A perfect filet of delicate grouper was surrounded by a mound of mashed potatoes, a generous portion of sautéed spinach, and a juicy, slow-roasted tomato. It was a mountain of food, and Savannah considered it a worthy personal challenge to eat every bite.
“That’s it? That’s all you’re giving us for dinner? I never saw such a skimpy portion in all my life.”
The grumpy voice reaching her ears from across the table annoyed her almost as much as the grumpy face across the table.
Her husband wasn’t pleased with his dinner. It wasn’t quite enough to feed a platoon of starving soldiers, so his knickers were in disarray.
What a rarity, she thought. Alert the media.
“Maybe Tammy knows a gossip columnist who would give a diddly-squat,” she muttered.
The waiter hovering over the disgruntled Dirk seemed as upset as he was. “What is it, sir? You aren’t happy with your dinner? Perhaps when you taste it, you will enjoy it more and—”
“I’m sure it’ll taste fine,” Dirk grumbled. “All three bites of it, that is. It isn’t enough to feed a grown man. I have a healthy appetite, you know.”
“There’s nothing healthy whatsoever about his appetite,” Tammy said, eyeing Savannah’s spinach.
“There is no problem, sir,” the waiter assured him. “You may have as many entrées as you like. Would you enjoy another grouper, or would you prefer the roasted veal chop?”
Dirk’s face lit up like a Halloween bonfire with a gallon of gas sprinkled on top. “Do you mean I can have them both?”
“Wait a minute! Wait a minute!” From the other side of the table Dora was waving her arms, like she was trying to flag down a train. “Son, I don’t know what’s going on here, but think this through before you regret it. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, so you know very well there’s no free dinner. I don’t care what this man here says. Sooner or later that food is going to show up on your bill. You’re going to feel pretty stupid if you find you paid one hundred dollars for a veal chop.”
She reached beneath her, pulled out her purse, and held it up for Dirk to see. “If you get hungry, you just let me know. I’ve got half a dozen peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in here, and more in my suitcase.”
“No, madam. Truly, there is no charge,” implored the waiter. “You may have all the food on the ship you want without extra cost. Except for your alcohol, everything is included.”
The waiter hurried away to get a second meal for Dirk, and for the next ten minutes Dora Jones chattered on excitedly about the miracle of having a week’s worth of delicious, free food at her fingertips.
Normally, Savannah would have found that moderately entertaining, but something else had caught her eye. Something far more interesting.
A man was walking through the restaurant, from one side to the other, studying the occupants of each table as he passed. Those diners who caught his eye gave him wary looks. Not just because he was an enormous man, standing at least six feet, five inches and weighing well over three hundred pounds. Not just because his face bore the scars of more than one severe beating.
It was the intensity of the man, a distinct sense of menace that radiated from him and appeared to intimidate everyone in his vicinity.
Savannah couldn’t remember when she had seen someone quite so scary. Her first thought upon spotting him was, I sure wouldn’t want to tangle with the likes of him.
“Holy cow! Get a load of that guy,” she heard her brother say. “How many poundings do you reckon it took for his face to look like that?”
“Something tells me,” Granny added, “that over the years he’s given more than he’s got.”
But it wasn’t the man himself or the reactions of the diners he passed that set Savannah’s heart racing. It was the reaction of one diner in particular when the giant passed the captain’s table.
She watched, spellbound, as Colin Van Cleef looked up from his veal chop and saw the monstrous man with the battered face.
Savannah had seen men so frightened that they fainted, so scared that they vomited or urinated. Occasionally, even worse. But she had never seen a man look like he might do it all at once.
“Did you see that?” she heard Dirk say. “Did you see the look on Van Cleef’s face?”
“I did,” she replied, even as she studied her client’s expression. Natasha gave the strange man the same suspicious look as everyone else in the vicinity. But her face had not turned gray, like her husband’s, and she didn’t look like she was about to have a heart attack on the spot.
“We have to find out who he is,” Ryan said.
“No doubt about it,” John replied. “I do believe we have our first suspect.”
“I know who it is.”
Everyone turned in their seats to look at Dirk’s father. Richard sat there, staring at the passing man, a cop-stern look on his face.
“Who is it, Dad?” Dirk asked. “What’s his name?”
“He’s an enforcer for a Los Angeles syndicate. He works out of LA and Vegas, collecting gambling debts for the mob. As you can tell by looking at him, he’s very effective. His name is Frank Bellissimo.”
“Bellissimo?” Ryan asked, then turned to John and they both snickered.
“What’s so funny?” Dirk wanted to know.
John told him, “‘Bellissimo’ is Italian for ‘the most beautiful. ’”
“Talk about a misnomer.” Savannah noticed that the man appeared to be leaving the room by way of the side door. “We can’t let him out of our sight until we know more about him. What room he’s in. What he’s up to.”
Ryan and John instantly jumped to their feet. “We’ll follow him,” Ryan said.
Waycross rose, too. “I’ll tag along. The three of us, we can leapfrog him, and he won’t know he’s being followed.”
Waycross looked down at Tammy. “You gonna be okay, sweet cheeks?”
But a waiter had just placed an eggplant soufflé in front of her, and she hardly even heard the voice of her beloved. She dismissed him with the wave of a hand and, “Okay. Sure. Whatever.”
As Savannah watched Ryan, John, and her brother discreetly follow the mountainous man out the side door, she turned to Dirk and said, “Do you think they’ll be okay?”
“Sure.” Dirk picked up his knife and fork and attacked his veal chop with a vengeance. “As long as he doesn’t figure out they’re following him. As long as they don’t piss him off. If they do, God help ’em.”
Chapter 8
When Savannah awoke the next morning, she was disoriented and for several moments couldn’t remember where she was. The stateroom was so tiny that, at first, she thought she had fallen asleep or passed out in somebody’s closet.
It had been a long time since she’d done that.
The only source of light in the small space was the dim, narrow beam that outlined the edge of a door.
A bathroom door, she recalled, when she heard the toilet flush.
Seconds later, she was blinded by eyeball-searing light as Dirk threw the door open, walked the two and a half steps to the bed, and hurled himself onto it.
“Good morning, gorgeous,” he said, far too chipper for a dude who hadn’t had his morning coffee yet.
Gorgeous? Without makeup? Without benefit of a hairbrush? Without caffeine?
Not likely, she thought. Not in a pig’s eye.
Then she remembered.
The hot, steamy, adventurous, darned-near-kinky whoopee they’d made the night before when finally hitting the sheets of their diminutive, no-frills stateroom.
“No wonder you’re in a good mood,” she mumbled, trying to turn away from him and hide her face with the blanket.
“Oh, no you don’t.” He grabbed a pillow and smacked her on the rear with it. “We’re docked! We’ve arrived! Alaska is waiting! Forests and glaciers are waiting! More importantly, the breakfast buffet is waiting. Shake a leg, babycakes.”
“If you hit me again with that pillow, I’ll shake y
our leg. Then I’ll whack you on the head with it.”
He leaned down and nibbled her neck. “You were a lot sweeter last night,” he said, “you know, when you were still a virgin.”
“Yeah, well, since you ‘deflowered’ me, you have to face the consequences. Us wanton women can be ornery, especially in the morning before we’ve had our coffee.”
She rolled onto her back and gave him a quick kiss. “Why don’t you go on down to breakfast and get started without me? Your parents will be there by now, and Tammy and Waycross, too.”
He perked up instantly. “You don’t mind?”
Do I mind? she thought. Do I mind the chance to wake up gently, to shower in peace, to put on my makeup without watching somebody bounce impatiently around the room, asking, “Can we go yet? Can we go yet? Can we? Huh? Huh?”
“I’ll miss you somethin’ awful,” she said with just the right amount of bogus sincerity, “but I know how hungry you are this time of the morning. You go on ahead, and I’ll be down as quick as I can.”
“You’re the best, darlin’,” he said, pressing a kiss to her forehead.
“Yes, I am. Don’t you forget it.”
Less than three seconds later, he was sprinting out the door, in search of the perfect Alaskan lumberjack’s breakfast.
She giggled, turned back onto her side, nuzzled her pillow, and pulled the blanket snugly around her shoulders.
Ah, peace, quiet, and treasured solitude, she thought. This cruising gig is a wondrous thing.
* * *
When Savannah entered the buffet restaurant on the lido deck, the first thing she noticed wasn’t the endless cornucopia of breakfast delectables that stretched in both directions, seemingly into infinity.
Her eyes and imagination were instantly captured by the view from the massive floor-to-ceiling windows. Her first impression of Alaska would always be dearest to her heart. The tiny village of Saaxwoo was little more than a large pier and simple row of quaint, rustic buildings lining the shore, painted in brilliant shades of goldenrod, brick red, robin’s egg blue, and hunter green.
Rough hewn, hand-carved signs identified the various establishments as souvenir stores, fur galleries, and jewelry shops, along with the occasional bar or restaurant.
The waterway in front of the town, its only connection to the outside world, hummed with activity as fishing boats jostled for space with private yachts and tenders transporting cruise passengers to and from their ships, while floatplanes took off, taxied, and landed.
Behind the town and its water, providing the quintessential Alaskan backdrop, was a range of thickly forested, mist-clouded hills.
Behind those, lording over it all, rose the ragged tops of snow-covered mountain peaks, glistening coral and gray blue in the morning sun.
Alaska. Alaska. Her soul breathed the word over and over again. You’re here, Savannah girl. A poor kid from the Georgia cotton fields. You’re actually here!
“Hey, Savannah!” Someone grabbed her by the elbow. “You’re not going to believe all the food, and it’s free!”
Dora. Just had to be. Savannah turned to greet her mother-in-law. No one else she’d ever known got that excited over a complimentary waffle.
“Good morning, Mom,” she said, putting on her best smile. It wasn’t much of a smile, but the best she could manage pre-coffee. “I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.”
“Wait until you see the waffles!”
Yes, somehow she’d known it was about the waffles.
“They’re big and fluffy and golden brown and covered with this fresh berry medley, raspberries, strawberries, and blueberries. Even Tammy had one because of all the fruit . . . you know how she is about only eating healthy things, which is a good idea anytime, but especially when you’re pregnant, and they’ll put either butter or whipped cream or sour cream, whatever you like, on it, and I’ll bet if you asked nice, they’d probably put all three, because they really want to please their—”
That was when Dirk rescued Savannah.
He grabbed her other arm, shoved a mug of dark coffee into her hand, and said to Dora, “Sorry, Mom, but I’ve gotta talk to her about some important stuff over here and . . .”
There was only the briefest of tugs-of-war before he won.
So what if a bit of coffee slopped onto the front of her shirt? ’Twas a small price to pay for freedom.
“Thank you,” she said as he guided her toward a large table by the window where the rest of the Moonlight gang was eating and enjoying the view.
“No problem. It was the least I could do for the young woman who so graciously surrendered her maidenhood to me last night.”
Savannah paused and looked up at him with a coy smile. “You quite enjoyed that, didn’t you?”
He snickered and nodded. “It was a hoot. A hot hoot.”
“Then we’ll be sure to do it again sometime, but only if you promise to stop talking about it.”
“Soon? Can we do it again soon?”
“All right. Sure. Whatever.”
“When would be soon? Tonight? Next week?”
“If. Only if.”
“Okay.”
Savannah slid into the empty seat next to Gran, assuming it had been saved for her. Granny Reid had been saving the chair to her right for Savannah as long as she could recall. “One of the few perks of being the oldest of nine young’uns,” Gran had always said. “Them that does the most work gets the seat of honor.”
“Good mornin’, sugar,” Gran said. “Is that all you’re havin’ for breakfast? You’ll faint away dead in the street if that’s all you eat.”
“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” Ryan said.
John added, “The Irish say, ‘Food is gold in the morning, silver at noon, and lead at night.’”
Granny laughed and spread an indecent amount of butter on her waffle. “I reckon we Reids don’t hail from Ireland then, ’cause we consider food to be pure gold morning, noon, and night.”
“Especially if your granddaughter’s cooking it,” Dirk said, far too enthusiastically.
Of course he loved the meals that Savannah shoved under his nose on a regular basis. But she also knew when she was being buttered up for nefarious, lascivious reasons.
She also knew the moment that his fleshly lusts turned from sex to gluttony. His mother walked up behind him and shoved a grossly overburdened plate onto the table in front of him.
“There you go, Son,” Dora said. “I just picked up a few things I thought you’d like.”
The “few things” consisted of an oversized omelet, some cinnamon rolls, French toast, and several slabs of thick, smoked ham.
She sat down beside him with a plate of her own that was similarly laden, and in seconds mother and son were shoveling in the grub with gusto.
As Savannah watched them, virtual mirror images of each other, it occurred to her that if the researchers were sitting in her chair at that moment, the age-old question of “nature versus nurture” would have been settled on the spot.
Attempting to ignore them both, she turned to Richard, John, and Ryan, who were quietly sipping their coffees. “How did your leapfrog surveillance endeavor turn out last night?” she asked them.
“A waste of time.” Richard sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, which, like his son’s, appeared to have a hard time waking up in the morning. “We could’ve been out on the deck, staring up at the sky, watching the northern lights for all the good it did.”
“You can say that again.” Ryan shook his head wearily. “That guy roamed this ship for over two hours. He was obviously looking for somebody, but he didn’t find them.”
John added a sugar cube to his coffee. “If you think he was in a bad mood when he passed through the dining room, you should’ve seen him when he finally slipped into his suite and put an end to it.”
“Frankly, we were hoping we wouldn’t have to tangle with him,” Ryan said. “A guy that big, that cranky . . .”
/> “Without a weapon or even a pair of cuffs,” Richard added. “It wouldn’t have been pretty.”
Savannah chuckled. “You would’ve needed Granny and her Taser along. Let’s just say she’s come in handy on previous occasions.”
“I’ll bet she has,” Richard replied solemnly. “But let’s just say that since we didn’t have her along for protection, we were glad when he went into his suite and stayed there the rest of the night.”
“Don’t tell me you guys watched that door the whole night,” Savannah said.
“Until half-six this morning.” John yawned. “Of course, we traded watches. But it still made for a less than restful night.”
“You should’ve gone to the magician show with Granny and me,” Dora said around a mouthful of pancakes. “That guy was amazing, sawing girls in half, pulling roses out of his jacket and giving them to the ladies sitting closest to the stage, and of course we were right up front, because we got there early and grabbed the best seats, and the most amazing thing of all is that they didn’t charge a penny for the show, a show that was fit for Broadway, for free I tell you!”
Eventually, she had to pause for a breath. The instant she did, Savannah turned to Tammy and Waycross, who were seated at the far end of the table. “How did the two of you fare, getting Natasha back to her suite?”
Neither of them replied. In fact, Savannah was pretty sure that Tammy was deliberately ducking her head, so as not to look her straight in the eye.
“Did everything go okay?” Savannah prompted when she got no response. “You didn’t have any problems with her, did you?”
“No,” Waycross replied. “She was downright ladylike about it. Didn’t give us no problem at all. ’Course we didn’t ask her any embarrassing questions, like you did. We just walked behind her, bringin’ up the rear, so to speak.”
Yes, something was definitely wrong. In spite of the fact that Tammy was staring down at her plate, and her golden hair was covering much of her face, Savannah could tell that she had been crying.
Tammy almost never cried. Even throughout her pregnancy she had been sunshine and daisies, puppies and kittens.
In the years that Savannah had known her, she had never seen her down in the dumps or out of sorts, unless something quite serious had occurred.
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