by Kathi Daley
“Who should we text?” Mac asked.
“Woody,” I said. “He already knows some of what is going on and has probably tried to contact me by now. He’ll be more apt to understand what needs to be done than anyone else we could contact.”
“Okay, so what should the text say?” Ty asked.
The four of us spent the next fifteen minutes creating a text that would provide as much information as possible without being too confusing. We hoped that once it was sent and received, not only would Woody understand what was going on but hopefully would be able to get GPS coordinates of where it was sent from. At the end of the text, I promised to try to send a follow-up to it in four hours. I gave him Ty’s number and told him to text us back there, because an incoming text would be able to come through when the jammer was disabled for the second time as well. When we all felt we were ready, Ty disarmed the jammer and Mac sent the text. The jammer was back online within seconds. Hopefully, the whole thing had happened fast enough that no one would have noticed it, even if they’d been monitoring the jammer. Of course, Ty pointed out, anyone on board who also had a satellite phone and had texts and messages waiting to come through would have received theirs as well, which in and of itself could have provided Evan with a heads-up that their jammer had been compromised.
Deciding to get as far away from the jammer as possible just in case someone had been tipped off, the four of us went back downstairs to clean up the lunch dishes and figure out what to make for dinner.
Chapter 12
I went back to our stateroom to try once again to make contact with Alyson while Trevor, Mac, and Ty finished up in the kitchen. This time when I called her, she appeared.
“Where have you been?” I asked.
“Seeing Lucy off. You knew that.”
“I did, but it seemed as if you were gone for a long time. Longer than usual.”
Alyson shrugged. “Time is different where I was, so I hadn’t noticed. Did you need me?”
“Actually, I did. I need to know the current status of all the staterooms and where Evan is. Trevor is cleaning up in the kitchen right now, but when he is done, we are going to try to take a look around. We are especially interested in the other cabins on this floor because their occupants, with the exception of Evan, all seemed to have disappeared.”
“Okay. Give me a minute and I’ll check them out.”
While Alyson did that, I straightened up the cabin in the event that the four of us ended up here to discuss our plans. Not that it was very messy, but there were wineglasses on the coffee table from the previous evening and Trevor had left a sweatshirt tossed over a chair.
“All the cabins on this deck are unoccupied,” Alyson said. “With, of course, the exception of us. As for the cabins on the deck below us, Bret and Cynthia are in theirs. Cynthia is looking through a magazine, while Bret is looking through a stack of file folders. The other rooms are empty, so I took a look around. Jason, Connie, Vinnie, Shelley, Clint, and Yvonne, are all in the dining room playing cards.”
“And Evan?”
“I’m not sure. He isn’t in his suite or the engine room. I’ll take another look around to see if I can find him.”
I nodded at Alyson and then went back to my straightening. I was just wiping down the bathroom when Trevor walked in with Mac and Ty.
“What now?” Trevor asked.
“I’d like to see if I can figure out a bypass for the jammer without having to completely disable it,” Ty said. “If we could communicate freely with the outside world without whoever mounted the jammer knowing about it, that would make things a lot easier.”
“I agree.” I glanced at Mac. “Why don’t the two of you work on that?” I held up the key Trevor and I had found. “We are going to see if we can get into the rooms on this deck.”
“What if they aren’t empty?” Mac asked.
“We’ll knock first, and we’ll be careful. I did a preliminary check and it seems as if all of them are empty.”
I grabbed Trevor’s arm and headed out the door before the others could ask any more questions. If Ty was going to become a permanent member of the gang eventually, we were going to have to tell him about Alyson. He had seemed to be cool with the seeing-ghosts thing when I explained it, so maybe he’d be cool with that as well.
Unfortunately, the key we found with the housekeeping supplies didn’t work on either Harris or Evan’s doors. After a bit of back-and-forthing, we decided to try to access their cabins via the balconies in much the same way we had Lucy’s room the day before. Of course, the sliding door from the balcony to Lucy’s stateroom had been unlocked. If the ones leading out to the balconies of these staterooms were locked, that would do us little good. Still, it was worth a try.
“You know the captain of the ship most likely had a master key, as would whoever was in charge of security,” I mused.
“True, but they don’t seem to be aboard anymore,” Trevor pointed out.
“No, but I bet their cabins are empty. I think I’ll have Alyson check out the crew quarters, and if they are empty, as I suspect they will be, we’ll go down there and look around.” I glanced down the empty hallway, aware that Evan could appear in the stairwell or elevator at any moment.
“While this plan sounds like a good one on the surface, how are we going to get into the crews’ quarters without a key?”
Trevor had a point. My idea did have a definite flaw. “Okay, here’s another thought. There were other keys in the housekeeper’s storage room downstairs. I suspect those were blanks, and there must be a machine to code them in the ship’s business office. I mean, it stands to reason that passengers will lose their keys from time to time and require a duplicate while the ship is at sea. All we need to do is grab a handful of those blanks and use the machine to code them.”
“Which would work perfectly if we had a way into the business office,” Trevor pointed out once again.
Dang, he was right. I had definitely lost my mojo, coming up with two flawed ideas in a row. “Okay,” I finally said. “We’ll just try the balconies. But be sure to take something with you to pry the door open if it is locked. We may not have a lot of time to search.”
We returned to our cabin and went out on our deck, from which Trevor had been able to get to Lucy’s balcony, and then Evan’s, which was next to it. Alyson appeared to let us know that Evan was in the theater, staring intently at a blank screen. Okay, that seemed odd, but as long as he was occupied, I had no complaints.
As I should have known, Evan’s sliding door was locked, but Trevor went on to Harris’s and found his to be open. Trevor slipped in, and then unlocked the hallway door for me.
“Looks like Harris was busy,” I said after entering the stateroom. There were file folders, graphs, typed reports, and signed documents on almost every surface.
“Harris was looking into the missing money. He might have brought all this with him, or perhaps he downloaded and printed it all out after the ship left port. What exactly are we looking for?” Trevor asked.
“Evidence of what might have happened to Harris and his wife,” I said.
The Hamilton’s personal belongings were still in the stateroom. Clothing, toiletries, Dotty’s jewelry. It seemed apparent that they hadn’t simply left the ship of their own free will. The bed was unmade and there was a decanter of whisky and two half-filled glasses on the bedside table. The one thing I noticed right away was that there was a connecting door from Harris’s cabin to Evan’s. Could it be unlocked? I tried it.
“Bingo.”
“Way to go, Amanda,” Trevor said as he followed me into Evan’s cabin.
This one, like Harris’s, was filled with piles of charts and graphs. I used my phone to take a photo of everything.
“Check this out.” Trevor held up a passport.
I took it from his outstretched hand. “It’s Evan’s face, but not his name. This seems to prove that whatever has happened was premediated.”
“Or he migh
t just carry a fake passport with him whenever he travels as a backup in case he needs it. If he is the one who embezzled the money, he might be in to other illegal activities,” Trevor suggested.
“You think?”
“I think it is possible.”
“I guess it might be,” I said. “It wasn’t until after we set sail that Harris became aware of exactly how much money had been embezzled. If Lucy is to be believed, she discovered the missing funds after we left port on Sunday while helping Harris prepare for his speech. She wasn’t one hundred percent sure about what she’d found, so she enlisted Bret’s help. The two of them then went to speak to Harris. It was late. After ten. I have to assume that if Evan is the embezzler, and if he has hijacked the ship, he didn’t do it until after he found out that Harris was on to him.”
“Which was probably on Monday morning, during the meeting that Harris called.”
I frowned. “That would mean that Evan would have had to have acted fast.”
“Very fast,” Trevor agreed. “Especially if Lucy was killed between the meeting on Monday morning and the cocktail reception that evening, as her appearance as a ghost seems to indicate.”
I thought about the smaller boat I’d seen that evening. “If the smaller vessel that docked beside the ship was dropping off the two men who are now piloting the ship, Evan must have had them lined up even before Lucy’s death.”
Trevor shook his head. “Not necessarily. It is possible that he just had a connection who was able to act fast. If Evan did embezzle hundreds of millions of dollars, it sounds like getting people to do what he needs to have done isn’t a problem.”
I paused to consider what we’d just discussed. “Okay, say I’m Evan. I’ve been embezzling money from the company for quite some time, and while no one has noticed so far, I have to realize that eventually, the truth will come out. Given the situation, it seems as if I would have a plan in place to disappear, although I suppose it is possible that the actual implementation of that plan had to be done in a hurry.” I glanced at Trevor. “Now let’s say that I’m attending the annual company retreat so as to present a normal façade, but after the ship has left Seattle, I find out that Lucy has stumbled across the missing money I’d hoped no one would find for quite some time. I know that my escape plan is going to need to be moved up if I want to avoid prosecution, so I decide to act sooner rather than later.”
“So far that all makes sense.”
“So far it does, but why would I bother to hijack an entire ship? I have my fake passport. Why wouldn’t I just get off at the next port, hop on a plane, and disappear? The fact that Evan is still on board this ship is what doesn’t make sense. He really should have gotten off at the first opportunity.”
Trevor frowned. “Yeah, that doesn’t line up.”
“I wonder what happened to the others: Harris and his wife, Claudia, Lisa and Brody. Do you think they are all dead?”
“Maybe. If you stop to think about it, with the president of the company, the president’s wife, the president’s personal assistant, and Evan’s own wife out of the way, it’s possible there isn’t another person alive who knows that the money has been stolen. Or at least not the bulk of the missing money, the theft of which hasn’t been attributed to the two fired employees. Maybe Evan doesn’t want to disappear quite yet. Maybe he wants to do some housekeeping so that he can return to Portland and resume siphoning money from the accounts of Hamilton Industries’ customers.”
“I guess that could be it, but I don’t know how he could hope to explain all the missing passengers. If Lucy was the only one who was dead and the others had just been offloaded from the ship, he might be able to come up with a plausible story. Of course, in addition to Lucy, Bret, and Harris, Ty and now you, Mac, and I also know about the missing funds.”
“Well, yes. But Evan doesn’t know that the four of us know anything.”
“He might be aware that Ty is the one who told Harris about the hack in the first place. I think we all need to watch our backs.” I had turned to look through the closet when we heard a noise in the hallway. Trevor and I slipped through the open connecting door to Harris’s cabin, closing it softly behind us, and waited for whoever was about to come in leave again before we could risk opening the hallway door. I assumed the visitor was Evan, which would be understandable, but considering where we were and had been, I supposed it could be anyone aboard the ship.
“There’s no one here,” I heard a voice say.
“Brent?” I mouthed to Trevor.
He nodded.
“I was sure I heard footsteps overhead when we were below this stateroom,” Evan said.
“It’s possible the stress you’ve been under is causing you to hear things. Still, I suppose to be sure, we might want to check the cabins on either side of this one.”
I felt my breath catch in my throat. I nodded toward the balcony, and Trevor nodded back. We both went quietly in that direction. We slipped out just as Brent walked in through the connecting door. He looked around, but luckily, the drapes in Harris’s room were partially drawn, so he didn’t see us. He went back through the connecting door, closing it behind him.
“We need to get out of here,” I whispered.
Alyson appeared.
“Where have you been?” I asked.
“I’ve been watching Evan like you told me to. By the way, he is on his way up.”
“He’s here,” I said. “Your timing really is off today. We need to get out of here. Is the hallway empty?”
“Yes, but it won’t be for long. One of the men from the engine room is on the way up.” Alyson looked at the balcony next to us. “Both Evan and Bret have their backs to the balcony. In my opinion, your best bet is to try to make your way back to your own balcony before anyone decides to come in here and take a better look around.”
I glanced at Trevor. “Alyson said our best bet is to use the balconies to make our way back to our own. She thinks we should go now. The men next door have their backs to the balcony, so as long as we are quiet…”
Trevor nodded. “Okay. Let’s go.”
Chapter 13
I was pretty sure I didn’t breathe at all until we reached our stateroom safe and sound. Playing Spider-man as I climbed over balcony dividers far above the sea was not at all how I’d planned to spend my vacation.
“So Bret is in on this?” Trevor asked.
I frowned. “I don’t know. It looks as if he might be. From what I know of the passengers on board, Bret is the head account rep, which I assume would make him number three in the Hamilton Investments’ hierarchy, behind Harris and Evan. It could be possible he is working with Evan. And he knew about the missing funds Lucy found as early as Sunday evening. Even if he wasn’t involved before, he might have recognized that Evan was the thief when he studied the reports Lucy found so he may have gone to him to cut a deal.”
“That would definitely have given Evan more lead time to put his escape plan in play.”
“But it also would have given him more time to just disappear, unless, as we discussed, he has a reason not to.”
“Maybe our timeline is off,” Trevor said.
“That is what I was thinking. I’ve been trying to come up with a scenario in which Evan might have done things the way they have played out.”
“Did you come up with anything?”
I shook my head. “Not really. At least not yet. I’m still working it out.”
“What do you have so far?”
“We’ve already gone through all this.”
“We have,” Trevor said, “but until we figure it out, we’ll have to go over it again and again.”
I shrugged. “Okay, if that is what you want to do. We know that Lucy found the missing funds while going through some reports that we have to assume she brought on board with her, or she might have downloaded them once she was on board, in anticipation of Harris’s big speech. She wasn’t totally sure what she was looking at, so she enlisted Bret’s
help. He must have confirmed her findings because they both went to talk to Harris on Sunday evening, even though it was pretty late. Lucy told me that once she realized the extent of the theft, she wanted to call the authorities, but Harris insisted on waiting. He wanted to have a chance to look into things, maybe even identify the thief. So the next morning, all the senior managers were called into a meeting to discuss the situation. I assume that Evan and Bret were there, in addition to Harris and Lucy. We overheard someone arguing in Lucy’s stateroom after the meeting was over, so I am going to take a stab at saying the pair we overheard were either Lucy and Harris or Lucy and Bret. Lance was ashore at that time. Or at least we think he was. You saw him waiting with the group leaving the ship, though I don’t suppose you actually saw him go with them.”
“That is true,” Trevor acknowledged. “Go on. I’m with you so far.”
“By the time Monday evening rolled around, both Lucy and Lance were unaccounted for, and Harris and his wife were behaving strangely. We know that Lucy was dead by this point. We don’t know what happened to Lance or what eventually happened to Harris, his wife, Evan’s wife, Evan’s assistant, her date, or the ship’s crew, but all those people have disappeared as well, and Evan appears to have hijacked the ship.”
“So far, your summary is perfect, but I think we are back to the place we were before and are left with the same questions we have already identified.”
“True. We speculated that Evan might have hijacked the ship rather than flee it because he wasn’t finished doing whatever it was he’d set out to do at Hamilton Investments. But the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that that idea is nuts. Even if he’d planned to embezzle additional money before he fled, he must know the gig is up and he needs to get gone. There has to be another reason he chose to hijack the ship, and the only one I can come up with is that getting off the ship and disappearing simply wasn’t an option.”