They were also motorized. We’d actually had occasion to ride in them, because they doubled as shuttles to transport passengers to the dock in those ports where cruise ships were obliged to anchor offshore.
Clearly that eliminated the possibility of dumping a body from any point on the side of the ship above the Promenade deck. But how about below it, below the lifeboats?
I took the stairs down to the Promenade deck and went outside. Now the lifeboats hung above my head. I recognized the area where we’d had our lifeboat drill the day we’d boarded the ship. When I looked down, I saw nothing to interfere with throwing a body off; it would definitely land in the water and be screened from anyone looking down by the lifeboats.
I perused the pamphlet. The only outside walkway was on the lower Promenade deck, and it went all the way around the ship, front and back—or fore and aft. There were no outside walkways on any of the other decks, and there was no other access to the bow of the ship; although it was obvious that anything thrown off the ship there wouldn’t land in the water anyway, so it didn’t matter. Access to the stern could be had from the Lido Terrace, the aft pool area on the Nav deck, or the lower Promenade deck.
But what about the captain’s veranda? The only way to check that out would be from the dock, so I went down to A deck where the gangway was and went out onto the dock. Unfortunately, the captain’s cabin was on the port side of the ship, and the dock was on the starboard side, but the deck plans showed verandas on both sides. So I stood on the dock, looking up past the lifeboats, so lost in thought that when a voice spoke behind me, I was so startled that I nearly fell off the dock.
“Dr. Day.”
Captain Sloane stood behind me at parade rest, his visor shading his eyes so that they looked hooded and secretive.
“Captain! What are you doing out here?”
“I am occasionally allowed to leave the ship, you know,” he said dryly. “There’s always an officer on the bridge, even when we’re in port.”
I knew that was a stupid question before it was even out of my mouth. “I just wasn’t expecting to see you here,” I said lamely.
“I’m everywhere, Dr. Day. Didn’t you know that?”
A frisson went down my spine, and the hair on the back of my neck rose. Was that a threat or just a product of my overheated imagination? Standing where he was, he could easily push me off the dock. But that would be ridiculous, I told myself.
Nevertheless, I stepped away from the edge of the dock before I spoke. “I was just wondering if anything dropped from that veranda would hit the lifeboat.”
“That would depend on if the ship was underway or not.”
“Underway,” I said.
Captain Sloane scratched his upper lip. “At our usual cruising speed of twenty-three knots, it might. Of course, one has to take weather conditions into account. Why?”
“I was just thinking about the murder,” I said.
“Of course you were. But Miss Montague wasn’t thrown overboard, as you know.”
“Why not?”
There! It was out.
“Dr. Day, however would I know that?”
“Suppose you were the killer,” I pursued. “Why would you choose to mutilate the body rather than just throwing it overboard?”
“Since I’m not the killer, I haven’t the slightest idea. Unless one didn’t want to be seen by security cameras. We have them everywhere, you know.”
Security cameras. Of course. I hadn’t thought of that. Some sleuth you are, Toni. “Can I ask you another question?”
“Can I stop you?” He almost sounded amused.
“No. Are there any crew members besides yourself who were on the Southern Cross twenty-five years ago when Evelyn Hodges was killed?”
“Ah. Chief Superintendent Gray told you about that.”
“Yes, he did.”
“Did he happen to tell you how she died?”
“He did.”
“And am I supposed to have killed her as well?” His shadowed eyes seemed to bore into mine.
He was trying to intimidate me, I knew, and I refused to be cowed by it. “Not necessarily. I’m just looking for connections between that murder and this one.”
“Besides me?”
“Yes.”
“Have you found any?”
“Yes, I have.”
He took a step closer to me. “And who would those be?”
I stood my ground. “I can’t tell you that.”
“Why not, pray?”
I looked straight into his eyes. “Because if you’re the killer, those people could be in danger.”
“If I were the killer, Dr. Day, you’d be dead by now.”
Well, now. That threat was unmistakable. If he were the killer, that is.
I changed the subject. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“Oh, yes. The crew of the Southern Cross twenty-five years ago. Of course, I haven’t exactly memorized the crew manifests, but to my knowledge, nobody else from that crew is in this one. Are you satisfied?”
“No. I have one more question.”
“Only one? You surprise me, Dr. Day.”
“I was told that Evelyn Hodges had an affair with one of the officers on that trip. Do you know anything about that?”
He looked away from me. “How would I know anything like that?”
“So it wasn’t you?”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Day. I’ve told you all I can. This conversation is over.” He turned and walked rapidly toward the gangway. I stood, hands on hips, and watched him go. Way to go, Toni, I thought. You just pissed off another officer.
And the big kahuna, at that. He could make the rest of this cruise a living hell if he were so inclined. Maybe he’d already started to by stealing my laptop and my smartphone, which reminded me that I’d better report that to the purser.
But in answer to my question, he could have just said no. Instead he’d walked off in a huff. Did that mean he was guilty as charged, or just offended on principle?
Obviously, I’d touched a nerve.
I glanced at my watch. It was time for my facial and massage. I ran toward the gangway and reboarded. Captain Sloane was already out of sight. I heaved a sigh of relief and took the elevator up to the Lido deck.
Later, while lying stretched out on the masseuse’s table under a warmed blanket, luxuriating under the pressure of her fingers as they rubbed and kneaded and worked various aromatic and soothing creams and oils into my skin, I mentioned the late Leonie Montague and inquired as to whether she’d ever utilized any spa services.
“Oh, yes, she came in for a facial and massage before every show,” my masseuse, Christine, said. She was a tall, Scandinavian-looking New Zealander with long blonde braids. “I didn’t do her, though. Mavis did.”
“Is Mavis here?”
“She’ll be doing your facial.”
“Did Leonie come in the day before she was killed?”
“If she did, I didn’t see her. You’d best ask Mavis.”
After Christine was done with me, she warned me about the extreme, almost pathological dryness of my skin, which was news to me and no doubt greatly exaggerated to convince me to purchase an exorbitantly expensive assortment of products guaranteed to prevent my skin from cracking and falling off me entirely, or something equally dire. I did consent to a large jar of coconut-scented body lotion, which would be added to my spa bill. Then she escorted me to Mavis’s cubicle for my facial.
Mavis was a New Zealander too, but otherwise she was just the opposite of Christine—a short, wiry, talkative brunette. All Christine had to do was mention my interest in Leonie, and she was off. I could hardly get a word in edgewise.
“I’ve been doing Leonie’s facials and massages for about two years now, so I feel like I know her pretty well. Like sis
ters, we were. I’m going to miss her. Had some real good chin-wags, we have.”
“Did she ever talk about her mother?”
“Oh, yes, all the time. She told me her mum died when she was four and that her grandparents raised her. She never knew her father. She asked her grandparents about it when she got older, but they didn’t know any more than she did. They told her that her mum had an affair with an officer on one of the ships she worked on and got pregnant, and that she had to quit that job to take care of her child until she was four, and that she went back to work and died on that ship.”
At this point I had an epiphany. Or perhaps it was an apostrophe. At any rate, I realized that it was not important whom Evie might have had an affair with on the Southern Cross. It was whoever had gotten her pregnant on a previous cruise five years before that, since Maggie was already four years old when Evie went to work on the Southern Cross.
Colin Sloane might not even have been on that cruise.
Nigel and I had been barking up the wrong tree. We needed to … With difficulty, I wrenched my mind off that subject, because Mavis was still talking, and I didn’t want to miss anything. “I’m sorry, what did you say? I seem to have been woolgathering.”
Mavis wasn’t offended. “I said, she’s been looking for that officer on every ship she performed on. She thought it was possible that on her mum’s last cruise she might have told the guy that he had a child and that she was going to sue him for child support, so he killed her.”
“Did she ever find him?” I asked.
“She told me she had an idea who it was, but she wouldn’t tell me. She said she needed to find out for sure before she told anybody.”
Damn. Why did people do that? It was a surefire way of getting killed. Just read any mystery novel. “Do you have any idea who that officer was?”
“No, not a clue. Do you think it’s got anything to do with Leonie getting killed? Like maybe she found out who her father was and that he killed her mother, and then he killed her to prevent her from telling anyone?”
“Maybe. It’s a plausible theory. I should have thought of that myself. Did she ever talk about her boyfriend, the doctor?”
“How did you know about that?”
“Jessica told me. You know, the cruise director?”
“How did she know?”
“She and Leonie grew up together. I’m surprised she didn’t tell you.”
“So am I,” Mavis said. “I had no idea. You don’t suppose he has anything to do with this, do you?”
I wondered how much I should tell Mavis. She was clearly a gossip, and anything I told her would no doubt get around. She might tell the wrong person, and that person would come after me. Nigel would tell me not to say anything to anyone for my own safety and to leave it to the police. That would be good advice except for one thing.
Nigel and I had only two more days to flush out the murderer.
How better to flush out a killer than to spread rumors around? If he came after me, we’d know who he was. And who would be better to spread things around than a gossipy spa employee? It would be like confiding in your hairdresser. Maybe I ought to get my hair done while I was at it.
“He might,” I told her. “He’s on this ship.”
Mavis’s eyes grew round. “He is?”
“He is. He’s Dr. Welch. And the reason I know that is because he told me himself.”
“Oo-er! But Leonie said he stalked her for years. That doesn’t sound like Dr. Welch to me. He’s so nice. Stitched up Horacio’s finger, he did, when Horacio cut it on his razor that time. Ever so nice, Horacio said he was.”
“I know. I think he’s nice too. He told me that they’d gone to college together and had been engaged and that she broke it off when they graduated and wouldn’t tell him why.”
A look of comprehension washed over Mavis’s face. “Oh, I heard about that one. Her name was Maggie. It wasn’t Leonie.”
“Leonie is Maggie,” I explained. “Jessica told me that. She changed her name when she started singing professionally.”
“Oh dear,” Mavis said. “Does he know that?”
“He does now,” I told her. “And there’s something else. The first officer on the ship where Leonie’s mother was killed was none other than Colin Sloane, our captain.”
“Crikey!” Mavis’s eyes grew round again. “How did you know that?”
“My stepfather told me. He was the Scotland Yard inspector assigned to the case.”
“Scotland Yard?” Mavis exclaimed in disbelief. “Mrs. Shapiro, are you sure you’re not having me on?”
“Quite sure,” I assured her. “He’s here too. We’re on this cruise to celebrate my mother’s retirement. So we’re both poking around to see what we can find out about Leonie and who might have killed her and why, and whether there’s any connection to Leonie’s mother’s death. Her name was Evie, by the way.”
“Blimey!” Mavis’s agile fingers, which had been patting a moisturizing mask onto my face, stilled. “Do you think our captain killed both of them?”
My initial reaction was not to let that little idea get bruited about in the crew mess. The captain was already mad at me. But on the other hand, why not? Especially since Mrs. Levine had been spreading the rumor that the captain and Leonie had been having an affair and that he’d had to get rid of her because his wife was coming aboard in Bridgetown. “As far as I know,” I mused, “there’s no evidence at all of any connection between the captain and Leonie and her mother other than that he knew both of them. He probably has no idea that they were mother and daughter.”
“But don’t they always say that it’s the last person you’d suspect?”
“They do say that,” I said, “and the captain certainly fits that description.” Even more so, I thought, since he probably wasn’t the one who got her pregnant. Nigel and I needed to find out about who’d been on that first ship. So far, we didn’t even know what ship that was. Talk about going back to square one! This was square zero. How were we going to find out the name of that ship? Did it even belong to this cruise line? That would have been, what, thirty years ago, which would have been 1983.
Maybe Nigel could simply ask Captain Sloane what ship he’d been on in 1983. He certainly wouldn’t tell me, since I’d already pissed him off.
But that wouldn’t help if Captain Sloane wasn’t Leonie’s father.
I felt as if we’d just been cast adrift without a paddle.
Bother!
Mavis did her best to sell me multiple obscenely expensive products to hydrate and plump my face and remove wrinkles (which I didn’t have), shrink large pores (which I did have), and even out my complexion by removing dark spots and redness (not a problem, so far). I told her I could use the body lotion I’d already bought from Christine, and she nearly had a heart attack at the very notion of using the same skin cream for facial skin as I did for the rest of my body. In the end, I consented to a small tube of eye cream, because now that I was pushing fifty, there were a few crow’s feet. Whereupon, she made a miraculous recovery. I tipped her generously for the gossip she would no doubt be spreading on my behalf, and her eyes grew wide when she looked at the receipt.
After a massage and facial, one is supposed to rest and drink plenty of water, but all I wanted to do was wash my hair. All those oils and unguents had gotten worked into my hair as Christine extended the massage to my scalp, and now my hair was sticking up in greasy spikes. The problem was that I was loath to shower and wash all those emollients off the rest of me, because they felt and smelled so good. I turned back. “Mavis,” I called.
She stuck her head around a partition behind the reception desk. “Mrs. Shapiro? Is everything all right?”
“Oh, yes,” I reassured her. “I was just wondering if I might get a shampoo and haircut.”
“You mean right now?”
; I gestured at my hair.
“Right,” she said and ran a finger down a page of the ledger on the desk. “You’re in luck. Horacio has an opening in ten minutes.”
“Excellent,” I said. “I’ll take it.”
“Just have a seat in the waiting area. Horacio will come get you when he’s ready.”
As I cooled my heels in the cool, green, potted-plant-infested waiting area, I tried to figure out where to go next. It was only two in the afternoon. Hal, Mum, and Nigel wouldn’t be back on board until at least four. Maybe I could put the time to good use by talking to Officer Dalquist. Only I hadn’t the faintest idea where to find him. Maybe Horacio or Christine or Mavis or somebody on the spa staff could direct me.
“Mrs. Shapiro? I’m ready for you.”
I was so far into my reverie that I jumped.
“Sorry to startle you,” Horacio said. He was a willowy young man with dark skin and liquid dark eyes that suggested Indian origins, although his speech was pure Aussie. His wavy black hair hung to his shoulders, and his ears were pierced with small gold hoops.
As we walked back to his station, I asked, “How does an Indian guy get called Horacio?”
He turned with a smile. “Easy. My mum is Filipino. It was her father’s name.”
His walk and hand gestures suggested that he was gay, which didn’t bother me. Gay guys, in my experience, were much more likely to gossip than their straight counterparts.
Horacio didn’t disappoint me. “Mavis tells me you were the one who found Leonie’s body. Was it awful?”
“Actually, Leonie’s body found me,” I said. “I was just sitting here on the Lido deck, minding my own business, when her head fell into the pool, and the rest of her practically fell on me.”
Horacio shuddered delicately. “How too gruesome, darling. I heard that she was crushed in the roof. Was that true?”
“That’s not the worst of it,” I said. “Someone took the head out of the pool, and it ended up in the laundry in the washer with a load of towels.”
Horacio made a face. “Ugh. How’d that happen?”
“I don’t know, exactly,” I said. “Someone could have wrapped it up in a bunch of towels, put it down the laundry chute here in the spa, and then cleaned up in the locker room.”
The Body on the Lido Deck Page 13
