Lethal Cruise: A Humorous Cruise Ship Cozy Mystery (Cruise Ship Cozy Mysteries Book 9)

by A. R. Winters

  “And there.” I pointed. Bruno had appeared outside the elevator just after the door closed on the models. He was now staring up at the little screen above the elevator, watching the digits change as the elevator moved.

  “I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all.”

  “Yeah. The models are following Miffy, and Bruno’s following them. If we hadn’t seen Bruno acting weird earlier, I would think he was worried about Miffy.”

  “Yep. But I don’t trust that guy at all. It looks like we’ve got two young guys about to try and take advantage of an elderly lady, and then Mr. Creep hot on their heels.”

  The models exited into the hallway and walked toward Miffy’s stateroom.

  “Do you think I should call her?” Ethan asked, hand hovering over the telephone on his desk.

  Another thought struck me. Maybe Miffy had asked the models to follow her back to her room. It was basically what she’d told me she wanted to do earlier. I could see them being slow enough to not realize they weren’t supposed to follow her right away.

  “Let’s just give it a minute. I don’t really think it’s any of our business if she wants to spend some time with the guys. But if Bruno is poking his nose in…”

  “No, I just want to make sure. If something happened, I could never forgive myself.”

  “Okay,” I said with a shrug.

  On the screen, we could see Bruno in the elevator while the models were just outside Miffy’s door. They’d stopped for a moment.

  Ethan punched in the number for Miffy’s stateroom and pressed the button to put the phone on speaker.

  “Yes?” Miffy said in a slightly annoyed tone when she answered.

  “This is a courtesy call from security. Is everything okay, ma’am?”

  “Of course everything is fine. Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “As I said, just a courtesy call. Please feel free to call us at any time. The number is printed on your telephone.”

  “Thank you. Good night.”

  Miffy hung up the phone.

  “Look.” I pointed at Miffy’s hallway. The elevator door had opened, and it had attracted the two models’ attention. They stared in that direction and then they took off down the hallway out of the view of our security camera.

  “What on Earth…”

  Bruno stared down the hallway after them, an unreadable expression on his face. After a moment, he turned back toward the elevator, pressed the button to call it again, and stepped inside when the doors opened.

  “Did he just save her from them?” Ethan was slowly shaking his head as he tried to piece together the puzzle of what had just gone on.

  “Or did he maybe ruin Miffy’s evening plans?”

  We both stared at the screen, watching as Bruno rode the elevator another couple of floors, before exiting. All four of the people we’d been watching had now gone from the monitor.

  “I don’t know who I trust less,” Ethan said, “Bruno or those two guys. Try and keep an eye on them all.”

  “Will do.”

  I yawned. Loudly. Caught under a sudden wave of fatigue, I realized just how tired I was. It had been a long, long day.

  “Walk me back to my cabin?” I asked Ethan.

  And of course, gentleman that he was, he did exactly that.

  Chapter Eight

  The next morning, Sam and I treated ourselves to breakfast at the International Buffet instead of eating in one of the staff canteens.

  I thought it was nice to… no, my duty to document the ship’s finest array of breakfast foods at least once each and every trip. People loved pictures of food on their social media feeds, right?

  “Try and make your plate look pretty,” I told Sam as we made our way down a line of foods. “This is a working breakfast.” I tried to make it sound nice and important. Which it was. I mean, it was food.

  “Already on it,” she said, before flitting away from the line we were in to head over to the Asian food station.

  My own plate wasn’t looking all that pretty. But that was part of my cunning plan. This time, I’d decided to go for what I was going to call a ‘super mega breakfast’—I was aiming for the single highest number of different breakfast foods on a single plate that had ever been achieved by a single person. Or something like that, anyway. It was still a work in progress.

  I made my way down each of the buffet aisles, taking a single portion of each and every dish, trying to choose the smallest one available for larger items like sausages and baked goods.

  My eye was suddenly drawn across the way to the juice station. Don’t worry; I wasn’t going to try and put that on my plate. It was Bruno, and he was talking to yet another uncomfortable looking woman.

  After the night before, my hackles went up immediately. I abandoned my current position, making sure to note that I was between cowboy beans and mini-quesadillas, and walked over as subtly as I could to see if it seemed like Bruno was causing trouble.

  The woman looked to be in her late twenties and dressed like she’d just come from the gym. As I got closer, I realized that, no, she looked more like she’d just come from a modeling shoot for exercise clothes. She was slim, trim, and beautiful, with auburn hair tied up in a high pony-tail, Lycra shorts and a halter top, and brand-new blinding white sneakers that had clearly never been outside.

  Bruno was saying something to her, and as he did so her face turned almost the same color as her gleaming white shoes. She seemed nervous and began shaking her head at him. I stopped just behind the troublemaking single traveler out of his line of vision to see what would happen next.

  Bruno said something to her again and then gave her a creepy smile. She shook her head again, narrowed her eyes in a dirty look, and then spun away, turning her back while clutching a bright green glass of juice.

  Bruno tossed his shoulders in a little shrug and walked away with a jaunty stride.

  Now that was odd, I thought. What could it mean though? Putting on my metaphorical detective hat, I decided to see what I could find out.

  “Hi there!” I nodded at her hand. “The juice is good, huh?” It was my attempt at a conversation starter.

  The woman looked startled by my greeting, but she soon smiled at me. Color began to return to her pale cheeks.

  “I guess? It’s for my husband.” She nodded to a nearby table. When we both looked over, the man sitting down waved at us with a meaty arm and I could see he was as much of a fitness fanatic as his wife. “I don’t drink juice. Too much sugar, you know.” She peered down at her ridiculously flat stomach. “These cruises can be killer on the body if you don’t keep on top of things.”

  “Tell me about it. I work here. Adrienne James, Social Media Manager.”

  “Tessa Washington, and that’s my husband Tony over there.” She set the cup of juice she was holding down next to the row of juice jugs and offered a dainty hand for a shake.

  “That man you were speaking to… was he bothering you?”

  Tessa’s face fell for a moment before she recovered.

  “Oh, no, not at all.”

  “Glad to hear it.” I glanced around to make sure Bruno hadn’t sidled up to us again and begun eavesdropping. “Yesterday, he upset… maybe that’s too strong a word… but let’s just say, we don’t want him to annoy any more passengers.”

  Tessa shook her head at me. “Don’t worry about it. And I can assure you, if anyone bothered me, I’d kick their behind into next Tuesday.” She raised up her arms and flexed her biceps, and despite the smile on her face, I believed her.

  “If there’s anything I can do for you on this cruise, just let me know. Enjoy your breakfast!”

  When she was gone, I returned to my place at the previous food station and continued piling my plate with a little of every single dish known to man, or known to Swan Cruises anyway.

  Bruno was bothering me though. That was two women in two days who had looked rather upset to be speaking to him, but both of them had denied there was anything wrong wh
en questioned. And of course there was the issue of him following Miffy, Tuff, and Canyon, too.

  After having met more than one dangerous passenger in the past, I was going to keep my guard up and my eyes on him.

  “Ta-da!” Sam announced when I joined her at our table. She was sitting there proudly over her meal, her plate as yet untouched.

  “Wow! That’s awesome. Let me grab a picture.”

  Sam had arranged the food on her plate into a cute smiley face. There were two big eyes made of sunny side up eggs, a broad mouth made from three sausages, ears made from hash browns which she had trimmed into shape with a knife, and the bright green hair on top was made with seasoned steamed spinach from the Asian food section.

  Sam held up her fork over the cheerful but doomed visage in a menacing pose, while I took a few pictures.

  “Excellent! That should go viral.”

  Sam stared at my own plate.

  “Umm, Addy, what’s the deal with yours though? It looks like a pig’s dinner.”

  “No way!” I frowned down at the plate. “It looks like a pig’s breakfast,” I corrected. “But seriously, I’ve tried to get a bite of just about every food we have. I’m hoping it’s a world record.”

  Sam snorted. “A world record? That’s a pretty dumb world record. No offense.”

  “None taken. There’s plenty of dumb world records. What’s one more?” I looked at my plate. She was right; it didn’t look all that appetizing. But looks can be deceptive. If there’s anything more delicious than one awesome food, it’s forty-eight of them on the same plate.

  “So are you going to send it to the Guinness Book people?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m going to do. The world record for the most different foods on a breakfast plate. Maybe Swan will give me a bonus too. What do you think?”

  She did not look convinced and avoided the question.

  “Finished with the pictures? I’m starving.”

  And with that, we attacked our morning fast-breaking with ravenous hunger.

  Woe betide anyone who gets between a Nebraska girl and her food.

  And this time, there were two of us.

  Bruno

  That evening, Bruno was feeling pleased with himself. This cruise was going to be extra special—he could just feel it—and he was in the mood to celebrate.

  Having treated himself to a large VIP suite, there was plenty of room to relax. Furthermore, he was lucky enough that the ship was sailing in the right direction for him to catch the beautiful sunset from his very own private balcony.

  “Another glass?” Bruno asked himself. “Don’t mind if I do!” he answered happily.

  Bruno pulled the near ice-cold bottle of champagne from the bucket, wrapped it in the handily-provided white cloth so that it didn’t drip too much, and re-filled his tall flute.

  “To another successful adventure,” he said, raising his glass in a toast. The lack of an audible clink, due to having no one to toast with, was slightly off-putting, so he dinged the edge of his glass against the mouth of the champagne bottle. It made more of a click than a clink, but it would have to do.

  Sometimes it was kind of lonely working on his own. But that was the hand that fate had dealt him, so a lone wolf he would have to be for the time being. He hadn’t always worked alone. Once, there was someone else. He took another sip and sighed. Half with pleasure, and half with regret for what might have been. But there was nothing to be done.

  Leaning back in a comfortable chair, he stared out toward the setting sun and took another big sip of the bubbly, savoring it for a moment before swallowing. Of course, working on his own instead of with a partner meant double the profits.

  This cruise was going to be an adventure and a half, and hopefully a profitable one as well. The good thing about his line of work was that he could do it just about anywhere that people gathered. And a cruise ship was particularly wonderful, because the people couldn’t disappear on you. The same ones would be there, day after day. You could really spend a bit of time with them, which made it so much easier to make a deal.

  Perhaps he’d start to cruise regularly, he mused. A winter cruise somewhere warm each year to escape the cold would be delightful. And maybe a summer cruise, too, to escape the heat. Swan had an Alaskan cruise too; he had seen on the website. That would make a nice change of pace.

  Just as he was nearing the end of his second glass of champagne the doorbell rang. Handily, there was a speaker out there on the balcony so he could hear it clearly. They really did think of everything for their VIP guests.

  He wasn’t expecting a visitor, but he wasn’t not expecting one either. After all, he’d met a few people on the cruise already.

  Perhaps it was one of the lovely people he’d met on board who somehow tracked down his stateroom number.

  Or maybe it was a complimentary treat sent by Swan corporate to let VIPs such as himself know just how much he was valued.

  “Hope it’s not another bottle of champagne,” he chuckled to himself as he went to the door. “I won’t get anything done.”

  It was not another bottle of champagne. It was instead one of the people he’d been delighted to meet on board the ship.

  “Oh! It’s you. Come to your senses, I see?” he said with a friendly chuckle. “Come in, come in. The champagne is on ice. Appropriate, no?”

  “This is a VIP suite,” he answered when his visitor asked. “Do you like it? I feel like I’ve really got room to breathe in here. There’s so much space, especially for me all on my own.”

  He pointed out all the wonderful facilities in his room, from the jacuzzi tub to the high ceilings, and of course the balcony.

  “Look at that! Just look at it! Beautiful, hey?”

  The sun had just dipped below the line of the horizon, setting the sky and ocean both ablaze with reds and oranges, crimsons and violets. The water sparkled like a trillion gemstones.

  “Glass of champagne?”

  When the visitor confirmed that they would indeed like one, he bent down to pick up the bottle.

  He didn’t suspect anything was awry.

  He hadn’t even noticed his guest pick up the decorative statuette.

  He didn’t hear the visitor lift up their arm.

  He didn’t hear the visitor swing the arm down hard.

  And he didn’t hear the whoosh through the air of the blunt instrument as it traveled in its short but deadly arc from above the visitor’s head until it connected with his skull with a soft whomp.

  One minute he was awake…

  The next…

  Lights out.

  Chapter Nine

  I was standing in front of the mirror that was affixed to our closet door in the cabin that Sam and I shared, making last-minute adjustments to my makeup.

  “That’s two in a row, Sam. Two nights in a row Ethan and I are going on a date. Can you believe it?”

  My friend was sitting up on the top bunk, legs hanging off the edge, swinging back and forth while she watched me finish getting ready.

  “Maybe you can send that record in too.” Sam giggled at me as she said it. She didn’t seem impressed with my plan to send in that morning’s record-breaking plate to the Guinness people.

  “I don’t think they’d be interested in that. It’s a bit too personal.”

  “But the messiest breakfast food plate in the world isn’t?”

  “Nope, it isn’t. And anyway, it wasn’t the messiest breakfast food plate, it was the plate with the most different items of food on it. You know that.” I popped the cap onto my lipstick with a click. “They might even use my photo.”

  “Yeah, right. And maybe I’ll be President.”

  I turned and nodded at her. “You might! Don’t put yourself down. You can do anything you set your mind to.”

  She shook her head. “Sometimes I think you’re crazy.”

  The telephone sitting on our desk began to ring.

  “Uh-oh.” Sam winced and gave the noisy devi
ce a death-stare.

  I glared at the phone, willing it to stop. I hated the stupid thing. Nothing good ever came from phone calls to our cabin’s fixed line. And you couldn’t even see who was calling first either, to decide whether you wanted to answer it or not. It was like we were cavemen or something.

  “Should we ignore it?”

  “We should throw it overboard.”

  But we weren’t allowed to do that. I stared at the phone some more, my hand hovering over it. Finally, with a sigh, I picked it up.

  “Knew it,” said Sam under her breath.

  “Hello?”

  “Adrienne! It’s Kelly!”

  “Hi, Kelly,” I said as sweetly as I could through my gritted teeth. “What’s up?”

  “I need your detective skills! There’s been a burglary! Can you come and help? Please say yes!”

  “I’m afraid I’ve got plans this evening.” I was doing it! I was ignoring the request for help. I was going to have my evening date, darn it. “With Ethan,” I clarified.

  “Ethan? He’s here too!”

  Of course he was. As head of security he would have to be, wouldn’t he?

  “I’ll be right there. Wait, where are you?”

  The scene of the crime was Nurse Jessica’s junior suite on one of the VIP floors. Ethan and Kelly were sitting down on a sofa while Jessica paced the room.

  “What happened?” I asked when I arrived.

  Kelly looked at me and frowned. Ethan looked at me and smiled. Jessica cocked her head at me, looking slightly confused.

  I glanced down at myself. Oops. I guess I wasn’t really dressed like a detective that evening. Black heels, a midnight-blue dress that stopped daringly above the knee, and a nice jade necklace I’d borrowed from Sam. I pointed at myself. “I was just about to go for dinner.”

  Ethan grinned at me and I knew he wanted to give me a compliment, but it wasn’t exactly the time or the place.

  “It’s my Phytox! It’s gone! We’ve got to find it. In the wrong hands, it could be deadly. And I need it for my work!” Jessica continued to pace while she spoke, her eyes flicking around the room at the corners, the tables and shelves, and everywhere else, as if the Phytox might suddenly reveal itself to have been there all along.