“Here’s the plan,” I said. “First we go down to Trevor’s cabin and collect one of his suitcases.”
“Why only one? We can carry both.”
“Maybe not a bad idea,” I said. “If we can carry both. But the one we really need is whichever one isn’t full of clothes. The one that contains Grandfather’s fancy radio equipment.”
“We can use that to radio for help! Excellent!”
“And it could be heavy, so if we can’t handle both, we leave his clothes and take the bag with the hardware.”
“But what if he put some bits of radio equipment in his own suitcase? Load balancing, or whatever.”
Yes, unfortunately, I could see Trevor doing that. Caroline or Wim or Guillermo or the three of them together would have packed the case containing the radio equipment with maximum efficiency and enough padding to ensure its safe arrival. But Trevor never trusted that anything was properly done unless he did it himself. Most of the time that was a good thing.
“You have a point,” I said. “So we’ll take both suitcases. Even if it takes two trips.”
And maybe that would be useful. Maybe people wouldn’t pay us much mind if they got used to the sight of us hauling suitcases up three flights of stairs.
No, make that two. We’d bring the suitcases to Michael’s and my cabin on the fourth floor. Once we’d secured them there, we’d search Desiree’s cabin. And we could get Wim and Guillermo to collect Trevor’s suitcases later. After I’d searched them. Not that searching would do much good—what evidence could I possibly find to support my paranoid suspicion that he’d deliberately missed our sailing? A note gloating that he’d arranged to have us stranded in the Bermuda Triangle, and asking us to give our regards to the pirates he’d hired to slaughter us? And unless his suitcase held a collection of Desiree’s books with increasingly affectionate, personal dedications, my search wasn’t likely to clear up the question of whether he had any prior connection to Desiree. I pushed my wild imaginings aside.
On a more practical note, it occurred to me that Desiree’s cabin occupied precisely the same spot on the fourth floor as Grandfather’s did on the fifth, right beside the elevator. If anyone spotted us going into or coming out of her cabin, we could claim that we had mistaken it for Grandfather’s, noticed the door hanging open, and gone in to check on him. Or we could pretend we’d intended to go into the library lounge, which had the same position to the left of the stairs that Desiree’s room occupied on the right. Or—
“Meg? Are we going soon?”
“We’re going now,” I said. “Let’s keep it casual.”
I hoped no one ran into us on our way down to deck two. Dad wasn’t trying to be furtive, thank goodness, but his whole body language shouted “Look at me! I know something you don’t know!” And creeping around with no light other than the flashlight beams from our phones felt pretty furtive to begin with, even though everybody had been doing it all day in the windowless corridors.
Luckily we made it to cabin 210 without encountering anyone who might have remarked on his jaunty demeanor. Léonie’s card key worked just fine, and the two suitcases looked exactly as I’d remembered them. Which didn’t mean they hadn’t been tampered with, but if they had, at least it had been by someone making a reasonable effort at subtlety.
I tested them both and grabbed the heavy hard-sided case, which I assumed would contain the radio equipment. Dad took the other one.
“Hang on a sec,” I said, when we were about to leave. “I want to see if there’s any ginger beer here.”
“You want to stop in the middle of a burglary to have a soft drink?” Dad asked.
“If there are cases of ginger beer anywhere in this room, then they’d probably have come on board with Trevor.” I was checking the closet, the drawers, under the bed, and in the bathroom. “The fact that I’m not finding any is a good thing.”
“Your grandfather would probably feel differently.”
“I’m sure even Grandfather would rather find out that Trevor was left standing on the pier in Baltimore with a couple of cases of ginger beer than that he’d come on board and disappeared somewhere between Baltimore and here,” I said.
“Oh, I see. Yes, definitely.”
I grabbed the big suitcase and, after first listening out the door and then peeking out in the hope of leaving unseen, we scurried down the passageway.
As we reached the stairs we heard someone coming up.
“Pant a little,” I whispered. “We’re resting.”
Two of the Stooges appeared. Hal, he of the five o’clock shadow, and the chin-deficient one we didn’t yet have a name for.
“Evening,” I said.
“You’re out late,” Hal said.
“Hauling some of Grandfather’s stuff back up to him,” I said. “Don’t worry, Dad. Only two more decks. We’ll stop at every landing.”
“Why not let us do that?” Hal said. “Come on, Victor—let’s not let this lady and her dad wear themselves out.”
I didn’t protest too hard. Hal and Victor were visibly a little the worse for drink, and if it was possible to get a contact high from beer fumes, Dad and I would be in trouble. But they were undoubtedly strong, and made quick work of hauling the suitcases up from deck two to deck four.
“Thanks a lot,” I said, shaking each Stooge’s hand. “Dad, do you want to come in for a minute and say good night to your grandsons if they’re still awake?”
“Love to,” Dad said. “Thanks again,” he added as he, too, shook both Stooges’ hands.
“No problem,” Victor said.
“Glad to,” Hal added.
It occurred to me that if they continued showing signs of common decency I’d have to find a new nickname for them.
I’d worry about that tomorrow. The Stooges left. Dad breathed a sigh of relief, but at least he waited until the door was closed.
“That was close,” he said. “Wait—the boys aren’t actually here, are they?”
“No,” I said. “Michael took them up to deck six to watch Raiders of the Lost Ark on Delaney’s laptop. We think they’re a little young to find out that both their mother and their grandfather are daring cruise ship burglars.”
“So now what?”
“We give the Stoo— We give Hal and Victor time to go back downstairs again.”
Dad stood by the door, staring at it. I bled off some of my nervous energy by tidying up the two rooms, checking my watch from time to time.
When ten minutes had passed, I returned to the door.
“Okay,” I said. “Part two of our mission.”
Chapter 23
I opened the door and peered out.
“The coast is clear,” I said.
We slipped out of the cabin and scanned up and down the corridor with our phone flashlight beams. No one in sight.
“Try not to look quite so furtive this time,” I told Dad. “Her cabin is right by the stairwell. Pretend we’re just heading to deck six to join Michael and the boys.”
“And if someone sees us lurking there?”
“We’re resting before tackling the last two flights.”
Dad nodded and continued down the hallway looking a lot more natural. When we came to 411, I whipped out the pass key and quickly slid it through the slot. The door clicked open, and Dad and I hurried inside.
I closed the door behind us. Once inside, I held out my phone and slowly ran the light around the circumference of the room. Dad was still fussing with the door for some reason.
“I never noticed it before, but these cabins don’t have any kind of inside security lock.” He was aiming his phone’s light at the door and frowning. “You know, the kind of lock that can’t be opened from the outside. Don’t hotels usually have that?”
“Yes, but what good would that do us right now? If someone tried to get in and found the door locked from the inside, I think they’d figure out something was up.”
“So what do we do if anyone comes along?” D
ad asked.
“We hide in…” I looked around. There weren’t many options in the tiny room. “In the bathroom or out on the balcony. Whichever one we can get to first.”
“Right.”
“So where do we look?” I said. Rhetorical question. There weren’t all that many options. I knew people whose closets were bigger than this room.
“I’m going to start with the bathroom,” Dad said. “You can learn a lot about someone by studying their medications.”
“I have a lot more confidence in my ability to learn about someone from what’s in her purse.” I ran my flashlight beam around the room. The giant pink woven straw purse I remembered Desiree carrying wasn’t visible. “So let me know if you find that.”
Dad nodded and disappeared into the bathroom. I started right outside the bathroom, with a small two-drawer side table. Nothing in either drawer. Nothing on the armchair next to it. I kept moving clockwise. Nothing on the balcony except the gleaming white table and chairs. Nothing in or on the nightstand to the left of the bed. Nothing on the neatly made bed apart from the perfectly arranged pillows. Although it did seem a bit odd that the bed was made.
“I’m not finding any medicines.” Dad appeared in the bathroom doorway. “Not many toiletries, for that matter. She travels light for, um…”
“For a woman of, shall we say, late middle age who did not appear to be a devotee of the natural look?”
Dad nodded.
“She also didn’t exactly settle into her room,” I said. “Michael and I aren’t overpackers, and we only had one suitcase each, but we still used every single drawer available for our stuff.” I was checking the drawers of the nightstand to the right of the bed. Nothing. A small travel alarm sat on top.
“The bed’s made,” Dad said. “Do you suppose she never went to bed Thursday night?”
“Or maybe whichever crew member is assigned to clean the room cleaned it sometime today.”
“Before she was found?” Dad frowned. “Or after?”
I shrugged exaggeratedly.
“But—if it was after, they tampered with evidence—”
“I don’t think the captain gets that her room could be evidence,” I said. “I think for him it’s pretty cut-and-dried. ‘We have the note. What more do you want?’ That’s what he’d say.”
“Idiots,” Dad muttered. “Unless she made the bed herself before she jumped.”
“Why would she do that?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” Dad shrugged. “Not wanting to leave behind anything untidy.”
“Doesn’t sound like her,” I said. “Not sure I can see anyone doing that just before taking their own life.”
“Neither can I,” Dad said. “But then I also have a hard time figuring out the taking-your-own-life part.”
I was examining the bed.
“Pretty neatly done,” I said. “But that doesn’t rule out the possibility that she made the bed herself. Being a diva and knowing how to make a tight hospital corner aren’t mutually exclusive. You say there’s not much in the bathroom?”
“See for yourself.”
I followed Dad into the bathroom.
A plastic hairbrush and a half-empty tube of toothpaste sat on the tiny vanity counter. The complimentary soap bar had been unwrapped, though it hadn’t seen much use.
“Maybe she never really unpacked?” Dad suggested. “Have you checked her suitcase?” He pointed to where it stood against the wall beside the closet.
“I was working my way methodically around the room,” I said. “Clockwise. I was going to check the desk next, then the closet.”
“I’ll be unmethodical then and skip right to the suitcase.” He flipped the suitcase on its side, knelt down, and unzipped it
The desk was also empty apart from the various papers supplied by Pastime—a TV channel guide, a map of the ship, a booklet marked GUEST SERVICES.
“It’s maybe half full.” Dad was staring down into the suitcase, occasionally poking gently at its contents. “She must have unpacked partway. But no toiletries.”
“Let’s see what the closet has to offer us.”
I pulled open the door, which made a slight creaking noise. I looked inside and, in spite of knowing we needed to stay quiet, I couldn’t help uttering a small yelp.
“What’s wrong?” Dad looked up.
“There’s a body in the closet.”
Chapter 24
I was momentarily frozen. Dad jumped up from his post beside the suitcase and hurried over. I wasn’t sorry to back away from the closet to make room for him.
Wedged into the closet—in the right side, where much of the already limited space was taken up with the life jacket—was a body. A man’s body. And not a small man, which was probably why he’d been shoved into something like a fetal position, with the life jacket pulled back in place to obscure his face.
We both just stared for a few moments. Eventually Dad reached out and touched the dead man’s wrist.
“Cold,” he said. “And no pulse.” He grabbed the fingers and tried to flex them. “Rigor mortis.”
“So he’s probably been dead at least a few hours but less than a day.” One of those bits of information I’d picked up from Dad, though I preferred never to have any use for it in real life.
“More or less.” Dad nodded absently. “We need to see who he is.”
Curious. Under normal circumstances Dad wasn’t the least bit squeamish. He did autopsies, for heaven’s sake. Why didn’t he just pull the life jacket aside to see?
Then I remembered something.
“No one’s seen Trevor since yesterday afternoon. Are you thinking it could be…”
Dad nodded almost imperceptibly. I felt a sudden twinge of guilt at the suspicions I’d been aiming at Trevor.
I studied the body more closely. He looked bulkier than Trevor. Or did he just look that way because of the way he’d been doubled up to fit into the closet?
“I assumed he was in his cabin, working through his seasickness.” Dad shook his head. “I should have checked on him. Should have forced one of the staff to open his door when he didn’t answer.”
“Don’t move the life jacket just yet.” I pulled out my phone and took some pictures of the body from a variety of distances and angles.
Dad nodded approvingly. And my picture taking seemed to give him time to regain his usual imperturbable manner.
“Good job,” he said. “Now let’s take a closer look.” He reached out and carefully pulled the life jacket aside.
It wasn’t Trevor. We both let out the breaths we’d been holding.
“He looks familiar,” I said. “I’ve seen him before somewhere.”
The dead man’s head was bent in what would be an uncomfortable position if he were still alive, with the face almost horizontal. Dad was tilting his head slightly so he could see the man’s face right side up.
I tilted mine in much the same way. Yes, I’d definitely seen him before.
“He’s a crew member,” I said. “I saw him arguing with First Officer Martin this afternoon in the Starlight Lounge.”
“Arguing about what?”
“Something about the ship repairs.” I shook my head. “Martin said something like ‘you’re the engineer, not me—just fix it.’ Then they shut up when they realized I was nearby.”
“If he’s someone who’s mission critical for fixing the ship, we’re in trouble,” Dad observed.
I reached into the closet and pulled at something—a Pastime ID card in a plastic holder that hung from a cord around the dead man’s neck. I couldn’t easily pull the cord over the man’s head so I slipped the card out of its holder. Unlike our short-term passenger cards, it had a picture of its owner on it—yes, that was him—and his name: Anton Bjelica, from Serbia.
“His name is Anton,” I said. “Don’t ask me to pronounce the last name.”
“We’re interfering with a crime scene, you know,” Dad said.
“A crime scene C
aptain Detweiler will do a whole lot more interfering with as soon as he sees it. As in completely destroying it.” I tucked the card in my pocket and used my phone to take several shots of the dead man’s face.
Dad stretched out the hand holding his iPhone, shone the flashlight beam on the man’s neck, and slowly ran it along the darker line encircling it.
“I expect the cause of death will turn out to be ligature strangulation,” he said. “Note the ligature mark.”
I noted and, more usefully, while noting I took a series of pictures of it with my phone.
“What do—?” Dad began. Then he froze as we heard the slight clicking noise the door lock made when you slid a card through it.
I shoved the closet door shut. We were closer to the bathroom, so we both dashed into it. I pulled the bathroom door most of the way closed, and we plastered ourselves against the wall on either side of the doorway and flicked off our phones’ flashlight beams.
A light appeared. Dad and I froze and stared at the thin shaft of light that fell across the bathroom floor between us. Apparently our visitor had a powerful flashlight. More powerful than our phone flashlights, at least.
At first we heard nothing, and I silently cursed the carpets. Then more light appeared—moonlight. The intruder had opened the curtains. A familiar noise followed—the sound of the sliding glass door to the balcony being opened. Maybe it was a good thing we’d hidden in the bathroom.
Another noise—softer, but nearer by. A soft creaking. The closet door opening.
Some rustling and thumping followed, and a few muted clicking and clanging noises.
Then a few moments of silence, followed by a distant splash.
More sliding glass door noises.
More silence, and then the light went out and the cabin door opened and closed.
Dad took a step. I put my hand on his shoulder as a silent signal to stop. What if the intruder came back?
After what seemed like several centuries, Dad and I exchanged a glance. I nodded. I slowly pushed open the bathroom door. We both flicked on our phone flashlights to take a better look. Yes, the room was empty.
Terns of Endearment (Meg Langslow Mysteries) Page 20
