Vegan Baked Alaska (Auntie Clem's Bakery Book 9)

by P. D. Workman

  “No. But when someone turns up missing…?”

  “There are thousands of people employed on this ship. Most of them are under thirty. We constantly have people turn up missing. It is not something we worry about. They go off on a bender, stay ashore, fall in love. That’s what happens on a cruise. Employee turnover is very high.”

  “You really don’t believe me?”

  “I believe that you saw something. But I don’t think it is anything for me to worry about. Don’t go wandering about the ship at night. That would be my recommendation.”

  They left Jacobi’s office in stunned silence, neither of them sure how to process what he had just said. They had been expecting push-back, but not disinterest.

  Arriving in the outer office, the reception area, they saw a middle-aged woman, dark haired, slim build, with clothes that looked to Erin to be very expensive, arguing with the receptionist. She looked up as Vic and Erin left Jacobi’s inner office.

  “Now can I go in?” she demanded. “They’re out.”

  “Ma’am, you’ll have to wait until I’ve had a chance to talk to the captain. You can’t just go in unannounced. We have protocols…”

  It was the same speech that Vic and Erin had heard when they arrived. Erin hadn’t fought it; it made perfect sense to her that Jacobi would have a gatekeeper. You couldn’t have the captain being interrupted by every passenger with a beef. He would never get any rest or be able to get his work done. The woman who was waiting didn’t seem to agree. She thought she should be able to just walk in and see the captain as she pleased. She walked toward his door. The receptionist stood up and positioned herself in front it.

  “Ma’am, do you want me to call security? I need you to sit down and wait until the captain is ready for you.”

  “Security?” The woman’s voice rose several notes. “Do you even have security on this boat? There isn’t any as far as I’ve been able to tell!”

  “There certainly is,” the receptionist said evenly. “Please have a seat in the waiting area.”

  “I want to speak to the captain.”

  “Then please sit in the waiting area.” The receptionist pointed to the small grouping of chairs. “I cannot do my job while standing over here. Sit down and do as you’re asked, and I’ll do my best to help you out.”

  “You’re not doing anything!” the woman groused.

  Erin wondered what it was that the woman was there to confront the captain about. A theft, maybe? Or some slight by the crew? She didn’t have to wait long to find out.

  “My name is Carisa Shepherd. My daughter’s name is Mackay Shepherd, and she is missing!” the woman insisted. “I would think that would be cause for some concern around here!”

  “There are a lot of places to go on a ship like this. She’s probably just off with some friends exploring the ship or participating in activities,” the receptionist soothed. “You’re sure she’s not ashore for the tour?”

  “No, she is not ashore for the tour. She has been missing since last night. I can’t find her. She wouldn’t just take off in the middle of the night. She never made it back to our suite.”

  “Kids do like to test the limits. If you’ll just wait for a few minutes, I’ll make sure the captain is aware of your concerns and you’ll be able to see him.”

  Carisa Shepherd finally sat down in the waiting area chairs, looking angry and devastated at the same time. Erin realized that she was staring, and the woman had noticed her attention.

  “I’m sorry,” Erin said. “I couldn’t help overhearing. I hope… everything is okay. You must be really scared.”

  “Of course I am. I can’t believe that I can’t get anyone on this ship to pay attention to my concerns. My daughter wouldn’t just take off. She isn’t just playing with other kids. She is missing.”

  “Where have you looked?” Vic asked. “Is there anything we can do?”

  “There’s nothing two or three women can do to search the whole ship. I’ve already looked all of the places where she might have gone on her own. But something has happened to her! She was supposed to be at the teen library, but they said she checked herself out of there around midnight last night. What is the point in having a secure place where teens can visit if they can just leave whenever they feel like it, without their parents being notified?”

  “I… don’t know…” Erin said. She looked over at Vic. Vic had left home as a teenager. Not a runaway, but a throwaway. Erin herself had been pretty independent as a teen, knowing that she was going to have to live on her own and support herself once she hit eighteen. She had not had to contend with a helicopter mother who wanted to know where she was at all times. True, she had generally had a curfew and had been expected to show up and be in her bed every night, but there were not really any consequences if she did not. You couldn’t be with a teenager all the time.

  “She probably is just off with some friends,” Vic repeated what the receptionist had said. “It’s pretty tempting in a place like this to just go off and have an adventure. But I’d be worried too. She doesn’t have a cell phone?”

  “Nothing works in this ship. They said it’s because of all of the steel in the ship, but I think they’re jamming signals. It’s going straight to voicemail, like the battery is dead or it’s been turned off.”

  Or as if someone were rejecting the calls as soon as they came in. Just because Mom was calling, that didn’t mean a kid had to actually answer the call. She should, maybe, but there was no way to force someone to pick up a call if she didn’t want to answer it.

  “Well, I hope she turns up soon,” Vic said. “And if there’s anything we can do to help, really, just let us know…”

  The woman shook her head. “It’s sweet of you to ask, but I need the captain to take action here. I need them to perform a search. You’re the only people who have shown any concern at all for my daughter. Everyone else just shrugs and says kids are like that and she’ll turn up. But not all kids are like that. My daughter isn’t like that. I need to find her. Something has happened to her and they can’t keep ignoring the fact!”

  They both nodded and made their exit. Erin looked at Vic. “You don’t think this is related, do you? This isn’t part of what I saw last night…?”

  “You said that you saw a man thrown over the rail. Not a teenage girl. I think you would know the difference.”

  Erin raised one eyebrow. “Sometimes it’s a little more complicated than that.”

  Vic chuckled. “Okay, sometimes it is,” she admitted. “But I think if the daughter was a transgender man, the mother might have thought to mention that to us. I think we can safely assume that this missing girl has absolutely nothing to do with your man thrown over the railing.”

  “Other than that they both happened the same night on the same ship.”

  Vic shrugged. “There are thousands of people on board. I’ll bet you those aren’t the only two interesting things that happened last night.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  T

  he men were not yet back from their tour of the fish hatchery, and Erin did not feel like going back to her room to stare at the walls and be left with her thoughts. She was tired, but she wanted to sleep better when night came, so she didn’t want to take a nap.

  “What do you want to do?” Vic asked. “There are a lot of different activities we could try. Or we could go swimming. Take in a movie.”

  “If I go to a movie, I’m going to fall asleep, and it’s too cold to swim.”

  “The water is heated. It looks really nice.”

  “I would still be cold when I got out of the water. And you’d be freezing the whole time, so I don’t know why you’re suggesting it.”

  “I don’t know.” Vic laughed. “Lots of people keep talking about how lovely the pool is, so I just thought I’d try. What do you want to do then? Go look for some food? Shop?” Her eyes lit up. “We both have a little spending money with us, if you’d like to go shopping.”

  “N
o,” Erin said firmly. “No shopping. I want to know what happened last night… I can’t just forget about it.”

  “What, then? You want to ask people questions? I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “No… I just want to have a look around. We don’t have to ask anyone anything. I’ll just… show you where everything happened. I know there won’t be any evidence, but… I think we should look anyway.”

  Vic shrugged. “I don’t think Terry would approve.”

  “That’s why we’re doing it when he’s still ashore.”

  Vic grinned. “Okay, then. Lead the way.”

  Erin took a few minutes looking at the deck layouts and descriptions before she was reasonably sure where it was she had stood the night before and watched the drama unfold before her. She walked along the wall, touching it with one hand, and stopped by the porthole.

  “Right here. This is where I was standing.”

  Vic looked around the interior of the room. There was nothing out of place, nothing to indicate that something violent had happened the night before. But Erin had been inside, and the two men had been outside. They walked down to the door that led to the outer deck and walked along the railing. Erin’s stomach felt like it was being squeezed by a strong hand.

  She knew she was being ridiculous. There would be no one there anymore. What had happened had taken place hours before and the man who had thrown his companion overboard would not be returning to see if anyone else had noticed something was wrong.

  He’d be staying as far away from the scene as possible.

  Erin scanned the deck, looking for scuff marks or blood. The fight had been violent, and the man had likely been bleeding when it was over. But she didn’t see even a drop of blood. She looked back at the portholes, trying to find the place she had been standing and therefore where the two men had talked and fought. She followed the sight lines in her head, and stopped at a place along the rail, looking for some marking on the surface.

  “Right here?” Vic asked, looking down at it as well.

  Erin nodded. But there was no sign that a man had gone over the rail. No scratches or blood on the railing. The brushed metal surface shone.

  Vic looked over the edge, all the way down to the water. She shook her head. “That’s a pretty long fall.”

  Erin didn’t want to look, but she held tightly to the railing and looked down. She felt lightheaded. “Oh boy…”

  Vic’s hand was on her back. “It’s okay, honey. Just take deep breaths. There’s nothing we can do from here. If someone went over the rail into the water, there’s no way for us to tell from here.”

  “No.”

  “So, let’s get back from the rail.”

  Erin nodded, swaying uncertainly. She stepped back from the rail, looking away from the water, trying to ground and steady herself once more. “Oh. What’s this…?”

  Vic looked as Erin bent down and picked up something shiny from the deck. “What is it?”

  “A button.” Erin held up the shiny gold button. “From a uniform.”

  Vic stared down at it, looking from several different angles. It was, indeed, a gold button. From one of the crew uniforms. Anyone could have lost it at any time. But it was right where the fight had occurred.

  “You probably shouldn’t have picked it up. You might have obliterated fingerprints,” Vic pointed out.

  Erin looked at the button pinched between her fingers. Of course Vic was right. She should have left it where she found it, or picked it up with gloves and put it into a plastic evidence bag. She had contaminated evidence, something that with all of her experience with crime scenes she knew better than to do. Her heart sank.

  “But no one else is going to be looking for evidence. The captain doesn’t even believe that the fight happened. He thinks that I just made it up, or that if it happened, it wasn’t important. I don’t understand how that could be. They were fighting about something. Something going on in this ship that was important enough that one of them dumped the other overboard to keep anyone from finding out about it.”

  Vic stared at her. “What?”

  “They were talking about some kind of scheme. Something that the victim said he didn’t want to do. He had been involved in it up to that point, but they had asked him to do something he didn’t want to do.”

  Erin stood there, staring at the button, trying to remember the details. It had all happened so quickly. She hadn’t been able to hear clearly, or to see their faces or who was talking. But there had been… some kind of conspiracy going on… something that the smaller man didn’t want to be involved in.

  “What kind of thing? Like burglarizing cabins? Stealing from passengers?”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Erin agreed. “I don’t know for sure what it was. They weren’t fighting over a girl or a bet or something. They were arguing about business. Money. And the bigger man, he said something about his boss. So it’s something with an organized hierarchy, not just something the two of them were in on.”

  “Did you tell all this to Terry? And why didn’t you bring it up to the captain?”

  “Because…. I don’t know who the boss is. What if it is the captain? He’s everyone’s boss, isn’t he? He could be in charge of this. Whatever it is.”

  “I suppose,” Vic said slowly. “He could be in charge of something criminal. It’s not like he wanted to investigate what had happened.”

  “Maybe because he already knew. Maybe that’s why it didn’t come as any surprise to him.”

  Vic nodded and scratched her ear. “So what do you think it was? It could be theft. Or rigging something illegally in the casino. Or… I don’t know, something like smuggling. They are crossing international borders, and I don’t know how thoroughly a ship like this is searched when it goes from the US to Canada and back to the US again. They could be smuggling drugs or… some endangered species… I don’t know.”

  “Maybe wild ginseng,” Erin said, allowing for a moment of lightheartedness. They had learned recently just how expensive and how much in demand wild ginseng was. It would be easy to smuggle through the kitchens, mixed in with other root vegetables or herbs and spices. It didn’t look that much different from parsnips or ginger.

  Vic smiled briefly and shook her head. “I highly doubt if it’s wild ginseng! But it could be drugs.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you remember exactly what they said? Did it sound like they were talking about drugs?”

  “I don’t know… I couldn’t hear everything clearly, and I was already panicking… It’s all muddled. I was sick and then I took a sleeping pill. I just don’t know. I can’t think of anything they said that might have excluded drugs… or anything else. They both knew what they were talking about, and they didn’t take the time to explain it in general terms.”

  “That makes sense. I wouldn’t talk about it openly if I was involved in something. Even if I didn’t think there was anyone around to hear.”

  “So, what do we do with the button?” Erin held it in the palm of her hand, looking at it.

  “I don’t know. Ask Terry, I guess. He’ll be able to tell you whether you can do anything to force an investigation. We must be able to call the police and get them involved. We’re in Juneau, that’s the state capital, so there’s probably state police here.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  T

  hey were in the main restaurant when the tour group got back from the hatchery. When she saw people from the tour starting to return to the ship, Erin texted Terry to let him know where they were. The text failed several times before it said it was delivered, leaving Erin with doubts about whether he actually got it or not. They watched the door and waved when Terry and Willie arrived. The men were looking flushed and relaxed, ready for a substantial meal. Terry looked Vic and Erin over as he sat down.

  “So… are you feeling any better?” he asked Erin.

  He didn’t say that she wasn’t looking much better, but it was implied. Erin shrugged her
shoulders. She placed the gold button on the table in front of Terry’s plate with a soft click. He looked down at it.

  “What’s this?”

  Erin didn’t say ‘it’s a button,’ which wouldn’t have been at all helpful. She let him look at it for a minute before he looked back at her face, waiting for an answer.

  “I found that on the deck. Where the two men had the fight last night.”

  Terry looked at Erin, then over at Vic. Vic nodded her head, indicating that she’d been read in on the situation and that she’d been there when Erin found the button. Willie was the only one who was left out, not knowing what Erin claimed to have seen the previous night.

  “Let’s order drinks,” Terry suggested.

  None of them were heavy drinkers, but it seemed like an appropriate time to have something with their meal. Erin was exhausted from all of the mental conflict, so she didn’t object. The kitchen was carrying a variety of vegan wines and beers, so they placed their orders. Willie’s eyes were on the button. He waited for them to tell him what was going on.

  “Erin had a restless night,” Terry said slowly. “She’s been having a lot of nightmares and the night before, she was even sleepwalking. So that’s really not anything new. What is new, however, is the fact that she says she saw two crewmen fighting last night, and that one of them threw the other into the drink.”

  Willie looked from one face to the other. “And you’re just getting around to telling me this now? What, we were just going to see if it went away?”

  Terry pressed his lips together, saying nothing.

  Erin spoke up. “He doesn’t believe me. That’s why. He thinks I imagined it.”

  “But we found the button,” Vic pointed out. “So it obviously wasn’t just a dream.”

  “That button could have been lost there by any crewman at any time. There’s no way to tell whose button it is.”