Cooks Overboard

by Joanne Pence

  “You know,” she began as she stood up and pushed the umbrella back upright so that it shaded her once again.

  “Hmm?” He kept reading. He was getting close to the end. Maybe she shouldn’t bother him?

  She stretched out on the chaise longue once more. “Am I disturbing you?”

  “Not at all.” He kept reading. Obviously, he’d given her an honest answer.

  “Have you given any thought to what you’ll do after leaving the police force?”

  “Not yet. Something will turn up. Maybe I’ll join the merchant marines and ship out. I could learn to enjoy a life at sea.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  He didn’t say yes…or no. “If nothing else,” he added, “I could always apply for a private eye license.”

  “Hmm.” Somehow he didn’t seem like the Magnum, P.I. type. He was more NYPD Blue material.

  “I’ve been giving a lot of thought to my own career as well,” she said after a while. The umbrella creaked and inched downward. She looked up. It stopped moving.

  “Oh?” At least he didn’t say, “What career?”

  “I know a lot about cooking…” The umbrella creaked again.

  “Yes…”

  “I thought it was time to put that knowledge to good use. I should write a cookbook.” The umbrella suddenly tilted so far to one side she was completely in the sun.

  “That sounds like a good idea,” he said without looking up.

  “The problem is,” she said, getting up once more to lift the umbrella back into place, “what kind of cookbook? I mean, there are all kinds out there now. Ethnic cookbooks, special diet cookbooks, single-food cookbooks—you can even get books on ways to cook parsley if you look hard enough. I mean, who cares? It’s not anything to build a meal around.”

  He put down his book. “I guess not.”

  She twisted the umbrella, tugging on and tightening any screws and handles she could find, until she was sure it wouldn’t move again. “I need a different angle.” She flung herself back on the chaise longue. “Not food, not ethnic, not low calorie, low fat or any other diet-related book. Something new, something different—something that’ll make people throw down their money! But what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She frowned at him.

  “What about,” he began, racking his brain in the face of her unhappiness, “a cookbook for people who don’t cook, like me? A no-cooking cookbook?”

  She heaved a big sigh—both because she was glad to have fixed the umbrella and because of the weightiness of her career problems. “I doubt many people who don’t cook will want to buy a cookbook reminding them of that fact.”

  “You may be right,” he admitted.

  “I’m afraid so. But that’s not a bad approach—a style-of-cooking cookbook. Let’s see. Microwave ovens already have plenty of cookbooks. Same with crockpots. Toaster ovens? Not very interesting recipes. On the other hand, I haven’t seen many cookbooks on using a convection oven.”

  “I’ve never heard of a convection oven.”

  “They’re quite popular.”

  “If you say so.”

  The umbrella suddenly flopped so far over, it was almost upside down. Angie jumped to her feet. She was going to tie the blasted thing in place—if she could find something to tie it with. “Maybe that’s why there aren’t a lot of cookbooks about using them. Or maybe it’s easy to just adjust a regular recipe, so no one needs a special cookbook. What we need is something simple, but not too simple.”

  “Er…right. You’ll come up with a good idea, I’m sure. Give it time.” He picked up his book again.

  A small chest with some ropes and tools was fixed to a nearby bulkhead. She rummaged through it and found exactly what she needed—a roll of nylon line, almost like that used on a fishing pole. Nellie and Marvy Marv put down their magazines and watched her.

  “A new kind of oven,” she called to Paavo as she pulled the line from the chest. “A new kind of heat. You know, they’re doing all this stuff to save on fossil fuel, but what’s the best kind of heat to cook with? Gas. But gas is a depletable substance. That means we’ve got to find something else.”

  She tied one end of the line to the umbrella pole that kept bending in the wrong direction, pulled the umbrella upright, then anchored the line by tying it to a metal ring sunk in the deck. It wasn’t easy to see, so she’d have to find something colorful to tie on the line so that no one would trip over it. “A new source of heat…of energy.”

  “I don’t think gas will be depleted in any amount of time we need to worry about.” Paavo turned a page.

  “That might be true, but you’ve got to do more than think about the here and now.” She looked at the umbrella. Finally it seemed secure. “On the other hand, if you were a father…” Suddenly the thought of Paavo as a father to her children made her skin feel even hotter. He’d make a wonderful father, a wonderful husband. She forced her attention back to making sure the umbrella was angled properly. It seemed to be.

  “If you were a father,” she said, doing all she could to keep her voice steady, “you’d worry more about the future.”

  Ruby Cockburn stepped onto the deck. She was going to say something when she caught Angie’s last words. She snapped her jaw shut.

  “What?” Harold asked.

  She jabbed his ribs to silence him. “S-e-x,” she mouthed, then pointed at Angie and Paavo. He nodded and they moved closer.

  “If I were a father,” Paavo said, “my number one worry would be how to stop your father from killing me.”

  Angie could hear the smile in his voice. She could have pointed out that if certain legalities were observed, her father would have no objection at all to her carrying Paavo’s child…except for the fact that Sal Amalfi didn’t like him one little bit.

  But what was a family without a few members who couldn’t stand each other?

  “That’s probably true,” she said finally. All in all, maybe this wasn’t the time to get into a conversation with more ramifications to it than she was ready to deal with.

  She sat down once more and began rummaging through her large tote for something brightly colored to tie onto the hard-to-see fishing line. “Anyway, we need a new source of heat and energy. If one were out there, in the hands of the right people, I’d use it, and I’d be the first one to show others how to use it as well. I could revolutionize the world!”

  Just then, a loud “Yeeoooowwww!” sounded across the deck. The umbrella rocked wildly. Angie spun around, realizing someone must have tripped over the line she’d just rigged up.

  Dudley Livingstone. With his plump body and white clothes, and his arms waving helplessly, he looked like a tipsy Pillsbury Dough Boy. He caught himself against a table before he fell, which was good. If a man of his girth had landed on the deck, it wouldn’t have been a pretty sight—for him or the deck.

  But even more surprising than Livingstone’s tripping over the wire was the fact that, when Angie looked up to see what was going on, she discovered that not only had Dudley Livingstone been close enough to hear every word she’d been saying, but so had all the other passengers, and Julio as well.

  Why were all of them interested in what she had to say?

  She caught Paavo’s eye. Surely, this struck him as odd.

  The Hydra moved back into the shadows. She’d noticed the passengers moving closer as Angie Amalfi spoke, and had worked her way nearer as well. A new source of heat and energy? So she did know. Now the question was, had Sven been working with her from the start?

  She should have known better than to trust the Norwegian with something this important. She was going to have to remedy it fast. Damn! She couldn’t afford any more mistakes. Too much was riding on this plan—it had to work, and work well.

  If anyone else caused her trouble, they were dead.

  11

  “I need to make sure she does not try to pull a fast one on me.” Colonel Ortega filled his beer glass with another C
orona. He’d already drunk two six-packs during the afternoon, and now that dinner was over, he was starting on his third. If Eduardo Catalán had ever bothered to wonder where the man’s huge gut came from, one day with him would have answered the question.

  “She would not dare. Everyone knows your reputation.” Catalán had a demitasse of black espresso on the lamp table at his elbow. They sat in the living room watching the sun sink behind the coast range to the west, Catalán on an easy chair, the colonel slouched down on the sofa, his head on the backrest and his feet up on the coffee table.

  Ortega’s dark eyes searched his. “I guess you are right.”

  “You worry too much, my colonel,” Catalán said. “That is my job.”

  Ortega wouldn’t drop it. “She would not have the reputation for reliability if she went around stealing from the men who employed her,” he said, as much to himself as to Catalán.

  “Exactly,” Catalán said.

  “But then, how many times has she had her hands on something worth millions? Something that every government, every industry in the world would want to possess? If she recognizes the true value of what she has, she will not want to release it for a mere million dollars.” Ortega sat up straight, running his hands through his already messy hair. His clothes, in which he’d taken a siesta earlier that afternoon, were wrinkled and dirty.

  “Especially when she learns you do not have the million to give her,” Eduardo added.

  Ortega’s eyes narrowed. “Are you accusing me of being unfair, amigo?”

  “Not unfair,” Eduardo said, quick to correct himself. “Clever.’

  “Good.” The colonel drank half a glassful before he put the beer down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I am always fair. She just has to wait a short time while I get the money. And the money will be twenty times—twenty, hell—fifty times over what I owe her, once I sell the formula to OPEC or whoever in the hell wants to pay me the most for it. Who knows, I might even be a real nice guy and sell it to Shell Oil in the U.S.” He chuckled at the thought that he would soon actually possess something that every major world player in oil and gas would want to get their hands on.

  “OPEC?” Catalán said. “You are not thinking of going over the heads of your friends, are you? Of cutting them out of the deal?”

  Ortega shrugged. “What are friends for?” he said, then laughed. “Anyway, they would do the same to me if they had the opportunity.”

  Catalán nodded. “So you will work with whomever, and let the Hydra wait? Is that it?”

  “She can wait. Or she can die. It is all up to her.”

  “You are clever indeed, my colonel.”

  12

  At dinner that evening, Dudley Livingstone joined the other passengers and officers. He was seated on one side of Angie, Paavo on the other.

  “How are you feeling after your near miss on the deck, Mr. Livingstone?” she asked. “I’m sorry I caused you to trip.”

  “No harm done,” he said with a chuckle.

  The Neblers and Cockburns were busy arguing over the merits of bridge versus canasta, Captain Olafson was quietly drinking, and Paavo was talking to Mr. Johansen about navigation. She wondered if he was more serious than she’d suspected about a job at sea.

  “So tell me about your business, Mr. Livingstone,” she said, feeling bad about ignoring the man at her side while the meal of Caesar salad, roast pork, mashed potatoes, and zucchini was being served.

  He pressed a napkin to his lips, then folded his pudgy fingers before responding. “I’m basically an art dealer, Miss Amalfi. A dealer in South American antiquities. Right now, I’m escorting an Incan artifact back to Peru. It was found in Machu Picchu early in this century. It never should have been allowed to leave the country. It’s priceless, you see, and the Peruvian government is paying quite handsomely for its return. It’s in a container on this very ship. That’s why I’m here: to ensure it arrives safely. Once in Peru, I’ll see what I can find to take back to the States that can be legitimately sold to some very serious collectors or even museums there.”

  “So you buy and sell the things you find, for the most part?” she asked.

  “To tell the truth, I only sell what I must in order to eat.” He poured them each more white wine. “Mine is a very small, exclusive circle, Miss Amalfi,” he continued. “I doubt anyone outside of it has ever heard of me. It’s not as if many people want a ten-foot-tall Viracocha, the main Incan deity, sitting in their living room.”

  “No, I guess not,” Angie admitted. “So, I take it you travel by freighter with your artifacts?”

  “When time permits. I hate letting something priceless out of my hands for all the weeks it takes for shipment. Too much can happen to it.”

  “Oh?” Whatever could he do to save a container with a ten-foot statue even if something did happen to it? “Like what?”

  He was clearly taken aback by her question, and his response did not answer it. “Well, to be frank, I enjoy this kind of travel. One meets interesting people. Tell me about yourself. Miss Amalfi.”

  “There’s not much to tell. Currently, I’m a restaurant reviewer.”

  “Really? You must know a lot about cooking, I take it.”

  “A bit,” she said, trying to sound modest.

  “What kind?”

  “All kinds.” That, she had to admit, was less modest. “My specialties are French and Italian. I studied in Paris for a while.”

  “So you must know all kinds of tricks of the trade, such as how to enhance the flavor of fresh truffles, perhaps?”

  “Is this a test, Monsieur Livingstone?”

  “Oui, mademoiselle.” He looked so serious all of a sudden it made her uneasy.

  “Are you talking about adding a little Madeira to the truffles?” she asked, although she was quite sure of the answer. “If so, I’d suggest doing that only to canned truffles—or should I say truffes?—which are a mere shadow of the fresh ones dug up from early December through the end of January. Nothing should be done to change one iota of the flavor of fresh truffes. Do I pass your test, monsieur?”

  “With flying colors, mademoiselle. And now I must be off. Oh, one last thing. You didn’t tell me about Mr. Smith. What line of work is he in?”

  “Paavo is a San Francisco homicide inspector.”

  Suddenly, Angie noticed that the table grew absolutely silent. She turned from Livingstone, who had had all her attention. Quickly, the Neblars and Cockburns went back to their discussion. Had they been listening to her?

  Then she remembered how they had all gathered close as she told Paavo about her idea for a cookbook. She began to eye them suspiciously.

  “That’s most interesting, Miss Amalfi,” Livingstone said. She realized he was still talking about Paavo’s job. He gulped down the wine.

  Angie glanced at Paavo, but he continued talking with Johansen. He seemed to be the only one who hadn’t noticed what had just ensued about his profession.

  Just then, pecan pie was served for dessert, and once again, all conversation stopped.

  13

  After dinner, Angie and Paavo returned to their cabin. Angie went into the bedroom and changed to mauve silk lounging pajamas, purchased especially for this trip. When she returned to the sitting area, she found Paavo on the sofa with a book on his lap. He wasn’t reading it, though. He was staring off into space. She’d seen that brooding look before. He noticed her and gave a faint smile.

  She glanced at the one lamp on the end table beside the sofa.

  Well, no wonder he wasn’t reading. The lamp was so small, and the light bulb in it so weak, he’d get eyestrain in no time at all. Last night, sitting there and looking at a magazine, she had scarcely been able to see it. That, at least, was a problem she could solve.

  She picked up the telephone. “Who are you calling?” Paavo asked, jarred from his reverie.

  “You’ll see,” she said, giving him a smile and a wink. “Julio? This is Angie Amalfi. Do you have
any larger lamps on board? I’d like to replace the one by the couch. I want a taller lamp with a brighter, stronger bulb.” She waited. “Great. Thanks.”

  Paavo was surprised. “They actually have extra lamps on a freighter?”

  “He’ll probably swap this one with someone who doesn’t care. It’s no big deal.”

  Before long, there was a knock at the door. “Buenos días, señorita.” Breathless, as if he’d run the whole way, Julio stood in the doorway holding a lamp so tall it could have served as a portable lighthouse. Angie gaped at it.

  Julio gaped at her in her silk pajamas.

  Paavo got up from the sofa and announced a sudden desire to change his shoes. He fled into the bedroom. Coward, Angie thought.

  Julio entered the cabin, then handed Angie the big lamp and unplugged the little one on the end table. When he lifted it, one small button-like object fell off the base.

  “What in the world?” Angie pointed at the floor. “The lamp is falling apart.”

  “What?” Julio stepped to the side, and she heard a crunch.

  “Watch out!” she said, too late.

  “I’m sorry,” he cried. “Forgive me, señorita.” He dropped to the ground and started picking up the tiny pieces. “I didn’t mean to break your whatever-it-is. I will replace it.”

  “It isn’t mine. It’s part of the lamp.”

  “I don’t think so.” He put the pieces in his pocket. “But it was not yours. That is good.” Leaving the small lamp on the floor, he took the tall one from Angie, put it on the table, plugged it in, then switched it on. It didn’t light. He switched light bulbs with the small lamp, and it still wouldn’t light.

  “What is wrong? There is…nada.” He took off the bulb and studied the socket. Before Angie could say anything, he stuck his finger in the socket to prod it. Then, with a yelp, he jerked it out.