “He must have been hit while standing, and then fell—spouting blood as he went—to the ground. That would fit with the splatters on Sandy’s dress.”
A Witch On The High Seas: Merryweather Mysteries Page 12
