Death on the Diversion

by Patricia McLinn

  The awful thing about cruise ships is those two wonderful things combine into a horrible blob around the middle.

  Not just mine. Nearly everyone’s clothes fit tighter at the end of a cruise. It should have a name, like Murphy’s Law. Maybe Gabor’s Law.

  Because, really, doesn’t cruising make you think of the Gabor sisters? At least if you’re old enough to remember them or watch Green Acres reruns.

  The majority of transatlantic cruisers are old enough, one way or another to know who the Gabor sisters were.

  It’s one of the reasons I like Aunt Kit’s choice of cruises. I’m a youngster in this crowd.

  The new arrivals to my clearly not-so-secret hideaway didn’t change that.

  The speaker was a short woman who was more stringy than thin. Her reddish-brown hair either came out of a box or was a wig. She held a cane, though it wasn’t supporting her.

  Her companion was a tall, paunch-ladened man with a ring of white fluff at the back of his otherwise bald head.

  His stoop-shouldered stance gave him an appearance of leaning down to the woman in what could be interpreted as a protective attitude, except for his expression of pain.

  “Hello, Leah. Hello, Wardham,” the man several deck chairs down from me said to the new arrivals.

  I turned to look at him, but his face was as expressionless as his voice. The woman with him, though, appeared to be trying to shrink.

  A sucked-in breath from the newly arrived female — Leah, presumably — turned me back to her.

  “I would think that after breakfast this morning, you two—” Bright red lipstick reinforced the snarl her voice put in the word. “—would be ashamed to show your faces.”

  “We were here first,” the man said evenly.

  “This is my spot.”

  I’d had practically the same thought, despite never being here before. Somehow, it sounded much less reasonable when the woman named Leah snapped it aloud than it had in my head.

  There was my life lesson for the day.

  The clatter of the door slamming shut disrupted my absorption of the lesson sure to make me a better person. Leah moved along the deck, tapping her cane hard on the deck, and the male half of the newcomers — Wardham, the other man called him — trailed her.

  Leah stopped almost at the foot of my deck chair, sparing no attention for me during her all-out glare at the couple.

  That gave me the opportunity to look over the top of my reader for a closer survey.

  Many people would say she was an attractive woman for her age, which I put somewhere in her seventies.

  She carried herself with confidence. She had regular features, highlighted by large eyes. As small as she was, she had a strong, almost masculine-looking neck. It reminded me of a linebacker I’d dated briefly in college.

  Beyond that, the impression was she’d gone too far.

  Too far with the henna in her hair, which did her complexion no good, which she’d tanned too much.

  Not only did the deep tan turn her arms, legs, and neck an unflattering dusty brown, but on her face, it starkly emphasized frown lines in her forehead and marionette lines from nose to mouth, then mouth to chin.

  Going too red with her lipstick brought attention to those lines and spotlighted how her upper lip pulled back, in a near-snarl.

  “Well?” Leah demanded. “Are you going to—?”

  I half expected her to end that question with jump overboard so I can sit where I want.

  She was interrupted by an “Oh” from the doorway, where the newest arrival stood.

  This arrival I knew.

  Odette Treusault paused, still holding the door. I hoped when she closed it, she’d avoid the clang.

  Her gray eyes went from Leah and Wardham to the couple on the deck chairs, then to me. That last stop sparked a bit of surprise.

  “Odette,” said the woman on the deck chair in the middle.

  Just the name. But it sounded like an SOS.

  Odette didn’t address it directly. Instead, she said to me, “How nice to see you again, Sheila. Have you met my friends, Maya and Ralph Russell?” She gracefully gestured to the original couple. “Maya and Ralph, this Sheila Mackey.”

  Remember, though, she used my writing name. She gave it a bit of extra punch the way people do when they’re trying to convey more identity than the name alone might. Or when they’re trying to warn someone.

  Neither half of the couple on the deck chairs showed any sign of receiving the warning or recognizing the name. We exchanged hellos and quick nods, then faced Odette again.

  She immediately said, “And this is Leah Treusault. And her husband, Wardham.”

  My brain stuttered an instant over the last name being the same as Odette’s. Sisters? One married to the other’s brother? Married to brothers? Or—

  “Leah is married to my ex-husband, Wardham,” Odette said smoothly.

  Or that.

  The ex and the current Mrs.

  The other Mrs., Imka said. She’d meant it literally. The other Mrs. Treusault.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I consciously closed my mouth.

  Odette displayed no discomfort. She showed every indication of fulfilling a mundane social task she’d fulfilled thousands of times, always with grace.

  Humor lighted her eyes as she added, “We’re also bridge partners. Leah and I. Not Wardham and I.” The lines at the corners of her eyes deepened. “And certainly not Wardham and Leah.”

  Wardham chuckled. “I’m a terrible bridge player,” he confided to me.

  “You wouldn’t be if you paid attention,” Leah said. But most of her attention was on me. Her eyes narrowed and her forehead wrinkled in the trying-to-remember-if-you’re-somebody expression I’d met far frequently in the past few years than in the heady beginning of Abandon All’s fame.

  I returned the look with an innocuous smile.

  “Do I know you?” she demanded.

  I stifled the smart-ass remarks about having no idea who she might know or think she knew and settled for a firm but pleasant, “No.”

  “You look familiar.”

  Odette’s lips parted. I flicked a look at her. Her lips closed.

  “I have that kind of face,” I said cheerfully. “For some reason I always remind people of someone else. Seems to happen particularly frequently on cruises. You’re not the first one. In fact, you’d bring up the rear of a very long line.”

  I said that with good humor and lightly.

  Still, her frown deepened into a scowl.

  Uh-huh. This woman did not cotton to the idea of not being original or coming in behind many others.

  “Hello,” I said brightly, concentrating my smile on Wardham, which he returned.

  Leah gave a brief nod.

  “Wardham, we’ll sit down the row until my preferred spot opens.”

  Maya made a muffled sound. Ralph reached over and covered both her hands with one of his.

  Maya seemed to shrink further as Leah pointed with her cane down the row.

  “Spread my towel here, Wardham. Don’t forget the clips. And you sit there.” Her arrangement would have Leah looking toward Maya any time she addressed Wardham. And she wasn’t done. “Take that chair, Odette.”

  That would put Odette on the Maya-Ralph side of Wardham. If Leah talked with Wardham or Odette, all her comments would arrow right at Maya.

  Ralph, too, of course.

  I zeroed in on the effect on Maya, almost forgetting Ralph, because she was more reactive.

  “I’ll sit here and talk with Sheila awhile.” Odette gracefully dropped into the deck chair on the side closer to the door. Making me turn my back on whatever happened between those two couples.

  An accident? Or deliberate?

  “Have you and your friend acquainted yourself with the ship?” she asked me.

  “Yes. My friend’s, uh, off exploring on her own.”

  Under Aunt Kit’s tutelage, I’d learned to carry on one conversation while
eavesdropping on another. A vital skill for using people-watching to build characters, she said.

  The others were also talking. Leah’s voice was the only one that came through clearly enough to catch more than snatches and tone.

  “…making herself ridiculous with her bleating and crying…”

  Maya made a sound that I suspected Leah would call bleating.

  Leah continued, “…self-centered, childish, who…”

  Ralph rumbled in, so I guessed that description was directed at Maya.

  Odette was saying with seeming delight, “I am familiar with this ship already. We sailed on the Diversion two and three years ago and would have last year except—” She hesitated an instant. “—something came up.”

  Leah said, “…after seeing what Bruce put up with year after year…”

  “Do you and your, uh, friends always cruise together?”

  “…think he’d have better sense, but…”

  “Always.” Odette’s voice dropped. “Until last year—”

  She broke off as a cloud covered the sun.

  I turned from Odette and saw it wasn’t a cloud. It was Petronella. Okay, kind of a cloud.

  I was impressed and grateful she’d moved silently as a cloud and avoided clanging the door.

  I introduced them. Petronella barely appeared to hear Odette’s “Have you enjoyed exploring the ship?”

  “I’m sorry, Sheila, they say the internet won’t be turned on for at least a few more hours.”

  “All right.” It was better than all right, but I didn’t want to celebrate, I wanted her to stop talking to let me hear Leah and the others.

  “I know your assistant wanted you connected to the internet right away so she could contact you.”

  That was a large part of why it was all right with me if the internet stayed out for the duration.

  “How nice of you to look out for Sheila like this,” Odette said.

  “It’s the least I can do.” Petronella launched into another gratitude monologue.

  I hated those anyhow, but particularly since as long as she talked, I missed what was going on down the row of deck chairs.

  Until a chair scraping on the deck quieted Petronella and gave me an excuse to turn.

  Maya shouted, “I can’t take anymore.”

  She scrambled ungracefully out of her chair, trying to gather her belongings into the wide mouth of a bag that kept closing on her. Her visor flipped onto Ralph’s knee. He calmly handed it to her, talking low enough that the words weren’t decipherable, though the tone was don’t let her get to you.

  Clearly, too late. Possibly by years.

  “Oh, dear,” Odette murmured with a sigh. “We haven’t even left port yet.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Petronella continued lamenting the lack of internet as we found our way to our cabins.

  Aunt Kit always said, “Best thing about these cruises. We’re out of reach of assistant, agent, editor, publicist, and those other assorted people who insist on referring to themselves as ‘your team.’ Sounds like we run a tot’s T-ball group.”

  Believe me, every one of these people would need the ball set up on a tee before they could hit it.

  On our first cruise we brought “my” assistant. Mistake. Major mistake.

  She insisted on showing me how to connect to the internet for emails from the rest of the “team.” When I pretended I couldn’t understand her directions, she printed out all the emails and took dictation of my replies.

  She told everyone she met who I was, which meant they all talked about Abandon All. She gave me a running total of every calorie I put in my mouth. She suggested spa treatments to improve my on-camera appearance.

  Three strikes and you’re out.

  No assistant came on another cruise. Supposedly because the business of — Oops. Almost let my other name slip — the brand name author now known as the human being Sheila Mackey could not possibly run without the assistant’s attention every second. That’s what I told the sequence of assistants who followed, anyway.

  Aunt Kit might have told them the truth.

  The assistants changed regularly because a couple showed hints of getting suspicious. “And they’re the ones stupid enough to let their suspicions show,” Aunt Kit said. “The ones to worry about are the ones who never reveal their suspicions. The ones who are too stupid not to suspect aren’t good enough at the job to keep around.”

  After that first cruise, we took along one of Kit’s relatives. Occasionally they overlapped with my relatives, but none I knew particularly well. They all thought I wrote the books. We kept to the script in their presence.

  In more recent years, there’d been a couple just-graduated-from college relatives who made me feel old. They went their way, Kit went hers, and I went mine during the day. We’d meet for dinner most nights and that was plenty of family time for all of us. This laissez-faire approach even earned Kit and me “cool” points with the younger members of the family.

  This time, Kit broke down and paid for Poor Petronella to go.

  With me.

  Kit stayed in North Carolina, saying she had far, far too much to do in settling into her new home to go on a cruise.

  “Besides, you’re more patient than I am.”

  True. Vlad the Impaler had more patience than Aunt Kit.

  I was several steps closer to the Nobel Peace Prize than Vlad or Aunt Kit, but that left a whole lot of room past me on the patience continuum. In other words, don’t rev up the canonization apparatus anytime soon.

  Especially not after already spending several days with Poor Petronella.

  * * * *

  “I am Eristo, your cabin steward, miss. Is there anything you request?”

  I smiled back at the man, introduced myself with my author of Abandon All name and requested a bucket of ice be left in my mini-fridge daily. I prefer water on the rocks.

  He brought the ice and offered to put my empty suitcase on the closet shelf, since I was at the stage of unpacking where everything was on the bed — two twins pushed together.

  When I cruised with Aunt Kit, we shared a two-bedroom suite.

  When she announced the arrangements for this trip, she’d told me she’d skipped the suite so I didn’t have to share with Petronella.

  Petronella’s cabin was across the hall and maybe eight doors down — an inside room.

  “I’m generous. I’m not stupid,” Kit said. “Petronella will be delighted with that room, while our dignity requires at least the top line stateroom for you. If they’d have given me the discount on the suite, maybe…” She’d bought a house in the Outer Banks, but her lifetime of cost-cutting to remain solvent as an author endured when it came to more mundane matters.

  So I was in a stateroom with a balcony. Not a suite. Which all suited me fine — pun intended.

  Petronella and I were in our separate cabins, unpacking and settling in, after I persuaded her I didn’t want her to unpack for me.

  A voice came over the public address system announcing the safety drill.

  The knocking on my cabin door came before the announcement finished and I didn’t hear it all. On the other hand, I knew the gist from previous cruises.

  “Sheila, Sheila!” Petronella shouted. “The ship is sinking! What do we do? Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. We’ll drown.”

  I snatched open the door and yanked her inside, speaking sharply to break through her panic.

  “It’s not sinking. It’s not even moving yet. This is a drill. Teaches you what to do if there is an emergency. If you’re not quiet, listen to every word, and remember every word, and there is an emergency — like the ship sinking — you will drown.”

  That stopped her from talking, though I feared she’d hyperventilate.

  She clung to my arm and made occasional whimpering sounds as we made our way to the assigned spot.

  Not hard to find with crew members in fluorescent vests and big signs indicating which way passengers assigned to each g
roup should go.

  The crew member in charge of our muster group was a young man with skin tanned nearly as dark as his hair and eyes.

  Unsmiling, he directed us into place within lines marked on the deck, recommending taller people move toward the back, to increase the number of people who’d be able to see him.

  “I’m not moving to the back.” Leah’s easily recognizable voice topped all other talkers and ambient noise. “I don’t care what some idiot says. He’d get us all drowned.”

  The crew member’s face darkened.

  The people in front of me shifted uneasily, and I saw Leah … standing in the next group.

  How strange.

  I mean it was strange for anyone to be nasty at muster drill, plus his instructions didn’t apply to her, since she was short, and he wasn’t even her muster leader.

  Before she could say more, the captain’s voice came over the PA system, drawing everyone’s attention. Or almost everyone’s.

  I could still see Leah’s lips moving. Wardham bent as if to listen to her.

  Our muster leader moved as far from Leah as he could while still having anything to do with our area.

  He didn’t budge as he gave us the instructions. I hoped people on the far side had good hearing or they’d get no benefit from this.

  * * * *

  Petronella had listened for two — her and me.

  She proved it by repeating the instructions on a loop as we returned to our cabins.

  With the elevators jammed, a lot of people streamed down or up the stairways. Each set of stairs climbed halfway to the next deck, then turned 180 degrees and made the rest of the trip. We followed a stream going up. Ahead of us, I saw Ralph and Maya. Three steps higher, putting them a full half-flight higher than us, were Leah and Wardham.

  I looked around but didn’t see Odette. Had Ralph and Maya been with Leah and Wardham and I hadn’t noticed, while focused on Leah’s behavior? Possible.

  Leah, gripping the handrail and using her cane with the other hand, stopped abruptly on the second-half stretch of stairs to deck seven. She stared up, presumably to where others were climbing to the halfway landing to deck eight. She muttered something but I didn’t catch it.