Slay Bells Ringing

by Emily James

  He set his cup down. “Not many.” He shifted his cup on the desk. “Is there anything else you needed?”

  That shift of his cup seemed almost like a fidget. He didn’t have a reason to be fidgety. We’d been here late last night, and I was back early this morning. As long as he had the list and planned to start speaking to the people on it today, he shouldn’t have been nervous about my reaction.

  Granted, it’d be uncomfortable to talk to guests about a potential altercation at a poker game that shouldn’t have been taking place, but they hadn’t done anything wrong. He wasn’t putting them in any sort of compromising position by speaking to him.

  So why was he reading as nervous?

  Maybe it was just his personality. I hadn’t noticed it last night, but it’d been late, and I’d been overly focused on the fact that I’d stormed into his office, holding shower products and wearing flip flops.

  This morning I’d picked my most professional outfit. My parents would have suffered heart palpitations from hearing me describe my loose, flowy dress as professional, but it was the only dress—or close to dressy outfit—I had with me. We’d picked a casual cruise where it wasn’t required to dress up for dinner, as we wanted to be able to relax completely. I hadn’t packed anything I would normally wear to work.

  But I needed him to take me seriously as a lawyer and not think of me as a passenger when I asked for the list. “Actually, there is one more thing. I spoke to a police contact of mine, and he’d like us to send him a copy of the list of names so he can cross-reference them for any prior connection with Mr. Bodie.”

  His desk seemed to jiggle slightly, almost as if his leg bounced. He crossed his arms over his chest. “I already told you that I can’t give you a list of other passengers’ names.”

  I couldn’t quite get a read on whether he was annoyed or if his nervousness just amped up. He wasn’t the straightforward person I’d assumed him to be at first.

  I gave him my best impression of my mom’s smooth-as-warm-butter smile, the one she used to convince someone it’d all been a misunderstanding when they started to get defensive. “You don’t need to give it to me at all. You can send it straight to Chief McTavish.”

  Was it name-dropping if the person’s name wouldn’t be immediately recognizable? Maybe more like title-dropping. Hopefully hearing I wanted him to send it to a police chief would erase any qualms.

  He checked his watch. “I’m not sure if I have time for that right now.”

  Something was definitely wrong here. I couldn’t put my finger on it. But it had to do with the list, and the fact that he didn’t seem to want to send it to Chief McTavish any more than he wanted to show it to me.

  I moved closer to his desk—close enough that I could have reached out and touched it. More often than I’d like to admit, the lessons my parents taught me came in handy. My dad used to say that the more someone balked, the more they were trying to hide. In this case, he was definitely hiding something about that list. “I understand that you’re busy, but my client won’t. Hopefully you can understand that, too. Her husband is missing, after all. If you could just let me see the list, then I can reassure her that you have it and will send it to Chief McTavish for further investigation when you have a free minute.”

  He got to his feet.

  I didn’t want to show submission by backing up, but a little voice in the back of my head told me not to let him get between me and the door, regardless of what that cost me in negotiation ability. Too many people I hadn’t thought would kill or harm had turned about to be exactly the person who’d committed the crime. I’d be stupid to assume Hart couldn’t have been involved simply because he was a member of the security team.

  From a logical perspective, a member of the security team was more likely to have been involved because they had access to areas of the ship that a normal passenger wouldn’t, and no one would suspect them.

  I stepped backward and to the side to make sure Hart couldn’t easily get around me and block the door. “You have gotten the list, haven’t you?”

  Something flickered across his face. He opened his mouth, then shut it again. He retreated one step. “I don’t have the list.”

  This could have all been a cover-up so that he wouldn’t have to tell me he still wasn’t taking this seriously. But that flicker of something that crossed his face made me think it was something deeper than that. He was afraid.

  He hadn’t sounded afraid of Nat on the phone. We’d been listening, so it could have been good acting. If he was that good of an actor, though, he should have been better at hiding the fact that he didn’t have the list.

  So maybe he was afraid of losing his job because he hadn’t known an unsanctioned poker game was happening.

  “All I’m interested in is finding out what happened to Garth Bodie.” I kept my voice low and soft and coaxing, the same tone I used when my bullmastiff Toby tried to hide under the chairs at the veterinarian’s office because he didn’t want his shots. “I’m not interested in getting you in trouble.”

  I’d started to say in trouble for anything unrelated to the case, but then stopped myself. If he’d had something to do with the case, that phrasing would put him more on guard than he already was. I wanted to make him think that I wasn’t suddenly concerned he might have had a part in this. Nothing good could come from tipping my hand at this point. I’d left Mark a note about where I’d gone, but look at how easily Garth had vanished. Hart could dispose of me and then claim I’d never made it here.

  Hart leaned heavily against his desk as if his own weight were suddenly too much for him to support. “Nat knew I had no intention of checking out the names on the list. I don’t need to. My name would have been on the list.”

  Chapter 8

  I stared at Hart long enough that it almost crossed the line into awkward. My dad would have loved that announcement because it would have added evidence to his theory that no one was innocent. Ever.

  “That’s why you knew I made it up when I said there was a fight at the poker game.” The words slipped from my thoughts and out of my lips before I could decide whether it was a good strategic move to speak them or not.

  Hart’s posture straightened slightly. “It tipped Nat off that someone else was listening in, too.”

  My estimation of Hart’s caginess ratcheted up. Which also made me that much more cautious. I’d told him to ask about a fight—meaning an argument—and he’d pretended to misunderstand and asked instead about a physical fight in order to tip off the person we were talking to.

  While I didn’t think Hart was playing me now, I wasn’t as confident as I might have been five minutes ago. He’d become an unreliable witness. I’d need to approach everything he told me with skepticism going forward. It also called into question what I’d heard on his call with Nat.

  That said, he and Nat were still my best leads for who was at that game and might have wanted revenge on Garth Bodie.

  Keeping up the I’m-Mr.-and-Mrs.-Bodie’s-lawyer farce seemed to be the safest bet for now. By asking about other people, I might be able to bring Hart’s guard down enough that he’d let something slip if he was hiding anything. “Did anyone else at the poker game seem to recognize Mr. Bodie?”

  Hart’s arms stiffened at his sides. I recognized it this time. He was getting ready to cover something up. “Not that I noticed.”

  That was an answer, but it wasn’t. It was the kind of dodge that most people would miss if they weren’t expecting the other person to lie to them. “How many people were there?”

  A muscle twitched in the corner of Hart’s eye. I got the feeling he was sizing me up.

  He settled his weight soundly on both feet. “Who are you really? Are you a cop?”

  The shift in posture was a bit startling. He’d still been playing me before—or trying to. First, he’d been the lackadaisical security officer who didn’t think anything had actually happened to Garth. Then he was the guilty, ashamed security officer who
was afraid of losing his job because he liked to gamble on the side.

  Now, for the first time, it felt like I was seeing the real Hart. Now that the masks were off, it was time to play it straight.

  I changed my posture to match—shoulders back and chin up the way my mom had taught me. “I’m who I said I am, but I’m a criminal defense attorney. I met the Bodies on this cruise, and Mrs. Bodie asked me to represent her when her husband disappeared. She’s afraid his family will try to blame her.”

  The skin at the corner of Hart’s eyes tightened. “Are you here looking for a strawman?”

  In other words, was I looking to pin this on him because my client was guilty of doing something to her husband? “I’m looking for the truth.”

  He didn’t move a muscle in his body. Even the twitch next to his eye had stopped. “The truth is that Garth Bodie is exactly what Nat said he was—a cheat.”

  For the first time, I believed he was telling me the complete truth. The question was what I did with that truth and how it could help us figure out what had really happened. “How do you know?”

  “I recognized him as the man who cheated my mom out of her life savings with his shady investment schemes.”

  I would have been excited by the fact that I had the self-control not to cringe if it hadn’t been for the other fact that Hart’s admission made my body feel heavy, like an entire pool full of water was crushing down on me. To lose everything and have to figure out how to support yourself when you should be retiring was a scary situation. “I’m really sorry.”

  Hart shook his head and moved around to the backside of his desk. He lowered himself slowly into his chair. “Nat’s my first cousin. I got him the job here. When I figured out who Bodie was, I asked him to help me. I’d read somewhere that Bodie liked to gamble, and Nat put himself through school by playing professional poker. We thought we could win back at least some of what my mom lost.”

  I didn’t need Hart to fill in the rest of the blanks for me. They’d invited Garth Bodie to a private poker game. Maybe they’d filled it out with a few friends they could trust. Maybe it’d just been the three of them. I didn’t know exactly how many people were required to play poker. My parents felt that gambling was one of the highest vices. They didn’t like leaving anything up to chance.

  Regardless, Bodie had accepted and then cheated at the game, taking their money, too. It’d have had to be a high-stakes game if they wanted to win back their family member’s life savings. They might have even borrowed the money or taken a loan on their credit cards to be able to do it.

  And if Nat had played professional poker for a while, he’d have recognized a cheater when he saw one.

  It provided a huge motive for them to have killed Garth.

  Sort of. Killing him might have made them feel vindicated for the moment, but it wouldn’t have gotten them their money back. Or Hart’s mom’s money back.

  If they were involved, this was more likely a kidnapping for ransom. It was their next logical step to get their money back, assuming you could call any criminal activity logical.

  If I was right, it meant Garth’s chances of being alive just went up by a huge leap. It also meant we either had to figure out how to find where they’d hidden him on the ship, or we had to find a way to prove that Hart and Nat sent the ransom demand once it arrived.

  Chapter 9

  I thanked Hart for being honest with me and lied to him that we’d be crossing him and Nat off our list of suspects. To add even more credence to my lie, I asked him to continue searching the ship for Garth. I was a criminal lawyer, but Carrie could hire someone else to sue the cruise line and so on.

  My parents had taught me well how to play a suspect, and I was decent at it—though maybe that wasn’t something I should brag about.

  Hart seemed to believe me. Granted, he’d also lied to me before, and I couldn’t be sure he wasn’t playing me in return. Even if it was, we were now playing a waiting game to see if a note arrived.

  After I filled Mark in and texted McTavish to investigate both Nat and Hart, I spent the rest of the morning snuggled up with Mark, doing crosswords. The mental puzzle seemed to distract him from how ill he felt—as did rehashing what we’d learned so far about Garth and what it all might mean.

  It wasn’t what we’d planned for our honeymoon, but it didn’t matter. At least we were together.

  I’d ordered us room service for lunch, since Mark felt like eating, when my phone dinged.

  I need you, Carrie had written. Please come.

  Mark read the message over my shoulder. “They’ve either found Garth’s body, or your theory is right and the kidnappers sent a ransom note. Either way, you should go.”

  I kissed him. I didn’t know yet how to balance being a good wife and working cases, but it somehow felt wrong leaving him here. “Are you sure?”

  He smiled just enough that his dimples peeked out. “You can’t back out now. You’d only make McTavish angrier.”

  He had a point. I texted Carrie to let her know I was on my way and hurried to her room.

  She stood in the doorway, waiting for me, one foot propping her door open and a note in her hand.

  She held the note out toward me by two fingers, as if she were afraid it might be carrying anthrax.

  I took it from her, holding it carefully between my thumb and index finger as well so I’d destroy as few fingerprints as possible, if there were any. Fingerprints on paper were one of the hardest to make visible. Only around half of the prints on a piece of paper could be made sufficiently visible for a clear print identification because prints on paper depended on how well the particular type of paper absorbed the sweat from a person’s fingers. Nanotechnology was making strides in improving fingerprint extraction from paper, but it wasn’t widely in use yet. I didn’t want to risk destroying whatever good prints might be there.

  I entered Carrie’s cabin and laid the paper down on the desk. The letter was typed, so the chances that the paper had prints on it were slim. A sender who took the time to type a note usually also took the precaution of wearing gloves.

  If you want to see your husband again, it read, get off at the next port of call and don’t get back on the ship. We’ll be in touch.

  I leaned back from the desk. It was the ransom note I’d been expecting—and somewhat hoping—for. And yet it wasn’t.

  It didn’t ask for a specific amount of money. It didn’t give her a timeline in which to get the money or a place to drop it.

  It was the vaguest ransom letter I’d ever heard of.

  Carrie wrapped her arms around her barely covered midriff. “That means he’s still alive, right? They want me to get off the ship and pay some money and then they’ll return him.”

  Probably. Possibly, anyway. But something about it wasn’t sitting right with me. “They didn’t even tell you where to go once you left the ship. How will they know how to contact you again?”

  Carrie shook her head so hard that a few tendrils of hair escaped from her ponytail. “It doesn’t matter. I have to do it. If he’s alive and I don’t, they might kill him.”

  Of course she’d pick now to start making decisions on her own. I recognized the granite tone to her voice. It was the one that said I can’t lose him. It was the one that said He’s worth the risk. It was one I was familiar with because I felt the same way about Mark.

  Suddenly, all I wanted to do was get back to our cabin and hold onto Mark tightly and not let go.

  I swallowed hard. Mark wasn’t in imminent danger. Carrie was. Not every place in South America was safe.

  When my dad learned that Mark and I wanted to honeymoon somewhere warm, he forbade us from going to Mexico, citing kidnapping statistics and the story of a woman who was shot in Mexico City while on her honeymoon. Mexico had never been on my list. To make him feel like we were doing what he wanted, though, we told him we’d take a cruise to South America instead.

  Our plan backfired. South America, according to him,
was a place where criminals like Robert Vesco settled after embezzling their millions. My mom placated him by making a list of the safest stops in South America for tourists and vetting our cruise before we booked. She’d “helped” us select the cruise that stopped at the fewest risky locations. Mark had joked that he hadn’t realized planning our honeymoon would be more of a family affair than planning our wedding had been.

  It’d been funny at the time, but thanks to my parents, I knew too much about what cities were safe and what cities weren’t. If Carrie got off at the next port of call, she’d be in one of the cities where only a few select areas were safe. She wouldn’t know where those were. And she’d be easy prey for anyone who decided they wanted something from a young, female non-local.

  The danger might be worth it if we could be sure they’d return Garth once she did what they asked. I wasn’t sure they would. I had to convince her not to go. Every survival instinct I had said she’d never be seen again if she did.

  I stepped aside so Carrie could see the note again if she wanted to. “Their request doesn’t make sense. If they wanted money for ransom, you’d be better able to get it onboard the ship or when we return to American soil. They might be trying to lure you off the ship to kidnap you as well or to make you look guilty for Garth’s disappearance.”

  She snatched the letter from the desk. “I called you here to help me.”

  She might call it help, but it was looking like she’d actually called me here for moral support. She didn’t want help making the decision about what to do. She’d already made it. There wasn’t anything I could do other than help her pack her bags if she’d already decided to leave the ship when it docked.

  It was the same thing she’d done when she claimed to need a lawyer. She hadn’t needed a lawyer. She’d just wanted someone by her side when she made the decision to call security.