Chapter Thirty-One
W
illie was standing in the doorway of his cabin, waiting for some word from Erin or Terry. He looked relieved to see Erin and K9.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “What did she say?”
“It’s all pretty confusing,” Erin said. “They won’t explain anything in any detail, but it seems like… the immigrants who work here in cleaning and the kitchen and whatever other jobs they do around the ship, are not being paid very well and their money and food is held over their heads if they don’t do exactly what they are told. The woman was told to clean our cabins and the captain’s cabin. Terry figures because they’re trying to eliminate any evidence of foul play. But if she doesn’t clean our cabins, then she doesn’t get paid and doesn’t get food.” Erin shook her head at Willie, outraged. “How could they withhold food? They can’t keep food and money from these people. They’re afraid that they’re going to starve!”
Willie’s expression was grim. His stone-faced countenance, together with his darkly-stained skin, made him look very threatening.
“So where’s Terry? What’s he doing?”
“He wants to go looking for the housing quarters for the immigrant workers. Find out what’s really going on. He asked me to come get you to help him out. I guess he doesn’t want to go down there on his own.”
“Down there?” Willie repeated.
“Aren’t the staff quarters all belowdecks?” Erin asked. “I thought the upper decks were all for passengers.”
Willie cocked his head, thinking about it. He looked at Vic. Vic nodded vigorously. “I studied all of the deck charts. Other than the captain and officers, the staff are all below deck. That means you’re going to need someone with authority, because they don’t just let the passengers wander around down there.”
“Mackay was down there,” Erin remembered.
Vic and Willie looked baffled at this remark.
“Who?”
“The girl who disappeared. The one whose mother was waiting to talk to the captain. Remember? She came and talked to us after they found her daughter, and she thought Mackay had been drugged and assaulted. She was found belowdecks. So the public must have some access to the area, or the security isn’t very good.”
“We’ll give it a try,” Willie said with a shrug. “Maybe Terry will be able to talk himself in with his police credentials.”
“I’ll take you to them.”
Willie looked at Vic. “We can’t leave Vicky here by herself. You’d better join us as well.”
Vic rolled her eyes. “As if you were ever going to be able to keep me away!”
Willie chuckled and reached out a hand for her. Vic joined hands with him, and they followed Erin and K9 back to where she had separated from Terry. Erin looked around. “He was just here.”
They all scanned the deck. It was pretty quiet, but there was no sign of Terry or the old woman and the man. “Well… he must have seen or heard something… he wouldn’t have just left when he knew that we were coming back to help him out. Would he?”
“I don’t like this,” Willie muttered. “He shouldn’t have stayed up here alone. He should have come back down with you.”
“Uh-huh,” Vic drawled. “But he’s a man, and men aren’t weak and vulnerable like us poor womenfolk. They can fight off hordes of homicidal crew members with their bare hands.”
Erin saw at once how silly it had been to leave Terry alone where he was, despite the fact that he was a grown man, well-trained in control and combat. “I didn’t even think… he said to run and get you, and to take K9 with me, so I did. I never thought…”
“Of course not,” Willie agreed. “He is perfectly safe by himself in Bald Eagle Falls working by himself, for the most part, so it wouldn’t occur to you to worry about his safety. He’s the protector.”
“What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to go belowdecks.”
“Really?”
Willie nodded. “That’s what Terry was going to do, so that’s what I’m doing to do. They can’t stop all of us.” Even so, he looked around anxiously, as if trying to spot anyone who might be watching them. He wasn’t nearly as confident as he pretended to be. “Stick close.”
They moved in a huddle, practically on top of each other, to the nearest elevator. When Willie pressed the first of the belowdecks floors, there was no responding light indicator. Willie pressed it again, then another of the lower floors. But none of those numbers would light up.
“You need a key,” Vic suggested, pointing to the circular keyhole that would take a round security key.
Willie looked at it briefly, then pulled out a pocketknife and fit the tip into the little nick that the round key was supposed to rotate. He wiggled it and manipulated it until he managed to move the notch around the circle from the off position to the on position.
Erin breathed out. “Nice!”
Willie tried the first belowdecks floor again, and this time, it lit up.
“Easy as pie!” Willie proclaimed.
“I never did understand that expression,” Erin mused. “Pie is actually one of the more complicated desserts to make. Harder than cake or cookies. So why isn’t the expression ‘easy as cake’ or ‘easy as fudge’? It doesn’t make any sense to me.”
Willie gave her a look that told Erin she was babbling because of her nervousness and needed to pull herself together. They were going into a risky situation, trying to find out whether people on the ship were being treated as slave labor. Two people had already been killed, possibly for knowing too much about what was going on, and she was chattering on about pie.
“Sorry.”
The elevator doors opened. Willie stood to the side and took a quick peek out to see who was there that might be able to see them. There were no security guards and no one who looked threatening, so he stepped out of the elevator car, followed closely by Erin and Vic. They all looked around. It looked pretty much like the other decks, other than the fact that the rooms would all go right to the hull of the ship rather than leaving a walkway around the outer edge. There was nothing noticeably different.
“I don’t see any sign of Terry. We should probably go down another floor,” he said.
At her side, K9 gave no sign that he could smell his master close by.
Vic and Erin looked at each other and nodded. Erin reached back and caught the elevator door before it could finish closing, and they all got back on. Willie selected the next floor and they went down again. They looked out of the elevator doors again. Still no sign of Terry or anything untoward. Just crew quarters.
“I think we’re going to have to go all the way to the bottom.”
“Won’t that just be storage? With all of the supplies that the ship goes through, there must be a ton of space required for supplies.”
Willie considered this. Then he shrugged. “I still think our best bet is the lowest deck.”
“Okay.”
This time he selected the bottom number on the elevator, and they waited longer as the slow elevator descended into depths of the ship.
This time, when the doors opened, it was different. Erin immediately gagged on the scent of sewage. She wasn’t sure she could even go out of the elevator. She wanted to go back up to one of the other decks, one of the clean, nice-smelling ones. Hopefully with a breeze through the ship to keep it fresh.
“Ugh. Is there a leak in a sewage tank down here?” Vic demanded.
“Smells that way,” Willie agreed. “That, or there is no plumbing down here, because it’s not meant to house people, but just for supply storage, like Erin said.”
Erin held her hand over her mouth and nose, nauseated and hoping she wasn’t going to throw up. Her seasickness was suddenly back full force. Not because of the motion of the ship, but because of the stench and the thought of people living down there, in conditions that were primitive and unsanitary.
“You okay?” Willie asked.
Eri
n nodded. “I’m trying.”
“I don’t want us to separate from each other. Are you going to be able to handle it?”
“I’ll have to be able to, won’t I?”
“I know it’s hard. Breathe through your mouth. Try not to think about it. I still don’t see any sign of Terry.”
“He could be at any of the other decks. We didn’t search the whole ship.”
“No, we’re just going by instinct. If somebody took him somewhere, they’d want him to be out of sight, not where a passenger or non-involved crew member might come across him. And if Terry decided to start the search on his own, we need to think about where he would go first, and I think he would come down here. This is obviously where the immigrant workers are being housed. Maybe he got the maid or her son to talk to him about it and decided to come down here on his own without waiting for me.”
Erin knew that wasn’t what happened, but she appreciated Willie trying to make it easier on her, so she nodded and played along. “Well, we’d better look for him, then.”
“Quietly,” Willie advised, and started moving forward.
They moved together in a tight grouping, eyes alert and bodies tense for action. K9 stuck close to Erin’s side, sniffing at the foul air.
They got past the first couple of storage bays, and then reached the one that had been converted to a living space for the lower-class workers. Erin looked around, panting through her mouth, trying to see everything without being sick.
There were mats on the floor. No mattresses, just bare, flat sleeping mats. Some workers were asleep. Maybe they had worked all night and morning and were only able to sleep in the afternoon. Maybe they were sick or suffering from some other ailment. There were obviously a lot of workers on duty; there were a lot of empty mats. Rows and rows of them. There was a little pile of clothes or blankets on or beside each one. At the opposite end of the room there were some privacy screens set up like you would see in an old doctor’s office. Erin gathered that’s where the improvised toilets were.
Erin moaned. Some of the workers were awake and sat up to look at them, wide-eyed and frightened.
“This is horrible,” Vic whispered. “I can’t believe they’re being treated like this.”
“Worse,” Erin reminded her. “They’re also afraid of starving to death if they don’t do their jobs to the liking of the boss, whoever that is.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
D
oes anyone know where the policeman is?” Erin asked. She looked around at the faces of the few people who were awake and looking at her. “You know about the policeman who was investigating the captain’s death? You heard about him? Do you know where he is?”
The immigrants looked at each other. She didn’t know how many of them understood her and were just afraid to answer. Someone must have heard something about Terry. They knew what was going on around the ship; they were everywhere, like flies on the wall, listening to conversations and seeing things that were going on without being observed. Invisible to everyone because they were so omnipresent and unobtrusive.
But would they know anything about where Terry was? Had he gone off on his own or been taken? She couldn’t believe that he had just left on his own, after telling her how she needed to be careful. He had stressed that they couldn’t be alone and then he had sent her away and left himself vulnerable. She was really angry at him for that. There was a tightness in her chest that was a combination of anxiety and anger. Fury at him for taking chances when he kept telling her not to.
“Has anyone heard?” Erin asked again.
She looked around. No one seemed inclined to talk to her and help her out. A little boy had been sitting on a mat with his mother, who was still asleep, or pretending to be. He crawled to the edge of the mat, then stood up and crept toward Erin. She realized he was looking at K9, his eyes wide and bright with interest.
“Do you like dogs?” she asked him. “He’s a very nice dog. Very good.” She scratched K9’s ears and crooned at him. “You’re a good dog, aren’t you, K9? You’re a good boy.”
The little boy continued to approach. He had his finger in his mouth and moved toward Erin with curiosity and suspicion, watching her every move and staying back. He flinched when she moved or looked at him.
“Dog?” he pointed at K9.
“Yes. You like the dog? Have you seen him before?”
He nodded, but Erin didn’t know if he understood that she meant that dog in particular, or if he meant that he had seen a dog before. How sheltered had he been from the real world? Had he grown up on the ship, isolated from the land and other pets?
“Was there a man with him when you saw him?” Erin asked, watching the little boy’s face carefully for signs of understanding.
The little boy nodded again, his finger still in his mouth.
“Would you like to help me out? We don’t know where the man is. The policeman who owns this dog. We think he might be in trouble. He might be hurt. The bad men might have him locked up somewhere.”
The boy nodded again.
Erin was doubtful. What could the boy do? Whether he understood her or not, how would he know where Terry was or be able to help her to find him? Could he get the grown-ups to help her? They would be too wise, too careful. If the man they had spoken to was of the same mind as the rest of the workers who were being warehoused belowdecks, then they would not want to take the chance of losing their jobs or their food by helping Erin out. Passengers came and went. They had money of their own. The poverty-stricken workers needed the money and food that the cruise line had to offer. They needed that security.
“Maybe I should just let K9 go and tell him to find Terry,” Erin said to Willie. “Do you think? I did that before, and he found Terry and brought him back when Vic was in trouble. Should I just do that?”
“I wouldn’t,” Willie cautioned. “If someone is holding Terry captive, then you may be sending K9 to someone who is armed, and certainly someone who doesn’t have much regard for human life. If he doesn’t care about people, chances are he’s going to care even less about some dog that shows up and makes trouble. If they have Terry locked up somewhere, K9 isn’t going to be able to get in and free him.”
“Maybe he can track him, though, and lead us to him. Then we can decide what to do when we know where Terry is and what the situation is.”
Willie nodded. “Maybe. Let’s not rush into anything. We don’t really know much about what is going on or who is running this operation, but they know who we are. If we get into the middle of things, they have a lot more reason to get rid of us than to give up. We don’t want to get into something that we can’t get back out of.”
“But what are we going to do? We need to find Terry and make sure he’s okay.”
“Let’s do that, then,” Vic said. “Let’s find Terry and make sure he’s okay.” She looked at K9. “He’s helped before. He helped when I was kidnapped. You can’t expect miracles from him, but he’s a pretty smart dog.”
K9 panted, looking from one of them to another, looking pleased with himself.
Erin bent down to talk to him. “We need you to find Terry. But quietly. No barking and no letting anyone see you. Do you think you can do that?”
K9 continued to pant and stare into her face.
Erin rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Do I really think he can understand that much of what I say? He’s a smart dog, but he doesn’t have superpowers.”
“He understands more than you give him credit for,” Vic said. “Let’s get him to search for Terry.”
They each nodded in agreement. The little boy finally screwed up his courage to join them. He crouched down and gave K9 a full-body hug. Erin had to smile. The dog was bigger than the boy. He was maybe three years old. He cuddled with K9 and rubbed his face against his fur, cooing and making noises. Erin didn’t know if any were actual words, or if he was just doing the usual baby talk thing that most people suddenly devolved to when faced with a cute animal.
They suddenly heard a gruff voice down the hall. The little boy froze. His mother, who had previously been asleep or pretending to be asleep, sat up and called him over urgently. He scampered back over to the sleeping mat, into her arms. She buried her face against his hair, hiding from whoever was coming. Erin looked at the others in a panic. They couldn’t go back the way they had come, and there wasn’t any obvious way out of the storage bay they were in. Erin whipped her head around, looking for a way out. Vic grabbed her arm.
“Behind the screens.”
“No,” Erin resisted. There was no way she was going to go back to where it was reeking of human waste. Vic pulled harder. Willie was nodding his agreement. “Come on, we need to get out of sight, quickly. Or they’ll throw us overboard just like that man you saw.” He grabbed Erin’s other arm and, although she resisted, they pulled her toward the back of the room, past all of the sleeping mats and behind the screens where the smell was the worst. Erin protested.
“No, no, let me go. Not in here. I can’t handle it! I’m going to be sick!”
They let her go, and Erin was about to make a run for it when she heard the men come into the storage room.
“Where have they got him?”
“Up in the captain’s room. He wanted to go there so badly, so why not? We figured it would make him happy.”
“And he’ll be taken care of?”
“Of course.”
“Is this the end of the mess? Every time I turn around, things are unraveling. This is the worst-run operation I’ve ever seen!”
“It’s not our fault. It was just pure bad luck that that woman saw anything. Who could predict that someone would have been watching?”
“Well, you might have taken a look around to make sure before throwing someone overboard. It would seem like the logical thing to do.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” the gruff voice growled, and Erin realized it was the same voice as she had heard that night. She peeked through the vertical space between the screens, trying to see him, but she couldn’t. Not from that angle. And she wasn’t going to go out to meet him.
Vegan Baked Alaska (Auntie Clem's Bakery Book 9) Page 19