Death Sets Sail_A Mystery

by Dale E. Manolakas

  I inched in where Helga was perched statuesquely on a high leather stool with her drained Martini glass harboring a lonely tooth picked olive. Before her on the green felt were colorful chips piled high. Meticulously arranged in a semi-circle were a short stack of red five-dollar chips, one tall stack of green twenty-five dollar chips, and three midsized stacks of black one hundred dollar chips. She had a queen of diamonds and a card face down. She slid ten black chips, a thousand dollars, into the circle.

  Brent was next to her with a full Martini glass sans olive and four green chips, a hundred dollars, before him. He had just been dealt a king of spades and a card face down. He slid his last chips into the circle.

  The dealer stood with sixteen showing in the cards before him. At sixteen, he would deal himself another card. All the players at the table knew this was the house rule, but, of course, didn’t know what the card would be. Each had to decide whether to go for twenty-one or stay and hope the dealer got a high card sending him over twenty-one and out. It was, after all, a game of chance.

  The dealer summarily disposed of the players in order, leading up to Brent and Helga. One stayed, not taking any risks. One with a soft hand at eleven took a hit from the shoe, the box where the shuffled cards are placed. He got a four—giving him fifteen. He hit at fifteen, got a ten point face card, and lost with twenty-five. The other two players stayed. They hoped for a high card when the dealer took his hit with his sixteen points.

  It was finally Helga’s turn. Her cards left her in a similar conundrum.

  “Eighteen. I feel lucky.” Helga scratched the table for another.

  “Are you nuts?” Brent blurted. “You have eighteen and that’s a thousand dollars!”

  “It’s your allowance, though. Remember?” Helga laughed as she looked at her new card.

  It wasn’t hard. The dealer hit her with a two.

  “Twenty . . . I’ll stay.” Helga turned to Brent with her faded red lips. “Coward.”

  Brent glared at her.

  “Sir,” The dealer pushed Brent.

  Brent turned over his card. “Twelve? Damn it!”

  “Coward?” Helga again goaded Brent.

  Twelve was low enough to take a gamble. The dealer could be lucky. The house always was. That’s why they are in business. They win.

  “What’ll it be?” The dealer asked.

  “Yeah, what’ll it be, Mister Big Mouth!” Helga smirked.

  Brent gave Helga a dirty look and then he scratched the table for a hit.

  A ten came from the shoe—twenty-two. Brent was out. He sat quietly as the dealer took his cards, his chips, and his pride with them.

  The dealer hit at his sixteen and got an eight. At twenty-four, he was over and paid out the remaining players, including Helga. The dealer added to Helga’s castle of chips.

  Brent got up to leave. No chips meant no money and no seat at a black jack table.

  “Stay!” Helga commanded.

  Helga shoved her tall stack of green chips over to Brent. He obediently sat back down, as would any well-trained dog.

  When Brent reached for the stack of green chips, Helga laughed and grabbed them back with both hands.

  Brent seized her forearms. She stopped laughing. Helga winced with pain. She tried to pull her arms away but couldn’t. Brent stood up and leaned his face into hers.

  “Never again,” Brent spit at her.

  “Let go, you ass!” Helga screamed, still clenching the chips despite the pain.

  The dealer nodded at the uniformed security man in the pit.

  Brent looked at the dealer and then at the security man. His face was red, contorted, and angry. I had never seen him out of control.

  Brent threw Helga’s arms down. They hit the edge of the table and the green chips scattered on the carpet.

  Brent’s feet crunched on them as he charged out, not noticing me.

  He headed to the bar.

  Helga watched Brent with eyes of flashing anger. She rubbed her forearms. Security picked up the scattered chips. She looked around at the gawkers and quickly composed herself. When she turned again to the blackjack table, all her fellow players had left.

  Helga sat alone. Her rigid body vacuum-packed in her black sequined dress was no longer statuesque. Instead, it looked lonely and stiff against the flowing, chiming, and colorful background of the casino.

  The dealer dealt. He looked up at Helga to play her hand, but otherwise avoided any interaction.

  ⌘

  Chapter 25

  Roiling and Romancing

  I went to the bar. I was as upset as I had been at dinner by Helga’s cruelty. Brent was trapped, at least in his own mind, and she knew it. Their lives were condemned, condemned by each other to each other.

  I stopped at the bar entrance. It was crowded, even with some of my fellow second seating passengers still at dinner. Its popularity had spread. It would thin out when some of the bar-goers, who were waiting for the main stage show, left.

  At the far side of the bar, heavy rain pelted the thick glass, mingling with the ocean spray from the high waves. Beyond was the white-capped sea reflected in the ship’s lights and the darkness beyond. I suddenly realized the profound aloneness of the Queen Anne in the pitch black of the stormy Atlantic. We had hit bad weather. The ship felt it and, therefore, we did, too.

  I spotted Curtis settling with his financial clients at a large table.

  I went to sit at the bar and wait for him, as he had for me.

  I sat next to Brent, partially out of sympathy but also out of curiosity.

  “Hi, there.”

  “Oh, Veronica!” Brent had his calm public face back after his blackjack scene. “How’s it going? Bearing up? Or do you get queasy like Helga?”

  “I’m okay for now.” I ordered a white wine, astounded by Brent’s quick recovery from the casino scene. “And you?”

  “I’m a sailor. Remember? The rougher the sea, the better.”

  “That’s right. I do remember. It’s just been a long evening.” I gave him an opening to talk about more than the pitching sea.

  “Yes, it has been. Very long.” Brent’s voice was tired and he slid his empty Martini glass over, signaling the bartender for another. “This time two olives.”

  “Whoa, buddy.” The bartender caught the Martini glass before it toppled. “Are you sure you want another?”

  “Yeah, I promise I’ll catch a cab back to my room.” Brent laughed.

  The bartender didn’t crack a smile as he left to get our drinks. I did, however, a big broad one.

  “How do you do it?” I asked.

  “What?”

  I overstepped because I felt entitled after seeing Helga crushing this poor man for two days. I felt like I knew them intimately—like married neighbors on the other side of a very thin apartment wall whose bedroom life you have essentially shared for years.

  “Live with Helga.” I blatantly talked about the elephant-in-the-room.

  “Oh, that . . .” Brent chuckled. “‘Live’ is not the word I would choose.”

  “At least you still have a sense of humor.”

  “Yeah.” Brent observed me. “And do you still have a sense of humor?”

  “What?”

  Brent smiled big and bright. “Come on. You’ve been outed by Mavis. It appears we are both here under false pretenses.”

  “Ah . . .” I took a deep breath.

  The bartender brought our drinks and we both drank.

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Indeed, but that’s a long, boring story.” I deflected because I was focused on Helga and him. “Why’d you make Helga come on the cruise if she hates the sea?”

  “Who said that?” Brent looked at his Martini and played with the olives.

  “Helga at dinner.”

  “Oh, right.” Brent took a healthy drink of his Martini, downed one of the olives, and played with the other nervously. “She has meetings in London and it was really her idea. She wanted to g
et in touch with her colleagues again. She just turns the tables and blames me when she’s not happy. Too bad you’re all subjected to her.”

  “We’re fine.” I figured the truth of them taking the cruise was somewhere betwixt and between.

  “She’s seasick and the patches haven’t helped, so she’s worse than usual.”

  Suddenly, from behind, Helga’s voice bellowed over our heads and through our ears, vibrating into our brains.

  “Turn off the charm, you gigolo. She’s too old to fuck and too poor to screw.”

  I twisted around and looked up at Helga. She was a five-foot-ten, thin-as-a-stick harpy—an haute couture virago of unbridled rage wrapped in her black ostrich feathers.

  All eyes around us turned our way.

  “Helga!” Brent stood and shook his head hopelessly. “We’re having an innocent drink.”

  “Nothing is innocent with you.” Helga’s contorted mouth was rimmed with worn red lipstick barely defining her lip line.

  “Let me get you to your room. You’re out of control.” Brent took her arm and tried to muscle her away from the sideshow she was giving for the bar. “You’re drunk.”

  “I’m sober as a judge! And don’t think I don’t know about the money you’ve been pilfering. I’ll prosecute you for theft, my prolonged little play date.”

  Brent glanced around. I faced forward, absenting myself from the spectacle now tentacled as far as Curtis’s table.

  “Get her out of here or I’ll call security,” the bartender ordered Brent.

  “Sorry. She’s just had too much. I’ll get her to our room.”

  The bartender watched, poised to take charge if he necessary.

  Brent pulled Helga’s arm, moving her forcibly toward the door.

  “Stop . . . someone stop him!”

  Helga struggled to free her arm, but couldn’t. There was no intervention. Helga was a mean drunk and Brent, the dutiful husband, was following the bartender’s order—as he apparently had many times before.

  No one cared that Helga was being dragged away. Why should they? We all hadn’t spent our good money to watch the very disturbing Brent-and-Helga freak show for five nights and four days.

  * * *

  In the hallway, between the casino and the bar, the combat continued as Brent pulled Helga to the elevator.

  Before Brent could get her there, Helga yanked herself free. She tromped away alone, swaying with the ship, back into the casino. Brent followed her. But outside, he hesitated. Then, he turned and retraced his steps alone to the elevator.

  “Hey, beautiful.” Curtis came over and rescued me from the lingering effects of the scene Helga had made.

  He found us a table. I was still shaken. With Mavis’s dinner authorial attack and now Helga’s even more public pronouncement that I was the other woman, I was viscerally upset. I couldn’t be charming. I felt hollow and the increasing rhythm of the stormy sea was making my head thick and my stomach unsettled. I was sure my face had turned green.

  Curtis flashed his winning smile. “The rocking getting to you?”

  “A little.” I didn’t admit to anything else.

  “I know what will help.”

  “Really?”

  “A little of the bubbly.”

  After a sputtering start, we clicked again and the conversation flowed about seasickness, sailing, and the MWW deaths. But before I got a chance to update him that the deaths were murders, I was interrupted by a couple of his female clients who came over and pulled up chairs at the little table. One unattractive woman with a large diamond on her left hand and one very attractive woman with short gray hair and a left hand sans wedding ring. She pulled her chair next to Curtis. She dominated the conversation and was very knowledgeable in finance and investing. Curtis was hers, at least for now, whether he wanted to be or not.

  I excused myself after a short but polite time with a case of motion sickness.

  I tottered toward the elevators and my stateroom hoping Mavis was not there.

  The storm was making the sea rougher. All I wanted now was a motion patch and my bed. Wessex’s state-of-the-art ship stabilizers were still no match for the North Atlantic. And, apparently, the North Atlantic was no match for Helga either; I saw her still in the casino gambling.

  Me? I was just as glad to call it a night.

  * * *

  When I got to the stateroom, Mavis was mercifully absent. I was glad. I took a quick shower and put on my navy blue jogging suit to relax. I slapped on a motion sickness patch and sat in my bed with pillows stacked comfortably. I turned on the news, but I didn’t listen. The only news I would have liked was that Mendel and Frederick’s deaths had been ruled homicides. And that didn’t happen, so I ruminated about the evening.

  After my seasickness waned, I regretted not staying to fight for Curtis. This was the third night of the cruise.

  I turned to the cabin phone on the nightstand next to me. I hesitated, but then called Curtis’s stateroom.

  There was no answer. I didn’t leave a message. Perhaps I should have.

  I watched more of the news half-heartedly and then reached for the phone again. Just as my fingers touched it, it rang loud and clear. I was startled, but had an idea who it was. I let it ring just twice—just long enough, but not too long.

  “Hello?”

  “Veronica?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Curtis. Where did you run off to?”

  “I didn’t feel well. I’m relaxing.”

  “I saw you were a little green around the gills.”

  “I’m better now. Besides, you looked busy.”

  “Business. It always interrupts.”

  “Business?”

  “Yes . . . only business.”

  “I get it.”

  “Good. Let’s have a nightcap.”

  “Oh, I’m already in bed.”

  “So am I.”

  I laughed a sophisticated laugh. Curtis was smart. He gave me his locale and didn’t let me get another word in.

  “I’ll see you.” Curtis hung up.

  * * *

  At four am, I startled awake in Curtis’s stateroom. I felt him wrapped around me, warm and strong.

  “I’ve got to go,” I whispered.

  “Stay.” Curtis didn’t move.

  I gave him a long, sensuous kiss.

  “I can’t. Mavis is after me enough now. I don’t want to give her more gossip to monger.”

  “Alright . . . but let me walk you back.”

  “That’s so sweet and chivalrous. But really, it’s the twenty-first century. I’ll make it.”

  “As you wish.” Curtis tightened his enveloping hug.

  “I’ve got to go.” I freed myself from the warmth of his body, but only after he relaxed his steely arms.

  “Tomorrow?’

  “Tomorrow.”

  I had to be in bed when Mavis woke to avoid giving her more grist for her mill. I hurried down the wee-morning, empty corridors.

  Mavis was snoring loudly as I slipped into bed in my same jogging suit.

  ⌘

  Chapter 26

  Exercized

  The next morning the storm had passed. I hoped all the storms had passed—particularly the Helga-and-Brent one.

  I woke at seven, ship-time. The cruise line turned the shipboard time forward one hour from New York toward London time every midnight of the cruise. It helped ease the “jet” lag when we finally docked.

  This seven o’clock might have been my normal four o’clock biological wake-up time. I didn’t care to analyze it. I could see there was daylight through a crack in the curtains. That’s all that mattered to me.

  I snuggled under my covers and thought about Curtis and the moments that were ours. I hoped, no believed, that this was more than a shipboard romance. I liked his company. And I had never experienced something like him before. So experimental, for me at least, so passionate. Not that I had experienced much before I was married or, unfortunatel
y, during—or after, for that matter.

  I heard a snort and rustling sheets. Unhappily, Mavis had walrused into my lovely morning daydream. But she was still dead asleep with earplugs and a sleeping mask over her eyes. I realized “dead asleep” was just wishful thinking.

  I lay back, cozy and comfortable with happier thoughts for a minute. Namely, that we had gone one night without a death. Most certainly, there would have been a knock at my door because my friends were keeping an eye on Amy, the next likely target.

  I chuckled to myself. I was glad there had not been a knock at my door because I was not here. It would only have given Mavis something else she could use to malign me. Then I panicked. Could there have been? I quickly glanced at the phone. Happily, there was no message light blinking and no note on the pad next to it. I had not missed anything. I relaxed. I would have gladly missed anything, including a murder, for last night with Curtis.

  Still in my navy blue jogging suit, I put on my tennis shoes to take a turn around the walking deck. I escaped unnoticed. Saying “good morning” to Mavis would have been such a downer. I hoped she’d be gone when I returned.

  I had planned a walk around the Queen Anne’s promenade deck once anyway. It was a must. And this was the last morning at sea before we docked at Southampton near London tomorrow. This experience was important for me because the great stars in the 1930’s movies always strolled on the promenade decks of luxury liners during their trans-Atlantic crossings. The old movies were etched in my memory from my all-night sleepless vigils after my husband passed. I grabbed my red cashmere hat, just in case, and stuffed it in my pocket.

  I thought of calling Curtis to join me, but then I didn’t know his waking habits. I Cheshire-cat-smiled to myself, however, because I certainly knew his sleeping habits—they were nearly nil when I was there.