Death on the Diversion

by Patricia McLinn

  Odette said something, possibly about the musicians, judging by her gesture toward them.

  Leah finally sat, turning toward the music.

  When the musicians took a break, I opted to leave.

  Odette’s group remained. As did the loud group in back. I raised a hand in acknowledgement of Jason’s Veuve Clicquot largesse, but didn’t stop to say good-night. I would cement his Veuve Clicquot pours another time. Mr. Grandpa’s Sailboat on the Label had returned.

  I left humming the last song played, knowing the tune was familiar but unable to capture its name.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The thing about cruising is that, while eavesdropping is hard to avoid — at least for some of us — you can, in general, have as much or as little discourse as you like with your fellow passengers.

  There are those who know the name of the majority of their fellow travelers — passengers and crew— by the end of the voyage. There are others who smile amiably, pass the odd comment on the weather or the likely flavor of the red dessert second from the left, but otherwise go their own way.

  There are a few who make their presence known and felt.

  Yes, Leah Treusault came to mind. Petronella, too, though for different reasons.

  Even at poolside the next day, even while I read, she discoursed me relentlessly, relating in great detail how she’d watched two passengers take towels without checking them out according to the rules.

  I felt sorry for anyone eavesdropping. I felt sorry for me.

  When she discovered she’d left her sunscreen in her cabin, I did not offer to share the tube in my bag.

  I read in blissful peace for several chapters.

  Only when I heard “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, excuse me, sorry, excuse me, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear” heralding Petronella’s return did I realize she’d been gone a considerable time.

  She collapsed into her deck chair beside me.

  Her hands were empty. None of the pockets in the long-sleeved smock she wore over knit pants bulged.

  “Where’s your sunscreen?”

  “Oh! I forgot. I never reached my cabin, I was that upset. A passenger fell on the stairs. I was right there. I was going down. She and her friend were going up. Poor thing. Horrible, horrible, horrible. She screamed in pain. Well, after she regained consciousness she did. Then she—”

  “She was knocked out?”

  “—screamed. Though, first, she sort of whimpered and made moaning sounds. Oh, yes. She was unconsciousness. She fell backward and hit her head on the landing. And she must have been up at least three steps. I didn’t see her until she started to fall. She sort of squawked. She screamed later, after she came to,” she explained earnestly, as if I might have thought she screamed while unconscious. “It must have hurt her poor head. That’s why I took off my sweater and put it under her head, to cushion it from the hard floor.”

  “She asked you to—?”

  “The poor thing wasn’t conscious yet. But it was only common decency. Though some would have denied her comfort,” she said with dark disapproval. “The emotion of that poor girl falling…”

  I was torn. My curiosity nudged me to try to find out more. My experience of Petronella said I wouldn’t get much information, though there’d be lots of words.

  “Everyone crowded around, saying things, but I acted. For her comfort. Poor soul. Her friend standing there, doing absolutely nothing. Even when she screamed, it was clear she was in shock.”

  I needn’t have wrestled with whether to ask her questions. Her words flowed on.

  “She insisted it wasn’t her silly high heels, though of course it was. She kept saying she’d tripped. On those shoes, as anybody could see. I was telling her that when the medical team arrived and said what she needed was peace and quiet. They sent everyone away. I had to stay, though, because I was a witness and there was a ship’s officer asking questions. And they still had my sweater.”

  “You don’t have it now, either,” I pointed out. The thought of adding that sweater to what she already wore made me realize I’d become quite warm myself, sitting in this sun.

  “No, no, I don’t. They were so kind, so considerate. They begged me to get on with my day and enjoy it and they promised to have my sweater delivered to the cabin when they moved the young woman.”

  “Good, good. I’m going in the pool.” I stashed my reading device and started to unbutton my coverup. “How about you?”

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly,” was her unsurprising response.

  Turned out, as she informed me, she refused to own, much less wear, a swimsuit.

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly,” she repeated. But in this instance her tone implied she’d made a moral choice and those who didn’t make the same choice were somehow immoral. Or, at the very least, demonstrating seriously flawed judgment.

  I’m about in the normal range of figures. I have friends and family, though, who allow themselves to be limited by their own or others’ tut-tutting — real or imagined — into never venturing into a pool on a hot day. One of the most satisfying sensations there is.

  In this moment, Petronella represented all that held back my mother, my great-aunt, my dear friends from enjoying that sensation.

  It griped me, despite my best resolutions not to be griped by her or at her.

  “Well, I can.” I stood and dropped my coverup, refusing to feel self-conscious. I also took out the sunscreen and handed it to her. “Even if you stay here, you need this. But you should come in the pool, too.”

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly.” Though she did take the sunscreen.

  I walked toward the pool.

  “Sheila!” Petronella cried.

  I turned back.

  “Are you sure? Is it safe? I mean…” She dropped her voice to a stage whisper. “Can you swim?”

  I made brief eye contact with the young man “life-guarding” for a pool that was to Olympic pools what T-ball was to the major leagues.

  He didn’t quite wink.

  I limited myself to a firm and cheerful, “Yes.”

  As I spent a good amount of time floating in the outdoor pool, with timeouts in a hot tub, I found myself applauding all — but especially the women — who braved swimsuits regardless of whether their shape matched the prevailing views of body beautiful.

  * * * *

  From the machine that dispenses soft ice cream into cones, where I’d stopped for a mid-afternoon snack, I recognized the voice of Grandpa’s Sailboat on the Label rising over recorded reggae music.

  “Don’t be chintzy on the scotch.”

  Past the ice cream machine, I could look down the line of stools at the poolside bar, which had some exotic name, but everybody called the poolside bar. The bartender — younger than Jason, with golden skin, whether from sun or genes — flushed, turned away from the customer and lifted the bottle. But he didn’t put more alcohol in the glass, which looked to my unpracticed eye to be at regulation level.

  The Grandpa’s Sailboat on the Label guy sat sideways, his back mostly to me. His position gave him a clear view of the closest hot tub.

  I was glad I’d used only the farthest hot tub.

  The young bartender added ice and turned back to the man. “Here you are, sir.”

  Would he fall for it?

  I took a healthy lick of my ice cream cone.

  “That’s better. Used to be you could get a decent drink on these bathtubs, but—” He broke off to drink.

  “What did you say before about the woman who fell on the stairs?”

  I suspected encouraging passengers to gossip didn’t get a lot of space in the crew member’s manual, but I approved his ploy to redirect this annoying grandson of the boat owner on the bottle.

  I settled in to a good licking rhythm and listened.

  “She went down like a sack of bricks. Bam. Going up the stairs one second, falling backward the next, and wham on her head. She’d’ve had padding if she’d landed on her ass.” Time ou
t for him to laugh at his own witticism. “Though her friend would have had even more. The badunkadonk on that one … Anyway, some idiot woman, who’d first screamed like a banshee, kept trying to pull her around and stuff something under her head. I kept saying ‘Don’t move her. Don’t move her at all.’ ”

  Petronella? Had to be. I sure hoped the woman who fell wasn’t litigious. Though she couldn’t get anything from Petronella, since she had nothing.

  “In the meantime, the other knockoff Housewives of Wherever low-rent trophy wives come from—” He hadn’t been critical when he’d been ogling the redhead or now, describing their derrieres. “—who was with her stood like a statue with no expression at all. She might as well have been doing her nails for all the attention she paid to her friend.”

  The bartender said something too low for me to catch.

  “Yeah, yeah, you’re right. Barracudas, for sure. Who—”

  “I didn’t say—” the young bartender started in alarm.

  “—needs friends like that, huh? But at least she wasn’t doing the woman on the ground harm like that screamer. I told her — first rule, don’t move the person. But she kept yanking the woman’s head and stuffing things under it. Finally, a crew member showed up and got rid of everybody.

  “I was glad to go. Let the professionals help her and it got me away from the iceberg would-be-friend and the hysterical old bat.”

  He gestured widely with his glass, flinging ice cubes and dribbles of liquid. The bartender jumped back. Not fast enough.

  “Gotta move quicker, kid. But you got that supply of clean stuff over by the buffet.” He started to turn on the bar stool toward me.

  I stepped back where the wall would block his view of me, then around another corner, as the young bartender appeared from the opposite side of an elevator bank, heading toward the buffet area. I took the final bite of ice cream, disposed of the last inch of cone, then caught the elevator.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Petronella confided to Bob and Catherine at dinner that she feared I’d gotten too much sun that day.

  I’d seen a faint pink when I changed for dinner and that was only compared to the stark white of the towel folded into a bunny that Eristo had left on the bed.

  “She looks fine to me,” Bob said heartily. “Healthy and better rested than she did last night. Few more weeks of that treatment and she’ll be beyond blooming.”

  “Thank you, Bob.” I hadn’t been aware of not feeling rested, but now that he mentioned it…

  Petronella immediately accepted his view as gospel and didn’t bring it up again. That definitely contributed to my rested feeling.

  After we’d ordered and the waitstaff left us, Catherine leaned in close.

  “Did you hear? The passenger who fell on the stairs today — you knew of that? — is hurt worse than they feared. They’re concerned about her neck.”

  I closed my eyes an instant. Petronella had lifted the woman’s head to jam a sweater under it. Please, let the woman be okay. And please don’t let Petronella be the cause if she isn’t.

  “That poor soul.” Petronella, with no apparent linking in her mind between her sweater-jamming and potential neck problems, told Catherine and Bob about being there when the woman fell. They exclaimed over her.

  My relief that she hadn’t mentioned her sweater activities deepened when Catherine said in a low voice, “I heard they’re worried about paralysis.”

  Petronella covered her mouth too late to stop a gasp that turned a few heads. “How horrible.”

  Catherine sat back, looking innocuous.

  “Any idea who she is?” I asked quietly.

  Bob gave a scoffing, huh. “Of course, she does.”

  With a casualness to inform anyone watching that she wasn’t saying anything the least bit interesting, she said, “Have you encountered a group of, ah, younger wives of older men? I see you have. This is—”

  “She’s blonde,” Petronella interrupted.

  I looked from her to Catherine. “Really, really light blonde?”

  “Blonde,” Petronella said.

  “Not as light as another in their group,” Catherine said. “Piper has the lightest blonde hair. Coral is the one who fell.”

  Interesting. That made Piper the one who’d gone into the windows. But Imka had called her Ms. Laura. Last name, presumably. I wondered where Piper Laura had been when her opponent in that great spa duel went down the stairs.

  Wait a minute. Mr. Grandfather’s Sailboat on the Label had said the friend of the faller had quite the badunkadonk—”

  That sounded like Piper.

  “Coral fell? Not Piper?”

  Catherine tipped her head. “That surprises you?”

  It did.

  Why? They were walking up the stairs together, didn’t that indicate they’d reached equilibrium, if not an accord?

  Catherine’s voice pulled me back. “Why are you smiling, Bob?”

  “I heard something, too. We’re swinging in close to land to drop her off in Gibraltar. Should be pretty seeing the lights at night up close.”

  “Oh, but that poor woman, to miss the rest of cruise,” Petronella protested.

  “Doesn’t hurt her anymore if we enjoy the lights. Might as well.”

  Catherine patted his hand. “My practical Robert. Can you pity me for living with such an entire lack of sentiment?”

  Petronella looked uncomfortable at the joking lament.

  Bob looked thoroughly satisfied with his wife’s touch and words.

  I grinned.

  Catherine didn’t quite quell the twitch of her lips.

  * * * *

  After dinner, Catherine lured Petronella away from her perceived duties as my watchdog by saying she needed a bingo partner, since Bob’s failure to pay close attention to the calls had surely cost her thousands in winnings over the years.

  Catherine winked at me over her shoulder as they departed.

  With gratitude in my heart, I went to the Wayfarer Bar for a quiet drink alone.

  Jason was not behind the bar tonight, so no Veuve Clicquot.

  Nor were the musicians here. So no hope of identifying the song that had become an earworm.

  Instead, there was a young man with a strong accent, trying to run a trivia game. The most frequent question back at him from the players — including me — was “What?”

  No one, from any country, appeared to be able to comprehend his accent. He finally resorted to pantomime when none of us could unravel Al-pa-hand as elephant.

  In the end, it wasn’t that anyone won the trivia game as much as the last person still trying got the grand prize — a cruise line pen. I’d quit two rounds earlier. Darn.

  With that distraction over, I sipped at my drink and realized a couple had come in while I tried to unravel the trivia questions/pantomime and now sat directly across a small table from me.

  The intricacies and intimacies of the woman’s family history unfolded in detail, as if a person feet away — say, me — couldn’t hear them.

  I tried to block it out, but I’m no good at that. I might never have been good at it. After the years with Aunt Kit, I’d become an always-on radar dish pulling in signals.

  Kit maintained eavesdropping was a vital tool for creating characters and their stories.

  Quickly, I learned that the woman had a cousin who got married late in life, followed his wife to a “settlement, no more, well east of Calgary, in the middle of the plains” and was now raising two small children. Because the wife up and left him and the “settlement.”

  “I think she’s realized now how much of a—” She said a word that made me blink. “—he was.”

  He was? He was the one stuck in isolation she’d picked, then left. And he was raising the kids, while she took off.

  “She’s thinking about what’s good for her at last. She’s shaken off his spell,” the man said.

  Good for her? What about those kids?

  This was the drawback to eave
sdropping that Aunt Kit never seemed to experience. She absorbed what people said, who they were and stored it away to use for a character at some future time without getting involved with the real people. Her characters, yes. But not the people who’d contributed real life stuff to their creation.

  Me? I wanted to argue with them. I wanted to set them straight. I wanted them to give the cousin who was, “late in life,” raising two kids, alone, out on the plains, a break. Heck, I wanted to go find the guy and give him a hug.

  Aunt Kit would warn me he might be a pervert.

  “Sheila. Did you hear?” Catherine was beside me, ending my force-fed eavesdropping and my cogitations about Aunt Kit.

  “Hear what?”

  “Bob was right. We’re swinging close to Gibraltar, much closer than planned. They’re not only dropping off that young woman who fell on the stairs, they’re taking her to the hospital there. They feel she needs more specialized care than the ship’s medical staff can give her.”

  “Paralysis? She’s that much worse than they thought?”

  “Not necessarily—”

  The PA system came to life with a mechanical clearing of its throat. “This is your captain,” the voice said, before pretty much repeating what Catherine said. Though not as succinctly.

  “How did you know that?” I asked when the captain signed off. “Good grief, you could have written that announcement. Or at least read it beforehand.”

  She gave an airy, dismissive wave. “You learn a thing or two when you’ve cruised as much as I have.”

  “You said not necessarily when I said she must be hurt badly. What did you mean?”

  “Oh, that. Word is that she was quite the thorn in their bums and the medical staff can’t wait to get her off.” She took my elbow and tugged me up. “C’mon. Bob and Petronella went up top to save us spots at the rail. Let’s go see Gibraltar.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The ship slowed. Slowed more.

  The backseat captains gathered at the railing on the top deck, speculated how and where the ship would approach the port of Gibraltar.