by Hy Conrad
Somehow I just knew. Mariah Linkletter was pregnant, which was bad news for the captain. And probably for Mariah’s life expectancy. Suddenly I had a renewed urge to stick by her side all evening.
“Can I eat at your table tonight?” I asked, my voice rising just a tad. “It’ll be fun. We’ll get my things and move them into your cabin, then we’ll have dinner and maybe do something afterward.” I knew I was sounding desperate right now in a Single White Female, stalker-girlfriend kind of way.
“Sure,” said Mariah with a little hesitation. “Sounds great.” The pocket in her skirt buzzed. “Sorry.” She pulled out a phone and spent a few seconds checking a text. I couldn’t tell if she wanted to smile or not. She did neither.
“Let’s get your things right now,” said Mariah. “Then I’m afraid I have some work to do.”
• • •
The crew quarters were not as cramped or as depressing as I’d been led to believe. True, at the doorway leading down into the ship’s bowels, all the nice carpet and woodwork stopped and were replaced with thin green carpeting and steel walls and, as Mariah had warned me, no windows.
The narrow corridors were lit by overhead lights and wound around oversized pipes and other bits of ship machinery I couldn’t begin to figure out. As Mariah led the way with one of my bags, I followed with the other and worked hard at remembering each twist and turn.
We passed only two other crew members. Mariah said hello but didn’t introduce me, and no one asked. Good. We soon came into a series of corridors with dozens of cabin doors on each side. Mariah used her electronic key card on one of them.
Our cabin was perhaps half the size of the guest cabins, painted a cheery light yellow, with a ceiling that curved gently over a pair of bunk beds. Mariah, I could see, had taken the upper, probably in deference to Giselle, the eightysomething accordionist.
“Is the bottom okay for you?” she asked.
“Perfect,” I said. “And I just want to thank you again for coming to my rescue.”
“No problem. If you want to know the truth, I miss having a roomie. Giselle was a hoot. Did you know the song ‘Lady of Spain’ was written by Englishmen? It’s true.”
Despite the close quarters, the built-in cabinets had hooks and drawers for everything—a Winnebago was wasteful by comparison—and I had no problem squaring myself away. Mariah ended the orientation by handing me Giselle’s key card, coded to open both the general crew passage and our cabin.
Mariah checked her watch, the fifth time she’d done it since we arrived. “I gotta go,” she said, sweeping her long copper hair back over her shoulders. “Make yourself at home. You remember the way out?”
“Of course,” I said, meaning maybe.
“Good. I’ll see you at dinner.” She spent the next ten seconds checking her hair and freckled face in the mirror.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Just business,” she said over her shoulder. And she was gone.
Why didn’t I follow her, you’re probably asking. Stupid Natalie. Or warn her. I could have sat her down on the edge of my bunk and explained what I’d overheard at the beach club. But I knew how she would have reacted to such a crazy warning. And as for following her, I tried.
After the door closed, I counted to three, then eased it open and turned right down the corridor, retracing our steps. I went as quickly and as quietly as I could, making all the turns just as I remembered them, seeing all the landmarks I’d noticed on our way in: the crew lounge, the cafeteria. But as quickly as I walked, I never found her.
When I got to the stairway going up, two cabin stewards were blocking the way, chatting in Spanish. They stepped aside as soon as they saw me, not in the least curious about this unknown intruder in their private space.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Did Mariah come by here? Mariah Linkletter? Cruise director? Red hair? Did you see her?”
Both of them seemed to understand. And both of them shook their heads.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Mr. Monk and the Alibi
“It only took two hours to get everything cleaned. And I only used two maids. Two maids plus me, so I guess that’s the equivalent of four maids.”
I felt a little insulted. “Adrian, I spent all of one night in that room.”
“That’s what I’m saying. I’m surprised it only took two hours. Can’t you take a compliment?”
“Thanks.”
“Oh, and I’m sorry you spilled a bottle of Chanel No. 5. I know how expensive that is.”
“I didn’t spill anything. I used a drop or two last night behind my ears. Is that a crime?”
“Getting rid of the smell took the maids half an hour. Don’t worry, I paid for it.”
“That’s so generous.”
“Well, I think it’s a fair trade for you giving up your room.”
“Are you sure I don’t owe you anything?”
“We’ll call it a draw.”
I didn’t respond. Monk squiggled his nose and watched as I toyed with the three tiny lamb chops on my plate. He had been given the same food and had spent much of the dinner moving it around—just like me, but for hygienic reasons rather than emotional ones. “You know, you’re paying even less attention to me than normal,” he said.
“I’m trying, but you don’t make it easy.”
It was a semiformal evening in the dining room, with the women in elegant dresses and the men in suits and ties. I was in a long, lavender affair, a little off the shoulder, a reworking of a bridesmaid dress from six years ago. Monk was in his usual checked shirt and brown jacket and orange life vest. It was still drawing its share of stares.
We had situated ourselves at a table with an unobstructed view of the dining room’s double doors. It was a table for four, but we’d been saving a place for Mariah, as I promised, and no one had taken the fourth spot. Every minute or so, I would glance over to the doors, hoping to see her walk in.
“I shouldn’t have let her out of my sight,” I said. “At least the captain is still here.”
Captain Sheffield was seated at the large circular table in the middle of the dining room, next to his wife. He was once again in his officer whites, and his wife was in what we used to call a cocktail dress, black and strapless with a cinched waist. For a woman a little north of me in age, she still had quite a figure.
“Yes,” agreed Monk. “The captain’s still here.” His tone was not reassuring.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Probably nothing.”
“Will you let me know when it means something?”
“You’ll be the first. Actually the second, after me.”
I tried turning my attention back to my lamb chops, but they were cooling on the plate, and Geraldo, our waiter, was beginning to make wide circles like a vulture hungry for a few more dirty plates.
“You missed the five o’clock talkback seminar. Both of you.”
That was Malcolm, of course, walking up to us and looking disappointed.
I’d seen him at his table across the room, laughing and eating and drinking with a circle of two women and five men, including Gregor Melzer, the Russian lawyer who’d taken my card last night. All of them seemed important and well-connected in their shiny red name tags.
I felt a pang of guilt. I hadn’t even remembered to put mine on. And I knew Monk would never wear his, not unless he had a name tag for each lapel and a level to make sure they were lined up straight.
“Did we miss it? I’m sorry.” I vaguely remembered a seminar in the schedule, happening around the same time I was unsuccessfully chasing Mariah in the crew quarters.
“I think you were the only ones not represented,” he went on. “Everyone else got up, said a few words about their company, answered some questions, and tried to make a good impression.”
“We’ll do better tomorrow,” I half promised. “Today just got away from us.” How embarrassing. Not that I regretted how I’d spent the time. We were on a
case. This is what we did.
“I’m sorry, too,” Malcolm lilted. “I shouldn’t scold you. It’s your business. I’m just trying to help.”
“And I appreciate it,” I said. “I really do. It’s just that—”
“Shh.”
Monk had a finger lifted to his lips, and a finger from his other hand gestured at the captain’s table. Something was happening.
“What’s he doing?” asked Malcolm, staring at Monk.
“Nothing,” I said softly. “Sorry.” But when it looked like Malcolm was going to speak again, I doubled down with a “shh” of my own. He shushed.
In a previous life, when I’d worked for two years in a Las Vegas casino, I used to make a game of isolating voices. I would stand at my croupier station, taking bets and spinning the roulette wheel, but I would really be focusing on an overhead mirror, trying to hear what my pit boss, a woman, might be saying to the floorman, her unhappily married boyfriend. It was the most entertainment I had all shift, until one day when I heard them discussing me and the fact that I seemed to be distracted all the time. That had put a stop to my fun.
I was still pretty good at isolating voices. And so was Monk.
“Dear, I have a headache,” Sylvia Sheffield was telling her husband two tables away. She had stood up and was reaching for her Gucci clutch bag hanging from the back of her chair. If you’re wondering how I knew it was Gucci, you must be a guy.
“Stay for dessert,” the captain said, his voice solicitous but firm. “Kathy was right in the middle of a story, weren’t you, Kathy?”
The tablemate to the captain’s left, a blowsy, flowery woman in a Lilly Pulitzer, sputtered and said how it wasn’t important and how dreadful it must be to have a headache on a moving ship. “I totally understand,” she told Sylvia. “Feel better.”
“You should stay,” the captain said, more firmly than before. Then he checked his watch, a subtle movement of the eye and wrist. “I hear it’s a wonderful dessert.”
“But you never eat dessert,” Sylvia complained.
“Tonight we’ll make an exception.”
Monk leaned across the table to me. “That’s the third time he checked his watch. I’ve been counting.”
I had missed the first two, to be honest, and had barely caught the third. “What does it mean?” I whispered back.
“He’s establishing an alibi. For him—and his wife.”
“What are you talking about?” Malcolm asked, more annoyed than curious.
“Establishing an alibi?” It took a second for me to understand what Monk meant. “Oh my God. It’s happening now?”
I was up from the table so quickly I nearly knocked down Geraldo, who was passing behind us with a towering tray of chocolate somethings. Monk was up a second later, and we both headed for the double doors. “Sorry, Malcolm,” I called out over my shoulder. “Sorry, Geraldo.”
Monk was right behind me. We stopped in the foyer and faced each other. It was crazy to think that the smiling captain was at this moment somehow killing his mistress. But things like this happen in our world. “Where do you think?” I asked.
“Suicide in her room?” Monk suggested. “It needs to be an enclosed, controlled space.”
“An accident?” I suggested back. “Nearly everyone’s at dinner, so there’s little chance of witnesses.”
This was another part of our shorthand. When the killer goes to such lengths to give himself an ironclad alibi, then you’re probably looking at a “suicide” or “accident.”
“I’ll check her cabin,” I said. “You check the decks.”
Monk winced. “I’m not that fond of open decks and oceans. Maybe I’ll check my room.”
“Adrian, she’s not in your room. Go.” I pushed him toward the stairs going up. “Check the lounge or the game room or anywhere. Go.”
I took the stairs going down, fumbling in my pocket for my key card. I didn’t want to think about it, but there was a chance Mariah was already dead, her body lying somewhere, waiting to be discovered.
No, I told myself. She had to be alive. Sheffield was checking his watch, which meant he was waiting for something. What could it be? A certain time? A message? A phone call? All these possibilities went through my head as I tumbled down flight after flight until finally using my key card on the door to the crew quarters.
I don’t know how I found our cabin so quickly. I certainly wasn’t counting doorways and turns. But there it was: “Mariah Linkletter,” hand-printed in the little cardholder. I took a deep breath, steeled myself, swiped my card, and pushed open the door.
Nothing. Just our bunk beds, neatly made up, and a few personal things on the tiny tidy desk. I’m not sure if I was happy or sad. At least she wasn’t dead in the room.
I was deciding what to do next when an alarm bell began ringing far away, several levels away. Seconds later, other alarm bells were triggered, and the constant rumbling of the engines underneath me turned into a grinding sound, metal on metal, and died. The ship had been stopped, dead in the water. This was not good.
Through the open door I could see several stewards putting on their life jackets and running in the direction of the stairs. “What is it?” I shouted to no one and everyone. “What’s the alarm?”
“Man overboard,” someone shouted back, and kept running.
“Mariah.” My heart sank. Whatever had happened, I suddenly knew we were too late.
I followed the line of scrambling crew members, at least until we got to the Calypso deck, the lowest of the outside decks, divided between a few public spaces and crew spaces. There they split up, going to whatever assignments they’d been given for an emergency like this. My emergency assignment, as always, was Monk.
At some point, as I raced from deck to deck, from room to room, I heard the engines rumble back to life. Probably in reverse, I thought, back to approximately wherever we’d been when the alarm had sounded. A minute or so later, the engines stopped. I must have been near the bow at the time because I could hear the heavy anchor chain start rolling off its spool.
From then on it was a simple process of following the people and the lights.
Most of the action seemed to be toward the front of the Calypso deck. That’s where I found Monk. He was off to the side, sheltered by a lifeboat, trying not to be crowded by the other thirty or so onlookers, all held back by a pair of hard-faced stewards. Beyond them all, the ship’s front searchlights were panning the wide expanse of moonlit water.
Monk caught my eye but didn’t speak. Instead, he pointed to the captain, leaning over the starboard railing, binoculars up to his eyes.
“There,” shouted another officer with binoculars. The man pointed. It took a few more seconds for us to make out the body, fifty yards or so away, just a head bobbing in the gentle swells, looking so peaceful. Even from here we could see Mariah’s hair flowing around her face, like a halo of crimson seaweed.
“She’s dead,” Monk said flatly.
“No,” I protested. He didn’t even seem to be looking at her. “You can’t know that for sure.”
Four crew members came running in our direction and politely shooed us out of the way. Within seconds the lifeboat was being lifted from the deck and swung out over the side.
“Don’t look at her,” Monk said. “Look at the captain. His attitude. His stance. His shoulders. The man knows she’s dead.”
Monk was right, of course. Damn it.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Mr. Monk and the Guy
She was laid out on the examining table, the girl named after Mariah Carey, cold and in rigor, her copper-colored hair tucked behind her ears and under her shoulders. I was surprised to see her freckles had disappeared. Perhaps they were still there, under the blue of her new skin tone.
“I need to put her back in the morgue,” said Dr. Aaglan. He could barely look at her without tearing up. “People need the infirmary, and I can’t have a dead body here.”
Monk was still examining Mar
iah. Naked living women can cause him to run away in horror. Naked dead women have no effect. That’s just the way it is.
He inspected the gash on her left temple, probably caused when her head hit the ship on her fall into the ocean. From there he moved his focus to her fingers and toes, which could tell him approximately how long she’d been in the ocean. There was a greasy stain an inch wide on her left side, running most of the length of her pearl gray dress. I didn’t know what that meant, and I guessed Monk didn’t know, either. I took pictures of everything on my iPhone.
The previous night we’d learned nothing, except for a few rumors. A relatively small ship like this can be like a family. And Mariah, a lively and warmhearted cruise director, can seem like everyone’s sister. The crew quickly closed in around the tragedy, excluding the passengers from any hard information. No one cared that the famous Adrian Monk was on board, willing to investigate. I had even given my brochure to the ship’s security officer. He treated me like he would any ambulance chaser trying to turn a horrible accident into a job.
By morning, things had loosened up slightly, and Dr. Aaglan proved willing to let us look at the body, provided we didn’t tell the captain, which was perfectly fine with us. More than fine.
“Did you take a postmortem temperature?” Monk asked, still fingering the long, mysterious grease stain.
“No reason to,” said Aaglan, a little defensively. “We know when she fell.” He was right. Even I could see—from the condition of the body and the lack of bloating—that she’d been in the water only a few minutes.
“Was there water in her lungs?” Monk asked.
“I don’t have the means to do an autopsy,” said Aaglan. “Even if I could cut her open, I wouldn’t. Besides, it makes no difference.”
