Cruise Ship Cozy Mysteries 04 - Beauty Queens and Cruises

by A. R. Winters

  “Ahhhhh.” She set the bottle back down by her side, turned the page in the scrapbook, and the sobbing resumed.

  She was drunk and emotional. If I was going to get something good out of her, now was the time.

  “Hello? Autumn?” I called as I entered the room, walking toward her.

  She turned, squinted, tilted her head, and about the same time as I reached her recognition finally crossed her face.

  “You. You forgot my water the other day. Hello.”

  Oops. I’d been supposed to get the judges some special water while they were conducting their interviews, but I completely forgot. It was too late for all that now though.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Do I look like I’m okay?” she countered, reaching down and snatching up the bottle again. Now that I was closer, I could read the label; it was vodka.

  “No, you don’t look okay. Why don’t you put the bottle down for a moment and tell me what’s wrong?”

  She did put the bottle down, but not until she’d had another two-gulp swig, followed by another satisfied, “Ahhhh. There’s nothing like warm vodka for a cold heart.”

  “What’s the matter, Autumn? What happened? Is it Rolf?”

  She shook her head, then nodded, then shook her head again.

  “Itsh Diana. And Rolf. And Rolf and Diana.”

  She jabbed her finger down at the big book on her lap. Now that I was closer, I could see that it was a scrapbook, and it was opened to a picture of Diana, radiant smile on her face, with her two hands pressed against her cheeks. On her right wrist was a bracelet. A silver bracelet. The silver bracelet.

  “Thish is it, isn’t it? Isn’t it?” she said, slurring while stabbing her finger at Diana’s face.

  As I had suspected, the mysterious bracelet wasn’t so mysterious after all.

  “That’s the bracelet I found, yes. Why don’t you put the lid on that bottle?” I nodded my head toward the floor.

  Autumn slowly nodded and reached down, picking the bottle back up. Instead of capping it, she took another swig and gently lowered it back to the floor.

  “Losht the lid. Gotta drink it all now. Or it’ll go bad.”

  “I don’t think vodka goes—”

  “It’ll go bad!” she insisted.

  “Right. What’s the story with the bracelet?”

  She lifted up her shoulders as high as they would go and let them fall in the biggest shrug she could manage.

  “My Rolf had an affair with... with her! Her! Look. She has the bracelet!”

  “When was that picture taken?” I asked with a frown. It was clearly at least a decade ago.

  Autumn gave me another one of her giant shrugs.

  “When we were on a break.”

  “A break?”

  Autumn nodded her head up and down very slowly, her glassy eyes making her look almost like a doll or puppet.

  “We took some time apart. And look! He and her must have...” She didn’t finish the sentence, instead opting to burst into loud wails.

  Tentatively, I leaned over and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, giving her a squeeze. It seemed to work, because after several more seconds of noisy sobbing, she abruptly stopped and slammed the scrapbook closed.

  “That’s why she was on this cruise! To steal my Rolf from me!”

  “Or maybe it was just because it was a great location for a pageant, and she got to be the head judge.”

  Autumn shook her head angrily. “No! She weaseled her way in to steal Rolf!”

  “Wasn’t it you who invited her?” I asked quizzically.

  She whipped her head around to glare at me.

  “Don’t you dare blame me for her behavior!”

  “I wasn’t! I just mean that—”

  “She’s a devil! A she-devil! She always wanted everything. The crowns. The sashes. The prizes. The titles. The men. My man.”

  “Did you talk to Rolf?”

  She glared at me. “What would he know? Wheresh the bottle gone?”

  She seemed to remember by the time she finished speaking, because already her hand was sneaking back down to snatch it up again. I briefly thought about taking it off her, but worried it might make her even angrier.

  “Why don’t you put the bottle down, and try doing something more productive than just sitting here? Maybe go for a swim?”

  She gave me a look like I must have been crazy. Maybe I was. I’d no doubt get in serious trouble if someone as drunk as her ended up in the swimming pool thanks to my advice.

  “Pro... productive. Good one. Ha!” Autumn lowered the bottle back to the floor carefully, uncrossed her legs, and hopped off the armchair.

  Much to my surprise, she didn’t immediately topple over, but she did hold on to the top of the chair for support.

  “Productive? I would do something productive, but I can’t becaushe... becaushe she’s already dead! Ha!” She laughed delightedly at her own wicked joke.

  “On second thoughts, why don’t you sit down again?”

  Autumn nodded her head up and down again in more big, exaggerated nods, before gently toppling back and falling into the chair.

  Slowly she looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time. Her eyes lit on something and she clambered back to her feet.

  “Watch thish!”

  Nervously, I watched as Autumn tottered across the room.

  “Don’t you think you should sit down again?” I asked.

  “No!” She shouted over her shoulder.

  Leaning against a wall was a mop, and Autumn picked it up, holding it vertically in front of her. Using it like a crutch, she headed to the back wall of the room.

  Stuck onto the wall was a poster. The same poster that I’d seen in Kelly’s office on the first day. The one with the pictures of the judges—the original ones anyway—with Diana Penn front and center.

  “Take this, and that!” said Autumn as she began to smack the poster with the mop. “Do you like that, Diana?” Smack. “Huh?” Stab. “Do you? Ha!” Smack. Smack.

  “Autumn! Come and sit down!” I said in my best impression of a school teacher’s voice.

  She completely ignored me. There went my future career as a school teacher.

  After a couple more swings, Autumn paused and looked at the poster. The center of it, which had contained Diana’s smiling face, was shredded, leaving just one eye remaining.

  “I taught her! I taught her good!”

  Autumn threw the mop like a javelin across the room, but luckily she wasn’t in any state to throw it with any skill and it clattered to the floor.

  With teetering steps, she headed back toward me, where I was waiting nervously by the chair she’d been sitting on.

  Like she’d just completed a strenuous workout, Autumn collapsed back into the chair with a noisy sigh of exhaustion. She reached down and grabbed up the bottle of vodka again, and took a couple of swigs like it was a sports drink.

  What was I going to do with her? I didn’t need to wonder long though, as just then reinforcements, of a sort, arrived.

  “Hello!” called a voice from the doorway.

  Autumn and I both looked to see who it was. Standing there with curious expressions on their faces were Martin and Clarissa.

  “How are y’all doing tonight?” drawled Clarissa.

  “Come here! Come here!” shouted Autumn toward them.

  They gave me quizzical looks and I shrugged. They were welcome to come and help deal with her if they liked.

  Recognizing that something was wrong, they cautiously walked over to join us. Autumn picked up her bottle again and made a cheers gesture in their direction before taking another sip.

  “Is everything okay, Autumn?” asked Martin rather pointlessly.

  “Nope.” Autumn leaned forward and placed the bottle back on the ground. “My life is a lie! All of it! Diana and Rolf and Diana and…” she paused and looked up, thinking. “Rolf!” She concluded.

  “She thinks Diana and Rolf
had an affair a long time ago,” I said by way of explanation.

  Martin gave an understanding nod while Clarissa just shrugged her shoulders.

  “Look! The bracelet!” Autumn pointed at the picture of Diana wearing the bracelet for the benefit of Martin and Clarissa.

  “And now she says Rolf has it.” She pointed an angry finger my way. “How did he get it? Huh? Huh?”

  Clarissa reached over and gently took the scrapbook out of Autumn’s hands and placed it on a nearby counter under a makeup mirror. Autumn didn’t seem to notice. She was still glaring at me, like it was my fault Rolf had Diana’s bracelet. In her vodka-addled mind, it was my fault.

  “Autumn, why don’t we get you back to your room? We’ll sort this all out in the morning,” said Martin, kindly.

  “Short what out?” she slurred.

  “Come on, up you go!” Martin took her by the elbow, and she stood up like she was told.

  “It’s too cold in here! Take me to my room!” She suddenly demanded.

  Martin looked at me in relief. She was, kind of, cooperating. Slowly he began to walk her toward the door. They had managed a whole two footsteps before Autumn stopped, span around, and bent down to pick up her bottle.

  “For the road. Don’t want it to go bad. Right? Bad vodka is… bad. Right?”

  “Let me carry that for you,” said Martin, gently taking it out of her hand.

  “Such a genman. Gennelmon. Gentleman!” said Autumn, grinning up at him. “Unlike that bar… bas… Rolf.” She nodded to herself.

  “Come on. Off we go, nice and easy. It’s not far.”

  Just before they left the room, Autumn brought them to a stop once more.

  “My book! My shcrapbook!”

  Clarissa looked at me and then at Martin for guidance. I didn’t have any and gave her a palms up gesture. Martin shrugged.

  “Don’t you think it’s a bit upsetting? Why don’t I hold on to it for you until tomorrow?” asked Clarissa kindly.

  “Give! Me! The! Book!” she yelled, taking a breath between each staccato word of her order.

  Clarissa visibly shuddered and quickly snatched the book back off the shelf on which she’d placed it.

  “Here. Take it. If that’s what’ll make you happy, keep ahold of it.”

  “Thank you,” said Autumn, somehow making the two polite little words sound nasty as she did so.

  Martin and Autumn resumed their journey out of the room, and this time he was successful in getting her away. We could hear them bumping down the hallway, pausing every now and then for Autumn to complain about Diana or Rolf or the air temperature and everything else that was upsetting her.

  Clarissa and I shared a look of awkward concern, both of us embarrassed on Autumn’s behalf.

  “So what are you up to?” I asked Clarissa.

  “Well, I dunno now,” she drawled. “I was gonna have dinner with Martin, but now I think he’ll have his hands full.”

  “I’m going to have dinner with my friends Sam and Cece, if you’d like to join us?”

  Clarissa seemed to consider the offer, and then shook her head. “Think I’ve lost my appetite after seeing that scene. I’ll just start my forty winks early. Call it sixty winks.” She finished with a shy smile. “Maybe I’ll catch up with Martin on the way.”

  I grinned at her.

  “All right, well, have a good evening. See you tomorrow.”

  I waved Clarissa off and slumped back into the chair Autumn had been sitting in. Her little breakdown had given me yet more information to work with, though I would have to be careful to make sure I understood all the implications.

  If Rolf and Diana had rekindled a long-finished affair, then it would certainly have given Autumn motivation to kill her. The only problem with that little theory was that she had clearly only just found out about it—long after Diana had been killed.

  But what about Rolf? He had Diana’s bracelet. Could he have killed her in fear of their affair becoming public knowledge? Maybe Diana had been in love with him and planned to let Autumn and everyone else know, and so he killed her to stop the word getting out.

  I would need to look very carefully at Rolf Monteith. Very carefully indeed.

  My stomach rumbled.

  But first, dinner called.

  A girl’s got to get her priorities in order, right?

  Chapter 22

  Sam and I had just finished our breakfast when we received the same text simultaneously. We both stared at the screens of our phones as we read the message:

  Urgent! Come to my office now! - Kelly

  “Now that’s a bad sign,” said Sam as she shoved her phone back into her pocket.

  “Yeah. I bet it has to do with Autumn. She was in a sorry state last night...”

  “That’s not our fault. If we get blamed for something she did, I’m going to be so mad.”

  I’d met Cece and Sam for dinner the night before, and told them all about Autumn’s breakdown and her history with Rolf and Diana. We all felt sorry for her, but in the light of Kelly’s text message, I was beginning to wonder whether I shouldn’t have been.

  “Guess we’d better hurry.”

  When we got to Kelly’s office, we could hear angry complaining coming from inside.

  “Ready?” asked Sam, her hand hovering above the door handle.

  “Nope. But then again, I never am.”

  We entered the room to find Kelly sitting behind her desk with a look of extreme consternation on her face. On the other side of the desk, Rolf and Autumn were both standing, berating her. Most of the talking was coming from Rolf though. Even from behind, I could tell Autumn wasn’t exactly feeling great. Her normally perfect posture was slumped and she seemed a little shaky.

  “...and compensation! And of course, you’ll need to severely reprimand them!”

  I closed the door behind us heavily enough that everyone would hear it. Rolf and Autumn turned around and immediately began to glare at us, fixing us with angry, narrowed eyes.

  “Oh, finally she decides to show up. First you try and ruin our reputations, and then you keep us waiting. No wonder you’ve never done anything with your lives!”

  I felt guilty immediately, despite not knowing what it was I had supposedly done. I’m just built like that.

  “Sorry! But what exactly is it that you think I’ve done?”

  Autumn turned to Rolf. “She asks what she’s done? Like she doesn’t know?” She faced Kelly. “She’s a slow one, isn’t she?”

  I glared at Autumn. I’d been so nice to her the night before, and this was how she was treating me the next day? It just wasn’t right.

  Kelly stood up behind her desk.

  “Umm, would you like to deal with this amongst yourselves? I’ve got two trillion—”

  “No,” said Sam sharply with a shake of her head. “You should stay and help explain what’s going on.”

  Kelly sat back down like a scolded child and sucked in air through her teeth.

  “Okay. Come here you two.”

  Sam and I dutifully walked across the room, giving Autumn and Rolf a wide berth—though not wide enough that I could avoid the scent of vodka still emanating from Autumn—and went around to Kelly’s side of her desk. She had been clicking at something on her computer, and when we arrived, she pointed at the screen.

  “Look. This is why they’re angry.”

  “Angry!? That’s not even the half of it!” said Rolf.

  I peered at the screen. Had I taken an unflattering picture of her or something? I couldn’t have imagined what had got them all so mad.

  “Oh... oh dear...” I said as I scanned the screen. “This has nothing to do with me!”

  Kelly was showing us a gossip column from a newspaper, and it was all about Rolf and Autumn. There were photos taken the night before, of Autumn leaning on Martin as she stumbled down one of the ship’s hallways, her eyes glassy and drool dripping from her chin. She looked awful.

  Underneath the pictures
was the story. I didn’t read the whole thing, but the subheadings stood out:

  Aging Beauty Queen’s Affair Nightmare

  Former Beauty Turns to Bottle

  A Sinister Series of Events

  Rivalry and Death

  Rolf and Autumn—Cute Couple or Cunning Killers?

  It looked like the article was a real hit piece on them. The problem was they seemed to think that I had something to do with it.

  “Well? What have you got to say for yourself?” demanded Rolf, staring at me across the desk.

  “This is the first I’ve seen of it! I had nothing to do with any of this. I don’t know anything about it!”

  Autumn snorted and tossed her head contemptuously.

  “Really!”

  “Kelly? Do you want to say something to her?” asked Rolf.

  I looked down at Kelly. She looked up at me.

  “Oh, shoot,” she whispered under her breath. Then she breathed in deeply. “Adrienne, you’re the social media manager. You’re supposed to make our guests look good, not bad. This is... you know, not good?”

  Rolf slapped his hands down on the desk angrily, not satisfied with Kelly’s attempt at disciplining me.

  “It’s completely unacceptable! How could you do this? And where did you get the pictures? Were you following us?”

  I shook my head.

  “No! Please, listen to me. This isn’t something I did. I didn’t talk to anyone about it, I didn’t email anyone, I didn’t say a thing! And those pictures aren’t mine. Look, you can check my phone if you want!”

  “You really didn’t do it?” said Kelly, looking up at me hopefully.

  I shook my head in a no gesture as rapidly as Kelly walked when she was in a hurry.

  “She said she didn’t do it,” said Kelly across her desk to the couple.

  They were not impressed.

  “You call yourself a social media manager? If you were doing your job properly, this story wouldn’t exist! It’s your job to fix this. Got it?”

  This seemed incredibly unfair to me. The newspaper didn’t come under the remit of social media, and how was I supposed to fix it? I was almost tempted to point out that most of the story actually looked to be factually true—even the veiled accusations of Diana’s murder didn’t seem unreasonable to me. At least with regards to Rolf.