by Mara Webb
“Of course, I will have one waiting for you in your room. Do you prefer it chilled or at room temperature?” he asked.
“I like both, I’ll leave that up to you, Sean. Thank you, I feel like an idiot.” Sean smiled.
“I’ve had more unusual items requested in the past. I can’t, err, present it to you here in front of Mrs. Talbot, she’s non-magical. That is my only restriction. I possibly should not have said that, I apologize,” Sean looked a little panicked as if there would be dire consequences to him letting slip that Monty’s wife was human.
“I won’t tell if you don’t.” I smiled. Relief washed over him, and he moved towards Jonathon to, once again, check for a pulse. He placed his fingers against Jonathon’s throat and looked carefully at his watch as he counted heart beats. He nodded towards Nicholas who seemed rather indifferent with another update that his son was still alive.
Stephanie seemed to be chastising her husband about something, Monty and his wife were caught up in their own little conversation and so when Nicholas began to speak, it appeared that only Ryan and I were available to listen.
“He does this all the time you know,” he said, pointing to his unconscious son. “To you it probably looks like I don’t care, but I’ve been meeting with a counsellor who told me to stop reacting with such flamboyant concern every time he acted this way. I know that he wouldn’t want to do this under normal circumstances, but he has been through a tough year.”
“He really has,” Leslie said, kissing Nicholas on the cheek and walking towards the stairs to go down to the sleeping area. “I need to lay down, I’m getting one of my headaches again.”
“Okay dear.” He watched her leave then turned back to us. “She hasn’t had one of her migraines for months, no idea what has brought that on. Anyway, Ryan has told me very little about you. Let me get this lot to shuffle down and you can both join me at this end of the table and fill me in.”
We stood up and watched as he requested for his daughter and her husband to move down a few seats. Stephanie silently protested with a stern look and then reluctantly scooted down. I watched Dominic pull a small packet of disinfectant wipes from his other jacket pocket and wipe the table and chair that Stephanie was about to occupy.
“I have two children and I honestly couldn’t tell you which one of them is less equipped to survive in the real world,” Nicholas said with a laugh. Kimberly dropped a tray of glasses loudly on the wooden floor behind us, shards flew across the floor and underneath the table.
“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry!” she squealed, dropping to her knees and trying to collect the pieces. Sean reappeared from a back room and, upon seeing the situation, helped Kim to her feet and advised that she took a seat while he cleaned up.
“The sea is smooth as whiskey; has she been drinking?” Monty exclaimed. “Poor show to be drunk so early in the day, well…I mean…Jonathon excluded of course.”
“She is a sober as a judge, I can promise you that. Have you ever tried carrying so many drinks on a tray on the ocean, regardless of it being smooth or choppy?” Nicholas seemed to have taken some offense to Monty criticizing his staff. “Why don’t we all move away from this area while the glass is removed? Dinner will be served at eight this evening and my staff will gladly assist you with entertainment or equipment if you choose to venture out into the water.”
No one seemed to need prompting a second time. Jonathon managed to sleep through the sounds of designer shoes tapping across the floor. Once Monty and his wife had left the deck, Sean used his magic to retrieve the glass pieces from beneath the table and reassembled them as whole drinks vessels.
As Sean walked past Kimberley, he gave her a gentle, encouraging squeeze on the shoulder that I alone saw, it was an intimate moment that had been intended for just the two of them. I wondered if Nicholas jumping to Kim’s defense was a true reflection of his character, or if working for him was difficult. Had they found solace in each other’s company?
“I know what you’re thinking,” Nicholas said to me. “Sean has worked with me his entire career. Kim is newer but the same applies for her, no one disrespects my family…or my staff. They are one and the same to me.” A stern expression washed over him to punctuate his statement. “Anyway, tell me everything. How did the two of you meet? Did he get you out of some legal trouble too?”
We chatted away happily about my inheritance, my job at the University of Awa, my progress with my witch studies at the Online Witch Learning school, also known as O.W.L and he seemed delighted with every little detail.
“Ah to be young again,” he sighed. “My wife, April, passed away just over a year ago. She and I travelled the world together and got up to all sorts of mischief, you two remind me of us in our twenties.” As he described his late wife, I couldn’t help but piece together a timeline of his current relationship. He was engaged to a very young woman which suggested that they had been dating for some time.
“I should probably have let you know that I am able to read minds somewhat, it isn’t always the full picture, but I know that my engagement to Leslie is causing you to doubt my sincerity. Leslie and I just got lucky. It is very rare to find your soulmate in this world; it is even rarer to find two of them. I am a very lucky man,” he smiled.
“Sorry, I just,” I stuttered. “I’ve been married before. It didn’t work out so well, I guess you are luckier than me.”
“You have a good one now though, of that I’m sure.”
Ryan and I returned to our room. He scanned our key card, I pushed open the door, and we were greeted by a mountain of chocolate boxes. The bed was adorned with at least twenty Cadbury Easter eggs, the labelling on the packaging had a logo, around which were the words “By Appointment to HM The Queen”. Had Sean stolen these from the Queen of England? Ryan opened the refrigerator and it too was filled with eggs.
“Okay…I didn’t realize this was how many you had asked for,” Ryan laughed.
“I didn’t!” I began to say. “I said one, or maybe two…” I wasn’t sure if I had specified a number. I was one of the few people around the dining table upstairs that treated Sean like a person, perhaps this was his way of saying thank you. “Have you seen this little crown thing?” I asked, pointing to the royal appointment logo.
“It’s a thing in England, they put that on a bunch of stuff. I don’t really know what it signifies but I guess it means it is delicious. Which would you like to try first, a cold one or a room temperature one?”
I laughed at his mirroring of my earlier conversation with Sean, grabbed the nearest box and tore it open. Ryan moved the remaining boxes from the bed onto the shelving that ran along the wall beneath the windows, turned on the TV and climbed onto the bed with me as we ate enough sugar to knock out a toddler.
“Do you know any magic to reignite an appetite?” I asked Ryan as I sucked melted chocolate off my fingers.
“No, sadly not. We can just pick at our dinner and not mention any of this,” he said, gesturing to the discarded foil that lay between us. “Hey, we’ve been on this boat for a few hours now and no squid sightings. Crazy, right?”
“Am I a joke to you?” I asked with a smirk.
“Well you currently have a chocolate smile like The Joker so, yeah!” he laughed.
“This is pretty fun you know. I don’t think you could have paid me to go on a boat a few years ago, but this is better than I thought it would be.”
“I’m glad. I know that we are new to the dating thing, but I have a good feeling about this trip. I think it will bring us closer together and…well I am excited for you to see me in swim shorts. I’m honestly surprised I haven’t been snapped up for the Olympic diving team because I can really throw some shapes. Just you wait and see, you’ll be astonished.”
“Is that right?” I laughed. “Is that why you packed so many pairs of shorts? To show off?” Ryan shrugged and I slid off the side of the bed and walked towards the door. “Man, I’m looking forward to this weekend,” I s
aid. “It will take some effort remembering all the new faces. I’m terrible at learning new groups.”
“Eh,” Ryan said dismissively. “It’s easy. Nicholas is your typical old rich dude. Leslie is his gold-digging wife, and Stephanie, the germaphobe is his gold-digging daughter. Dominic is her husband-turned-packhorse. Then we have Jonathon, the gold-digging son who seems to like his drink.”
“Monty and Rose, they’re just family friends?”
“That’s right. Friends of Nicholas. Monty is a big businessman as well. And don’t forget the boat staff. Kim and Sean. I think there’s supposed to be a captain too. I assume someone is steering the ship, I haven’t met him yet though. I think that’s everyone. That clear enough?”
“As clear as muddy water in a dark room,” I said, turning for the door leading out of the room.
“Where are you heading?” Ryan asked.
“I’m just going to go and grab a drink; I have weird fuzzy mouth from all that chocolate.”
“We have a mini bar you know,” Ryan said.
“I know, but a mini bar can’t mix a drink like Sean can!”
I wandered up through the hallway and to the stairs. I noticed flecks of chocolate all over my dress where the sunlight hit me as I approached the deck, this would be a terrible time to bump into any of the rich passengers.
I stopped on the top step and looked at the sun setting down into the water off the back of the yacht, the sky faded into beautiful pinks and oranges. I took another step to turn in the direction of the bar and saw a body with a gun in one hand and a small amount blood pooling across the floor.
It was Nicholas Blatham-Ford and he was as dead as dead can be.
5
I didn’t scream straight away which was unusual.
It wasn’t that I had become so accustomed to seeing dead bodies at every turn that I wasn’t affected by it, but that I just couldn’t understand what I was looking at. We were on a private yacht in the middle of the ocean, the only other people on the boat with us were his family and friends. It didn’t make sense that he had been so enthusiastic just hours ago, excited about the trip and where he was taking us all, how had things taken a turn so quickly?
I shouted for help instead, standing in place so as to avoid leaving evidence anywhere that would prevent finding out what had happened here. “Help! Please, somebody help!” I shouted. I was quickly joined by many of the others. Ryan came running up the stairs first and grabbed hold of me.
“Are you okay?” he asked in a panic before noticing the body on the floor. “Oh, right. Okay. How…okay.”
I could appreciate that he was probably running through the same confusing thoughts that I had, as well as the fact that I seemed to attract death everywhere I go. Sean was suddenly in the room also and I hadn’t seen where he had come from. He bent low and checked for a pulse, there was none. Then for a reason only he could know, Sean grabbed the gun and began to turn it over in his hands. Great, that was contaminated now.
Leslie, the fiancé, came down from the deck above in an elaborate gown and rushed over to Nicholas. “My darling!” she shrieked, rolling him over onto his back and cradling him in her arms. There was now blood all over her clothing and hands, had none of these people watched forensic files before? This was a nightmare. Stephanie ran up the stairs from the cabins below and started screaming, Dominic ambled slowly behind and looked only slightly shocked.
“About time,” Dominic whispered. I wondered who that was for, was that a statement he was making only to himself or did he intend to be heard? A man I hadn’t seen before strolled into the middle of the chaos smoking a large cigar. I half thought of asking him to smoke elsewhere so as to preserve the crime scene but that seemed a little pointless now.
“Less than ideal, eh?” the stranger said, taking another huge drag from his cigar.
“Excuse me?” I said, we were all standing quite close and no one else had acknowledged the smoking man. I worried that I was the only one that could see him.
“Rick’s the name. Captain of this yacht and err, well I steer it and other things. Guess I am now in charge of this here crime scene too, just what I need.”
“Is this death inconvenient for you?” I snapped.
“I have to navigate this luxury yacht to our destination, at Nicholas’ request we were to continue on to the final location regardless of what’s going on with the passengers. Perhaps he expected some mischief. Thing is that the route isn’t all that straight forward and I am the only qualified person on this vessel that can get us there. I haven’t really got the time to be playing detective with some rich folk,” he said.
That made more sense and I calmed a little. Stephanie was now on her knees next to Nicholas and her and Leslie seemed to be fighting over who got to hold him.
“We could take care of it for you,” Ryan interrupted. “Nora is a detective and I am Nicholas’ lawyer. I think together we would make a pretty good team to get to the bottom of this.”
“Honestly, I’m not even gonna ask any more questions about it because I can smell rain in the air, and I think we are in for a bit of a rough night. Sean can probably help you find a place to put the body. It’s a shame, he was a nice guy. Well…not to everyone…” Rick mumbled as he walked away, presumably back to the control room.
“Okay,” I declared with a confidence I didn’t know I had. None of these people knew what my real job was so I could definitely get them to comply with me and Ryan without them questioning our authority. “I’m gonna need everyone to go up to the deck above, stop…just stop touching him. Oh for… no please stop.” Getting the two grieving women to let go of the dead body would apparently be the hardest part. “Right, everyone up. Sean could you please stay here for a moment. We will be up shortly to ask some questions. “
Ryan and Sean had a brief conversation as the others walked away towards the stairs. Dominic tried to give his wife, Stephanie, a reassuring hug to show his support but she batted him away and I heard her muttering about needing to clean her hands immediately. Sean left and returned with a large bed sheet to cover Mr. Blatham-Ford before following the other guests upstairs, leaving Ryan and I alone with the body.
“Where do we start?” I asked.
“He was holding a gun, blood everywhere. Looks like he was shot in the head. Maybe a suicide?” Ryan was trying to piece together individual aspects of what we had seen but something didn’t add up.
“Yes, there was a hole in his head, yes he was holding a gun. The blood wasn’t coming from his head though, I only noticed it when Leslie rolled him over. He was bleeding from the center of his torso, or maybe his chest. I would have to look again. Either way, the head shot didn’t kill him.”
“Well look at you Ms. Observant,” Ryan joked.
The truth was that after my last crime solving endeavor I had been working with a curse-breaker witch. My O.W.L assignment had required that I study an ancient language, it had been my knowledge of runes that helped break a decades old curse. This caught her attention.
She had told me how overwhelmed she was with requests for assistance breaking curses, she offered to train me up so that I could take on a few hours of curse-breaking a week for a little extra money.
I loved it because every case was different, and the cash didn’t hurt either. A lot of the time it involved conversations with clients and inspecting their stories for clues about where the curse originated, luckily the curse-breaker was a retired private investigator and she had shared some of her top tips with me. It had helped me pick up on things other people didn’t seem to notice.
“Observant, sure. I wish I had prevented everybody touching absolutely everything but as we are out at sea until we get to our destination, I guess the forensic team might have struggled anyway. The sea air must change things, I wonder if that’s why this glass door was left open?” I pointed to the large wall of glass that had the potential to slide away entirely and leave the whole dining area open to the elements.
“Yeah, I feel like I don’t know much about anyone on this ship and one of them is a murderer that we are stuck with for some time.” We walked up the stairs before Ryan grabbed my wrist to spin me round to face him. He handed me a tissue.
“Here,” he said. “You still have some chocolate on your face.” I smiled then turned to the waiting crowd. Everyone onboard was now present.
“I would like to speak to each of you one at a time,” I said, looking around for the person that seemed most able to communicate. Leslie and Stephanie seemed to be trying to out-do each other in the grief Olympics. “Dominic?”
He stepped forward and we walked out onto the deck and closed the doors, the gentle rumble of storm clouds wasn’t too loud, and we could hear each other over the engine and moving water. Ryan made a notepad and a pen appear from nowhere, Monty’s wife was out of his eyeline, so it was fine, and he began to take down what was said.
“Could I get your full name for the record?” I asked
“Dominic Blatham-Ford,” he replied. I looked blankly at him. “Oh, well Stephanie and I are married, but she said that my last name, now let me see if I remember this right, ‘made her gag as if she was eating a vomit salad’. I took her last name just so that we were a little family, I don’t think she liked my name change but then she didn’t have to say my previous name anymore so that was a small victory at least.”
“What was your previous name?”
“Dominic Elderport,” he replied with a laugh. “It’s not that bad really is it? She has the bar for her standards set so high now I don’t think she can even see it anymore. The lot of them are falling apart but she has her good moments, they have been getting further and further apart recently, but every now and then she might smile at me!” He sounded impressed. It was a sad story.
“What were you doing this afternoon before the discovery of Mr. Blatham-Ford’s body?” I asked.
