A Witch On The High Seas - A Paranormal Cozy Mystery (Merryweather Mysteries Book 2)

by Jenny Bankhead

  Raul seemed doubtful of this. “At the moment, I’d rather drink alone,” he said flatly. He fixed her with a glare.

  Yes, he does have cold eyes, Lorna thought. She straightened her spine. I can’t get scared off.

  “Well then,” Lorna said. “If we’re not going to share a friendly chat, I may as well cut to the chase. I want to discuss Leon’s murder with you.”

  Raul’s glare disappeared. He looked sobered by the change in topic. Something about Leon’s death makes him nervous, thought Lorna, watching him lift his drink and take a long swig.

  The bartender approached. “What can I get you, miss?” he asked.

  “I’d love a glass of white wine,” Lorna said. And then on second thought. “Actually, a beer. Something bubbly sounds very refreshing.”

  “Your usual then? The grapefruit IPA?”

  Lorna nodded. Her taste buds were tingling already.

  The bartender winked. “Coming right up,” he said.

  “Now,” Lorna turned on her seat so that she was facing Raul directly. She noticed that his drink, which had been half full only minutes before, was now empty. “Where were you, Raul, when Leon was killed?”

  “Look, lady. I don’t have to talk to you. This is my ship, and I talk to who I want to talk to.” Raul pushed his drink away and made as though to stand up. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I—”

  Lorna could see that he was going to leave. She interrupted him. “I know you were with him, Raul,” she said in an even, authoritative voice.

  Raul froze in place, half up and half down. Then he lowered his weight back down onto the stool, studying Lorna as he did so.

  The bartender returned with Lorna’s drink in hand. He set it down in front of her.

  Lorna could feel Raul’s eyes on her as she lifted the beer and took what she hoped appeared to be a casual sip. Inside she was quaking with nerves, but she didn’t want Raul to know that.

  “Another one, Mr. Alvarez, sir?” the bartender asked Raul.

  “Yes,” Raul said. “Make it a double.”

  When the bartender walked away, Raul spoke. “Who told you that?” he asked.

  “That doesn’t matter,” Lorna said. “What matters is that you were there. And believe me, young man, just because you own this ship does not mean that you are above the law. If you killed Leon—”

  “I didn’t kill him!” Raul said.

  Lorna lifted her drink and took another sip. Sometimes, she had been learning, silence was the best tool in her arsenal of tricks. She waited for Raul to keep talking.

  The silence stretched on, almost to the point that Lorna gave up on the tactic. If the beer wasn’t so good, she might have. But as it was, she continued gulping it down, waiting the silence out. The grapefruit IPA was crisp, citrusy, and had a floral aftertaste.

  Eventually, Raul spoke. “Okay, I was there,” he spat out. “I’ll admit to that.” Here he cursed again. This man really had a sailor’s mouth on him. When he was done muttering a string of profanities, he raked his fingers through his hair with frustration. “We were going to discuss personal matters. But we didn’t get to that. He was gone before I had the chance to say a word. I can’t believe he’s dead.”

  Lorna studied Raul. He really did wear a look of disbelief on his handsome face.

  “Tell me what happened,” Lorna said. “Start from the beginning.” At this point, she wondered if she was pushing her luck. She quickly lifted her beer and took another swig, so that her quivering lip would not give away her apprehension.

  “I wanted to discuss something with Leon,” Raul said. “I saw him heading down to the lower deck, so I followed him. It’s best to talk down there. There’s less going on—not as much commotion as up here on the second level. I thought we might have a chance to talk privately.”

  About what? Lorna wondered, but she bit her tongue and refrained from asking him. He was just launching into his story, and she didn’t want to interrupt.

  The bartender approached and placed Raul’s drink on the counter. Raul lifted it up and held it while he continued. “I saw him walking down the narrow hallway at the base of the stairs. He looked like he was heading somewhere in particular—not just out wandering around, but really going somewhere. Do you know what I mean?”

  Lorna nodded.

  “Well, I was following him. He was walking very fast and getting ahead of me. Then he stepped out onto the deck, and I lost sight of him. When I rounded a corner, I saw him. I was going to call out to him, but then I saw that Sandy was there too, just on the other side of him.”

  Raul eyed Lorna. “I’m guessing you know about Leon and Sandy? You seem to have your finger on the pulse of this ship.”

  “Yes,” Lorna said. She’d never been the one to have her finger on the pulse of anything before, and this felt like a major accomplishment. She gave her hand a little dismissive wave. “Of course, I know about Sandy and Leon,” she said. “That’s old news.” Really, she’d just learned about Sandy and Leon’s affair hours before, but that was irrelevant. She knew. That was the important part.

  Raul sighed. “I knew that Sandy and Leon were having problems. I didn’t call out to Leon because I figured the two of them—Sandy and Leon—were probably about to hash things out.”

  He paused to sip his drink and then continued. “Sandy had recently gotten word about a woman that Leon had been visiting when we stopped in Sardinia. I could see it on her face—she was upset.”

  To put it mildly, thought Lorna. She spoke. “Oh, Raul. Sandy knew that Leon was bedding lots of women. Plural. He had women at every port.”

  Raul took in this information. “No wonder she was upset, then. I thought she knew about the Sardinian, but I didn’t know that she was aware of all the women. Leon liked women. We can’t blame the guy for that.”

  Or can we? thought Lorna. The fact that Leon had been cheating on his wife did not make her think highly of the deceased man. She didn’t want her objections to Leon’s lifestyle to color her investigation, though; so for the moment, she attempted to keep things objective.

  “What Leon did in the bedroom was his own business,” she said. “He made his bed, and now he has to lie in it.” And it will be six feet underground, once we are towed to shore, she thought. “I’m not about to judge his choices.”

  “Well, you might not judge his choices, but Sandy sure did. She looked very upset with him,” Raul replied.

  “So you were going to call out to him, but you stopped when you saw that he was with Sandy. You knew that the two of them had things to discuss.”

  “Yes, but if I’d known that Sandy had plans to literally ‘hash it out’—or ‘bash it out’ might be a better term for it—with Leon, I would have called out. I would have warned him.”

  “Warned him?” Lorna asked. “But why?”

  “Because,” Raul said, “the next thing I knew, I heard a cracking sound, and kind of a thud. It was sickening.” His face paled. He steeled himself with his drink, and then went on. “I didn’t see what happened because I was blinded by a flash of light. When my eyes adjusted, I saw Leon had crumpled to the ground. His head was a bloody mess. I think the cracking sound was actually his skull.”

  Now it was Lorna’s turn to pale. She too steeled herself with her drink and learned that grapefruit IPA is the perfect drink with which to fortify oneself during an interrogation.

  “Where was Sandy?” Lorna asked.

  Leon shook his head. “I couldn’t quite tell, with the sunlight in my eyes like that. When my eyes adjusted, I saw Leon, and I knew that he was dead.”

  “Well,” said Lorna, baffled by this story. She gulped down the remainder of her beer.

  Raul also polished off his drink. When he set it down, he spoke with a tone of finality. “Sandy must have done it,” he said. “There was no one else there. She must have been overwhelmed by the news of all the women Leon was sleeping with and decided to do away with him.” A particularly unpleasant curse word slipped from his
lips.

  Lorna blushed. “We can’t rush to any conclusions,” she said. In actuality, she was very sure that Sandy had not murdered Leon. Now that she had heard both Sandy’s and Raul’s stories, she didn’t know what to think.

  “Well, I don’t want anything to do with it. I just want to get off of this ship and be done with the whole thing,” Raul said. He sounded honest. Lorna was glad to hear that he wasn’t about to persecute Sandy for what he thought she’d done. He seemed to genuinely want to stay out of it all.

  “It will be nice to reach the shore,” Lorna said. She hopped off the stool. It was much easier to dismount the tall stool than to get onto it. “Thank you for sharing a drink with me Raul. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  Raul shook his head. “I guess it wasn’t terrible,” he said.

  Lorna walked off with her head held high. It wasn’t until she’d exited the interior bar room and stepped out into the fresh air that she let her shoulders slump. “What a puzzle,” she murmured to herself. “Sandy says that Raul is the killer, while Raul insists it was Sandy. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  Caught up in her own thoughts, she passed the pool area. No one was swimming since it was still so cloudy and gray out. She continued along the deck, and then, seeing one of the comfortable, puffy chairs that the second level deck had in every nook and corner, Lorna decided to stop and sit. She sank into the overstuffed cushions, still pondering the stories she’d recently heard.

  The sound of a woman’s voice disrupted her thoughts. Lorna’s chair was tucked in a small alcove, overlooking the sea. The voice was coming from beyond the alcove, to the right. The woman was speaking Spanish.

  Lorna used her sometimes-underutilized witchy powers and honed in on the sound. Yes. She recognized that voice. It was Ana Almeda.

  The woman was speaking in rapid-fire Spanish, so Lorna had no idea what she was saying. With perked ears, Lorna waited for the apologetic assistant to respond. Surely the two had returned to their usual power dynamic, and Ana was once again berating her assistant.

  To Lorna’s surprise, when Paula spoke, her tone was not weak and submissive. Although the words were in Spanish and Lorna could not understand what was being said, she could understand the underlying sentiment beneath the words.

  Paula was not being apologetic. Instead, she was being quite assertive.

  Lorna listened more intently. The conversation carried on, the women taking turns speaking in quick succession. Ana did not dominate the conversation. Instead, the women seemed to be speaking as equals.

  Well that’s odd, thought Lorna. I noticed it before when they were with me at the crime scene. They seemed to be treating each other as equals then, too. What’s changed between them? Was it some kind of event? Why is it that Ana is treating Paula so differently? Lorna wondered.

  She stood up from her chair.

  Yes, she thought. Something must have happened, to cause such a drastic change. But what? Could they be involved in the murder in some way?

  She wasn’t sure, but she intended to find out. After that, she would see if she could find Betty and forage up some dinner fare. All of this investigating gave her quite an appetite.

  Chapter 11

  Lorna emerged from the little alcove where she had been comfortably seated. The pool area was entirely deserted, except for Ana and Paula who stood at one end of it. As Lorna picked her way around vacant lounge chairs, she watched Paula head off in the other direction. Ana was alone.

  “Contemplating a dip?” Lorna waved towards the colorful noodles and floats bobbing in the clear aqua waters. The assortment of objects reminded her of apples floating in a pail at the Tweed-upon-Slumber Harvest Festival, only there were no children waiting in line to bob for them. The only guest at this festival was a very sour, intimidating, and mysterious Spanish woman.

  Ana wasn’t dressed as though she planned on swimming. She wore her oversized fashionable sunglasses propped on her head, and her dark hair was swept up in a high bun. As usual, she was dressed sharply, this time in a blouse and tight-fitting black slacks. Lorna envied Ana’s figure, and for a moment thought about asking her if she had committed to some sort of athletic discipline, such as tennis or ballroom dancing.

  Before she could inquire, Ana spoke. “No, there is no time for a swim today.” Her Spanish accent was thick.

  Lorna was intrigued by her statement. “No? Why not?”

  Ana seemed very preoccupied indeed. While Lorna spoke, Ana was scanning the deck. She appeared quite on edge.

  Because she hadn’t received an answer, Lorna spoke again. “Where did Paula go?” she asked. And then, “Paula is your assistant, correct?”

  “Yes, yes,” Ana said dismissively. “My assistant. Right.”

  Ana’s tone was not convincing. Lorna decided to dig further. “Where were you from nine to ten o’clock this morning, Miss Almeda?” she asked. “What were you doing right before you went down to see the body on the lower deck?”

  This finally got Ana’s full attention. She narrowed her made-up eyes at Lorna. “Who is asking?” she said cautiously.

  “I am,” Lorna said. “I think my friend, Betty Wardenshire, would like to know too. At the moment, we’ve been separated, but usually, we work as a team.” Saying this made Lorna wonder just how Betty was holding up and where on the ship she might be. I really must go find her right after this, Lorna thought.

  Lorna’s answer did not satisfy Ana. “What is it to you and this…Betty Wardenshire?” she asked carefully.

  “We want to know who killed Leon,” Lorna said. Was it curiosity that drove her? A sense of responsibility? A desire for justice? She did not know, but she knew that she wanted the truth as badly as Lord Nottingham craved his five o’clock dinner.

  Ana was wary. “I was in my suite until nine o’clock,” she said. “My…assistant and I were discussing our plan for the day. At nine twenty we walked to the bar for breakfast. Before we could help ourselves to food, we heard a scream.”

  “You were in your room until nine...discussing your plan for the day?” Lorna repeated.

  Ana nodded. “Of course. That’s our usual routine. I usually keep a very tight schedule, and this detainment out at sea has been an inconvenience.”

  Lorna sighed. “Yes, it has been an inconvenience, hasn’t it?” She thought of her cottage, and her dear Lord Nottingham, and the feel of splashing through puddles in her galoshes on the way to Muriel’s Cafe for breakfast. She thought of stepping into the cafe and shaking off the raindrops, and how cozy it was inside, and how filled with familiar faces. At this moment, she missed Tweed-upon-Slumber with an intensity of longing that she’d never before experienced in her life.

  After a pause, she pulled herself from her thoughts of home. “Would you like to know what else is inconvenient?” she said. “Getting smashed on the head with a snow globe and then left for dead. That’s the very definition of

  ‘inconvenient’ if you ask me.”

  Ana paled. “I agree. But I know nothing of how he was murdered. Leon may have had it coming. He was involved with—” She stopped short.

  Lorna stepped forward. She found that she was nothing short of six inches taller than Ana. “Involved with what?” she asked.

  “I cannot say.” Ana pressed her lips together.

  “There is a murderer at large!” Lorna said, throwing her hands up with exasperation. “If you know something about Leon that might implicate his killer, you shouldn’t keep it to yourself!”

  Ana took in a few even, metered breaths. She eyed Lorna. Finally, she spoke. “Raul Alvarez is not exactly running his business aboveboard. And the other crew—including Leon—may or may not have been involved.”

  “What does that mean?” Lorna could not help it. Her voice lilted upwards and increased in volume. She felt as though she was at her wits’ end. Ana clearly knew something about the murder but was hiding it.

  It frustrated Lorna to feel so out of the loop—and just after she’d been co
mplimented as having her finger on the pulse of the ship, too. Suddenly, she felt as though her finger had slipped altogether off of the pulse.

  “I will not say any more on the matter,” Ana said resolutely. “I may have said too much already,” she added under her breath before spinning on her heel and marching away.

  Lorna stood, staring at the spot that Ana had just occupied as though the woman’s ghost was still there. But the imprint of Ana that Lorna conjured up with her memory did not reveal any more answers.

  “Great,” muttered Lorna. “Just great. Another puzzle. I must find Betty to talk this through.”

  On her way to the ballroom, where she hoped Betty might still be lingering, Lorna spotted the ship’s captain. He was making his way to the stairs that led up to the third tier of the ship, where the bridge and captain’s quarters were. He had a cup of steaming tea in his hand.

  He had changed since his adventures overboard and was now dressed in a dignified, crisp uniform complete with a spotless, freshly ironed jacket. The navy jacket with gold stripes suited him well, as usual.

  Captain Lou Gasparini did not look pleased to see Lorna approaching. “You again,” he said, deflating slightly as she held up her hand to wave. His shoulders sagged. “What do you want?”

  “Well,” said Lorna, trying not to take offense to his reaction. “It’s nice to see you too, Captain Gasparini.”

  Lou waited.

  Lorna spoke. “I have a few questions for you if you don’t mind.”

  “You always seem to have questions,” Lou noted.

  Lorna ignored this. “Are you aware that the owner of this ship, Raul Alvarez, is—”

  “I know who the ship’s owner is,” Lou said. “You don’t need to tell me his name.” He waved his hand. “Get to the point. My tea is getting cold.”

  Lorna knew how unsatisfying a cup of lukewarm tea could be. “Raul is involved with business that is not aboveboard,” she said, using Ana’s words exactly. She did this because she did not know what, precisely, the Spanish woman meant by them.