Cruise Ship Cozy Mysteries 01 - Killer Cruise

by A. R. Winters

  "Umm…"

  Cece shook her head. "No way. I'm coming with."

  I smiled. It was nice to know someone had my back.

  "Can you just leave?" I said, lifting my chin toward the cleaning cart.

  "Cece Blake does whatever Cece Blake wants. You should know that by now."

  Giggling, I grabbed her by the wrist. "Well come on then!"

  F ive minutes later, we stood outside Carl's cabin, our hands on our knees, panting.

  "We should have... taken it a bit slower," I said.

  She righted herself again, straightening her back as she wiped her brow, and lifted me up to a standing position again.

  "Coulda, woulda, shoulda. Let's do this thang."

  Before I could hesitate, she'd used her keycard and already the lock had gone green and the motor to unlock the door was whirring. It opened with a loud thunk.

  She pushed the door hard and we stepped inside.

  It was then that I remembered something.

  The reason I had gone to Cece in the first place was so that someone would know if something happened to me. But now that she'd come with me, there was no one who would know where we were.

  Cece was already marching ahead. It was too late to back out now.

  I was hoping we’d find Carl sitting neatly in front of a big stack of money that he'd taken from Murphy. It would have been a tidy end to the whole mess.

  Unfortunately, that was not what we found.

  I couldn't see anything immediately out of the ordinary in the living room. Across the room, the french doors had been slid open to let in a breeze, and the room was much as I remembered it.

  "This way," hissed Cece, heading straight for the master bedroom.

  I followed as fast as I could, and just as Cece got to the bedroom door she stopped abruptly, causing me to crash into her. She stumbled forward, and I fell. When we regained our balance, we were both standing inside the room.

  Then I saw what made Cece stop so abruptly.

  Directly in front of us was Carl. But he was not sitting there counting a stack of money. He was lying on the bed, eyes wide open. Stock still. Dead.

  "What in the name of..."

  Cece grabbed my arm and I was grateful for the touch. I'd never seen a dead body until Murphy, almost a week before. Now this was number two.

  "What do you think happened?" I asked, rather foolishly.

  "I think he got shot is what happened," said Cece.

  The white sheets around Carl were no longer white; they were stained bright red with fresh, wet blood.

  Then I got the shock of my life.

  "That's exactly what happened. Now, slowly place your hands on your heads, and then very slowly turn around. Any sudden moves and you'll be deader than Carl. And he's very, very dead."

  Chapter 31

  M oving like molasses, I did as I was told, and when I turned around, I saw that there was indeed a gun being pointed at me—held in the very steady, and very firm grip of Janice Murphy.

  "Bet you didn't expect this, did you?" she said with an expression that lay somewhere between amused and triumphant with a generous dollop of cockiness on top.

  I shrugged. "Not that surprised. It was either going to be you or Carl. Actually, I thought it might be the two of you, in cahoots."

  She glared at me, not pleased that I was unsurprised.

  "I always figured you were a crazy old broad," said Cece with a little laugh. "But you're even crazier than I thought."

  Janice did not like being called crazy. Her expression had turned dangerously dark and there was the hint of a tremor at the muzzle of her gun.

  "Quiet! Both of you! Stop bluffing. You had no idea it was me. I had you all fooled with that drunk act. Did you know they were all alcohol-free cocktails? I was acting! Acting the whole time! And you were all too dumb to figure it out."

  "Obviously," said Cece, rolling her eyes.

  Janice gritted her teeth and clenched her jaw. The gun trembled more intensely.

  I frowned, not really fully understanding yet though. "Why did you kill Carl? Weren't you going to split the money?"

  "Share with that moron? Why would I do that?"

  I remembered catching her in his cabin, her lipstick smeared all over his face. "But weren't you having an affair?"

  She smiled now, her anger fading as she got to explain how clever she thought she was. "That moron was in love with me. Had been for twenty years. I told him to follow us on this cruise. I told him I'd sneak to his cabin every day. Of course, he didn't know I planned on killing Patrick."

  "So, just to confirm, that was definitely you," said Cece.

  "Of course," said with a little smile of pride.

  "Why?" I asked her.

  "He was a disgusting, horrible old man. His only redeeming quality was his money. So I figured, why not just take the money and lose the man? He thought he was so clever, having his secret accounts in the Caymans, but he wasn't all that clever. Oh no. I knew all about it. At least, I thought I did."

  "But what about Carl?" I asked.

  She nodded her head toward him with a sigh. "He didn't know I planned to kill Patrick, and he was a giant wimp about it. Afterward, he kept saying 'it's not right,' or 'you shouldn't have done that,' like a sniveling child. I was going to pay him off to keep quiet, but he kept saying stuff like 'I shouldn't' and what if we get caught?' I'd had it up to here with him. Why couldn't he just take a little bribe and keep it to himself? If he hadn't been so in love with me, he would have turned me in right away. Anyway, I couldn't trust him. And why bribe him when I could just keep the money for myself? So I told him I loved him too, and then killed him.

  “It worked out marvelously, because now this idiot's going to take the fall for killing Patrick. He's got the perfect motive: Patrick was stealing his money. He killed Patrick in the heat of the moment, but then, overwhelmed with guilt, he killed himself. At least that's what his suicide note is going to say once I print it out. I'll toss him over the side tonight—plop—and all my problems are solved."

  "That's really awful."

  She shook her head. "No, it's not. It's business."

  I shuddered at her idea of 'business.'

  "But I guess we ruined your whole plan, huh?" said Cece.

  "Not at all, dear. Now you're included in it. Plop… plop… plop.”

  Chapter 32

  “N ow, if you’d like to step outside to the balcony.”

  Cece and I looked at each other. She shrugged her shoulders and gave a half-nod.

  “Now!” shrieked Janice, gesturing with her gun.

  I wasn’t sure it was a good idea, but we did as we were told. A gun in the face can be very persuasive.

  We slowly walked out of the bedroom, across the living room, and out the sliding glass doors onto the balcony.

  “Phones!” she shouted.

  I pulled my phone out of the back pocket of my jeans. Cece pulled hers out of the front pocket of her cleaning apron.

  “We knew you were a thief, but this is low,” said Cece.

  “I’m not stealing your phones, you idiot. Toss them.”

  I held mine in my hand and begin to swing my arm to gently toss it inside.

  “Stop, you idiot! Toss them over the side of the ship.”

  My cheeks flushed lightly in embarrassment, and then I felt even more ridiculous. How could I be feeling that at a time like this?

  “Farewell, friend,” I said to my work-issued iPhone before throwing it over the side of the ship.

  “I’m due for an upgrade anyway,” said Cece, nonchalantly throwing hers over her shoulder.

  “Now wait there!” Janice shouted.

  When the door closed behind us, we let out a pair of deep sighing breaths.

  “She’s nuts,” said Cece, shaking her head.

  “Mad as a hatter,” I agreed. “She can’t really be planning on killing both of us!”

  “She’d have killed us already if that’s what she wanted,” Ce
ce said, smiling confidently.

  Her smile put me slightly at ease and I allowed my shoulders to relax a little. “How do you think she got away with shooting him? Why didn’t someone report the gunshot?”

  “Ships are noisy. With the engine droning in the background, and all the steel doors everywhere, a gunshot would blend right in. These cabins are pretty soundproof too, especially the VIP ones. Of course, she is going to get found out though.”

  “Oh?” I said with a tremor of excitement. Maybe Cece had somehow left a message or given a signal while we were on our way over.

  “Sure. Housekeeping are going to notice a giant pool of blood on the bed sheets. And if she tosses them over too, well they’re going to notice that. A suicide wouldn’t take the sheets with them.”

  “Umm. When will housekeeping be here?”

  “Tomorrow morning,” Cece said quietly.

  “We’re in serious trouble, aren’t we?” I said. My shoulders rose up to around my ears, and my throat felt tight.

  Cece shook her head defiantly and began looking around the balcony. “Find a weapon.”

  We looked up and down the balcony. It extended the entire length of the suite, though it did not appear to contain anything even vaguely resembling a weapon. At both ends of the balcony was a wall that went right up to the ceiling of the deck. There was no way to cross to the neighboring cabin’s balcony in the VIP suites.

  “In the good old days, there would have been a solid glass ashtray out here, to whack her over the head with,” complained Cece.

  “Or maybe a whaling harpoon,” I suggested, earning a wry smile in response.

  The closest thing to a weapon out here was the furniture, but there were two significant problems with it. First, it was bulky and made of wicker; it was awkward and without much heft to it. You wouldn’t do much damage to a psychopath with it. But second, and even more glaring a problem, was the fact that it was bolted to the deck below us, presumably so it didn’t get washed away in high seas or blown away in a gale before it could be brought inside.

  “We could try yelling,” I suggested.

  Cece tapped her chin.

  “We could. But there’s hardly anyone around. They’re mostly onshore. And even if we did yell, we’d need someone to be out on their balcony pretty close to here to hear us.”

  The ship was docked, but we were on the ocean-facing side meaning we couldn’t signal to anyone ashore.

  “But,” she conceded, “it’s better than nothing. Are you ready to yell your little lungs out?”

  “Little? Girl, clearly you don’t know Nebraska farm girls. We’ve got lungs for days. You better cover your ears.”

  Cece had a grin on her face, though it was a nervous one. “On three. One, two—”

  Ding-dong!

  “—was that the doorbell?” was how Cece finished her countdown, which was not exactly the traditional manner.

  Above our heads was an outdoor speaker, which had indeed rung like a doorbell. It had been installed so that when the Very Important People were outside doing Very Important Things on their balcony, they could hear if another Very Important Person dropped by for a visit. Even when the triple-glazed, soundproofed french doors were closed.

  Cece raised her eyebrows and nodded, a little smile on her lips. We hurried back to the windows, and held our hands up to the glass so we could peer through.

  On the other side of the glass, Janice, now wearing a low-cut silk robe, was approaching the door, a bottle of champagne in one hand and a wine flute in the other. She looked like she’d just been interrupted during a private celebration.

  We couldn’t hear anything through the thick windows, but we could look and watch the body language. Janice shimmied her way to the door in a kind of music-less dance. She couldn’t have looked happier if you handed her a basket of kittens. She pulled open the door and we stared eagerly to see who it was and whether they could save us.

  “Hot Stuff!” said Cece in excitement.

  First Officer Ethan Lee was at the door, asking her something. With laser focus, I stared at his mouth, wondering what it was he was saying and regretting that I never learned to read lips.

  After they exchanged a sentence each, Janice swung the cabin door all the way open, and flung her arm out in a gesture of welcome. Ethan began to enter and Janice let him lead the way while she closed the door behind him.

  “Quick! Hit the glass! Get his attention!”

  As one, Cece and I swung our balled-up fists into the glass door, whacking it and causing it to shake in its frame. Ethan looked up, tilted his head in mild confusion, and then went wide-eyed when he saw our panicked faces hammering at the glass out on the balcony.

  “He saw us!”

  “Oh… cornstalks!”

  Janice, who was following behind him, saw what we were doing, and panicked. Or maybe it had been her plan all along.

  Holding the wine bottle by the neck, she swung it hard and fast and caught him right in the back of the head.

  He crumpled like his legs had turned to pineapple jello.

  With a satisfied grin, Janice looked at us through the glass, then shook her head as if disappointed in us. After glaring through the glass, something seemed to cross her mind and she ran out of the room, back toward the master bedroom suite. She was back a moment later, gun in hand again and an angry look on her face. Ethan remained motionless on the floor.

  “Do you think he’s…” I said.

  Cece shook her head. “No way. He’ll be fine.” Her voice didn’t have her normal cocky confidence though. This time, I didn’t think she was all that sure.

  Janice unlocked the french sliding doors.

  “In. Now. I can’t trust you out there. I thought it would be easier if I just kept you out there, so you’d be ready for tonight, but nope, I’ve lost all faith in you. I don’t want you yelling like demented harpies and ruining everything. Things are getting complicated enough as it is.”

  I stepped forward but she immediately trained the gun on me. “Hands on your head first!”

  Doing as we were told, we went back inside, hands on our heads, gun trained on us the entire time.

  “That way, that way! To the bathroom in the master suite!”

  We started to do as we were told, then she seemed to change her mind. “Stop!”

  So we did.

  Her plan seemed to be shifting moment by moment. She liked to appear to be clever and in control, but she wasn’t. Janice was rapidly losing her grasp on the situation, but I didn’t think she realized it.

  “Take him with you!” She waved her gun in the direction of the unconscious first officer.

  Slowly, hands still on our heads, we walked toward him. Standing over him, I was relieved to see that he was breathing slowly and deeply as if he was asleep. There was a small blood stain around his head, but at least he wasn’t dead.

  “I don’t think we can lift him.”

  “Drag him by his hair!” Janice screeched.

  Cece shook her head at me and grabbed one of his hands. Following her lead, I took his other hand, and even though he was unconscious the warmth of his skin reassured me. Everything was going to be all right.

  It wasn’t just the warmth of his hand that made me think things would be okay. There was another reason.

  When I leaned over, I felt something brush against my collar bone. It was the needle that’d fallen out of Sandy’s mother’s bag. I had placed it in the pocket of my blouse and promptly forgotten all about it. I had a weapon after all.

  Slowly, we dragged him across the room and into the bedroom where Carl was still sprawled on the bed. Ethan Lee didn’t look light, and in reality he was even heavier than he appeared. Stupid big heavy muscles, I thought.

  “Stop, just a moment,” I said, breathing heavily. “Can we take a pillow with us? For his head?”

  Janice gave me a contemptuous look.

  “Oh, sure! And do you want me to call an air ambulance? And give you all a massa
ge?”

  “Yeah, that’d be great,” said Cece.

  “Idiots! Keep dragging!”

  I leaned down to pick up his hand again, but as I did so I let out a little yelp and toppled over, losing my balance. I fell onto my front, with my hands underneath me.

  It was pretty convincing, at least I thought so.

  While I was face down on the floor, I surreptitiously slipped the needle out of my blouse pocket and removed the plastic cap from the end. It took less than two seconds.

  “Up, get up! Or I’ll make you stay down for good!” Janice cackled at herself.

  “You all right?” asked Cece, putting a hand on my shoulder.

  “I think… I think I sprained my wrist…” I panted and squinted my eyes as I spoke, making a show of holding my right wrist with my left hand. What neither Cece nor Janice could see, however, was that my right hand was holding the needle. The way I held my left hand and arm blocked their view, and my whining and panting distracted them further. I bet they both thought I was a wimp.

  “I think…” I panted and gasped. “…it’s broken. Look!”

  I slowly lifted my left hand away, and then faster than I’d ever moved in my life, I whipped my ‘broken’ hand through the air and slammed the point of the needle directly into Janice’s hand.

  “Owww!” she screeched and immediately dropped the gun.

  “Argh!” she shouted as the firearm struck a bone atop her bare foot with an audible crack.

  Before I could make another move, Cece had charged into Janice like a bull into a particularly annoying matador, driving her shoulder deep into the woman’s solar plexus.

  Janice’s shouting and screaming stopped abruptly as Cece drove all the air out of her lungs. She dropped to the floor like a sack of bricks, with my friend the housekeeper-from-hell landing on top of her.

  Panting, I stood there, staring at Cece. She shifted so she was sitting on top of Janice, and grinned back at me. She held up a hand, and I leaned over and high-fived her.

  “Good job,” she said. “Thank goodness for your secret drug habit.”