She went back to the railing, looking at the river again, before heaving a sigh and going to the stairs. Wilbur watched her ascend toward the texas deck, then took her place at the rail.
He stood there for a long time, but the river provided no answers for him.
Death on the Water
By Cherie Priest
1.
“Goddamnit, wake up and roll your ass over. Someone’s trying to break in.”
Leo’s eyes popped open. He blinked once or twice and sat up. “What? Who? What?”
“Wake up,” his wife commanded. The outline of her face came into focus, but the lights were off and without Leo’s glasses, Wanda was just some frantic blob with a death grip on his shoulders.
Leo Storgman rarely woke up fast, and never woke up happy. “It’s probably just … somebody’s got the wrong room.” He pivoted slowly on his hips and found the side of the bed, then dangled his feet—fishing around until his toes located his sandals.
She flipped on the lamp. “Here’s your robe. I’ll get the gun.”
The thought of his wife with a 9mm lit up Leo’s morning like a trash fire. He leaped to his feet and with sandals flopping he intercepted her on the path to his suitcase. “No! No, don’t … don’t do that. I’ll see who it is.” He took the robe and wrestled his way inside it.
Behind him, the knob rattled. A large, blunt body part slammed against the door, and somebody swore while a key scraped and jerked fruitlessly in the lock.
Leo held his eye up to the peephole, and there he saw one fishbowled face up close and personal. It belonged to a big, black-haired dude with black tattoos crawling out of his black T-shirt. A silver wallet chain dangled across the hip of his black jeans, and a black leather bracelet slipped up and down his wrist when he knocked.
Leo didn’t want any trouble, but he wasn’t particularly bothered by it, either. He leaned one shoulder against the door and in his best old-cop voice, he said, “Hey, asshole, this isn’t your room.”
Silence fell. Whispers rose.
Leo put his eye back on the peephole. Now he could see two other guys, one on either side of the man with the wrong damn key. One of them was a blond. The other had a hat. That was all he could tell from the narrow vantage of the little glass circle.
The first guy lifted up his face. His eye was as big as an apple. “Oh shit, man, I am truly sorry if we bothered you … but … isn’t this room thirteen?”
“Yes, and it’s occupied.”
The guy outside pressed on. “It’s occupied? Are you sure?”
“What kind of idiot question is that?”
“No, I mean, it’s just…” The eyeball disappeared.
One of his friends pushed him aside. The newbie was leaner and less decorated. He wore a gray cap and suspenders. “Excuse me, hello?”
“Hello, and go away.” Leo reflexively looked at his wrist, but he wasn’t wearing a watch. “This is an ungodly hour to be running around, knocking on doors.” Or so he assumed.
The dark-haired guy whined faintly from somewhere off to the right. “But our investigation doesn’t end until dawn. We’ve got all this equipment ready and everything.”
The new face at the peephole said, “I’m very sorry that we bothered you, sir, but we were told the room would be empty until the boat hits Memphis.”
“Well, it’s not.” He teetered on the cusp of finishing off with a “fuck you and good night,” but now he was curious. His hand hovered over the old-fashioned chain that did back-up duty to the dead bolt. He sighed, surrendered, and drew the chain back—then opened the door.
All three men shuffled their feet, suitably abashed. The first two looked related, but the blond one didn’t match them at all. He looked like a surfer, not a Hipster of the Night. For Christ’s sake, he was wearing Crocs with denim cutoffs.
The one in the hat was the most apologetic, and did the least mumbling when he began his apologies afresh. “Sir, we’ll leave you alone. Again, we do apologize.”
Leo eyed their cameras and the metal case that the blond toted—while simultaneously juggling what looked like a boom mike. “What kind of investigation are you up to?”
The dude in black wrestled his way back to the front and center and offered his hand in a firm, friendly shake. “Sir, I’m Ryan Forge from The Dead Report, on the Explore America channel. This is my brother Kevin, and our cousin, Sean Venters. We’re here on the Natchez to film a special: ‘Death on the Water,’” he said, jazz hands waving.
“‘Death on the Water’?”
Ryan nodded earnestly and launched into his sales pitch with a sincerity to be envied by the saints. “Believe it or not, this boat is one of the most supernaturally active structures in the world. There have been over two dozen documented deaths on board since it launched in 1948, and at least half of those departed souls remain on board … riding up and down the Mississippi River for all eternity.”
“You … you’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Super-serious, sir,” Ryan insisted, heroically failing to lisp. “This is our life, man. This is what we do. We communicate with spirits and enable them to find peace.”
Leo asked, “How do you do that?” and immediately regretted it, for he had unleashed a dragon. A dipshit dragon, who talked with his hands and peppered his speech with italic emphasis.
“Okay, what we do is, first we set up all our equipment—our cameras and recorders, and our EMF readers, and our amplifiers, and our spirit boxes, and then we create a base of operations—or that’s what we usually do, but we’re locked out of our base of operations right now because the bartender threw us out. So we took our light gear and thought we’d check out some of the individual rooms. Wait…” His eyes narrowed, and his forehead sank into a handsome, determined frown of confusion. “Does that plaque say this is the honeymoon suite?”
Wanda manifested over Leo’s shoulder, all smiles and white satin. “Why, yes, it is. Hello there, boys.”
Leo made room for her in the doorway.
All three faces darkened three shades of pink. All three throats required clearing at once, with the sound of three mortified lawn mowers puttering by. Ryan spoke for them all when he said, “Oh. Um. Our most heartfelt apologies. And congratulations, dude. To both of you, I mean. Ma’am. Dude.”
Leo slipped an arm around his wife’s waist. She was taller than him by an inch and a half despite his horns, but those mostly curled to the sides of his head. Even without them, she was better looking than him by a mile and a half. He knew how lucky he was. His joker card wasn’t that weird, and his wife was a ten.
The guys stared studiously at everything everywhere, except for anything beneath Wanda’s nightdress. Her nipples were out like stars.
Ryan successfully held his eyes above the danger line, keeping his gaze locked on Leo’s frowning face. “Right. Well. Once again, sir. And madam. We apologize for the trouble. Have a … I hope you…” He floundered. “Enjoy your honeymoon some more. Without us.”
On that note he turned and fled, with his cousin and brother hot on his heels. They scrambled down the deck, bumping into one another and scraping the boom mike along the wall—knocking it on every damn door they passed.
Leo shook his head. Wanda laughed. “That was exciting!”
Leo shut the door and kicked off his sandals. “That was annoying.”
“They were very polite, though. Such gracious and strapping lads, weren’t they? Especially the one in black. What was his name?”
“Like you don’t remember it.”
“Bryan something,” she teased.
“Ryan something,” he corrected. “And they were ghost hunting, I swear to God. The job market for millennials is worse than I thought.”
He shrugged out of his robe and wadded it up. He chucked it at his wife, who dodged it.
Wanda shrugged out of her nightdress and wadded it up. She chucked it at Leo, who caught it with his face. “I think we’ve got another hour until dawn, and I�
��m both wide awake and conveniently naked.”
“That’s my favorite kind of awake.”
He sat down on the bed. It didn’t hide the pitched tent in his boxers, but then again, he wasn’t trying to hide it. “You want to turn off the light or…”
“Don’t you like the view?” She grinned wickedly and prowled toward him.
“I do. Very much. Yes.” He leaned back. She leaned forward. She put her hands on either side of his head, and she crawled onto the bed until she straddled him—grinding gently against the warm lump in his shorts.
Until the bedside lamp’s bulb popped and went out, with a sound like a wine cork.
They both froze.
“Did you do that?” he asked, thinking maybe she’d kicked it by accident. Lights on or off, he couldn’t see past her breasts anyway.
“No.” She sat up and rolled off him.
He protested by rolling back onto her. “Must be a bum bulb.”
“No, stop it. Wait.”
“What?”
Her body was tense, and not in the good way. He could feel her shoulders tighten and see the edge of her face by what little light came in around the window’s shade. He didn’t know where they were on the river, but there was always a little glow from the lights on the boiler deck. It was never as dark as you’d think.
“I heard something. I think I felt something.”
“Was it—”
“Something cold,” she cut him off. “On my back. Just now, like someone touched me. Right before the lightbulb blew.”
He sighed and flopped down beside her. They both stared up at the ceiling, at nothing. “You’re just worked up because of those boys. I didn’t know you believe in ghosts.”
“I don’t, exactly. But I won’t rule them out, either. Something touched me, Leo. A hand, right on my thigh, as cold as death.”
“Death feels cold?”
“And damp. Like a mist, almost. Like…” She curled up and grabbed the edge of the blanket and drew it across her torso. “Like a humidifier.”
“Death likes it moist. Got it.” His pup tent deflated, and he resigned himself to a morning that would be less steamy than clammy.
“Shush. Listen. Do you hear that?”
He shushed. He listened. He heard the distant humming slap of the stern wheel churning and the creak of the old boat’s boards as it trekked north through the night. He heard someone talking, but couldn’t make out the words. It sounded close, and it sounded like swearing. Maybe it was coming from the Grand Saloon.
“It’s just your imagination, now that you’ve got it running. Or maybe those idiots tried to get inside another room and woke up somebody else.” But just like that, he was covered in goose bumps.
“Who do you think the ghost hunters were looking for?” Wanda asked.
“What does it matter?”
“If there’s a ghost in the room, we could try talking to it. Maybe we could ask it to go away. Do you think it was a suicide? Accident? Natural causes? Or … something more interesting?”
Leo grabbed his pillow and crawled back into the spot where he’d been sleeping before the spook trio tried barging in. He tugged the sheet over himself, and Wanda joined him. “Leave that nonsense to those three jackasses,” he told her. “We’ve got a real case to solve.”
“We haven’t made much progress so far.”
“Tomorrow, we should…” He stopped himself and shook his head, rolling it back and forth on the pillow. “Or this morning, I guess—I don’t know what time it is—we’ll start asking around. We’ve just hit Vicksburg, after all. She died right around this point in the cruise, when the boat was coming down the other direction.”
“I still say we should’ve gone undercover.”
He laughed. “It’s an insurance gig, not a RICO investigation. There’s no real reason for anyone to lie to us, and we won’t be in any danger.”
“Unless the girl was murdered.”
“She wasn’t murdered. It was an accident. The only question is, was the accident her fault, or was something on the Natchez to blame? The boat’s owners are just covering their asses, in case her family tries to sue.”
“I have a really great wig, and some killer sunglasses.”
He smiled at the ceiling. “No disguises. No undercover work—just work-work, as soon as the sun comes up. We’ve fooled around enough already.”
“Are you sure?” She wormed up against him, warm and soft and reaching for his half-mast chubby of eternal optimism. It rose to the challenge like an inflatable tube man at a car dealership.
Leo mumbled an answer, something about her not being afraid of ghosts anymore. It was mostly a soup of vowels and grunts.
Wanda cackled and ducked under the blanket. She took his waistband in her teeth and dragged his underwear south, while the Natchez rolled softly on the river.
2.
After their predawn quickie, Leo and Wanda slept in another hour or two before heading to the Grand Saloon for breakfast. The sun was up, and the center of the boat was lit for the morning meal, so everything felt a little too bright to Leo. He pulled out his sunglasses and shoved them on, then ordered a black coffee. Wanda went for a mimosa.
The waiter buzzed off, dashed back with a pair of waters, and said he’d be right back with the menus—unless they wanted the breakfast bar? Both said “no thanks.”
“Never pick the breakfast bar,” Leo both commanded and vowed. “I’ll wait for something made for me, not thrown in a trough for eighty other people.”
“Well, we can survive another ten minutes. It’s only what … seven thirty? And to think, you’ve already had a morning workout.”
He smiled without showing any teeth and bobbed his head. “You were no slouch, yourself.”
She returned the grin, added a cocked eyebrow, and adjusted her sun hat. “I know.”
Before long, the uniformed server reappeared with coffee, mimosa, and menus. The Storgmans ordered and settled in to wait. Wanda sighed happily and licked bubbly orange juice off her top lip. “I’ve never been a morning person, but being up this early isn’t all bad.”
Leo shrugged. He’d been a cop for thirty years, in the city that never sleeps. Over the course of that career, he’d seen more sunrises than sunsets—as often as not, while staring down a corpse. It was never his favorite way to start the day, but he’d gotten used to it.
If anything, he would’ve rather seen a lifeless body than the fellow who spotted him and Wanda, waved, and invited himself over to their table. Any lifeless body. Ideally, this guy’s. “Oh God,” he muttered.
Wanda, on the other hand, lit the fuck up. “Why hello there!”
Ryan Forge grabbed a nearby empty chair. He spun it around and sat astride it in reverse, folding his arms on the narrow metal back and frowning apologetically. “Sir. Ma’am. I just want to apologize again. What happened this morning was totally our bad.”
“No shit.”
“Leo…” Wanda whapped him on the shoulder. “Be nice. The poor boy is trying to say he’s sorry.”
“We heard him the first time—and it’s a good thing you had the wrong key,” he said to Ryan. “Wanda was ready to come out, guns blazing.”
“Guns?”
“We’re private investigators.” She extended a hand, limp and calling for a kiss. “I’m Wanda, and this is my husband, Leo—of Storgman and Storgman Investigations.”
Ryan took her up on the smooch across the knuckles. “Always a pleasure to meet a fellow investigator, ma’am.”
Leo rolled his eyes. “We’re not the same sort of investigator.”
“Yeah, I know—but it’s kind of the same. Me and my team, we investigate old murders and deaths—we investigate the other side, man.”
Leo wasn’t having it. “Yeah, well. We investigate fresher mysteries. Real ones.”
“Is that what you’re doing on this boat? Investigating a fresh murder or death?”
“Stop saying that. You sound like an idiot.
”
Wanda shot her husband one kind of look and gave Ryan another look entirely—half benevolent mom who wanted to pat his head, and half cougar who wanted to slap his ass. “Nothing so exciting as a murder, I’m afraid. There was an accident, and a young woman died. We’re here at the insurance company’s request. But what about you? Who were you hoping to contact in our suite?”
Ryan hunkered down against the seat back, crossing his arms and lowering his voice. “Okay, so like, a bunch of people have died on board this boat. It’s practically cursed, man. But supposably a man who committed suicide back in the eighties was staying in room thirteen.”
“You just said ‘supposably.’”
“Yeah, because nobody knows for sure. We can’t find any hard records about it, because of maritime law, or something.”
Leo pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed it like it hurt him. “That is definitely not the reason you can’t find records.”
Defensively, Ryan said, “Look, man—we’ve got records on nine different ghosts. We’ve already reached two or three of them with our equipment, and there must be at least a dozen more on board. Just because we don’t have all the details on this one suicide, that doesn’t mean he isn’t there.”
“Your logic is flawless.”
“I’m pretty good at logic.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.…”
“Leo, stop it. Now, Ryan, do you know the name of the man who died in our suite?”
“It’s Ted. Or Fred. Or maybe Alexander.”
“You’re covering quite a spread there, kid.” Leo looked around for the waiter and didn’t see him.
“The art of investigation is a little imprecise, sometimes. As you well know, sir. Unless you’re new to investigating…”
“Listen here, you—”
“Leo.”
The waiter hovered into his peripheral vision, a tray full of food balanced on one hand and a pitcher of water in the other. Leo focused on the food. He took a deep breath and let it out slow. “I was a cop in New York for longer than you’ve been alive. Now I’m retired from that, and I do this, instead.”
Mississippi Roll Page 15
