Death on the Diversion

by Patricia McLinn

  I turned to her. “Was your friend there when Coral fell?”

  “Came on the scene just after.” The lines at the corners of her eyes deepened. “Retains a vivid memory of Petronella.”

  I bet. I returned to watching the musicians. These two musicians’ voices, their looks, their movements, all screamed couple to me. “Piper was there when Coral fell. Were all of them?”

  “Only the two of them.”

  I shifted my gaze to Leah without moving my head.

  She watched the guitarist.

  “Uh-huh,” Odette said into my ear, apparently abandoning her previous topic.

  That twisted me to look at her.

  Her eyes glittered. “She’s taken quite the interest in that young man. Because you’re a nice person, you’re thinking maybe she’s wondering if he reminds her of a son, a nephew. Look again.”

  I didn’t have to. I knew she was right.

  I suspected the guitar player knew, too. He was careful, as they began to play, to not to look in this direction.

  In contrast, the violinist took frequent, quick, worried glances toward Leah.

  Despite the violinist’s apparent distraction, the music was as lovely and enjoyable as it had been in the Wayfarer Bar. It was like the music from the two instruments danced together.

  When the duo stood and quickly left the stage area for a break, there was a sense of blinking back to awakeness after a restful dream.

  “Music soothes the savage beast,” Odette murmured.

  “Breast,” I corrected automatically. Aunt Kit had drilled that into me, while commenting on the lamentable inaccuracies of modern education. “Sorry.”

  “No, no. Is it truly breast, not beast?”

  With some reluctance, I said, “William Congreve. Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast,” I quoted. “To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.”

  That started us on a conversation about the plays Aunt Kit had taken me to in New York.

  Before we knew it, the musicians returned.

  As they settled into their seats, the polite gatherings of all nationalities in the chairs in the center quieted. Initially the crowd at the bar ranked as only marginally louder. That diverged sharply in the next minute.

  Bartenders delivering drinks constantly stirred the crowd at the bar. One set left, everyone shifted, and new people arrived.

  Blips of conversations bobbed up to the surface, intercut by a symphony of catarrh coughs, snorts, and sniffs.

  “Frankly, I’ll be more careful about where we book next time. There should be a certain elegance. Even in these days.” Those words came from between the bright red lips of the leader of the spa pack.

  “I know, I know,” came the redhead’s voice, eagerly adding its apparent disgust with the state of passenger lists nowadays. “You can’t open your balcony door and not be exposed to how provincial it’s become.”

  Hard to imagine a ship kept running by citizens of a dozen-and-a-half countries being provincial.

  The red-lipsticked leader ignored her contribution. “Next time, Harve, we get the suite, like I wanted.”

  “Oh, the suite is lovely,” popped in the redhead. “We’re very comfortable there.”

  I turned my head in time to see the eye-dagger the leader jabbed into the redhead, who smirked a bit, but was nowhere near as impervious as she wanted to appear.

  The next words came from another direction. Behind me. Male voices.

  “I’m telling you, I’m sure. He wants to go back to his first wife now that she’s inherited that pile of money.”

  Could that possibly be about Ralph? Just as Odette had told me about people from other cruises, this speaker could know the background of the Marry-Go-Rounders. Could money be the reason that group didn’t kick Leah to the curb?

  “Never understood why he made the jump. The current Mrs. is a piece of work.”

  I shifted, trying to spot these speakers without being too obvious.

  “He jumped to her because she knew how to play him. Or else he had no choice, because she roped him in and that was that.”

  “What good’s money then?”

  Now that sounded more like Wardham’s situation with Leah.

  “He must’ve figured it would buy him enough cake to have it and eat it, too. You know, a little on the side.”

  “Or a lot on the side.”

  My imagination? Or was there something familiar about that voice?

  The hell with subtlety. I craned my neck.

  Did no good, because of the intervening and moving bodies.

  “So, why didn’t he?”

  “Hah. Not only does he know what would happen to his crown jewels if he tried, but she’s the one doing her best to play around. Why, I heard—”

  The voice temporarily disappeared under the surface of a new shift among those at the bar, and I still hadn’t pinpointed either speaker.

  “He keeled over not far out of Rome. She was gone a couple days on that leg of the cruise, but rejoined for the transatlantic leg. Talk about the merry widow…”

  I’d heard this before… The voice gossipy from the deck above…

  I glanced toward Odette. Were they talking about Maya?

  But Bruce Froster died on a cruise with the same schedule as this one and Maya stayed onboard … hadn’t she?

  The musicians began to play.

  The conversations didn’t cease, but I couldn’t hear them any longer. Not to mention that turning and staring would scream that I wasn’t listening to the music.

  Their first song was a lilting rendition of Wonderful World, sharing its joy while achieving a restrained dignity.

  As the last notes held, a strident voice from the other side of the seating tore across the music and the mutters of conversations from the bar area.

  Leah jumped up, jabbing her cane in the air. “You,” she seethed.

  There might be stronger people who would resist turning to see whom she addressed. I’m not one of them.

  It was the German-speaking woman from the hot tub standoff. The man from the hot tub sat next to her. He didn’t look any happier than he had then. She clearly saw Leah’s cane pointed at her.

  She laughed loudly and harshly.

  “You,” Leah repeated. “You barbarian.”

  “Ach du Lieber.” The German woman turned it into a guttural sneer.

  Leah’s response was a higher-pitched, but equally sneering, “Bitch.”

  So much for a wonderful world.

  In switching my focus from one woman to the other, I saw the musicians speaking earnestly to each other.

  The music re-started abruptly. It was energetic and beat-driven. Nothing like I’d heard before from them as it landed somewhere between an Irish jig and flamenco. It not only drowned out the two women, it spun Leah back to the stage.

  Wardham tugged her sleeve. She jerked her arm away but dropped into her chair.

  Despite her husband/male companion’s efforts to shush her, the German-speaking woman appeared to still be talking, based on her moving lips. But the music covered the sound.

  Smart. The duo followed with several more up-tempo pieces, then shifted to their more usual fare, including the tune they’d played in the bar. My earworm. I swore I knew that title, if it would only surface.

  It had lyrics, but I couldn’t quite…

  Darn, what was it?

  The duo wrapped up to appreciative applause and put away their instruments, then music.

  “They’re done?” I said wistfully.

  “According to the schedule,” Odette confirmed. “Next up is Follow the Leader Dance Party.”

  “I’ll skip that one.”

  “Ah, because it’s not one of the nights with an extra hour?”

  “Even if it were, I’d skip it.”

  Petronella headed out the near exit, which gave access to the ladies’ room.

  I stood, intending to talk to the musicians, hoping for earworm relief. Before I could, my gaze conne
cted with the violinist’s, seeing each other as people, not passenger and entertainer. I smiled. Her mouth twitched toward a small response.

  Then her expression changed as she watched Leah make a beeline for the guitarist.

  He shot a look from Leah to the violinist, then hurried toward the far exit to a hallway. The violinist grabbed the rest of the music into an untidy bundle and picked up her case, trailing him, but ahead of Leah.

  At the doorway, Leah came even with the violinist, then lurched sideways as if the ship had rocked. I hadn’t felt anything. Leah’s lurch elbowed the young woman, who stumbled.

  Leah shot ahead of her and was on the heels of the guitarist when they disappeared from sight.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I started the next day on my balcony.

  Many cruise veterans consider a balcony a luxury they’ll forego. They like to sit out in the public areas, moving around the ship depending on if they want sun or shade, less breeze or more.

  I love the balcony. Of course, for the privacy. And for the ability to hear the ocean whenever you feel like opening the door — if you’ve bothered to close it at all.

  But the biggest factor is that the opaque privacy screens on either side allow you to frame your experience as you choose. Sit one way you look back to where you’ve been. Switch seats and you’re looking forward to where you’re heading.

  Look one direction and watch the gathering clouds we were sailing toward, as I had faced when I first came out here to eat my room-service breakfast. Or move to look in the other direction and see only a cloudless, blue-skied horizon, as I did now.

  So what if I was looking behind me. It was a much prettier view.

  The islands were days out of sight. But that horizon behind us was bright and open and … familiar. Especially compared to the uncertain clouds ahead that could be masking anything.

  You’re right. I’m wimping out about looking forward to where I’m heading.

  In my life and in the next half hour.

  I understood the life stuff. Big changes, major course correction, uncertainty, and all that.

  The next half hour was that I’d promised myself I’d take a brisk walk around the jog track for at least a mile.

  Yet the buffet beckoned, much more alluring than the walk. Yes, I’d decided I could ease up on my weight restrictions as part of my disguise once I stopped being the author of Abandon All … or was I shedding the disguise of the past fifteen years?

  Either way, I didn’t want to do it all during this cruise. And all with sugar. To be blunt, the buffet bulge threatened my wardrobe.

  Did I crave sweets because of my disrupted life?

  Or because of displaced tension from the Marry-go-Rounders, whom I seemed destined to spend a lot of time with on this cruise. It happened that way on cruises sometimes. You saw a few people over and over, while never running into others, only to discover six months later you were on the same ship at the same time.

  Yes, and there was also Petronella.

  I told myself she was only trying to show her gratitude. My mother’s voice in my head reminded me to be kind.

  Aunt Kit’s said a few different things. I always had loved that woman.

  Even when she sat me down in her office in the brownstone and kicked me out of the nest.

  She’d had good reasons.

  “The trouble is we’ve become an industry. Not a cottage industry, more like a villa industry, supporting a network of people who have a vested interest in doing the same thing over and over. Agent, assistant, publicist, editor, publisher—”

  “Me.”

  She patted my arm. “Not you. You want to move on. You just don’t know it yet. And you’ve more than earned your keep.”

  Wanted to move on? Not so sure. Recognized the wisdom. Yes.

  My time as hot young writer had passed its expiration date some time ago. That is, it passed for the author of Abandon All. Not me, Sheila.

  Yeah, this got complicated sometimes.

  I left the balcony and prepared for my day among the people.

  Then — boom — I remembered the song played by the guitarist and violinist that I hadn’t been able to identify. The earworm had a name.

  Hey, that had to be an omen, right? It would be a good day.

  * * * *

  The first person I saw — almost as soon as I opened my cabin door — was the violinist from the musical duo.

  I almost didn’t recognize her.

  She moved slowly along the corridor. I drew back into my doorway to let her pass, thinking she was a passenger I didn’t recognize.

  Taking her for a passenger was justified, because crew members found in the hallway outside the passenger cabins wore stewards’ uniforms. She wore jeans and a t-shirt.

  Just before she would have passed, her identity clicked in my head and I turned and spoke without checking in with the higher functioning levels of my brain.

  “That song,” I blurted at her, letting my cabin door close behind me.

  She jolted, eyes rounding.

  “The song you and your — the guitar player played during the last set. It’s an Irish song called The Fields of Athenry.”

  The lyrics came rushing in along with the title. The story of a young, him in prison about to be shipped to Botany Bay for stealing corn to keep his children alive and her preparing to see her love leave forever.

  Now that I’d blurted out the earworm identity, I had room to notice that, in addition to rounding, her eyes were producing tears. She was crying. And trying hard not to.

  “I don’t know.”

  “It goes kind of like this.” Yes, I tried to hum. Or whatever it’s called when you da-da-dum an approximation of a tune. In my case a distant approximation. Lamely, I ended with, “It’s very pretty.”

  “I don’t know.”

  She had a heavy enough accent — my Eastern European guess strengthened — that I wondered if that’s all she could say or if the phrase conveyed her incomprehension of my English.

  “Are you okay?” I figured that had a better chance of being understood by any non-English speaker, as long as they’d seen an American movie or two.

  She dipped her head, bringing a tissue clasped in her left hand to her eyes. The crying made noise now.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Must go. Must not be here.” So she spoke some English. “Must go.”

  “Can I help?”

  She shook her head sharply, which might have loosened some internal lock, because she ran down the hallway, putting her right arm out to balance against the wall now and then, while her left hand clutched the tissue.

  She paused once, halfway to the door to the Atrium area, looking toward a door on the same side of the corridor as my cabin, then hurrying on even faster.

  When she pushed open the door at the end, I headed the opposite direction for my virtuous walk.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I do not run.

  I do not jog.

  I walk.

  Sometimes. I’ve grown rather fond of town cars and limousines.

  The first circuit, I didn’t notice much except my muscles moving. Interesting sensation.

  The second circuit, I saw a figure wrapped in towels like a mummy in the fifth-to-last deck chair on the shady side, with nobody nearby. It was breezy and still morning cool, but not that cold. Of course, I was moving. Virtuously.

  The third circuit, I confirmed what I’d suspected the previous time I’d passed — that hair sticking out of the top of the mummy wrap, combined with the short stature made Leah a likely candidate. If being on this shady side left her so cold she had to wrap up in towels, why didn’t she move to the sunny side?

  Not that I’d ask. She was a champion nose-biter and I liked mine as it was.

  Then I was distracted by a snippet of conversation between two men who’d been talking stock trades the previous two times they’d pass me.

  This time, strider one said, “Is that legal
?”

  “Yeah, yeah, of course it’s legal.”

  “But you wouldn’t want everyone to know.”

  “Hell, no.”

  Prime eavesdropping.

  Wishing I had a button to run that back to know what they were talking about, then speculating about their possible activities, I didn’t think much about the figure on the deck chair.

  Until I came around again.

  The fourth circuit, with me squinting at the figure as soon as it came into sight, confirmed this mummy wasn’t moving.

  That could be explained. She could be asleep. Nice and cozy in her cocoon. Not wanting to be disturbed.

  Just keep going. Finish this circuit and I’d have a mile in. That’s what I came here for. Not to tangle with irascible Leah Treusault. Or anyone else, if it wasn’t her.

  I wasn’t close enough to see breathing and I couldn’t be sure anyway because of my own movement.

  Oh, c’mon, Sheila. Stop making up stories in your head. Of course, she’s breathing. Somebody would have noticed.

  I slowed as I neared that chair.

  Just keep going.

  I slowed more. Two people huffed as they passed me. Irked or out of breath? I didn’t care.

  I stepped off the track and went to the deck chair. Not too close.

  “Leah?”

  Nothing.

  Closer.

  “Leah?”

  Nothing.

  Closer.

  I touched her shoulder. Jostled it slightly.

  Most of my hand encountered towel. But the tip of my index finger encountered something else. Something cool.

  I pulled my hand back.

  My hand had something on it.

  Uh-oh.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I stared at a tacky, dark red smudge on my index finger.

  My brain spit out Does Not Compute messages.

  Concentrate.

  Figure out this dab of dark red and the world would be okay. Sure, sure. That would do it.

  Figure this out. Logically. Step by step.

  I had nail polish on my nails from the spa that first day, not to mention nicely shaped ends and less visible cuticle, and you might reasonably think that made spotting red on my fingers unremarkable.