Terns of Endearment (Meg Langslow Mysteries)

by Andrews, Donna

  Josh and Jamie hurried over, trailed by Horace.

  “Your mom heard that a lady went overboard sometime this morning,” Michael said.

  “You mean she fell?” Jamie asked.

  “Maybe,” Michael said. “But the ship’s pretty safe, so it’s more likely that she jumped.”

  “Maybe someone pushed her,” Josh suggested. Clearly Dad’s fondness for suspecting murder had rubbed off on him.

  “It’s possible,” Michael said. “But we don’t know.”

  “Is that why we’re stopped?” Jamie asked. “To find her?”

  “No, I think we’re stopped to fix part of the ship,” I said. “They don’t yet know how long it will take. I don’t think there’s anything they can do to find her.”

  “So she’s probably, like, dead?” Josh asked.

  I nodded.

  “Wow,” Jamie said. Josh just nodded, and they both looked serious. Maybe even worried.

  “So if you guys hear anyone talking about this, you’ll know what’s going on,” Michael said. “And remember that I want you to always stick together and follow the ship’s safety rules!”

  They both nodded soberly.

  “And when we find out more about what’s going on—with the ship or the lady—we’ll tell you,” I said.

  “So, I think it’s Jamie’s shot,” Michael said. “Is the score still tied?”

  The boys hurried back to the tiny miniature golf course.

  “I should go see if there’s anything I can do.” Horace hurried off.

  “He’s in for a disappointment,” I said as I watched Horace leave.

  “You don’t think the captain will let Horace help with his investigation?”

  “I don’t think he’s going to do an investigation. He took the suicide note at face value. She’s not in her cabin. If she chickened out at the last minute, I think we’ll find her before long. Would have found her by now, if you ask me.”

  “How about if I stay here and either distract the boys or help them process this, whichever they seem to need,” Michael suggested. “You see what you can find out.”

  “I’m going to start by finding the writers,” I said. “They know more about Desiree than anyone else on the ship.”

  “Good idea.”

  I’d last seen the writers in the main dining room, where they’d been picking at fruit and pastries and listening to the captain with expressions that suggested they were not entirely satisfied with his non-explanations.

  They were still there, sipping juice and nibbling pastries. Two of them had opened up laptops, and the other two had gone back to their stacks of paper. They greeted me with enthusiasm.

  “So did someone really jump overboard?” Kate asked. “Or was the crew member overreacting?”

  “He did seem rather hysterical,” Janet said.

  “So would you be if you saw someone jump overboard and drown,” Tish said.

  “He didn’t see anyone jump overboard,” I said. “But he did find a few telltale objects by the ship’s rail: a pashmina shawl, a pair of red Christian Louboutin shoes, and a suicide note.”

  I watched their faces to see how they’d react. It only took them a few seconds.

  “Wait a minute—red Christian Louboutin shoes?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Desiree?”

  I nodded.

  They were all silent for a few moments. Kate put her hands over her mouth. Janet took a sip of her juice and then frowned at it, as if disappointed that it hadn’t morphed into a martini in her hour of need.

  “How do we even know it was a suicide?” Kate asked.

  “There was a note,” I said.

  “Is that what the captain says?” Tish shook her head. “I wouldn’t believe him if he told me the sky was blue. Has anyone actually seen the note?”

  “I have,” I said. “In fact, since I was already starting to worry about the quality of the captain’s investigation by the time I saw it, I even took a picture of it.”

  “So you know what it says.” Angie sat up straighter in her chair.

  “Spill,” Tish said.

  “Here.” I opened up my picture of the note and handed the phone to Janet, who was closest. She peered at it for a few moments and made what the boys, when younger, would have called a yuck face. Then, striking a dramatic pose, she read it aloud.

  “‘Farewell! I can no longer bear the calumnies and unkindnesses of this all too cruel world! I want you to know that I have forgiven you—all of you—even those of you who have treated me so cruelly! When we meet again—as I hope we will—it will be in a better place!’”

  Maybe it was Janet’s rendition, but it sounded even more melodramatic read aloud.

  When she finished, they all sat silent, frowning for a few moments. Except for Angie, who had turned back to her laptop and was doing something with it. Taking notes for a book, perhaps?

  “Well, it’s got that … flowery style,” Kate said slowly.

  “By ‘flowery,’ you mean ‘over the top,’” Tish said. “Queen of the purple prose.”

  “Way too grammatical.” Janet was shaking her head. “And no way she would know the word ‘calumnies.’ Got to be a forgery.”

  “Now, now,” Kate said. “I’m sure she could have found it in a thesaurus.”

  “God, yes,” Tish closed her eyes as if in pain. “The things that woman could do to the English language with a thesaurus in her hand.”

  “Her characters never say anything,” Janet said. “They divulge, expostulate, ejaculate, profess, enunciate, vocalize, interject, aver, adduce, give utterance to, spurt out, extoll, verbalize, vociferate—anything but say.”

  “We writers have a love/hate relationship with the word ‘said,’” Kate explained, seeing my puzzled look. “Bad style to overuse it. Gets boring—said, said, said, said, said. But on the other hand, using overly pretentious synonyms for ‘said’ isn’t good style, either. Desiree tended to err in that direction.”

  “So you think she wrote it?” I asked.

  “You think she’d plagiarize her own suicide note?” Tish asked.

  “I was wondering if someone else might have written it,” I explained. “Someone who wanted to make murder look like suicide.”

  “What a bloodthirsty imagination you have.” Janet sounded impressed.

  “When you have a medical examiner for a father and a cousin who does crime scene analysis, you’re maybe a little too ready to see homicide wherever you go.”

  “You know, it does sound like something out of a book,” Janet said.

  “It is out of a book.” Angie had been totally focused on whatever she was doing with her laptop, but now she looked up. “But it’s okay—it was one of her own books. I guess you’re allowed to plagiarize yourself.”

  “Which book?” Kate asked.

  “Sweet Savage Suitor. The one with the bad Fabio clone in the leopard-print loincloth on the cover.”

  “And you know this … how?” Janet seemed amused.

  “Yes,” Kate said. “I have to admit, I’m surprised you recognized it. And even knew which book.”

  “I didn’t completely recognize it,” Angie said. “It sounded vaguely familiar. So, I searched through all her books for ‘calumnies and unkindnesses,’ which I thought would be a pretty unique text string, and there it was.”

  “Wait—there’s no Internet at the moment. So you happen to have all her books on your laptop because…?” Janet was grinning. In fact they all were.

  “You actually read her?” Tish asked.

  “I had this vague idea that maybe I could find a way to analyze her style and prove that Nancy hadn’t plagiarized her,” Angie said. “But before I could make much headway—well, Nancy was dead.”

  That cast a pall over the conversation.

  “Of course,” Janet said eventually, “if you were going to knock her off and make it look like a suicide, why not steal a suicide note from one of her own books? Anyone who knows her
would find the highfalutin style plausible. Anyone who reads her and recognizes it figures words failed her at the end and she fell back on something she remembered writing.”

  “I’m so glad you’re not saying that to the captain,” Kate murmured. “Although more likely it will be the long-suffering first officer who conducts the investigation, don’t you think?”

  “I doubt if they’ll do much of an investigation,” I said.

  “Oh, I hope you’re wrong,” Kate said. “Even Desiree deserves … I don’t know. Closure for her family, or whatever.”

  “Does she have family?” Janet seemed to find this implausible.

  “Several exes and a grown kid or two,” Angie said. “Maybe she’s different with family.”

  “Well, we can’t do anything about Desiree.” Tish stood up. “Or about the ship. I vote we find a quiet place and all get some work done.”

  “Before the first officer shows up again.” Angie glanced at me. “You missed the part where he tried to organize a Trivial Pursuit tournament after breakfast.”

  “He means well, but he doesn’t seem to understand that some of us have things to do.” Janet glanced down at her notebook.

  “Your mother dealt with him quite nicely,” Tish added.

  “But now that she’s gone, I bet he’ll be back.” Janet picked up her notebook and stood, staring anxiously at the door to the kitchen.

  “The library lounge,” Angie suggested.

  “Might as well,” Kate murmured. “We’ll see you later.”

  “Are we still on for swordplay this afternoon?” Janet asked me.

  “Deck six at two o’clock, if that still works for you,” I said.

  “Fabulous.”

  They hurried out. There were still several dozen people occupying the main dining room, conversing or reading. Were they exhibiting the very human tendency to cling together in times of crisis? Or merely trying to avoid having to go up the stairs to their cabins and then back down again at lunchtime?

  “So, who’s up for charades?”

  First Officer Martin had returned, looking haggard and trying his best to smile cheerfully. I slipped out before he could assign me to a team.

  I decided to drop by my cabin for the book I was reading—a paper book luckily, rather than an e-book—and take it up to deck six. The book was my reading group’s latest selection—not what I would have chosen for shipboard reading, but I needed to finish it by the time we returned. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to concentrate on it—I might give in to the temptation to fret over the highly unsatisfactory events of the morning. But at least having it would give me a good excuse for chasing away anyone who tried to interrupt my fretting.

  I made for the part of the deck where there was a row of six blue-and-white recliners, all wonderfully shady, thanks to being tucked under a canvas awning. The honeymooning couple occupied the first two, lying with their eyes closed, holding hands. An iPhone lay on the husband’s stomach, and they were sharing a pair of earbuds, each taking one.

  At the far end was a small, bespectacled man in shorts and the most subdued Hawaiian shirt I’d ever seen, all in black and white and gray. I recognized him as the man I’d briefly shared a table with at breakfast—the one who had been so disparaging of how Pastime was handling our current problems. He appeared to be reading a book—an oversized coffee table book about tall ships. When he saw me, he hugged the book tighter to his chest. I nodded politely and took the middle recliner, leaving one empty recliner between me and him and one between me and the honeymooning couple.

  I hoped the first officer didn’t show up. I didn’t think anyone here was in the mood for one of his ice-breaking games. If his methods were typical, cruises must be hell for introverts. Or people, like the honeymooning couple, who only wanted to spend time with each other.

  Or people like me, who wanted some peace and quiet to think.

  And instead of browbeating innocent passengers into forced merriment, why didn’t he concentrate on whatever administrative details had to be done to deal with Desiree’s suicide? Even if they weren’t going to investigate, surely they had to write up at least a rudimentary report. If nothing else they’d need to pack her things and figure out who to hand them over to when we got back to Baltimore.

  Not my problem. And even if I wanted to make it my problem, not much I could do.

  I pulled out my book, and while I was at it, my notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe. I opened the notebook to a fresh page, in case I had any useful thoughts. Then I opened my book and tried to focus on the words. None of which made sense. I tried rereading the last few pages, to help me get back into the plot. It didn’t help much. Then I let it fall flat on my stomach as I leaned back in my recliner to think.

  I didn’t actually close my eyes, but since I had my sunglasses on, it probably looked as if I were napping.

  The small, bespectacled man glanced my way a few times. Eventually, he seemed to relax and stopped hugging his book so tightly to his chest.

  Behind the book, he was hiding a thick sheaf of legal-sized papers. He was slowly reading through them, occasionally picking up a pen to make a notation.

  Okay, I was mildly curious why he was being so secretive about his papers. Maybe later I’d figure out a way to get a glance at them. But for now …

  “Meg, we have to do something.”

  Chapter 13

  I started, and opened my eyes to see Dad and Horace standing at the foot of my recliner. Evidently I had dozed off while thinking.

  “Do something about what?” I asked.

  “The sheer incompetence of it all!” Horace fumed.

  I noticed that the small, bespectacled man two recliners down had looked up at their arrival and then gone back to his book—but I had the feeling he was eavesdropping.

  “Any specific examples of incompetence you’d like to share with me?” I asked.

  “They don’t seem very interested in taking advantage of our expertise.” Dad sounded hurt. “I offered our services to the first officer—my medical and Horace’s forensic services. He didn’t seem interested.”

  “He all but said ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you.’” Horace didn’t look hurt. He looked irritated.

  “Maybe they have a doctor on board,” I suggested.

  “No, they don’t,” Dad said. “I found that out yesterday. I spotted the location of the ship’s hospital on the map, and I dropped by. I thought I’d inspect the facilities, pay my respects to a colleague. But there was no one there, and when I asked where the doctor was, they looked as if I were crazy.”

  “If there’s no doctor on board, who staffs the hospital?” I asked.

  “Two crew members with EMT training.” Dad shook his head. “And some hospital—a hospital bed and a first aid kit, that’s about it.”

  “Besides, even if they did have a doctor on board, I doubt if they’d have their own forensic expert.” Horace didn’t look irritated anymore. He looked mad. “So who’s working the crime scene?”

  “Not much of a crime scene to work,” I said.

  “Well, of course not, to the untrained eye,” Horace said. “But who knows what I could find if they gave me a chance? Fingerprints! DNA! Trace elements of all kinds! And—”

  “I get it,” I said. “And if I were the captain, I’d have been overjoyed to find out that I had trained professionals to help me deal properly with this morning’s suicide.”

  “Alleged suicide,” Dad and Horace said, almost in unison.

  “But there isn’t a crime scene anymore. After the captain inspected it, he told the first officer to take her belongings back to her cabin and have a steward clean the deck.”

  Horace and Dad stared back at me for a few moments in stunned silence.

  “Unbelievable,” Dad finally murmured.

  “Are they idiots?” Horace exclaimed.

  The man two recliners down had definitely been eavesdropping. He hadn’t turned a page—either in his book or his hidden docu
ment—since Dad and Horace had arrived, and now he burst out laughing.

  “Yes, they’re complete idiots,” he said. “Sorry—I know it’s rude to eavesdrop. But there you have it in a nutshell. They’re idiots.”

  “I’d be interested in hearing why you say that, Mr…?”

  “Lambert.” He slid off his recliner and onto the one next to me. “Ted Lambert.”

  He held out his hand and we all three shook it in turn.

  “The thing is—you’re absolutely right.” He sat very erect on the edge of the recliner and pushed his wire-rimmed spectacles farther up his nose. “It’s idiotic. But it’s not really their idiocy—it’s company policy.”

  “Company policy to destroy a crime scene?” Horace sounded incredulous. “Instead of preserving it until the proper authorities come on the scene?”

  “Ah, but who are the proper authorities? And what is the likelihood that they will come on the scene?” Mr. Lambert’s round owlish face radiated the same passionate enthusiasm Dad often displayed when he had found a new subject to obsess on. “The ship’s registered in the Bahamas, you know—that’s actually the most common registry these days.”

  “I thought that was Panama,” I said.

  “Oh, very good!” Lambert looked pleased. “Used to be Panama, yes; and Panama’s still number two. But Bahamian registration’s almost double Panama’s now.”

  “So the ship’s owned by someone in the Bahamas?” Horace looked puzzled.

  “No, it’s American owned,” Lambert said. “But registered in the Bahamas. It’s what’s called a flag of convenience. The practice started out a century ago when the U.S. passed some fairly forward-thinking laws to improve vessel safety and working conditions for sailors. And of course, as soon as the laws were passed, the ship-owning companies started trying to figure out how to get around them. So they started registering ships in other countries.”

  “Thereby avoiding any laws they didn’t like?” I asked.

  “Yes.” Lambert was favoring me with the sort of smile teachers save for their star pupils. “Shipping lines tend to prefer countries whose laws are pro-business, of course.”

  “Meaning the countries that have the most lax safety, labor, environmental, and consumer protection laws,” I said.