Death In A Deck Chair

by Georgia Kains

  Addie’s emails were another story entirely. The subject lines started with a slightly concerned “Hey, Are You Okay?” the morning after our unfortunate snoozechat and descended into, “I’m Really Worried About You” … “Why Aren’t You Responding?” … “Have You Been Thrown Overboard? Heh Heh, But No Really. Reply To This Please” … “Oh My Gosh! There’s A Letter From The Police! ” (that one was actually regarding a form I needed to fill out for the luggage theft).

  And then, apparently, this very morning, news had finally leaked of Bebe Bosley’s demise, and Addie switched the hissies up to full throttle. “What is even happening? WHY HAVEN’T YOU RESPONDED?” … “YOU’VE BEEN MURDERED, HAVEN’T YOU? THERE’S A MURDERER ON BOARD AND YOU’VE BEEN MURDERED BY THE MURDERER” … “If You’ve Been Murdered, Can I Have Your Frye Boots?”

  I was about to hit reply that, no, she could not have the one pair of beloved footwear that hadn’t been stolen from me when the would-be shoe thief herself began pinging me on video chat. I opened the icon.

  “Hey,” I said when a visibly shaken Addie appeared on the screen.

  “Where have you been?” she practically screamed.

  “On a cruise ship. In the middle of the ocean.”

  “But—”

  “My Internet was cut off because my credit card is overdrawn.”

  “Ohhhhhh.” Addie nodded. “So not murdered.”

  “Not murdered.” Yet.

  It occurred to me that it might be good to tell at least one person what I’d done—breaking into Bebe’s room to search for clues—before we docked. It might help my case if I ‘fessed up to someone before the Feds came calling, even if that someone was my best friend.

  After I finished filling her in on Tammi’s predicament and my involvement, including my break-in, Addie ever-so-helpfully said, “Well, that was a stupid move.”

  “I prefer the term ‘horribly impulsive,’ but yeah. I know. Not my smartest decision. Although, to be fair,” I pointed out, “if I hadn’t broken into her room, then we wouldn’t even know that the camcorder had been stolen.”

  “Yes, but right now, we is you and me, Piper. How does that help things, investigation-wise?”

  “It doesn’t.” I sighed.

  “Why again can’t you tell this Silas guy what happened? You said he took you seriously when Tony threatened you. And he gave you WiFi access. If he really wanted to silence you, I highly doubt that he would have given you the means to contact the outside world.”

  “That’s a good point. But … the keys. The murderer had to have had access to the ship’s keys. Which makes me think it was a crew member.”

  “The keys that you had access to? No offense, Pipes, but you’re no James Bond. If you could get into the cargo hold and a passenger’s room, then anybody could.”

  True.

  “And didn’t you say that the Bosley family has been cruising on this ship for years? Couldn’t one of them have discovered the key at some point?”

  Another good point.

  “Tell me this,” she said. “Who does your gut say is guilty?”

  My gut. The one thing I hadn’t taken into account. Mostly because the majority of this trip, my gut had been dancing the hurly-burly every time the Dramamine fizzled out.

  “Who do I think did it?” I decided to simply say the first name that came to mind. “Preston Bosley.”

  “The grandson?”

  “Yeah. Call it my gut. Call it a hunch. Call it … whatever you want. I know that man is hiding something. And I know it’s something to do with money.”

  “But that doesn’t mean he murdered his own grandmother.”

  “Step-grandmother, and trust me, there was no love lost between those two. All the clues I do have keep circling back toward him. The necklace. He was the one who insinuated Bebe was a blackmailer. He could have been plotting this for ages and waiting for the right opportunity.”

  I still had nothing substantial to go on.

  “You’re going to need to do better than that if Bebe had a restraining order out against Tammi for stalking,” said Addie.

  “Thank you, Captain Obvious.” We sat there staring at each other for a beat before I cracked and said, “Oh my gosh, it’s so good to have someone to talk to.”

  Elton squawked from the bathroom where he was busy playing in a shallow puddle of water in the shower.

  “And you too, of course, Elton,” I called over my shoulder.

  “Oh!” Addie flapped her arms as if she were the bird. “I have a house lead for you.”

  “Fabulous.”

  “How do you feel about living with an ex-professional bodybuilder named Francisco?”

  “Not fabulous.”

  “Have you seen the listings lately?” Addie threw her hands up in exasperation. “It’s a freaking bloodbath anytime a rental under three-K a month comes open.”

  Looked like I’d be living on my parents’ couch for the foreseeable future.

  “Thanks for trying,” I said.

  “And I’ll keep at it. The perfect place for you is out there. I know it.”

  After we said our goodbyes, I opened the search engine and typed in “Preston Bosley.” All the top hits now referenced Bebe’s death, but I kept scrolling. Later pages were mostly business info about his work with Bosley’s Potties. I switched over to the images tab. Corporate headshots, a charity golf tournament or two. Then three pages in, I found a shot of him with one of the guys from a golf tournament standing in front of the huge, ornate fountains at the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas. On the next page, there was a photo of him at a craps table, but the signage on the table said MGM Grand.

  I clicked the cursor on the search bar and typed, “Preston Bosley Gambling.”

  The images exploded in front of me. In some of the photos, he was happy and relaxed, floating on the arm of whatever pretty young thing had suctioned herself to his side like a barnacle while he was winning. But then there were other, anything-but-happy shots. Pictures that showed him in the exact moment of losing. And by the pained, panic-stricken expression on his face, losing big. The sheer number of images overwhelmed me. This was no casual, occasional vacation gambler.

  Money. Desperate.

  Those were the words I’d seen on his phone. I thought about how obviously upset he’d been when he’d caught me reading them. If that was his poker face, he was one pathetic gambler.

  A new picture of Preston Bosley formed in my mind. Not that of a bored businessman or even a resentful, controlled grandson, but of a desperate risk-taker who had lost—lost big and lost often.

  He’d told me his grandfather had left him on a set budget that was comfortable but that didn’t allow extravagances. Obviously, I’d never met the late Mr. Bosley, but I was pretty sure he’d consider flushing money down the drain at casinos as extravagant.

  Maybe Preston had had one losing streak too many. Maybe Bebe had found out about it and was somehow using it against him. Or maybe he’d gone to her himself asking for money and she’d declined.

  This was all speculation, of course, but pretty decent speculation, if I did say so myself. And it might be enough concrete information to take to Silas so that he could at least present it to the authorities.

  I pulled out my planner and began jotting down any names that were listed in the various captions. It was a slow, tedious task. My fingers cramped up sometime around two a.m., but I was rewarded with the information, buried deep within a PDF on the Caesar’s website, that Preston Bosley had not only lost his shirt at a Texas Hold ‘Em tournament there last year, but he’d been banned from the premises after he slugged a hapless waiter who made the unfortunate mistake of crossing his path on the way out. I took notes of the pertinent details and emailed the entire page to myself.

  Yawn.

  One guy was in several pictures with Preston, always in the background. His long, horsey face was grim. But I never found a mention of his name, much less his relationship to Preston.

 
Yawwwwwwn.

  I needed to finish. The more I could bring to Silas, the more seriously he’d take me. And the more seriously the investigators would take me. But first, I’d rest my eyes for a couple minutes and …

  Snore.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I awoke with a start. A ridge had formed along my cheek where I’d fallen asleep on my pen. I dug around for the paper that contained all the details about Preston’s gambling habits. It was crumpled beneath my elbow.

  My shoulders tensed, partly from the odd angle at which I’d slumped over, but it was something else, too. Something was wrong. Something was … missing. A light knock on the door shattered my concentration, and that’s when I realized what was missing.

  Noise.

  There was no noise.

  No engines. No poop pump. Nothing. None of the daily, constant whirrings and rumblings I’d grown accustomed to as we sailed the open sea.

  I hopped out of bed and peered through the peephole. It was George, my cabin steward. I opened the door slowly.

  “Good morning, Miss Monroe. You were missed at breakfast, and Purser Goode-Tripp asked me to come check on you.”

  “Purser … oh, Silas. Thanks. I’m fine. Where is Si—, umm, Purser Goode-Tripp?”

  I might not have gathered enough evidence to convict Preston Bosley last night, but I had enough dirt on the guy to fill a dump truck of reasonable doubt on Tammi’s guilt. And Addie was right. I needed to tell Silas that I’d broken into Bebe’s room.

  “He was headed to the bridge,” said George.

  “Thanks.”

  George gave me directions to the bridge. I grabbed my planner full of all the details about Preston’s gambling addiction, skirting around George as he straightened my bed that hadn’t even been slept in.

  Silas would have to listen to me now. Preston had a double motive. Was a perfectly content and laidback head of a toilet empire likely to off his evil step-grandmother, no matter how much he resented her? No, probably not. But was a desperate and destitute gambler likely to if it meant saving his own neck? Heck, yes.

  If Bebe had found out about the gambling addiction and made a video diary about it, it would be doubly damning. I bet the stodgy members of the Bosley’s Potties board of directors would have dropped him like a hot turd if they’d found out about it.

  The door to the bridge was open, but I knocked anyway. It was a small room at the bow made all the more cramped with the electronic navigational equipment and computers crammed in there as well. It could have been any IT cubicle if not for the stunning view out the windshield, or whatever it was called on a boat.

  The panoramic windows gave a nearly one-eighty display of the surroundings, which right now happened to be of a colorful smattering of buildings in Freeport. Like a village of pastel candy cottages, all lined in a row.

  We were at a different dock than the big cruise ships. The boats surrounding us seemed to be smaller commercial sightseeing vessels and private yachts.

  “Come in.” Silas was deep in concentration. The muscles in his arms flexed as they braced his body over the computer.

  “Hi.” I sidled into the tiny space.

  “Piper?” He looked up, genuinely startled. “Uh, good morning. Are you okay? I’ve been worried about you since you didn’t come to dinner or breakfast.”

  “I’m fine. I actually, well”—deep breath—“I need to confess something.”

  “Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like the next thing that comes out of your mouth?”

  “Probably because you’re not going to like the next thing that comes out of my mouth.”

  “I assume this is about the murder investigation that you’ve been told repeatedly not to interfere with.”

  “That would be the one.”

  Oh, gosh, if he was this angry before I even told him what I did, I couldn’t imagine what he’d do when I—

  “You broke into Bebe’s room, didn’t you?” he said.

  My eyes bugged. “How did you know?”

  “I suspected.” He pushed himself away from the workstation. “When we ran into you right outside of her room yesterday, there was no reason for you to be in that hallway.”

  I braced myself for the full lecture, but he hesitated, clearing his throat. Wait. What if this whole time that I’d been suspecting his family might have done it, he wondered the same about me?

  “I didn’t take anything,” I said. “I was searching for clues that might help exonerate Tammi. I worried that the more time we spent bobbing out there in the middle of the ocean, the more chance the killer might have to get rid of evidence.”

  “Which is why I locked the room.”

  “I know. You really should have multiple master keys.”

  He gave me an exasperated look.

  “But while I was in there,” I added, “someone did break in.”

  “What?”

  “They took Bebe’s video camera. She’d hidden it in one of her wig stands, but they found it. Well, I found it and accidentally left it out in the open, but then they took it. So you see? The murderer couldn’t have been Tammi.”

  “Unless her new husband was the one who took the camera, knowing there might be something on it to further incriminate your cousin.”

  “You think Lance could have hatched that plan? Oh, come on. The man once trapped a mole and tried to train it to dig up customers’ garden plots to save time tilling.”

  “I didn’t know you could train moles to—”

  “You can’t! That’s my point. The thought of Lance plotting to break into Bebe’s room and steal her video camera is ridiculous. He’s an idiot. And, yes, one of my greatest regrets in life will be falling for that idiot. At least it’s all behind me. But my point is, Lance is no Machiavellian Einstein.”

  “I’ll have to take your word on that.”

  “Honestly, I think Elton is smarter than him.” And definitely cuter.

  “Touché.” Silas let out a chuckle. “As to the confession of your own breaking and entering, I’ll refrain from locking you up. I’m not sure it would do any good even if I did as apparently, this ship doesn’t seem to have a lock capable of holding you.”

  Silas’s eyebrow rose to a cocky angle.

  “How kind.” I swallowed a slew of choice comebacks.

  “I’ll tell the investigators about the missing camera,” he said. “Though they would have noted its absence fairly soon anyway. Peg is on top of everything as far as the Bosley estate is concerned. I’m sure she had all of Bebe’s valuables cataloged. Was there anything else?”

  “As a matter of fact, there was.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s about one of my theories.”

  Silas’s cheeks puffed as he blew out a long breath.

  “Hear me out,” I said. “The reason I missed breakfast is that I stayed awake last night researching Preston Bosley. Apparently, he’s a frequent gambler.”

  “That’s … not news.”

  “What?”

  “On previous cruises with us, he’s spent entire days ashore in casinos. We’ve had to go fetch him so that we can depart.”

  “Well, if you’ve ever spent any time in casinos, you know that the house always wins. What if Preston has gambling debts?”

  “That wouldn’t surprise me. But he killed Bebe then … why?”

  “For the money.”

  “I’m not sure that he’s going to inherit any money from her. Besides, couldn’t he have just asked her to borrow money?” Silas picked up a clipboard and started to write on it.

  “Maybe he did and she said no.”

  “Hmm. So he killed her because she wouldn’t loan him money? Seems like there would be a lot of dead bankers if people went on murder sprees simply because they’ve been turned down for a loan.”

  “Maybe he has been turned down for loans from banks. And then he planted Bebe’s jewelry in Tammi’s cabin to frame her.”

  “Why not take Bebe’s jewelry and
hock it if he could get to it so easily?” Silas paused from his task.

  “Well, ummm. I haven’t worked that part out yet.”

  “Okay.” Silas went back to writing numbers from his computer screen onto a clipboard. Crap. I was losing him here.

  “Can you at least mark this information in the captain’s log?”

  “Not unless you magically transform into an iceberg.”

  “I thought—”

  “You’ve been watching too much Star Trek. This is a small, family-run cruise ship. We record things like wind speed. No one is going to scour my mother’s journal in search of clues.”

  “I wish you’d just admit it’s a plausible theory.”

  “It’s not that it’s implausible. It’s that—” Silas’s voice faded away. He focused his gaze past me to the wide window that encircled us. He took a step forward and stared at a spot in the distance on the wharf, a little farther down the dock from where we’d landed, squinting.

  “What is it?” I whipped around. He hurried past me, grabbing a pair of binoculars off a hook on the wall. I sidled up next to him. “What are you looking at?”

  “I’m looking at your theory … gaining plausibility.” He handed me the binoculars, and said, “By the big stack of pallets there, right next to the sign.”

  I adjusted the center focus knob and let out a squeak as the person skulking behind the pallets stepped into view.

  “It’s Preston Bosley,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “But no one is supposed to leave the boat.”

  “I know.”

  “Preston looks really guilty. Don’t you think he looks guilty? I think he looks guilty.” It was difficult to hide the glee from my voice. Not that I was trying to all that hard.

  But Silas was already on his radio barking orders to the workers who scurried around below on the dock like swarming, frantic ants loading and unloading freight. Unfortunately, most of Silas’s attempts were met with static. The few people he reached were no help, passing his request along to another clueless worker. His frustration grew as he continued to get crossed wires and increased static on the com. He pulled out a sheet of paper and sighed.