Terry agreed. “Five minutes. Then be back here. I want us all to stay together, if we can. Maybe you should bring your luggage in here, and we’ll plan on you sleeping on the pull-out for the rest of the trip.”
Vic made a face. “I don’t think I can sleep on that thing every night. If we don’t get good quality sleep, none of us are going to be good for anything.”
Terry’s lips pressed together. He shook his head in frustration. “If we just knew who was behind all of this… we could get them arrested and feel safe for the rest of the trip.”
“Depends how many of them are involved in it,” Erin pointed out. “I don’t think this is just one man. I don’t think the man who attacked me last night was the same man who threw that other man overboard.”
“You don’t?” he stopped and looked at her. “Why not?”
Erin tried to think through the impressions she’d had of him. “I don’t think he was the same build… but I didn’t see him in the light, so I can’t be sure. And the man on the deck didn’t smell like cigarettes.”
“He was outside, and you were inside. You wouldn’t have been able to smell him.”
“I probably could have. And he came inside. We were standing just a few feet apart, and I didn’t smell any cigarette smoke.”
“Okay. So there are at least two involved in whatever scheme they’ve got going on. Plus the man who went overboard. How many more do you think could be involved without everyone finding out about it? The captain apparently didn’t know about what was going on, or he wouldn’t have been killed when he started the investigation.”
Vic made a motion toward their cabin. “Going to get changed. We can talk about the rest later.”
She and Willie went back down the corridor. Erin sighed. She sat on the bed watching Terry get ready.
“Did you find anything else out last night? About the captain and what happened to him?”
Terry frowned as he dressed. “I shouldn’t really talk about an open investigation…”
“What open investigation? There isn’t really any investigation, is there? It’s just you.”
“That’s true… but I still feel…”
“Someone else should know what you’re thinking. Don’t you always have someone to report to when you’re investigating in Bald Eagle Falls? You don’t just act on your own.”
“There’s no one else to report to here. They have their security staff, but I’m not confident that they’re not involved in some way.”
“So tell me. Then at least two people will know what’s going on.”
He finished buttoning up his shirt and let K9 out of his kennel. “There’s not very much to tell, unfortunately. I don’t have a lab and there’s only so much I can to do investigate.”
“He died while he was eating his dinner?”
Terry pursed his lips and looked at her for a minute. “Where did you hear that?”
“I didn’t hear it. If you think it might have been an allergy or might have been poisoning, then he must have been eating, or just finished eating.”
“Oh.” His face flushed a little. “I guess that was a bit obvious. Yes, he was in the middle of eating his dinner.”
“Do you know what allergies he had? Peanut? Anything else?”
“That’s all that the doctor knew about. I assume if there was something else, he would have told the doctor.”
“It could have been something unusual that he didn’t think he’d be exposed to on the cruise. Or it was something new. Sometimes people develop new allergies quite suddenly.”
“So he could have died from an allergy he didn’t know he had?”
“Could have,” Erin agreed. She scratched K9’s ears. “Did it look like allergies? Or poisoning?”
“I couldn’t tell the difference. The doctor figured it was an allergy attack, but there really wasn’t anything that would tell me one way or another… spittle around the mouth. Scratches on his arms. The doctor said his throat was swollen. None of that proves one theory or the other.”
“If they have a morgue on board, does that mean they can do an autopsy? To figure it out?”
“I don’t think it’s much more than cold storage. And the doctor isn’t a specialist. I don’t think he’s qualified to do a proper autopsy.”
Erin snapped her fingers for K9. He went over to nuzzle her hand and get ear scratches.
“It would figure that this would happen on a day when we’re not close to a settlement,” Terry said. “All there is here is a nature preserve, but no police force, even if we could get the crew to let them board. And tomorrow we are not scheduled to be ashore at all.”
“After that, we’re in Anchorage.”
“Three days after the captain’s death.” Terry sighed. “All kinds of evidence could be destroyed by then.”
“What evidence have you gathered?”
“What I’ve gathered is safe for the time being. Fingernail clippings, swabs of his mouth. I kept them with me so that no one can lose them. But in the meantime… we put the food into the freezer to preserve it. And there’s the captain’s body, his clothes, whatever trace evidence might have been left on him. I didn’t have any way to prevent contamination of the scene, any of us might have left fibers or hairs or skin cells behind.”
“And none of that is going to matter if no one comes to investigate it.”
“Exactly.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
T
hey all tried to behave normally and pretend that nothing had happened. They didn’t want to reveal to the rest of the passengers that they had concerns about what had happened to the captain or that somebody had previously been killed on board. A full-fledged panic wouldn’t help.
Erin stood at the railing, watching the water for any sign of whales or sharks, and the glacier for any other animal life. The brochure had brilliant pictures of seals, bears, birds, and other wildlife that could be found on the glacier but, so far, she hadn’t seen much more than screeching gulls and an occasional eagle floating lazily above them.
Terry looked through the binoculars, scanning along the shore. She hadn’t thought that he’d be able to relax and forget about the captain and the investigation, but he did seem to be enjoying himself. He handed her the binoculars and pointed to a spot where Erin could see the black smudges of some sea birds.
“Over there.”
Erin looked through the binoculars and took a minute to zero in on the location he had pointed to and focus properly. As the stout little birds came into view, Erin laughed.
“Puffins!”
“You said you were hoping to see some.”
“I love them! They’re just so cute!” Erin watched them. They weren’t doing anything, just standing around looking adorable. Before she won tickets for the tour, it had never occurred to her that she’d someday actually be able to see puffins in person. Maybe if she were lucky, she could see them in some marine aquarium or zoo. But she’d never expected to be floating just off the shores of Alaska, watching puffins in their natural habitat.
Erin lowered her binoculars to make sure that Vic had seen the puffins too. Vic lowered her binoculars at the same time, and they laughed at each other.
“I saw!” Vic confirmed. “So cute!”
“Don’t you just wish you could take a couple of them home with you?”
Terry shook his head. “You girls. What would you do with puffins? Don’t you already have enough animals?”
“I doubt if Orange Blossom would think much of puffins,” Vic agreed. “Other than maybe for dinner. We’d have to keep them at my place instead.”
“I want them at mine!”
“Neither of you is going to go home with puffins,” Willie said sternly. But he was smiling too. They had all been so stressed with the violent happenings on board the ship that they were a little giddy.
Erin put the binoculars back up to her eyes and scanned for any other signs of wildlife. That was what she had gone on the cruise fo
r in the first place. To see Alaska and all of its open spaces and untouched wilds. It was totally different from anything she had ever seen before.
She had come for the wildlife but had not been prepared for what life could really be like on a cruise ship.
She was both relieved and anxious when they reached the dock and were allowed to go ashore. There was, as Terry had said, no settlement, only the small visitor center and other buildings required to operate the nature preserve. There wasn’t enough room in the visitor center to manage everyone in the tour at once, so they disembarked in smaller groups, each waiting for the group before them to receive their orientation and nature talk at the center and then go for a walk through the preserve.
Terry didn’t pull rank and tell them that he had to go ashore first because he needed to use the phone. He instead waited patiently with the rest of the group, not giving away that he was interested in anything other than seeing the wildlife like everyone else. He used the binoculars, searching the water for whales. Erin looked away, and when she looked back at him she saw that he had switched his view and was focused instead inside the ship, scanning over the faces of the passengers as they stood visiting and the staff as they supervised, coming and going on various errands. She didn’t say anything to him, wondering if he were able to pick anything up by looking at their faces. Would the killer or killers give themselves away in an unguarded moment, dropping the masks that they put on for the passengers and showing their true natures?
Erin looked over the faces of the crew members she could see. She didn’t have the binoculars to examine them for smaller details. She couldn’t see much more than whether people were smiling or frowning. One crew member stood out to her, scowling rather than smiling helpfully.
It was Saville, the man who had harassed Vic when she had first boarded the ship. Following his angry gaze, she saw that he was focused on Vic once again. Vic was visiting with some of the friends she had made, with the brightly colored hair, piercings, tattoos, and other signs of their non-compliance with society’s norms. As if they needed to declare that they were individuals.
Erin drifted toward Vic. She wanted to be with her friend, wanted to protect her from the crewman’s wrathful stare, but she didn’t really want to be with the new friends Vic had made. There wasn’t really a place for Erin in the group.
Willie saw her look and joined her. “Hey. Excited to go ashore and see what other animals are out and about?”
“Yeah.” Erin watched Vic. “That will be cool, won’t it?”
“I hate that I feel so jealous and protective of her,” Willie said. “I don’t want to be that way. But every time I see her with that crowd, I feel like… I’m losing her.”
“You’re not losing her. You are her boyfriend. She’s just enjoying having people to talk to who understand her perspective. When the cruise is over, everyone will be going their different directions. Maybe she can keep in touch with them by email or social media, but they don’t live in Bald Eagle Falls. They don’t even live in Tennessee.”
“I know that. But cruise ships are notorious for hookups. I don’t want to smother her, but I don’t want her… wandering, either. We are supposed to be exclusive, but I don’t know; in a place like this…”
“Vic’s not going to be unfaithful to you,” Erin assured him. But she understood his concern. Vic was young, just figuring out who she was, and was suddenly surrounded by people who could relate to the struggles she had been going through. Willie was an older man, comfortable in his life, ready to settle down with a long-term partner. Erin couldn’t see Vic being unfaithful to him, but people sometimes did things that they regretted later, especially when under stress and in new environments. Vic could be tempted as easily as anyone by the siren call of exciting new prospects.
Erin looked at Vic again. She was smiling and enjoying talking with her LGBT friends, but that didn’t mean she would ever consider being anything more than friends with them.
“I hope not,” Willie said quietly.
Erin looked back for the scowling crewman, but he was no longer anywhere to be seen.
Erin was excited when their group was finally invited to go ashore to explore the sanctuary. She could almost forget that one of the reasons they wanted to go ashore was to make contact with the real world back in Tennessee to try to get help or at least guidance on what to do in the situation they were stuck in. She wanted to see the animals on the preserve or, if she couldn’t see them in person, to at least look at the pictures and artifacts that they had at the visitor center.
She saw Terry separate from the group and approach one of the staff to see if he could get access to a phone, but tried not to watch him. If she did, then other people would notice what was going on, and they wanted to keep things below the radar. Erin tried to keep her attention on the talks that were being presented. Endangered species, shrinking natural environment, the ivory trade.
Erin perked up. One of the things that they had speculated about was whether the crew might be participating in smuggling something from or to Alaska. Drugs were an obvious possibility, and they had talked about endangered species, plant or animal. Ivory was something that Erin hadn’t thought about. She listened carefully to what the docent was telling them about ivory. While hunting elephants for ivory was against the law and elephant ivory could not be legally traded, there were other sources of ivory in Alaska that were legitimate. Walrus tusks and ivory from ancient mammoths that had once roamed the area were both legal for the native peoples to harvest, carve, and sell.
But it was not legal for just anyone, so that meant there was a black market, and that ivory smuggling did go on. Ivory smuggling was something that someone on the crew could be involved in. They could go ashore and bring back ivory without anyone noticing, especially if they were small pieces. Limited supply meant that the price of ivory was high and would continue to rise.
Could that have been what the two men had been arguing about? Could that be what the captain was killed over? Erin’s excitement died down as she thought about it. Would the big man really have killed his companion just because he said he didn’t want to smuggle ivory? It wasn’t like he was being asked to go out and kill walruses himself. If he had agreed to be involved, then what could he have been asked to do that would have violated his moral standards and made him back out?
Ivory didn’t fit. Not unless the ivory trade was a lot more bloody than she expected.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
E
rin stayed with Willie and Vic, even though she wanted to stay back and wait for Terry to finish his inquiries. She couldn’t hang around the visitor center as people continued to walk through, not knowing what direction danger might come from. Not many of crew had elected to go ashore with the passengers, but there were a few of them, and Erin didn’t have any way to tell which of them might be involved in the plot.
“We’ll just take the short loop around the preserve,” Willie advised. “By the time we get back, Terry should be done, and we can go back to the ship.”
“Are we going to go back to the ship?” Vic asked. “Maybe we should just get off here.”
“There’s nowhere to go from here. You need a boat to get anywhere. We may as well stay with the transportation that we have, rather than trying to find another way out. We’re best off waiting for Anchorage.”
“Unless Terry says we should get off here.”
“Yes. Unless Terry says we get off here.”
Erin let out her breath. “Let’s walk, then. Maybe we’ll see something cool.”
They trailed the rest of their tour group, trying to act natural.
When they rejoined Terry, he was stone-faced and didn’t say anything to them about his calls. Erin gathered that they had not gone well. He merged in with the group but didn’t make any effort to join in the happy chatter of the group. Erin walked with him in silence. After a few minutes, she took his hand. He looked at her, but didn’t say anything.
“We’re going back to the ship?” Erin asked, as they walked by the visitor center back toward the boat. Terry sighed and nodded.
“We’d better stick with it at least until Anchorage. Once we’re there, I’ll see if I can convince the first mate to call in the authorities. But I don’t have high hopes. My friends have pretty much repeated what we’ve already been told. I have no jurisdiction. Nobody in the US does unless the cruise line authorities or crew involve them.”
“It must be frustrating to be told to stay out of it.” Erin meant it sincerely, but she saw by his look that he thought she was needling him. All of the times he had told her to stay out of an investigation…
“Do you have suspects?” she asked quickly. “You know, in the last thing.” She didn’t want to specifically mention the captain’s death in anyone else’s hearing.
“I’ve asked for the surveillance tapes of areas around the cabin and a log of what they know about what he was doing and who saw him the last few hours. I can’t really eliminate anyone until I have those things. Though there are obvious suspects. The person who prepared his meal and whoever brought it to him would be at the top of the list.”
Erin thought about Chef Kirschoff and felt sick. There were other cooks on the ship. A lot of other cooks and kitchen staff. The food could have been tampered with at any point along the line; that didn’t mean it was her new friend.
She wondered fleetingly whether he could just have befriended her because he wanted to keep track of where she was and what she was doing, and maybe to have a window into the investigation. He hadn’t asked her anything about the investigation or the waves she had been making, and he hadn’t asked if her boyfriend was the one who was looking into the terrible accident that the captain had suffered.
But he had known where Erin was for the evening and knew when Terry had picked her up and returned her to her cabin.
There was no evidence that he’d had anything at all to do with the accident.
Vegan Baked Alaska (Auntie Clem's Bakery Book 9) Page 17