“I was hired by Frederick Connors,” I said.
“That much we know.”
“Only I’m not security.”
“That much we also know.”
“This needs to stay between us.”
“You need to clean up your story. What stays between us, I will decide later.”
“Fair enough. Frederick Connors thinks his wife is having an affair.”
He frowned. “An affair?”
“Yes.”
“Mrs. Connors?”
“Yes.”
“With who?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“Mr. Connors has seen a guy hanging around, coming out of his house. He doesn’t know the guy’s name. We’re calling him Guy X.”
“Guy X?”
“Yes.”
“Guy X? This what you came up with? You read a lot of spy novels?”
“What would you call him?”
“I have no idea. Keep talking.”
“Mr. Connors was not supposed to be on this cruise. He suspected that his wife would meet up with this Guy X while on board, and he hired me to confirm it.”
“So why is he here?”
“I guess he decided to be here in case it was true, or maybe in case it wasn’t.”
“Wouldn’t him being here scupper their plans to get together?”
“That’s what I said. But he insisted he would stay mostly in his cabin.”
“Why would his wife buy that?”
“He doesn’t like cruises. He gets seasick. That’s where he is this evening. In his cabin.”
“He gets seasick?”
“Yes. He says he can’t swim.”
“And you’re supposed to follow his wife.”
“Right.”
“You’re not doing much of that.”
“We were watching her at the cocktail thing in the casino.”
“You find this Guy X?”
“Haven’t seen any trace of him yet.”
“They could be together now.”
“Danielle is following her.”
So your story is that this theft is just a coincidence.”
“No. That’s not my story at all.”
“It’s not?”
“No. Coincidences happen, sure. But this one’s a doozy.”
“So you have a theory?”
“Fragments of theories. Nothing solid.”
“You want to share?”
“Guy X.”
“What about him?”
“He’s behind it. Maybe it’s part of the affair. Maybe he and Mrs. Connors are in it together. Maybe he’s using her to get to the rings.”
“But you don’t even know if he exists.”
“No.”
“And right now we know who the likeliest customer is.”
“It’s me. But come on. Do you think I’d be that sloppy? Surely I would get the proper credentials to be in the room. Why draw suspicion to myself?”
“Why indeed.”
“And it doesn’t answer the real question.”
“Which is?”
“How did the rings go missing? I was there, sure. But I never physically touched them. Mrs. Connors locked them up tight and your video shows no one else going in the room.”
“That’s what you’d want me to think.”
“Sure. So go do your job. Don’t listen to me. Look at the videos. Follow the trail.”
“And what do you think I’ll find?”
I raised my eyebrows.
“The invisible Guy X?” he asked.
“Or someone else, I really don’t know. But I know it’s not me. So you do your job, maybe you find my guy.”
“And you want in on the investigation?”
“No. Not if you don’t trust me, and not if you can’t use me. Put your cameras on Mrs. Connors. I bet she leads you to Guy X. If they do, just let me know.”
He looked me over again. He knew I knew he was doing it and he didn’t care one bit.
“It’s a big ship. Where do think she is now?”
“Danielle will know.”
“Can you call her?”
“Cellphones work out here?”
“Reception’s patchy but the vessel has ship-to-shore via satellite.”
“I don’t think she has her phone. I know I left mine in the cabin.”
“So much for that, then.”
The phone on Army’s deck rang. He picked it up.
“Chief of Security.”
He listened and then said, “That so? Put her through.”
He turned his eyes to me.
“Ms. Castle, what can I do for you?”
He listened again. He made no expression and gave nothing away. I wouldn’t play him in poker. He’d have taken the shirt from my back before Anastasia Connors could get her mitts on it.
“Thank you, Ms. Castle. If you’ll stay there I’ll have one of my people come and bring you up to the security office. Mr. Jones is here with us.”
He hung up and told me to stay put, and then walked out of the office. He wasn’t gone long.
“I’ve got one of my team watching the feed from your suite’s passageway.”
“My suite? Why?”
“Because you’re two doors down from your client, remember? Ms. Castle called from the house phone to let you know that Mrs. Connors had returned to her suite after all, and Ms. Castle found out that she couldn’t watch it, since there really isn’t anywhere for someone to wait up there without looking suspicious.”
“She’s good like that.”
“I can see who the brains behind the operation is.”
“Me too. Every day.”
A moment later there was a knock at the door and a uniformed crew member opened up for Danielle. She stepped inside the small space. She smelled far better than the disinfectant that had dominated before her arrival.
“Cozy,” she said.
“Ms. Castle, I won’t go through everything because I’m sure Mr. Jones will update you. But as you requested, I have put a watch on your passageway. We’ll know if either Mrs. Connors or Mr. Connors leave their suite.”
“Thanks,” she said. “Any movement on the rings?”
Army glanced at me and then at Danielle. “Not much. We’ll comb the video and see what we see. But you’re FDLE, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So how do you solve a closed-room caper like this?”
“Eliminate the suspects, eliminate the possibilities.”
“What possibilities?”
“The rings were in a safe, in a locked room, on a ship. So three options: one, they were never in the room; two, they were in the room and were taken out somehow; and three, they’re still in the room.”
“Makes sense. But option one, we know they were there.”
“We suspect it.”
“You were there, you saw them.”
“I saw something. But I don’t know anything about these rings. What I saw could have come from a Cracker Jack box for all I know.”
“They were verified by the auctioneer.”
“Right, which is a check against point one. But the auctioneer could have been lying.”
Army nodded and I just watched. Danielle was on a roll.
“All right. Point two?”
“Point three first. They’re still in the room. This is the easiest to check. You could go through that room with a fine-tooth comb. You could pat down everyone who leaves. And for sure you’re going to keep videoing everything in and around that room. So if they’re still there, getting them out is risky.”
“I agree.”
“Me too,” I said.
Army shook his head at me. “So, point two.”
“The most likely. If the auctioneer lied, then so did Mrs. Connors, which means they’re both in on it. And I think that would be easy to prove. The auctioneer isn’t going to do that for free. She would have to pay him. So we look at his financials. T
oo easy to find a trail.”
“Crooks do make mistakes.”
“They do. That’s how they usually get caught, so nothing is ruled out. All these options should be explored.”
“Beyond my resources,” said Army.
“Not beyond mine,” said Danielle.
“All right, let’s keep that in our pocket. Let’s assume the auctioneer was truthful. Then what?”
Danielle shrugged. “Then someone took rings from a locked box in a locked room, on a ship.”
“That doesn’t help.”
“But it does. They’re still on the ship. You can’t just jump in a getaway car to escape a cruise ship.”
“They have to get the rings off,” I said. Both Army and Danielle looked at me like I had just appeared from thin air.
“Where do we make landfall?” she asked.
Army said, “Other than when we get back to Palm Beach, the only stop is tomorrow, on Paradise Cay.”
“Maybe that’s it,” I said.
“But even that doesn’t help them much,” Army said. “It’s a private island owned by the cruise line. They’d still be stuck on an island.”
We were looking at each other, searching for some kind of solution, when Army’s phone rang again. He picked it up and listened and then said we’d be right there.
“Mrs. Connors just left her suite.”
Chapter Fourteen
Army led us back into the security control room, where one of his team had put the video from our deck onto a screen on the wall. Anastasia had changed out of her gown into a purple long sleeved blouse and white pants. I got the feeling that was her version of dressing down, but even so she would have fit in at a lot of weddings in gear like that. She walked as she had before, head high, an air of certainty about her, although she looked less like a Russian aristocrat and more like the Greenwich, Connecticut, kind of money that lunches after a long session of retail therapy at Bloomingdale’s.
She headed aft to the elevator and waited for it to arrive. We waited to see where she was going. When the elevator came she got in and disappeared from view. The woman in front of the screen tapped her console and brought up another camera angle that showed Anastasia in the elevator. She checked her look in the mirror at the rear and then stood tall. When the elevator stopped, we waited for her to get out. She didn’t. Someone else got in. A man. Our camera angle gave us a prime shot of his bald patch. The elevator stopped again and the man held the door open as Anastasia stepped out.
“Five,” said the woman operating the console. She tapped again and brought up a camera angle across the open lobby area adjacent to the elevators. The balding man was walking toward the camera’s position. Anastasia headed the other way, along a corridor.
“What’s down there?” I asked.
“Retail, the spa,” said Army. “Not much.”
“It’s Guy X,” I said.
“Where?” asked Army.
“She’s meeting him. I need to get down there.”
Army snapped up a small walkie-talkie and spoke to the woman operating the video. “Tell me where she goes.”
Army led us back out to the elevator. We didn’t have to wait. The car was waiting for us. Army swiped his card and hit the button for deck five. We descended in silence. When the door opened Army called in.
“Do you have a location?”
“She went to the lobby near the spa.”
Army led us to the port side and then cut up the corridor toward the bow of the ship. We entered what looked like an airport concourse. Lots of brightly lit stores selling spirits, cigarettes, the latest fashions. We stopped just beyond a store selling electronic gadgets and Army called in again.
“Where?” he said.
There was a pause at the other end. “One moment, sir.”
“Come on.”
“Sorry, sir. I’ve lost her. She was in the spa lobby and then I changed cameras and she was gone. I see you now.”
“We’re not looking for me,” Army said, but he didn’t say it into the walkie-talkie. He looked at me and Danielle.
“I’ll take port, you take starboard.”
He broke left and we made our way right. In front of us was the entrance to the spa. It smelled like lilies and the interior was all soft lighting and pale Scandinavian wood. Danielle ducked inside as I headed for the corridor that ran alongside it. The corridor came to an abrupt end at a door that was marked crew only. I stood for a moment and looked it over. It didn’t seem to be alarmed or locked. It had a big push bar across it. Danielle arrived at my hip.
“She’s not in the spa.”
I heard the sound of several sets of feet behind me but didn’t investigate. I pushed through the door and we found ourselves outside. The moon wasn’t full after all, but it did throw plenty of light across the ship’s forward-most deck. It was plain and utilitarian, probably a green non-slip paint covering the surface, ropes coiled in the bow. In the middle of the deck was a hot tub. It was dark and dormant and I couldn’t fathom why it was there. Then the door open again behind us, and Danielle and I both turned to Army.
But it wasn’t Army.
“You got me in trouble,” said the blond guy in the Cleveland Browns jersey. Not only had he not bothered to change for dinner, it appeared that dinner had been of a liquid variety. He stumbled as though we were rolling in a fifty-foot swell, rather than floating on the dead-flat Bahama Banks. I took note of his three buddies. They had less to say but seemed equally well lubricated. They fanned out into a line.
“It’s time to party,” he said.
“Really?” I said. “That’s what you’re going with? It’s time to party?”
“You got something better?”
“Everything is better than that. A barbaric yawp would be better than that. You’ve had hours to come up with a pithy remark and all you’ve come up with is a bad Schwarzenegger retread.”
I wanted this goose thinking. Clearly it wasn’t a strong point, and while he was doing it, I was looking around the deck for some kind of weapon. I wasn’t concerned about getting beaten up by four drunk frat boys. Danielle could take three of them and I was good for the last one. But random punches sometimes landed and I wasn’t eager to wear one. What I did want was to get rid of them. Army was just as likely to be right behind them, and he was already a little suspicious of our relationship. I didn’t think it would improve much if he found us out on a crew-only deck. I scanned again for a weapon. I didn’t find one.
I found Frederick Connors.
He was standing on the other side of the deck with his hand in the air. While I tried to figure out what he was doing, Danielle stepped forward.
“Boys, I am a special agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. I think it might be best if you head back to your cabins before things get out of hand.”
I watched Frederick step around in a circle. For moment I thought he must have been throwing up over the side of the deck, but I realized he holding up a cell phone, trying to get a signal. I’m not sure what kind of cell tower he thought he would find out in the middle of the ocean, but I suspected logging onto the ship’s satellite system would have produced a better result. I was going to call to him when Cleveland doofus number one spoke up.
“You gonna hide behind a chick?”
I glanced at him. I wanted to remember what his face looked like before Danielle disfigured it. I took a second look and decided that Danielle would only have to take down one of her three, because two others were already backing off. I glanced at Frederick to make sure he was staying put. I’d catch up with old Frederick shortly.
And then I saw Guy X.
Like the photograph I had memorized, the lighting on the bow deck wasn’t great and in a strange way that helped. I saw the outlines, the shape of his head, and the shadow of his deep-set eyes. I forgot all about Cleveland. I turned toward Guy X just as he stepped out from the shadow of the decks above and moved along the edge toward Frederick. For a second, I t
hought a fight might break out on both sides of me. That would make Army really happy. But Guy X didn’t raise his arms to sucker-punch Frederick. He did the opposite. He went down. He wrapped his arms around Frederick’s legs. And he tipped Frederick off the deck.
For a second I was dumbstruck. I couldn’t quite comprehend what I had just seen. Then it all clicked into place. The wife’s new boyfriend getting rid of the husband. It felt so cliché. Throwing the husband off a cruise ship into the ocean.
The ocean.
Frederick hated cruise ships. He hated the ocean. Because he couldn’t swim. I didn’t think anymore. I broke into a sprint. I saw Guy X cut back into the shadows, and Cleveland yelled out “chicken.” I didn’t pay either of them any mind. I pumped as hard as I could and sped across the deck, past the hot tub. I’m not an Olympic sprinter. Few baseball pitchers are. But I run on City Beach pretty regularly, so I got there quick enough. I didn’t see Guy X. I didn’t look for him. I just hit the gunwale hard and vaulted over the edge.
Chapter Fifteen
The first thought I had as I launched into the night was that I would probably die from the impact. Such thoughts are all about timing, and would have been useful while I was sprinting across the deck. Once in midair, not so much.
My second thought, however, was a memory. I recalled that as we had boarded earlier that day I had looked up at the sheer size of the ship and noted that the lowest outdoor point appeared to be the forward deck, with the other decks towering above. I had the notion that the distance from the forward deck to the water was the height of about two or three high-dive platforms. I had no premonition that I would need this information or I would have probably refused to get on the boat. But knowing that as I did, I figured I might just make it after all. I had jumped off a high-dive platform before. It was accurately named. It was damned high. Two or three times that was madness, and if I had climbed a ladder to get there I would have left Frederick Connors to drown. Damn him for living in Florida and not being able to swim.
The breeze felt warm as I dropped, and I made myself long and thin like a six-foot-one pencil and braced for impact.
Cruise Control Page 9
