“Yeah. I’ll do my best. If something really did happen here, he’s going to want to know about it. Especially if there is some sort of criminal activity that could reflect back on him or the company. He’s going to want to know about that.”
“You don’t think he’s involved, do you? What if he was part of all of this? What if he is the boss?”
“Do you think he is?”
“No… I just worry. Some people are really good at hiding who and what they are.” Erin let the words hang in the air. He knew who she was thinking of. He knew all of what had happened since she had moved to Bald Eagle Falls, and how people had fooled both of them, keeping their secrets hidden until they were forced to show their hands. Erin had been the target of unexpected violence more than once. People she had trusted and been friends with until suddenly the whole world had flipped upside-down.
“But you don’t think he was involved. From what the men said during their argument? From anything the captain said to you? You don’t think he had anything to do with it?”
“No. I’m just worried. I don’t want to be a suspicious person, but I can’t help worrying now whenever I like someone that they might actually be the bad guy. I hate that…”
“It’s hard to realize that you can’t trust everyone.”
“I never thought I was a particularly trusting person to begin with,” Erin confided, staring out at the darkening sky. “Growing up the way I did, I learned you can’t trust people to take care of you or to do the things they said they would. I knew that people put on a false front and pretended to be one thing to the social workers when they were something else behind closed doors. But not trusting authority figures is different than not being able to trust anyone, not even the ones closest to you.” She turned to look at Terry, staring into the bottomless depths of his dark eyes. Was that how he felt when he looked at her? That even though he loved her, he couldn’t trust her?
“It will be okay, Erin. We’ll sort it out,” he said softly.
“I don’t know. Like you said, there are thousands of people on board the ship. How do we figure out who it was? How do we know who on the crew can be trusted and who can’t?”
“I don’t want you to be off on your own,” Terry said, not answering her question. “I want to know where you are and that you always have someone with you.”
He didn’t say the rest of it. That if someone on the crew found out what she had seen, she wouldn’t be safe. There was nowhere on the ship that she could go without being followed. She couldn’t go home and lock the door and arm the burglar alarm. She was vulnerable to whoever was involved in the plot.
Erin stayed with Vic and Willie in their room while Terry went to talk to the captain about his findings. He hoped to catch the captain before the usual formal dinner time, when the captain might be drinking or consider himself off duty. He wanted to get him to consider the circumstances as early as possible, because the longer it was before an investigation was started, the less they were going to be able to discover.
“You want to play cards? Watch TV?” Vic asked. “We’re on vacation. What would you really like to do? We can go out if you want to.”
“I don’t think Terry wanted me to. He wants me to stay here with you.”
“But you’ll be fine if the three of us are together. Nothing is going to happen to all three of us. And out there, where there are a lot of people, that’s actually safer than being out of sight in our cabin. If something happened to us here, no one would know it. If we’re out there where people can see us, no one will dare do anything to us.”
Erin was sure Vic was correct, but she didn’t want to be out in public where the crew could see her. What if the killer had seen her the night before? What if he had caught a glimpse of her and was just biding his time until he could take care of her?
Maybe he had seen her sometime that night but not put it together that she had seen and overheard them. But now she’d talked to the captain and Terry was going to talk to the captain. They were going to do whatever they could to find out who had been killed and who the killer had been. If they did that, the killer would know. He would know he’d been seen, and by whom. If he hadn’t already heard rumors of what she had reported to the captain, he would soon.
“What do you want to do?” Vic asked softly. “Do you want a nap? You’ve been going all day now. I know you’re worried about waking up in the middle of the night, but I think you’re safe now. Your body needs the rest.”
“No, not yet. Thanks. I’ll go to sleep later, after Terry gets back.” After she had heard from him. After she knew what the captain had said and whether there was going to be any investigation. “I’ll just… I want to think things through.”
Willie was sitting at the writing desk. He looked up from his computer. “You have some thoughts on what might have happened?”
“No… I know what happened. I just don’t know who or why. Except that the victim was supposed to do something, and he didn’t want to.”
“An attack of conscience. And that made him too dangerous to the killer, or too dangerous to the entire enterprise. So much so that he had to be disposed of immediately. There wasn’t any more attempt to convince him. He wasn’t going to leave it to later and see if he could convince him. It was now or never.”
Erin nodded. “I wish I knew what it was they were involved in.” She looked around for something to write on. Vic caught her look and frowned.
“What are you looking for?”
“I thought there might be… a notepad…”
Vic grinned. “Oh, it’s time for a list, is it?” she teased. “Willie, is there some paper in that drawer?”
Willie started opening and closing the drawers of the desk. He handed Erin a scratch pad with the Carolina’s logo on it, and a stick pen similarly branded. “I don’t know what kind of quality those are.”
“They’ll do.” Erin took the writing implements and sat down on the bed, letting her breath out.
“You really should just write your lists on your phone,” Vic pointed out, not for the first time. Erin knew it was pretty old-school to do all of her thinking and lists in longhand, but she just didn’t think the same way when putting notes on the phone. And she couldn’t help thinking that she was going to lose them if she left them in some electronic cloud.
She knew how the technology worked, and that her lists were probably safer stored on some big corporation’s server than on a crinkled-up note in her pocket or purse, but she had an irrational fear that she would lose them. She had to be able to put her hands on them physically. That was the only way they brought her comfort. It just wasn’t the same writing electronic notes. She couldn’t hold them in her hands.
“I’ll just jot a few things down here,” she told Vic, not arguing the point. Vic already knew all of the arguments. She just liked to tease.
“You want to know what kind of crimes could be going on on the ship?” Willie asked, staring up at the ceiling as he thought about it. “I don’t know a lot about the statistics, but I would say you’re going to have similar crimes to what you would have living in a small town like Bald Eagle Falls. You’re going to have drug smuggling and using. People come someplace like this, they want to party, and alcohol isn’t going to do it for someone used to more. There must be drug suppliers on board, likely in the crew.”
“Why in the crew?”
“Because they’re the ones who know the ins and outs of getting things on board. And because they’re on every cruise.”
Erin wrote drugs down at the head of her list.
“You don’t think that was it?” Willie asked, trying to read Erin’s expression and body language.
“No… but no reason. It just doesn’t resonate. The victim was involved in drug smuggling or dealing, and then they asked him to do something that was beyond what he was willing to do… like what? He was already smuggling or dealing drugs. What would they ask him to do that would be worse than that?”
&nbs
p; “No idea,” Willie admitted. “What else? Theft. I imagine there is a lot of theft that goes on on a ship like this. People have money. They bring cash or traveler’s checks. Jewelry. Electronics. They have a false sense of security when they lock something in their cabin or in the room safe.”
“Anyone on the crew could get into the cabin,” Vic agreed with a nod.
“But wouldn’t the captain know something was going on if there were a lot of reports of thefts?” Erin asked.
“I would imagine there are thefts on every ship. And also people losing things and saying they were stolen. And people saying something was stolen in order to claim it on their insurance. They would be used to a certain level of theft. And as long as the criminals didn’t do anything too bold and raise people’s suspicions, they could stay below the radar.”
Erin wrote it down on her list. It made sense, just like drug smuggling and dealing. But it still didn’t strike her as the type of thing that would have produced such a violent response when the thin man had decided to back out. They would just be able to hold his past involvement over his head. If you talk, we’ll turn you in. We have proof you stole this or that. They wouldn’t throw him overboard.
Chapter Seventeen
T
here was a soft knock on the door of the cabin. Erin turned and looked at it, her heart squeezed in her chest. Vic and Willie looked at each other, but neither of them was expecting company. Terry would have just entered. Even if he knocked first to be polite, he would then let himself in if it were unlocked so that they wouldn’t have to get up to get the door.
Vic eventually got up and went to the door. She opened it a crack and looked out at the caller. Then she opened the door wider and Erin saw it was Carisa Shepherd.
“Did you find anything out?” Vic asked immediately. “Did you find her?”
“We found her…” Carisa looked far more worried than someone who had just found her lost child had any right to. “but… things are not right.”
“Not right,” Vic repeated.
“She’s in the infirmary, under the doctor’s supervision. I didn’t know where to go. There’s no point in talking to the captain or anyone on the crew. Everybody thinks that I’m just overreacting… You’re the only one who really took me seriously and offered to help. I don’t really know even what to ask for… I just need someone to talk to.”
Vic motioned her into the room. “Come in. Tell me about it.”
The woman entered the cabin. She looked at Erin and nodded. Her eyes went over to Willie, widening.
Willie always had been a rough-looking character. At least for as long as Erin had known him. His mining and processing of metals meant that his skin was stained dark. Not like a tan, but he looked like he was dirty. Like he hadn’t washed in weeks. Erin happened to know that he was very exacting about his hygiene, but a stranger couldn’t tell that. He looked filthy and imposing instead of reflecting the kind of man he really was. He was infinitely gentle and loving toward Vic and a good friend to Erin. He was always willing to lend a helping hand. He’d been involved in rescuing Erin more than once when she got herself into a tight situation.
He had a cast on his leg that matched the one on Vic’s arm, something that demanded explanation.
“This is Willie,” Erin said. “Don’t mind the way he looks. He’s a pussycat. He’s really helpful. He’s been involved in search and rescue, so he might have some input on your daughter and… whatever it is you’re worried about.”
The woman didn’t know how to take that. She didn’t know whether to believe Erin or her own eyes. She sat down on the end of the bed and looked at the three of them, the worry and anxiety clear on her face.
“My daughter… Mackay. We found her. But there’s something wrong with her. They said that maybe she was drinking too much or taking drugs with the other teenagers. But I know she wasn’t with them. If she was with them, I would have found her when I was looking for her, because that’s who I went to. They didn’t know where she was.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Erin prompted.
“She can’t tell me what happened to her last night. She doesn’t remember. She doesn’t remember anything after I left her with a group of them at the teen library last night.”
“Nothing at all?” Erin found it hard to believe.
“No, nothing. I keep telling her things, that it’s been almost twenty-four hours since I saw her last and she doesn’t even believe me. She just keeps staring at me and repeating things, saying that she’s tired and wants to go to bed now.”
“Maybe she just needs to sleep it off,” Vic said. “If she did have alcohol or some drug, then she’ll be fine after it wears off.”
Carisa looked at them, shaking her head. “Something is really wrong. I think… I don’t think she was doing ecstasy or some recreational drug with those other teens. I think… someone drugged her. Some kind of… date rape drug.”
“Was she… assaulted?” Vic asked delicately.
“The doctor won’t perform any kind of examination. He said that there are a lot of false reports of sexual assault on ships like this, because people’s inhibitions are lowered and then they have regrets afterward. They do things that they wouldn’t do if they were at home, so they feel bad and make up stories about how it wasn’t consensual.”
Erin’s heart thumped and her blood boiled. Trust a man to fly that flag. It wasn’t really assault; she just changed her mind afterward. How many men had said the same in the past?
“What does your daughter say? Does she say she was assaulted? Does she want them to do a rape kit?”
“She’s barely speaking,” Carisa said. “She won’t answer questions and she certainly doesn’t know what it is she wants. She’s all muddled and just wants to go to sleep. I want to know what happened to her. I want them to do whatever they have to do to find out who did this to her. What if we hadn’t found her? What else might have happened to her?”
“Where did you find her?” Vic asked, frowning in puzzlement.
“Somebody, one of the crew members, he said he found her sleeping in a storage room downstairs. Belowdecks. How would she get down there without anyone seeing her? They wouldn’t let a teenager wander around down there. Somebody must have taken her down there.”
Erin looked down at the list she had started on the notepad. That was one thing they hadn’t discussed, but it had to be a problem on a cruise ship. Not just with teenagers, but with mature adults as well. The doctor had a pretty glib answer; things like that happened all the time. People drank too much, had too much fun, decided to do things that they would later regret. A casual hook-up led to regrets.
Erin wrote “sexual assault” on her list. Not a crime ring, maybe, but there could be a lot of that going on on a ship like that. Something that the crew would want covered up. Something the captain wouldn’t want to investigate. They wanted people to be happy. They didn’t want the cruise getting a bad reputation. They wanted people to talk about how much fun they’d had on a tour, not about how they were assaulted.
But that hadn’t been what the conversation between the two crewmen had sounded like. It wasn’t one of them trying to cover up a chance encounter with a passenger. While that might have been something that went on on a big ship, that wasn’t a crime ring. That wasn’t what the argument had been about.
“She’s in the infirmary now?” Vic asked. “Is she sleeping?”
“Yes. I wouldn’t have left her otherwise. The doctor wanted to give her a sedative, but I wouldn’t let them. If she’s been given something, she needs to get it out of her system, not to have something else added to the mix. I don’t want her drugged. I want her to be able to wake up clear-headed. I want her to get it out of her system so she can tell me what happened.”
“She still might not be able to remember,” Erin told Carisa. She wished she hadn’t taken a sleeping pill the night of the murder. While she had told Vic and Terry everything she could about what she had seen
and heard, parts of it were still hazy or confusing.
“Maybe not… but she’s certainly not going to remember it if we keep adding more drugs to the mix. I’m not going to be involved in doping her up until she doesn’t know whether she is coming or going.”
Erin was grateful for a mother who cared enough about her daughter to make sure that the doctors did the right thing. Too many women would just have accepted what the doctor said, continuing to give Mackay drugs until it was buried so deeply she wouldn’t be able to deal with it for many years.
“Have you talked to the captain about it?”
“I couldn’t get in to see him. I’m trying… but they said I’ll probably have to wait until tomorrow. There’s someone in with him right now, and then he’s got dinner, and then he goes to bed. If I want to talk to him and not one of the others, I have to wait until tomorrow.”
Erin felt guilty, knowing that the person in with the captain was very likely Terry, and he was pressing Erin’s case, trying to get the captain to open some kind of investigation into the crewman who had gone overboard. But at least Mackay had been found. She was safe. They couldn’t say the same of the dead crewman.
He was gone, his body was gone, and his family would never hear from him again. It would take time before they even knew he was missing, and then they would waste time trying to find him and figure out what had happened to him. But they would never see him again. Maybe his body would wash ashore somewhere, but it would be unrecognizable or chewed on by a shark. By the time an investigation was started by someone in the USA, it would be far too late to find anything out.
Chapter Eighteen
I
t was late when Terry returned to Vic’s and Willie’s room. He looked tired and drawn.
“Did you have any luck?” Vic asked.
Erin waited for his answer, not wanting to sound too eager. He was doing the best he could and, from the looks of him, hadn’t had much success.
“He agreed to open an investigation,” Terry said.
Vegan Baked Alaska (Auntie Clem's Bakery Book 9) Page 10