Death on the Aegean Queen

by Maria Hudgins

  Kathryn and I met up again at the same place we’d parted and decided to go straight to the shipboard security office, wherever that was. It stood to reason it would be in the vicinity of the purser’s office and the main desk, which were on the next deck up. We passed through the side doors and along a corridor until we found the grand staircase Lettie had nearly tumbled down earlier. Up one deck and around to our left, we walked past the photo shop where the embarkation pictures they had taken of each group as they boarded were displayed on felt-covered panels. Beyond the photo shop was the main desk where we found a grizzled, gray-haired attendant playing a hand-held video game. We explained our situation in slow, deliberate English.

  “One minute, please.” The man punched a button on the desk phone and paused, then began talking in Greek to whomever had answered.

  “Kathryn, I’m going to call Marco. I hate to wake him up, but he’ll know what to do. He’s a policeman.” I looked around for another phone. Marco’s room number was 373. I remembered it was four doors down from my own and on the same side of the hall.

  “I have talked to security,” the attendant told us as he hung up the phone. “They want you to wait right here. They will be here in a minute.”

  Kathryn pointed to a phone on a low table in the center of the arc of counters that included the main desk and land excursion sales cubicles. I took a deep breath and punched in Marco’s room number. Four rings, no answer.

  Kathryn nudged me and pointed toward a baby-faced young man approaching us. He wore a short-sleeved white shirt with a security patch on one sleeve and a gold nameplate that read, “Demopoulos.” I assumed it was his last name.

  I hung up the phone and listened as Kathryn explained her plight to the security kid. He paid close attention but didn’t appear to be all that shocked. It dawned on me this might be a fairly common occurrence on a cruise ship, and the lost spouse would frequently turn out to have been indulging in a little tête a tête in the wrong room.

  Kathryn launched into a description of George and what he was wearing the last time she saw him, but Demopoulos stopped her with an upraised finger. “I have better idea,” he said, taking her by the arm. “The photo shop has already posted the embarkation pictures. The shop is locked but I have a key. There should be a photo of your husband that will help us find him much more easily.”

  He unlocked and slid open the glass door of the shop and let us walk around among the panels displaying hundreds of photos, all taken in the same spot at the bottom of the gangway the day before. I couldn’t figure out how they were posted: alphabetically, in order of arrival, or what. We wandered around until we finally found it. George and Kathryn Gaskill, embarking on their dream vacation, hand luggage in hand, arms around each other’s waists.

  Demopoulos lifted the photo off the board and said, “I’ll bring this back after we’ve found him.” We stepped out and he relocked the photo shop door. “We have security cameras located almost everywhere on the ship, except in individual staterooms, of course. I will first call the two bars that are still open, the cabin stewards’ storerooms, and so on. And I will check all the monitors in our office. If you find anything, you can dial seven on any phone and get me or whoever is in the office.” He paused and looked at his watch. “The Chief of Security and the day shift will go on duty in about two hours. If we have not found Mr. Gaskill by then, although I’m sure we will have, Chief Letsos will take over.”

  Kathryn nodded and repeated, “Dial seven for security.”

  “May I have your room numbers?” he asked.

  We gave them to him.

  Backing away from us, the photo of George and Kathryn in his hand, he added, “I would suggest you return to your rooms and wait for my call. And don’t worry. We will find him.”

  This was a problem. I couldn’t imagine Kathryn going back to her room and simply sitting, waiting for the phone to ring. It would be torture for her. But on the other hand, if we weren’t in our rooms, how would we know when George had been found? There were a couple of other places I thought we could check first. I fished the deck plans out of my shorts pocket and studied them again.

  “There’s a big, open deck and pool area on the back end of this deck,” I said. “Let’s look out there before we go downstairs.” We tried, but the doors to that part of the deck were locked. Through the etched glass doors, I could see starlight dancing on the pool water. “There’s also a small deck at the back of the level where our rooms are.”

  Returning to our own floor, we scooted past our rooms and on to a polished wood door that opened onto the stern deck. This deck, directly beneath the spot where I had paused and looked down at the propeller-churned water a half-hour ago, was lit by two carriage lanterns on the wall. The teak floor was dry and empty except for a large, dark-red pool in the middle.

  Chapter Four

  From the red pool a wide smear feathered out toward the stern rail, and I saw a few streaks on the white-painted iron of the rail itself. Another spot or two near the red puddle could, I thought, be shoe prints. A few seconds later I heard a sort of swoosh-thud sound, which turned out to be Kathryn sliding down the door frame and hitting the deck.

  I knelt beside her, tapping her face lightly with my hand. “Kathryn. Kathryn.” Luckily, a door marked ΤΌΎΑΛΕΤΑ, which I had already learned meant toilet, stood just inside the exterior door. I dashed in, wet a paper towel, and used it to bathe Kathryn’s face. Her eyelids fluttered, then opened.

  “Oh, no! No, no! What was that stuff ?” Kathryn shook her head and looked at me as if she couldn’t remember who I was. Pulling her arm across my shoulder, I let her lean on me while I maneuvered her back to her room. She stared blankly at her stateroom door while I fumbled through her pocket, found her room card, and opened her door.

  I laid her out on her bed and said, “You stay right here. I’ll be back in a few minutes. Don’t leave! Do you understand me, Kathryn?”

  She mumbled something vaguely affirmative. I dashed to my own room, a few yards farther down the hall, lunged for the phone, and dialed seven.

  “Demopoulos.”

  I told him what we’d found, hung up, then dialed Marco’s room. He answered on the fourth ring, his voice dusty with sleep.

  “Pronto. Chi è?”

  “It’s Dotsy, Marco. I’m sorry to wake you up, but it’s important. Kathryn has lost George and we’ve found a big red puddle at the end of the hall. I think it may be blood.”

  “Who?” Marco’s sleep-addled brain had forgotten who Kathryn and George were. Quite understandable, I thought. After I reminded him and filled in a few other blanks, he said, “I will get dressed and come out.”

  I grabbed my little travel light and ran back to the stern deck. Demopoulos was already there with a big flashlight. He played the cone of light back and forth across the teak deck, pausing and crouching down near a smudge a foot or so away from the main part of the dark pool.

  “Is it blood?”

  “It smells like it,” he said, touching it with one finger and then sniffing it. I wondered how much training Demopoulos had had in this sort of investigation. He looked so young; he couldn’t be more than nineteen or twenty.

  Marco pushed through the door. He motioned me back, looked at the puddle, then at Demopoulos. To me, he said, “Do not touch anything. And watch where you step.”

  Demopoulos rose from his squatting position and looked curiously at Marco.

  Marco introduced himself, in English, and added that he was Carabinieri from Italy. They continued to converse in English, the universal language. “We have two footprints in blood right here. I assume it is blood. Do you see?” Demopoulos shone his light on the dark smudges I had noticed earlier.

  “And a streak running almost the whole way to the rail,” Marco said. “Did you notice it already? Two streaks, actually.” He squatted and his knees popped. Careful to let only one foot and the toe of the other shoe contact the teak deck, he wobbled and was forced to put one knuckle
down to steady himself. “These could be drag marks.”

  I was in the way so I decided to go and check on Kathryn, but, the tension bringing on a call from Mother Nature, slipped into the “toyaleta” first. The overhead light inside showed me a shiny, clean bathroom, an empty trash can, and a small, round, shiny object on the side of the sink. It looked like clear plastic. For no reason other than the fact that it looked curiously out of place, I stuck it in my pocket. I examined the little room for blood spots or anything else out of place, but it was spic and span.

  A minute later, when Kathryn answered my knock and opened her door, her face begged for an update.

  “Marco and Demopoulos are out there now, doing what investigators do,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Marco Quattrocchi. Remember him? He saw the show with us tonight, and he was at our dinner table.”

  “Oh, yes.” Kathryn padded back to her bed and sat on its corner, her gaze fixed vacantly on the opposite wall.

  Their room was exactly like mine, except everything was reversed left to right. Their beds lay against opposite walls with two small nightstands between them. Dressing table, mirror, and a row of closets to the left. Sofa, upholstered chair, and coffee table on the right. As I sat in the chair facing the bed, the bathroom was behind me. In my room the bath stood on the left with the dressing table and closets on the right. Their color scheme—cream, russet, and periwinkle blue—was the same as mine.

  The only other difference I could see was that, this being an interior room, the curtain behind their beds covered a long fluorescent light whereas mine had a real window behind it. Having checked out Lettie and Ollie’s room earlier, I knew the twin beds could easily be slid together to make a double. The cabin steward could make the change in a couple of minutes by sticking the nightstands on the outsides of the beds instead of between them. Did the separation of the beds say anything about the Gaskills’ relationship or were they simply unaware of their options?

  “Is it possible George did come in for a while after the poker game and then leave again? He could have slipped in quietly, couldn’t he? And not wakened you?”

  “No. When he left to go to the casino, he was still wearing his suit and tie.” Kathryn turned sideways and looked at me. “If he came in late, he certainly would’ve at least shed his tie and jacket, and they aren’t here now. If he went to bed at all, he wouldn’t have put his dressy clothes back on again, would he? And his bed would be messed up.”

  “Of course.”

  I looked over my shoulder at the closets in the narrow hall across from their bathroom. Through one open door I saw a couple of pairs of men’s shoes aligned neatly beneath hanging shirts and trousers. “Kathryn, do you or George know anyone else on the cruise?”

  “You mean did we know anyone before we got on the ship? No. Nobody.” She picked up the hem of her bedspread and crumpled it in her hand. “Dotsy, what’s happened to George? I can’t stand not knowing!”

  I rose and slipped over to sit beside her on the bed. I patted her fist, still clenched around the blue-and-russet bedspread. “There’s no reason for us to assume that . . . that whatever-it-is out there has anything to do with George. This is a big ship. Eight or nine hundred passengers, I heard. And there are lots of possible explanations for what we saw.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like, it might not be blood. It might be paint somebody spilled. Or maybe there was a fight out there sometime tonight between a couple of folks we don’t even know. Maybe somebody had a hemorrhage from a bleeding ulcer. Maybe the chef’s assistant tossed some bloody entrails out the galley porthole and the wind caught it. Whipped it around the back of the ship. Maybe a sea gull got in a fight with a pelican.”

  Kathryn giggled a little. “Dotsy, you’re wonderful. I know you’re doing your best, but it ain’t working.” She stood up, tottered to the bathroom, and came back out with a wet face cloth pressed against her eyes.

  I waited silently.

  “We’ve been planning this vacation for years,” she finally said. “George has had such a horrible time at work. He’s not meant to be a salesman. Certainly not a car salesman. He used to be a teacher when we lived in Pennsylvania. He taught social studies for years, and then they made him the principal of the whole high school. I was so proud of him, but really, he should have stayed in the classroom. He’s not a natural-born administrator. So many conflicts. Discipline problems, irate parents, school board members analyzing your every move.”

  “I can imagine. I teach in a junior college and I see a certain amount of that, too. Not discipline problems generally, but, yes, all the rest of it.”

  “Let’s go out there again, Dotsy. I have to know what’s going on.”

  I convinced Kathryn to wait for me in her room while I dashed down to my own for a minute. Closing her door behind me, I turned to my left and spied Marco, rushing down the hall toward me.

  “I need a what-do-you-call-it, cotton on a stick,” he said. “A cotton swab. Do you have one? And a plastic bag I can seal up?”

  “I have both.” Leading the way to my room, I shoved my key card into the little slot, got the green light, and ushered Marco in.

  “Your room is exactly like mine,” he said.

  I pulled out my top dressing table drawer and located my cotton swabs and a small locking plastic bag. I must admit I pride myself on traveling light and still having everything one could possibly need. I’m waiting for someone to ask me for the moleskin I saw on some packing list or other and have carried on every trip I’ve taken in the last ten years. I’m not sure what it’s for, but I have some. I also have an emergency clothesline but I’ve never seen a shower curtain rod that wasn’t handier. I like to collect things in tiny travel sizes so my luggage remains quite small, even though I have everything including a currency converter, Greek-English phrase book, and tide tables for the whole Mediterranean Sea, including the Aegean branch.

  “What do you think has happened, Marco?”

  “I cannot say for sure, but it certainly looks as if someone has been attacked and thrown overboard. I can see what looks like heel drag-marks in the blood. You know? As if someone has been dragged through the blood.” He demonstrated with his hands. “Maybe pulled by his armpits from the place of attack over to the rail.”

  “The blood. Is it still liquid?”

  “Yes, and that’s strange. The blood should dry quickly in this air. With the breeze from the ship’s movement and all. Even though we are over water, still, the Mediterranean air is very dry. The blood has not been there long.”

  I gulped. Marco, I knew, was an expert in crime scene analysis. None better.

  “Can I come out with you?” I asked. “Can Kathryn?”

  He ran his fingers through his hair and exhaled loudly. “If you promise to stay at the door. Do not come out into the middle of the deck or approach the rail. Do you think Kathryn can follow this rule, also?”

  “I’ll make sure she does.”

  Marco tucked the cotton swab inside the plastic bag and waited for me to fetch Kathryn from her room. We trekked back to the stern deck in single file because the hall was too narrow for three to walk abreast. When Marco opened the door to what I had begun to think of as the crime scene, I glimpsed a lightening sky. But before I could take in the breaking dawn, Marco let go of the door handle and took a flying leap at a man on the left side of the deck.

  “Ma è pazzo?” Marco shouted, then roared an unintelligible jumble of Italian as he tackled a man who was holding a water hose. He wrapped the hose around the man’s neck and shoved him up against the wall with a great splat. Within five seconds his prey, a poor, baffled cabin steward, was pinned to the wall with Marco’s forearm across his chest.

  Another man, not Demopoulos, yelled something and barreled across the deck toward them, yanking a walkie-talkie off his belt as he ran. This was a dark, bearded man, a good bit older than Demopoulos.

  “He’s a policeman!” It was the short
est, most succinct statement I could think of to get the message across quickly. The message that Marco was one of the good guys.

  “What in the hell? You told him to wash the deck? Destroy the evidence? Si è pevuto il cervello?” Marco waved his arms wildly.

  “We’ve taken pictures.”

  “Sure. All taken in the dark! You must wait until the sun comes up.”

  “We used a flash, of course,” the man growled. “When the sun comes up, our passengers will start coming out here. We can’t let them see this.”