by Kathi Daley
“Could you tell what they were arguing about?”
Trevor shook his head. “No. To be honest, I didn’t try all that hard to make out what was being said. It didn’t seem important at the time.”
“There weren’t all that many men on board at the time. It should be easy to make a list.” I walked over to the small desk. There was a cord for a laptop, but no sign of the laptop itself, as well as a charging cord for a cell phone that wasn’t there. Trevor and I quickly searched the room, but other than those two cords, it seemed someone had already cleared out both Lucy and Lance’s possessions. If I didn’t know better, I would assume that the couple really had left at today’s port, as Harris said they had.
Trevor frowned. “Given the fact that Lance is obviously gone, it seems to me that Harris must either be in on the murder, with one of them being the killer. Harris is the one who claimed Lucy left the ship, so she either really did leave or he lied. But she couldn’t have died elsewhere, could she?”
“If her ghost is here, it is likely that either she was killed on board or her body is hidden on the ship or both. We need to keep looking. Let’s grab any supplies we think we’ll need and head out to look for her body. We’ll start on the top deck, where I found her standing, and work our way down.”
“Do you plan to knock on everyone’s door?” Trevor wondered.
We had left the cabin, and now I glanced at the closed doors down the hallway. “No. We’ll start with the common areas. If we decide that staterooms need to be searched, we’ll just have to hope that everyone—other than us, of course—goes ashore tomorrow. We’ll be in Friday Harbor, which I imagine is a popular stop.”
A thorough search of the top deck netted us absolutely nothing. We searched the pool area and the gym, including the saunas and the locker rooms. We even turned over the pads on every lounge chair on the deck, but in the end, we came up with no body, no blood, and no clues. As we worked our way down toward the lower decks, I found myself wondering if the body was even still on the ship. If I was at sea and wanted to get rid of a body, I’d just toss it overboard. If we didn’t find the body, it was going to make it a lot more difficult to convince anyone that Lucy was dead and that she had most likely died on board.
By the time we made it down to the dining deck, most of the passengers who had gathered in the bar were gone. Bret, Cynthia, and Connie were still sitting at the bar, but the others, I assumed, had retired to their cabins. The place was a lot quieter than it had been when we’d been there earlier. If we didn’t have a body to find, I’d be tempted to grab a table and have a drink myself. I was sure the body was not in the bar, and the dining room was closed for the evening. We poked our heads into the tiny theater, but it too was empty.
After finishing our search on that deck, we bypassed the one that housed the staff quarters and went down to the engine room and kitchen. The latter was both open and unoccupied. There weren’t a lot of places to hide a body, but we did open the freezer, refrigerator, and all the storage cabinets, even those that were obviously too small for a body. It occurred to me that the murder weapon could have come from the kitchen, but a thorough search didn’t reveal any blood, hair, or signs of a struggle. Of course, that didn’t mean that a knife or a meat cleaver hadn’t been taken from the room. It appeared that unless we found the weapon or the body, there was no way of knowing how Lucy had died.
When we peeked in, there were two men in the engine room, which also provided access to the bridge, so searching that space was not an option. I supposed if a body had been hidden in this large room, the men would discover it at some point, if they hadn’t already. In addition to the two main rooms on this deck, we searched the hallways, the lifeboat storage areas, the cabinets where extra life vests were stored, the supply and cleaning closets, anywhere we could think of, but as we half-expected, the body didn’t turn up.
“What now?” Trevor asked after we had completed our entire search. “Do we go back to take a second look in case we missed something?”
“No,” I sighed. “I guess we’ve done what we can for tonight. Without the body, it isn’t as if we can alert anyone to the fact that Lucy is dead. As we discussed before, we’ll just need to hope that everyone goes ashore tomorrow so we can take a better look around. Maybe the killer has the body in his or her cabin.”
“Every one of them is occupied by two people, which would mean for that to be the case, both occupants would have to be in on the murder.”
“I suppose that is a possibility.”
“Do you think Lucy will remember what happened once she has time to process her death?”
“Maybe. Some do and some don’t. I guess we can hope she is one of the ghosts who do remember how they died and where they left their body. For now, we’ll just go to our stateroom and try to figure out if there is anything else we could and should be doing now.”
“It does feel like the missing money is most likely the motive for Lucy’s murder, but I suppose it would still be a good idea to find out what we can about her life and relationships,” Trevor suggested. “We can start with a Google search. Maybe once we bring Mac and Ty into our hunt for answers, they can hack into her files at Hamilton Investments.”
“Personally, I think the missing money is a heck of a motive, but I agree, it is too early to settle on a single motive or suspect. I can’t help but feel that if we didn’t poke around at least a bit deeper, we might miss something important.”
“Do you think it is at all possible that she wasn’t murdered? Could she have slipped and fallen overboard?” Trevor asked.
“I suppose slips and falls do happen, but in this instance, I don’t think that is what’s going on. I know I literally just said less than a minute ago that it was too early to focus on a single suspect or motive, but I do think the missing money has to be at the root of this. Lucy told me she wanted to go to the authorities but Harris didn’t. At least not yet. He wanted to wait to see if he could find both the embezzler and the money. Harris was afraid that if his clients found out that their life savings were simply gone, there would be a panic.”
“Well, yeah,’ Trevor said. “I’d panic. Wouldn’t you?”
“Perhaps.”
Trevor paused and looked around. “So perhaps, as we have already suspected, Harris is the killer. Maybe he wanted to keep what had happened a secret and Lucy wanted to call the authorities, so they fought, and somehow Lucy ended up dead. It could even have been an accident. He could have pushed her and she could have hit her head and died.”
“If Lucy did die in her room we would have found blood or some other evidence. We still do need to search the currently occupied staterooms. I suppose Harris could have killed Lucy in his stateroom rather than hers. If he did we should find some sort of evidence once we have a chance to take a look around.”
“Do you think Harris came right out and told the others about the missing money at the meeting this morning?” Trevor asked.
I shrugged “He might have. Especially if he figured it would help him smoke out the embezzler. I’m not sure I would have just come out with what I knew before I had proof, but he might have.”
Trevor narrowed his gaze. “I wonder if Lucy remembers exactly what was discussed at the meeting.”
“She might. She remembered attending the meeting and chatting with Bret and Harris last night, and that the money was missing. I’ll ask her when we get back to the stateroom.” I looked around at the mostly empty space. “I don’t suppose there is anything to find here.”
“Is there anywhere else you want to search before we head there?”
“No. I guess not. I really do think that Lucy was killed while aboard this ship, which means there is a crime scene to find, but I’m not sure where else we can look, at least not tonight. Let’s head back and come up with a plan.”
Chapter 7
As soon as we arrived in our cabin, I called out to Alyson, but she didn’t appear. Occasionally, she failed to respond to me, so
I logged on to my computer, figuring I’d try again later.
I felt like the missing money was most likely the key to whatever was going on, but should I prove to be wrong, I wanted to learn everything I could about our victim. I wasn’t in the same league as Mac when it came to finding digitized information, but I could Google with the best of them. I knew Lucy’s first and last name, which provided a starting place. I knew that Hamilton Investments was based in Portland, so it wasn’t going out on a limb and take a guess that was where Lucy lived. She’d been on the cruise with a man named Lance Simpson, though Lucy had said he was just a friend. I had to assume that she was single. Now, I began with her social media accounts, Googling Lucy Loveland living in Portland. Tracking down her Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, and Instagram accounts was pretty easy. As I suspected, her Facebook page had her down as single. She was thirty-four, a runner like me, and moderately active on both Facebook and Instagram. There were a number of posts from the ship before it left port. She referred to her plans and how excited she was about the cruise that was about to begin. She hadn’t indicated anyone on her friends list as a relative, but I’d found in the past that a lot of people didn’t take the time to specify them. I couldn’t find evidence that she had ever been married or had any children.
“So far, Lucy looks like an average person,” I informed Trevor. “She has friends, hobbies, a good job, and, based on her photos, quite a lot of friends. If there is a motive to find here, I have no idea where to look.”
“Do you think there will be something to find?” Trevor asked.
I sighed. “Honestly, no. Given the fact that she was most likely murdered on this ship, we have a suspect list, and the missing money seems to provide a motive. I guess I just wanted to broaden my search a bit to eliminate other obvious possibilities.”
“Okay, so we suspect that someone on this ship murdered Lucy, most likely because of her awareness of the missing money.”
I nodded. “That leads us to either Harris, who didn’t want the theft leaked, or the embezzler, who also would have wanted to keep things quiet.”
“Who do you think is guilty of taking all that money?” Trevor asked.
“I have no idea.”
“If you had taken it, why would you even come on the cruise?”
“I supposed it is possible that for some reason, the embezzler wasn’t ready to cut ties with the company and run and needed to keep everything looking normal,” I answered.
“Okay, so now that the money has been found to be missing, what would the embezzler do?”
I frowned. “I guess if I was the one who took the money, I’d get off at the next port and disappear.”
“We could just wait to find out who, if anyone, turns up missing tomorrow.”
I had a feeling that things weren’t going to work out as simply as that.
“Should we tell someone about Lucy?” Trevor asked.
“And tell them what? Without a body, we have no proof that Lucy didn’t get off the ship at the last port, as Harris said.”
Trevor got up and began to pace around the small cabin. “I agree you can’t tell a stranger about Lucy’s ghost, but you could get in touch with Woody. Sure, he isn’t here, and this isn’t his jurisdiction, but he is a cop, and I sure would feel better if we told someone what we know, especially with Lance missing and us not knowing if he is alive or dead.”
I took a moment to consider Trevor’s suggestion. “I guess I could call Woody,” I said at last, referring to our close friend, Woody Baker, an officer on the police force in Cutter’s Cove. “He most likely won’t be able to help us in an official capacity, but maybe he can help us do some digging into Lucy and Lance’s backgrounds, as well as the backgrounds of Harris and anyone else we decide is a viable suspect.”
“It’s pretty late,” Trevor pointed out. “Maybe we should wait and call him tomorrow.”
“I’ll text him to let him know that I need to speak to him. If he is up, he’ll answer, and if he has already gone to bed, he’ll get back to me tomorrow. In the meantime, maybe we should start a list of who we need to speak to, who we suspect, and what we need to find out.”
I texted Woody and Trevor grabbed a notepad and pen.
“The first thing on my list would be to try to confirm what happened to Lance,” Trevor said. “Is he dead? Is he alive? Did he get off the ship, as Harris said? Is he being held captive? Is he injured? Is he the killer? Is there even a killer? We discussed the fact that if Lucy had fallen overboard and then died as a result of that fall, she most likely wouldn’t be haunting the ship, but are you sure about that?”
“No,” I admitted. “I’m not at all sure, but Lucy and Lance’s suite has been cleaned out, which leads me to one of two conclusions: either they actually did leave the ship together while we were in port, as Harris indicated, and she died after she left but for some reason her spirit is still trapped on board, or, more likely, someone other than one of them cleared out the room to make it appear as if they left.”
“If they left voluntarily and packed their own belongings, it seems as if they would have taken the computer and cell phone charger cords in addition to the computer and cell,” Trevor pointed out.
“I agree with that. Which leaves us with a cover-up.” I leaned back in my chair. “All we can really do is approach this systematically to see where we end up.” I glanced at my phone. I had a return text from Woody, letting me know he was still up if I wanted to talk. I texted him back to let him know I was going to follow up with a phone call.
“Thanks for getting back to me even though it is pretty late,” I said as soon as he picked up.
“No problem. I assume you aren’t just calling to say hi. What’s up?”
“No, I’m not calling just to check in. I’m on a cruise ship, actually.”
“That sounds like fun. Where are you sailing?”
“Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands. We are here with a group from Hamilton Investments. It’s a really nice ship, with just twenty passengers.”
“Sounds wonderful. I’m all assuming you didn’t text me at this time of night just to rub it in that you are cruising while I am here working.”
I laughed. “No. That’s not why I texted either.” I filled Woody in on the situation, beginning with the fact that one of the passengers was dead, although no one but Trevor and I and the killer knew about it.
“If someone killed this woman, her body was most likely weighted and tossed overboard,” Woody offered. “That’s what I’d do if I killed someone while on a ship.”
“That’s what Trev and I suspect as well. I’m not sure what to do. No one is missing her, and without a body, how am I supposed to convince anyone that she is dead?”
“Are you certain she didn’t get off the ship? Might she have been killed elsewhere?”
“I won’t go so far as to say I’m certain of this, but it has been my experience that ghosts are usually initially found at a location associated with their death. It might be the place they died, the place their body was abandoned, or the place they were buried. Occasionally, after time, I have found ghosts that have drifted to other locations, such as the home they lived in or another meaningful location, but that usually only occurs with the passage of time. Lucy had only recently died when I encountered her ghost right here on the ship, and because, as far as we can tell, her body doesn’t seem to be on the ship, I have to assume that this is where she was murdered, assuming she was murdered, which I strongly suspect.”
I could hear Woody let out a breath. “Okay. I’ll talk to the police in Port Townsend to try to get some general information on Lucy and the cruise you are on. I’ll just say I am looking for her as a follow-up to an investigation I am working on, that it is urgent that I speak to her, and my sources have confirmed that she was last seen there.”
“She wasn’t in Port Townsend. I don’t think she ever got off the ship.”
“Have you looked for the crime scene if she was killed on boa
rd?”
“We have, but we couldn’t search occupied cabins. We hope to be able to do that tomorrow. But there is more. I’m pretty sure we have a motive.”
“Okay. A motive would help. What do you have?”
I explained about the missing money and Lucy’s role discovering it.
“So you think that Lucy was killed to keep her quiet?”
“It makes the most sense,” I said.
“I agree,” Woody said. “From what you’ve told me, the killer could have been Harris Hamilton, but it also could have been whoever stole the money. Maybe you should give me a list of all the people on board.”
I took a moment to organize my thoughts. “In addition to the ship’s crew, Trev, Mac, Ty, and me, there are sixteen passengers who either work for Hamilton Investments in executive or upper-level management positions or are the guests of someone who does,” I continued. “Actually, that would be fifteen if you don’t count Lucy.”
“So there were eight employees and eight plus-ones?”
“No that isn’t quite right. One of the couples, Bret Nolan and Cynthia Davis, both work for Hamilton. That means that of the sixteen, nine, including Hamilton, are employees, and seven, including Hamilton’s wife, are not.”
I could hear Woody breathing on the other end of the line, so I knew he was still there even though he didn’t reply right away. I figured he might have been writing something down.
“Okay, I want you to list every cruise passenger individually,” Woody instructed. “I’ll be taking notes, so don’t go too fast. I want you to tell me who was on board at the time of the argument you overheard, who attended the meeting this morning, and who you know for certain had gotten off the ship during the argument. While we don’t know for certain that the argument you overheard and Lucy’s death are connected, at this point I think we ought to go with that assumption.”
