Death In A Deck Chair

by Georgia Kains

  “I feel like such an idiot,” I said.

  “Oh, honey, not true. But I’m so sorry. Can you get off the boat?”

  “Tomorrow when we reach the first port, but Silas said that it’s a big hassle and really expensive to fly one-way from these little islands. So one more log for the bonfire o’ crap.”

  “Who’s Silas?”

  “Sorry. He’s the—what did his sister call it?—the purser.”

  “Oh, so like Gopher on the The Love Boat. Sorry. All my nautical knowledge comes from eighties Aaron Spelling reruns and … ” Addie’s voice trailed off as she scanned her screen, reading something. Her eyes went wide, then a pinch of worry formed on the bridge of her nose.

  “What are you looking at?” I asked.

  “Huh? Nothing.” She threw her hands in front of her computer quickly as if I were trying to peer over her shoulder.

  “You know I can’t read what’s on your screen, right?”

  “Oh, right.” She went into über-nonchalant mode. “Hey, how’s the buffet?”

  “Hmm. Yeah. Now you’re definitely going to tell me what’s on that screen.”

  “It’s nothing,” she said with a smile as fake as a three-dollar bill.

  “Read. It.”

  Addie gulped, but began reading:

  “Atlanta Wedding Planner Jilted At Own Ceremony. In a twist ironic enough for Hollywood, Piper Monroe, thirty-two years old, a professional wedding planner based in the trendy Little Five Points area of Atlanta was left at the altar of her own nuptials on Saturday. Stated one guest of the groom’s, ‘It was the most well-organized break-up I’ve ever been to.’ Monroe and her ex-betrothed could not be reached for comment at the time of publication.”

  “What?” I shrieked.

  No. This couldn’t be happening. I … I hadn’t even hit send on my client email. When my brides read this article, it would go down like a garlic milkshake. I needed to be doing damage control, not sitting on this ship with a first row seat to an aging reality star’s version of Family Feud.

  “Addie, what am I going to do?” I gnawed on my thumbnail. “This is the worst PR imaginable.”

  “Don’t panic.”

  But I’d already opened my email inbox. The incoming messages had flooded in. Betsy Lords-Willington was so sorry, but they’d decided to go a different direction with their wedding planning. Ashley Jakes was soooo thankful for all the help I’d given her so far, but was making a few changes in her wedding support team. Bentley Jackson had suddenly had a conflict come up with our next scheduled meeting time. And all times after that.

  My shoulders hunched and I rocked from side to side as I continued to scroll. The subject lines were all variations of the same thing. Sorry. Change of plans. Won’t need your services after all. I did a quick head count. I now had three clients left.

  Ding.

  Two clients left.

  And almost every one of those brides had been brought to me by personal referral, which meant right now, the grapevine wasn’t so much buzzing as burning to the ground.

  Everything.

  I’d lost everything.

  I slouched onto my pillow, completely numb.

  “Are you okay?” Addie’s forehead puckered.

  “Am I okay?” I blinked. “No, I’m not okay.”

  “Deep breath.”

  “Deep breaths don’t fix this one, Addie.” I had nowhere to live. No job. A huge credit card bill was headed my way. And now, no bride within a hundred miles would want to work with me.

  I was ruined.

  “Shhhhh.” Addie reached out as if she could touch me. “It’s going to be all right. I promise. We’ll figure something out as soon as you get home.”

  “It took me years to build my client portfolio. Years. And it’s … gone.” The funny thing was, I wouldn’t miss working on the elaborate country club affairs with hundreds of guests. But I was going to miss those one or two ceremonies I still did each year that were simple and creative.

  “What am I going to do?” I stared at the ceiling in a stupor. It felt like a heavy weight had settled on my chest. I bit back a sob, and it morphed into a snuffling yawn.

  “I’ll let you go,” said Addie.

  “No. This sounds stupid, but I don’t want to be alone, even if you’re only on the other side of a computer.”

  “Not stupid at all.” Addie switched some soothing music on and told me a dumb, funny story about one of her seller’s cats attacking a potential buyer.

  My shoulders unclenched as I chuckled. Addie stretched in her chair. We went silent for a few seconds.

  “It is going to be okay,” Addie murmured.

  “Mmmmm.” I let my eyelids flutter shut for a moment. Yes, I would be okay. Or … something like … z-z-zzz-zzz.

  “Whuh?” I swung my body around and knocked my head on the lamp. Oww. My mouth was so dry, it felt like someone had filled it with cotton. I reached for a glass of water before remembering I wasn’t in my own bed. But I couldn’t quite remember where I was. My laptop had tumbled onto the bed beside me, and in my grogginess, I could make out a hazy lump on the video chat screen. The lump moved.

  Video chat.

  Addie.

  Twelve dollar WiFi.

  “What time is it? Crap, crap, crap. What time is it?”

  “Huh?” The lump sat up, and Addie’s bleary-eyed face filled the screen. “Piper?”

  “Aighh!!” I grabbed the computer and looked at the clock. Three a.m.

  “I must have nodded off,” mumbled Addie.

  “We both did.” Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. “That was over six hours ago. At twelve dollars for five minutes. Times twenty. Times six hours. That’s … that’s … how much is it?”

  “You’re the former mathlete!” shrieked Addie. “Solve it!”

  “My brain isn’t working. It’s … a lot!” And then I started screaming. And Addie started screaming.

  “Hang up, hang up!” she yelled. But I couldn’t find the WiFi connection icon. At some point, I had the sense to turn off the computer.

  Okay. Surely some kind of stop-gap existed for drug-induced ship-to-shore calls. Or maybe if I stopped and did the math, it wouldn’t be so bad. Let’s see. Carry the one and …

  Almost nine hundred dollars.

  I shoved my head between my knees and tried to keep from hyperventilating. I couldn’t fathom what my next credit card bill would look like. And now, thanks to a newspaper reporter with an appreciation for irony, I was going to face the innards of that envelope jobless.

  My misery was interrupted by the sound of shouting in the hall. I went to the door and was about to swing it open and tell whoever it was to knock it off when I recognized one of the voices as Bebe Bosley. I peeked through my security peephole. The other speaker was Peg Halloway.

  “Well, I don’t care what the will says. I’ve done my duty.” Bebe shoved a finger in Peg’s face. “I’ve already paid for the rest of the week on this pathetic excuse for a cruise ship. I’m getting off at the first port of call.”

  My hackles rose. True, the ship was kind of the Charlie Brown Christmas tree of cruise ships and needed a serious intervention in the décor department. But the staff had been great so far.

  “The will is quite clear, Bebe.” Peg’s voice sounded exasperated, exhausted even. “It’s airtight.”

  Bebe let out a shrill peal of laughter. “At least there’s that. You’re just as stuck as I am, jumping through all Winston’s controlling hoops. It must have killed you when he told you how he wanted it drawn up.”

  “I respected his wishes even if I didn’t agree with all of them.” Peg shifted away uneasily. “And if you’re referring to his stipulations about me staying in my position, I believe that showed foresight. Not to mention lack of trust in his wife.”

  “Paint it however you want it, you’re still trapped. Seems like any lawyer worth their salt would have figured out an escape plan that didn’t put their own pension at risk.”

 
“I’m a perfectly capable lawyer, Mrs. Bosley.”

  “Ha! How would you know? You’ve only ever had one client.”

  Peg grew a furious shade of scarlet and stomped off.

  Bebe chortled in Peg’s wake then whipped out her camcorder. She flipped it around to face herself. Hefty tears cascaded along her collagen-plumped cheeks. Tears as fake as a mall Santa in May.

  “I worry so much about dear Peggy,” she said in a voice that sounded much more babydollish than her regular voice. “She just left, but I think that maybe she might be suffering with that old person disease where they can’t remember anything. What is it called?”

  “Alzheimer’s?” I whispered. That didn’t make sense. I hadn’t spent much time with Peg, but the limited time that I had, she had been perfectly lucid. The thought of her exhibiting symptoms of dementia was downright laughable. Bebe wasn’t laughing now, though. She was near sobbing.

  “I feel horrible about it, but I don’t know how much longer I can keep employing someone who is clearly not in their right mind,” she said then switched off the camcorder. She wore a satisfied smirk on her tear-streaked face.

  Huh. What was that all about? It seemed like Bebe was stacking up evidence to justify getting rid of Peg. But if Bebe didn’t like her, why not just fire her? And what was that taunt about Peg’s pension and how Winston Bosley’s will had been written?

  Looked like I wasn’t the only one having a rough ride on this boat.

  None of my business, I reminded myself. I pinched the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger. Lord-willing and the ocean don’t rise, I would get off this ship in a few hours and head out on the first flight home.

  Yep, I thought as I drifted back to sleep, Bebe Bosley is none of my concern.

  Oh, how wrong I was.

  Chapter Nine

  So it turned out that our first port of call “Saint Burts” wasn’t a typo on the itinerary after all. The moment the boat touched land on the microscopic island, I practically leaped off the gangplank. Saint Burts might not have shared a clientele with its celebrity playground counterpart, but it shared the same shimmering turquoise and azure sea.

  The old splintered dock creaked and swayed as I rushed to the end of it. A sole taxi driver leaned against the trunk of a palm tree next to his 1992 Geo Tracker. He held the door open for me then climbed in. The car’s engine coughed and wheezed but rattled to life, and we took off for the airport. My heart sank as we pulled up to the blip of an airport. The entire thing—check-in counter, terminal, and baggage claim—was no bigger than the Escape Cruise office had been. These out-of-the-way airlines could charge an arm and a kidney if they wanted.

  But maybe I’d luck out.

  At the counter, a middle-aged woman with peroxide-crisp hair and a tan so deep her skin looked like a stretched out piece of beef jerky, greeted me with a wide smile. Well, she probably got a year’s worth of Vitamin D in a single morning judging by her melanin levels. No wonder she seemed happy.

  “Can I help you?” she asked in a nasally drone.

  “Yes, I need to buy a one-way ticket to Atlanta.”

  “Hmm.” She tapped on her keyboard in a cadence that would match any professional drummer’s best. “Hmm.”

  “Or round-trip if that’s cheaper.”

  “Hmm.” Clickety clickety click click clickety click.

  “Any number of layovers. You can route me through Antarctica. Doesn’t matter.”

  “Hmm.” Click clickety click clickety clickety click click.

  “I’ve always wondered if you guys were secretly playing solitaire behind that screen.” I tried to turn it into a joke, but the woman frowned at me.

  “We have one flight out each day. I can get you to Atlanta in seventeen hours.”

  “Seventeen hou—?” I snapped my mouth shut after the woman narrowed her eyes at me. “I mean, seventeen hours … sounds great.”

  “All righty then,” said the woman. “That will be four thousand, two hundred, and sixty-eight dollars. And twenty-four cents.”

  My knees buckled beneath me.

  “That’s outrageous. Is there anything cheaper available? I’ll fly cargo if I have to.”

  Her frown deepened with my second weak attempt at a joke.

  “It’s basically a charter flight. You could always try your luck on a neighboring island. You’d need to wait for the boat that the locals take.”

  “Okay. Do you know where I can buy boat tickets?”

  She stuck her hand under the desk, pulled out a sign with an anchor on it, and plopped it on the counter.

  “The next boat departs in”—clickety click clickety click—“four days.”

  So highway robbery or Gilligan’s Island.

  “You could always try the other airlines.” She swiveled her head left and right to survey the otherwise empty room and cackled. “Oh, wait. We’re the only airline that serves the island.”

  There was no other choice. I handed my credit card over and plunked my head down on the counter. This prepaid non-honeymoon had ended up being the worst thing to ever happen to my already anemic savings account.

  The credit card machine took what felt like an hour to warm up and then made a horrible screeching beep as she ran my card through it. She tried again. Beeeeeep.

  “Sorry.” She handed the card back. “Declined.”

  “But … but … ” Ugh. And then I remembered. The charge for the video chat must have already gone through. My card was maxed out.

  “Thank you anyway,” I said and headed outside.

  I sat on the curb outside the airport. My cab driver from earlier was nowhere in sight. Not that I had money for a taxi.

  I was stuck. And I had to face Lance and Tammi for the rest of this dang voyage. Alone.

  If this wasn’t the definition of pathetic, I didn’t know what was.

  One grovelfest later, I accepted my fate of a week aboard the S.S. Misery.

  “Fine,” I said to no one in particular before trudging the two miles back. On the bright side, I didn’t have any luggage weighing me down. I made my way toward the beach and walked along the snowy, soft sand. The view really was incredible.

  There’s something about accepting your fate that gives you strength.

  Or maybe it was the Dramamine wearing off.

  To get back to the ship, I had to weave my way through a makeshift market. The vendors’ bright wares formed a kaleidoscope of colors—neon tee shirts and sunglasses, painted bits and baubles. A rack of tie-dyed sarongs billowed in the breeze, and a light purple parakeet hopped around in a cage that was too small for it to spread its wings.

  Next to the birdcage, a whole pile of garments lay dumped in a heap. A hand-painted sign in front said, “Designer Clothes—Cheap.” Designer, my tush. Still, it occurred to me that I had zilch to wear since my luggage was long gone. I meandered over and sifted through the clothes, holding some up that were my size. I picked up a cute copy of a Tory Burch skirt, identical to one that I had actually bought off the Nordstrom clearance rack a few weeks ago.

  “You like it?” asked the man at the booth. His ample belly peeked out from the bottom hem of an ill-fitting (but I had to admit good quality) fake Tommy Bahama shirt.

  “It’s okay.” Umm, it was amazing—hard to tell it wasn’t real—but I didn’t want to act too eager and overpay if I could haggle him down.

  I put the skirt back and noticed a pair of adorable pink and navy Lilly Pulitzer shorts. They looked just like a pair that I’d lost with my luggage. They were marked at five dollars. And they were in my size!

  It was like God wanted me to have those shorts. His gift to me after the crapstravaganza that had been my week.

  I grabbed a couple more tops that would fit me and a pair of cropped pants. And, ooh, the cutest little Vineyard Vines dress.

  “I’ll give you twenty for all of it,” I said, ignoring the outraged grumble in my brain that I had to spend one cent to replace clothes that had been stolen from
me.

  “Fifty.”

  “Thirty.” It was all I had left.

  “I’ll give you three hundred,” said a voice from behind me.

  I whirled around to face Bebe Bosley, who smirked at me like a cat that had swallowed the canary in one gulp.

  Why would she do that? She wasn’t even the same size as me. My entire chest circumference was probably smaller than her left boob. But then Tony peeked around from behind her, looking sheepish. Bebe’s revenge for a nonexistent flirtation.

  “Sold!” yelled the man, grabbing the clothes out of my hands and shoving them at Bebe while she peeled a stack of twenties out of her pocketbook. She pulled out her camcorder and whipped it around to face her.

  “And that”—she held up the Lilly shorts and gave me the side eye—“is how you haggle.”

  She snapped the recorder off and traipsed away, laughing.

  Over the speakers, steel drum music filled the air with a tang of energy. The song that was playing ended, and a vaguely familiar tune started—pulsing nineties synth and then—Hey! Macarena!

  The knockoff clothes seller let loose a string of swears that would have made a drunken Viking blush. He swung one of the dresses he was holding around in frustration, and it struck the parakeet’s cage.

  “I hate this song,” he said with a growl. “These same songs all day long. Macarena, Macarena. Over and over and over.”

  “Maybe ask them to change it?” I suggested.

  “Oh. I hadn’t thought of that. Stupid know-it-all tourist!” The man called me another word, which caused me to flush with rage, then he whipped the dress he was holding against the cage again. It rattled the door. The bird flapped its wings wildly and squawked in pain.

  “Shut up!” he yelled at the bird. He grabbed the edge of the cage and shook it.

  “Leave that bird alone.” I pulled the dress out of his hands. I’d seen my share of rudeness so far on this trip, but animal abuse pushed me over the edge. This parakeet had done nothing to hurt this guy, had probably even pulled in a few curious customers.