Cruise Ship Cozy Mysteries 11 - Cruise Control

by A. R. Winters

  Kayleigh scoffed. “The employees are as miserable as we are with the whole tech embargo. We should at least turn the internet back on now that Vernon’s not around to bother us.”

  Ethan and I had knocked on the door, but no one paid it any mind. They were too involved with their impromptu board meeting, so we strolled right in, and could see the fire thrown back and forth between the executives, as well as poor Kelly caught in their crossfire.

  “Who do we talk to for that, anyway?” Ivan looked at Kelly. “We should have the internet back immediately!”

  Kelly looked uncertain. “I’m not sure. It was something that was ordered from corporate and they sent a guy to deal with it and to turn it back on when the ship got back to New Orleans.”

  “Then find that guy.”

  “I have to find out where he is first.”

  “Fine. Whatever, mismanage your ship however you want,” John continued, taking point as the new leader of the group. “For now, we have rules in place. A line of succession. With Vernon’s tragic passing, the new CEO is Sebastian. I suppose we use Vernon’s secret satellite phone to call him and fill him in.”

  “That hypocrite.” Kayleigh shook her head, mumbling obscenities under her breath.

  “Why’s he so special, anyway? Why does he get out of going on this accursed trip?” Ivan said.

  “Executive privilege,” Kayleigh replied.

  “Are we not executives also?”

  “It’s executive-executive privilege, apparently.”

  John Heaven finally noticed that Ethan and I had arrived, and he suddenly became none too pleased. “You. You’re the first officer, right?”

  Ethan nodded curtly.

  John Heaven went on. “If your captain is waiting for an answer, the cruise will continue. And you’re also responsible for security on the ship, yes?”

  “It’s one of my many duties, yes.”

  “Then I’m saying it right now: you figure out who did this. You bring justice. You make it so we can sweep all this under the rug, or your company is going to be hit with so many lawsuits that your great-grandchildren will be feeling it.”

  Ethan didn’t look too pleased with John’s tirade, but he merely lifted one eyebrow at the man. “I don’t think lawsuits work like that…”

  “Actually, you should prepare for lawsuits anyway. When Sebastian hears of this crew’s incompetence, he’ll see a way to make money off of this nonsense after all.” John was getting in Ethan’s face. Although he was a bit shorter than him, his bravado made up for his lack of height.

  Ethan, though, was cool under fire. One of the many reasons I admired him. “Should you be throwing threats around like that so freely? The Swan can countersue you just as much. Corporate has skilled lawyers of their own. The way I see it, you’re the ones ruining the Swan’s reputation. Murders on our ships make us look bad.”

  “Yes,” Kelly said, putting on her best smile. “This wouldn’t have happened if your company didn’t book our ship. This never happened before. Yep. Never ever. Not once.”

  I wanted to yell at Kelly to stop talking because her lie lost more and more power with every word, but that would have just made things worse.

  Ethan wasn’t shaken by it. “Besides,” he said, staring at John steadily, “I’m pretty sure the person responsible for Mr. Nunn’s passing is in this room.”

  “Are you accusing me of all people?” John recoiled in disgust.

  “No. I’m merely informing you that whoever had the most motive for the crime is usually the one behind it. And it doesn’t take a genius to see that none of you liked him all that much.”

  There was a stunned silence in the room, but there was also a smile on Monica’s face. She was the only one who hadn’t shown absolute contempt for Vernon. What Ethan just said didn’t apply to her.

  I saw an opportunity to get one of them to speak, so I took it. I approached the table and looked at Monica. “You seemed to be on good terms with Vernon. Do you have any idea of who had such bad blood with him that they would resort to taking their grudge to something so final?”

  Her smile collapsed. “I can’t say. I never really understand why all these guys hated him. Vernon was a sweetheart.”

  “Don’t try to deflect it onto me, masseuse.” Kayleigh brought her venom back into the conversation. “Besides, if you’re going for the most obvious answer, what about that talkative intern of yours? She’s nosy, and she’s the one who found him.”

  “I think I saw her poking around our suites last night too,” Monica added. “The liaisons aren’t supposed to be harassing us at night.”

  “Are we talking about that one girl? With the short hair?” Ivan wagged his finger as he came up with something. “She seems familiar. I don’t know where, but I could have sworn I’ve seen her somewhere before. That, my friends, seems incredibly suspicious.”

  “And really?” Monica crossed her arms. “It’s very rude to come in here and accuse us like that when the most obvious suspect is your own staff.”

  “She’s an intern and not an employee of Swan, I assure you,” Kelly was quick to say, throwing in legal term judo to minimize any fault the ship would have in this.

  John adjusted his shirt as he stood. “If you don’t give us what we want, our lawyers will shred that legal excuse to pieces. You best get us an answer to what happened—and fast.”

  “We can all be adults here. The answer will be found. Our best minds will be put toward solving this.” Kelly stood as well, gesturing toward Ethan and me. “We will keep you all updated with whatever we learn, don’t you worry.”

  The three of us retreated into the hallway, free from the scornful eyes of the LightningBlossom brass.

  Kelly was quick to turn to me. “Well, Adrienne, we need you to do your thing.”

  I nodded. “When do I get a raise for pulling double duty as a social media director as well as a homicide detective?”

  “Let’s not be hasty. I’ll put in a good word for you to be named employee of the year.”

  “Wow. That’s everything I ever wanted.” I said, all enthusiasm gone from my voice.

  “I believe in you, Addy. Make it happen.”

  She grinned, and then retreated off to do the next thing on her endless itinerary of things she had to do.

  I guess I didn’t do this for money, anyway.

  The murder mystery thing, not the social media stuff. Just some desire for justice and making sure the right people are punished.

  “Sorry, but it’s time for me to go,” Ethan said. “I think you’ll get Holly to speak more freely anyway without me looking brutish and intimidating behind you anyway.”

  “Oh, I’m sure she’ll be happy to tell me anything and everything.”

  The most obvious suspect at the moment was Holly, as had been pointed out by almost everyone in the room.

  It didn’t feel right, but my hunches weren’t solid evidence to bring up in a court of law.

  I went off, feeling bad about accusing someone who was only the most obvious suspect because of something I’d asked her to do.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I made my way back toward the VIP area. Even believing Holly was innocent, I couldn’t let her roam freely, so I weakly confined her to our room, threatening… something… if she disobeyed. She didn’t want to cause trouble so I had faith she would behave anyway even though I lacked any real threat to keep her from doing otherwise.

  I didn’t even make it back to our room before I ran into more chaos.

  “You! You did this! Do you know how much trouble you’ve caused!?” Ivan Popov was looming over Holly, shouting at her. “Why did you do it? Why did you kill Vernon?”

  “I didn’t! I didn’t do it!” Holly said, shrinking as he stepped closer.

  “You have the nerve to say that when I’ve seen you roaming the hallways still covered in blood! Are you mocking us on top of it?”

  Holly’s shirt was a bit messy. I hadn’t paid it any attention when I’d
first ran into her this morning. It was sort of damp, and I could still see some stains on it.

  Ivan was claiming they were bloodstains, but Vernon’s death was almost completely bloodless. There were small cuts on his neck and fingers; he was hardly a blood fountain that would have caused the stain on Holly’s shirt.

  “Back away from her, Ivan,” I announced, rescuing my intern from his berating by stepping between them and pushing Ivan back. “Whatever’s on her shirt, I assure you it’s not blood.”

  “It’s blood! It’s Vernon’s blood! It’s as clear as the day is long!”

  “No, it’s not! It’s ketchup!” Holly yelled back. “Blood and ketchup don’t even look the same, really, other than both being kinda red?”

  Ivan tried to move back into his domineering position. “How would you know what blood looks like if it’s not blood?”

  “Relax!” I shout, again preventing further physical contact. “Ivan, the ship’s crew is already investigating the incident. We don’t need you causing more trouble on top of it.”

  “She’s the one, though. She looks familiar. I think she might be a corporate spy! A corporate assassin technically! Take out Vernon and steal LightningBlossom’s secrets!”

  I shook my head. “I’m sure we’ll find out if she’s smuggling USB drives or something. This is meant to be a vacation, Ivan. Please relax.”

  “How can I relax when…”

  “Grillman’s has some fine steak. And Hemingway’s can give you enough liquor that you’ll forget your concerns and everything else. You have full, unfettered access to both. I suggest you go indulge yourself.”

  Talk of food and booze was enough to get most people to calm down, especially when it came in copious amounts and at the low, low price of free.

  The allure of all that free deliciousness was too much for even a paranoid blowhard like Ivan to ignore. He grunted, walking away from the situation and leaving Holly and I be.

  “Come on Holly, let’s go to our room.”

  “Umm, okay.”

  She followed my lead, and she was strangely quiet as we moved. I was used to her talking my ear off, but I guess she had figured out that people were starting to point at her and her obvious connection to the crime.

  “How’d you get ketchup all over your shirt anyway?”

  “A ketchup packet exploded on me. Then I got a bunch of sauce on me from the tofu that Vernon gave me, and…”

  “Vernon gave you tofu?”

  She nodded. “I brought him a plate of sandwiches from the kitchen. They were drenched in some sort of weird sticky sauce. Teriyaki, I think? I wanted to add some ketchup, but I pulled too hard.”

  Ketchup and teriyaki sauce? Even this girl’s tastes were weird.

  “I spent an hour in the bathroom trying to scrub the stains out with the hand soap, but I couldn’t get all of it out.”

  “Why on earth would you do that?”

  “I only brought enough shirts for five days. I can’t start wearing new ones early or I’ll run out of clean shirts.”

  “Uh, you know the ship has a laundromat, right?”

  “What? Really? I thought that there wouldn’t be any room for something like that.”

  “This is a really, really big ship. For the high price of two dollars, you can wash your shirt faster and more effectively than you can in a sink.”

  “Oh. I should do that then.”

  We went into our cabin, and I urged her to sit on the sofa next to me. “Back to your time with Vernon last night. He invited you in to share his food with him?”

  “Yeah. I was there to start doing that profiling thing like you said, and he wanted to watch some movies with me, so I thought that’d be a good way to start. He started drinking though, and he passed out before too long. When the movie was over, I left and came back here to go to bed.”

  Sam had seen her, so that lined up. “And I guess the next morning you woke up early to go meet him again?”

  More nodding. “I wanted to bring him his favorite breakfast. I had some aspirin blended in just in case, because he was drinking a lot of that wine.”

  That Vernon was a hypocrite about all of this didn’t really surprise me. Even though everyone hated his no-tech “detoxify” policy, it didn’t seem like he was bad enough to warrant being murdered. Going out watching old movies and gorging on room service was probably not how he would like to be remembered.

  “Listen, I don’t think you did it, Holly. But I’m going to need you to stay in this room for the time being and not go anywhere. People are paranoid and worried about who did it, and the last thing I want is someone to go vigilante and hurt you because they can’t wait for the real answer.”

  She nodded. Outside of answering my questions, she was much more subdued. Morose. It wasn’t any more appealing than her speaking seven-hundred-words a minute and being so happy about every single thing. Honestly, her new attitude was somehow worse than that, and that was something I never thought I would feel.

  “Why don’t you go take a shower? Relax. Change your shirt. I’m sure we can get this one washed and you don’t have to worry about running out of shirts.” I smiled, trying to get her to cheer up a little.

  “All right. Thank you, Addy.”

  Still glum, she moved away from me.

  There was something bugging me, though. It was obvious there was something she wasn’t telling me. I wondered what it could possibly be, and I knew I was going to have to pry into her secrets more later.

  Sighing, I picked myself up off the sofa, ready to go and find something to eat. All of this coming before breakfast was no way to live.

  It was then I heard a clamor outside. A voice with a slight German accent yelled, “Help, help! I’m being accosted! They are going to kidnap me!”

  With little hesitation, I ran out to see the source of the commotion.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  T he sharks were circling their prey and I suddenly felt a whole lot less brave when I saw that there were four of them.

  “Uh…” I said, keeping my distance.

  My voice did get the attention of the assailants.

  Only for me to find out that it was the LightningBlossom execs, Kayleigh, John, Ivan, and Benedict.

  Apparently, the allure of free booze hadn’t been enough to keep Ivan out of trouble.

  “What’s going on here?” I said, my arms crossed as if I were a teacher surrounded by naughty children. It made for a strange picture, since I was significantly younger than all of them, including the man they surrounded.

  It was Herman Graaf who they were harassing, which definitely took me by surprise.

  “They,” Herman said pointing at them, “are trying to kidnap me.”

  I stared for a time, trying to figure out the logistics of why kidnapping Herman was a good idea. “Why would they kidnap you?”

  “We’re not kidnapping him,” Kayleigh ran a hand through her hair. “I don’t know where he got that idea.”

  “You lured me down a dark hallway and will not let me leave. That sounds like kidnapping to me.”

  “We don’t want to kidnap you, you fool,” John said. “We just want you to turn the internet on the ship back on. Disable all the cell blockers, and whatever else is in the way of us living in the modern day.”

  “It was disabled at the request of corporate, who received the request from Vernon. Take it up with Vernon if you want your internet back. I will not disobey an order.”

  “Vernon is dead, you idiot!” Kayleigh let out. For as much as they wanted to keep the secret from the workers, they sure were telling everyone in sight. None of them showed the slightest bit of remorse or grief for what had happened either. “Just agree to turn all the stuff back on and we’ll let you go. It’s all we want.”

  “So it’s not a kidnapping,” I said. “It’s just that you’ve forcibly brought a man here and are trying to force him to do your bidding before you let him go. Got it.”

  “We just want our phones back
on. We don’t think that’s too much to ask.”

  “Something, something, honey gets more flies than vinegar, or however the saying goes.” I pushed through the execs, fully agreeing with their desire to be able to use phones again. “How about we just ask him nicely? Mr. Herman, would you mind turning the internet for the ship back on?”

  “I will gladly do so.”

  “See?” I gestured. “It’s not so hard.”

  “Once I receive the order from corporate.”

  My hope deflated. So much for the triumph of kindness.

  “I’m under strict orders, and I cannot break a rule. I don’t make special deals when my reputation is on the line. If you get the orders from above, I’ll do it ASAP.”

  “Fine, fine. We’ll send a message to Swan HQ about all of this.” I turned to the execs. “We can be adults about this. Please. You can go a little longer and honor your late CEO’s wishes just a little bit, right? Right?”

  There was a mumbling among all of them, their little clique finally dispersing. “What’s there to honor for such an idiot? We’re better off with him gone,” Benedict, I believed, mumbled as he passed.

  Herman regained his composure. “Thank you, girl, whoever you are.” He then tried to take off.

  I swiftly stepped in front of him.

  His brows drew slightly closer. “What? Now you are trying to kidnap me?”

  “Why do you always instantly jump to kidnapping when someone inconveniences you?”

  “You are holding me somewhere against my will, no?”

  “It’s nothing that dramatic.”

  He nodded. “Then that is kidnapping.”

  I let out a long, annoyed breath. “Look, just answer some of my questions. I’m trying to figure something out and all that.”

  He grunted. “It is not like I have anywhere else to be.”

  “Being on a cruise ship tends to mean a simpler plan for the day yes.” I crossed my arms, building the courage to ask questions where I may not well like the answers. “Have you ever been to Arizona?”

  Herman’s expression didn’t change. “Ari Roma?”