by Jane Heller
“No cruise ships,” he acknowledged with a weak smile before proceeding with the story. I could tell by the way he closed his eyes, then inhaled and exhaled deeply that he was preparing himself for the hard part, the bad part. “Jillian and I were both experienced sailors so we took the boat all the way out to Anegada, the so-called ‘shipwreck island,’” he said, struggling a bit. “The weather was clear when we left the harbor, and we had a brisk sail over to the island.” He stopped again, working his jaw muscles. “Later that afternoon, while I was down below checking the charts and Jillian was at the helm, a sudden, violent squall struck. The boat was knocked down, and before Jillian could react, the mast hit the water.”
“The boat capsized?”
“No. It was slammed onto its side at about a ninety-degree angle.”
“My God. You must have been terrified.”
“There wasn’t time to be terrified. As I was thrown across the cabin, against the galley counter, I heard Jillian scream. I charged through the hatch, into the cockpit, and she was gone.”
“Gone? What do you mean ‘gone’?” My own heart was racing as I tried to imagine the scene.
“She’d been swept overboard, Slim.” The words came slowly, as if he could barely get them out, as if each one triggered a numbing pain that could never be eased. I’d experienced my share of psychic pain, but I’d never endured a trauma like the one Simon was describing.
“If only she’d been wearing a harness,” he mumbled, shaking his head. I didn’t know what a harness was in sailors’ parlance, but I assumed it was meant to keep a boat’s occupants hitched to the boat.
“But surely she was a good swimmer,” I said, figuring Jillian was good at everything.
“We were in the middle of a bad storm,” he said impatiently. “The swells were over ten feet high. Swimming didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Sorry.”
“After the boat had righted itself, I searched the waters for Jillian, trying not to panic. It seemed like forever until I finally spotted her. She was fighting frantically to stay afloat. I was relieved to see she was alive, but I knew that if I had a prayer of moving close to her, I had to get the boat under control and turn it around. With the wind and rain beating the shit out of my body, I dropped the sails, which had been flapping around like crazy. Then I started the engine, completely forgetting to secure the jib sheets and allowing them to get tangled in the propeller. Do you understand what I’m saying, Elaine?”
“Not exactly.”
“I’m saying that in a single second, the boat had no sails and no engine. It was dead in the water, totally disabled.”
“Disabled,” I nodded, spellbound.
“I kept looking for Jillian, would spot her off in the distance, and then lose her again. The surging waves took her one way and me and the boat another, and before I knew it, she and I were half a mile apart. I had never known such powerlessness. It was like I was living one of those nightmares where you can’t get where you have to go no matter what you do.”
I nodded again, having had such dreams.
“I scrambled down below and radioed for help,” Simon pressed on, “knowing damn well that even if the charter company did send a rescue boat, it would come too late for Jillian. Then I went back up on deck yet again, searching for her, becoming elated when I finally located her. But that was to be my very last glimpse of her. I actually had to stand there and watch as Jillian Payntor, my wife in every way but a marriage license, got smaller and smaller and smaller until I couldn’t see her anymore.”
Simon had been tearing up as the story moved to its inevitable conclusion, but now he was crying openly, quietly, removing his glasses to wipe his eyes with his hands. I didn’t know what to do, I really didn’t. Part of me wanted to reach out and encircle him in my arms, rock him, console him, tell him everything was all right because I was here now and I would love him just as much as Jillian had. The other part of me wanted to run back to my cabin, afraid, not for the first time, that I might be in the presence of a pathological liar as well as a hit man, a sociopath who simply made up stories—the more melodramatic, the better—because he couldn’t help himself.
“I kept shouting to her, begging her not to leave me,” Simon said, gulping back tears. “I shouldn’t have panicked and started the engine before securing the sails. I shouldn’t have let that propeller get jammed. I shouldn’t have let either of us go out on a boat we weren’t familiar with. Shouldn’t have. Shouldn’t have. I should have saved her, but I just couldn’t pull it off. I failed, do you understand that? I was on my goddamn honeymoon and I let the love of my life drown.”
Well, that did it, of course. Nobody was that good an actor; Robert De Niro couldn’t have been more convincing.
I fell apart right there in that hallway, pulling Simon to me and holding him tightly, tenderly. “It wasn’t your fault,” I said, choking back my own sobs as I stroked his dark hair, patted his back. It was bad enough to feel abandoned by the person you loved most in the world, I knew. But to believe that you let the person die, that you could have saved their life and preserved your own happiness, was so torturous I couldn’t fathom it. “There wasn’t anything you could do,” I said softly. “I know you must miss Jillian terribly, but she died in an accident. A tragic accident. You weren’t to blame. You must know that.”
“I should have been able to save her,” he said, shaking his head. “It was my responsibility.”
Why was it his responsibility? I wanted to ask. Because he was the man and men were raised to believe it was their job to save women? He’d said that Jillian was an experienced sailor, not to mention an accomplished professional woman. She must have seen the squall coming and should have warned him about it. Why was it his fault that she died?
I pulled a packet of tissues out of my purse. I handed Simon a bunch of them and kept a few for myself. We cried together for several minutes. People walking in the hall slowed down as they went by us, like rubberneckers on a highway. At one point, a woman whispered to her husband, “They probably came in second in tonight’s Big Bucks Bingo.”
That broke the sadness and the strain, and Simon and I actually laughed.
“What is it that they sing in those cruise commercials?” he asked wryly. “Ain’t we got fun?”
I nodded and squeezed his hand.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you who I was,” he said after a long silence. “I had every intention of telling you. Last night.”
“I believe you,” I said. And I did. Almost.
“That’s a relief,” he said wearily. “Now. Maybe you can tell me something.”
“Sure. What?”
“Why were you going on last night about your ex-husband and me plotting to kill you?”
I was so ashamed. “Oh, that,” I said casually. “It must have been the medication.”
“Medication?”
“Yes. I’d gotten a tiny case of sun poisoning, so I took an antihistamine pill yesterday, even though it warns you on the package that one of the active ingredients can make some people delusional.” And I’d had the nerve to accuse Simon of lying! “Just forget all that. I didn’t know what I was talking about.” I wasn’t ready to tell him about the hit man and the ex-wife. Not until I was absolutely, positively, one hundred percent sure he wasn’t involved.
“Look, what do you say we call it a night?” He extended his hand and helped me up off the floor. “I haven’t talked about myself like that in a long time. I’m kind of worn out.”
“I understand,” I said, pretty worn out myself.
We walked to the elevator and waited for it to come and take us to our staterooms. Before it arrived, Simon looked at me, his expression so poignant it nearly broke my heart. He cupped my chin in his hand, studied my face, and said, “May I make a suggestion?”
“Sure.”
“I say we each get a good night’s sleep and start fresh in the morning. The ship will be at sea tomorrow, before stopping
in Nassau on Saturday afternoon. Why don’t we go for our morning run, spend the day together, and pick up where we left off? I’d really like that, Slim. You?”
“Well, I wouldn’t mind a night to let everything you’ve told me about yourself sink in,” I said, cursing myself the minute I realized I’d said “sink.”
“You seemed to like me when I was an insurance agent,” he smiled. “Do you have anything against travel writers?”
“Only that they get to go to the best places for free while the rest of us have to pay through the nose,” I said. “But I’ll try to keep my resentment in check.”
“I appreciate that.”
The elevator came. Simon held my elbow and walked me inside. We each pressed the buttons for our respective decks. When we arrived at his, he leaned over, kissed me on the cheek, and said goodnight.
“’Night,” I said, then rode up one more floor to my deck. The moment the elevator doors parted, I took off down the hall to my stateroom. I had a phone call to make. An urgent phone call that would confirm once and for all whether Simon Purdys was who he said he was.
I hadn’t had much success in the past reaching Harold Teitlebaum, my boss at Pearson & Strulley. But I was determined to make contact with him this time—not to bawl him out about promoting Leah, but to ask him about Simon. Harold was a veteran of the public relations game; there wasn’t a single media person he hadn’t rubbed shoulders with. If Simon Purdys wrote for Away from It All magazine, Harold would not only know him, he’d know everything about him except his mother’s maiden name—and maybe he’d know that too.
I gave the operator my credit card number for the ship-to-shore call, then Harold’s home telephone number, and waited, crossing my fingers he’d be home. After several seconds he answered.
“Harold!” I said excitedly.
“I don’t want to hear about it, Elaine,” he said, probably anticipating a harangue about Leah. Harold was used to my harangues, which was probably why he had avoided my calls up to now. “I’ve got enough to deal with here. All hell has broken loose this week.”
“I know. I know. But I’m not calling about Leah. At least, not tonight.”
“What is it then? You’ve fallen in love with some shipboard Casanova and you’re calling to tell me you’re quitting your job and running off with him to Antigua?”
“The Princess Charming doesn’t stop in Antigua.” Well, he was right about the first part. “Actually, I’m calling to ask if you’re familiar with any of the people who write for Away from It All magazine.”
“Elaine. You know better than to ask me that. There isn’t a national magazine writer I’m not familiar with.”
“Of course, Harold. You’re the best. But I was wondering if you knew this particular writer.”
“Who?”
“Simon Purdys.”
I held my breath while I waited for Harold to respond.
“Sure. The tall one with the dark hair. The one whose fiancée, the lawyer, died in a sailing accident.”
I started laughing. It was an odd reaction, I admit, given that there was nothing the least bit funny about Jillian’s death. I was just releasing my anxiety, all my pent-up fears about Simon. And I was laughing because I was happy, I realized. The man I’d fallen in love with wasn’t a hit man after all.
“Elaine? You all right?” Harold asked as I continued to laugh—at ten dollars a minute.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Finally.”
“Listen, about the Leah thing, she was pushing for a promotion and the kid knows what she’s doing, thanks to you, so I figured what the—”
“I’m fine,” I repeated. “About Leah, about the promotion, about everything.”
“I’m not so sure. You don’t sound like yourself,” he said. “You sound relaxed. For you.”
“I am relaxed, Harold. Especially after speaking to you.” I smiled. “See you back in the office next week.”
I hung up, wrapped my arms around myself, and danced around the cabin, feeling utterly liberated. Simon hadn’t lied to me. He was honest and good and true.
Of course, there was still the matter of the man on the ship who wasn’t honest and good and true—the real hit man—but I wasn’t going to worry about him anymore.
For the first time since we’d left Miami, I anticipated getting a good night’s sleep.
I took off my dress and was hanging it in the closet when I remembered the envelope that had been slipped under Jackie’s stateroom door while she, Pat, and I were having dinner. I had stuffed it in the back pocket of the dress, so I wouldn’t have to tell my friends what was going on between Simon and me. But now that everything was all right between us, now that he wasn’t a murderer and I wasn’t his target, I whipped it out of the pocket and tossed it in the garbage.
Boy, Simon must have been really desperate to reach me by the time he wrote that one, I giggled as I continued to undress. I’ll bet he poured out his heart to me, told me how much he cared for me, said something really mushy and wonderful.
The more I thought about the note, the more curious about it I became. I fished the envelope out of the garbage, tore it open, unfolded the piece of Princess Charming stationery, and began to read.
The first thing I noticed was that the handwriting on this note was dramatically different from the earlier ones Simon had barraged me with.
Sam was a lefty, and his writing had that lefty slant, the sort of unruly scrawl you can barely decipher. But whoever wrote the note I now held in my hand had a very neat, legible script, each letter arched and graceful, particularly the capital T’s, which were finished off with a little curlicue. No, this was the work of a calligrapher—or at the very least, someone with beautiful penmanship. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Simon wasn’t its author.
The second thing that struck me about the note was that it was a nursery rhyme—or should I say, a very twisted spin on a nursery rhyme. It read:
Three Blonde Mice.
Three Blonde Mice.
See how they run.
See how they run.
They took a cruise like many an ex-wife,
Trying their best to escape from strife.
But one of them’s going to lose her life.
Poor Blond Mice.
Day Six: Friday, February 15
19
“I need to talk to you,” I told Simon when he showed up at seven-thirty for our run on the Promenade Deck.
“So we’re not mad at me anymore? We’re making fun of me now?” he asked with a self-deprecating laugh.
“Making fun of you?”
“Of all those messages I had the steward slip under your door yesterday. I think I wrote ‘I need to talk to you’ on every single one of them.”
“This has nothing to do with those messages,” I said gravely. “It’s this message I want to talk to you about.”
I pulled the gruesome nursery rhyme out of the pocket of my running shorts and handed it to Simon.
He’d only read the first line when he looked up at me. “Three Blonde Mice? Isn’t that the nickname you and Pat and Jackie call yourselves?”
“Yup. Read on.”
He did. When he got to the “One of them’s going to lose her life” part, he looked up again. “Obviously, someone on the ship has a bizarre sense of humor. Who wrote this?”
“I don’t know, Simon, but whoever he is, he was hired by my ex-husband and he’s going to kill me before the ship is back in Miami.”
“Slim.” He rolled his eyes, reminding me of Jackie whenever she thought I was being a Drama Queen. “You’ve got to stop taking those antihistamines.”
“I’m not taking antihistamines. I just made all that up because I didn’t want to tell you the truth.”
“About what?”
“That I thought you were a hit man and Eric hired you to murder me.”
He stared at me. For much too long. I prayed he wasn’t rethinking his affection for me.
“Look, I
really need to sit down with you and explain everything,” I said as calmly as I could manage. “Could we skip the run this morning? Please?”
He shrugged. “Your stateroom or mine?”
“Yours. The hit man is probably hiding in mine.”
“Okay. Here’s the story. From the top,” I said as soon as we got to Simon’s cabin. He sat on the bed. I paced. Without realizing it, I also began picking up various articles of his clothing that were lying on the floor.
“I wasn’t expecting company,” he apologized, clearly amused by my compulsiveness as he watched me fold a T-shirt here, smooth out a pair of pants there. “But you know, Slim, the cruise lines are always looking for cabin stewards. Maybe you should apply for the job.”
“Maybe I should. Now do you want to hear the story or not?”
“I want to hear the story.”
“All right. On the second night of the cruise, at about ten o’clock, I placed a ship-to-shore call from the phone in my stateroom. To Harold Teitlebaum, my boss at Pearson & Strulley.”
“Because you were pissed off that he promoted your assistant without discussing it with you first?”
“You have quite a memory.”
“You say things that are hard to forget. Or maybe it’s the way you say them.”
“Thank you.” I assumed it was a compliment. “Anyhow, there was a storm that night, as you may also remember.”
“I do. The ship was really pitching and rolling.”
“Right. The television in my room wasn’t working and I wondered if the phone would go out too. But I decided I’d take my chances and try to reach Harold. It turned out that the phone lines were crossed and I ended up overhearing a ship-to-shore conversation between two complete strangers. At least, I thought they were.”
“You knew them?”
“I’ll get to that in a second. At first, all I could make out was that they were men. Their voices were distorted because of the lousy connection—one of the voices kept breaking up, in fact. But the more they talked, the more obvious it was that the man on the ship had been hired by the man on shore to murder the man on the shore’s ex-wife, a passenger on the ship.”
