Death on the Diversion

by Patricia McLinn

  But I opted for what’s known as an American tip polish. With the ends painted a less shocking white than the better-known French manicure (really, those things could be used to direct traffic at night) and clear polish over the beds of my nails. That made the red remarkable and wrong.

  Strawberry preserves from breakfast? Not the right color. Plus, I’d washed my hands before leaving the cabin.

  I smeared at it with the pad of my other index finger. Not the right consistency, either.

  It looked like…

  I brought my finger to my nose and sniffed, catching a faint, metallic scent.

  …and smelled like…

  Blood.

  I closed my eyes and thought.

  What can I say? I’m not the screaming type.

  Procrastinating type, yes. Screaming, no.

  Okay, also the denial type.

  Instead of acting, I reviewed where I’d been since leaving my cabin.

  The encounter with the violinist.

  But we hadn’t touched, I didn’t recall any sign of blood around her, and her hands had left no trace when she’s put one against the wall to balance and the other to her face to stop tears.

  I’d come up the stairs, stopped at the buffet where, yes, all right, I’d picked up a cookie, maybe two, for later.

  On the way in and out, I’d received the obligatory squirts of the antiseptic/antibacterial stuff they dish out by the gallon at entry and exit of each dining venue. No red on my hands.

  I found a deck chair, deposited my things on it.

  Again, no sign of blood.

  I’d started walking.

  Three and a half circuits, being passed by joggers and other walkers, then occasionally passing a greater laggard, all while making no contact with person, railing, or other object.

  Except this figure whose towel-wrapped shoulder had felt … odd.

  It was not moving.

  At all.

  My breath suddenly hurt my chest and throat.

  No screaming, but should I call for help?

  That would draw a crowd.

  What if there were clues that would be obliterated?

  Clues to what?

  Not going to think about that right now.

  Not.

  Going.

  To.

  I turned my head, watching the intermittent stream of joggers and walkers. Unfortunately, from where I stood and with the direction they were moving, I saw their backs after they’d passed me.

  As I stood there, not recognizing anyone’s back, a thought crept in. Not precisely about what I was not thinking about, but close to it.

  Some people I might spot would not be good choices to call over to this towel-wrapped figure because of possible, uh, conflicts of interest. Assuming someone was responsible for the person who might be Leah no longer breathing.

  That’s blood on your finger, toots. People who stop breathing in their sleep seldom have blood on their shoulders.

  That voice in my head was getting old. If Aunt Kit had wanted to come along on this cruise, she could have darned well come instead of hitchhiking in my brain.

  After a few minutes of standing stock still, watching unknown backs stream past, I would have accepted even the individual who had the absolute biggest conflict of interest. In other words, whoever might be responsible for nothing under the towels moving.

  No, maybe not.

  Besides, how would I know that person was the one with the biggest conflict of interest. And he or she might do something that prevented the, uh, conflict of interest from ever being exposed and then I’d be responsible for someone getting away with—

  “Bob!”

  Not a screamer, but I’m a hefty shouter and that shout turned several heads around … including the one my brain had recognized and communicated to my mouth to shout to while the rest of my mental power dithered about conflict of interest.

  He peeled away from the flow of joggers and runners, curling back toward me.

  “What’s wrong, Sheila?”

  Where did I start?

  Not by saying aloud the question drumming in my head:

  Did Maya finally crack?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I’ve been on a number of cruises and somebody dying during one isn’t unheard of, especially on the longer ones. You pack a few thousand people who are more Boomers-and-Beyond than Millennials on a ship for a week or two and the numbers will tilt that way.

  This death, however, was from decidedly unnatural causes.

  The blood on my hand was the major clue.

  She hadn’t just been killed. Crack of dawn exercises were held on this deck even before the joggers and walkers started. They might not notice a non-breathing figure, but they’d notice someone depositing it in a deck chair, not to mention someone killing and wrapping a person in towels. So she’d been put here a while ago. And she hadn’t put herself here.

  Which led to the strongest point: How could she have ended up wrapped in towels if it was a natural death?

  Apparently, the ship’s officers called in by Bob agreed.

  They quickly blocked off that part of the deck, escorting all passengers except Bob and me and whoever was in the towels well away from the activity.

  They also used a tarp to mask the area from prying eyes. Though the wind confounded those efforts a few times.

  My eyes pried for all they were worth.

  I also eavesdropped on conversations between the medical personnel and ship officials.

  From those, I knew the blood I’d encountered wasn’t the cause of death. I mean blood usually isn’t a cause of death in itself, unless you lose too much of it, which would have created a scene no jogger could have missed.

  “Stabbed?” the first official with stripes on his uniform asked the doctor.

  “I’m no pathologist, but I don’t think so. Certainly not fatally. More likely a skin tear when she was, well, I suppose you’d say strangled.”

  “What do you mean, you suppose I’d say strangled?”

  “It appears, from the lack of markings on the back of her neck, that something was held across the front long enough and hard enough to kill her.”

  Before I heard more, another official with fewer stripes on his uniform started asking me questions.

  After questions from a sequence of ship officials, I was escorted down several decks, into an interior warren of narrow hallways and tiny, utilitarian offices not meant for passengers’ eyes.

  Up ahead, I caught sight of Wardham being ushered into a room by another official. When we reached the door it was closed, showing the sign: Chief Security Officer.

  I was led two doors farther, then invited to enter. As I passed the long title on the door, I caught the name Henri Lipke and something about passenger satisfaction. I had the better end of this than Wardham, assuming Henri Lipke lived up to his title.

  Rising from behind his desk to greet me, Lipke displayed a Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind mustache with no other resemblance to Clark Gable. He was short and thin. He smiled smoothly, then remembered the seriousness of the matter and grew solemn with disconcerting speed. He had not been among the officials at the scene.

  Assuming this was being recorded, I supplied my name and submitted to his questions with the best grace I could muster with a major headache knock, knock, knocking.

  No, I hadn’t met the victim before this cruise. No, we didn’t spend a lot of time together. No, I hadn’t liked her. No, I’d never killed someone I didn’t like — he didn’t ask that question. I threw in the answer for free.

  “Tell to me again what reason you possessed to stop to check on your friend?”

  “Not my friend,” I repeated. “Acquaintance. I met her through a fellow passenger. In the spa the first day—”

  “In the spa,” he murmured, not sounding happy. Death — even if it wasn’t murder — was not good for passenger satisfaction.

  “Yes. We were having manicures.”

  “Y
ou and the deceased passenger?”

  “No. A different woman.” I felt oddly reluctant to share Odette’s name, though surely Wardham would tell the Chief Security Officer about the group traveling together. And all the currents and cross-currents among them. “That woman and I hit it off. She later introduced me to her friend, Leah Treusault. That is the woman I found.”

  I rubbed at my forehead, as if friction would cure my headache.

  Repeating my story was getting old.

  Lucky me to discover the victim.

  All those people passing me on my circuits must have been going too fast to notice the towel-wrapped figure’s complete lack of movement.

  They said the murderer often returned to the scene of the crime. Could this one have returned over and over while circling the track? Keeping an eye on the victim while keeping fit? Murderous multitasking?

  Henri Lipke made a note of what I said, even though I’d said it before. I kept my questions and speculations to myself.

  He looked up through his lashes while keeping his head down. “And your companion? Ms. Domterni?”

  I gave him a hard look. I was fair game. I had found the body. Petronella was Bambi, Peter Rabbit, and a few other defenseless woodland creatures rolled into one. Sure, some might say her brain power fell into the same range as those woodland creatures, but she was family by Aunt Kit’s standards.

  “She is not my companion in either the old European sense nor in the current sense of partner or significant other. She is a sort of distant relation.” I was not explaining to this man how Aunt Kit’s long-dead fiancé figured in. “And she not only wouldn’t hurt a fly, she would pick the fly up after someone else swatted it and give it a decent burial. Sure, you’ve got to consider me when you write up your list of suspects, but forget—”

  “Suspects?” His eyes bugged out in dismay. “For a natural death?”

  “I don’t think so.” I gave it a touch of the satirical sing-song intonation where you go up on the think. It felt good. Like a normal person, instead of a vaunted author. “Blood, remember? I suppose that might be natural, but from the doctor’s expression when he unwrapped her from the towel—” I restrained myself from repeating I don’t think so. No sense rubbing it in and making an enemy of him. I might need help with my passenger satisfaction later. “—probably not.”

  “How did you—? You were not to see. The passengers were to be shielded, the covering to protect them from the ugliness.”

  “The crew did its best, but the wind caught a corner of the tarp.”

  That wind-arranged gap had momentarily revealed a flash of red where Leah’s shoulder and neck met, along with an impression of something wrong with her throat. And that was before hearing the doctor.

  “Not natural,” I said with confidence.

  His eyes dropped. Bingo.

  “That brings us to suspects,” I added.

  “No, no. I do not think—”

  I held up my hand. “Her husband.” Index finger raised. “Her ex-husband.” Middle finger. “Her husband’s ex-wife.” Ring finger. “Her ex-husband’s current wife.” Little finger.

  “You must not say such things.”

  “Wait. There’s more.” I waggled my thumb. “A German woman Leah clashed with.”

  “No, no, no. Not on the Diversion.”

  I wasn’t done. “Also, she made herself unpopular with a number of the crew, including the woman who plays the violin so beautifully with the guitar player.”

  “Anya and Pyorte.” He still looked unhappy but not as deeply disturbed.

  “Then there was something nasty with the towel guy. And if she’d treated me the way she did any of the waiters, I’d have been tempted to pop her.”

  Though I wouldn’t have killed her. On the other hand, I could get away from her. They were stuck serving her — food, drinks, towels — day after day. Sometimes cruise after cruise, too. And having to be nice while doing it.

  “Ah,” he said with deep meaning. “The towels. Such as wrapped her. It must be one who hands the towels to passengers who did this.”

  “I thought you said not on the Diversion?”

  He spread his hands wide. “If it must be, better crew than a guest.” His mouth turned down, but he lifted one shoulder slightly in fatalistic acceptance. “What name was this person you saw be nasty with her?”

  Badar, the towel guy, wasn’t my favorite, but that didn’t mean I’d vote to have him railroaded, especially since anyone could have snagged towels.

  “Not him being nasty. Her. She was nasty to him.” I shook my head, slow but sure. “Sorry. I don’t remember a name.”

  “What description did he have?”

  More head-shaking. “I don’t remember. I was focused on how nasty Leah was being.”

  “She was this nasty to you?”

  “I never took a direct hit. Just caught in the general miasma of her nastiness.”

  Including whoever she’d been talking to at the elevator last night, making noises about a prison cell. Hyperbole? Or did she know something? That person seemed more likely to have been a passenger than a crew member, considering crew rarely used those elevators. But—

  Henri Lipke interrupted my speculations by asking, “Your companion?”

  I didn’t answer immediately.

  He didn’t meet my eyes. He understood English well enough that he hadn’t stumbled at direct hit or miasma. Yet he’d used unusual constructions and he’d repeated that identifier for Petronella that I’d objected to.

  Uh-huh. My buttons were being pushed.

  Slowly, I said, “Ditto. Same as me.”

  He didn’t blink over that or seem to have any issue understanding.

  Instead, he said, “Tell me again, starting from when you began to walk the track.”

  His English had improved radically.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Lipke excused himself “for a moment” that turned into more like forty-five. Long enough to realize that with The Fields of Athenry identified, a new earworm had taken up residence.

  T-bar and errand chase sonar. You and me theme and Cheese Mary now.

  The nonsense syllables that were the last thing I’d heard from the gossiper on the upper deck early in the cruise.

  What on earth did they mean and why did they haunt me?

  When he returned, they at least — and at last — served me lunch.

  That helped my headache. But it didn’t go away completely as we had yet another round of Same Old Questions.

  Finally, he politely thanked me for my time and sent me on my way.

  It was after three p.m. Five hours since I found her.

  I wanted fresh air and solitude.

  I headed for my cabin, specifically the balcony.

  On the way, I realized the death was the only topic of the snatches of conversation I heard. Though no one identified me — yet — as the body finder.

  Walking to the elevator…

  “The cruise line’ll try to keep the death hush-hush. They all do it. Discreet, anyway. They sure don’t want to advertise that someone’s croaked during their cruise…”

  “I heard there’ll be a burial at sea.”

  “Nah. They have a morgue to hold bodies until we get to a port.”

  In the elevator…

  “You know they have cameras all over. They must have security video.”

  “They could see it was a waiter who left the body there—”

  The hair on the back of my neck stood up. They had video.

  At least according to rumor.

  “—but didn’t know which one…”

  “How could they not know which one if they had video? The person covered his or her face? Then how did they know it was a waiter?”

  Good questions.

  Wish I knew the answers.

  Outside the elevator…

  “I wonder if the heirs get a partial refund.”

  “Why would they? It’s not the cruise line’s fault th
is person didn’t finish the trip.”

  “Unless the food killed them. Or a fall in the bathroom or—”

  “How could anyone fall in a bathroom? They’re so small, you could try to keel over and still be found standing up.”

  I closed the door between the public area and the corridor where my cabin was, cutting off the voices.

  With my key ready to open my door, I heard a male voice.

  “Oh, miss. Horrible for you to be the one who…” It was Eristo, my cabin steward. He usually left towel creatures on the bed for me, now he offered condolences on finding a body and proving the crew grapevine was faster than the passenger version. “Can I do anything for you? Something you require? I left the ice in your refrigerator. Anything else, I would be happy…”

  His brown eyes shone with sympathy. And something else.

  “Thank you, Eristo. That’s kind of you. If I think of anything… But right now, I’d like to…” I tipped my head toward my cabin door.

  “Yes, yes, yes. Such an awful thing for you to find. All the questions. For you. For others.”

  He spread his palm to hold the door open for me once I’d unlocked it. I stepped in. Before he could withdraw, I faced him.

  “Eristo, you said others were asked questions. Do you know who?”

  “Oh, miss. I should not.” He looked up and down the hall.

  “Of course, of course.” I backed up, through the narrow hallway between the bathroom and closet, back until I felt the bed behind me, then I sidled to the side. “There was one thing I hoped you might help me with. My, uh, suitcase. Getting my suitcase down from the shelf in the closet.”

  “Of course, miss.” He came in, letting the hall door shut. He made no move toward the closet.

  “Under normal circumstances I know you would never share information with a passenger.” I held his gaze. “But this is not a normal circumstance, is it?”

  “No, miss.”

  “If you’re not comfortable telling me who’s being questioned officially, tell me what is being talked about among the crew.”

  “Ah. Well. The crew, we see much more. The officers—” He flicked a hand. “—they occupy themselves with important duties, too important to notice. The staff, too. But we, of the crew, we are with the guests far more.”