1 Shore Excursion

by Marie Moore

  “Weak, Sidney, weak. Think I’m buying that? Not even if Santa Claus says so. Empress would have my job if they found out. They just released Bostick’s cabin today and it stays locked until it can be cleaned out and his stuff packed up. I can’t let anyone in there.”

  “Well, they won’t find out you did unless you tell them, Vinny, because I sure won’t.”

  “Sorry, Sidney, I can’t do that. Not even for you. I couldn’t even do that for the President.”

  I turned to leave, then realized that Vinny was still standing there with an expectant look on his face.

  The light bulb went off.

  “Vinny, what if President Abraham Lincoln said to give it to me?”

  “No, ma’am. Not for President Lincoln. Not even for President Andrew Jackson. But President Grant, now, old Grant might be a different story. He’s powerful, Grant is. He swings a lot of weight. Old Grant’s an influential man.”

  I grimaced, considering my dwindling bank account.

  Vinny was driving a hard bargain, but I really wanted that key and the manifest.

  “Okay, Vinny. An envelope will be left with Satish for you at the bar in the Moonbeam Room. By the end of your shift, say about six-thirty. Okay?”

  “Okay, Sidney, and them items you was interested in will be under your cabin door after first seating. Pleasure doing business with you, but keep it zipped, understand?”

  My new plan of action was to stop drifting along, hoping that everything would be all right, and make some careful but concrete moves toward finding the killer. I needed real information and the facts I knew were pretty thin.

  Sometime during the night I had realized that if at all possible I must search Mr. Bostick’s cabin for Ruth’s bag and any other clues on the off chance that Empress hadn’t already had it sanitized. The key would make that possible.

  We had missed our chance to check out Ruth’s cabin after she was found. We were so shocked and stunned by her death that it didn’t occur to us until a day or two later to attempt a search. By then, it had already been cleaned and refitted.

  The purser had sealed Mr. Bostick’s cabin when his death was discovered and until the official seals were removed, no one could enter it. The hour after dinner, during the show, would be our first opportunity for a quick look.

  I bought the copy of the manifest to check out exactly who was on this ship. Somewhere in the hundreds of names there might be a clue, some connection to the High Steppers. It was a long shot, for sure, with all those names, but it was all I could think to do, and I might get lucky. I not only wanted to try and identify the supposedly murderous Chilean deckhand and the dancer, but any other “persons of interest” as well. One of the bartenders told that me that the deckhand was a guy named Raoul, from Santiago, and that the dancer’s name was Esmeralda.

  I had not brought my laptop on the cruise, but there are computers for passenger use in an annex off the ship’s library, and if I found any interesting names and addresses, I could do a search that might yield a hit. Or maybe an Internet café in Stockholm would be more private, and therefore safer. I would have to think about that one, but first, I needed the manifest.

  The computer rooms on ships are always filled with seniors. They love writing letters on the Internet, mostly complaining about stuff to their congressmen, I think. Or maybe telling the President how to run the country. They like to share their thoughts out loud with anyone available to listen, too, so the computer room is never really private.

  Yes, it was time for some digging, and as soon as possible.

  I didn’t know who all the players were in this deadly game that was unfolding, or how they all fit together. But some of picture was becoming clearer.

  In the wee hours of the night, I had finally realized the identity of the mysterious deckhand who on that first night out of Harwich had bumped into me on the rainy deck and warned me of danger. I knew him by sight, I just didn’t know his name.

  I had last seen him at Tivoli, taking one final ride on a carousel.

  * * *

  Brooke was sipping from a tall frosted glass of Pellegrino with a thin slice of lemon when I finally found her at a quiet corner table in the Crystal Dining Room. It was fairly late, almost 1:30, and most of the herd had already finished lunch and gone to bingo.

  “Hi,” I said, sliding into my chair. “Hope you haven’t been waiting long.”

  “Oh, no,” she replied, “I just got here myself. I never lunch early, you know. I’ve ordered the Brown Derby Cobb Salad, and here is Alberto to take your order.”

  Alberto approached the table and handed me a menu. I chose iced tea with lemon and mint, and the European Toast—a delicious sandwich of cheese, tomatoes and olive on a crunchy toasted bread—served with a side salad of arugula, bibb lettuce, pears, and walnuts.

  Moheet, the busboy, brought my tea.

  Brooke laughed. “Do Southern women have iced tea in their veins?” she said. “Well, Sidney, where’s Jay? Did you find him?”

  “Forget Jay, Brooke. Jay has completely lost his mind. He’s gone as crazy as a shot rat, and there’s really no hope for him this time until we can get him back to New York and into therapy.

  “We can’t count on him for any help whatsoever,” I continued, buttering a roll, “He’s out of it. Trust me on that. But what about you, Brooke? Did you find out anything useful?”

  “Yes,” she said, smiling. “Yes, I did. First I went to the perfume seminar. That was amusing, but I didn’t learn anything new. ”

  She ticked off her results on her long, slender, fingers. “Then I played bridge for a while with Marjorie Levy and Chet and Fred Johnson. Still nothing. But then I went to the beauty salon for a manicure, and Sylvia Klein was there having her roots done. She didn’t notice my arrival. She was too intent on telling Monique, the hairdresser, and anyone else who cared to listen, her plans for leaving Abe and the ship in Stockholm.”

  “What?” I said, leaning forward, “Leaving the ship? No kidding? Did she say why?”

  “Oh, yes,” Brooke nodded, “At length, but I couldn’t hear all of it because Gladys Murphy, who was having a shampoo and set, started talking just then in a loud voice about the shopping in Stockholm, so I didn’t get all of Sylvia’s plans. Sylvia had obviously been talking for some time before I came in, too, mostly about how Abe had mistreated her. But I heard enough, I think.”

  “Well, out with it, what did she say?”

  Alberto arrived at that moment with our lunch, and Brooke’s blue eyes sparkled with delight at the enforced delay in her narrative. She knew how eager I was for her answer.

  When Alberto had finally finished fiddling around with the table and departed for the kitchen, Brooke continued, “Sylvia said, ‘I’m thinking about leaving old Abe when we get to Stockholm, so I want the works, Monique, while he’s still paying for it.’

  “Then Monique said, ‘Leaving him, how will you leave this bad man? Where will you go? What will you do?’

  “Sylvia replied, ‘I’ve got ways, and I’ve got friends, and I’ve just about got it worked out, too. Abe and his pals can kiss my ass. Last night was the coop de grease’—I think she meant coup de grâce. ‘I’m sick to death of the whole thing and Abe, too, but before I leave this ship, you better believe I’m headed straight to the boutique to see how much more damage I can do to his charge account.’

  “ ‘What if he tries to stop you,’ Monique said, ‘what if he won’t let you go?’

  “Sylvia laughed and said that he better not try to stop her, that she knew too much. ‘He better keep me happy and he knows it, I’ve got insurance’ she said. There was more, but I couldn’t hear the rest because of Gladys and the hairdryer.”

  Brooke laughed, “Perhaps you could ask Sylvia about her plans tonight at dinner, in your official capacity, Sidney. After all, you need to know if a member of your group is leaving early, don’t you?”

  “Yes, certainly,” I said, “but what about Abe? Do you think from what
you heard that he is leaving too?”

  “I don’t know. That dreadful Murphy woman’s voice simply drowned out everything else that Sylvia said, almost as if she meant to; but of course, Gladys was just being her usual charming self. Anyway, by the time Gladys finally stopped talking, my manicure was finished and Sylvia was under the dryer, so I left.”

  Alberto appeared with coffee and the dessert menus. He also brought a thick, white envelope, embossed with the ship’s insignia.

  I stared at it, recognizing the handwriting.

  “Well, aren’t you going to open it?” Brooke said.

  I broke the seal and read the short note inside, scrawled in slashes of bold, black ink.

  Dear Miss Marsh,

  Your presence is requested immediately on the bridge.

  —Stephanos Vargos

  Master, m/s Rapture of the Deep.

  “It seems I’m being summoned,” I said, finishing my coffee and pushing back my chair.

  I took a deep breath.

  “This should be interesting.”

  20

  I climbed the steps to Bridge Deck and knocked on the door marked “Authorized Personnel Only.”

  The first officer opened the door, looked out, and motioned for me to enter. “Good afternoon, Miss Marsh. Please come in. Captain Vargos is expecting you.”

  If you’ve never been on the bridge of a modern cruise ship, you may have some romantic notions about the ship’s wheel and compasses and astrolabes and such. If so, you’ve seen too many late movies.

  I guess they can still work all that stuff, but the reality is that computers and sonar and GPS and other mysterious electronics now rule the waves.

  Before 9/11, ships used to all offer bridge tours on days at sea, and the passengers really enjoyed them, but in our new age of heightened security, the bridge is mostly off limits now to passengers. Many lines have also stopped galley tours and skeet shooting.

  Everything about the Rapture’s bridge looked efficient, high-tech and complicated. The sight of all those precision instruments and sonar screens and stuff immediately reminded me that the task of piloting this monster safely across a deep and dangerous ocean was a difficult and serious business indeed.

  These modern behemoths are so slick and so big that you tend to forget that underneath you is a whole lotta water. When the wind begins to rise and the whitecaps appear—as they had around dawn—you start to think about that. Or at least some of us do. For others, it takes a full gale before their attention is drawn away from the meals and the shows.

  The main room of the Rapture’s bridge reminded me of the cockpit of an airplane, only much, much larger. The front wall was made almost entirely of thick, tinted glass, fronting a room filled with electronic instruments and radar, sonar and computer screens. Other rooms, adjacent to the main one, included the captain’s office and private quarters.

  First Officer Avranos escorted me to the captain’s office and knocked on the door.

  “Enter,” the captain’s deep voice answered.

  “Ah, Sidney,” he said, rising from behind a handsome mahogany desk, “it is good to see you again, and it is good of you to come so promptly. Please have a seat. May I offer you some refreshment? No?”

  He nodded to the officer. “Then that will be all, Avranos. Please close the door on your way out and see that we are not interrupted.”

  Steady, Sidney, I told myself, think before you speak this time.

  He sat once again in his fine leather chair behind his massive desk, watching me with those dark blue eyes. He wore a white shirt and pants and a dark pullover sweater with epaulets gleaming on the shoulders.

  I sat, too, squirming a bit under his gaze as I took in my surroundings.

  The office was handsome, with highly polished mahogany furniture and paneling, gleaming brass fixtures, and a midnight blue carpet. There were few personal items. His master’s license, framed, and some nautical engravings were hung on the walls along with stylized charts of the constellations in black ink on thick white paper. An expensive brass telescope, mounted on a tripod, stood in the corner. No photographs of people, no memorabilia.

  Everything was very neat, painfully precise.

  He leaned back, elbows on the arms of the chair, fingers tented, staring at me in silence. His dark hair was beginning to gray at the temples and, though he was clean-shaven, a shadow of beard darkened the firm line of his jaw.

  His stare was intent, unnerving.

  “You wanted to see me, Captain Vargos,” I said finally, “and here I am. In your note, you indicated that it was urgent, so I came immediately.”

  He rose and came around to the front of the desk, where he stood before me and leaned against the polished wood. He folded his arms and again did nothing but stare.

  We got off to a bad start, I thought, wishing that things had worked out differently between us.

  “Yes, indeed, it is extremely urgent,” he said. “I don’t know quite how to approach you about this, Sidney. I’m not sure how to proceed. You are so defensive, so stubborn, so elusive. I asked you here today to warn you for the last time to stop meddling in matters that do not concern you. If you do not heed these warnings, there may be grave consequences. I hope that this time you will accept my advice in the spirit in which it is offered. My only concern is for your safety and that of the other passengers.”

  “Yes, Captain, I appreciate that, and I’m sorry that.”

  “Please, Sidney, let me finish.”

  “But, Captain ...”

  He raised his hand, cutting me off.

  “I was informed this morning, Sidney, that you are again asking questions, potentially dangerous questions, of the hotel staff and others about the identities of the missing dancer and the deceased crewman. I am not suggesting at this point—nor do I have reason to believe—that either of them met with foul play, but if they did, then your questions could certainly put you in jeopardy. I do not know who the woman is, or where she is, and I do not believe that anyone on my staff does either. As for the crewman, his background is being investigated.”

  “But, Captain ...” I said again.

  He shook his head.

  “The circumstances surrounding this man and woman are not your affair, Sidney, nor are they the business of your group. As I said, these matters are being thoroughly investigated; you have my word on that. You are not a trained investigator, or an officer of the law, and you certainly have no authority to ask such questions.”

  He leaned forward, watching me intently. “I must insist that you stop your so-called investigation immediately. I have cautioned you before, and you have foolishly ignored my warnings. I am telling you now, I am ordering you, to cease this activity at once. If you do not, as master of this vessel, for your own safety, I will have you confined to quarters.”

  “What? What did you say? Confined to quarters?” I glared up at him defiantly. “I don’t think so, Captain Vargos. I don’t work for you. I am not an employee of this ship, or Empress Line, and all I have done is to pose a few simple questions in hopes of unraveling a dreadful mystery that has resulted in the murder of two innocent people, people charged to my care—murders that you and this line will barely acknowledge, let alone try to solve.”

  He reached down and grabbed me by my arms, pulling me out of the chair. He was furious, and I thought that he was going to shake me.

  “Don’t you understand what I am trying to say, you silly girl? Don’t you know what you are doing? You must listen to me. I am not, not, working against you or your group or anyone else. I am on your side. I am your captain. Your safety is my responsibility, my prime concern. I have been protecting you all along, and believe me, protecting you is not easy, with all of your attempts at detective work.”

  His tight grip on my arms loosened, and the hard glare in his eyes softened. “I care about what happens to you, Sidney Marsh. I care very much, no matter what you think.” His eyes darkened, studying mine. “But believe me, I c
ertainly can confine you to quarters, and if you don’t stop this immediately, I will.”

  I pulled free of his grasp and took a giant step backward, toward the door. “Okay, Captain Vargos, okay. I’ve got it. I hear you. Thank you for your concern. Aye, aye sir. I certainly appreciate your position, and from now on, I will be sure to obey your orders.”

  I jerked open the door, stepped through it, and slammed it behind me, ignoring the curious glances of the ship’s officers.

  Like hell I will, I said to myself as I bolted down the stairs.

  * * *

  When I opened the door to my cabin, there was Jay, sprawled out on his old bed, propped up on his pillow and mine, reading the passenger/crew manifest that I had bought from Vinny.

  “How in the world did you get this?” he said. “This is the real deal, isn’t it?”

  “Yes it is,” I said, snatching it out of his hands, “and never mind how I got it. What are you doing here?”

  I looked at the bags piled in the corner.

  “Is that your stuff? I thought you moved out. I thought you were living in the Neptune Suite.”

  He smiled. “I guess I do have a conscience after all, Sidney, because it was bothering me. We’ve been pals for a long time, lady, and you mean more to me than the Neptune Suite. And maybe I discovered that somewhere I do have a little bit of integrity after all. But, hey, I’m back. Aren’t you glad?”

  Jay is impossible, of course, but yes, I was glad.

  * * *

  In the shower, I thought everything out and decided that now that Jay and I were a team again, it was time for us to really step up the action before Vargos clamped down.

  Just why he would clamp down at this particular time was a mystery. Was he somehow involved in the crime? Nah. I didn’t think so, I couldn’t see it. But you never know. Was he just a company man, marching to the direct orders of Empress to put a lid on it? That seemed more likely. Maybe he really cared about my safety. That would be nice. I savored the thought.