Death on the Diversion

by Patricia McLinn

  I tipped the screen to shield it.

  Perhaps because of that movement, she added, “Ah, a man?”

  Her question was light enough that I could have easily not answered.

  “My great-aunt.”

  “Oh, yes, you live together, don’t you?”

  Interesting she knew that. It didn’t figure in most information on the author of Abandon All. Not impossible to discover, but it took reading the longest, least media-glitzy articles to find, much less to remember.

  “Not anymore.” I heard sadness in my voice. “She’s moved into a place where she can be more comfortable.”

  “It’s difficult when that’s necessary.”

  It took me a beat to realize she thought Aunt Kit needed help, perhaps had dementia of one form or another. The moment to correct that impression passed when she continued.

  “But you surely have enough men onboard who’d be willing to send you intriguing texts, as well as anything else you’d like. The drawback being that they’re mostly old enough to be your father, if not your grandfather. Goodness, some of them are old enough to be my father.”

  Petronella waved from a spot in front of the just-opening dining room doors, where the maître d’ greeted everyone with a smile and a hearty “good evening.”

  I raised a responding hand.

  Odette chuckled, “I’ll join you in cutting in. Any ire from the rest of those lined up will be divided between us, swamping neither.”

  “We could go to the back,” I muttered. The order of arrival made no difference, since tables were assigned.

  “But agitation is not good for digestion.”

  Without pointing or nodding or otherwise indicating Petronella, her reference was clear.

  “At last,” Petronella sighed. “I was so afraid you’d miss dinner completely.”

  The line had barely started to move through the doors when there was a stir behind us.

  “Let us through, let us through,” came a familiar voice. It was the leader of the Valkyries. Behind her hobbled Coral on crutches and with a huge cast from her toes up to nearly her knee. It could have gone a lot higher and we still would have seen it because her dress was slit to… I don’t know exactly where because I refused to check.

  “Oh, you’re back,” crooned Petronella.

  “Yeah.” Coral gave no sign of recognition. She also gave no sign of interest in anyone else.

  “Those awful, awful shoes,” Petronella continued. “No wonder you fell.”

  Coral rounded on her. “Are you saying I fell because I can’t walk in heels? I’ve been walking in heels since I was a baby. I did not fall because of my shoes.” She turned her back on us to whine, “Are we ever gonna get in? This hurts, you know. I’m in pain.”

  The rest of the group followed, crowding us back.

  “You. You there. Seat us immediately,” one of the men ordered the maître d’.

  “But…” Petronella watching the departing back of the maître d’, appeared to be in more pain than Coral.

  “Now, no reason to worry.” Odette took Petronella’s arm, while twinkling up at the head waiter. “These kind gentlemen would not let us starve.”

  Their following banter gave me the opportunity to text back to Aunt Kit. Going in to dinner. More later.

  As we walked single file toward the far end of the dining room, my phone hummed. Without taking out any of the servers balancing trays, I quickly read:

  Look at her history. Patterns.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Our tablemates cleansed the palate after Leah’s display at the pool.

  Catherine filled us in on all the details of how Coral and her husband had been flown to the island to catch up with the cruise once doctors in Gibraltar determined the ankle was her only true injury.

  “Apparently they couldn’t wait to get rid of her, either,” she whispered.

  Coral’s plaints dominated the Valkyries’ table, growing louder with more drinks. Maybe she was on drugs that didn’t mix well with alcohol. Maybe it was just her.

  The Marry-Go-Round table was largely quiet, with Odette and Wardham carrying the conversation, without the couple from the first few nights, who had won a small table to themselves in a corner and looked happy.

  For three full days and most of a fourth, I had the good fortune to be spared any live demonstration of Leah’s patterns.

  After La Palma, we started six straight days of cruising, otherwise known as bliss.

  I know some cruisers enjoy all the activities possible on the ship.

  I enjoy the lack of activities. And I’m a dynamo compared to Aunt Kit. Give the woman a sea view, a good book, and something to drink (alcoholic or not) and she was set for days. Actually, the drink was optional.

  Come to think of it, so was the sea view. Though it clearly did relax her.

  Heck, these days of cruising were even starting to relax Petronella.

  I spent time in the pool, chatted with friends made on the excursions, read copiously, wrote long emails to Aunt Kit describing all the characters I’d encountered, somewhat shorter emails to my family skipping over all the characters I’d encountered, and enjoyed Eristo reaching new cuteness heights with his towel creatures, including an elephant and a sea turtle that made a great pillow.

  The only fly in the ointment of those easy days was the unnamed earworm.

  The next time I heard those musicians, I’d ask the name.

  On that fourth evening of cruising, Leah appeared to be in fine spirits at dinner. No, that might be misleading, because she spent considerable time in dark contemplation of the table usually occupied by the Valkyries and their husbands. It was empty tonight, presumably they were eating at one of the specialty restaurants. But she did not snarl or snap at anyone at her table that I noticed. Oh, a few parries at the waiter, but nothing serious.

  Her tablemates appeared to chat amiably around her.

  As we did at our table.

  Our conversation slowed our eating, as it did every night, which was fine with me.

  My years with Aunt Kit reinforced a family tendency to linger. She savored a meal, especially dessert. She didn’t talk about it often, but I gathered she’d had lean days — and years — early in her writing career.

  This habit offered a side benefit — no backup at the elevators when we left, because the crowds had departed.

  Petronella hurried ahead of me out of the dining room. She worried the wait staff might reprimand her for holding them up.

  I did say cruising was starting to relax Petronella, some.

  Bob and Catherine went one way to take in a show. Petronella and I headed for the elevators.

  The banks of elevators outside the dining room were in four sets of three, forming a rectangle, with one passageway dividing them longways and a second dividing them shortways. Where the passageways intersected, Leah stood, leaning on her cane, looking toward one set of elevator doors, which were blocked from our view by the nearer set.

  Her voice rose harsh and sharp.

  “…better change your tune toward me fast—”

  I picked up my pace to see who she was talking to. Petronella stepped in front of me, I connected with her back.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. So sorry. Forgive me,” Petronella nattered, covering several of Leah’s angry words.

  “—worst cabin onboard seems like a palace compared to a prison cell—”

  Prison cell?

  I took hold of Petronella’s shoulders to hold her in place to get around her to the right.

  “—was in your way when the cruise started, but sure wasn’t when it was over.”

  A strangled sound, unrecognizable as male or female, much less an identity, didn’t stop Leah.

  “You think you’re so smart, but I know what I know. You better—”

  Petronella stepped to the left, directly in front of me again. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I am sorry.”

  “—not give me a hard time or everybody will know. Inc
luding the police.”

  I half shoved Petronella and got to the open area where the passageways intersected in time to see the furthest of the elevator doors sliding closed, with no hope of seeing an occupant.

  Leah was the only other person visible.

  “Oh, I thought that was your voice,” Petronella said cheerfully to Leah as she joined us.

  “I’m going to my room.” Leah turned her back on us to punch a button, another elevator door opened immediately.

  “Of course, of course,” Petronella said. “I like to freshen up after dinner, too. Makes one feel much more…refreshed.”

  She spoke the last word to the closed elevator door.

  Not before Leah gave me a dark glare.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Twenty minutes later, Petronella, refreshed by her freshening up, and I walked into the performance area at the base of the multi-deck central atrium. Nothing was being performed at the moment, an unmusical arrangement of voices grew louder and louder.

  On this deck a stage area with speakers, music stands, and two chairs, backed up to a sketchy rendition of a grand stairway, flanked by angled facets of distressed mirror that reflected into each other. More mirrors covered columns. Fake stone supported the steps that curved up from either side, meeting in a sort of balcony over the stage. A single set of seven stairs led the rest of the way up to the next deck.

  That stairway offered a truncated view of passengers walking past on the next deck. Short walkers close to the steps revealed themselves as high as the shoulders. Taller walkers provided views only of the legs.

  The next deck up, the view down to the stage was the hole in its donut, with armchair seating surrounding the railing-guarded opening. The decks above had ever-smaller seating areas.

  Upstairs was less crowded and more conducive to conversation. But Petronella wasn’t the greatest conversationalist. Plus, it didn’t have a bar, which this level did.

  That’s where I headed, with Petronella trailing, protesting she couldn’t possibly have a drink.

  It was hard to guess how many customers were ahead of us, because some sat on stools — permanently or temporarily while they obtained a drink? I shifted for a better angle to assess who was next in the nonlinear line.

  My Veuve Clicquot supplier Jason was behind the bar.

  He turned his back on the bar, but another mirror — whoever designed this space had a thing for mirrors — caught his intense expression.

  Quick calculations of angles that would have gotten me a lot better grades in geometry if I’d been able to write them down rather than sense them, turned my head to where he was looking.

  The gal pals from the spa and their guys.

  No — another calculation that owed only a portion of its answer to geometry — he wasn’t looking at the whole group. He was looking at one.

  Piper. The Valkyrie with the impressive derriere, who’d been pushed into the windows by Coral.

  Piper was looking right back at him. With an equally intense look.

  Sending a message.

  As sure as I was of that, I didn’t have a clue what that message was.

  And then it shut off.

  Piper looked away. My gaze shot back to Jason. He looked at the bottle he was pouring. Then back to Piper. She gazed adoringly at her husband. At least the guy I thought was her husband.

  As my gaze had made that return trip to Piper, it caught something else. Since Piper wasn’t doing anything interesting, I let my gaze return to the snag.

  Leah Treusault.

  Leah and the rest of the Marry-Go-Round group occupied a half-moon of loveseats and chairs closest to the right side of the musicians’ stand, currently unoccupied. The curved stairs set the stage area off from the general seating, with this grouping the closest to the performers.

  One chair in the group was empty, but all the rest held the familiar people who smiled and chatted, as if no tensions or rivalries existed among them.

  Except Leah.

  She was watching Piper, who appeared oblivious to her attention.

  Then Leah looked toward Jason.

  Huh. Another geometry practitioner?

  Speculation glittered in her eyes. Her mouth formed a stark smile.

  Until she saw me, seeing her. The smile converted to a scowl.

  Odette, apparently catching the drift of Leah’s attention, started to follow it in my direction.

  I smiled generally, over their heads, avoiding eye contact, then turned completely toward the bar, as if it required a concerted effort to procure a drink. Which it might at this rate.

  “Hello there, Sheila,” a familiar voice said from in front of me.

  Ralph, standing at the bar, presumably placing an order, had greeted me. He must be their designated drink-getter.

  He smiled. “Let me get you both something to drink. And come join us, young ladies. We’d have front-row seats, if this place had rows.”

  “Oh, thank you.” Petronella’s acceptance came faster than I could muster an acceptable excuse to decline. The one time her Oh, no, I couldn’t would have come in handy and she skipped it. “I’ll have a sloe gin fizz.”

  Still, I tried. “I’m not sure—”

  Ralph closed that off with a wink. “No worries as the Aussies say. She’s all sweetness and light now. With Maya, with me, with everybody. She’s most likely got her zingers in to somebody else. It’s like light breezes and sunshine after a hurricane. Another champagne?”

  What could I say to all that except, “Yes, thank you, that would be lovely.”

  Jason cut off the other bartender, saying, “I’ll take care of the champagne.” He winked. A little too chummy for my taste.

  Then I saw what he was pouring.

  I’d suffer a wink for Veuve Clicquot.

  I thanked him and discreetly topped up Ralph’s tip.

  Ralph arranged for two more chairs to be added to the grouping, then escorted us triumphantly to the others, leaving a waiter to deliver the order, except my champagne, which I held onto. “See who I persuaded to join us?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Everyone called out happy greetings as if we hadn’t seen them in weeks, maybe years.

  Cravenly, I maneuvered into the added chair farther from Leah. That put Petronella near her, but since my great-aunt’s sort-of relative started by gushing about the older woman’s spangled dress, that might go well.

  Wardham, on Leah’s other side, was equally attentive.

  That allowed me to slip in between Odette and Ralph.

  “I’m surprised to see you here. I thought Le— You all preferred the Wayfarer Bar.”

  Her eyes sparkled. “Is that why you came here instead?” She waved a hand to stop my response, then said cryptically, “You’ll understand before long.”

  “I’ve been meaning to thank you for suggesting the camel ride. It was fun. Not something I’d ever expected to do, but I’m glad I did.” I lowered my voice. “Even Petronella enjoyed it. Especially after it was over.”

  She, too, kept her voice low. “Then she did better than Leah. We all took the camel ride the first time we stopped at the Canary Islands, years ago now. She swore up and down that her camel purposefully made her ride uncomfortable. You know with them tied in a line the way they are there’s not much a camel can do other than walk slowly, right behind the one in front, but that didn’t deter her. By the end, she was fuming. She tried to hit the camel on the neck, then on the backswing, she hit the head of the one behind her — the one I was on, which the tender had said was grouchy. That knocked the cover they put over their mouths askew. We tried to warn her—” What Odette tried to do now was not laugh. “—but that made her turn around and the camel spit right in her face.”

  I covered my mouth to mask my laughter.

  “Oh, dear, I shouldn’t laugh,” Odette said. “She tried to hit it with her bag and one of the men had to restrain her. The camel handlers said it was the first time one had spit in years, decades. But
its aim was great. It got her right in her open mouth.”

  She coughed, laughed, then subsided.

  As if she knew she was being talked about, Leah swung her head toward us.

  I froze. Odette handled it beautifully.

  “And, yes, that same acquaintance from previous cruises said more about our friends from the spa. The core group apparently has been on other cruises.” She chuckled, planting the idea that our laughter might have stemmed from that topic. “I referred to them as trophy wives. To which my acquaintance said, Trophy wives. Hah. Only if you’re talking about the kind of trophy given out for finishing fifth in a summer camp relay race.”

  I chuckled to add my bit to the impression this continued the topic that made us laugh.

  “Coral, the one who pushed Piper into the window, showed up a few years ago. Apparently, she’s had to work hard to be part of the group.”

  I only half-listened.

  I suspected I’d spotted why the Marry-Go-Round folks were here.

  The guitarist and violinist, the same musicians from the Wayfarer Bar approached the stage, carrying their instrument cases.

  I listened to Odette, but I watched the musicians. And Leah.

  She watched only the musicians. One of them, anyway. The guitarist.

  “But Piper has been accepted readily, even though she’s only been around for less than a year. That drives Coral wild, as we saw.”

  The musicians set up quickly and smoothly, with the ease of practice. Their heads were close together as they spoke softly in a language I didn’t understand, but guessed was Eastern European. My second guess — that their conversation was about music — was stronger since they were setting sheet music on the stands, one in front of each of them, apparently coordinating the order of the songs.

  Odette continued, “My acquaintance said she wouldn’t have been surprised if Coral had pushed Piper down those stairs, but was surprised Piper was still standing and Coral wasn’t.”