Midnight Shimmer: A Toni Diamond Mystery (Toni Diamond Mysteries Book 3)

by Nancy Warren

  She shook her head.

  He glanced toward the open door but didn’t go any closer. “I’ll get the passengers out of here, quietly.”

  “What will you tell them?”

  “I think I’ll say the woman smelled gas. That will get them out of here pretty quickly.”

  “Excellent.” She nodded, happy to have an unofficial helper. “And when you pass that girl with the cookies, ask her to alert the captain.”

  He nodded. “You’ll remain with the body until the captain arrives?”

  “Yes.”

  “Keep the area free of contamination?”

  “Of course.”

  He narrowed his gaze. “You’ve done this before?”

  She sighed. “Sadly, yes.”

  “I was a colonel in the army before I retired. Thomas Farmington is my name.” He glanced at her with his colonel’s eyebrows raised.

  “Toni Diamond. I recognize the dead man. He was one of the ship’s doctors.”

  He nodded briefly. “That’s bad. I’ll return with the captain. I can corroborate your story.”

  “Thank you.”

  It wasn’t much, but between them she and her new friend could at least prevent anyone else from disturbing the doctor’s rest—or the crime scene.

  *

  Once the captain arrived and Toni gratefully passed the problem on to him, she returned to the stateroom and showered for so long she was surprised the massive water holding tanks on the ship didn’t run dry. Even though she hadn’t touched anything except the corner of the tablecloth, being in that fridge with the dead man made her feel contaminated. If she could have scrubbed her lungs after breathing that cold, dead air, she would have.

  Her shower was as hot as she could crank the water temperature, but she was still shivering when she stepped out. She dried herself vigorously and then spent time on her hair and her makeup. Maybe her lip liner was wobbly, but the familiar routine calmed her.

  And while she applied cosmetics, her mind was clicking through a series of questions. Memories were popping up randomly.

  The doctor that first day, helping her mother.

  The various times she’d seen him flipped through her memory’s screen like a movie montage. She couldn’t stop the endless loop.

  He was so recognizable, with his glasses and his doctor’s bag, he’d been a character as much as a medical professional.

  She gasped, staring at herself in the mirror. She knew where the doctor’s glasses were. They were in the captain’s possession. But where was his bag?

  Toni had a mental image of the doctor as he’d been in the cavernous meat fridge. The tablecloth that draped him hugged his body. There was no medical bag–shaped lump. And no bag in the vicinity, she was certain of it.

  The last time anyone had seen him, he’d been in Alicia’s suite and she couldn’t imagine he’d done so without his medical bag. She considered checking with Alicia, but according to her, she was always drugged by the time he got to her suite. Sometime in the past twenty-four hours he’d lost both his bag and his life.

  Her mother and Tiffany burst into the suite soon after that. “Toni, I came as soon as I heard,” her mother said, rushing up. “Are you okay?”

  Damn. “The gossip’s already out that I found a dead body?”

  “What?” her mother shrieked. “I heard you got caught in a gas leak. I was worried about your lungs.”

  She let out a breath. “No. It wasn’t a gas leak in that fridge. It was Dr. Madsen.”

  “Oh, my God,” Linda put a hand to her chest. “Was he…?”

  “Dead? Oh, yeah.”

  “Are you okay, Mom?” Her daughter had probably heard the tremor in her voice.

  “I will be.”

  “What do you need from us?” Tiffany was there. Solid and reliable.

  “I don’t even know. Distraction, maybe.”

  But that obviously wasn’t going to happen for a while. Linda had to process the news in her own way, which involved talking it through. “He was such a nice man. Remember how he helped me that first day? So kind. Such a gentleman.”

  “Yes, he was.”

  “Everyone spoke highly of him. I bet he saved a lot of lives in his time. How tragic that he should lose his, here. Now.”

  “I know.” And personally, Toni would have been a lot happier if he’d ended his life, say, next week, when they were safely back in Texas.

  “And he even treated patients on that shore excursion. Plus, he ran the medi-spa. When did he ever get time off? And when I think—”

  Toni’s mind snapped back to that day in the Bahamas. She interrupted her mother’s trip down memory lane. “Mama, do you have those photos you took?”

  “What photos, honey?”

  “The ones you snapped of the doctor when we saw him in the Bahamas?”

  “On my camera, sure.”

  “Can I see them?” Her voice must have sounded urgent, for her mother looked concerned.

  “Do you think maybe you should lie down for a bit? You can’t bring him back, you know.”

  “I know that. There’s something I want to check.”

  “Sure, honey.” Linda retrieved her camera and turned it on. Toni flipped back through her photos, then stopped and backed up again.

  “Tiffany,” she said, “can you fire up your computer? And download these pictures?”

  “You deputizing me?” But she was already pulling her laptop out of her backpack.

  “I am.”

  Tiffany loaded the photos and the three of them gathered around the screen as she flipped to the first photograph that showed the doctor. He was striding through the crowd, a man on a mission of mercy. Her mom had been unbelievably snap happy that day and Toni was deeply grateful. “Keep flipping.”

  Tiffany did. Through photos of them at the beach, of the beach itself, strangers at the beach, the water, the sand, the two of them, then, when she’d asked a stranger to snap their photo, the three of them mugging for the camera.

  She had photos of the outdoor displays in the shopping plaza and tons of crowd shots. In some of the later ones, the doctor appeared once more. “Wow. There he is again.”

  It seemed he was returning from his appointment, presumably heading back to the ship. Even in the still photograph, you got the impression he was walking more slowly on his way back to the Duchess, as though there was no hurry. “Honey, is there any way to put the two photos up on the screen side by side?”

  “I can go from one to the other, would that work?”

  “I think so.”

  Tiffany fiddled and up came the first photo, when he was heading away from the ship. Then she flipped to the one of him returning.

  Toni nodded. “Do you notice anything odd?”

  “Yes,” Linda said. “The background on the second photo is blurry. I was having trouble with the focus. Sometimes the background is in better focus than the subject I was shooting, and sometimes it’s the other way around. I should read the manual. Except I don’t know where it is.”

  “Not that. Look at the bag.”

  Tiffany went back, and forward. “Oh, wow.”

  “Oh, wow, what?” Linda asked. “He took his bag. It’s a medical bag. He’s a doctor.”

  “Look again, Mama.”

  Tiffany flipped from one photo to the other once again. “Do you see that the bag in the later photo is a different shape than in the first one?”

  “Really? Let me see again.”

  Tiffany obliged.

  Linda leaned closer to the screen. “Oh, my gosh. You’re right. It’s so much bigger when he’s coming back to the ship. Why would that be?”

  “He’s bringing something back with him,” Toni said. “But what?”

  “Drugs,” Tiffany said, as though it were incredibly obvious.

  “Drugs? You mean illegal ones?”

  “Sure. I read about it on the Internet when I was looking for reasons why we shouldn’t come. I searched Norwalk.com, crimes committed
on cruise ships, the death rate, everything I could think of.” She shook her head. “Do you have any idea how many people die every year on cruises?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Well, when I started looking at the places we’d visit, it actually looked pretty cool, so I kept my mouth shut. But there’s a lot of smuggling that goes on, especially from the Bahamas.”

  “What do they smuggle?”

  “Heroin, mostly.”

  “Good Lord. You think the doctor…” Linda couldn’t even finish the sentence. “And I was going to let him inject filler into my face.” She put her hands to her face as though making certain it hadn’t been tampered with when she wasn’t looking.

  They enlarged the photos and flipped back and forth, but there was no question the bag that came back was bulkier than it had been on the trip out.

  “You know what else is strange?” Tiffany said.

  “What?”

  “That scary-looking guy who was talking to the doctor right before karaoke the other night. He’s in the background.”

  “Really?” Toni had been so focused on the bag she hadn’t thought to check out who else was in the vicinity. But Tiff was right. She scrolled through and sure enough, A. Vlodovitch showed up in the background in several of the shots. He wasn’t walking beside the doctor, speaking to him, or in any way appearing to be connected. If he’d turned up in only one of the shots, Toni would have put it down to coincidence.

  But he didn’t.

  In the photos where the doctor was heading away from the ship, A. Vlodovitch appeared to be ambling along. He wore baggy shorts, a tropical shirt, a ball cap, big glasses, and carried one of the cruise ship bags. He blended in seamlessly with the other passengers.

  When the doctor was returning to the ship, lo and behold, there was A. Vlodovitch again, this time wearing only a white T-shirt and missing the ball cap. Had he removed the shirt because he was warm? Taken the ball cap off to let the breeze blow through his close shaven hair? Or had he deliberately tried to disguise his appearance?

  In the second couple of photos where Linda had accidentally caught the doctor, she’d caught Vlodovitch, too. He strolled behind Dr. Madsen. At first glance he appeared to be part of a group with a woman and her two daughters. Toni suspected he’d tagged along with them to blend in, look like a family.

  Toni felt a cold chill waft over her.

  “Who is that man?” Linda asked, sounding worried.

  “I don’t know,” Toni answered. “But the name plate on his stateroom says A. Vlodovitch.”

  “Did he kill Dr. Madsen?” Tiffany asked.

  “I don’t know,” Toni repeated. “The only thing I do know is that he is on board this cruise ship and if either of you see him, I want you to stay out of his way.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  I am not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

  – Woody Allen

  Toni imagined that Dr. Madsen was stored away in the ship’s morgue and that when they got to their next port of call, police would begin investigating. That’s what Luke had said would happen when he’d told her in no uncertain terms to stay the hell out of the way. In the meantime, she felt unsettled. She had absolutely no proof that A. Vlodovitch was anything but a fellow passenger who had happened to end up near Dr. Madsen both when he left the cruise ship in the Bahamas and when he re-embarked. Coincidences like that happened all the time.

  But all her instincts told her that A. Vlodovitch had not been there by accident.

  She recalled the nervous way the doctor had acted when confronted by the Russian. After Tiffany’s suggestion that the doctor could be involved in drug smuggling, Toni had done some Internet research of her own. And she hadn’t liked what she uncovered. The Russian mob had pretty much cornered the heroin market in Florida and a lot of it came through the Bahamas. Crew members and passengers had been caught with drugs strapped to their legs, smuggled in bags and cases. For all the drugs that were intercepted, many more made it to the mainland.

  A doctor with a medical bag? She wondered if he was even required to run the bag through the regular screening machine.

  While she was thinking about dead doctors and drug smuggling, she was also preparing the wedding makeup. Very few people knew there was a murder victim on board, so it was business – and pleasure – as usual. Caitlyn was getting married the next day and Toni was a professional. She couldn’t let her worries, or her questions, get in the way of work. She was determined to have everything ready ahead of time so that the bride’s makeup application would be as stress free for both of them as possible. She’d also allowed more time than she believed she and Linda would need, because her short acquaintance with Caitlyn told her that something was bound to go wrong.

  Her mother was lunching with her new beau, Tiffany was probably having lunch with hers, and recent events had put Toni off her food. Especially anything that might once have been stored in a meat locker.

  Instead, she was carrying a stack of towels and facecloths that she’d borrowed from the salon for tomorrow’s bridal makeup session.

  She was running through everything she had to do for tomorrow as she hit the elevator button and stood in the hallway waiting. She was the only person there. At this time of day most of the passengers were eating lunch or lounging in deck chairs. It was rare to find anyone below deck. Hopefully, she’d be finished soon and could spend a little time in a lounger herself.

  She was aware that another person was coming toward her and didn’t think anything of it until he was beside her. A tad too close. She turned and fought to hold in her gasp of shock. A. Vlodovitch was standing beside her looking terrifying. He stared at her from hard, pale blue eyes.

  She had no idea what to do. She glanced around, but the surrounding area was deserted. Not even a room steward was in the vicinity. She glanced at the elevator buttons, lit up with the various floors, but what would she do when the doors opened?

  She decided that if there were people inside, she’d step in, and if the elevator was empty, she’d pretend she’d forgotten something, turn around and run.

  It wasn’t much of a plan, but she couldn’t think very clearly and any plan seemed better than nothing.

  “I would like to talk to you,” he said. His voice was surprisingly American, though she swore she heard a hint of Russian in it. And more than a hint of menace.

  “My mother told me never to talk to strangers.” Really? Had she actually said that? Nerves were making her stupid. She needed to pull herself together.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  “No.”

  But he grabbed her arm and started pulling.

  She had an arm full of towels, high heels on her feet, and she’d barely slept. She was in no mood to be manhandled by a drug dealer.

  “I am not going anywhere with you,” she said.

  Before he could reply, the elevator chimed and she heard the swish of doors opening. Voices told her there were people inside. She was about to turn and bolt when he said, “I wouldn’t do that,” and lifted his shirt so she could see the gun stuffed into the waistband of his shorts.

  “What do you want?” she asked, her lips feeling numb.

  “I want to talk to you.”

  Her gaze darted to the people getting out of the elevator, but they were old and it seemed like someone yelling for help might give them a heart attack. Besides, he had a gun. She didn’t think it was a good idea to antagonize a thug carrying a concealed firearm. She swung around. “Fine.”

  He pushed her forward and not until they’d gone a ways down the starboard corridor did she realize this was where his stateroom was. She stopped moving. “I’m not going into your stateroom with you.”

  “Shut up.” He put a hand in the middle of her back and pressed her forward.

  She didn’t think he had the gun out and pointing at her, but she experienced an itching sensation in her mid back as though there were a bull’s-eye pain
ted on it.

  He opened the door with his key card and held it for her. One last glance up and down the long corridor revealed a couple of stewards way down at the end. Even as she contemplated screaming as loudly as she could, he shoved her inside, causing her to stumble and drop the towels on the floor in the middle of his stateroom.

  The stateroom was a smaller version of hers. No seating area or pull-out bed, just a double bed, small desk, the mini-bar, TV, and one chair. He also had a balcony, though the doors were shut. There was nowhere to run. If she screamed, who would hear her?

  His place was a lot neater than hers. With three of them sharing, the surfaces had become cluttered. A. Vlodovitch’s stateroom was bare. Not so much as a pair of swimming trunks or a towel gave evidence that anyone was actually staying here. For some reason, the super tidiness added to her sense of dread. “What do you want?” she asked. She tried to sound tough but she didn’t believe she’d pulled it off.

  “I hear you found the doctor.”

  “You heard wrong.” How had her own mother heard the rumor about the gas leak while this scary man seemed to know enough of the real story to drag her in here at gunpoint?

  He pulled the gun out of his pants and laid it, very deliberately, on the top of the mini-bar, where a small tray table held a wine bucket, two water glasses, and the TV remote. When he laid the gun down she heard a clicking sound as it hit the table. “Do not mess with me,” he said.

  “I’m telling the truth. I didn’t find him. I was there when someone else did.”

  His hard gaze narrowed on her face. “Who found him?”

  “A kitchen helper. She started screaming and backed away. That’s when I went forward.”

  “And what, exactly, did you find?”

  She shuddered in spite of herself. He’d made the picture flash in front of her again—the shoes sticking out from under the tablecloth and the sad, blank face that seemed so vulnerable without his glasses. “You know what I saw.”

  “Tell me anyway, Ms. Diamond.”

  Oh, crap. He even knew her name. He probably also knew that she was traveling with the two people she cared about most in the world.