Terns of Endearment (Meg Langslow Mysteries)

by Andrews, Donna

  “A ploy to flush out Desiree’s new ghostwriter?”

  “Any aspiring writer would be crazy not to attend,” she said. “Especially since they can pretend they only came because it’s dinnertime. But if we have a few keen-eyed people there to help us figure out who’s interested in what we’re saying and who’s only there to stave off starvation…”

  “I’ll be there,” I said. “You’ll only have an hour, you know. Grandfather will be doing his lecture at seven.”

  “That’s why we chose six,” she said. “If anyone gets really into it and wants to talk our ears off, we can always say ‘wonderful, but it’s time to listen to Dr. Blake now.’ Look good to you?”

  “Looks great.”

  “Then we’ll make a few more copies and post them in strategic locations. Later!”

  She dashed off, waving the poster like a banner.

  “Weren’t you going to ask her about the book?” Caroline asked.

  “Plenty of time for that,” I said.

  “Meaning you suspect her?”

  “I suspect everybody,” I said. “And I just thought of another possible explanation for the book. What if someone planted it in Trevor’s luggage? And left it partly sticking out of an unzipped suitcase pocket to make sure we’d find it. The more I think of it, the more suspicious that was—Trevor would never leave a suitcase pocket unzipped, much less have something hanging out of one.”

  “But why? To frame Trevor, I assume, but of what?”

  “What if Desiree’s apparent suicide wasn’t suicide but murder?” I suggested.

  “And the killer planted the book so if we figured out it wasn’t suicide we’d suspect Trevor? Nice plan, but it’ll backfire if Trevor’s still back in Baltimore. He’ll have a fabulous alibi.”

  But what if he had joined Desiree at the bottom of the Atlantic? Or had even preceded her there. Not something I wanted to say out loud at this point.

  “Maybe someone planted it to create confusion,” I said with a sigh. “In which case, they’ve succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.”

  “Good point.” Caroline frowned slightly. “Do you even know if that’s really Desiree’s signature?”

  “Looked genuine to me,” I said. “Of course, the only thing I have to compare it with is her suicide note.” I pulled out my phone, opened up the picture I’d taken of the suicide note, and handed both phone and book to Caroline. She spent several minutes peering back and forth between the two.

  “Looks genuine to me.” She sounded disappointed. “Of course, I’m not a handwriting expert. And I should think her handwriting might be easier to fake than most. The way she makes some of her letters is…”

  “Unusual?” I suggested.

  “I’d have said downright peculiar. If you got those right, someone might not notice the more subtle things you got wrong.”

  “So either it is Desiree’s handwriting or it’s a forgery by someone who has reason to know what her handwriting looks like.” I tucked my phone back in my pocket and the book in my tote. “Keep your ears open—if we find out one of our fellow passengers is a vacationing graphologist, we might get a better read on the inscription. I’m going to have another go at finding Léonie. And not just so we can use the equipment that’s packed away in Trevor’s suitcases. Once we get our hands on them, I’m going to turn them both inside out.”

  “Good plan.”

  I headed for the stairway and met Delaney coming up. I drew her a little away from the tern-watching crowd.

  “You don’t happen to have a handwriting analysis program in your computer, do you?” I asked.

  “Sorry. I bet I can find one if we get Internet back.”

  “Might come in useful. And is there any way you could figure out how to open one of the card key locks?” I explained about Trevor’s luggage, my difficulty in finding Léonie, and my reluctance to let any other crew members know I wanted to collect it.

  “If we were at home, no problem,” she said. “Not sure I have the right equipment here. Let me play with it a while.”

  “I’ll let you know if I ever find Léonie and don’t need it anymore.”

  “Cool,” she said. “Although given how weird things are going around here, even after you bag Trevor’s stuff it might be nice to have a little more access.”

  I had to agree.

  She returned to the recliner beside Rob. I noticed that she’d pulled out her own card key and was staring at it, visibly lost in thought.

  Just then Wim returned with a plate of something fishy-smelling. Probably just what Grandfather needed, assuming the way to the tern’s heart would be through his stomach. But the mere smell made my stomach turn. Time to have another go at finding Léonie.

  Chapter 22

  The afternoon dragged on. Léonie remained unfindable. The temperature rose. As I traveled through the ship I could see more and more passengers leaving their doorways and their balcony doors open to get cross-ventilation, so as you walked down the passageways you could wave at people who were fanning themselves while sitting on their balconies or lying on their beds. Every time I passed one of the doors leading into the crew’s portion of the ship I’d try it, only to find it locked.

  I checked my phone occasionally to see if by some lucky chance it had found a stray signal and downloaded my email. But every time I checked, I found nothing. No cheerful notes from friends. No announcements of sales from the several thousand companies that had me on their mailing lists. No excited requests for donations from politicians. And more to the point, no scoop on Desiree and the other writers from Kevin.

  At one point I ran into Rose Noire on the deck two sun deck, fretting aloud to two other passengers about all the dire perils that could befall us here in the Bermuda Triangle. And not just any passengers, but the Sandburgs, the elderly couple who were probably still recovering from Dad’s monologue on disgusting tropical diseases. We’d be lucky if they didn’t sue the entire family for emotional distress when we got back to civilization.

  “Good news!” I trilled, barging into the middle of the conversation. “Caroline has discovered that we’re not in the Bermuda Triangle after all!”

  “But Meg—” Rose Noire began.

  “Let me tell you about it—you don’t mind, do you?” I added to the already retreating Sandburgs, who shook their heads and smiled gratefully at me.

  Turning back to Rose Noire I put my forefinger to my lips and shook my head slightly.

  To my relief, she stayed quiet until the Sandburgs had scuttled inside.

  “But Meg,” she protested. “I think they need to know what’s going on.”

  “No, they don’t,” I said. “They really don’t. I take it you don’t agree with Caroline’s map that shows we’re not in the Bermuda Triangle after all.”

  “The Bermuda Triangle isn’t a place that has precise physical boundaries,” she began. “It’s much more amorphous. Intangible.”

  “More a state of mind than anything else,” I suggested.

  “Precisely!” She beamed at me. “So that’s why it’s so important—”

  “To keep as many passengers as possible in the sort of positive, optimistic mood that is the best antidote to any kind of negativity. Especially people like the Sandburgs—a lovely couple, but do you really think they have the kind of psychic armor needed to withstand something like the Bermuda Triangle? Especially if you go around forcing them to think about it all the time.”

  I expected her to protest that I had no idea what I was talking about. Instead she looked at me with a small puzzled frown on her face.

  “I know you think you’re humoring me,” she said finally. “But I rather think you have a very valid idea here. Quite possibly a brilliant one. I’m going to have to think about this.”

  She wandered off looking very pensive.

  “That’s me,” I said under my breath. “Brilliant, if only by accident.”

  The next time I saw her, she was leading a small group of passengers th
rough a guided meditation, exhorting them to breath out negativity and breath in strength and calm. And extolling the benefits of doing so in the open air, in the middle of an ocean that was pumping out healthy ions, and far away from all the mechanical and electronic contraptions that could befoul the chi.

  The passengers would never know what I spared them.

  Grandfather remained on deck six, alternately napping and observing the tern, even after Wim and Guillermo had grown tired of photographing the bird and gone back to searching the horizon for more interesting photographic subjects. At one point Rose Noire showed up—taking a break between meditation sessions, I assumed—and studied the bird with even more interest than Grandfather.

  “Perhaps he’s been sent to us as a spirit guide,” she said. “Sent to help us in our present peril—to lead us out of the Bermuda Triangle.”

  “Then we’re doubly out of luck,” I said. “Until the ship’s fixed, we can’t exactly follow anyone anywhere, and even if we could, he’s certainly not going anywhere with a broken wing. Some spirit guide.”

  “I didn’t mean literally follow him.” She let a faint note of exasperation creep into her voice. “Follow his example.”

  “If you mean we should all hover around Grandfather and let him toss sardines at us, I’ll pass, thanks.”

  “The tern is not panicking or even fretting.” Rose Noire’s tone conveyed that she was graciously ignoring my sarcasm. “It remains calm, accepting that regardless of whether the ship is steaming toward its destination or becalmed here, the universe remains the same beneficent and wonderful place.”

  “Of course the tern’s calm,” I said. “Not only is he home, but he has more suckers than usual to fetch fish for him. We’ll see how calm he is when the sardine supply runs out.”

  Rose Noire rolled her eyes and disappeared. A few minutes later I heard soft chanting from the deck below.

  I resumed my search.

  Once, while trudging down the fourth deck passageway, I stopped and tried the door to Desiree’s cabin. Which, not surprisingly, didn’t open. I decided that if I ever did find Léonie again, and if she agreed to let me borrow her key card, I wouldn’t just fetch Trevor’s luggage. I’d search Desiree’s room. I wasn’t quite sure what I’d find—I doubted that she’d have left behind a signed confession that she’d killed the writers’ friend Nancy, or stolen her manuscript. But if she had a laptop with her—and from what I’d seen, laptops seemed to be almost required equipment for traveling writers—I could borrow it and see what Delaney could uncover.

  At six, the writers’ presentation on how to get published was well attended—and well received. I had no idea how many of the audience really had literary ambitions and how many were just overjoyed to have some form of entertainment after a long, powerless day—and for that matter, some form of distraction from an uninspiring meal of fruit, power bars, cheese and crackers, cans of fruit cocktail, and tins of sardines.

  Dad and I made a list of everyone who took notes, everyone who went up afterward to get business cards from the writers, and everyone who even seemed more than casually interested. Tomorrow I’d work on figuring out their names, and where their cabins were, and how we could manage to engage them in conversation that might reveal if they secretly harbored an ambition to ghostwrite for Desiree. For tonight, I was content to sit back and enjoy Grandfather’s lecture on sharks.

  It wasn’t until near the end of the lecture that I finally spotted Léonie. She slipped through the door at the back of the room and seemed to be scanning the crowd for … what? Then she slipped out again. Should I follow her? Probably a good idea to let at least a few minutes pass before— No, I should follow her.

  “Back in a few minutes,” I whispered to Michael.

  When I left the main dining room for the long passageway, I saw her at the far end, entering the boarding lobby. I walked as fast as I could and found her talking to the first officer. Actually, more like being told off by the first officer.

  “Our priority should be the passengers,” he was saying as I drew near.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “Did you find your key card?” Léonie asked.

  I was opening my mouth to say that I’d never lost it when I realized what she was doing.

  “No—sorry. Pretty sure I must have left it in the room.”

  “I should go and assist madame,” Léonie said to the first officer.

  He nodded, then turned and stumbled off, looking exhausted. He slid his key card through the slot beside the CREW ONLY door and disappeared into the forbidden realms of deck zero.

  “If madame will follow me?”

  She led the way up the stairs. I waited until we were outside Michael’s and my room, with no one visible around, before saying, quietly, “Sorry—I hope I didn’t get you in trouble.”

  “No—in fact you gave me a good way to escape yet another lecture. I am not in the running for employee of the month, you see.” She looked up and down the corridor to see if anyone was passing. No one was, but just in case, she took out her key card and swiped it through the door. “You were looking for me?”

  “Yes. I want to ask a favor.”

  She raised one eyebrow.

  “Can you lend me your key card for a few hours?” I asked. “I want to collect our friend Trevor’s luggage—one of his suitcases actually contains stuff for my grandfather anyway, and as for the other one—well, with everything so disorganized we’d like to have it where we can keep an eye on it.”

  She studied my face for a long moment, and then nodded.

  “I will pretend that I lost it and have been looking for it,” she said, handing me her card. “I can get by without it for a while. But it would be better if we could find a place for you to leave it, instead of handing it back to me.”

  I liked the fact that she hadn’t asked why I wanted to borrow the key card this time, instead of just getting her to let me in again.

  “I assume you don’t want to be seen aiding and abetting one of the passengers,” I said aloud. “I know—I could hide it in one of the books.” I led the way into the library lounge, which was only a few doors down from our cabin—and fortunately empty for the moment. I studied the shelves around us. During a moment of boredom earlier in the day I’d given them a reasonably thorough inspection and I was fairly certain we could pick out a book that would remain unmolested for years on end. In fact, any number of them. The volumes lining the walls were a mixture of fancy-looking books, probably bought by the yard for their covers, and unloved books left behind by passengers of previous voyages.

  We settled on a faded leather-bound copy of Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Paul Clifford. I’d heard of it before, largely because of its infamous first line: “It was a dark and stormy night.” But I doubted there were more than a couple of people on board who would have known about this—Dad and Caroline came to mind—and it was the sort of book whose appearance suggested that it was more likely to provide an allergy attack than a good read. I didn’t explain the significance of the book to Léonie, but she wrinkled her nose and agreed that yes, it was a book no sensible person would even touch. And to make it even better, it was ex-library, and still had an old-fashioned card pocket glued to the inside back cover.

  “A perfect hiding place,” Léonie said with satisfaction. “You can just slip the card in there.”

  “And I’ll have it there by midnight.”

  We found ourselves grinning at each other.

  “In spite of all this, I am having fun,” she said. “I should have become a mutineer long ago.”

  “Up the rebels,” I said. “Which is how the Irish sayi vive les rebelles.”

  “Then up the rebels. And à bientôt.” She hurried off.

  Back downstairs in the main dining room, Grandfather’s question-and-answer session was coming to a close. I drew Michael aside.

  “Can you keep the boys busy for a little while?”

  “I can,�
�� he said. “Actually, we were all planning to go up on deck six and watch Raiders of the Lost Ark on Delaney’s laptop. And then as many of the sequels as they can stay awake for. The boys swear they’ve never seen any of Indiana Jones—not sure how we missed sharing that with them—and Rob and Delaney seem to consider this a form of child neglect. So since she just happens to have digital copies somewhere in the vast collection of electronic doohickeys she brought along … don’t you want to watch with us?”

  “I’ll catch up with you when I can.” I explained about my plan to retrieve Trevor’s suitcases and search Desiree’s room.

  “You sure you don’t need help with that?”

  “I was going to enlist Dad,” I said. “Not that you wouldn’t be a lot more help, frankly, but it isn’t a tough mission, and I think he’d be hurt if I didn’t ask him.”

  Dad, of course, was delighted by the opportunity to begin his life of crime on the high seas. My only problem was keeping him from dashing off to begin our burgling expedition while people were still slowly making their way up to their cabins by the light of their flashlights and phones.

  “Go put on your burgling clothes and come to Michael’s and my cabin at nine,” I said. “And by burgling clothes, I mean comfortable clothes and sneakers. I am not going to walk down the passageway with you if you’re dressed like a ninja. Casual wear.”

  “Roger!”

  At nine on the dot, I heard a knock on the cabin door, the familiar “shave and a haircut, two bits” knock.

  “Hi, Dad.” I didn’t even have to look to see it was him.

  He slipped in and stood, bright-eyed with excitement. For a moment I wondered if maybe I should have asked Dad to watch the boys and invited Michael to join me.

  No, Dad would enjoy this more. And if we got caught burgling Desiree’s cabin, at least the boys would have one parent who wasn’t behind bars.