Cruise Ship Cozy Mysteries 07 - Deadly Cruise

by A. R. Winters

  Ethan shrugged. “Sure. But we won’t take long, I’m sure.”

  That didn’t seem to worry Tom. He rushed over to the counter.

  “I guess you don’t have to dress up if you’re just a movie critic who writes for newspapers,” I said, shaking my head after he was out of earshot.

  Tom was wearing jeans again today, but they were too tight around the waist, too large in the legs, and seemed to have paint spatters on them. Not designer spatters, but the ones you get after you put on your oldest clothes to do some home decorating. The jeans were accompanied by a T-shirt, but it was for a movie that had premiered when I was still in middle school and hadn’t been much of a success then.

  Ethan scraped out the last few spoonfuls of our melted ice cream remains while we waited for him to return.

  Tom came back carrying a much bigger bowl than either of ours. I shifted seats, moving around so that I was sitting next to Ethan.

  “It’s got two bananas in it,” said Tom with childish delight as he set down an oval-shaped bowl on the table. He had a double banana split that he immediately dug into. He didn’t take small mouthfuls to enjoy the cool sweet treat, instead loading up his spoon with little mountains as if someone might come and snatch the dish away if he didn’t finish it quick enough.

  “So…” said Ethan. I guessed not many interviews with murder suspects involved them trying to wolf down a double banana split. “I have a couple of questions for you.”

  “Yesh?” Even that single word was difficult for him to get out, his mouth crammed full as it was.

  A thought struck me then, one that didn’t occur to me before when talking to suspects. It’s actually pretty hard to read a person’s expression when their mouth is full and their jaw is working away. You can still look at the eyes, of course, but in Tom’s case they kept flicking down to his spoon or dish or up toward the ceiling in pleasure.

  “During your talk the other day, I caught you right at the end. I couldn’t help but notice that you were using a large knife as a prop.”

  Tom Devlin was nodding his head up and down while his jaw went up and down as well. He swallowed three times before he answered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and then snatching a napkin from the dispenser to wipe the ice cream that was now coating it.

  “Yes, I did, didn’t I? I was talking about a killer in a slasher movie, if you recall.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  He frowned and tilted his head as he realized what this conversation was actually about. “What are you trying to say? You were there,” he said to me. “You know where I got it.”

  Did I? I remembered him swinging the knife around, but I didn’t know where it came from.

  “Umm, do I?”

  “Sure. Unless you have the memory of a sieve. I got it from the buffet, from one of the tables nearby. I pulled it out of a ham.”

  “I see.” Ethan nodded, as if Tom’s explanation had both cleared everything up and exonerated him. “Would it be all right if you dropped by my office and gave me a fingerprint sample, when it’s convenient?”

  Tom paused in the nonstop work of shoveling the banana split into his mouth, leaving his dripping spoon hovering over the table. A little pool of melted ice cream began to appear on the surface, one little drip at a time.

  “No, it would not.” His voice was incredulous, as if Ethan had casually asked whether it would be okay if he could borrow Tom’s car for a bank robbery or take his wife away on a six-week vacation.

  “As you may or may not be aware, I’m head of security aboard the ship. I am investigating Zoya’s murder. And I am talking to a lot of people, not just you.” Ethan’s tone was slow, measured, and deadly serious. “It would be very helpful if you would come to my office and provide me with some fingerprint samples.”

  Tom lowered his spoon back to his bowl, and his own tone grew just as serious as Ethan’s.

  “It would be very helpful,” he said, mimicking Ethan, “if you two would go take a flying leap.” He dug his spoon back into the bowl and took another giant heap of the now stew-like dessert, shoving it into his mouth with a glare in our direction.

  “As head of security, I should warn you that we have a brig aboard this ship. And I have the authority to put anyone who I believe to be a threat inside of it.”

  Tom chewed, occasionally wiping his mouth and hand with a napkin as he had before. He took his time with this mouthful, and so I decided to try a different line of inquiry. We could return to the fingerprints, and the possibility of locking him up, later.

  “At the Q&A you did, one of the guests mentioned you had given Zoya a very bad review that basically ended her career.”

  Tom snorted, put his spoon back in his bowl, and leaned back in the booth. This was a topic he was more than pleased to talk about.

  “Yes. That’s one of the most talked-about reviews of all time in the movie world. It helped build my reputation.” And destroy hers! “That fan should have been grateful. Her acting in Painted Little Flower was atrocious. He should have been happy that I put a stop to her attempted career in serious films.” He closed his eyes as he thought back to that time, thirty years earlier, a half-smile twitching on his ice-cream-stained lips. “But,” his little smile turned to a frown, “she made sure I paid the price for that.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Nothing.” He leaned forward again and resumed his attack on the remains of the dessert.

  We fell into silence for a moment. Actually, it wasn’t very silent, as Tom clicked his spoon against the oval bowl, slurping as he worked through the rest of it.

  I glanced through the window to my right while we waited for him to finish, and my heart skipped a beat. There! But a moment later, he was gone. I had just seen a bald man with broad shoulders and a Hawaiian shirt walking past the ice cream shop.

  I was sure—well, about sixty percent sure—that I had just seen the mystery man who we’d been hunting. We hadn’t been sure if he was aboard the ship this time, but now I was certain that not only was he aboard, he was again disguised as a passenger. He had been carrying a Key West baseball hat in one hand and was wearing a pair of khaki shorts.

  “What is it?” Ethan had noticed the startled expression on my face.

  I hesitated and then thought about the plan with the ring. If Ethan knew the man was aboard, he might become too protective to let me go through with it. While it was nice to have a big strong man in uniform who wanted to protect you, sometimes it could be a little bit overbearing, especially when you were trying to put yourself in minor danger.

  “Nothing.” The man was gone now. But if he was aboard, I was going to track him down and find out just what it was he was playing at.

  “Tom,” said Ethan as soon as the man placed the spoon back down in the empty bowl, “I really am going to need to ask you to provide those fingerprints. Why don’t you come to my office right now?”

  Tom slammed his hands down on the table. “And I told you to take a flying leap off the deck. Get a warrant.” He snorted. “Or go swim.”

  I looked at him in astonishment, barely believing he’d just said that. Didn’t he know who he was talking to? The brash look on his face fell as Ethan stood to his feet, staring down at the movie critic.

  “Tom Devlin, I’m taking you to the brig.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  T hat evening, Ethan and I had dinner together in the Grand Ballroom. For once, he had an evening free from having to dine with the VIP guests, and there was a performance lined up that sounded interesting. It was another of the little perks of the job—getting to see some excellent entertainment without having to pay for it.

  I just hoped it would be interesting in a different way than Zoya’s tragic movie poster unveiling.

  The large room was about three-quarters filled with dining tables in a range of sizes, from the small round ones for couples to large group tables like we had sat at on Zoya’s big night. The rest of the room w
as left open as a dance floor, and at the front the same Big Band was up on the stage.

  Ethan had reserved us a table for two along the wall, in view of the dance floor but somewhat secluded. I could tell he was in relaxation mode as he had dressed down, not wearing his first officer’s uniform.

  “Hoping no one will recognize you?”

  He was wearing dark brown corduroy trousers and a simple white shirt with a faint checkered pattern. The shirt showed off his broad shoulders and chest and gave him an attractive smart-casual look.

  “That’s the plan. While I do love being the first officer, sometimes it’s nice not to be on display.”

  “You’re on display for me.” I smiled at him.

  “You also look nice this evening,” he said, shifting the topic away from himself. Ethan wasn’t a shy person, but he didn’t like to be the center of attention either. It was something we both had in common.

  “Thank you,” I said half-guiltily. The dress I was wearing was nice, but it was the same one I had worn the last time we were there. After Cece’s expert coaching, I had taken to packing light whenever I boarded for another cruise, since there were so few opportunities to wear anything other than work clothes.

  But if I was going to be spending more time out in the evenings with Ethan, I’d need to rethink that packing philosophy. And do some shopping. A lot of my old stuff from back home had become a little too loose. Spending all day, every day running around a cruise ship at least had some small payoff beyond exhaustion.

  “Oh, I got it for you. You can go ahead with the plan.” Ethan pulled a dark red handkerchief out from the pocket of his pants and placed it onto the table between us.

  I peered down at it. “Is that…?”

  “Yep.” Ethan unwrapped the red handkerchief to reveal the old gold ring that was wrapped inside. Sticking the whole wooden ring box inside his pocket would have probably been uncomfortable, so he had re-wrapped it. “Don’t let the captain see you with it though if I’m not there.”

  I picked it up with an absentminded nod. It was warm from being in his pocket, but to me it felt like it was the gold itself that was glowing with a gentle heat.

  “It’s pretty, isn’t it?” I said, holding it up to the light with a big grin on my face. He was finally letting me go ahead with the plan! My appreciation of the ring was interrupted by a grating voice.

  “Enjoy it, honey. After ten years of marriage, you’ll be lucky to get a toaster for your anniversary.”

  Startled, I swung around to see who was talking. Our secluded spot wasn’t that secluded.

  “Thanks?”

  It was the same woman from Ethan’s office earlier, Patsy Prince. She was now wearing a red dress that looked a bit too tight and a bit too short. She was accompanied by a man who looked about thirty years old with shoulder-length hair, wearing a gray business suit that he didn’t appear particularly comfortable in.

  “Hey,” said the man who was presumably her husband, “we’re on this cruise, aren’t we?”

  “Exactly. We’re on the cruise you wanted to go on. I wanted to go on the scrapbooking cruise that’s happening after this one.”

  “Brought you here, didn’t I? I wanted to go to the drive-in for the double slasher session, but no, we have to come here for a musical medley instead.”

  The drive-in was still out of commission after Zoya’s death, but I didn’t want to stick my oar into this particular domestic dispute by pointing that out. In fact, I wanted the couple to hurry up and leave us alone.

  “Oh, so I can’t choose one activity? Just one evening? I suppose you…”

  The couple walked away bickering, me and the ring forgotten as they headed to their table.

  “They seem nice,” said Ethan with a straight face.

  “Charming,” I said with a little laugh. “She didn’t come by again to get the necklace back? Now would probably be a good occasion to wear it.”

  “Nope. She probably didn’t think her husband deserved to see her in it today.”

  “Yeah, probably. That was a bit embarrassing though, wasn’t it? I think she thought you were proposing.”

  “I’m surprised she didn’t tell me off for not kneeling.” Ethan frowned a little. “And who does that? Interrupting someone else when they’re proposing?”

  “The Princes. They do that, apparently.”

  We selected our choices from the menu card and told the waiter. I would have the shrimp cocktail, followed by steak in pepper sauce, and apple pie for dessert.

  Despite the food being somewhat old fashioned, it was my kind of menu. It reminded me of the food we would eat on special occasions back home. They didn’t catch a lot of shrimp around Cornridge, Nebraska, so a shrimp cocktail was regarded as an exotic and high-class dish when I was growing up.

  Once the food was on the way and our drinks had arrived—we both ordered an Old Fashioned because it suited the mood of the cruise—I decided to ask Ethan about something that had been bothering me.

  “You know that script Zoya and Judd mentioned?”

  Ethan took a sip of his drink and gave a little nod for me to continue.

  At the front of the room, the band began to play a musical number from the show Oklahoma. The extra background noise made me feel more comfortable about speaking openly to Ethan.

  “It seems like too much of a coincidence. Zoya had a script about a girl from Nebraska on a road trip who was kidnapped at a diner in Arizona. I mean, what are the chances? A million to one?”

  Ethan tapped his finger against the rim of his glass while he thought. Finally, he picked it up by wrapping two hands around it and held it in front of him.

  “I don’t know. I literally have no idea. It seems almost impossible that something like that could have come up by coincidence. But what are the alternatives? That Zoya Maxwell was part of the gang that kidnapped you?”

  The idea of that old movie star being in league with the men who kidnapped me was too ludicrous to even contemplate, but Ethan said it in such a way I knew he wasn’t mocking me or laughing at me. If I thought that was what happened, then I knew he would believe me. But of course I didn’t believe that either.

  Something else was going on, but it was bugging me like crazy that I couldn’t figure it out.

  “That would be ridiculous. The only thing I can think of is that someone gave that script to her because they knew I’d find out. But that idea seems crazy too.”

  “As long as you know I don’t think you’re crazy.” Ethan rubbed the top of my hand, but his fingers were cold from clutching his drink. I shivered at the touch.

  “Hey! Cold hands!”

  “Sorry,” he said. He genuinely seemed to mean it, despite it being the most minor of annoyances.

  “Just kidding. But I do want to find out where Zoya got that script from. I tried asking Judd before, but he wasn’t exactly chatty about it.”

  “Despite enjoying them, I really don’t know much about how movies are made or where the scripts come from.” Ethan sounded annoyed at himself, as if it was something he really should have known as a former naval officer or as a current first officer on a cruise ship.

  “No. Me neither.” I sipped my drink while I thought. “But maybe there’s someone else who would know.”

  “Who do you have in mind?”

  “Maybe a fan of Zoya’s. Remember that guy, Kirk Field? Zoya’s biggest fan? Maybe he’ll be able to give us an educated guess as to where the script came from.”

  “That’s a brilliant idea!” Ethan was genuinely delighted at my thinking.

  I tried to control the smile on my face with a modest shrug. But secretly, I was basking in my genius.

  The band worked through more show tunes, both old and modern, though even the modern ones were played in a more old-fashioned style that suited their style of music.

  The food, when it arrived, was good. Not good like a food critic would rave about, but good in the simple way that made people like me happy. Tasty, and
with portions big enough I wouldn’t need to be hitting up Two Scoops right after. Not unless Ethan wanted to, anyway. Visiting the ice cream shop twice in two days would probably be overkill.

  There was a break between the main course and dessert for the first part of the entertainment Kelly had arranged for the evening. She stepped out onto the stage in front of the band in a slinky black dress, mic in hand, seemingly without any mishaps or disasters.

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen! Are you enjoying yourselves?”

  “I am,” I said to Ethan quietly, and he squeezed my hand in response.

  “Tonight, I have a pair of very special guests for you all! Please give a big round of applause as we welcome to the dance floor Ginger Lodgers and Fred Destair!”

  I giggled at their names as the two lookalikes appeared at the front of the dance floor and, holding hands, gave a big bow to the audience.

  “They’re going to start with a little demonstration, after which you’re all invited to join them on the dance floor!”

  The crowd clapped and cheered. A few of our passengers were just about old enough to have enjoyed the real Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers at their peak, so it was a nice trip down memory lane for them.

  “I think I’m a bit too full for that.” I pointed my chin at Fred lifting up Ginger high up into the air while she arched her back in a way I hadn’t been able to do since kindergarten.

  “Maybe after dessert?” asked Ethan with a twinkle in his eye.

  “Sure, if they’ll do some slower numbers.”

  It would be fun, though I hoped Ethan didn’t intend to throw me around like ‘Fred’ was doing right then. I’d end up in Doctor Ryan’s sickbay.

  When they’d finished their first demonstration, the two dancers broke apart, and Kelly announced that everyone was now welcome onto the dance floor for five numbers, before dessert would be served.

  I pushed my chair back and turned it a little so I would have a better view of the dance floor. A number of couples went up there to join in.