Crime (and Lager) (A European Voyage Cozy Mystery—Book 3)

by Blake Pierce

  “I’m sure I can trust your discretion,” the captain said with a laugh.

  Then London remembered the disagreeable episode that had taken place earlier today up on the Rondo deck.

  “Oh, I’m glad I got a chance to talk to you, Captain,” she said. “One of our passengers has a complaint that she asked me to bring directly to you.”

  “Indeed?” the captain asked, his bushy eyebrows rising with concern.

  “Yes, her name is Audrey Bolton. She’s very upset by the delays in our journey.”

  The captain let out a grunt of dismay.

  “I can’t say I blame her,” he said. “I’m quite upset about it myself. I’m surprised more passengers aren’t complaining. I only wish there was something I could do about it.”

  London shrugged slightly.

  “Well, Ms. Bolton has a suggestion,” she said.

  “Really?” said the captain.

  “Actually, it’s more than a suggestion. It’s more like a demand.”

  “I’m always keen on fulfilling passengers’ demands. Tell me about it.”

  “She insists that we skip our stop in Bamberg. Her instructions are to sail straight on nonstop to Amsterdam.”

  Captain Hays drew himself up with surprise.

  “What! Skip Bamberg?”

  Then he added in a mock earnest tone, “A sweeping demand. And yet I suppose it would put us back on schedule. What is that motto of yours, London?”

  “‘The customer may not always be right, but the customer is always the customer.’”

  “Words to live by. Well, I’ll give new instructions to the pilot, then get right on the intercom and tell all the passengers and crew that we are following the explicit orders of … what was her name again?”

  “Audrey Bolton.”

  “The orders of Ms. Audrey Bolton, and we’re canceling our scheduled overnight stay in Bamberg. I’m sure no one will object. After all, orders are orders, and the orders of Ms. Audrey Bolton must be obeyed. In fact, we’ll power up the engines and sail past Bamberg as fast as possible, at record-breaking speed.”

  The captain’s straight-faced delivery didn’t hide his mockery of the idea.

  “Well, I promised her I’d tell you, and I did,” London said.

  “Well done, London Rose,” he said, finally yielding up a chuckle.

  “Seriously, Captain,” London said. “I’m sure she’s not going to drop this. What do you want me to tell her when she mentions it again?”

  “Tell her to bring it to me personally,” the captain said.

  “I’ll do that,” London said.

  “Jolly good!”

  The captain finished his tonic water, then looked at his watch and got up from his barstool.

  “Well, it’s time for me to make my tipsy way back to the bridge,” he said to London. “Enjoy your evening.”

  “I’ll do that, sir,” London replied.

  The captain stopped for a moment to listen to Letitia, who had just begun a lovely and surprisingly sensual interpretation of Cole Porter’s “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.”

  “Delightful singer,” Captain Hays murmured with a smile. “Charming woman.”

  London smiled. She figured it was just as well that the captain didn’t know about Letitia’s penchant for minor theft. Then he made his way toward the exit, walking, of course, with a perfectly sober stride.

  Looking over the room, London saw that even Bob Turner’s lips were turned up in a smile. He was enjoying the performance in spite of himself.

  Then she turned back to Elsie and said, “I’m starving.”

  “Would you like to order something from the restaurant?” Elsie asked. “I hear the head chef is not only a culinary genius but also a gorgeous hunk of an Australian.”

  London couldn’t help blushing a little. Elsie had picked up on her attraction to the handsome Bryce Yeaton almost before she’d become aware of it herself.

  “A sandwich would be nice. What do you recommend?”

  “Since we’re now in Germany, how about something of that nationality? A little while ago I had a delicious Leberkässemmel. I highly recommend it.”

  London laughed.

  “I’ve got no idea what that is,” she said.

  “Trust me, you’ll like it.”

  “All right, that’s what I’ll have,” she told Elsie.

  As Elsie texted the order down to the Habsburg Restaurant, London saw that Amy Blassingame was still sitting alone looking out that window. She was finishing what looked like a daiquiri.

  “Have you talked to Amy tonight?” London asked Elsie.

  “Do you mean our infamous river troll?” Elsie said.

  London cringed a little.

  “I wish you wouldn’t call her that,” she said.

  “Sorry. She just rubs me the wrong way. And admit it—she rubs you the wrong way too.”

  London couldn’t deny it, but she preferred not to say so.

  Elsie continued, “And no, I haven’t talked to her much. She just over came to the bar a few minutes ago and ordered her daiquiri and stalked away to her table. She was pretty much monosyllabic.”

  “She looks lonely,” London said to Elsie.

  “Well, she doesn’t make it easy to be friends with her,” Elsie said.

  Maybe that’s not entirely her fault, London thought. She knew that Amy was inclined to be abrasive, but perhaps that was because no one had put much effort into making friends with her.

  “I think I’ll go pay her a visit,” she said.

  “London, that’s not going to end well,” Elsie said.

  “How do you know?”

  “From experience. Don’t you? She’ll snap your head off for no reason.”

  London got up from her bar stool and picked up her drink. She felt that she should at least make a try at bridging the gap between them.

  “I’ll have my sandwich at Amy’s table. Send it over with a nice cold German lager.”

  “OK. And good luck.”

  As London walked toward Amy’s table, she felt sure that the concierge was definitely just pretending not to see her. And that didn’t bode well.

  Maybe Elsie was right, London thought.

  Maybe this was a bad idea.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  When London stepped over to the small table where the concierge was sitting, Amy just kept staring out the window. The young woman’s smooth helmet of short dark hair added to her severe, unwelcoming look, and London knew she wasn’t the only staff member to have trouble getting along with her.

  London stood there awkwardly for a moment, but Amy gave no sign of having noticed her.

  “Hi, Amy,” London finally said.

  Amy looked around with a rather unconvincing expression of surprise.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she said. “Hello, London.”

  Then Amy gazed back out the window again.

  London stifled a sigh. Amy had resented London since before they’d even met, and not entirely without reason. Amy had been hoping to be hired as the ship’s Social Director, and London had gotten the job instead. The daily pressures of working on a tour boat hadn’t brought them closer together.

  For that matter, neither had dealing with two murders.

  It hasn’t been an easy trip for anybody, London thought.

  “May I sit down?” she asked.

  At first Amy looked as though she might say no. But then she gestured noncommittally to the empty chair at her table.

  “The chair’s free,” she replied.

  Feeling more uneasy by the second, London sat down at the table. Amy took a sip of her daiquiri and kept looking out the window.

  London could see that it actually was a beautiful view, with moonlight playing on a forested riverbank. Just coming into sight were the cheerful lights of a German town.

  Less cheerful was Amy’s expression when she turned to London and snapped, “I hope you’re not here to tell me something else I’ve got to do today.”

>   London was a little startled by the suggestion.

  “Of course not,” she said.

  “Good. Because I’m off the clock.”

  Amy let out an exaggerated sigh of exhaustion. She turned slightly in her chair and kicked off her high-heeled shoes in a dramatic fashion.

  “Honestly, London, you know how to work a woman half to death. I’ve been on my feet nonstop since this morning doing your bidding. I’m dead on my feet. I ache from head to toe.”

  London was a bit nonplussed. She didn’t doubt that Amy had been working hard all day. So had London. But they’d had no one-on-one contact until now, and although London was technically Amy’s boss, she hadn’t given the concierge a single order today. They’d both been going about their separate tasks.

  It’s not like I’ve been cracking the whip, London thought.

  “I just thought we could … visit for a little while,” London said.

  “What about?”

  London shrugged.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “About … things, I guess. Nothing in particular.”

  Amy shrugged and took another sip of her daiquiri and looked out the window again.

  London wished she’d come prepared with a few items of meaningless small talk to break this hard, deep, cold layer of ice.

  Meanwhile, Letitia had finished singing “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” and was making a segue into a swaying and finger-snapping rendition of Cole Porter’s “It’s De-Lovely.”

  London was relieved to have something to talk about.

  “Sounds like Letitia’s going to go through the whole Cole Porter song book,” London said to Amy with a smile.

  “Huh,” Amy said. “I’d like to know whose idea it was for her to do this little act.”

  London’s eyes widened.

  Of course, it had been Letitia’s own idea to do a cabaret act here in the Amadeus Lounge. But London herself had encouraged her and made all the necessary arrangements.

  “You don’t like the way she sings?” London asked.

  “Oh, she sings just fine, I guess,” Amy said. “But somebody should have warned the audience to hang onto their valuables.”

  She crossed her arms and added, “In fact, I don’t know why you haven’t put out some sort of APB so that everybody aboard knows they’d better watch out for her.”

  London was more than a little shocked by this remark. As far as she knew, Bob and Amy were the only other people aboard the Nachtmusik who knew about Letitia’s kleptomania. They’d all agreed to keep quiet about it—or so London had thought. London hated the idea of exposing the repentant thief to the judgment of everybody around her.

  “She says she’s not going to steal anything else,” London said.

  “And you believe her?”

  “I think she deserves a chance, anyway. Besides, she doesn’t steal personal belongings.”

  “I know—just little items from restaurants and museums and such. As if that made everything hunky-dory.”

  London squinted with worry.

  “Amy, you haven’t told anybody about all that, have you?”

  For the first time since London had joined her at her table, Amy grinned just a little.

  “What if I have?” she asked.

  “Please tell me you didn’t.”

  Amy chuckled a little.

  “Maybe I did, and maybe I didn’t. You don’t know, do you?”

  Before London could say anything else, she saw Emil coming into the lounge from the ship’s library. He walked with a spring in his step, so he looked more cheerful than he had when London had last seen him. He even smiled and waved slightly as he noticed that Amy was in the lounge, and Amy smiled and waved back at him.

  Emil headed toward them, but suddenly he hesitated. Looking directly at London, he slowed his steps and frowned. Then he turned and walked back toward the library. Amy looked disappointed to see him go.

  “What do you suppose is wrong with Emil?” London muttered.

  “Why do you ask?” Amy said.

  “He’s been standoffish toward me since yesterday,” London said.

  “Maybe he doesn’t like being accused of murder,” Amy said.

  London’s mouth dropped open with shock and surprise.

  “I never accused him of murder,” she said.

  “Odd. I seem to remember you saying something like that.”

  London’s mind raced as she tried to understand what Amy meant. But then she remembered the scene right here in the lounge just a few days ago, when she’d been questioning a group of people to try to determine who had killed Mrs. Klimowski. Emil had been one of her suspects—she couldn’t help that—but then so had some of the ship’s passengers. She hadn’t accused anybody of anything, but she remembered how testy the historian had gotten toward her—even a bit sarcastic.

  “I would be rather disappointed in your intellectual prowess if you did not include me among your roster of suspects.”

  Unfortunately, she’d had a sharper confrontation with him just yesterday over the murder of the tour guide in Salzburg. He hadn’t reacted at all well to her admission that she suspected him.

  “I think our little chat should end here,” he’d told her. “Kindly leave me alone.”

  Of course, London and Emil had been alone in his library at the time, and Amy couldn’t possibly know about Emil’s frosty words toward her …

  Or could she?

  “Amy, what’s going on?” London said.

  “About what?”

  “Well, you to start with. I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye—”

  “No, we really haven’t.”

  “—but tonight you’re being very odd. What do you know that I don’t know?”

  Amy laughed outright.

  “You don’t know, do you?” she said.

  I wish she’d stop saying that! London thought.

  Still laughing, Amy leaned across the table on her elbows.

  “Honestly, London, there’s so much going on around here that you don’t know about. Don’t you ever look right under your nose? Does somebody always have to tell you about everything that’s happening? Can’t you figure it out for yourself?”

  “Can’t I figure what out?” London asked. She could feel her frustration rising.

  “There. That’s just my point. You don’t know, do you?”

  Amy was smiling ear-to-ear, all happy and gloating. She pushed her empty glass aside and put her shoes back on and got up from her chair.

  “Well, I’ll just leave you to your unresolved curiosity. Goodnight, London.”

  Amy walked out of the lounge, leaving London alone at the table with what was left of her Manhattan. As she sat watching Amy exit, she heard a voice beside the table.

  “Your Leberkässemmel and lager, fräulein?”

  London turned and saw Elsie’s smiling face. London’s friend had arrived with a tray carrying her sandwich and a glass of beer.

  “Thanks,” London said. “Care to sit down for a moment? I seem to be alone all of a sudden.”

  “So I noticed,” Elsie said, putting London’s meal in front of her and then sitting down where Amy had been sitting. “Things didn’t go well with the River Troll, I take it.”

  “Things went … very oddly,” London said. She took a sip of the delicious lager, then looked at Elsie intently.

  “Elsie, do I strike you as … well, hopelessly unobservant?”

  Elsie laughed with surprise.

  “Unobservant? Quite the opposite, I’d say. I doubt that you could have solved two murder cases if you’d been unobservant. Is that what Amy told you?”

  “Amy didn’t tell me much of anything.”

  London hesitated, then said, “Elsie, tell me the truth. Are there things going on aboard the Nachtmusik that everybody knows about except me?”

  “I … don’t think so,” Elsie said.

  “You’d tell me about something like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Of cours
e I would,” Elsie said. “Don’t get paranoid on me, OK? And don’t let whatever Amy said get to you. Enjoy your Leberkässemmel. I’ve got to get back to my customers.”

  Elsie got up and headed back to the bar.

  London turned her attention to her meal—a simple sandwich served on a halved, hard wheat roll of semmel—“small bread.”

  She mentally teased out the meaning of the German word Leberkäse to be “liver cheese.” London could see the thick slice between the buns looked something like ordinary meatloaf.

  London took a bite. The meat was more finely ground than American-style meatloaf, but its crunchy brown crust around its edge was similar. London’s happy taste buds didn’t detect either liver or cheese, but she hardly missed them. Instead she relished a mixture of ground pork, bacon, and corned beef, all pleasantly flavored with coriander, marjoram, thyme, and other seasonings.

  Real German comfort food, she thought.

  And exactly what she needed after a long, hard day that hadn’t ended especially well. She finished her sandwich except for a morsel of meat, which she wrapped in a napkin.

  By then Letitia was wrapping up her performance with a delightful rendition of another Cole Porter tune, “You’re the Top.” London waved goodnight to Elsie, then left the lounge. Feeling a bit too tired for the stairs, London took the elevator down to the Allegro deck. When she opened the door to her stateroom and switched on the light, she was glad to see Sir Reggie lying fast asleep on the bed. If he’d been out at all tonight, he’d made use of his doggie door to return and make himself comfortable.

  “Wake up, sleepyhead,” she said, holding out the piece of Leberkäse. “I’ve got a treat for you.”

  Sir Reggie suddenly leapt to attention. London tossed a bit of the treat into the air, and Sir Reggie deftly caught it and ate it. London crouched down beside the dog and helped him to the rest of the treat.

  “So how was your evening, buddy?” London asked.

  Sir Reggie let out a yap that seemed to indicate he’d been having a good time. Of course London had no idea where he’d been or what he’d been up to.

  Just something else I don’t know, I guess, London thought.

  London took a good hot shower and climbed into bed. As he always did, Reggie crawled under the covers and snuggled up beside her. London felt more and more relaxed as she lay there petting him. Still, she couldn’t shake off a nagging annoyance at the way Amy had behaved tonight and that question she’d kept asking.