Beauty Queens and Cruises: A Humorous Cruise Ship Cozy Mystery (Cruise Ship Cozy Mysteries Book 4)

by A. R. Winters

  “That’s very noble of you. See you shortly.” With a wave of her hand, she spun on her heels with much more panache than I could ever muster and left me alone.

  I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d learned from her. Mentioning the bracelet hadn’t seemed to have sparked any recognition on her end. But maybe she was just good at bluffing.

  Picking up my bag, I left the bathroom to return to the fray. Outside, an area near the front of the room had been kept clear and a dozen or so couples, including the captain and Kelly, were ballroom dancing.

  I slowly walked across the room, observing the atmosphere. The Captain’s Club was filled with large, circular tables like the one I was seated at. Most of the tables had a senior officer or member of staff to act as a kind of host or hostess for the other guests.

  When I got to the front of the room, I looked out at the small dance floor, and couldn’t help but smile. The captain was dancing with a lady who looked old enough to be his grandmother, and he was in his mid-forties at least.

  Further across the floor, I could see the diminutive form of Kelly with a much taller guest—though they pretty much all were—and as they slowly turned, I blinked and did a double take. The guest had fairly long hair, tanned skin, and a french cut beard. That guest was no guest. He was the mysterious disappearing housekeeper I’d been after!

  Though he almost certainly wasn’t a housekeeper either,. Cece had been right. So was he a stowaway? An undercover spy? Or something else entirely?

  Determined to find out, I began to march my way across the dance floor, dodging between twirling couples. I had my eyes locked on the man. I wasn’t going to let him get away this time. Focusing intently on him, I kept going. As I got closer, he saw me heading toward him.

  At first, he smiled at me. I didn’t smile back. I kept going. His eyes narrowed, and then his eyebrows shot up in alarm. Just as I approached, he gave Kelly a shove and she flew right into me.

  “Argh!” she yelped.

  I caught her and stopped her falling to the ground, and she grabbed onto my arm gratefully.

  “What the heck was that!?” Her head whipped around to search out her dance partner. But he was already making a getaway.

  “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out!”

  As soon as Kelly had regained her balance, I started to run after the man. Unfortunately, one of the things I’d never quite got the hang of was running in high heels. Walking was hard enough, but running? Not a chance. While I tottered across the dance floor, the man gave one last glance over his shoulder at me, and then burst through the kitchen doors.

  When I reached the edge of the floor, I quickly kicked off my shoes. If I was going to catch him, I was going to have to move fast.

  When I was free, I sprinted toward the kitchen doors. I can be pretty fast when I’m not hobbling, and I was quietly confident that I was going to catch him. I burst through the double doors, and immediately I saw him, right on the far side of the kitchen about to exit through another set of doors which led to another one of the restaurants.

  He wasn’t going to get away.

  “Stop!” I yelled as I continued my mad dash.

  “What?” came a voice, as its owner stepped out from behind a refrigerator, a concerned look on his face.

  And he was right to have the concerned look on his face.

  Because not only was he holding a giant silver tray loaded with several dozen martini glasses full of pink mousse, but there was a manic-looking social media manager barreling toward him—me.

  “Argh!” I shouted, trying to dodge out the way. At the last moment, I saw who it was: Greg Washington, one of the ship’s chefs and a man I knew quite well from previous cruises.

  “Oh, lord no!” he shouted, and also tried to dodge out the way.

  He moved to his left. I moved to my right.

  CRASH!

  I flew right into him, smashing him in the stomach and sending his tray flying into the air. Greg lost his balance and fell to the ground, with me landing awkwardly on top of him.

  Smash, smash, smash, smash…

  The martini glasses had flown through the air, sending their pink-splashing contents in a hundred different directions. And of course, what goes up, most certainly has to come back down. Several landed on my back, and head, while others shattered nearby.

  “Adrienne!? Girl, what on earth possessed you!?”

  I looked across the room. The man was gone.

  I looked down at Greg.

  What do you say?

  What can you say?

  I went with the classic response.

  “Sorry?”

  He put his face over his hands and groaned.

  I did the same.

  It was some time before either of us got up again, only doing so when several chefs came to offer their assistance.

  It was one of those days.

  Chapter 20

  The next day was a new day.

  A fresh start.

  No need to think about the embarrassment of the day before, when I’d walked back to the dining table covered in pink dessert—from my dress to my hair to my face.

  “You’ve got something on you,” Autumn had said with an arched eyebrow to almost everyone else’s amusement. Everyone except Ethan, who had of course been sympathetic.

  I’d made my excuses and left with as much grace as I could in the circumstances, carrying my heels in one hand and using the other to stop bits of pink dessert from falling onto guests as I passed them on my way out of the restaurant.

  But that was all done and over with. There was no need to think about it anymore. Over and over again. While I repeatedly did keep thinking back to it. I suspected I’d still be thinking about when I was on my deathbed, hopefully many, many years in the future, despite my best efforts to forget all about it.

  But it was a new day, and a new country. We were in Mexico, the ship was docked at Cozumel, and we were doing something special for our beauty queens.

  “But why didn’t you get someone to take your photo?” asked Sam with an angry glare. She was mad that she had missed the excitement of me making a fool of myself.

  “A photo? Who wants a photo of themselves looking like that!?”

  Sam shrugged. “Me!”

  “Oh, very funny.”

  “Cece would love to see it too. Oh yeah, and a little place known as the internet. I’m pretty sure the entire internet would have loved to see you.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Come on. We’re supposed to be working.”

  Sam and I had accompanied the pageant contestants to San Gervasio, a site full of ancient Mayan ruins and we were there to make sure everything went smoothly.

  Which of course it didn’t.

  “It’s like herding swans, isn’t it?” said Samantha as we surveyed the scene.

  Our pageanters were wandering around the ruins, all of them holding up their cell phones to take unnatural natural-looking selfies of themselves and each other as they did so. More than a few of them tripped over because they weren’t looking where they were going, much to our guilty amusement.

  “I want to take pictures of them, but I only get pictures of them taking pictures of themselves,” I complained.

  Sam shrugged. “Don’t bother. Just grab the pictures from their social media sites and share them. They probably take better pictures than you anyway.”

  “Oh, thanks,” I said sarcastically. It was true though. I’d trained as a journalist, not a photographer, and I didn’t spend nearly as much time trying to take glamorous photos as these girls did.

  “I’m going to take a nap under that tree,” said Sam pointing at a rather inviting shady spot.

  I was tempted to join her, but there were a couple of things I was hoping to accomplish during this day trip. Things like questioning my suspects.

  “Don’t work too hard while you’re napping,” I said, giving her a punch on the arm.

  “I’ll try not to,”
said Sam, putting a hand over her mouth to suppress a yawn while she said it.

  When she’d left me I started to wander around the ruins seemingly at random. Like I wasn’t looking for someone in particular. Like I definitely wasn’t searching out one particular man to talk to.

  After talking to Autumn the day before, I was convinced that not only had Rolf taken Diana’s bracelet, but there was more to it than I had figured out so far. Like the archaeologists who’d been to San Gervasio before me, I needed to dig deeper.

  I found Rolf staring away from the ruins, back near the ocean.

  “Not that interesting, huh?”

  Rolf looked at me and smiled. It wasn’t so much a friendly smile of greeting though. It was a barely suppressed cackle of laughter as he remembered what I looked like the day before covered in pink mousse. Luckily he was just about enough of a gentleman not to bring the topic up.

  “I don’t get ruins. What’s the point of them? If they were any good, they would have maintained them, wouldn’t they?”

  I’d never thought about it that way before. I didn’t think I would again, either.

  “That’s an interesting way of looking at it,” I said, nodding along like I didn’t think it was stupid, which I did.

  “I think it’s much more interesting to focus on the here and now. Give me a modern skyscraper over a crumbling ruin any day.”

  “Right. I can see that.” At least that made a bit more sense. If you were an idiot.

  “Say, Rolf, you didn’t lose anything recently, did you?”

  His forehead wrinkled as he thought.

  “I don’t think so. I thought I’d lost my concealer, but I found it in Autumn’s bag. She borrowed it, can you believe that?”

  With a laugh I shook my head.

  “Not that. The other day, when I ran into you in the shop—”

  “You’re a bit of a klutz, aren’t you? The boas in the shop, the mousse in the restaurant. It’s a wonder you didn’t fall in the pool as well!”

  I decided not to tell Rolf that actually I had fallen in the pool. Twice. Just not on this cruise. Though there was still time...

  “Yes, I’m clumsy,” I said to shut him up.

  I didn’t think I was all that clumsy, not usually. I hadn’t been until I started working on the Swan of the Seas. “But back to the topic at hand. The shop. After you’d left, I found a bracelet on the floor, right where we’d been standing.”

  “I’d hardly call what you were doing standing,” he said.

  Suppressing a glare, I pretended he was funny and treated him to a brief smile. “Do you know anything about that bracelet?”

  “No, no. I don’t know anything about any silver bracelets. I don’t tend to wear them myself, though I do have some silver cufflinks.”

  I didn’t believe Rolf. Not because of his tone, but because of the fact I hadn’t mentioned anything about the bracelet being silver. He’d brought that up all by himself. But he was denying any knowledge of it for the time being.

  I briefly considered pushing him further—asking him how he knew it was silver—but decided this wasn’t the time or the place. I should probably check with Ethan and see what he thought. Knowing that Rolf was definitely hiding something was good enough for me for the moment.

  “Well, if you know nothing about it, it must have come from somewhere else,” I said. “I guess I’ll just hand over to lost and found then.”

  “Good idea. Right, I think it’s time to find some refreshments. Enjoy the crumbling buildings.”

  “Will do,” I said with a sad shake of my head.

  We both turned back toward the historic site to head our separate ways. But Rolf didn’t get to go for his refreshments. Standing right behind us was Autumn, and from the look on her face, she wasn’t too happy. In fact, she looked downright furious.

  “A… Autumn!” said Rolf in shock. “I didn’t know you were there!”

  Autumn slowly shook her head, a contemptuous look on her face. Then she swiveled, and angrily began to walk away from us. She’d overheard our conversation and something had clearly upset her. I was pretty sure it wasn’t Rolf’s disrespect for the ancient ruins.

  It was the bracelet.

  Autumn knew more than she’d let on the night before when I questioned her, and so did Rolf.

  But neither of them were talking to me about it.

  Autumn stalked away in a huff, while Rolf hurried along behind her.

  “Wait, Autumn, wait...”

  She didn’t wait. She picked up her pace, and soon the two of them were out of earshot.

  With some new interesting information, I walked back toward most of the girls, who were now standing in a big group while Sam took pictures of them. I guessed she didn’t get much of a nap.

  Sitting on an old rock, watching the proceedings, was Martin. I had a few things I wanted to ask him too, so I sidled my way over, as if running into him by pure chance.

  “You’ve changed, then?” said Martin as I approached.

  “Changed?”

  “You know. From last night!” he began to laugh as soon as he finished speaking.

  With my hands on my hips, I waited for him to finish. I found the whole thing much less amusing than everyone else.

  “Sorry, sorry,” he waved his hand downward in an apologetic, calming motion. “It’s just we were all tickled pink yesterday.” He paused a beat. “Though it was you who was pink—with strawberry mousse!”

  I almost turned and walked away from him. But unfortunately, I really did need to talk to him.

  “I suppose it’s much funnier when you’re not the one who’s embarrassed,” I conceded.

  He finally stopped laughing and shifted across on the rock he was sitting on, patting a flat piece of the rough surface next to him.

  “Grab a pew.”

  I sat down and joined him. I wondered how much longer they’d tease me about the pink pudding incident. One of the good things about working on a cruise ship though was you got to say goodbye to the passengers after a week or so. And I didn’t think I’d be hiding my enthusiasm when I waved off this bunch of prissy pageanters.

  “I guess my embarrassment isn’t as bad as what happens to some of the people in your industry.” I nodded my head toward the girls who were attempting to all jump into the air simultaneously, while Sam futilely tried to capture them all airborne in a literal ‘jumping for joy’ pose. After the third failed attempt, the joy was looking more and more fake.

  “Oh?” said Martin, his interest piqued.

  “I heard about when poor Kimberly fell off the stage in front of everyone.”

  Martin let out a snort. “Oh, yes, that was funny. She nearly quit because of it!”

  Hilarious. Not. These people had the worst sense of humor. It was like they couldn’t laugh unless someone else was in pain or embarrassed. Or ideally, both.

  “Right. Oh, and I heard about something else—some girls had some pictures leaked?”

  Martin looked up, as if remembering something. “Oh yes. A few years back. I remember, now. That was also Diana’s lot—like Kimberly was. Despite all her wins, she had some rotten luck as well, sometimes.”

  “Yeah, it does seem awfully unlucky.”

  “And then of course the other day,” said Martin shaking his head.

  “What do you mean?” Was he about to reveal some other snippet I hadn’t yet heard?

  “She was murdered, of course. Awful luck.”

  “It definitely didn’t seem lucky, no. But we’re working on the assumption that that was deliberate.”

  “Right, yes of course.”

  “I was wondering, someone mentioned to me that perhaps Diana had leaked those photos, as a kind of punishment to some of the girls. Do you think...?”

  “Oh, no. She was tough, but she wasn’t stupid. That’s definitely not the kind of punishment Diana would have used. Far too risky. She was more the type to make a girl stand on a balance beam for two hours without letting her
smile falter once, that kind of thing.”

  Charming, I thought.

  “I see. But perhaps if one of the girls thought it was true, even if it wasn’t, mightn’t it have given them reason to want some kind of revenge?”

  Martin shrugged. “I suppose, if someone truly believed that, then sure they would want revenge. But of course that isn’t what happened.”

  “Oh?” How did he know what happened, I wondered.

  “None of those girls are here, so it couldn’t have been one of them.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “You should probably talk to Autumn if you want to know more about all of that, though. She was much more involved in the scene at the time.”

  “Thanks for the tip. I’ll see you later.”

  I hopped off the rock I’d been sitting on. Across from me, the girls had finally gotten their jumping shot and were starting to head back toward our tour bus to take us back to the ship.

  While I hadn’t found out everything I wanted to know, I felt like I was making progress. The only problem? I didn’t seem to be eliminating any suspects.

  Chapter 21

  I took a small break after we returned to the ship, and then I decided to visit the conference center for our beauty contestants.

  The following night was to be the big talent show, when the pageant contestants would all be up on the stage, showing off their various skills and abilities to the judges and to the audience.

  The room Diana had been found in was still sealed off, and one of the other conference rooms was supposed to have been converted into the new preparation room for the girls, and I needed to check that everything was in order.

  When I arrived at the suite, there was only a single light on, and the air had a chill to it from lack of activity.

  I flicked on a light switch in the lobby area, and then walked across to Conference Room D. As I approached, I got the faint whiff of woman’s perfume, something that smelled expensive but understated. When I got close to the room, I heard something and stopped.

  Staying stock still, I listened carefully. There was someone in the room. At first, I thought it was the sound of heavy breathing and it put me on guard, but after continuing to listen, I realized I wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t heavy breathing. It was sobbing and sniffling.