Terns of Endearment (Meg Langslow Mysteries)

by Andrews, Donna

  Being singled out seemed to make him nervous.

  “I work in sales,” he said. “Bart and Victor have useful skills, but me—”

  “You have a loud voice,” I said.

  “Sorry,” he said. “It’s just that—”

  “It’s okay.” I held up my hand in a “stop” sign. “That wasn’t a complaint. Sometimes loud is useful. Do you also have a reasonably good memory?”

  He nodded.

  “Good. You are now officially our town crier. When we have announcements to make to all the passengers, we’ll send you up and down the decks, shouting them at the top of your lungs.”

  He grinned as if it sounded like fun. I wondered if he’d realized how many trips up and down the stairs he’d be making.

  “You’re also our … I don’t know what to call it. Person in charge of noticing things and keeping track of things and reporting things. Checking in on the people who are confined to their cabins to make sure they’re okay and arranging to get them anything they need. Noticing where people are, so, for example, if someone needs a doctor, you’ll have some idea where to find Dad. Stuff like that.”

  “Town crier and chief busybody,” he said. “And maybe also the Town Watch. Can do.”

  “Great.” I handed him a page from my notebook. “Here’s the current list of seasick and otherwise cabin-bound people and empty cabins. Start wherever you like. Work your way through all the decks, checking on the cabin-bound folks and adding anyone else in need of help. Note whatever’s going on throughout the ship. Report back if there’s anything you think we need to know. Then do it all over again. And—”

  I paused. Had I decided to declare the ex-Stooges trustworthy?

  Maybe. He’d been one of the men who’d stepped forward to defend Mother. He got points for that in my book.

  I pulled out my phone and called up the picture I’d taken of Desiree’s shoes and shawl.

  “If you happen to see either of these objects anywhere on your rounds—”

  “Confiscate them?” He sounded as if he thought that would be fun.

  “No. Be subtle. Pretend you don’t even notice them. But find me or my dad immediately and tell us where they are and who has them. And don’t tell anyone—not even your buddies.”

  “Gotcha.” He winked and tapped the side of his nose. “Mum’s the word.”

  With that he set off.

  I returned to my list. Were there any EpiPens on board? Could we launch the lifeboats without power if we needed to? Was there any gluten-free cereal in the kitchen? Did we have any way of making coffee? Was there any air freshener that could be used to mask the smell from the toilets?

  Just for a moment I felt sorry for Captain Detweiler. And even more for First Officer Martin, who’d at least had the gumption to talk to the passengers—even if his ideas of what we should be doing differed from ours.

  Another head peered into the dining room from the door to the kitchen. And this time it didn’t disappear immediately.

  Léonie. I hurried over to the door.

  “First Officer Martin is not a happy man at the moment.” She didn’t sound as if his unhappiness distressed her unduly. Annoying that the only two crew members who hadn’t disappeared seemed at odds with each other. Was their antagonism typical of the Wanderer’s crew? And if so, had it contributed to our being marooned?

  I’d worry about that later. Unlike the other crew members who’d peeked out, Léonie opened the door far enough for me to see into the kitchen, which was a mess. Even worse than my kitchen usually looked on those occasions when the boys decided to surprise Michael and me with breakfast in bed.

  “I don’t want to get you in trouble,” I said. “But I could use some information.”

  She cocked her head, rather like a bird, as if to say, “yes?”

  “I’ve found some passengers with skills that might let them help repair whatever’s wrong with the ship. Where should I send them?”

  She blinked and looked startled for a moment. Then she smiled rather mischievously.

  “Fixing the ship would be excellent,” she said. “The place where most of the engineers have been working is the small mechanical room next to the navigation bridge. In the bow of deck three. As you approach the bridge, the last two cabins on the right—302 and 304—belong to the captain and the first officer. The last door on the left, which would be 301 if it were a cabin, is the small mechanical room. There is also the engine room on deck zero, which is where the useless emergency generator can be found, but the small mechanical room is where most of the distress has been.”

  Excellent. And the probable whereabouts of the captain and the first officer would have been my second question.

  “The remaining crew members bunk on deck zero, right? Including the other officers?”

  She nodded. Her face clouded and she bit her lip as if trying to decide whether or not to say something.

  “One hears that your father is doctor,” she said finally. “This is true?”

  I nodded.

  “They have been trying hard to hide it from the passengers—but there is sickness on deck zero. I think it is time something was done about this. Do you think perhaps—?”

  “I’m sure Dad would be glad to help.” I tried not to show the sudden anxiety her words had provoked. “What kind of sickness?”

  “People…” She spread her hands as if unable to find the word, and then made a graceful gesture, arcing her hand out from her mouth.

  “They vomit?” I asked.

  “And spend a great deal of time in the lavatory. I do not know if it is a sickness or if perhaps some were not so wise about what they have eaten since the power goes.”

  Oh, great. Which was worse—food poisoning or norovirus?

  I’d leave that to Dad.

  “I’ll tell him,” I said. “And I didn’t hear it from you. Oh, and can you prop this door open? I have a volunteer cleanup crew that wants to come in.

  “That would be most excellent.”

  She popped out of sight and returned with a broom, whose handle she stuck in the door opening. Then she flashed me a quick smile and disappeared.

  Delaney and her crew were closer, so I dashed over to talk to her first.

  Chapter 27

  “My sources suggest that the repair action is going on in the small mechanical room by the bridge,” I said. “If you don’t find everything you need there, try the engine room, which I suspect is downstairs on deck zero. If you have any trouble getting in, come and find me.”

  “Awesome,” Delaney said, and she and her motley tech crew rushed off. I grabbed Guillermo before he left.

  “Call me paranoid,” I said. “But when we get back on land, Pastime is going to try to claim things weren’t nearly as bad as we know they are.”

  “Yeah.” He grimaced. “Afraid we’ll sue, I bet.”

  “And they’re right to be afraid. We have a lot of lawyers in my family. So while fixing whatever’s wrong with the ship is important, so’s documenting what we’re going through. Don’t leave your video camera behind.”

  “Outstanding.” He grinned and gave me a thumbs-up. “I’ll tell Wim.”

  Then I hurried over to where Dad was conferring with his new medical team. An older man with a cane. A middle-aged woman in the sort of comfortable-looking yet sturdy shoes that would make Mother wince and inspire me to ask what brand they were. Rose Noire. And one of the no-longer Stooges—the one whose chin was only a little weak, now that I studied him with less jaundiced eyes.

  Dad made the introductions. Bob, the older man, was a pediatric oncologist—I hoped we wouldn’t need his specialty and was a little dubious about how useful he’d be until Dad mentioned that he went on annual volunteer missions to Haiti. Since conditions on board were rapidly beginning to resemble those in a third-world country, no doubt Bob would prove useful and feel right at home. Heidi, the middle-aged woman, was a seasoned ER nurse—just hearing that lifted my spirits. Victor, the former
Stooge, was a paramedic. And while Rose Noire mainly dabbled in new-age remedies, because of the increasing amount of time she spent wandering about in various woods looking for unusual herbs, she’d wisely taken rafts of courses not just on first aid, but on wilderness survival first aid.

  “And, of course, Caroline is a retired nurse,” Dad added. “So I think we have a good team, should any medical problems arise.”

  “One has arisen.” I relayed what Léonie had revealed about the crew’s plight.

  “Oh, dear,” Dad said. “Whether it’s food poisoning or norovirus—”

  “We need to get down there right away,” Heidi said. She stood up. They all did.

  “Not much we can do except rehydrate,” Bob said. “But if we’re lucky that will be enough.”

  “Heidi—can you do a quick check of the ship’s hospital?” Dad said.

  “The so-called hospital,” Heidi muttered.

  “See if there’s anything there that we’d find useful and then meet us on deck zero as soon as possible. Everyone else, follow me to deck zero! Including you, Meg—we could use your help to assess the situation.”

  He accompanied my invitation with an exaggerated wink, from which I deduced that our new mutiny project hadn’t completely driven sleuthing out of his mind. I nodded back—I had to admit that however worried I was about the crew, I was eager to see what could be learned on deck zero.

  I led the way to the boarding lobby and used Anton’s card to open the door to reveal the stairway to deck zero.

  Was it just my imagination or did opening the door also reveal a rather unpleasant smell?

  Not my imagination. Dad frowned. Bob grimaced. Victor gagged and had to stop and brace himself before continuing down. Rose Noire plucked a sachet out of her pocket and clapped it in front of her nose and mouth.

  Maybe it was a good thing none of us had eaten a big breakfast.

  The smell grew stronger as I descended the stairs. By the time I set foot on deck zero, I’d have called it a stench.

  We arrived in a lobby that was smaller than the boarding lobby on the deck above and windowless, with doors on all sides. To our right, a door hanging halfway open led to the crew’s quarters. The lobby and what we could see of the corridor through the open door were covered with a cheap though functional-looking beige industrial carpeting that probably hadn’t looked particularly clean when it was brand new. Now it was marred with patches of what I suspected was vomit.

  “We need to get a cleaning crew down here,” Rose Noire muttered.

  Dad nodded and headed into the narrow corridor. Things got worse there. More spots of probable vomit, and an odor that suggested, as one of my techie nephews was fond of saying, that the crew’s gastrointestinal woes had been bidirectional.

  We began peering into cabins on either side of the corridor—cabins that would have given a hermit crab claustrophobia. Most of the rooms had two sets of bunk beds, one on either side of a foot-wide strip of floor, and the bunks themselves seemed narrower than most cribs. And nearly half of the bunks were occupied by miserable-looking crew members. Crew members clutching their stomachs and moaning. Crew members vomiting. Crew members hunched over the toilets in bathrooms too small to make a decent shower stall. Crew members sprawled unconscious on their tiny bunks.

  At least I hoped they were all merely unconscious.

  The medical crew dived in. Dad darted into the first cabin and began checking vitals on its occupant. The rest of the crew followed his example.

  I decided I could be more useful elsewhere. Fetching that cleaning crew, for example. I headed back down the corridor. If my grasp of the ship’s layout was correct, there should be a stairway leading up directly into the kitchen.

  Which already looked like a completely different place. At least twenty passengers were busily scrubbing everything in sight—floor, walls, cabinets, counters, appliances, even windows. Mother was actually holding a cleaning rag, although she was doing more gesturing than cleaning with it. And I was especially pleased to note that the cleaning crew was about evenly balanced between men and women—at least if you counted the men who were going to and fro with buckets of water.

  And Wim was there with a small video camera, documenting the squalor before it disappeared.

  “Should we really be using up quite so much water on cleaning?” I asked Mother. “I mean, what if—”

  “Yes, we should definitely ration the water, dear,” Mother said. “So until we have some idea how soon we’ll either get under way again or be rescued, we thought it might be prudent to use seawater for the initial rather … unpleasant round of cleaning. Michael and the boys have organized a bucket brigade on the stern deck.”

  “Any chance you could spare a few volunteers to help out on deck zero?” I asked. “Volunteers with strong stomachs. And strong immune systems.”

  I gave her and the other listening volunteers a rundown on what the medical crew had found, doing my best to hint at the squalor below rather than describing it too accurately. Mother called for volunteers, and before long half of the passengers who had been working in the kitchen were trooping down the stairway with rags, sponges, mops, and buckets of salt water.

  Followed by Wim with his camera.

  I left the kitchen for the dining room. Caroline was sitting in one corner with her laptop. She beckoned me over.

  “As soon as Kate gets back I’m going to let her take over the passenger inventory so I can go down and help with the patients.”

  I nodded.

  She glanced around to see if anyone was close enough to overhear and dropped her voice.

  “I got through to the Coast Guard this morning,” she said softly.

  “That’s great!” I only just managed to keep my voice down. A wave of relief washed over me. There was still a world out there, and now they knew we were here.

  “And I think I’ve convinced them to come and rescue us.”

  “You think?”

  “They were a little skeptical at first, because someone claiming to be our captain has been in regular communication with them, saying that we’re merely stopped for minor repairs and everything is fine aboard ship.”

  “That jerk! And what if they don’t believe you?”

  “Then I keep calling. One of the passengers who’s an attorney has made a study of these situations—”

  “Ted Lambert?”

  “That’s the one. He seems to think that what usually happens is that the cruise line sends parts and technicians to fix the situation.”

  “And who’s going to make them? Besides, I don’t want technicians from Pastime—I want the Coast Guard!”

  “I quite agree,” she said. “But I don’t know what else we can do.”

  “So we sit here and wait for Pastime?”

  “All we can do.”

  “I don’t think so. Look, the whole reason you’ve got the equipment that lets you contact the Coast Guard is that you were going to do webcasts from Bermuda, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Any reason we can’t webcast from the ship? Show them how bad things are?”

  Her face lit up.

  “No reason at all,” she said. “I’ll get Wim and Guillermo right on it.”

  “I already told them to film whatever they can. Meanwhile I’m going to see if I can get a list of crew members. Make sure there’s no one else missing.” I turned to go, and then thought of one more thing. “Did you reach Trevor?”

  “Not yet. I’ll keep trying.”

  She dashed off—presumably in search of Wim and Guillermo. I went back down into deck zero and peeked into cabins until I found Léonie, standing in the hall, holding two buckets, and watching what was going on inside the cabin.

  I peered over her shoulder—Dad was doing vitals on a pale, sweaty crewman. I stepped back to give the poor man some privacy.

  “How’s it going?” I asked Léonie.

  “Your father believes the problem is food poisoning,” she said. “W
hich relieves the mind very much, since it is not contagious. And we have narrowed it down—it appears to have come from the beef stew. As far as we can tell, all the crew members who are suffering from the sickness ate the beef stew that was the main entree the first night out. It is quite robust, and popular with the male crew members. For those of us who are vegetarians or who are seeking to eat less red meat, there was a vegetarian lasagna. None of us who ate that are unwell.”

  “That’s a relief,” I said. “I guess we’re lucky the captain and the first officer didn’t eat the stew, so there’s still someone in charge.”

  “Lucky!” She rolled her eyes. “They do not stoop to eat les déchets … the garbage they have served to the crew.”

  I nodded. Then I realized something.

  “Wait a sec—the first night out? That was before the power went out.”

  “And the beef should not have had time to spoil,” she said. “Oui. It was left over from our last cruise, and they knew the passengers would turn up their noses at it. I suppose they hoped it was merely unpleasantly odorous, not actually dangerous. It would be interesting to know who gave the order to serve the beef instead of disposing of it, n’est-ce pas?”

  “It would indeed. Make sure Caroline Willner knows this.”

  “Mrs. Willner already knows,” Léonie said. “She thinks we should sue the company. Of course, this requires a lawyer, and for that one would need money, which we do not have.”

  “I bet if she tried, Caroline could find a lawyer who would do it pro bono. And if she can’t, I might have a try myself.”

  “‘Pro bono’ means ‘cheap’?” Léonie sounded hopeful.

  “‘Pro bono’ means ‘for free,’” I explained. “Short for ‘pro bono publico,’ which in Latin means ‘for the public good.’ Because I think it would be very much for the public good if Pastime were made to pay for poisoning its employees and stranding its customers in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle.”

  “Oh, yes.” From Léonie’s sudden fierce expression I suspected the noxious beef stew was only the tip of an iceberg. “At least one good thing comes from having too few crew members,” she went on. “We have enough space to move people about while we clean the cabins.”