Dark Passage

by Marcia Talley

  ‘Exactly. Pia holds the key to everything. She’s the only person among the crew that I think we can trust.’

  I set my glass down, swiveled in my seat to face him. ‘Do you think that’s wise, David? Things didn’t turn out too well for poor Charlotte. Pia could be – no, make that would be – putting herself in danger. You’d never forgive yourself if something happened to her, and, frankly, neither would I. I’ve grown very fond of that girl.’

  David nodded. ‘I know. It’s a dilemma.’

  ‘What do you expect her to do, David? Send Westfall a note like in that old movie, “I Saw What You Did! And I Know Who You Are”?’

  ‘Something like that, except I think it’d be more compelling if Westfall believes that Pia might be amenable to a little financial compensation.’

  I sank back against the cushions. ‘Oh, what a good idea!’ I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm.

  David stiffened his back. ‘No, no, I think it might work. What if Pia tells him that she has written everything down in a letter, and she’s mailed it to her sister with instructions that should anything happen to her … blah blah blah.’

  You’d have to be a fan of grade B movies to come up with that sort of lame brain plan. Still, I could tell from the expression on his face that he was deadly serious about it. ‘Even so,’ I said, ‘it could be risky.’

  ‘I think Pia should make that decision, don’t you, Hannah? Where would we find her right now?’

  I knew the answer to that question. ‘She’s got a show tonight, so she should be backstage with Channing, getting ready.’

  David set his empty martini glass down and started to get up. ‘Shall we go talk to her, then?’

  I laid a restraining hand on his arm. ‘Why don’t you let me talk to her? Then, if she’s willing, we three can put our heads together and come up with a safe and workable plan.’

  When we stood up, I asked, ‘Do you intend to tell Officer Martin?’

  David laughed. ‘He’d never sanction such a thing. If this is going to work, we’ll need to do it on our own.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  ‘The end of all magic is to feed with mystery the human mind, which dearly loves mystery.’

  Harry Kellar (1849–1922)

  It was a short hike from the Athena bar to the Orpheus Theater located on the same deck in the bow of the enormous vessel.

  Pia was backstage, as I had predicted. She sat on a straight-back chair, surrounded by Channing’s illusions, using a needle and thread to sew up the tear in the leg of her yellow harem pants. ‘Just now getting around to it,’ she said, drawing the thread to her mouth and cutting it with her teeth. She held the pants up for my inspection. ‘Do you think anybody will notice?’

  ‘Don’t you have costume people to do that?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, sure, they’ll make me a whole new costume eventually, but I’m partial to this one.’ She stroked the fabric as if it were an old friend, folded it carefully, then placed it in a small bin that had her name on it: Fanucci.

  ‘Channing’s working on the new illusion,’ she told me. ‘Come see.’

  Pia picked up her costume bin and tucked it under her arm. She held aside a curtain until I had passed through, then escorted me down a short, narrow corridor to a room full of oddly shaped items covered in plastic sheeting. In the corner stood a beach umbrella, a suit of armor and a life-sized giraffe.

  Pia waved vaguely, taking in the whole room. ‘Props.’

  ‘Is Channing going to be introducing the new illusion at the magic show tonight?’ I asked as we circumnavigated a gaily painted wheelbarrow.

  ‘Sorry, no, it’s not quite ready. We should be rolling it out in a couple of weeks, on the next Baltimore-Bermuda trip.’ She gave me a lopsided smile. ‘I’m sorry you’ll miss it.’

  I leaned close to her ear. ‘Maybe I’ll just have to stowaway, then!’

  Channing was working on the far side of the room, hunched over his Plexiglas cylinders. From where I stood, I could see that the propeller had already been installed about midway inside the apparatus. It looked high-techedly wicked, like something SPECTRE would design to extract secrets out of James Bond.

  When Tom noticed us, he straightened and grinned, wiping his hands clean on his jeans. ‘Hannah, good to see you. Did Pia tell you? We’ve decided to call it The Turbine of Terror.’

  ‘I can’t wait,’ I said. ‘How do you get the water to it? I presume there’s water.’

  ‘Yes, there’s water. There’s this little gizmo …’ He made a twisting motion, as if turning a doorknob. ‘Better yet, come back in a few days and I’ll show you.’

  ‘Alas, in a few days I’ll be back home, trying to get caught up with my email.’

  Channing slapped his forehead. ‘Of course. When one’s on a ship for so long, you sometimes lose track of what day it is.’

  ‘Tom is exploring the possibility of debuting the illusion outside on the trampoline deck. I think that would be awesome, don’t you?’

  I had to agree that it would.

  ‘Tom,’ I asked after a moment. ‘Can I ask you a question?’

  He looked up from a screw he was tightening with his fingers. ‘Sure.’

  ‘When you were performing those card tricks for the kids in Breakers! the other day, did you notice anyone hanging around, acting suspicious?’

  ‘The afternoon your niece disappeared, you mean?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Sorry, Hannah. Even though I’ve been doing it for years, sleight of hand requires intense concentration. I didn’t notice anything much beyond the deck of cards in front of me.’

  ‘Just thought I’d ask.’

  ‘And I don’t believe I’ve ever been introduced to your niece,’ he added. ‘I don’t even know what she looks like, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ I felt pretty stupid. Julie had only been present in the crowd at one of his shows. How on earth would Tom recognize her, not to mention know if any lowlifes had been hanging around her?

  Channing fished a screwdriver out of his back pocket and seemed eager to get back to work, so I said, ‘Can I borrow Pia for a few minutes? There’s something I’d like to talk to her about.’

  ‘Be my guest. We’re all set for tonight.’

  Pia and I left the theater, walked through the casino and out on deck. A fierce wind lifted my hair and roared hotly across my ears. We strolled aft, with no particular destination in mind, while I told Pia what David and I had discovered about Jack Westfall. She listened carefully, not asking any questions, only asking for repeats when the wind tore my words away.

  When we reached the cage-like barrier that led to a crew-only section of the ship, we reversed direction, stopping at one point to lean against the rail and stare out at the water.

  ‘Every time I stand here,’ Pia said, her voice breaking, ‘I think of Char, floundering all alone in the middle of the Caribbean.’ A tear rolled down her cheek, but was dried almost instantly by the wind. ‘You’ll think I’m a horrible person for saying this, but I have often prayed that she was dead before she went over.’

  She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, faced into the wind with her head tipped back. ‘I just love the sea. How can such an evil thing happen in such a beautiful place?’

  I scooted over, until our forearms were touching where they rested on the rail. ‘It’s sad, really. David is convinced that because of the passage of time and the lack of evidence, he’ll never get justice for his daughter.’

  ‘I like the guy,’ Pia said, ‘but what a sad case.’

  ‘My sisters and I feel pretty certain that the F.B.I. can nail Westfall for Julie’s abduction.’ I counted them off on my fingers. ‘There’s whatever physical evidence Officer Martin was able to collect when Julie was examined, Julie’s positive identification, as well as the testimony that Kira will be able to provide.’ I told Pia that we hoped the F.B.I. would meet the ship in the morning, armed with a proper search warrant in order to give Jack Westfall’
s cabin a thorough going-over. ‘Julie’s father should be talking to the F.B.I. now, in fact, along with my husband and Julie’s other uncle.’

  Keeping her head bowed, Pia turned it to study me sideways. ‘A formidable team.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But David has a team, too,’ she said.

  ‘He does?’

  ‘You and me.’

  Amazingly, Pia had given me an opening, and I stepped right through it. ‘What do you suggest?’

  ‘This morning,’ Pia said, ‘all I wanted to do was take the guy down a few pegs, scare the crap out of him. I saw him in the Firebird café, strutting around and glad-handing everyone like he’s running for president or something. Now? He doesn’t deserve to be walking the streets. He should be cooling his heels in a federal prison.’

  Pia turned around, leaned her back against the rail. ‘So, Hannah, how are we going to fit that SOB up with an orange jumpsuit?’

  ‘I saw David earlier, and he has a plan,’ I confessed, ‘but I’m not sure I like it.’

  ‘Try me,’ she said.

  ‘You worked on the Voyager and the Islander, you were there when both attacks occurred, you were Charlotte’s roommate.’ I tilted my head so I could look directly into her eyes. ‘How would you feel about a little blackmail? You know, I saw what you did, but I’ll keep my mouth shut as long as you …’ I let the sentence die.

  Pia was silent for so long that I thought I’d lost her. ‘Pia?’

  She raised a hand. ‘I’m thinking, I’m thinking.’

  After a bit she said more quietly, ‘This could be dangerous to my health. Look what he did to Char.’

  ‘You’d have to have an insurance policy. You’d have to convince Westfall that as long as he plays along, everything will be cool. If he doesn’t, you have a letter on file with your attorney that lays it all out.’

  ‘Sounds like a bad movie.’

  ‘That’s what I thought when David first suggested it.’

  ‘But it could work.’

  ‘Maybe, particularly if you don’t hit him up for a lot of money.’

  ‘How about a lump sum payment? I’m just so tired of the cruise ship routine, I’ll say, and all I need is the down payment for a modest home in Arizona and I’ll go away and leave him alone?’

  As serious as the discussion was, I had to laugh. ‘You remind me a bit of myself. My husband calls me Nancy Drew, girl sleuth, and he’s not always being funny.’

  Pia grinned. ‘When I was growing up, Nancy was a little too homogenized for my taste. I cut my teeth on Harriet the Spy. Know who my heroine is now? Flavia de Luce.’

  I, too, had enjoyed Alan Bradley’s stories about the irrepressible eleven-year-old in fifties England with a passion for chemistry and murder. Flavia’s volatile relationship with her two older sisters had struck some familiar chords, too.

  As I thought about it, though, my passion for righting wrongs had gotten me into some very hot water. A sailboat had sunk out from under me, my car had been run off the road into a pond, I’d been kidnapped and locked in a wine cellar, and I was once arrested for murder. And that was all before breakfast on Monday, as my father had been known to say. As much as Pia might want to help bring Westfall to justice, I couldn’t let her do it, not this way.

  ‘It’s fun to fantasize about being Nancy or Flavia,’ I said after a moment. ‘But that’s fiction and this is real life. It was crazy of David to come up with this blackmail idea, and crazy of me to suggest it to you. You know and I know that Westfall is far too dangerous.’

  Pia folded her arms, stared out to sea. ‘Yeah, but it sure would be great to watch the worm squirm, up close and personal.’

  I tugged on her arm, forced her to look at me. ‘Pia, promise me you won’t do anything foolish.’

  ‘I promise,’ she said. But I had seen that determined look before. In my daughter’s eyes when she told me that she wanted to waste the entire year following her college graduation by following the rock band, Phish. In my own eyes in the mirror.

  ‘I mean it,’ I said. ‘There must be a better way.’

  ‘Like what?’ she asked.

  I didn’t have the slightest idea, but I squeezed her hand and said, ‘Don’t worry. Leave this to David, and to me.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  ‘In the queer mess of human destiny the determining factor is luck. For every important place in life there are many men of fairly equal capacities. Among them luck decides who shall accomplish the great work, who shall be crowned with laurel, and who shall fall back into silence and obscurity.’

  William E. Woodward (1874–1950)

  David was not in his room when I called, nor in the Firebird café. I was thinking about having him paged when I found him exactly where I had left him, in the Athena, sitting on a bar stool nursing a martini.

  ‘Fancy meeting you here,’ I said, sliding onto the bar stool next to him.

  He blinked twice, as if trying to focus. ‘Hannah. How did you get on with Pia, then?’

  ‘Club soda with lime,’ I told the bartender.

  David sipped his drink appreciatively, one eyebrow raised.

  ‘It’s far too dangerous,’ I told him. ‘There has to be another way.’

  David’s head bobbed, his lips never leaving the rim of the glass.

  I touched his hand lightly. ‘I’m sorry.’

  David set his glass on the coaster, rocking it this way and that until the base was precisely centered in the middle of the Phoenix Cruise Lines logo. ‘Don’t worry,’ he muttered. ‘It’s not that I didn’t expect it.’

  The bartender had delivered my drink. I took a sip and set it aside. ‘Westfall’s going to be put away, David. The F.B.I. is going to see to that.’

  Head still bowed, he considered me with a single, watery eye. ‘Just let nature take its course, then, is that your recommendation?’

  ‘Not nature, exactly, but the long arm of the law.’

  David drained his glass and raised it in the air, signaling for another. ‘I want to thank you, Hannah. You’ve been more than kind. I appreciate that.’

  We sat side by side, drinking quietly. There seemed nothing more to say.

  I finished my club soda, brushed his cheek with a kiss, and bid him goodbye. I left him sitting alone at the bar, long-faced, looking as if he had lost his last friend which, in a way, he had.

  ‘I have to pack,’ Georgina said, ‘and I won’t let her go up there alone.’

  ‘Go where,’ I asked, ‘and where’s Ruth?’

  ‘I’m hungry,’ Julie whined. ‘I was going to the Firebird to score some nachos. Mom’s being a pain.’

  Georgina folded a hoodie and placed it carefully in her suitcase. ‘Ruth’s at guest services, arguing with them about something on her bill. She may be there for a while. The line was humongous.’

  ‘I’ll take Julie up,’ I said. ‘You get on with your packing.’

  Julie tore out her earbuds, hopped off her bunk and presented herself to me, beaming. She wore flip-flops, a pair of skinny denim jeans and a white T-shirt that had ‘Friend Me’ on it, printed in glitter.

  ‘Come on, you,’ I told her. ‘Let’s go get those nachos.’

  The Firebird was crowded so it took us a while to find an empty table. ‘Go get your nachos,’ I told my niece, ‘while I save the table. And bring me a Coke!’

  Julie bounced off to the buffet tables while I looked around. Diners passed me with trays heaped high, as if pigging your way from one end of the All-You-Can-Eat buffet tables to the other was a lifetime goal.

  I was thinking about snagging some of the chicken tikka kabobs we’d passed on our way in when Julie came streaking back, empty-handed. She grabbed my arm and pulled me down, her mouth nearly touching the tabletop. ‘I need to get out of here, Aunt Hannah. I saw him! He’s here! And he saw me!’

  ‘Jack Westfall is here?’ I asked, my head bowed, too, on a level with hers.

  Julie buried her face in her arms and began to weep. ‘I
think I might have made a terrible mistake.’

  I laid a hand gently on her arm. A horrible sinking feeling came over me. ‘What do you mean, sweetie?’

  ‘I was positive that the man who attacked me was that guy, Jack, from the art gallery, but now I’m not so sure. I just saw … oooh! I’m really not sure, now, Aunt Hannah, and it’s freaking me out!’ She began to sob.

  ‘Let me get this straight. You just saw a guy you think could be your attacker, and that guy is not Jack Westfall?’

  Without raising her head, Julie nodded miserably.

  ‘Who is it, then. Who did you see, Julie?’

  ‘I don’t knoooow!’ she wailed. ‘I was going to the nachos, and this guy was coming from the other way, and I didn’t see him, and I practically ran into him, like, and when I looked up to say sorry, he gave me this creepy look, and I went eeeek, and I wanted to barf and I saw in his eyes that he knew that I knew, so what am I going to do now?’

  ‘Breathe slowly, Julie,’ I suggested, gently stroking her back. ‘In. Out. In. Out.’

  I was kicking myself for allowing Julie to go off to the buffet alone, but that ship had already sailed.

  ‘What did the man look like, sweetheart?’

  ‘He’s wearing a black shirt with a squiggly logo, and a black hat!’

  I raised my head, stretching a bit so I could see over the decorative etched glass panel that divided our section of the café from the others. A man in a yellow T-shirt waiting for a burger; a guy in a festive Hawaiian number loading his brownie with whipped topping; uniformed wait staff bustling about, but nobody in a black polo shirt.

  I swiveled in my chair to check out the other side of the café, but my view was blocked by a broad expanse of black cotton knit with ‘Waterway Marine’ embroidered on the pocket. Then, next to me, a familiar voice said, ‘I came over to apologize.’

  Buck Carney.

  I gasped and pressed a hand to my chest. ‘Mr Carney! You startled me.’

  ‘I think I startled this young lady here, too. Zigged when I should have zagged,’ he explained. ‘Ran right into her.’

  ‘Julie,’ I said, trying to breathe normally and give nothing away. ‘This is Mr Buck Carney, a photographer who’s doing a book for the cruise lines. He took some photographs of your mother the other day.’