by Harper Lin
“I know,” she sniffed. “After all we did for her, she turns on us like this and spreads malicious lies.”
“But why?”
“Because of the bowling tournament. I told you. She couldn’t get over being rejected for the team.”
Hmmm, it looked like there was only so much truth I was going to get out of this witness. It was a pity she was a civilian and not some drug lord or terrorist. I could have brought in a CIA interrogation squad that would have gotten her talking even before they finished unpacking their toolkit. Most of the time, just seeing the toolkit was enough.
We only did that on bad people. Really bad people. Not even Georgina was bad enough to qualify.
“But why kill her?”
“When she saw us on deck, she got paranoid. She thought we were after her. She bumped into us in the hallway shortly thereafter while you and Octavian were still on deck. She threatened us. Claimed she had information that would make it so that we could never show our faces in Schenectady again.”
“What sort of information?”
Georgina made a dismissive wave with her hand. “Nothing. She had cooked up some sort of conspiracy theory about us going around systematically destroying marriages. She was crazy. But one of the girls must have gotten scared. What are we without our reputations? And it wasn’t like anyone would miss Maggie. She was a loser, but she wasn’t suicidal. She was too determined to prove herself to quit it all. I think one of them pushed her off the ship.”
“But who?”
Georgina ordered another drink. “I don’t know. Lord help me, but I don’t know.”
I’m not an overly religious person, but when someone like her calls on the Lord, it makes me a bit queasy. That drug baron I went to El Salvador to catch wore a big gold cross and donated to his local church while at the same time burying his victims in a mass grave in the jungle outside of town. You can have faith and live a religious life, or you can be evil. You can’t be both. I wish more people understood that. The world would be a better place.
“So why are you telling me all this?”
She grabbed me by the shoulders. Her grip was surprisingly strong.
“Because I need you. You’re a smart woman, Barbara. I could see right from the start that you suspected Maggie had been pushed. You’ve been asking probing questions and studying us. If anyone can help me, it’s you. I can’t go to the police, because I have no evidence, just a hunch. I need you to help me find who killed her. I’m afraid she might kill again. Do you know that when Alicia fell down, for a moment, I thought someone had poisoned her drink? I think someone in our group is so desperate to keep the status quo that they’ve gone crazy and will kill anyone who gets in the way. But you can help find out who it is. You’re objective. I’m so close to these people I can’t think straight, but you can look at everyone with an outsider’s eye. Will you help? Please say you will.”
Before I could reply, the rest of the gang showed up, Octavian and Fiona included.
“They say we can see Alicia now,” Brenda told us. “Alicia asked to speak to Georgina alone first.”
Everyone started filing out of the bar. Octavian gave me a look that said he had something important to tell me. I gave him a tiny nod and followed the crowd.
Georgina moved in close beside me and spoke to me in a low voice, “I’ll see Alicia first but not alone. You need to be there. I have a feeling she has something to say that you need to hear.”
Ten
As we entered the infirmary, we passed a room where another senior citizen lay groaning. The sharp smell of disinfectant couldn’t quite hide the stench of vomit coming from in there. It looked like Alicia wasn’t the only person who needed to realize her party days were over.
Alicia lay very still and pale in her bed. She was hooked up to a heart monitor, which showed a weak and irregular pulse. I’m hardly an expert, but that jagged line sure didn’t look healthy. Cotton gauze was stuck in both her nostrils, and her nose was twisted at a bad angle. The doctor stood beside Alicia’s bed, talking to her.
“Now, Ms. Ponsette, I just got an email from your hospital back home. You had been warned about your heart condition and told to avoid alcohol and not to exert yourself. You’re very lucky there was a doctor on the dance floor. Otherwise we might not be having this conversation.”
“A doctor on the dance floor?” Her voice sounded weak.
“Yes, another passenger. Good thing for you that other boat had engine trouble.”
Alicia’s eyes widened. “One of the gay ones?”
The doctor looked confused. “I fail to see why that matters, Ms. Ponsette.”
Alicia’s face took on an expression of horror. The heart monitor showed a faster and more jagged pulse. “Did he … touch me? He didn’t do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, did he? You need to give me a blood test!”
“He saved your life, Ms. Ponsette,” the doctor said sharply. Then he turned to us. “You can only have a minute. Try to keep her calm.”
With that, the doctor went to see to his other patient.
We drew closer to the bed.
“How are you feeling?” Georgina asked, stroking her hair with what looked like genuine affection.
“Violated,” Alicia groaned. “I can’t believe he touched me.”
“Perhaps he shouldn’t have,” I said. I didn’t mean to say that. It just sort of slipped out.
“He should have waited for the ship’s doctor to come or let Fiona treat me, but doctors always lord it over nurses, don’t they?” Alicia said. “But let’s not talk about that now. I need to tell you something, Georgina.”
Alicia glanced at me, expecting me to leave.
“Barbara is here to help,” Georgina said. “You can say anything in front of her.”
After a moment’s hesitation, she said softly, “It’s about Maggie. Somebody killed her.”
“How do you know that?” Georgina asked, surprised.
“When I went back to my cabin that night, I found my bowling ball covered in blood.”
Georgina gasped.
Alicia went on. “That’s why I said I forgot it. I couldn’t bring it to the bowling alley, and I was afraid to clean it, to even touch it. Someone got into my cabin and used my bowling ball to knock Maggie over her head and then dump her in the sea. They used my bowling ball to shift the blame on someone else. I didn’t do it, though. I swear. Otherwise I would have cleaned the ball, and no one would have been any the wiser. The key card to my cabin is in my purse. Take it, and go get my ball. Go to the ship’s security, and tell them everything.”
“But, Alicia, why didn’t you tell anyone before?” I asked.
“I was afraid. Oh, I was so afraid. When I saw blood on my bowling ball, I fell faint. Good thing I fell on the bed. My heart was in palpitations for several minutes, and I was hyperventilating. I hid the bowling ball in the closet and had Fiona check on me. She made me take a hot shower to soothe my nerves and rest for a couple of hours. I knew I shouldn’t have gone out tonight, but I didn’t want to disappoint you, Georgina. We all came to have fun together.”
“Yes, but this was a murder. Why didn’t you report it?” I insisted.
“Because the murderer was trying to stick it on me, don’t you see?” she cried, raising her voice. The heart monitor started gyrating wildly. We soothed her, and she took several deep breaths. After a minute the monitor went back to showing a regular heartbeat. “I figured if I stayed silent, it would all blow over. Maggie was already dead, after all, and nobody would miss her, but then this heart attack made me think twice. We were horrid to her, Georgina, like we’ve been horrid to a lot of people. Something like this was bound to happen eventually.”
Georgina’s lip curled in disgust, and she stepped away.
“Who did you share your cabin with?” I asked.
“No one. With my condition, it’s better for me to stay alone. I get less antsy that way. I have no idea how they got into my cabin.”
I studied her. Could she
be the murderer and just be covering up? Unlikely, with that heart condition. A stressful incident like murdering someone in cold blood would have probably knocked her down. Plus, she was about to be evacuated and get away from the scene of the crime. If she was guilty, she would have no reason to confess all this and tell us the murder weapon was in a cabin only she could access.
Georgina got the key card from Alicia’s purse. There was a knock on the door, and the others came in. The two of us said goodbye and left.
We made a beeline for Alicia’s cabin.
Georgina unlocked the cabin door, and we entered, flicking on the light. It looked almost identical to my own cabin except that the closet was stuffed with colorful dresses and the bathroom counter was covered in medicine bottles. Why a woman with that many prescriptions thought she could drink and dance all night was beyond me. She really risked her life just to please Georgina?
Georgina rummaged around the closet. After my quick survey, I helped. We didn’t find the bowling ball in the closet or anywhere else.
“Gone,” Georgina said.
“Or it never existed.”
“She had her own ball. We all did.”
I remembered seeing the other balls in the bowling alley. They all had their names and the logo of their team. Alicia would be sure to have one.
“Then where is it?” I asked.
Georgina shrugged.
“Did she give an extra key to anyone else?” I asked.
“Not that I know of. I know Fiona didn’t have one because this evening, when she went to take Alicia’s vital signs, I saw her knock on the door to be let in. I wasn’t given an extra key to my room anyway. Were you?”
“No.”
We stood there for a moment, stumped.
“The cleaning lady could have taken it,” Georgina said, sounding a bit unsure of herself.
“Who steals a bowling ball?”
Georgina inclined her head. “True. Alicia must have lent her key to someone.”
“She would have mentioned that because that would be the obvious culprit.”
Georgina threw her hands in the air. “Then it’s impossible! How could the ball be gone?”
“Wait.” I pulled my key card out. It was a simple electronic card that came in a little paper folder with my room number on it. I put it beside Alicia’s room card. They were identical. Like in hotels, the front desk activated one when a guest checked in and deactivated it when they checked out. The only way to tell the difference between them was the paper folder with the room number written on it.
Georgina took in a sharp breath. “Someone switched the cards while we were all out then snuck back here, took the ball, and then switched the cards back again.”
I nodded. Georgina was smart. Perhaps “cunning” was the better word.
“When could that have happened?” I asked.
Georgina shrugged. “Any time. We were all sticking together, and we’ve been out and about ever since the ship launched.”
“It couldn’t have been any time,” I said as we walked out of the room and closed the door behind us. “Let’s try to narrow it down. It had to be a time when Alicia was present and you were all distracted enough by some activity that the murderer could have switched the cards then excused herself for a minute. And it had to have been after Maggie was killed and before you all went bowling because Alicia didn’t bring the ball.”
By silent agreement, we headed on deck. The others would be coming back to our hall soon, and we did not want to meet up with them yet.
Georgina considered for a moment. “Let’s see … we were at the bar late the night Maggie was killed. Then we hung out in the cabins for a bit. Then breakfast, lunch, the bar, dinner, the bar … oh, it just goes on and on! We all sat together, and our purses were lying within easy reach. And the girls were always excusing themselves to go freshen up.”
This was a problem. It wasn’t surprising that Georgina couldn’t come up with anything. Most people are terrible witnesses. They don’t pay attention until after they know a crime has been committed. Why would they? Georgina could hardly be expected to watch her friends with an eagle eye when she didn’t even know one would try and switch the key cards. And she couldn’t be expected to remember each and every time someone left to ostensibly go to the bathroom.
“So who do you think might have wanted to kill Maggie?”
Georgina shook her head and sighed. We had made it to an observation platform on one of the lower decks. There was a floor-to-ceiling Plexiglas window. We stood looking out to sea.
“I don’t know. I just don’t know. I never thought one of us could do such a thing, and then to try and blame it on Alicia? Why? We all get along so well.”
I turned to Georgina and looked her in the eye.
“You need to be straight with me,” I said.
She didn’t reply, her eyes looking in every direction except at mine.
I went on. “Georgina, you brought us into your circle the moment you met us. Perhaps you do that a lot, but even after the blowup with Maggie and her saying all those nasty things about you to us, you kept us close. And you continued to keep us close even after Maggie went into the sea. You’ve suspected that she was killed all along, haven’t you? You probably expected someone to bump her off even before it happened.”
Georgina bit her lip and trembled. It was shocking to see such a normally confident (well, arrogant) woman suddenly so afraid. I have to admit, it gave me a sense of smug satisfaction.
“I … the thought crossed my mind.”
“Why?”
“She was so vindictive, trying to undercut our reputations that way. Everyone in the group said she needed to be shut up. They were quite nasty about it. I tried to calm them down, but they really wanted to drive her out of town. When she bumped into us on deck and started badmouthing us to you and Octavian, two complete strangers, I got a sinking feeling that one of the girls would try something.”
“Did any one of them show more hatred than the rest? Did Maggie hurt one more than the others?”
She shook her head and wiped a tear from her eye. At least she made the motion. She did it so quickly I didn’t see the actual tear. “I have no idea which one of them did it. It’s all so horrible.”
“Did you know Maggie would be on this cruise?”
She shrugged. “We planned it months ago, when we were still trying to make something of her. We invited her along, but after we stopped speaking with one another, we assumed she wouldn’t go on this cruise. I guess she assumed the same about us.”
“So why did she have a falling out with you?”
“The bowling tournament. I told you.”
“Nothing else?”
She shrugged again. “She was hypersensitive. I know it’s such a petty thing to get angry about, but that’s how she was.”
Liar. Georgina wasn’t going to tell me about Wesley.
I decided to try another tactic.
“You know, maybe we have it all wrong. Maybe she really did jump, and Alicia was having a hallucination about the bowling ball. Alicia just survived cardiac arrest. She isn’t thinking straight. Is there any reason why Maggie might want to kill herself? Did she have any major trauma recently?”
For a second the mask slipped. Georgina gave me a cold, calculating look, obviously wondering how much I had discovered. Then she once again became the distraught, kindly woman who needed a friend. “Not that I know of. Her life has been one long series of disappointments. I think that final rejection by us might have snapped her sanity. I don’t think she killed herself, though. It just wasn’t in her nature, and what about the missing bowling ball?”
“That’s right. You’re very intelligent, Georgina.”
She beamed despite acting distraught a moment before. Nothing gets to the heart of an arrogant person more than flattery. Her group of followers had certainly figured that out.
“I’m afraid, Barbara. I think my friends have become overly attached to me
. I love them all dearly, but they follow me around like hens. Surely you’ve noticed. I’m tired of having to be the mother hen. They look to me for everything. You know I had to plan this entire trip? It’s exhausting. They’ve become obsessed with me. They call me all the time, ask me for advice about every little thing. And when Maggie started saying bad things about me around the neighborhood, they were enraged. I tremble to say this, Barbara, but I think one of them murdered Maggie for my sake.”
I considered this. She certainly did have them in thrall. These were insecure women getting their sense of identity from a stronger personality. If that personality were threatened, it could lead one or more of them to kill. I’d seen it before in cults and extremist groups. People could even be motivated to kill themselves.
But how to find out who did it? Alicia didn’t have the heart, literally, and she had just made that confession about the ball. Charlotte, Brenda, Fiona, and Lauren were all equally invested in the group, and all equally likely suspects. Lauren was the youngest by a few years and perhaps the strongest, but all of them were remarkably strong thanks to their bowling. I had never realized it was such a workout. Maybe the Marine Corps should use it in boot camp.
What else did I know? Both Lauren and Fiona had tried to poach my boyfriend and didn’t seem to mind the competition from each other. That seemed like a group game, so that didn’t get me anywhere. Charlotte suffered from malaria, at least that’s what she said, and that could weaken a person. Perhaps she didn’t have the strength to kill Maggie, but I couldn’t know that for sure.
So what else did I know about these people? Practically nothing. They hardly ever spoke an original thought, merely following Georgina’s lead.
But wait, what was it that Lauren said when she was giving us bowling tips?
That Maggie wasn’t as bad of a bowler as Georgina had said. That was the only time I had heard one of them contradict Georgina.
She had said something else too: “She sure was competition in other matters.”
She had said this on the sly, like a child badmouthing a teacher or strict parent behind their back. She had been about to go on when that gay couple had walked in.
