Haunted Destiny

by Heather Graham

  The man driving the Chevy should have been stopped by the sheer volume of pedestrian traffic. So far, he’d banged on his horn and plowed through. Jude hopped into the driver’s seat while Crow got into the passenger side.

  Streets were closed; there was no way to traverse them.

  Jude shot across to a side street, but the suspect was nowhere to be seen. Moving on instinct, he sped toward Canal, hoping to cut him off.

  “Where are you going?” Crow asked.

  “We’ll catch him on the border of the Vieux Carre,” Jude said.

  And they did.

  There they saw the Chevy surging ahead, and Jude did his best to follow without running over a pedestrian. Even on Canal, people were wandering on and off the road.

  “Where’s he going? What the hell?” Crow asked, shaking his head. “And who’s driving? Are we dealing with a pair of killers?”

  The man in the Chevy didn’t seem to have a destination. He was driving erratically, avoiding the dozens of cop cars now on the road.

  “Airport...train station...” Crow mused. “Hey! That was him, down Tchoupitoulas!”

  “Might be going to the port,” Jude said, still trying to follow the Chevy. He wasn’t sure, but he thought that the driver was now maneuvering around a one-way street toward the Riverwalk area—and the massive cruise port.

  Yes.

  The car was going to the port!

  As Jude drove hard, the siren blasting, Jackson Crow got on the radio, advising all law enforcement in the area to watch out for the car and the two men, giving a description of their suspect’s clothing and appearance.

  So many ships, so many cruise lines.

  “There! Up ahead. The Celtic American line,” Crow said. “I see the car.”

  The Chevy was in front of the entry to the Celtic American line. More chaos was breaking out as last-minute cruisers competed for positions to park or drop off passengers.

  Jude jerked the sedan off to the side of the road. Crow was out of the sedan before it was in Park. Seconds later he had the driver standing on the sidewalk beside the old Chevy.

  He looked like a man in a trance. He was fifty-five or sixty, a slightly pudgy and balding businessman who seemed completely bewildered—as if he didn’t know who he was or why he was there.

  “Who were you driving? Why didn’t you stop?” Crow demanded.

  “I’m Walter Bean. I was supposed to pick up my daughter after her shift at the Red Garter... She’s a hostess there.”

  “We need you to tell us about your passenger.”

  “I’m not even sure he was real, he showed up so fast! I don’t know... I don’t understand... Suddenly he was in the car, making me drive, telling me there was a killer after me.”

  “Where did he go just now?” Jackson asked. “Think. Where did he go?”

  Walter Bean was very red and sweating profusely. He shook his head. “I don’t know. He said to stop here. I stopped. He got out of the car. I don’t know if he...if he was a killer. I believed he would kill me. He was frantic. He said a killer was after me, and then he said he’d kill me if I didn’t drive, didn’t get him to the port. Oh, God, oh, God...”

  The man clutched his chest.

  “Heart attack!” Jude warned.

  They patted his shirt for aspirin; Jude found the bottle, and Jackson got a pill in the man’s mouth. Other agents ran up.

  “Get him an ambulance!” Crow yelled, gesturing to a cop in uniform who rushed forward to help.

  “Let’s move,” Jude said. He could hear sirens already. Walter Bean would now receive the medical care he needed.

  Once again, he and Crow were running.

  Jackson flashed his badge as they moved through the passenger terminal. They were asking questions at a checkpoint when Jude found himself studying a man who had boarded the ship. He’d just crossed the air bridge, and Jude could see him through the window.

  No one there had seen a man who fit the description of the man they were chasing.

  But Jude did.

  He couldn’t see him clearly; there were too many people boarding at the same time.

  He turned to Jackson Crow. “He’s on the ship. It makes perfect sense. Every city where the Archangel has killed has been a port city—a port where cruise ships depart and return. Some crew members are on for nine months or more at a stint. Some hire on for two, four or six months, especially if they’re entertainers or celebrity hosts, that sort of thing. Crow, it’s what we’ve been trying to figure out! How and why the murders happen and then stop. He’s either an employee or a passenger on a ship, and I have strong feelings it’s that ship.”

  “Why do you think it’s that ship?” Jackson asked.

  “I think I just saw him. Or at least, I saw the man we were chasing.”

  “You’re not certain?”

  “No. Not 100 percent certain.”

  “McCoy, we don’t even know if he’s the killer! He could be some gawker jerk who’s guilty of some minor crime—and afraid of all the law enforcement. He could also be late for a sailing.”

  “If he was just late for a sailing, he would’ve had to go through the line. But he’s here on the ship. And no one runs like that because of a parking ticket. He’s guilty of something major—probably these murders—and I believe he’s on that ship.”

  Jackson Crow stared at him a moment longer; Jude didn’t blame him. They’d met less than three hours ago. Crow had Native American in his heritage, and although Jude wasn’t in any way enamored of stereotyping, Crow had the “stoic” attributed to Native Americans down pat. Jude couldn’t begin to tell what he was thinking.

  “Gut feeling,” Jude told him, determined to be honest and equally determined to be convincing. “I have one hell of a gut feeling.”

  Jackson Crow brought out his credentials and started a rapid-fire discussion with a Celtic American security guard. Within seconds another man came down; some senior person with the cruise line.

  When they’d finished speaking, Jude and Jackson were each handed a boarding pass.

  “Ever been to Cozumel?” Jackson asked drily.

  “Spring break, a thousand years ago.”

  Jackson shrugged. “Then you should remember it well enough. Anyway, let’s hope to hell we’re off by then—with him in cuffs. Because if we’re not...”

  “He’ll kill again,” Jude said quietly. He looked up at the behemoth they were about to board.

  The Destiny.

  She wasn’t one of the largest ships sailing the seas by far. She was, Jude knew—thanks to the publicity at her most recent relaunch—the pride of the Celtic American line, owned by an Irish American who had come to the States as a college student and gone on to become a billionaire. The ship was old, commissioned in the late 1930s by an English lord who was hoping to give the Queen Mary a run for her money. The timing, for obvious reasons, had been bad. She wound up serving as a hospital ship during World War II, her cruising days curtailed by the devastation facing the world. Following the war, she’d gone through numerous hands until she’d been purchased and completely refurbished by Celtic American. The company specialized in historic ships, making that history part of their charm.

  No, she wasn’t one of the largest. She still carried about seven hundred crew members.

  And over 2,400 passengers.

  She was, in essence, a small city.

  Jude looked at Crow, then studied the ship again.

  “What?” Crow asked.

  “He might be feeling the heat’s on him now. And that means he just might kill again before we reach our next port.”

  * * *

  “I really think you should be playing more ballads.” Minnie Lawrence said, her painted red lips forming a pretty pout. “This is, after all, a piano ba
r.”

  Minnie had draped herself on one of the velvet lounge chairs near the piano. She was beautifully clad in a slinky blue gown with a matching headband around her short blond hair. She managed to smile while maintaining her pout, behaving as the 1930s idol she’d once been. But she was truly sweet and very charming. Alexi could understand why she’d been so beloved in her day.

  “I believe she means old ballads,” Blake Dalton said, coming behind Minnie to lean rakishly against the chair as they both stared at Alexi Cromwell with their most beguiling smiles. “Well, what you’d call old ballads, at any rate!”

  Blake definitely had some Valentino mystery-charisma, as well.

  “I do my best,” Alexi assured the two, sorting through the book she kept for the passengers who wanted to sing. She looked up at them and sighed. “Honestly. I do. But this is the twenty-first century. And I play our passengers’ requests. That’s my job.”

  “I’m a passenger, and I’m requesting!” Minnie said.

  But you’re a dead passenger! Alexi wanted to say.

  She refrained.

  “I do a smashing version of ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow,’” Minnie said. “And it was in The Wizard of Oz. Surely, everyone knows that.”

  “Or ‘In the Mood’!” Blake said. “Minnie sings that very well indeed.”

  “You do way too much of that new fellow, that Billy Joel man,” Minnie said. “I just can’t fix on a key with him.”

  “Most people these days don’t consider Billy Joel to be a new fellow and I’m sorry, but I never go a night without someone wanting ‘Piano Man.’ But a number of people really enjoy older numbers and ask for them, too. How about this? I promise I’ll do ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ tonight. How’s that?” Alexi asked.

  Before Blake or Minnie could reply, a man came tearing into the Algiers Saloon, racing through the bar area—for employees only—to leap over a neighboring sofa and continue running down the hallway of the St. Charles Deck.

  He moved so swiftly that Alexi never saw his face. She had a fleeting impression of his height and appearance—and something a little ghastly. He looked as if he was wearing makeup for a Shakespearean play or a classic Greek drama.

  Gray sweatshirt, blue jeans, about six feet, maybe around two hundred pounds.

  “Well, I never!” Minnie sniffed.

  “How incredibly rude,” Blake said, trembling with the indignity of it all.

  “We’ve seen plenty of rude. At least he didn’t jump over the sofa where you two are sitting!” Alexi told them, lowering her head so they couldn’t see her smile.

  Sometimes, guests sensed the pair of ghosts. She would see them shiver and look around, remind themselves that they were on a floating island with thousands of people around them. She knew it disturbed both Blake and Minnie when people walked through them. It didn’t hurt them—they simply didn’t like it. Blake once explained to her that it felt as if someone had shoved you carelessly in a crowd. It was rude, just rude. “Some staff member who’s late reporting in, maybe,” Alexi murmured. “Anyway, my friends, I’m going to my cabin while the stampede of boarding takes place. I’ll see you soon.”

  Alexi rose, scooping up her book, laptop and extra music pages. She smiled at Blake and Minnie. “I promise, we’ll start off with Judy Garland,” she assured them.

  “Lovely!” Minnie called after her.

  “Shall we stroll, darling?” she heard Blake ask Minnie.

  “We’ll find a place high atop and watch as we sail away, watch the city disappear and the beauty of the moon upon the water,” Minnie agreed.

  Alexi smiled as she hurried on, anxious to get to the elevators and down below where the crew members had their cabins.

  She loved having Minnie and Blake on the ship. The Destiny had lost many employees to the ghosts they encountered on board. People had reported seeing images disappear and things being moved about. Sheet music seemed to do that a lot, according to people who’d worked on the ship. Actually, Alexi owed her position to the fact that the pianist who’d been preferred by the entertainment director had lasted only one cruise. As a result, Alexi had been hired. She was sure that the musician who’d left—disturbed by the way his sheet music constantly moved and keys played when he hadn’t touched them—would find a job that made him happy. He was a far better pianist than she was. But he hadn’t felt the same need to escape, to live this strange life of fantasy the way she had.

  Escape.

  She couldn’t escape. Her sister, her brother, her parents, her friends—everyone had told her that. Zach was dead. He’d come back from the Middle East in a box. She knew that. She’d never escape the fact that he was dead. But she could escape New Orleans, their little Irish Channel duplex and the places they’d frequented for years.

  She realized, as she walked, that she’d been on the ship for almost a year. Well, four months on and one off, and then back on, accepting contract after contract with the cruise line. And although she might not have the astounding talent of some piano bar hosts, she did have a way with a crowd. Perhaps equally important, she never complained about ghosts or poltergeists.

  She’d been aware of the dead as long as she could remember. Early on, her mom, not in so many words, but by careful suggestion, had let her know the sense ran in the family.

  And it was best not to share that with others. She was pretty sure her mom didn’t actually see or hear ghosts; with her, it really was a sense. She felt when they were close, felt the happiness that had existed—and the trauma and tears.

  As Alexi walked down the hall to her cabin, she passed Clara Avery, one of the entertainers in the ship’s main show, Les Misérables.

  Clara was supremely talented; she was a soprano with a genuinely impressive voice.

  “Hey!” Clara said. “You were back-to-back cruises, too, huh? Did you take some time to get off the ship? Did you see your family?”

  “Yes, they came and met me for lunch near the port,” Alexi told her.

  “Good.” Clara hesitated. “It’s been a long time, Alexi. I can’t imagine having your wedding all planned—and him not coming home. But you can’t let your family lose you, too.”

  “I know. I know that, really. I see them as often as I can. Honestly. I love my folks. I didn’t see my brother because he’s on tour and Sienna’s in Europe. On vacation. Well deserved, I imagine.” She grinned. “My poor parents. They’re so...mathematical and scientific! And they wound up with two entertainers and only one doctor, Sienna!”

  “I’m sure they’re proud of all of you,” Clara said. She grinned. “I think my dad cried when he found out I wanted to go into theater. But he’s happy now!”

  “And he’s a super guy. They came to the piano bar almost every night they were on the cruise—even when you couldn’t. Your mom is lovely, too.”

  “Your folks haven’t taken the cruise yet,” Clara noted.

  Alexi shrugged. No, her mother would never be on this ship. She didn’t see the dead the same way Alexi did, but she knew they were there. She worried not just because Alexi was a piano-playing hostess on a cruise ship; she worried because Alexi was on the Destiny.

  “The things that happened on that ship!” her mother had warned her. “Terrible! And not just the poor soldiers who died. There were other incidents, too!” The Destiny, like most old ships with interesting histories, had the reputation of being haunted.

  There’d been incidents aboard, yes. Such as the night in 1939 when Blake and Minnie had died, murdered in cold blood.

  But Alexi wished she could explain that none of the ghosts on the ship were malevolent in any way. She’d come across a couple of soldiers who’d died in the infirmary: Privates Jimmy Estes and Frank Marlowe, handsome young men who’d been taken far too soon; Barbara Leon, a nurse who’d died of a fever she’d caught while tending to other
s; and Captain McPherson, who’d dropped dead of a heart attack at his retirement party, which had been held on the ship in 1967.

  He still loved to tell her what the current captain was doing wrong.

  All the Destiny’s ghosts were pleasant. The soldiers still believed they were convalescing, the captain was still watching over the bridge, and the nurse was still standing duty at the infirmary. They were polite and cheerful, thrilled that Alexi—and more often than not, her friends—could see them.

  Her family really didn’t need to worry about her. She accepted the fact that Zach was gone. Time didn’t heal all wounds, but it allowed memories to offer consolation, to bring smiles instead of tears. She had simply become rather dependent on living on the ship. And she did love the Destiny, including all her history and her ghosts. Alexi didn’t lie awake at night anymore, the way she had at first.

  She’d lain awake and wondered why, when the dead from so many different eras and generations found her, she’d never seen Zachary Wainwright, never had a chance to hold him and be held one last time. Never had a chance to say goodbye...

  Alexi smiled. “My mom won’t be getting on this ship and without my mom—no dad. Mom’s convinced the ship is haunted, which of course it is, and she wants nothing to do with that. She’s... I don’t know...very Catholic, slightly Wiccan, possibly? She believes that spirits can find her. Don’t get me wrong, I adore my mother. But my dad always smiles and tells me that when they were married and moved into our home in the Irish Channel, she called in a priest to bless the house and cleanse it of ghosts.”

  “She sounds like fun. And, hey, I agree with you that this ship is haunted! I try to say nice things to whatever gives me the chills as I walk by,” Clara said, shrugging. “In any event, they leave me alone.”

  “I’ll see you in a little while,” Alexi told her. “I’m going to grab some downtime with a pillow.”

  “And I’m going to pop into the lounge,” Clara said. “Come with me and say hi. We have some new people in the entertainment crew.”