Murder (and Baklava) (A European Voyage Cozy Mystery—Book 1)

by Blake Pierce

  Suddenly she was startled by a nearby sound—from the door, she realized.

  It was someone using a keycard to enter.

  Oh, no, London thought. The police.

  Of course she knew better than to be surprised. She’d known she was taking a risk just by coming in here. But it wasn’t going to look good for her to get caught clutching this necklace in her hand.

  Before she could do anything about that, the door swung open and a figure stepped inside.

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  “Amy!” London cried out in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

  Amy pointed an accusing finger at the necklace in London’s hand.

  “Oh, my God!” Amy squealed. “I knew you were up to something. You’re stealing that, aren’t you?”

  Then she backed away from London with alarm.

  “Why, that must mean that you’re the killer!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” London replied, trying to sound calm.

  “Well, how else do you explain—all this?”

  “It’s like I told you back in Old Town. I’m trying to solve the case. I’m trying to find Mrs. Klimowski’s killer.”

  “Why should I believe you?” Amy asked.

  London rolled her eyes and put the necklace back in the drawer.

  “Amy, do you seriously believe I’m the killer? I’d be pretty stupid to try to steal anything out of this room right now, with police aboard the ship and everybody under suspicion. Besides, what about you? At least I’ve got a reason for coming here. I’m looking for clues. What are you doing here?”

  Amy crossed her arms.

  “Well, if you must know, I’m here to find out what you’re doing. I glimpsed you coming off the elevator, then looked around the corner and saw you sneaking in here.”

  “I wasn’t sneaking,” London objected. “Well, not really. Anyhow, why didn’t you just knock if you wanted to come in and check up on me?”

  “Because I wanted to catch you in the act … of … whatever you were doing …” Amy’s voice trailed off, then she added. “I actually got a little scared. I paced the passageway for a few minutes before I got the nerve to open the door.”

  “Well, you weren’t very stealthy about it,” London said. “Anyway, you don’t seriously think I’m the killer, do you?”

  Amy shrugged.

  “No, I don’t suppose I do,” she said.

  “That’s a relief. Now that you’re here, maybe you can help me look for clues.”

  London showed her the drawer full of jewels.

  “She’s got tons of valuables here that don’t look like they’ve been touched, except maybe by the police,” she explained. “At least I don’t think they’ve been touched. I guess maybe it’s possible that somebody stole a few small things. But nothing about this seems seem right to me. Why go to the trouble of killing somebody and leave so many valuables behind?”

  “So what was the motive?” Amy asked.

  “I wish I knew,” London said, gesturing toward the jewels. “But the answer’s not in this drawer.”

  “So where else should we look?”

  “I’m going to try the bathroom,” London said. “But you should get back to work.”

  Ignoring that suggestion, Amy followed London into the bathroom. Amy gasped at the sight of all the medicine bottles.

  “She must have been in very poor health,” Amy said.

  London didn’t doubt it. But she wondered whether all these medicines could possibly have been really helping her. Was it possible that they were making her much, much worse?

  Suddenly she noticed something different about the containers. Like yesterday, they were arranged neatly in army-like rows. But yesterday, three containers had stood in a row in front of the others. Today there were only two of them there. The one in the middle was obviously missing.

  She picked up the two bottles and looked at them closely.

  “These are prednisone,” she said.

  “So?”

  “It looks like the police took away the container between them. Judging from how the rest of the medicine was arranged, it was probably prednisone as well. The police must have thought it was important and took it in for analysis.”

  “What’s it prescribed for?” Amy asked.

  London read the label on one of the bottles.

  “It says, ‘Take as needed for stress, tiredness, anxiety, panic, depression, nervousness, lethargy, insomnia, poor appetite, or overeating.’”

  Amy scoffed.

  “Well, that pretty much covers everything, doesn’t it?” she said.

  “Way too much, it seems to me,” London said. “There’s something really wrong here. I guess the police thought so too.”

  “Who prescribed it for her?”

  Reading from the bottle, London said, “Dr. Emory Bowen, a private physician in Port Mather, Long Island. That’s where Mrs. Klimowski was from. It looks like most or maybe even all of the prescriptions were written by him.”

  London squinted at the bottle.

  “Maybe we should ask Bryce what he thinks about it,” she said. “He’s surely had enough medical training to figure it out.”

  “I guess we could give him a call,” Amy said.

  Then London thought better of it.

  “No, we’d better not,” she said. “You and I will get into plenty of trouble if we get caught playing detective like this. It would be unfair to get Bryce into trouble as well.”

  Amy snapped her fingers.

  “Hey, I’ve got it!” she said. “I know a pharmacist we can ask!”

  “A pharmacist?”

  “Sure. Sandor. You know … you remember …”

  Her voice faded shyly.

  Then London remembered the man sitting in the sidewalk café.

  “The guy you went out to meet today,” she said.

  “Yeah. Like I said, we don’t speak each other’s languages very well. But he did manage to tell me what he did for a living. He’s a pharmacist here in Gyor, with his own drugstore.”

  She took out her cell phone and added, “I’ve got his phone number. I could call him. Maybe he could at least tell us something about this medicine. What do you think?”

  “Well, I guess there’s no harm in giving him a call,” London said with a shrug. “Helping us won’t get him into any trouble, anyway.”

  Amy let out a squeal of delight.

  “OK, I’ll call him right now!” she said.

  She snatched the medicine bottle out of London’s hand and scampered out of the bathroom into the main room.

  Picking up the remaining prednisone container, London stifled a groan of dismay. She now realized that Amy had been looking for any excuse she could think of to give her would-be boyfriend a call. And that was all this was, really—an excuse. Nothing was likely to come of it.

  Well, I guess it’s still up to me, then, she thought.

  Looking at another container, she thought back to when Mrs. Klimowski had swallowed some pills with a glass of water at the Magyar Öröm. She’d done the same thing back in Budapest at the Duna Étterem restaurant. Was this the same medicine she’d taken those two times?

  It seemed likely. Mrs. Klimowski been quite agitated on both occasions, and the prescription indicated its use for stress and anxiety, among all those other conditions. Might this particular medicine have been the cause of her death?

  The police surely knew the answer to that question, even if they were keeping that answer to themselves. After all, the coroner had done a full autopsy, and he’d surely found what substances were in her system. But for some reason, the coroner and the police had decided that Mrs. Klimowski was murdered, not that she’d accidentally overdosed on some prescription medicine.

  Why? London wondered.

  Surely it was because they knew she’d died from some other cause.

  London’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Amy babbling over the phone in the next room, repeating certain words ove
r and over.

  “… Lots of prednisone … prednisone, I said … prednisone … We don’t know what to … I said we don’t … Could you repeat that for me? … What are you trying to say? … I don’t understand …”

  London shook her head in silent annoyance as she remembered something Amy had said when they’d run into each other in town.

  “Sandor and I don’t know each other at all, and I don’t speak any Hungarian and he doesn’t speak much English.”

  Obviously, the language gap between Amy and Sandor was pretty much insurmountable, at least over the phone.

  She’s just wasting her time, she thought.

  But at least Amy was staying busy, giving London a moment to think things through. Despite all his secrecy, she believed Alezredes Borsos to be sure of at least one thing. Mrs. Klimowski had been murdered by someone who had been near her at the Magyar Öröm—in fact, someone on that list London had made of the people sitting at the table.

  If so, when and how had the murderer struck?

  She sighed with despair. She wished she’d been paying better attention at the time. She wished she’d been watching what was going on that table. But it was too late now.

  Then an idea hit her like a flash out of the blue.

  Maybe it’s not too late, she realized.

  Maybe I can still find out what happened.

  Maybe I can actually see …

  Before she could think her idea through, Amy bustled back into the bathroom.

  “Good news!” she said with breathless excitement, setting the bottle back on the counter. “I think Sandor can explain it all!”

  Taken aback, London asked, “What?”

  “Well, we had a hard time communicating over the phone, but he seemed to recognize the word ‘prednisone.’ It seems that the word is very similar in Hungarian. And he was worried about it. He said he could explain why in person.”

  “You know we’re really restricted to the boat now,” London reminded her. “You can’t go sneaking off to meet him again.”

  Amy looked like a disappointed child. “I think he wanted to take me out for drinks and dinner,” she whined.

  London felt an urge to just say, “Too bad. I guess it’s not going to work out.”

  After all, it seemed more and more obvious that Amy was more interested in having a rendezvous with Sandor than in actually solving the case. Then she remembered what the alezredes had actually said.

  “Well, Borsos did tell me a little while ago that he didn’t much care who comes aboard the Nachtmusik. He just doesn’t want anybody to get off.”

  Amy’s eyes widened with excitement.

  “Do you mean the guards might let Sandor aboard?”

  “I believe they would.”

  “Then we could have dinner here. The ship won’t leave until at least late tonight. I’ll call him back and invite him.”

  “Problem solved,” London told her. “Meanwhile, I have something to take care of right now. You need to be out there helping our passengers get settled in for our voyage to the next port.”

  “That doesn’t sound like much fun. What are you going to do?”

  “This is not fun time,” London snapped. “Passengers are still roaming the decks like agitated chickens.” Realizing that she needed to remind Amy again about who was the boss, she added, “I need you to get serious about your job right now.”

  Amy crossed her arms and scowled.

  “And just when I thought we were starting to get along. I should have known better.”

  London sighed as Amy charged huffily through the stateroom and out into the passageway.

  She’s back to River Troll mode again, she thought.

  Before Amy left the room, she called back, “I’ll do my job, but I will phone Sandor.”

  When the door closed behind Amy, London suddenly felt able to breathe a little easier. Now she could clear her head and remind herself what she’d been thinking a few moments ago when Amy had been on the phone.

  Oh, yes, she remembered.

  Maybe I can actually see what happened to Mrs. Klimowski!

  She put the container of prednisone in her pocket. Then she dashed out of the stateroom and headed for her next destination.

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  London rushed through the reception area and toward the lounge. The ship’s library was tucked between the two, and she hurried to the door. With relief she saw that the person she hoped to see was there, sitting comfortably at a large table.

  “London, what a nice surprise!” Emil said, looking up from a book with a German title. “I was getting a bit lonely here, with nothing except books to keep me company. Welcome to the least popular room on the Nachtmusik.”

  London had only glanced into the library before now. The walls were completely covered with shelves full of books of all kinds, popular paperbacks, tour guides, language dictionaries, with history and nonfiction sections. A selection of computer tablets surely must access an even wider range of e-books. A computer with a large screen and a cluster of folding chairs indicated that this could serve as a little lecture room from time to time.

  Emil was sitting near a section of books that were all hardbacks, some of them looking very old. He showed her the one he was reading.

  “As you can see,” he said, “I am catching up on my Austrian history in preparation for our arrival in Vienna.”

  Then he added with a chuckle, “That is, if we ever get to Vienna. What are the chances, do you think? The police are keeping us here until they have solved Mrs. Klimowski’s murder, is that correct?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” London said, sitting next to him at the table. “But I don’t know if they’re making any progress.”

  “Then it appears that our entire tour could be in danger of cancellation.”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  Emil looked surprised, and London went on to explain.

  “You’ve been taking pictures, haven’t you? I mean of the tour groups and the places we visited.”

  Emil nodded.

  “And you took some of our group at the restaurant in Budapest, and also here in Gyor, right?”

  “Yes, I did,” Emil said. “Why do you ask?”

  “I wondered if I could have a look at them.”

  Emil gave her a strange, skeptical look.

  “May I ask why?” he said.

  London swallowed hard. How much of what she was doing did she want to explain to Emil? She’d avoided calling Bryce about Mrs. Klimowski’s medications for fear of getting him mixed up in her illicit investigation. She didn’t want to get Emil into trouble either.

  “I’m just curious,” she said.

  Emil frowned. His darkening expression reminded London of a couple of other moments when he’d seemed haughty, condescending, or prickly.

  “You are not telling me everything, are you?” Emil said.

  London shrugged, trying to decide what to say.

  Emil leaned toward her.

  “I could not help but notice something a while ago,” he said. “When the captain called several passengers to come to his quarters to be interviewed by the police, the people he called had all been with Mrs. Klimowski at both restaurants. One of those people was me.”

  His frown sharpened.

  “Should I be concerned, London?”

  London felt herself stiffen uneasily. True, Emil had been right there at both of those restaurants. But so had Mr. and Mrs. Shick, Honey and Gus Jarrett, Cyrus Bannister—and of course London herself.

  Did she actually suspect Emil?

  She didn’t want to suspect anybody, particularly not a man she liked and even felt somewhat attracted to.

  But how can I be sure?

  She decided she had to be at least partially truthful.

  “The alezredes won’t tell me a lot,” she said. “He won’t even say the exact cause of Mrs. Klimowski’s death. But he does seem to suspect our group. After all, we were close to Mrs. Klimowski s
hortly before she died. We had an opportunity to … well, poison her, maybe.”

  “That does make sense,” Emil said with a tilt of his head.

  “Actually, I seem to be at the top of Borsos’s suspect list. After all, not only was I at the restaurant, but I found her body. But I’m not the killer, please believe me.”

  Emil’s lips curled in a slight hint of a smirk.

  “I should certainly hope not,” he said.

  Emil leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers together.

  “I take it you’re conducting your own little investigation,” he said. “One that the alezredes does not exactly approve of.”

  That’s putting it mildly, London thought.

  Emil continued, “And of course, you want to see exactly what happened when our group was all together—not just at the Magyar Öröm here in Gyor, but at the Duna Étterem back in Budapest. And I just happen to have a visual record of sorts.”

  “That’s right,” London said.

  Emil gazed at her intently for a moment. London couldn’t read his expression.

  “Well,” he finally said, “I suppose it is only reasonable for me to help you. After all, you are very anxious to clear yourself of suspicion. And I am anxious to clear myself as well. So let us get to work, shall we? I have moved the images onto the computer, so we can see them on the larger screen.”

  London breathed a little easier as Emil moved the computer screen so they could both view it.

  He brought up a picture that showed the spacious, candlelit Duna Étterem with its low arching ceilings. Of all the people who had gone there to eat, that ones who most concerned London were sitting near the end of the table in close proximity to Mrs. Klimowski—the Jarretts, the Shicks, Cyrus Bannister, Emil, and herself.

  This first picture captured a rather tense moment before the group had ordered.

  Emil pointed at the picture and said, “Here we see Mrs. Klimowski sitting with that disagreeable little dog of hers in her handbag. And standing right next to her is the waiter—I can’t remember his name.”