Cruise Chaos

by A. R. Winters

  “Hi,” I said offering him a smile. He had messed up earlier with his little stunt of flinging Mary Mead into the pool, but I knew just as well as anyone that mistakes happen. I’d made more than a few myself—even ones that ended up with an angry guest in the pool. “You can just call me Adrienne, though. ‘Lady’ is just my character for the mystery.”

  “Oh,” he said, sounding slightly disappointed. He quickly recovered when he remembered why he’d called me over. “I found this!” He waved a sheaf of papers in the air as he walked toward me.

  “You found some paper?” I said as kindly as I could. It looked like he’d found something for the trash can or a recycling bin.

  “Yes, I wanted to give it to Sam, but I couldn’t find her. Do you know where she is?”

  I shook my head even though I did know where she was. “I’m sure she doesn’t need to be bothered with that. Just throw it in the trash can,” I said, pointing to the one right next to him.

  He looked down at it, and then he slowly moved his hand toward the receptacle. Before he could deposit the paper, his hand stopped moving and a worried frown appeared on his face.

  “I thought it might be important? Do you want to see?”

  From where I was standing, it looked like a wet pile of paper.

  “What is it? Why’s it important?”

  Shaun closed the distance between us and pointed his finger at the first page. “It’s the script for the murder mystery. Don’t you need it?”

  I blinked at it. It was the script for the murder mystery. The copies of the script were restricted so as not to spoil the mystery for the guests. It should definitely not have been left lying around.

  “Where did you find it? Was it where the Danes were sitting?” I nodded toward the table in the shade that they had occupied earlier.

  “Oh, no,” said Shaun. “It was over there, underneath one of the sun loungers.” He nodded his head in the direction of his earlier embarrassment.

  Holding the wet script in my hand, I thought about who had been there earlier. Someone had got their hands on the script. That meant that there was now at least one additional person who knew what was supposed to happen in the event. That was one additional person who could have mimicked the scripted murder when killing Felicity Bull.

  I squeezed the paper in my hand, annoyed. I wanted to reduce the number of suspects, not grow the list of possible killers.

  “You don’t know who had it?”

  He shook his head. “Sorry. I wasn’t paying attention to that.”

  “Right,” I said with a shake of my head. “I know what you were paying attention to. Or who, rather.”

  He looked confused for a moment, then his cheeks flushed red.

  “Thanks for this.” I waved the soggy script in the air. “Try not to push anyone else in the pool.”

  “I won’t! It was an accident!” He took my comment as a dismissal and hurried away to continue tidying the sun loungers.

  When I arrived at the Danes’ room, only Harley was there.

  “Hi, Adrienne. Come in, I’ve got the dress in here.”

  I followed her inside the suite, and as with every time I’d gone into one of the VIP suites, I felt a pang of envy. From the marble floors to the spacious living quarters and the fancy decorations and ornaments, it was like being in a different world compared to the cramped cabin I shared below the waterline. Even the air smelled different. Our cabins smelled of metal, paint, and grease, whereas here there was the gentle aroma of potpourri competing with the salty smell of the ocean far below us.

  Harley led me to the dining table in front of the french doors that led to the ocean-view balcony. The black dress was draped over the back of one of the chairs.

  “What’s that you’re holding?” she said, nodding her head to the crumpled and wrinkled stack of papers I was holding.

  “Good question. I wanted to ask you about this, actually. It’s a copy of the script for the murder mystery.”

  Harley leaned over and gently took it out of my hands, peering at it. “Where did you get it?”

  “By the pool. One of the pool boys just handed it to me when I was on my way over here.”

  Harley began to go through the pages, peeling apart the ones that were stuck together with water.

  “This looks like Edward’s personal copy. Look.” Harley held out a page in front of me, on which was scrawled what looked like words. The writing was so small and spidery that the addition of the pool water had made it completely illegible.

  Harley’s eyes had narrowed, and within a second she was glaring at the paper. “That woman must have taken it!”

  “Do you mean Felicity Bull?”

  She nodded sharply as if she couldn’t possibly have meant anyone else. Of course it was Felicity Bull, her nod seemed to say. It was interesting how much she seemed to dislike the deceased woman even though they had only met shortly before her untimely death.

  “But how…”

  “I saw her leaving here last night! I went to play bridge, and when I returned, she was just leaving our cabin.”

  “Oh?” I wanted to know everything. Had Edward invited her? What had she been doing? Was there something illicit going on? But I couldn’t actually ask Harley those questions directly. I needed her to tell me.

  “She was leaving when I came back. Edward told me she was just a fan.”

  I shook my head in sympathy. “But you think she and—”

  “What? Her? Goodness, no!” Harley was staring at me wide-eyed like I’d just accused her of throwing puppies overboard for fun.

  “Sorry, I misunderstood.” I felt hot all of a sudden, and I could tell my cheeks had gone red.

  “She must have pretended to be a fan and then stolen his copy of the script! It’s the only explanation.”

  I nodded, though I wasn’t entirely convinced by her chain of logic. I would play along though, to see where it led us.

  “Right. The only explanation,” I said with a nod.

  “It’s positively disgusting.” Harley had a frown of consternation on her face. “Stealing a script just so that she could win that free cruise? It’s despicable behavior, I tell you. Really, who would do such a thing?”

  “Terrible,” I said sympathetically.

  Of course, I didn’t believe a word of it. Felicity Bull was a corporate spy. It seemed highly unlikely to me that she planned to cheat her way into a free cruise. There was something else going on.

  “Are you sure this is Edward’s copy? I saw the handwriting, but the water had really smudged it. Maybe it was someone else’s?”

  “I’m sure it’s his.” Harley stood up, pushing her chair back behind her. “But let me check. Hold on.”

  The writer’s wife walked to the far wall where a desk had been set up and began to thumb through some of the papers on top of it. Curious, I followed her over there and hovered nearby while she looked at the documents. Harley was going through several different stacks, one by one, shaking her head and muttering to herself as she did so.

  When Harley picked up the last stack, a small square of paper from one of the complimentary Swan notepads that were placed by every telephone fell out from the stack. Caught by the light breeze blowing through the room, it landed back where we had been sitting by the dining table.

  I hurried over and picked up the paper, to return it to Harley. I couldn’t help but glance at it. In ballpoint pen had been written ‘$14,856,’ and next to it was a phone number and the words ‘Chase Manhattan’ with what looked a bank account number next to it.

  I handed it back to her without saying anything, but with a curious look on my face.

  Harley looked at the note.

  “That’s the phone number for Edward’s new agent. I guess he’s getting yet another payment of some kind soon. They come all the time: royalties, foreign sales, movie options, all kinds of things. Maybe it’s for this cruise.”

  They better not be paying him that much! Not that I’m a jealous p
erson, but… really! It was more than Cece, Sam, and I made combined, for a month of cruises. And that was just one week!

  “Wow, he’s very successful.” I hid my bitterness pretty well, I thought.

  “Oh, yes, he’s a very successful writer. The finest in the world, in my opinion. But it’s not about the money—it never is. I find it incredibly shallow when people concern themselves over dollars and cents.” Harley let out a little laugh at the absurdity of people concerning themselves with money. “Would you believe some people even accused me of marrying him for his money?”

  “They didn’t!” Actually, it had been my first thought too when I’d met them. It seemed a lot more common for a rich man to marry a woman more than twenty years his junior than for a poor man to do the same.

  “I know! Of course, what they don’t realize is I’m worth even more than him!” Harley tossed her hair back and laughed. I tried to join in too, but I had to force the laughter out.

  If Harley really was that rich, it would explain why she thought people worrying about money were shallow: she’d never had to deal with it herself. I had to remind myself that the world wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t likely to start being fair anytime soon.

  “Do you mind if I keep this script? I had to lend mine to someone.” I wanted to go through the script and see if there were any more hand-written notes—especially ones that hadn’t been written by Edward Dane.

  “If you like. I’ll print out another one for Edward. That one looks near-ruined. Are you sure you don’t want me to do one for you too?”

  “No, it’s fine. It’ll dry in no time in my cabin. I hate to waste paper!”

  “I agree! I’m somewhat of an environmentalist myself. Last year, I flew to three different conferences about climate change just to keep abreast of it all.”

  “Wow, you’re more dedicated than me!” While I spoke, I was pondering the environmental impact of three airplane flights. Harley may not have been the environmental crusader she fancied herself to be.

  I walked back to the dining table and lifted the black dress off the back of the chair, hanging it over my left arm.

  “Thanks so much again, Harley.”

  “It’s a pleasure. Anything to help.”

  As I left the cabin with the dress for Cece I had my mind focused on one thing only: 727 856, 727 856, 727 856.

  We’d soon see whether it really was the phone number of Edward Dane’s agent.

  Chapter 16

  As soon as I was out of the room, I pulled out my cell phone and typed in the number I had memorized from the scrap of paper. As I put it in, I realized that it was the first number I’d had to memorize since high school.

  I hurried back to the conference suite. I’d been gone longer than I’d anticipated, and Sam was probably wondering where I’d got to.

  When I arrived at the lounge, the space was deathly silent.

  “Hello?” I called out.

  “Hey,” came a quiet voice.

  On the other side of the room Samantha was slumped in one of the armchairs. She was slumped so low in the chair that I hadn’t even noticed that she was there when I first looked around the room. She looked as exhausted as I felt.

  “Where is everyone?”

  “I sent them off after the scene finished. Don’t worry, all the clues got distributed and the plot moved along nicely. Everyone seemed to have fun. But they did keep asking where you were.”

  I crossed the room and sat on the arm of the chair that Sam was using. She looked completely worn out.

  “Sorry about that. It won’t happen again.”

  “No problem. Those people though...” She gave a weary sigh.

  “No disasters, I hope?”

  Sam looked up at me with amused eyes.

  “I stopped the disasters before they could happen,” she said with a little laugh. “Some of them got it in their heads that you being absent was part of the plot. A group of them were convinced there’d been a kidnapping.”

  “Oh, wow.” I felt half-amused and half-guilty. If I hadn’t left Sam in that situation, she wouldn’t have had to deal with so much nonsense.

  “Yeah. I persuaded them that you were off preparing stuff for later on, and that your absence was not a part of the story. What were you doing?”

  The arm of the chair wasn’t all that comfortable a seat, so I stood up and turned another armchair around to face Sam. When I sat down again, almost as wearily as Sam looked, I had the sudden thought that we were like a pair of old grandmas sitting in our armchairs.

  “I’ve been thinking about this morning. About how it probably isn’t a coincidence that the fake death and the real death were staged in exactly the same way. Not many of us had access to the plot, and the people who knew it best were the Danes. I wanted to find out if there were any hints or clues to suggest that they had something against Felicity.”

  This drew Sam’s interest, and she pushed herself into a slightly more upright position and faced me directly.

  “So did you break into their cabin?”

  “No... though I probably should have.” Too late now though. “Actually, I broke into Felicity Bull’s cabin. I was hoping to find some hint as to whether she had it in for the Danes, or anyone else on the ship.”

  Sam leaned forward now, keen to hear about my adventure.

  “Did you find anything?”

  “Nothing to implicate the Danes. Not in there, anyway. There were a couple of odd things though. It was filled with empty bags of corn chips. Which was odd considering her supposed allergy, though maybe she faked it. There were also employee files for all of us and a few more notes she had written. Nothing too surprising. Except one.” I looked around the room and over my shoulders to make sure no one was listening, then I lowered my voice almost to a whisper to make sure we wouldn’t be overheard. “She had a note saying the captain was on his ‘last chance,’ but it didn’t say why. I couldn’t find anything else about him in there.”

  “That is interesting,” said Sam, nodding along. “Did you find anything related to her death, though?”

  “Not really,” I said. “But I’m not done yet. When I was leaving, Harley called me to go and get that dress for Cece.”

  “Ooh, and?”

  I rubbed my hands together while I thought about all the things I had to tell Sam.

  “Come on!” said Sam impatiently.

  “Sorry. On the way over there, I met that guy who’s in love with you.”

  Sam fixed me with a skeptical look.

  “Guy who’s in love with me? You met an imaginary person on your way to the cabin?”

  “No!” Sam was a little too self-deprecating at times. She would be a real catch if she just met the right person. “That pool boy. He hasn’t been able to stop staring at you.”

  “Oh, him,” said Sam dismissively. “He’s just messing around.”

  “No way. He totally has the hots for you. But anyway, he found a copy of the script by the pool earlier. It seems someone else got their hands on it and was reading it.”

  “Ooh. Who?”

  I shrugged.

  “No idea. When I mentioned it to Harley, she seemed to think it was Felicity. Apparently she was in their cabin with Edward last night, while Harley was off playing bridge. She didn’t seem to like Felicity much, either. She called her that woman.”

  “Felicity was in the cabin with Edward? Just the two of them? Were they—”

  I cut her off with a shake of my head.

  “No, she thinks Felicity was just a fan.”

  “Hmm. Anyway, even if she did take the script, it wasn’t her who had it by the pool. Not unless she was sitting there in the dark last night, or she decided to do some sunbathing after she was murdered.”

  I giggled at that but felt guilty immediately. I’m sure my grandma wouldn’t have approved of me laughing at murder victims in any circumstances, even when Sam was just joking.

  “Right. Harley seemed to think she’d stolen it so she cou
ld win the murder mystery competition, and get a free cruise. I don’t buy it though. She was a corporate spy—it’d be weird for her to win the competition. Probably a conflict of interest, at the very least.”

  “Yeah, I agree. Did you learn anything else from Harley? Do you think they’re really suspects?”

  I leaned forward even more. “There was one thing, actually.” I pulled out my phone and showed her the number I’d saved.

  “You have a phone number. And?”

  “And Harley told me it was the phone number of Edward’s agent. But I don’t buy it. On the piece of paper, there was a bank account number listed, and a note about fourteen thousand dollars. Harley told me it was probably just payment for the cruise—”

  “Fourteen thousand dollars!? For that script!?” Sam’s mouth was agape with incredulity.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. I don’t think it’s right though. It seems too much just for this trip. I bet it’s something else.”

  “We’re in the wrong game, Adrienne. We should be writers!”

  “I was a writer, remember?”

  Sam shook her head. “You were a journalist. I mean a real writer.” She paused, saw the look on my face, and said, “No offense.”

  “None taken,” I lied with a shake of my head.

  “So did you call it?”

  “No,” I said hesitantly, “do you think I should?”

  “Totally. If it’s his agent, then we’ll know she wasn’t lying about it. If it’s something else though...”

  “Yeah. And I was thinking it was weird that he would write the bank account number down. You’d do that if you were going to send money to someone and they read you the account number over the phone. You wouldn’t be writing it down if you were receiving the money.”

  Sam nodded in agreement. “Go on then. Call it.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.” Sam’s eyes sparkled with excitement and her earlier lethargy had disappeared, replaced with excited, nervous energy. I felt the same. We might actually be getting somewhere with figuring out what happened to Felicity Bull.

  Hesitantly, I pressed the numbers into my phone. “Here goes...” I punched the button to make it connect. After a few seconds, the phone began to ring. While we were waiting for it to be answered, I pressed the button to put my phone on speaker so that Sam could hear too.