Cruise Chaos

by A. R. Winters

  Edward had been the key, in actual fact. The reason I’d figured it all out.

  “Edward had gambling debts and he needed to earn some money—fast. So he agreed to read Mary Mead’s manuscript, but it wasn’t to help her. It was to steal it for himself so that he could get his next big advance and pay off some debts.”

  “But wasn’t he afraid of getting caught?” Sam was tapping her fingers on the table, trying to get a handle on everything and still not quite understanding it all.

  “Nope. Who’s the world going to believe? The internationally successful novelist with dozens of books under his belt, or a no-name author without a single publication?”

  “That’s so unfair,” complained Sam. “Why do people have to be like that?”

  “I know, right?” I said in agreement with her. “It was her Celtic necklace that really gave it away for me though. She was always touching it, and then when I thought about the plot Edward had supposedly written for his new book... it all came together.”

  “So did Mary get mad then? And try and frame Edward?”

  I nodded. “Yep. I think the brass candlestick death was just an unlucky coincidence, but when she saw Edward was going to steal her manuscript, she ran with it and tried to frame him. That’s why she stole his cane to whack Harley with, too.”

  “And what about the note?” Cece had been the one to find it, so she was especially keen to figure out its significance.

  “I think Harley must have shown it to her. They were quite friendly even at the beginning of the cruise. But Harley told her she had no intention of meeting with Felicity Bull—she didn’t like the woman. So Mary took the opportunity to go herself. Felicity already knew Mary had taken the script, and Mary wanted to meet her alone to persuade her not to let on.

  “She didn’t initially plan to kill her. She just wanted her to agree not to spill her secret. But Felicity wouldn’t agree. She insisted she was going to report Mary and get her kicked out of the murder mystery event, and blacklisted with Edward’s agent and all his other connections. She would never get to be a published author like she wanted. One thing led to another, and Mary ended up whacking her over the head with the brass candlestick.”

  “Goodness. They were all awful, weren’t they?” said Sam. “Just goes to show, you never know what a person’s really like. Under the surface they can be a thief, a cheat, even a killer.”

  “That’s why I trust no one,” said Cece darkly.

  “What, even us?”

  Cece flicked her eyes back and forth across Sam and I.

  “Nah, I trust you guys. At least as far as I can throw you anyway.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I said to her with a grin. I knew she was kidding, but there was also an underlying truth: Cece had had a pretty tough life and she was slow to trust anyone. But the three of us had become close friends now.

  “Is Harley going to dump Edward now?” asked Sam.

  I shook my head. I didn’t have all the information, but from what I’d heard from Ethan, that wasn’t the case.

  “Love is blind to theft and gambling,”

  “Really? But how could she ever trust him?” asked Cece.

  “Maybe she doesn’t need to trust him,” said Sam. “She’s got her own money, her own life—all she wants is a famous husband to spend some time with.”

  “So romantic,” said Cece sarcastically.

  We all laughed in agreement.

  “When are you going to hear about the job?” asked Cece suddenly.

  “What job?” I said, almost without thinking. I’d put it so far to the back of my mind that I hadn’t even thought about it lately.

  “The cruise director position!”

  “Oh! Right. I kind of... withdrew my name from consideration,” I said somewhat sheepishly.

  “What’d you do that for? You’d be a great cruise director,”

  “Maybe one day. But I don’t think I have enough experience yet. And anyway, after managing just that one special event, I found it way too stressful for my liking. And did you see what Kelly was like? I think it’ll be nice to drop back to just being a social media manager again for a bit. Maybe in the future, I can think about moving on again, but for now it’ll be nice to get back to hanging around the ship, taking pictures of people having a good time and posting about it online.”

  Sam and Cece both gave me jealous looks.

  “It’s all right for some,” said Cece with a frown. It was half put on, but I knew she was at least a little bit envious of my job underneath.

  “Yeah. While we have to work, she just swans around the ship.”

  “I work for Swan. It’s my job to swan around,” I said with a smirk.

  Sam balled up a napkin and tossed it at my head, but I deftly dodged it.

  “Excuse me a minute,” said Cece, rising to her feet and hurrying away before we could even respond.

  We both watched her, curious as to what the hurry was.

  “Figures,” said Sam with a little laugh and head shake as we saw who Cece was chasing.

  Outside, Dr. Ryan Wilson had just walked past the restaurant. Cece had hurried out and caught up with him, and she was now holding him by the arm. They were both smiling, and from the body language, it looked like they were about to go somewhere together.

  This was confirmed when Cece ran back in a moment later.

  “Sorry guys, gotta go. Ryan’s taking me to brunch!”

  We stared down at the empty plate she’d just finished.

  “What?” she said accusingly. “I said brunch. That’s the meal that comes after breakfast. See ya!”

  “Bye,” we both called after her as she hurried off for her second breakfast—sorry, first brunch—with the handsome young doctor. “Good luck!” I added just before she was out of earshot.

  “What about the… other thing?” said Sam in a low voice.

  Of course I knew what she was talking about. The postcards. The diner. The threats. The stalker.

  “I don’t know, Sam. I don’t know what to do about that. You know, I figured if whoever is bothering me was clever enough to track me down at sea, they’ll be able to follow me anywhere.”

  “So you’re not going to quit over it?” she said, her eyes alight with excitement.

  “Nope. I’m not going to quit. Not over that. Whoever it is will make a mistake soon, and we’ll figure it who it is.”

  Sam reached over the table and squeezed my hand. “You and me together, we’ll figure it out. Then kill them.”

  “Sam!”

  “Just kidding!” she said with a wicked smirk. “Are you still worried about Ethan?”

  I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head. “No. I mean, maybe I should be, but I’m not. He’s just...” I couldn’t explain it. Not properly. But I’d try. “There’s something about him that makes me think—no makes me know—that he’s got nothing to do with it. He’s too good, and too honest. If that’s all an act, I’d have to give up on the entire human race, I think. And I’m not ready to do that.”

  “Good,” she said squeezing my hand again. “I think he’s going to be good for you, Adrienne. I’m glad you’re not writing him off just yet.”

  “Though I do want to know what that ring was about.”

  I had told Sam about the fancy looking ring I had discovered in the first officer’s office when I’d been left alone there. She had assured me at the time that there would be an innocent explanation, but we hadn’t figured out quite what that innocent explanation was yet.

  “Maybe it was for his mother.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Though what kind of son buys his mother a diamond ring?”

  “A good one?” she suggested.

  I couldn’t help but laugh at that. I bet he was a good son, too.

  “We never figured out why the captain was on his last chance either, did we?”

  I shook my head. “Not yet. Maybe on the next cruise...”

  We spent the rest of the morning happily chatting away, right u
p until lunchtime, when we simply ordered more food and kept on going.

  There was still a lot of stuff for us to figure out, like who had been stalking me and why, what the deal with Ethan’s ring was, and what had gone on in the captain’s past. All those unanswered questions promised that the next cruise was going to be just as exciting as this one had been.

  One thing was for certain: life at sea was never dull.

  And it wouldn’t be long at all before we were back aboard the Swan of the Seas on another cruise.

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  Sneak Peak: A Berry Deadly Welcome

  Chapter One

  "Come on, come on." I gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles. My car was out of gas. Rather, my ex-husband's car was out of gas. I had "borrowed" it to make the trip from Chicago, Illinois down to Camden Falls, Kentucky. I'd had to make the trip somehow, and I'd been too broke to buy a bus ticket.

  I rocked back and forth in my seat a couple of times, trying to will my momentum into the car. I knew that wouldn't help it inch forward off the road and into the curbside parking spot, but I did it all the same. I couldn't stop myself.

  "Just a little more!" The engine gagged, coughed, spluttered and then bucked before rattling and dying. That was okay, though. When it bucked, the car lurched forward that little bit more that I'd needed to get it off the road. I wasn't going to have to abandon it with its butt end sticking halfway out into the road.

  I eyed the road around me. It was huge. It wasn't eight lanes huge or anything like that. There were only two lanes, one coming and one going, but the main street of little Camden Falls could have accommodated four tractor trailers driving side by side. Even with so much room, the traffic was slow and lazy, cars meandering instead of rushing. There were two and three car-lengths between each car that passed. I was used to seeing cars in Chicago drive headlight to bumper, but that wasn't happening here.

  On top of that, there were almost no people. I eyeballed around thirty or forty people walking around. They walked in small groups or alone, but always spread out with plenty of distance in-between.

  I turned my attention toward a pickup truck that was driving past. The truck's driver nodded his head at me and then lifted his palm in a small side-to-side wave. Panic flooded me, and my heart skittered and jumped as badly as the engine had a moment earlier. My ex probably already had a warrant out for my arrest, and it would be just like him to hire someone to keep an eye out for me.

  I twisted to see if anything was coming from behind and then jumped out of the car. It was a pearl white Mercedes S-Class, and I'd probably never get the chance to drive anything like it again—especially if my ex had me put in jail. If that happened, I wouldn't even need to worry about how I'd look when I renewed my driver's license. I wouldn't need to worry about where my next meal was coming from or where I was going to sleep tonight.

  "Maybe I should get arrested." I couldn't keep the hopefulness out of my voice as I glanced around, but I didn't see any police. "Live to fight another day," I said with a scowl before forcing my features to relax. I didn't want to get wrinkles.

  Popping the trunk of the car, I used all of my not-impressive strength to lift a navy canvas suitcase out of the trunk. Then, I hesitated, looking wistfully between the car keys I held in my hands and the car. With a sigh and a shoulder shrug, I did what I had to do. I clicked the lock button on the key fob, and then tossed the keys into the trunk and slammed the trunk's lid down. I'd gotten this far, but tempting fate wasn't my style.

  I pulled up the suitcase's telescoping handle and started walking, dragging the suitcase behind me on its tiny wheels. The name tag attached to the handle flopped and jiggled as I walked, listing my name in block letters: KYLIE BERRY. It was my maiden name, not the name I'd left behind with that dirty, rotten piece of pond scum I used to call a husband. No, Kylie Berry was a good name, and it, the suitcase and its contents were all that I owned. But that would be enough. It had to be. I'd figure out the rest as I went, and where I was going now was my cousin's cute little café. When she'd invited me to come down to "help her out," I'd jumped at it. If it meant one less night of having to sleep at the women's shelter, then I was game.

  I paid attention to the people around me as I walked. All around me were a myriad of tennis shoes or flat sandals, various types of denim, a few Walmart-style short skirts, and a lot of t-shirts. I was wearing a black polka-dotted sleeveless, torso-fitted dress with a flared skirt, gold high-heel pumps, and I knew from experience that my shoulder-blade length fire red hair would be shining in the afternoon sun.

  I didn't fit in, but I didn't see anyone picking up any rocks to throw at me, so I figured that must be okay. A man exited a store with a green awning twenty or so feet ahead of me wearing what had to have been a thousand-dollar suit, and no one paid him any attention either.

  "Things are going to be okay," I mumbled to myself. Yet my feet were not convinced. Camden Falls' Main Street seemed to go on forever, and my pretty gold pumps soon pinched my feet in ways that made me work hard to hide a limp.

  A group of barely twenty-somethings sauntered through a door a little ways ahead of me laughing, and one of them was holding a to-go cup of what looked like iced tea.

  My heart sped up but my feet slowed. This was it. My new beginning. My second chance. I'd be the best waitress, assistant, whatever I could be to Sarah. And hopefully, Sarah would make room for me on her couch until I crawled my way back up to standing on my own two feet.

  This would work. I would make it work.

  Chapter Two

  I won't lie, when I reached for the glass-front door with the scrawling script "Sarah's Eatery" on it, my hand was shaking, but I kept my eyes bright and an excited smile on my gloss-painted lips as I pulled the door open. A little bell jangled, announcing my entrance.

  That's when I stepped into cousin Sarah's "tiny" little café, and my smile slipped as my mouth fell open. It was huge! I had imagined some ten foot by ten foot space with as many little round tables and chairs as could be crammed into it per the laws of physics, but instead what I found was spatial extravagance. There was room to walk between the tables. People could have conversations without the absolute certainty that the words they spoke were being overheard by the person sitting two inches behind them. A ladder on top of another ladder would be needed to reach the ceiling. And it had big, sunny windows on two sides, all along the wall that faced Main Street and all along the wall that faced the corner side street, making it look even bigger.

  "Wow." I felt like I was Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. I'd been swept up from the churning bustle of Chicago and dropped right in the middle of a magical place where people could stretch their legs, lean back in their chairs and prop their arms behind their heads without worrying about blocking the path of another.

  "Kylie!" Sarah exclaimed.

  I turned my head to the left, toward Sarah's voice and a grill-style bar. Over the bar was a large banner that read, "We'll miss you!" with Sarah's name taped on at the end on a large piece of colorful construction paper. Sarah had her hands thrown up in the air
as if to celebrate, and all of the patrons at the bar were swiveled around on their stools to stare at me.

  Sarah didn't exactly come running from around the bar to greet me. It's more like she bounced. She was wearing denim overalls that were rolled at the ankle, a sleeveless tee with a scoop neck, and cute little white canvas shoes without socks. Her eyes crinkled heavily at the corners from her enormous smile, but it looked good on her.

  "Hey!" She threw her arms around me in a warm, snuggly hug. Her hair smelled like apples with a hint of grilled cheese. "I knew you'd make it in time."

  "Hi," I said, with a panic-smile plastered on my face. "You going somewhere?"

  Sarah sighed and got dreamy-eyed. "I just couldn't wait a minute more to go join Jon in Seattle. All my stuff is packed and ready to go."

  Breathe. Keep breathing, I told myself while another little voice inside my head screeched, Homeless! You're going to be sleeping on the streets!

  I should have kept the car keys. I could have at least slept in it. A crowbar. I could break into the trunk in the middle of the night. And the trunk was roomy! No one would have to see me sleeping in the car. I could use the clothes in my suitcase to make a cozy little bed for myself.

  "That's great." My voice barely wavered, but I felt a cold sweat breaking out on my upper lip.

  "Come on," she said, grabbing my hand and pulling me along behind her. "I want you to meet the regulars. This going away party was their idea."

  I eyed them, wondering if one of them would take over the café. Then I wondered if they would give me a job.

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