Cruise Ship Cozy Mysteries 07 - Deadly Cruise

by A. R. Winters

  I had put on my costume, but I had my doubts about it. I was supposed to dress up like a 1950s reporter, with a big fedora, a large badge reading PRESS, a non-functional antique camera hanging from a strap around my neck, and a beige duster jacket that was designed for a man from my grandparents’ generation.

  “Cece would tell you to keep the jacket and lose what’s underneath.”

  I laughed. She probably would. Cece was a great friend, but not someone I generally went to for advice—unless I wanted to be entertained rather than counseled.

  “I’ll be too hot.” I took off the duster and hung it back in my closet. Maybe I’d put it on if we had a cool evening. With the big press badge and fedora, the costume was still pretty clear.

  “Come on. Let’s go.”

  Sam was dressed like an old-fashioned airline stewardess, from the days before they were known as flight attendants.

  She wore a long, tight brown skirt, a white blouse, and a small red-and-blue airline scarf tied around her neck. A tiny cap sat at an angle atop her head, held in place with bobby pins.

  We were going to the International Buffet for brunch. Officially, we were going there to work, but we very much intended to take advantage of the location to stuff ourselves while we were at it.

  “So are they doing speakers all day?” asked Sam as we walked through the crew quarters of the ship.

  “Nope. Just in the mornings. They’ve sectioned off a big part of the Buffet so people can eat and listen at the same time.” I had popped in for a peek earlier, before Sam woke up.

  The International Buffet was a gigantic restaurant, and through the arrangement of portable partition walls different areas could be sectioned off for events, groups, or to just make it into a more intimate venue.

  “How was Zoya yesterday?” I asked. “She was pretty rude to me when I first met her.”

  “She obviously thinks she’s Hollywood A-list.”

  “She was never A-list, was she?”

  Sam shook her head. “Nope. But from what I can tell, a lot of people from that world are delusional. But she was polite to me. You probably caught her at a bad moment.”

  “I guess.” I didn’t mind if guests were a little difficult, but from my first impression I had been worried she’d be a full-on despotic egomaniac.

  “She did ask me to do something weird, though.”

  “Oh?” I was already having visions of diva-esque requests.

  “She asked me to find out where Judd Cohn’s cabin was, and his schedule.”

  That didn’t sound too much like a diva. “He’s a movie producer.”

  “Yep. I think they worked together a long time ago. She said it was time they worked together again.”

  After exiting a marked Staff and Crew Only, we strolled along a hallway before arriving at the ship’s Grand Atrium, a short walk from the International Buffet.

  “Maybe we’ll play a small part in the creation of a new Hollywood blockbuster, if they make a deal while they’re on board.”

  Sam laughed. “Yeah, maybe. Now let’s go and do some customer liaising… with a big plate of food.”

  I nodded and followed her inside.

  A few minutes later, we’d both loaded up our food with some real treats, supposedly from a bygone era. I had some duck a l’orange, Snickers salad, deviled eggs, shrimp cocktail, and two other curious dishes that seemed to be made of meat, Jell-O, and olives. Sam’s plate looked just as retro as mine.

  We made our way to the area of the restaurant that was going to be used for the lectures, or ‘Informal Expert-led Talks’ as they were labeled on the program. These would be carried out throughout the cruise at a variety of locations.

  The lecture area was walled on three sides, with the back section open to the rest of the restaurant. Two of the walls were lined with tables, upon which were more foods and drinks, as if the whole buffet itself wasn’t enough.

  Lecture guests were to sit at normal dining tables and chairs, and the speaker would stand up at the front. Since everyone else would be sitting down, they wouldn’t need a stage.

  “You know, if I were a passenger, I think I’d come here for breakfast, stay for brunch and a lecture, and then just keep on going right through lunch,” I said.

  “That does sound good,” said Sam. We were both country girls at heart, with the appetites to match. “Maybe we should take our vacation on board. We’ll be due for one soon.”

  I smacked her on the arm. Our dear friend Cece had made the mistake of taking her vacation aboard the ship during the last cruise, and if there was one thing I’d learned from that experience, it was that you should never, ever, vacation where you work.

  “Ooh, he’s dressed up,” I said, nudging Sam and pointing to the front of the section, where Tom Devlin was now standing, a microphone in his right hand.

  “He is?” asked Sam.

  Compared to when he’d boarded the day before, he certainly was. He was wearing blue jeans that almost fit and what appeared to be a brand new Swan Cruises—Feel the Passion of the Sea! T-shirt.

  “You should have seen him yesterday. I thought a hobo had gotten on the wrong boxcar and ended up on board.”

  Sam had been busy looking after Zoya by then and so had ‘missed out,’ if that was the right term, on meeting him the day before.

  “Can you all hear me? Yes? Good. Good.” Tom began to pace back and forth at the front of the room, the mic held just in front of his mouth the entire time so that we could confirm with our own ears that he was indeed breathing the whole time.

  He was the kind of speaker I describe as anxious-earnest: he clearly loved his topic and wanted to talk about it, but he had nervous mannerisms like pacing back and forth, talking too fast, and breathing too loudly.

  I munched on a surprisingly delicious deviled egg while he began his talk.

  “As a movie critic, people often ask me the dumbest questions.” There was a pause while he awaited the laughter which was indeed forthcoming. “Like, ‘What’s your favorite movie?’” More laughter. “I tell them, ‘I don’t have one. I hate movies.’”

  I couldn’t help but giggle, and so did Sam. I picked up my phone and took a couple of pictures of Tom as he spoke, before returning to one of the gelatin-based meat dishes on my plate.

  “I’m kidding, of course. But that’s what I’m going to talk to you about today: some of my favorite movies, some of my least favorite, and some of the behind the scenes stories that the general public never get to hear—and that the Hollywood stars are praying I don’t tell you!”

  The next forty-five minutes or so were some of the most enjoyable that I’d spent working on board. I had interesting food to sample, my best friend next to me, and a surprisingly entertaining speaker.

  After he’d told us about some of his favorite and least favorite movies, Tom went onto a few specific anecdotes.

  “Any fans of horror movies here?” The response to this question was mixed, drawing both cheers and boos. “I love them. Not the good ones, but the terrible ones. And the 1970s was the best decade ever for the particular brand of over-the-top slasher flicks with the too-stupid-to-live but scantily clad heroines that I love. There’s one scene that really sticks out in my mind. One that really encapsulates the whole era.”

  Even people who didn’t like horror movies were interested to hear what he had to say.

  “Picture it. You’ve got your heroine, eighteen years old, high school cheerleader, in the passenger seat of her boyfriend’s car. They’re parked up at Make-out Ridge—yes, that’s what they actually called it in the movie—and her boyfriend hears something suspicious. Of course, in the tradition of these kinds of movies, he’s done the stupidest thing he could: got out of the car, in the dark, alone, to see what the strange screaming was.”

  A lot of people had put down their knives and forks to listen as he talked. I couldn’t help but think his rendition of this particular story was probably better than watching the movie itself.


  As Tom paced back and forth, he took a few extra steps to where the food tables were.

  “I hope Swan doesn’t mind.” Tom reached down and pulled out a carving knife, which was embedded in a large pink ham, and swished it up into the air.

  “Sure enough, a couple of minutes later, the car door opens again, and the hunky high school quarterback climbs back in the car, still wearing his letterman jacket of course.”

  Everyone was leaning forward now, listening to Tom as he swung the knife around as he spoke. I found myself anxious that he would get the microphone and knife mixed up and injure himself.

  “He turns to the girl, and you know there’s something wrong. Like, maybe he’s seen something, or something happened to him outside the car. He reaches over and puts his hands on her shoulders. Now, we the viewer can see these hands are not those of her boyfriend. They’re massive, massive hands, each of which is missing a finger or two and covered in scars. But the girl doesn’t look down at her shoulders. She’s too busy staring into her boyfriend’s eyes. They have a brief kiss, but she breaks it off.

  “‘What’s wrong?’ asks the guy in a really deep voice—a voice nothing like the boyfriend’s.

  “‘Tom,’ she says—and yeah, he has the same name as I do, because they obviously based the hunky quarterback on me—” Tom Devlin motioned down at his portly body, drawing more amused laughter from the crowd.

  “‘Tom, your lips are cold,’ says the girl. And the camera turns back to the guy, and he says, ‘That’s because they’re not my lips.’ Ha! And then, he reaches up, and what do you know? He pulls off the boyfriend’s face to reveal that he’s actually the crazy killer.” Tom paused to swing the knife around in the air again for effect. “‘Now give me another kiss,’ says our murderous knife-wielding maniac. Needless to say, the young heroine declines the offer.”

  Sam was staring at me, wide-eyed. “That’s horrible!”

  I nodded back at her, regretting the mouthful of pork and red Jell-O I was eating. It tasted almost bitter when I swallowed.

  “What I love about that scene is just how ridiculous it is. The best surgeons in the world today couldn’t do what this supposed serial killer did in the dark, with a knife like this one. It sums up that whole era of movies for me…”

  I leaned back in my chair, stuffed, as Tom wrapped up the anecdote. He asked the audience if we had any questions for him.

  “I’ve got one. When’s he going to put that knife down?” Sam gestured at the movie critic with her head, but her voice was low so only I could hear.

  I was grinning in agreement with her, but as if he’d heard us, he walked across the front of the room and put the knife back on the cutting board next to the ham he had extracted it from.

  “I have a question!”

  The voice sounded familiar, and when the man stood up I could see why. It was Kirk Field, Zoya’s superfan who I met the day before.

  “Go ahead,” said Tom, though his eyes seemed to have narrowed in suspicion.

  “You wrote a review of Zoya’s masterpiece, Painted Little Flower, but it was the worst review I’ve ever read! You—”

  “Sorry to interrupt you,” said Tom without even the merest hint of regret, “but that’s not the topic of today’s talk. We’re here to talk about classic movies, seventies horror, and interesting scenes, not what movie reviewers—even ones with illustrious careers as myself—thought about the work of washed-up has-beens forty years earlier. Let’s focus on the movies, not what critics said about them.”

  “But surely that is relevant,” called out another man from the audience.

  “I’ve never heard of Painted Little Flower. Was it a load of trash?” called out a woman.

  “Trash? It was fantastic! A masterpiece!” yelled Kirk, turning as he did so to face the rest of the guests behind him. “Flower was Zoya Maxwell’s finest work, but this imbecile’s review meant no one ever gave it a chance!”

  “Masterpiece?” said a man incredulously. “It wasn’t a masterpiece, more like a piece of—”

  “Zoya should never have abandoned her roots! She should have stayed in horror!”

  Sam and I exchanged worried glances. Out of seemingly nowhere, the audience was beginning to argue about ancient movies.

  “You’re right. She should have stayed in B-movies where she belonged. She couldn’t act her way out of a wet paper bag.”

  Kirk smashed his hand down on his table causing it to rattle. “She’s the finest actress of her generation and the most beautiful woman in the world!”

  He shouted so loudly, and with such passion, that everyone went quiet for a moment. Possibly because they were scared to disagree with him.

  Tom stood at the front of the room, the mic now hanging by his side. His eyebrows went up, and he seemed to see something at the back of the room. As the audience began to turn around, a chorus of oohs spread through them.

  Craning my neck around, I saw the familiar hourglass figure of Zoya herself, her face obscured by a giant sunhat and oversized sunglasses.

  “It’s Zoya!”

  “She’s here!”

  I glanced to the front of the room and saw Kirk had his head tilted, squinting at the newcomer. I was surprised that his face wasn’t locked in adoration.

  Turning back again, I looked at the former Hollywood star. The sunglasses she was wearing today were different than the ones from yesterday, though they were still large and covered a good portion of her face.

  She raised a manicured hand to her face and lowered the glasses.

  “It’s not Zoya!”

  “Who’s that?”

  “It’s Susan Shelly!”

  “Nice prank!”

  The woman held up her hand and the audience hushed.

  “It seems like I fooled you all… again,” said Susan Shelly.

  The audience erupted into mirthful laughter, though I didn’t quite get the joke. I wasn’t sure when she’d fooled us the first time.

  “I think some of you—Tom,” she said pointedly, “are being a little too hard on Zoya. All actresses have to find their true passion, their true calling. But as we found out in 1979, for Zoya that certainly wasn’t serious movies. And before that, it wasn’t the horror genre either. She just wasn’t cut out for it. Unlike me.”

  A concerned expression fell on Susan’s face. Her eyes went wide, and something seemed to catch her attention in front of her. I looked back at the other end of the room but couldn’t see anything wrong. When I returned my attention to her, Susan put two hands up to her cheeks, her brow wrinkled, and her whole body seemed to quiver.

  “What’s wrong?” I hissed to Sam.

  “I don’t know!”

  Seeing someone in distress but not knowing the cause was a particular kind of unnerving. I squeezed my fingers into my palms as I stared at the actress, trying to work out what the problem was.

  Susan’s fingernails pressed into the side of her face, her mouth opened even wider, impossibly so, and she began to let out the most heart-wrenching wail of a shriek I’d ever heard.

  “Aiiiieeee!”

  We all looked on, aghast.

  Had she been poisoned? Seen a ghost? Been attacked by an invisible assailant?

  And then, like a summer shower, it was over. Her arms fell back to her sides and a broad smile appeared on her face.

  “I got some of you, didn’t I?” she said with a grin. “Don’t forget—Susan Shelly’s still got it! I’m the real Queen of the Cinema Scream Queens.”

  I stared at Sam in shock.

  “She sure fooled me,” said Sam, shaking her head.

  “I think I’m still fooled. Is she all right?”

  I looked back at her with genuine astonishment. I’d been in life-threatening situations myself, but Susan’s reaction was even more real than reality. That was probably why she was an actress and I wasn’t.

  When a ridiculously handsome old-fashioned gumshoe appeared behind Susan with a concerned look on his face, I did a doub
le-take.

  The man was wearing a fedora similar to my own, and he had on a long trench coat like the duster I’d decided not to wear.

  “Hot Stuff’s gone old school,” said Sam.

  “Doesn’t he look great?”

  Sam grinned and shook her head at me.

  The detective was Ethan Lee, First Officer of the ship, the head of security, and the guy I was currently dating. He normally wore a handsome white-and-gold uniform, but for this cruise he had gotten into the spirit of the theme.

  I caught Ethan’s eye and he walked over to our table.

  “What’s a peachy dame like you doin’ in a lowdown sleazy joint like this?” To my surprise, he pulled out a flask from a pocket inside of his jacket and took a good swig of the contents.

  I tapped my fake press badge. “This dame’s huntin’ down a story. One she can put all over social media.”

  “Social what now?” he said.

  “Would you two stop it?” said Sam, loudly interrupting us. “Neither of you are any good. Your slang’s all wrong and you don’t sound anything like a detective or a reporter.”

  We both looked at her, wounded. We’d been enjoying ourselves. “I thought you didn’t know about old-timey slang?”

  “I don’t. But I know when you’re garbage at it.”

  Ethan chuckled and sat down in the empty chair beside me. “You’re right. I don’t know what I’m doing. I told Kelly as much when she asked me to wear this outfit, but she said it didn’t matter.”

  “At least we dressed the part. Nice hat.”

  He reached up and tapped my fedora on its brim. “You too. We’re a matching couple.”

  I grinned at him. We were a matching couple. But our mutual adoration didn’t have time to flourish for long.

  “Ah, Adrienne, there you are!” said Kelly, approaching me at a rapid clip. Today, she was dressed in all plum-purple, right down to her freshly manicured fingernails.

  “What’s up?” I asked with just a touch of nervousness. Kelly had a habit of dropping things in my lap without warning.

  “Good news!”

  “Uh-huh…” I didn’t know who it was ‘good’ for yet.