by Mara Webb
“After lunch I had to help Steph clean her handbags, she has a Birkin bag that cost more than some people’s houses and she was worried that the waitress had spilled a drink on it when she slipped with that tray of glasses. She then suggested that I may as well clean the others while I had the kit out, so I did that for about an hour.”
“Why did your wife bring so many handbags onto a yacht? What does she need to carry around?” I might take a bag out with me to a restaurant or something, but it has my money and phone in it, maybe some snacks, chewing gum and a few old receipts too. No reason to have one with you on a boat, surely.
“She always keeps a few thousand dollars in cash on her at all times, her cell phone, her business cell phone, a power bank to charge the phones, a small mirror, hand sanitizer, chap stick, pepper spray and her engagement ring.”
“She doesn’t wear it?”
“No, the ring I bought her is ‘ghastly’, apparently. She carries it around to show her friends what an idiot I am. I did the traditional thing of asking her father’s permission first, I showed him the ring too. She said that is was clearly a joke that he approved the ring, that maybe they had fought that day and it was revenge. Anyway, I was cleaning bags. I fell asleep on the bed and Steph came back into the room and yelled at me for slacking off, that was right before you started hollering up here.
“She was flustered though, before we came up here. She came into our room and she had a stain on her dress, she was clearly upset, and I already knew ‘that’s my evening, scrubbing this dress clean’.”
I thanked Dominic for his time, and he stood up and looked out at the ocean illuminated by the sunset.
After a deep breath he turned back to us and ran his hand through his golden curls. His typical ‘rich-guy’ uniform of a polo shirt and khaki pants seemed out of touch with his subservience to his wife. How had she established such dominance over him?
“Everything okay, Dominic?” I asked.
“You will probably learn more about this family than they want you to. I suspect Steph is having her lawyer back on land draw up a few NDA’s for the pair of you. They have secrets that they are deeply ashamed of.”
“Doesn’t everyone?” Ryan asked.
A serious expression came over Dominic. “I don’t think you understand. This lot will do anything to keep their skeletons buried in the closet. Keep your eyes open… both of you.”
6
“It was that awful witch wasn’t it?” Stephanie said. Dominic had returned to the group and Ryan had followed him inside to request that his wife joined us.
“Witch? Which witch?” I asked, unsure if she meant that in the literal sense.
“Witch is a poor choice of words perhaps, but I mean that witch of a woman with her claws in my poor papa’s back. Which is to say Leslie, of course.”
“You are confident that this is all the result of foul play?”
“Well my father was holding a gun in his right hand, he has near crippling arthritis, so I am certain he didn’t shoot himself. The man could barely hold a pencil. Always managed to wrap his fingers around the stem of a wine glass, didn’t let the throbbing pain in his joints hold him back there.” Ryan was scribbling down frantically every detail and Stephanie seemed to be relishing the attention.
“Can you explain to us what you have spent your afternoon doing? Between the group lunch and everyone’s return to the deck following the discovery of your father.”
“Dominic and I were watching a film together in bed for some time, then I went up to lay out in the sun.” This was hardly complicated investigative work, she was trying to use her husband as an alibi for part of the afternoon, but he had already stated that he was in the room alone.
“And you changed outfits?” I pressed.
“Of course, I can’t wear the same outfit for multiple meals. We were all about to meet for dinner and I didn’t want to be seen in the same dress.”
I had been fully planning on wearing the same thing, I wasn’t sure if this was a ‘rich person’ rule or a ‘Stephanie’ rule. Her husband had given the impression that she was pretty intense and even after our brief conversation I could see what he meant. “This was Leslie anyway; I would put money on it. After that mess with Jonathon she has been waiting for an opportunity to twist the knife in further with this family and she finally found a way.”
Stephanie paused for a moment to fester with her ideas and I looked over what she was wearing to see if there were any clues. She was beautiful in the way that many wealthy people are, her money had clearly bought her many facials and expensive skin treatments and her eyebrows hadn’t moved once during our discussion.
Her dark blonde hair was parted along the center and fell down to just beyond her shoulders, tucked behind both ears to adequately display a pair of sparkly earrings. Her dress was unusual, an emerald dress with silk down to the mid-thigh and a floor length lace overlay. It had short sleeves with ruffles at the shoulders and a built-in neck-strap thing that looked like a choker.
She wore heals with one thin black strap around the ankle and another thin black strap across the toes.
“Care to elaborate?” I asked after a few seconds of silence.
“I assume my father explained how he met his lovely bride-to-be.” Ryan and I both shook our heads. “Ah, delightful. Then let me fill you in. It seems I was always destined to be related to that woman, either she would become my step-mother or my sister-in-law.”
“She dated Jonathon?” I gasped.
“They were engaged. Completely besotted with each other. It was sweet in a gross, ‘stop-making-out-in-public’ kind of way. There were some disagreements with the direction of dad’s company, most of us are involved with his work in some capacity. Jonathon was the wonder child though, apple of dad’s eye. He could do no wrong, until he started trying to interfere with business decisions.”
“What does the company do?” I asked, curious as to the career that had amassed such wealth.
“We provide closed ecosystems for the distinguished buyer.” The blank look on my face was clearly not the reaction she wanted, she seemed reluctant to elaborate. “I’m sure you have heard of them. We make scalable glass orbs that contain water, maybe a plant or two and some miniscule shrimp to feed on the algae that grows inside. An aquarium without the fish. It may sound stupid, and truly it is, but you would be astonished at how much some people are willing to pay for a plant inside a ball.”
“Your family bought a multi-million-dollar yacht by selling fishless fish tanks?” I said, unable to wrap my head around it.
“What?” Stephanie looked at me momentarily and laughed. “Oh, darling no, that’s the domestic side of the operation. The money comes from the industrial contracts. NASA, the military.”
“The military has high demand for that sort of thing?” Ryan asked with incredulity.
“No, silly,” Stephanie said and laughed again. “Daddy got lucky and filed patents for some specific water filters back in the seventies. It was originally designed to pump water around a closed eco-system. It’s one of a kind, and apparently it’s also very good at pumping air around space stations and keeping warplanes from overcooling.”
“That makes more sense,” Ryan said.
“Though the ecosystems are Daddy’s passion. The family is involved in that side. The big contracts take care of themselves these days. That’s where the yacht money comes from.”
“But Jonathon wasn’t happy with something?” I was going to have to get my hands on one of these dumb plant balls now. I had an image in my head of what these things looked like and had already mentally placed a few around my house on Charm Close. Quin would get a real kick out of it too because I had forbidden him from installing a fish tank. I had overheard him talking with the other cats about torturing the poor little creatures.
“Allegedly, and I want to make sure that the word ‘allegedly’ is left on the record,” she spoke directly to Ryan to make sure he was taking notes the
way she wanted. “Allegedly some of the glass orbs contained incredibly poisonous plant life, so allegedly if there were to shatter, and then allegedly be eaten by a pet or a child then they might allegedly be dead within a few minutes…allegedly. All it takes is a few dumb familiars to chomp down on some cheap seaweed and drop dead and then you have a group of witches launching a class action lawsuit coming after your inheritance…allegedly.”
“And Jonathon?”
“Well he and Leslie were all lovey-dovey. Planning kids and the white picket fence. He was unhappy with dad’s plan of developing some ‘closed ecosystems’ specifically for nurseries and playrooms. Dad booted him off the project, things got very heated and then next thing you know boom.” She then waggled her finger and made her voice low in a clear impression of the late Mr. Blatham-Ford. “And if you think you will be seeing a dime from me after I kick the bucket then you’ve got another thing coming. I’d rather leave all my money to a donkey sanctuary.”
“Jonathon was cut out of the will?”
“That’s what daddy told me. Then it was just a case of starting your stopwatches. Within a few days of that big announcement, Jonathan and Leslie had called off their engagement. She’s suddenly shacked up with my elderly father and my brother is drinking himself into oblivion every night. Understandable really, but Leslie is a demon and I wouldn’t help her if she fell overboard. She wouldn’t drown obviously…”
I tried to take a moment to process the dynamics of the people on this yacht.
Leslie had been engaged to the son, and then the father. That put her as a suspect because money was obviously a motivator. Jonathon was a suspect because he had been removed from the will and had his fiancé stolen, that would drive anyone over the edge. What about the rest? I didn’t know anything about Monty and his wife, and I hadn’t spoken to Leslie yet either. Maybe she could cast some light on all this.
Stephanie continued to complain about one thing, then the next. It didn’t seem that she was on topic anymore, but I had been so lost in my own thoughts that she had spoken, uninterrupted, for several minutes. “…the lawyers would take him to the cleaners. I doubt they’d be sharing a golf cart after that!”
“Sorry, what was that?” I asked, realizing I had no idea what she was talking about.
“Monty. He had taken plans from our business and taken them to a rival company. There was a manufacturer that wanted to try and edge ahead of us, steal our plans for advertising, our marketing strategies, our suppliers, you name it.
“The weasels over at ‘Pint Sized Ocean’ have been hounding all of us for months, offering insane amounts of money to sneak documents out of dad’s office and into their hands. They’ve come to me, Dominic, Jonathon, probably Leslie too.
“We all know which member of dad’s inner circle would screw him over for a pay out, Montgomery Talbot. His bank account is fit to bursting already, he has greed like nothing you have ever seen though. If anyone has been selling us out to those dorks over at Pint Sized, then it’s Monty.”
We thanked Stephanie for her time and finally managed to get her to rejoin her husband inside as Ryan and I waited out on the deck. “Any hunches so far?” I asked him.
“I have a hunch that if these people aren’t fed soon, we will find another body tonight, seems I’m not the only one who thinks that,” Ryan said. I turned my back on the open water and saw the yachts staff serving out a meal for the hungry travelers. I could see the steam rising from dish after dish of hot food and I felt my stomach rumble aggressively in response.
“Jeez, how do you choose who to sit next to? There’s a killer in there,” I said.
“Well, you started off thinking this whole trip would end with you being killed by a giant squid. In a way, being killed by a witch or wizard would be a step up.”
We laughed and walked inside to join the others. As I slid the glass door closed behind us, I managed to muffle the sounds of the water outside that had been the background sound of every conversation for over an hour. The room fell silent as we entered and, sensing an opportunity to be helpful, Sean hurried to our side.
“Please everyone, take a seat and we will gladly assist you in enjoying your first evening meal upon the Andiamo. Ms. Wildes, Mr. Hughes, could I take your drinks order?” Sean asked. He took control of a room filled with confusion and upon his instruction, everyone took their seats and began to eat a meal that had been served family style, much to Stephanie’s horror.
“Dom, I swear on your life, if you dip that potato spoon into a different bowl, even by mistake, I will throw you into the sea.”
Not everyone was a fan of the serving style, but Ryan and I filled our plates with vegetables, bread rolls, potatoes and a nut roast that had been prepared as a vegetarian option. There is nothing like eating good food when you are really hungry, every mouthful taste better than the last.
“So, I suppose you know which one of these tag-a-longs murdered our daddy then?” Jonathon slurred from the other end of the table. He took a swig of a brown liquid in a short glass and slammed it back down next to his plate. “Everybody here is just take, take, take. The lot of you can just fly away and leave me alone.” A tear rolled down his cheek. “I’m so alone.”
“Oh, please Jonny, not in front of all these people. Haven’t you done enough damage to yourself? You don’t need to make things worse,” Stephanie scoffed.
“Me? Why don’t we swing the fingers of accusation to point in your direction, huh? Maybe you should clean up your own house before complaining about mine. I doubt you killed him Steph, you’d hate to get your own hands dirty. Wouldn’t surprise me one bit if you hadn’t told Dom to do it, wouldn’t take much convincing either. No one here hated our dad more than you, Dominic.”
The table fell silent.
7
After dinner it was agreed that, as we would be on this boat for a while, we may as well get some sleep. Ryan explained to me that the yacht’s captain had the power to put the yacht on lockdown due to a legal dispute which would prevent anyone using their magic to transport themselves away.
He went to locate Rick and arrange that while I finished off a second chocolate brownie at the dining table. It was only me and Mrs. Rose Talbot, Monty’s wife, left in the room and she was also eating a second dessert.
Kimberley and Sean cleared the tables and then dish after dish of sweet items were brought in. Stephanie had declined, muttered something about New York Fashion Week being just around the corner and then left the room.
Dominic inhaled a bowl of profiteroles as his wife had come back into the room to snap her fingers at him so that he would follow her. Sean assured me that Mr. Blatham-Ford’s body had been moved from the lower deck so that we wouldn’t have to pass him on the way down to our cabins, but it didn’t appear that the idea had crossed Stephanie’s mind as she confidently stomped her way down the stairs.
Monty requested a large helping of tiramisu and a brandy. His thick, walrus-like moustache was glazed with coffee cream, it provided a distraction from the rosacea across his face. I wondered if the skin condition was entirely caused by his alcohol consumption or just aggravated by it. Monty was a well built, older man with an ‘all-business’ fashion sense. We were on a yacht, yet he was wearing suit trousers, a smart white shirt and a buttoned-up waistcoat to dinner.
The snowy hair on top of his head was short and combed into place, he seemed to take pride in his appearance. I hadn’t heard him speak much and wondered if what Stephanie had said about him was true. Had Monty betrayed Nicholas by trying to crush his business? Was there bad blood between the mustachioed-walrus and the deceased? I would have to wait until morning to find that out, there was no need to continue with questioning this late into the night.
After making sure he had inspected every crevice of his glass dessert dish, Monty stood up, kissed his wife lightly on the cheek then left. I saw him pull a cigar out of thin air as he walked away. Rose looked up at me as we were now alone. Everyone else had eithe
r left flamboyantly or scuttled away discreetly, and now there were just the two of us.
“You’re a witch too, is that right?” Rose asked. I looked up from my brownie and stared at her, unsure of what I could say, she was the only non-magical on the boat, and as far as I knew she didn’t know about magic. “It’s okay, I know all about it. Monty is hardly subtle about these things as you can see.” I nodded to acknowledge that I did in fact have magic powers.
“Does Monty know you know?” I asked.
“Ha, he wouldn’t know if I shaved my head some days.” Rose had long brown hair that was elegantly curled into deep waves that rested delicately on her red dress. “He isn’t the most perceptive, but I love him anyway.” She reached over the table and grabbed a cake knife to serve herself a substantial slice of lemon meringue pie. “Would you like some?” I almost lurched forward with my plate to accept the piece and we both dived in with our silverware. “Leslie seems to have a calorie goal of twenty for any given day and Stephanie has become desperate to compete as if that would win back her father’s affections. It’s nice to meet someone with an appetite to match my own, dessert is the best part of any Blatham-Ford event!”
“Stephanie and Nicholas had a falling out?” I asked between mouthfuls.
“Since her mother died, Steph has been struggling to cope, this obviously wasn’t helped by the speed at which Nicholas took a lover turned fiancé. Steph had been the apple of Nick’s eye her entire life, Leslie being so young came across as threatening so she tries to outshine her whenever she can. Silly really, but she’s still grieving in a way.” Rose polished off her pie slice and leaned back in her chair. I mirrored the movement.
“Do you have any theories about what happened to Nicholas?” I asked, unsure of what to expect.
“Well he has two children that are entitled little monsters, leeching every dollar he has ever earned and having business cards with titles like ‘Chief Ideas Executive for Social Media Engagement.’”
