Cruise Ship Cozy Mysteries 01 - Killer Cruise

by A. R. Winters

  “I don’t have a—” I stopped when I realized she was kidding, then let myself gently collapse onto the floor beside her. We leaned against each other, gasping and giggling like we hadn’t nearly just been murdered in hot blood.

  Someone else began to stir.

  “Could I get a pillow? My head is killing me.”

  “The wine went straight to your head, Hot Stuff,” I said with a tired smile.

  It was then I truly knew everything was going to be all right.

  Chapter 33

  Ethan Lee spent the rest of the day in the sickbay, where Cece kept him company. Coincidentally, Dr. Ryan Wilson spent an awfully large amount of his day doing the exact same thing.

  A less kind observer than me might have thought neither Cece nor the doctor were there primarily for the injured victim, but instead for the pleasure of each other’s company.

  Before I left Cece and the doctor, however, I got the patient to agree to Sam’s immediate release from her confinement, and permission to deliver the good news to her myself.

  I splashed some water on my face before heading down to the brig. There were now three occupied cells. Only a few more criminals and they’d have to start requisitioning some of the crew’s quarters.

  The brig was also a lot noisier than the last time I’d been there.

  “It’s your fault for killing him, you stupid cow!” screeched Sylvia from one cell.

  “You were stealing from us for years! You owe me! I always get what I’m owed!” wailed Janice from another.

  “Oh, you’ll get what’s coming to you! You killed my golden goose and you’re going to get the electric chair! That’ll teach you, do you see!?”

  “I’ve got lawyers so good I’ll be given a Congressional Medal of Honor before this is all over, you conniving little rat!”

  “Yeah, well—”

  I tuned out the manic shouting and used Cece’s keycard to unlock Sam’s cell.

  “Addy!”

  “Sam!”

  We hugged each other so tightly I was surprised one of us wasn’t injured as a result. This was the longest we’d been apart since her family took her to Yellowstone for two weeks when we were eleven.

  “Good news,” I said when I finally escaped her grasp and had recovered my breath. “We found out who did it.”

  “Yeah. I kind of heard,” said Sam, nodding her head toward the door. We could still hear the two criminals screeching at each other.

  “Oh. So you heard everything, then?” I said, disappointed.

  Sam shook her head, her short blonde hair moving just a bit slower than her face and catching up with a whip when she stopped. “No. Way. You have to tell me everything. Everything. I don’t think I can trust what I’ve overheard those two yelling about. And the acoustics here are lame.”

  “Come on. Let’s get you out of here.”

  We hurried out of the room, arm tightly interlocked in arm, like if we let each other go for even a second the other might get whisked away again.

  It took until almost midnight to tell her everything, and by that time I was so exhausted I couldn’t keep my eyes open a moment longer. I think I fell asleep right about the time I got to “…used Cece’s keycard to unlock your cell.”

  T he next morning, I was awoken by a loud ringing.

  “Turn it off,” I mumbled.

  “It’s the phone, not an alarm clock,” said Sam.

  While I slowly blinked the sleep out of my eyes, Sam answered it. A moment later, she was patting me on the shoulder. “It’s for you.”

  The room was small enough that the receiver’s cord could easily stretch to my bed, and Sam pushed the phone right up against my ear.

  So I started the day with my head resting on my pillow, eyes closed, while Ethan Lee whispered sweet nothings in my ear. Well, almost.

  “Adrienne? Please come to my office immediately.”

  “Wait… aren’t you in sickbay?”

  “No, I’m in my office,” he said, slowly.

  I forced my eyes open to see Sam staring at me with a curious expression on her face.

  “But…”

  “Now, please, Adrienne. Thanks.”

  “What’s the time, Sam?” I asked with a croaky voice. I hadn’t had anywhere near enough sleep.

  “It’s nearly ten.”

  “Whoa. I overslept.” I sat up. “And I lost my phone. Can I borrow yours? I’ve got to Tweet and post—”

  She raised her index finger to her lips. “Shh. No, you don’t. Sylvia’s gone. You’re boss-less.”

  That perked me up and I forced myself to my feet with a smile. “Good point. I guess I better go see the first officer and see what he wants. Maybe he’ll give me a replacement phone.”

  I didn’t go right over. No way. You don’t hop right out of bed and run straight to First Officer Hot Stuff’s cabin. Not even if it was on fire. I spent a good ten minutes trying to make myself look presentable, but not so much that it looked like I had tried. It’s a careful balance.

  With my hair tied up in a ponytail, my best pair of jeans, and a white blouse, I walked over to his office. The uniform blouse I had been wearing the day before had somehow lost two buttons, and the other one I had been issued with was sitting in the bottom of my closet waiting to have a ketchup stain washed out of it.

  When I arrived, the orderly just waved me in with a, “Good morning, go ahead.”

  Inside the office, Ethan Lee was sitting behind his big important-person desk, his starched white uniform almost gleaming, as was the bandage that was wrapped around his head.

  “Sit,” he said, indicating one of the pair of chairs that sat in front of his desk.

  I bit my lip and sat down, knees pressed tightly together. Why weren’t we sitting on the pair of leather sofas, like usual?

  “Adrienne, Adrienne, Adrienne,” he said.

  I frowned at him. Did he have brain damage after yesterday?

  “Are you sure you’re okay to work?”

  “Of course I am. We need to go over a few disciplinary matters.”

  Oh, great. No thanks for saving my life. No thanks for solving the murder. Disciplinary matters? What was this?

  “The first concerns your friend and colleague, Sam. I should be talking to her directly, but since she’s spent so much time in the brig I didn’t think it fair to drag her in here right away. Since you’re such good friends, I thought I might use you as the messenger. Is that all right with you?”

  “I guess. Have you found another crime to accuse her of?”

  He didn’t laugh. Nor did he smile. He looked a little sad, in fact.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  My heart sunk and I squeezed my fingers into my knees in nervousness.

  “What is it?”

  “When your friend applied for her job, she claimed five years of experience working on cruise ships. Since it was a last minute position, full background checks weren’t carried out. Or rather, they were, while we were at sea. We just got the results of that check.”

  Oh no. After all that she’d been through they’d found out that she had been hired under false pretenses.

  “And?”

  “And she’s never worked on any kind of cruise ship. That’s right, isn’t it, Adrienne? There isn’t some bizarre reason there are no records of her, like she completely changed her name and forgot to tell us about it?”

  Oh, that could have been a good excuse! A bit late now though. I shook my head at him sadly. While my expectations for our meeting this morning hadn’t been too high, they had certainly been more optimistic than what this meeting was turning into.

  “Can you confirm that for me verbally?”

  In the smallest audible voice I could muster, I did so. “She hasn’t worked on a ship before. She wanted to get the job to be close to me. She… lied.”

  Still squeezing my fingers into my knees, I felt hollow inside, like I was betraying my friend. But she’d been found out already, I wasn’t giving them any ne
w information. I felt terrible though.

  “Okay, thank you for that. Let’s move on to you, now.”

  “Wait. What’s going to happen to her?”

  “I’ll come to that shortly. I’m afraid we have to talk about you now, Adrienne, and what happened yesterday.”

  “Right.” In that moment, I felt small and weak. All my happiness from having Sam back and what I thought had been the success of the day before was gone, fluttered away like it had never existed.

  “Yesterday, I told you not to speak to Sylvia, and what did you do?”

  I shifted uncomfortably. “I… ran into her at the gym. A public place.”

  He lowered his chin and met my eyes. “You didn’t know she would be there?”

  “Well, I may’ve had an inkling…”

  “That’s what I thought.” He clasped his hands together, interlocking his fingers and letting them rest on the desktop. “And then I told you not to go to Carl Turner’s cabin.”

  I shook my head. I remembered that part very clearly. “No, you didn’t. You were too busy dealing with Sylvia. She was quite a handful.”

  “Really?” He looked up to the ceiling as if trying to remember. “She was quite difficult, wasn’t she?”

  With a nod, I confirmed that she had indeed been a lot of trouble.

  He unclasped his hands and stood up, though with less precision and confidence than what I remembered. He walked around the desk until he was standing beside my chair.

  “Stand.”

  I stood up, and found myself looking up into his eyes.

  “Adrienne, yesterday you acted very foolishly. It was a dangerous situation, and it nearly didn’t end as well as it did.”

  “I know. But I couldn’t leave Sam locked up for a murder she didn’t commit. You see that, right?”

  As I breathed in, I inhaled a whiff of his aftershave, a piney scent with a hint of a muskier sandalwood underneath. My head almost went giddy. I gave it a little shake. I must still be recovering from all my exertions, I reasoned. There couldn’t be any other reason the awful first officer’s aftershave would be making my head spin. I was probably allergic to it, in fact.

  “Yes, I suppose I understand. But there’s something else.”

  “Oh?” My voice was nearly as glum as I felt.

  “I warned you not to run off and put yourself in danger, but then I did the very same thing myself.” He lifted a hand and ran it over the bandage around his head. “If it wasn’t for you… well…”

  What was this? A little surge of hope sprang up inside of me. It sounded an awful lot like the bad stuff was over, and now he was going to thank me. Play it cool, Adrienne.

  “If it wasn’t for me and Cece distracting you through the window, Janice never would have got the chance to hit you with the bottle.”

  He tilted his head. “Oh. Good point.” He paused, thinking for a moment. “Then I guess I don’t owe you at all.”

  His face was so serious I almost couldn’t tell he was joking. Almost. The corners of his mouth quirked up and the tension in the room shattered into a million pieces and flew away. He wasn’t mad at me.

  “Hey! I was just being nice! She totally would have shot a hole in your head instead of just giving you a little love tap with a bottle,” I said with a firm nod.

  He ran his hand over the bandage again. “That was a love tap? Remind me to stay away from feisty women. But, back to the topic at hand. You broke a ton of rules, Adrienne. I can’t even list them all. Cece too. Speaking of which, why does her keycard open all the doors? That is a massive security breach. Nope, there’s got to be a punishment. All three of you have committed fireable offenses.”

  If my heart had sunk a little before, now it plummeted straight to the bottom of my stomach.

  “However, you have also provided valuable services.”

  And like a bobbing cork, my heart popped right back up again. He was such an annoying tease I was tempted to reach up and strangle him.

  “Adrienne, for your punishment…”

  I stared up at him, trying to look as annoyed as I felt.

  “…I order you and Sam and Cece to accompany me as my guests of honor at the Masque Ball tonight. Furthermore, Sam can, if she wishes, continue her employment on a six-month trial basis. If her work is acceptable, she’ll be given a permanent contract.”

  “What?”

  “I said—”

  I poked him hard in the chest. “Yeah, I got it! Why did you have to be so mean?”

  He grinned at me. “Well you did disobey my orders more times than I can count.”

  “You’re a mean, mean, mean, boss.”

  “I’m not as bad as Sylvia though, you see that right?”

  I poked him again. “It’s do you see, not you see that right. Man, you may be a bigwig around here, but you’ve still got a lot to learn.”

  “Yeah. Actually, I have a question.”

  I stared at him for a second. “That didn’t sound like one.”

  He laughed and patted me on the shoulder. “That wasn’t it. No, I could have sworn you called me something strange when I woke up in that cabin yesterday. You said something about drinking too much wine, and you called me something. What was it?”

  I shook my head and willed my cheeks not to flush. They did not comply.

  “Why are your cheeks red?” he asked with a frown. With a thumb he gently touched my left cheek. “It feels warm, kind of hot…”

  I stepped back, my cheeks going even more crimson than before. “I don’t remember. We were all very confused—speaking of which, I’d better go tell the girls we’re going to be at the ball so that we can decide what to wear and get ready. Is there anything else?” I was running my words together so quickly I felt like an auctioneer.

  “No, that’ll be all for now, Adrienne.”

  I left the office with a smile on my face. Sam was back with me, I’d solved a murder, made a wonderful new friend, and First Officer Ethan Lee had kinda, maybe asked me to be his date to the Masque Ball.

  As I sailed down the hallway, I felt like I was floating. Life at sea wasn’t so bad after all. I couldn’t wait to get to my room and share the good news with Cece and Sam.

  When I got to my room, I knocked on the door, and called out softly, “Sam, you in there?”

  There was no reply, which didn’t surprise me too much. As I was leaving to go talk to First Officer Ho—Ethan Lee, Sam had said something about going over to the staff canteen and grabbing some serious breakfast, since she hadn’t had much of an appetite in the brig.

  I figured Sam wasn’t yet back from her huge breakfast, so I swung open the door and stepped inside.

  The envelope was the first thing I saw, lying about a foot away from the door. I looked at, puzzled, wondering if it was some kind of notice being sent to all the staff—in the old-fashioned way? Rather than via email or even a staff meeting?

  I shrugged it off. This cruise hadn’t exactly lived up to my normal expectations so far, so what was one more strange thing happening?

  I flipped the tab of the envelope and pulled out a sheet of paper, unfolding it to reveal a note.

  Except this clearly wasn’t a generic message to all staff.

  This message was meant for me.

  Comprising of cut-out magazine letters pasted on to form the words, the letter simply said, “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”

  A chill ran down the back of my neck, and I turned around quickly, feeling as though I was being watched.

  But I’d closed the cabin door behind me. There couldn’t be someone watching me.

  I stepped up to the keyhole, and peered through.

  No one in the hallway.

  I breathed a sigh of relief, then looked down at the note again.

  Memories, unbidden, flashed through my mind. The darkness, the panic, and then… it was over.

  I gave myself a shake. Could this be some kind of prank? Someone spoofing a popular horror movie?

  No, if som
eone was mocking me for investing the murder, they’d have sent a note saying something like, “Nancy Drew Strikes Again,” or “Happy Hunting, Scooby Doo!”

  Not this creepy piece of paper I held in my hand.

  The sound of voices down the hallway had me opening my door, and I peered out to see Sam and Cece walking toward my cabin, laughing about something together.

  They stopped when they saw my face though, their laughter replaced with worried eyes.

  “Is everything okay?” Sam asked. “Did things go well with the first officer?”

  “It’s all great,” I said, trying to keep my tone light. “You didn’t leave me a note or something lying on the floor, did you?”

  I glanced from Sam to Cece, trying to see if they knew anything, but they both just looked confused.

  “What kind of note?” said Cece. “Were we supposed to?”

  “No, no,” I said, forcing out a laugh. “I was just—anyway, I’ve got great news! Officer Lee’s invited us to go to the ball with him, as his guests of honor!”

  With whoops of delight, the three of us went back into the cabin, and I closed the door firmly behind us, glancing out the keyhole just once to make sure there was nobody else in the hallway.

  “You mean, he’s asked you,” Cece was saying. “We’re just tag-alongs.”

  Sam giggled and said something about missing out on my great romance while she was in the brig, but I didn’t quite hear the details of what she was saying. I was busy glancing furtively at my note.

  Who would send me such a thing? And who on this cruise ship would even know about what happened last summer?

  “Addy? Addy, are you okay?” Sam was saying.

  As my bestie, she’d caught on pretty fast to the fact that I wasn’t my usual self.

  “Just a little seasick,” I said, rushing into the bathroom and locking the door behind myself.

  “Well, get better before the ball,” Cece called out. “I have to go back to work, but you girls enjoy your day off!”

  “Will do,” I heard Sam say, and then there was the noise of footsteps and the closing door.

  “You can come out now,” Sam said softly after a few seconds. “What’s going on?”