Terns of Endearment (Meg Langslow Mysteries)

by Andrews, Donna

  So was the closet.

  “He took our body,” Dad muttered.

  “And threw it overboard.”

  Dad stared at my phone.

  “Those pictures you took,” he said. “They’re the only record of that poor man’s fate.”

  “Well, that and his Pastime key card.”

  I slid open the balcony door as quietly as I could, went out, and stared down at the water. Dad followed.

  “Wouldn’t the body float?” I asked softly.

  “He must have weighted it down.”

  I stepped back inside and looked around. I couldn’t see anything missing, and certainly not anything that could have weighted a body. Dad followed me in, and from the way he was studying the room, I suspected he was coming to similar conclusions.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said. “Whoever just did that would not like to find out that anyone witnessed him throwing the body overboard. Him or her. Murder’s an equal opportunity crime. We have no idea who was in here.”

  I closed the sliding glass doors. I took a quick glance in the side of the closet that hadn’t contained the body. A couple of dresses hung there, and one pair of shoes rested on the floor.

  “What did they do with the Christian Louboutin shoes?” I asked. “I could have sworn the captain told the crew member who collected them to take them back to her cabin.”

  “Maybe he changed his mind and took possession of them himself.”

  “Or maybe someone stole them.” I took a quick glance around. “I don’t see her as a minimalist traveler. Some of her stuff’s missing. Quite possibly a whole lot of her stuff. Maybe she didn’t have a laptop—I was hoping she did, so I could get Delaney to search it. But no cosmetics? No way.”

  And also no copies of any of her books. Maybe she had given Trevor her only copy.

  I made a quick circuit of the room, taking pictures of everything—the stuff and the empty spaces alike. Dad was shifting from foot to foot, clearly torn between his approval of my efforts to document the crime scene and his intense desire to leave it.

  Then I opened the door and stuck my head out. No one in the corridor.

  “Let’s make it fast,” I whispered.

  We hurried out and pulled the door shut behind us. I could tell Dad’s first impulse was to run back to Michael’s and my room, but I grabbed his elbow and slowed him down to a casual saunter. As long as we hadn’t been spotted actually leaving the room, anyone who saw us would merely assume we were coming back from the stairs or the Starlight Lounge.

  “We need to figure out who we can tell about this,” Dad said quietly. “I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling a lot less suspicious of the writers all of a sudden.”

  “I take it you won’t argue with my suggestion that we not tell the captain,” I said. “Or any of the crew.”

  He nodded.

  “Hang on a sec,” I said as we reached the door of Michael’s and my room. “I want to check something.”

  I reached into my pocket, took out the key card I’d retrieved from Anton Bjelica’s body, and swiped it through the lock. The door clicked open.

  We hurried inside.

  “The good news is that we can give Léonie back her card and still have access to anything the dead guy had access to,” I said.

  “How will that help?” Dad asked. “Unless, of course, Stefan was assigned to this deck.”

  “Anton,” I corrected. “Léonie isn’t assigned to this deck, or deck two, for that matter, but we had no trouble getting into Trevor’s and Desiree’s rooms. I bet they just give the crew access to everyplace they might need to go while working with the passengers.”

  “That’s good,” Dad said. “But what are we going to do with it?”

  Good question.

  “I’ll figure that out tomorrow,” I said “But it makes me feel better to know we have access—without anyone knowing about it.”

  “Not even Léonie?” Dad asked. “Your mother rather likes Léonie.”

  “So do I,” I said. “But we don’t really know her that well. She’s definitely not a Pastime loyalist—we know that much. What if she is secretly happy about our being marooned because it hurts Pastime? And besides, if this was one of your mystery books, wouldn’t the one crew member who’s actually been kind and helpful and sympathetic turn out to be the killer?”

  “Good point.” He looked a little blue—clearly our adventure wasn’t turning out to be as much fun as his books.

  “You go up to deck six,” I said. “Let Michael know everything went smoothly and the two of us will not be spending the night in the ship’s brig.”

  “Do you suppose it has a brig?” Dad asked. “I’d like to see that.”

  “If I run across one, I’ll let you know.”

  “And where are you going?”

  “To return the key to Léonie. Or at least to the clever hiding place where I’m going to leave it so no one will see us together and suspect that she’s been aiding and abetting us. Now hurry—you might still get to see the scene where they open the Ark.”

  He brightened—that was one of his favorite scenes—and hurried off.

  I waited until he’d disappeared up the stairway. Then I locked the door behind me and headed for the library lounge.

  It was unoccupied. Rather than dash in, hastily stuff the card in Paul Clifford’s card pocket, and rush out, I decided to dawdle for a little while to lend plausibility to the notion that I was in search of non-electronic reading material.

  I started browsing a little to the left of where Paul Clifford was shelved, pulling out a book here and there. When I came to the book itself, I plucked it out and tucked the key card inside the card pocket.

  And then instead of putting it back on the shelf, I gave way to the impulse to do something Dad had taught Rob and me to do as children. Stitchomancy, he had called it—telling our fortune by means of a book. I closed my eyes, opened the book at random, and read the first sentence my eyes fell on:

  So ended the conference of the robbers.

  “I was looking for a fortune, not a recap of recent events,” I told the book sternly. “And technically Dad and I were burglars, not robbers. Let’s try again.”

  Of course, the game usually worked a lot better if you asked a specific question. But what to ask? “Was Desiree murdered?” might be a good one, although books rarely ran to yes or no questions. “Who killed Anton Bjelica?” might be nice, but asking for proper names was always a silly idea, especially when such a large number of the crew—and for that matter, the passengers—bore names that wouldn’t be in common usage in the England of 1830, when Bulwer-Lytton was writing. “When will we resume our voyage?” was what I really wanted to know, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer. I settled on “What’s really going wrong on board the ship?”

  The second answer didn’t seem a whole lot more fortune-like:

  Meanwhile let us glance over the destinies of our more subordinate acquaintances.

  “Subordinate acquaintances.” Did that mean the crew? Did the real answer lie with them? Should I try to expand my acquaintance past the helpful Léonie? Or did it just mean people I didn’t know all that well?

  One more time. “What’s really going on?”

  O time, thou hast played strange tricks with us; and we bless the stars that made us a novelist, and permit us now to retaliate.

  “That’s a little ominous,” I said. Novelists retaliating—was the book trying to warn me that one of the writers was behind—behind what? Desiree’s apparent suicide? The breakdown of the ship? Bjelica’s death?

  “This is silly,” I told myself. “You’re asking for wisdom from a book whose opening lines have become synonymous with purple prose.”

  I snapped the book closed, left the library lounge, and went back to our cabin. Time to search Trevor’s luggage. I was tired, and still a little shaken by our discovery of the body, and I almost wanted to leave it locked up in our cabin and worry about searching it
in the morning. But as Dad and I had just demonstrated, anything locked in a cabin was fair game to anyone with crew access on their Pastime card. If he and I hadn’t decided to burgle Desiree’s cabin tonight, Anton Bjelica would have gone to his watery grave without anyone other than his killer being the wiser.

  “Get it over with,” I muttered, stifling a yawn.

  The larger, hard-sided suitcase was entirely filled with electronic equipment. None of the items even resembled a laptop, and most of it was stenciled with PROPERTY OF THE BLAKE FOUNDATION.

  The smaller suitcase contained Trevor’s belongings. No laptop, and no papers of any kind. But he’d probably have kept those in the black leather messenger bag that never left his side—his equivalent of my trusty tote bag. Or if he had left any papers in the suitcase, someone had beat us to the search.

  Only one book—a paperback copy of Master and Commander, the first of O’Brian’s nautical series. I attempted to reproduce what Caroline had done with The Sharp Claw of Love, letting the book fall open where it would, but the results weren’t nearly as dramatic. If anything, the book had a slight tendency to fall open at naval battles, but I wasn’t sure that signified anything. I’d read the book myself, and while it had been a while, I seemed to remember that there were rather a lot of naval battles.

  But was there something sinister about Trevor’s choice of books? Given Grandfather’s current state of indignation that his former student had named a newly discovered tern after one of O’Brian’s characters instead of Grandfather, I’d have assumed that everyone who knew him would go to almost any length to avoid reminding him of the whole thing. Bringing along a copy of Master and Commander seemed like a deliberate provocation. Especially since, from what I’d seen, Trevor did most of his reading on one or another of his electronic devices. He could read all twenty of O’Brian’s Aubrey and Maturin series right under Grandfather’s nose without anyone being the wiser. But if he pulled out this seemingly innocuous paperback, all hell would break loose.

  “Sorry, Trevor,” I said aloud. “I’m confiscating this.” After all, while I’d flipped through it enough to confirm that there weren’t any interesting bits of paper stuck between its pages, it would take a lot more time and concentration than I had right now. Trevor could have scrawled faint notes in the margins, or used pinpricks or underlining to spell out cryptic messages. Maybe—

  Maybe Dad’s fascination with mystery was having a little more influence on me than I’d realized. I stifled another yawn. I could enlist Dad to study the book for clues—he’d probably enjoy it. The important thing was to keep the book hidden from Grandfather—which meant not leaving it in Trevor’s suitcase. I could just imagine Grandfather, already irritated by Trevor’s absence, pawing through the suitcase in search of some item Trevor normally found for him and finding O’Brian.

  I tucked the book away in one of the drawers—beneath my underwear.

  The book had been a good find. But apart from that, searching his luggage had been pretty useless. I had learned nothing. Well, nothing useful. I couldn’t imagine when I’d need to know that Trevor preferred boxers to briefs. The sheer size of his collection of over-the-counter medicines was impressive, but hardly relevant to anything.

  So I packed up the contents of the suitcases again and left them in the middle of the cabin. With luck, I could get Wim or Guillermo to collect them before bedtime. Then I headed for the stairs. I arrived on deck six in time to catch most of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Although Michael and I missed a few of the high points while I brought him up to speed on what Dad and I had found.

  At my suggestion, Michael and Guillermo slipped out toward the end of the movie, when the boys—and for that matter, everyone else—were glued to the laptop screen, to relocate Trevor’s luggage from our cabin to the one Guillermo shared with Wim.

  At bedtime—a rather late bedtime—I expected to have trouble getting to sleep, between the visions of Anton Bjelica that kept appearing whenever I closed my eyes and my impatience to hear how Caroline, Wim, and Guillermo were doing with the equipment in Trevor’s bag. And the heat didn’t help. At one in the morning it was still stiflingly hot, which didn’t bode well for tomorrow. If the crew didn’t get the power going again, and we had to cope without air-conditioning …

  Chapter 25

  Saturday

  It was hot when I woke up, at around 6:00 A.M. Hot and sticky. The fact that the boys had crawled into bed with us in the middle of the night didn’t help.

  “I really need a shower,” Josh said, when he woke up.

  “Yeah, you do,” Jamie said, adding, more kindly, “We all do.”

  “I’ll haul up a few more buckets of seawater for a rough shower later,” Michael suggested. “First, let’s go downstairs and see what’s for breakfast.”

  “Cereal, probably.” Josh rolled his eyes.

  “That’s okay—I like cereal.” Jamie, ever the optimist.

  “If they haven’t run out of cereal.” And Josh, reliably the pessimist.

  So we trooped down to the main dining room. A few people were there already, picking over the offerings on the buffet tables. It looked a lot like a rerun of last night’s buffet dinner—cheese, cold cuts, fruit, and crackers. Although this time the crew had mostly set out boxes. A carton full of individual cereal boxes. A wooden crate containing oranges. A case of granola bars. No crew members were visible—they must have stolen out in the middle of the night to restock the tables. This was getting creepy.

  I was relieved to see that Josh and Jamie were frowning suspiciously at the cold cuts and cheese.

  “This looks kind of yucky.” Josh wrinkled his nose.

  “Smells yucky, too,” Jamie added.

  “Try the cereal,” I said. “It should be fine. But no milk. It could have spoiled.”

  I noticed that Wim had piled a plate with the ham the boys had just turned up their noses at.

  “Don’t eat that,” I told him. “It may have gone bad.”

  “So soon?” Wim said.

  “It’s been over twenty-four hours now,” I pointed out.

  “And it smells funny,” Jamie said.

  “If you are careful not to open the refrigerator or freezer too often, food will keep there for a couple of days,” Wim said.

  “In the freezer, maybe,” I said. “The rule of thumb we use is forty-eight hours if the freezer is fully packed and twenty-four for a half-full one. A refrigerator will only stay reasonably cold for four hours or so, and that’s if you keep the door closed. After that everything starts spoiling. You want to bet your life that everyone on the kitchen staff was really careful about closing doors? Or that none of the food they loaded on for the journey was getting a little too close to its sell-by date to begin with?”

  Wim looked at his plate and leaned down to take a delicate sniff. Then he sighed and took it over to empty its contents into a trash can.

  “Stick to cereal,” I advised. “And no milk unless it comes from a can that you see opened.”

  “Right.” Wim sounded glum.

  “How are you doing with the equipment from Trevor’s luggage?” I asked.

  “Do you want the technical explanation or the easy one?”

  “Do you really need to ask?”

  “An important part is broken,” he said. “But Guillermo and Delaney are fixing it. We should be ready to test it out in an hour or so.”

  “Excellent.”

  Wim went back to the buffet table and began searching for unspoiled items. Josh and Jamie grabbed two single serving boxes of cereal apiece and followed Michael to a table. I spotted Mother, who was standing to one side, surveying the scene with a look of profound disapproval. Sympathy and more than a little concern swept over me. Things on board weren’t too bad yet for those of us who were fond of camping. But Mother’s idea of camping was staying in a hotel that didn’t have a four-star restaurant. This must be difficult for her. I felt a slight twinge of guilt—which made no sense. It was Gr
andfather’s fault she was here, not mine.

  I didn’t see anyone within earshot of her, so I went over. I didn’t want to add to her stress, but I needed her help. And maybe helping would prove a distraction.

  “Mother,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Did Dad tell you what he and I found last night?”

  She nodded. Her mouth was compressed into a tight line.

  “Michael and I don’t want the boys left alone for a minute.” I glanced over my shoulder to make sure they weren’t listening. “I could use your help with that.”

  “I agree,” she said. “Let’s brief some of the others. Horace, Rose Noire, Rob and Delaney, Caroline…”

  “Not Grandfather,” I said.

  “No,” she agreed. “He’d only go racing up to the bridge to provoke a confrontation. But I think Wim and Guillermo can be trusted. Yes, we should definitely protect the boys. But…”

  She frowned and fell silent for a few long moments, clearly lost in thought. Then she visibly straightened her already erect spine—how did she manage that effect?—lifted her chin, and assumed what I thought of as her Joan of Arc expression.

  “Meg,” Mother said. “This has gone far enough. We must Do Something.”

  I cringed slightly. When Mother said that, I usually ended up being the one who did whatever she thought needed doing. She was very good at enlisting people in general to accomplish whatever projects she wanted to push forward, but in addition to being the handiest potential lieutenant at the moment, I was also, in her view, the most capable of them all. I reminded myself that some people would see this as a compliment.

  “I can think of a lot of things I’d like to do,” I said. “Things that would definitely improve living conditions on board, and maybe even get us on our way again. Not that I see any chance of the captain either doing them or letting any of us do them.”

  “Precisely,” Mother said. “We will need to take over the ship.”

  “I think that’s technically known as mutiny,” I pointed out.

  “No,” Mother said. “If the crew did it, it would be mutiny. What I have in mind is more of a revolt against a tyrannical and incompetent dictatorship.”