The South Pacific Murders

by Sylvia Massara

  “Let’s not worry about this just yet. I’ll need a bit of time to trace the site back to the real identity of the owner,” Chris pointed out. “For the time being, let’s have a look at some of the entries and see if something jumps out at us.”

  I agreed and we spent the next two hours reading a huge amount of threads within the topic of illicit liaisons. By around 1.00am, my eyes started to close. “I think we’re going to have to stop soon, Chris. We read so many threads, my head’s spinning. Plus we didn’t even find anything that sounds familiar.”

  Chris ignored my comment. “Look at this one.” He went on to read from one of the threads. The comment was from someone who called themselves Multiswitch. “I had the wildest experience recently, and we did it in my husband’s surgery. Of course, it was after hours. He went off with a few of his friends to shoot some golf balls—boring!—while I shot some golf balls of my own—much more exciting! Two of my husband’s colleagues and I had a threesome in his office. One man had me sit in front of him with my legs spread open while the other one putted golf balls my way to see if he could shoot a hole in one... if you know what I mean (blush, blush). Needless to say, one ball found its way in with a little bit of help from the guy who held me. Oooh! Now I know what it’s like with those exotic Thai dancers who shoot ping-pong balls out of their... you-know-what. LOL. Golf balls feel much firmer. Mmmm.” When Chris stopped reading, he looked my way.

  “Charming,” my tone was full of disgust. “Some people are really sick!”

  “Hey, whatever happened to ‘live and let live’?” Chris smirked.

  “Whatever turns them on, Chris. I don’t care what they do, but to write about it and be so glib. It’s heartless, I tell you. This bloody tart’s cheating on her husband with not one, but two men, and she’s got the nerve to share it for all the world to see. What the hell is the matter with these people?” I hated cheaters. There was no excuse whatsoever to cheat on someone. If a person wasn’t happy in their marriage or wanted to have sexual relations with others, they should at least have the balls—no pun intended—to put an end to their current relationship before cheating with someone else. Only cowards, like my ex, cheated behind their spouse’s back. Why? Because they had no cojones!

  “Wow! Talk about hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” Chris remarked, still smirking.

  I turned on him and exclaimed in an impassioned tone, “What do you know about the pain of betrayal and dealing with people whom you thought you could trust?” I stopped and drew a deep breath to calm myself. Chris looked surprised at my outburst. “I’m sorry. Put it down to my Italian blood. But I feel strongly about some things.”

  “I’ll say! But, Mia, you forget my mum cheated on my dad. So I do know a little about betrayal.”

  “Touché.” I thought back to Chris’s mother, Elena, and how she’d spent most of her married life to David cheating with other men and barely caring about her own son. I was more of a mother to Chris than Elena had ever been. I sighed, this time with exhaustion. “Look, I’m going to get some sleep. If you want to keep working, try to find the identity of the site administrator and while you’re at it, see if you can identify this Multiswitch person. She mentions a golf putter, and this could mean something. We can continue going through more threads tomorrow.”

  Chris nodded. “Okay. I’ll catch you sometime in the morning.”

  I bade him goodnight and left. Then, just as I was about to unlock the door to my cabin, another door opened on the opposite side of the passageway and Smythe’s head popped out. “I thought I heard your voice,” he said. “We missed you at dinner.”

  I was about to deliver one of my smart comments, accusing him of spying on me, when I suddenly remembered my talk with Dobbs. I stopped myself just in time and gave him a smile instead. It was time to face the music.

  “Chris and I made a bit of a breakthrough,” I explained. “So we ended up having room service in his cabin.”

  Smythe shot me a look of surprise. He had probably been expecting a tirade from me instead of civility. “Oh.”

  “I was just heading for bed but if you have a few moments, I can bring you up to date with what we found.”

  The look of surprise hadn’t left his face when he replied, “Just give me five and I’ll change and join you.” He closed his door softly.

  I went into my cabin and left the door ajar so he wouldn’t have to knock when he came over. It was obvious Smythe was confused by my friendly manner. I felt a smile on my lips, which felt quite dry after eating pizza. I quickly brushed my teeth in the bathroom and made myself more presentable. I looked tired, but with a little powder and lipstick I soon restored some semblance of order to my ravaged looks.

  “Mia?” Smythe called out before he walked in.

  He’d called me Mia instead of Ferrari. I was ready to go easy on him after what I’d learned, but calling him Phil would be a huge leap for me just now. “Come on in,” I said as I came out of the bathroom. “Do you want some coffee?”

  “No, but thanks,” he replied and took a seat when I motioned him toward one of the plush chairs by the coffee table. “So what did you find?”

  I took a seat on the adjacent chair and told him about the Neurotic Erotics’ site. “As you know, Chris and I believe there’s a common link among the victims,” I explained. “So we stuck with the search. Of course, it’s going to take some time to come up with something, if anything. There are so many threads, you see.” I went on to tell him about some of what we found but left out the comment about the golf balls. Just the thought of what the woman wrote was enough to make me blush to the roots of my hair. Plus talking “sex” with Smythe was not something I was ready to do.

  “It sounds like you guys are making great strides,” he commented. “Meanwhile, we can’t find anything worthwhile. We must’ve watched the CCTV footage a thousand times, and all we keep coming up with is that the killer is definitely the same perpetrator. You know; same gait, same height, build, and so on. But beyond this, we have nothing. No prints, no murder weapon, and no witnesses.” He sighed, looking as tired as I felt.

  “Well, whoever’s killing these doctors must have one huge grudge. We still have a number of suspects, of course, but we’ve yet to connect the victims who’ve been targetted. This is why the cheaters’ club might provide us with a reason for motive.”

  Smythe regarded me thoughtfully. “You mean the victims could all be members and supposedly cheating on their spouses?”

  “Yes. We already established this when Martha Barry overheard her husband talking with Cliff Downes. According to Martha, van Horn, Downes, and her husband belonged to the club.”

  “Okay, but it doesn’t make sense,” Smythe remarked. “Let’s assume Martha killed her own husband, why would she kill the other two? Besides, we established the killer is a male.”

  “Yes, I know. And you’re right, it doesn’t make sense that Martha would go after the others when only her husband was her concern as far as the cheating went.” I scratched my head absently as if this would help me discover the answer to the mystery. “We may be looking in the wrong place, of course, but if there’s some kind of clue on the site that can help with the investigation, Chris and I will do our best to find it.”

  Smythe glanced at his watch. “It’s getting late and we’re both tired. Why don’t we get together with Chris and Dobbs over a late breakfast and continue this discussion?”

  We stood. “Good idea,” I concurred. Then, as he started to walk toward the door, I said, “Wait. There’s something else I need to tell you.”

  He stopped and looked questioningly at me. He didn’t speak but waited patiently while I gathered my thoughts.

  “Well... it’s like this... I mean...” I didn’t know how to say it.

  “What is it?” he asked softly, taking a step closer to me. “Are you okay? Did Downes try something on you again? Because if he did, I’ll—”

  “No, nothing like that,” I reassured him. The
n, I blurted out, “Dobbs told me what really happened when my application to the force was rejected. He said it was because of my dad and nothing to do with you. He wanted to set the record straight seeing as all this time I’ve been under the misapprehension that you were responsible. Now, I know it was never you. And so, I wanted to say I’m sorry. I just wish someone had told me sooner.”

  An indiscernible emotion crossed Smythe’s face. “Ross was a good man, Mia. Despite the fact that we had our differences, I respected him too much to say anything to you while he was alive. Then, after he passed, you seemed to have made up your mind about me. Plus Dobbs told me your dad didn’t want you to know what had really happened—you know, that a few of the panel members were biased because of those disciplinary instances on Ross’s record. Anyway, I didn’t think it was my place to tell you otherwise.”

  “Yeah, but all this time you let me go on, hating your guts,” I argued. “Generally, I’m not such a bitch, you know.”

  He smiled then. “Well, how about we call a truce now? And perhaps we can be friends.”

  The idea sounded foreign to me, but Smythe was right. There was nothing stopping us from being friends—or at least, civil to each other. “Only on two conditions,” I said with a smirk on my lips. He raised a querying brow. “One, I don’t have to call you, Phil; and two, I can still appear to be a bitch. After all, I have a reputation to maintain.”

  Smythe laughed and nodded. “You’re on, Ferrari. And now, I bid you goodnight.” With this, he exited the cabin and closed the door behind him.

  I felt relief at having set things straight between us. But my thoughts were in turmoil about our future friendship. I instantly recalled how safe I had felt when I lay in his arms not so long ago—when he’d saved my life—and how my body tingled when he gazed at me with those blue-green eyes. I knew I was on shaky ground.

  ~~~

  I slept fitfully, my sleep haunted by dreams of my father and his bombshell secret; plus Smythe and our future friendship. I tossed and turned, torn between the pain of grief for my dad and sexual desire for someone I’d tried my best to hate. In fragments of my dreams, I argued with my father at the unfairness of what he’d created by keeping his secret. Then, the dream changed to my lying in Smythe’s arms while unconscious, and my father’s voice telling me from somewhere in heaven that “he’d keep me safe”, meaning Smythe.

  Later, I was in Mark’s arms, kissing him passionately; but when I looked at his face it wasn’t Mark’s, but Smythe’s face that I saw. Then, the dream changed to a woman who looked like me, sitting naked on a carpeted floor and resting against Smythe’s body, which was also naked. Mark Evans stood a few feet away from us, dressed in his undershorts and about to hit a golf ball my way. Before he could do so, however, Smythe’s body covered mine and we sank back down on the floor while I opened myself up for his delicious invasion.

  Thankfully, I jerked awake; my skin feeling clammy despite the air-conditioning in the cabin. I looked at the bedside clock—it was gone past eight. I had expected to sleep in until at least nine, but with the troubling thoughts going around in my mind, plus the disturbing dreams, I decided to get up and shower.

  I expected to meet the others for a late breakfast around ten, so I took the time to compose myself. Meanwhile, I also berated Chris in my thoughts for reading out the woman’s comment about the golf balls.

  Chapter 16

  We ended up meeting for a very late breakfast in Horizons. It had just gone eleven so it was more like brunch. While we ate, Chris gave us a rundown on how we’d discovered the site, mainly for Dobbs’s benefit as I’d already related most of this to Smythe when we met in my cabin. Like me, Chris had the good sense to leave out the bit about the golf balls.

  “Anyway,” Chris remarked, “after Mia left, I kept working, trying to identify the administrator of the site. Unfortunately, the satellite signal must’ve been weak because the connection kept dropping. So after a number of attempts, I gave up. I’ll get back to it after we eat.”

  “So where are we up to with all of this right now?” Dobbs asked.

  I answered for Chris. “We’re going to see whether the victims participated in any of the threads. This would establish a common denominator.”

  Smythe observed, “That’s going to take a lot of work, especially since you told me there are so many threads in the forum.”

  I gave him a shy smile. I wasn’t yet used to a “nice” Smythe. “Exactly. So Chris and I will be very busy beavers.”

  “At least the sexy comments will keep us awake,” Chris dared to put in.

  I kicked him under the table and he did his best not to cry out in pain as my foot made contact with his shin. “Don’t worry.” I looked from Dobbs to Smythe. “I’ll make sure Chris doesn’t read any X-rated material.”

  “Hey!” Chris protested. “I’m not a child, you know.” He then leaned forward and started to tell Smythe about the golf ball comment.

  I couldn’t stop him so I drew Dobbs’s attention away from the conversation and told him, “I ran into Smythe early this morning, when I left Chris.”

  Dobbs’s look of mirth told me he was enjoying the situation. “Yes, he told me you were rather cooperative for a change,” he replied, and added when he saw the look of thunder in my eyes. “No, I’m not teasing you, Ferrari. Smythe was really pleased that you guys cleared the air. He said he looks forward to working with you.”

  I shot him a suspicious look. “If this is his way of trying to butter me up—”

  “He really meant it, girl. So get that look off your face.” He then threw me a warm smile. “And I’m glad I did the right thing by telling you. I think we all make a pretty good team; and now we can truly work together without my having to smooth the path between the two of you.”

  “Hmm.” I decided to hold judgement on that one. I turned to Chris instead, who had just finished telling Smythe the spicy tale of the golf ball lady. “Can we get back to business here?” I said rather firmly.

  Chris gazed back at us with an official air. “As I’ve said before, as soon as we’re done with breakfast I’m off to see whether I can get a signal so I can keep working.”

  “What about you two?” I addressed Dobbs and Smythe.

  “Phil and I have a meeting with Jerry Garcia,” Dobbs answered. “Despite our warning to your fancy boy, Enrico, not to gossip, it seems the convention members are talking about nothing else and things are getting out of hand.”

  I rolled my eyes. “He’s not my fancy boy, Dobbs.”

  “Well, whatever the case, Garcia suggested we have a group discussion with the convention members to tell them to stop speculating and gossiping. The last thing we want is panic to spread through the whole ship.”

  Smythe added, “We’re also going to give them some security tips so they can stay safe.”

  “You mean not to wander alone, especially late at night or early in the morning?” I remarked, not at all hopeful this would work.

  He nodded. “Yes, among other things. Until we catch this killer, we need to ensure we can keep him from striking again.”

  “Well, we have another two days at sea before we reach Pago Pago. I hope the murderer’s not planning another kill even as we speak,” I stated. “It’s obvious the most dangerous time is when we’re at sea.” I frowned with concern, and it seemed the others echoed my sentiments because we ate in silence until we finished our meals.

  “I’m off.” Chris was the first to speak. “Mia, let’s catch up in the afternoon so we can keep working through the threads.”

  I nodded and Chris left the table. “I’m going to talk to Martha Barry again. She may be able to remember something more.” I stood to leave.

  “Shall we meet for dinner?” Smythe suggested. “We can have another catch-up then.”

  Dobbs nodded. “I’m in.”

  “Yeah, why not?” I said. “Let’s go to the buffet restaurant so we can seat outside. It’s lovely sitting at the back of the ship a
way from the breeze and gazing at the night sky.” I didn’t know why I suggested this. Smythe was going to think I was in a romantic mood. But it was too late; it was already out there and I couldn’t take it back.

  “Good idea,” Dobbs replied. “Say around eight?”

  “Done.” I hurried away, feeling Smythe’s eyes on my back.

  ~~~

  “Mia, so glad you suggested we meet up,” Martha greeted me when I joined her and Joy Gerard at The Mariners’ Hub. “Only yesterday, Joy and I were saying we haven’t seen you for a while.”

  I took a seat opposite them and ordered a fruit cocktail from the waiter who glided over to me. The ladies were enjoying iced coffees.

  “I’ve been keeping busy with all that’s been going on,” I explained. “Then, I learned Enrico’s been going around talking about the killings, and the word is convention members are now taking bets as to who is going to be next.”

  Joy sniffed. “That Enrico is nothing but trouble, I tell you. I think it’s a good thing he never stayed on working at the hospital.”

  I gazed at Joy with interest. “You know all about that?”

  “Of course!” She harrumphed as if disgusted with Enrico. “I believe he’s told everyone on this ship, including all the crew. Well, what can you expect from someone who’s bed hopping his way through all the gay males onboard?”

  Martha laughed. “Oh, Joy! You have such a way of putting things. What the young man does is his business.”

  Joy glared at Martha. “All the same, when he goes around telling tales of woe about his hard-done-by life he makes everybody feel uncomfortable. Besides, he could be the killer playing a game of cat and mouse with us all.”

  Joy’s comment reminded me not to discard Enrico as a suspect in the investigation; but then, we also had Mike Yuen and the captain. Martha seemed an unlikely suspect by now plus my gut told me she was not the killer type. “Ladies, let’s not talk about Enrico anymore; but at the same time, let’s not give him more ammunition he can use to cause panic among the group.”