Cruise Ship Cozy Mysteries 07 - Deadly Cruise

by A. R. Winters

  Zoya grasped the gold-braided rope that was attached to the sheet. She made a show of it, grabbing it in both hands, like she was about to engage in a tug of war with a football team.

  “Ready?” called Zoya. “Everyone, say it with me. One, two… three!”

  On the final count, the whole room shouted, and with a yell of her own Zoya yanked on the golden rope, pulling the drop cloth off perfectly.

  It was the last thing that went perfectly that evening.

  While Susan had given a fantastic fake shriek at Tom Devlin’s talk, Zoya’s scream when the image was revealed was genuine.

  “Argh!”

  It was so loud, and so sudden, that half the audience were screaming along with her before they even knew what the problem was. Being at the front of the room, I could see what had happened immediately, and it made my blood run cold.

  Who could do such a thing?

  Why would they?

  The giant framed movie poster had been defaced. The glass covering the picture had been scribbled on with permanent marker. The most damning thing was the word scrawled across the entire front of the image, going from the top left to the bottom right in a diagonal line: FRAUD screamed the graffiti.

  The two men and Susan at our table began to laugh as they examined the defaced image.

  Apart from the giant word saying FRAUD, there were other additions also made to the picture. ‘Worst Actress 1976’ was written at the bottom. There was a large arrow pointing to the actress’s thighs, only the tops of which were covered by the Daisy Dukes, and the words ‘Actually much fatter’ were written next to it.

  “Come on,” I said to Ethan. “Things are going to get ugly.”

  Zoya hadn’t resorted to tears after her scream, but instead had developed the kind of red-faced anger you generally only see in cartoons.

  As Ethan and I stood up, Zoya was already making her way back to our table. Before we could reach her, or she could reach the table, someone else intervened.

  “Zoya! I’m so sorry! Who could have done this? Who!”

  Kirk, the Zoya fan, was shouting the words as he rushed toward her. His arms were open wide like he was going to embrace her. Or maybe snatch her up and run away with her.

  “Leave me alone!” she hissed as she jumped to the side, dodging his outstretched arms.

  “I’m here when you need me!” Kirk continued on to the framed portrait, peering at it for a few seconds. From his seventies-style suit jacket, he drew out a pocket square and began dabbing at the ink.

  Ethan and I both had calm expressions on our faces by the time she reached the table.

  While her big moment had been ruined, I was sure we’d be able to remove the red ink from the glass covering the picture and get it fixed again. This was just a momentary, though shocking, setback.

  “Zoya—” I began, but I didn’t get to finish.

  She ignored me and grabbed the shoulder of the table’s other actress—Susan Shelly. “You! It was you, wasn’t it?”

  Susan turned her head to face her furious accuser, an innocent expression on her only slightly lined face.

  “Hmm? Did what?” She glanced over nonchalantly toward the framed poster. “That? No, dear. Not me.”

  “Liar! You’ve always been jealous of me and my success! Always! Admit it!”

  “Jealous?” Susan drawled. “Of you? Surely it’s the other way around.” She reached out and prodded Zoya in the stomach. “You’ve never had my looks or my body, and you never will.”

  “How dare you!” Zoya swung out an arm that looked like it was aiming for Susan’s head.

  Before it could connect, I inserted my own arm into the mix and grabbed her by the wrist.

  “Zoya, I know this is awful, but we can’t resort to violence.”

  “There’s already been violence! What do you call that, if not a violent assault on me?” Zoya jerked her head at the poster as she spoke, her face the very picture of outrage.

  I tried to speak in a soothing voice. “We have excellent maintenance workers aboard the ship. It can all be fixed. It looks like the awful person who did this just wrote on the glass. Don’t worry.”

  “Don’t worry!? Don’t worry?” Zoya’s eyes pierced through me. Clearly, she’d turned her anger from Susan to me.

  “Excuse me?” Ethan was there, and it was a welcome relief.

  With his considerable size, handsome uniform, and the stern expression on his face, he immediately drew both Zoya’s and Susan’s attention. “Why don’t we step outside and see if we can get to the bottom of this? As the first officer of the ship, I have the authority to do whatever it takes to right this travesty.”

  I released my grip on Zoya’s arm, which had already fallen by her side. She no longer seemed ready to lash out. At least not physically.

  Zoya looked back at the poster and then around at the Grand Ballroom itself. Her shoulders seemed to sink, and the nod she gave to Ethan was a feeble, defeated one.

  “Okay.” It was clear she had now accepted that her big night had been ruined.

  Ethan offered her an arm and led her away.

  So much for my date, I thought to myself.

  The room was full of chatter as everyone talked about the dramatic scene that had unfolded. The graffitied poster was still sitting in pride of place at the front of the room. Realizing that I needed to do something about that, I walked over to it. Several people had already taken pictures of it and it would no doubt soon be up on social media, but I wanted to make sure there weren’t any more.

  “Kelly? Let’s get this covered up again.”

  “Oh! Good idea.” Her voice echoed around the room.

  “And turn off the microphone and put it down,” I hissed at her.

  “Shoot!” she said to the room one final time, before doing as I suggested.

  “Here, you take one end, and I’ll take the other. Let’s see if we can fling this over the top.”

  We managed to swing the sheet over the top of Zoya’s defaced image and get the picture hidden again. I doubted we’d have another unveiling when the poster was cleaned up—at least not one as lavish as this. It was with some sadness, and pity for Zoya, that I looked at the covered up image for a final time that night.

  “I guess I’ll get the band to play some songs before dinner starts.” Kelly was nodding to herself as she talked, and she was scuttling away to talk to the band leader before she’d even finished the sentence.

  Sighing to myself, I headed back to our table. Despite the disasters, I still intended to force myself to eat the delicious five-course meal that would soon be arriving.

  But when I got back to the table, my eyes narrowed. Susan’s seat was empty.

  “Where’d she go?”

  Please say she went to the restroom, please say she went to the restroom, please say she went to the restroom…

  “She went outside after Zoya,” said Tom Devlin with a smirk.

  “I simply pointed out how outrageous Zoya’s accusations were, and—” Judd Cohn the movie producer snapped his fingers “—she was off after her! You’ll probably be able to hear them once you get outside.” He paused for a moment before turning back to Tom. “Should we go and watch? Catfights can be fun.”

  Tom laughed and shook his head. “No thanks. I had enough of watching Zoya after Painted Little Flower. Let’s enjoy the meal instead. Do you think they’ll do a bottle of whiskey for the table?”

  I didn’t bother to listen to the rest of the men’s discussion. As I was rushing out the room, the Big Band broke into a tune.

  I just hoped that what was happening outside wasn’t what I thought was going to be happening outside.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  While I was dodging the tables and chairs that filled the room, I was joined by Polly Stratton, the stylish woman with the business selling movie-themed bags and other memorabilia.

  “Is she all right?” Polly asked me, falling in step beside me as I rushed as fast as I could in my high heels a
nd bit-too-tight black evening dress.

  I flashed her a quick smile.

  “She was awfully upset. I hope she’s okay, though.”

  Polly nodded and followed me out the doors. We emerged into one of the largest internal passageways on the ship. It was almost like a road; it was wide enough for half a dozen people to stride side by side and the ceiling was double the height of most of the hallways of the ship.

  We could hear the two actresses before we could see them. We turned right out of the ballroom, heading toward the Grand Atrium. We found Susan, Zoya, and an exasperated Ethan where the passageway emptied out into the atrium.

  “Of course it was you!” I heard Zoya saying. “Who else could it be? You’re the only person who ever had a problem with me.”

  “Yeah, right! I’m twice the actress you ever were, you washed-up old has-been. I barely remembered you even existed until you showed up on this cruise.”

  “You’d be nothing without me!”

  “Well, you’re just nothing. You know it wasn’t me who drew on the stupid poster, because I simply don’t care.”

  “Ladies, please.”

  Usually, Ethan’s voice commands such an air of authority that people obey whatever he says. But not these two. They were in a world of their own as they argued.

  “You obviously do care—you followed me out of there!” Zoya said.

  “Only because you accused me of drawing on your silly old picture. Why do you think I’d even do that? Quite frankly, I should be the one who’s upset here, not you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You know what it means!” screamed Susan, glaring daggers at Zoya. “It was me in the poster, not you.”

  I blinked in surprise at the revelation. Some of the earlier comments I’d heard suddenly made more sense. Like when Susan appeared at Tom’s speech and after the audience had mistaken her for Zoya, she said that she’d fooled us again.

  “You’re just jealous! The best roles you ever had were being my body double!”

  “At least I didn’t need a body double, you Jell-O-bodied old hag!”

  The two actresses stood just inches apart, both of them with beads of sweat on their brows, huffing and puffing after their shouting altercation.

  A familiar peal of laughter rang out nearby.

  I watched as Minnie, the operator of the Boulevard Café that’s located out on the constitutional deck, appeared. She was pushing a rattling food cart in front of her, destined for the Grand Ballroom.

  Minnie was just about the happiest person I’d ever met, or at least she did a very good job of giving that impression. She found delight in everything. If Santa had been a middle-aged Caribbean woman instead of an old European man, Minnie would still have him beat.

  “What’s all the fussing about?” Minnie stared at the two women, her mouth open wide in a beaming smile, like she was their mother trying to peacefully stop her children’s silly argument. It didn’t matter that Minnie was probably several years their junior.

  Like Ethan, she also commanded an air of authority, and hers was more successful with these particular ladies.

  “She ruined my poster,” said Zoya quietly.

  “She thinks I did, but I didn’t. And she doesn’t have any evidence.”

  “Is the poster ruined?” asked Minnie with concern.

  “It’s in a frame. It’s just the glass that covers it that was marked on,” I said.

  Zoya shot me an annoyed glance.

  “Well then!” said Minnie. “That doesn’t seem worth fighting over. Like I tell my daughter, there’s no point fussing over broken eggs.”

  I guessed that was something like not crying over spilled milk.

  “Now,” she continued, “I’ve got a wonderful, wonderful cleaning spray in my café. Platinum Power, they call it. It’ll take the marks off any glass in a jiffy.”

  “That’s not the point,” complained Zoya. “My whole evening was ruined.”

  Minnie held out her arms, stretching them as wide as they could go.

  “Look here. This is your life. From here to here.” She nodded her head in the direction of each hand as she spoke. Minnie whipped her left hand over and jabbed one finger about three-quarters of the way along before returning it to its outstretched position. “That little dot? That’s one evening. One evening of thousands and thousands and thousands in your life. So what if one evening is ruined? So what if a hundred evenings are ruined? Tomorrow’s going to be another new, beautiful day. You’ve got plenty more evenings left. There’ll be good ones, and bad ones, but don’t forget—all of them will be over one day.”

  The two women were nodding their heads and mumbling understanding as Minnie spoke. To my surprise, so was Ethan.

  “It’s not so bad now, is it?” she asked.

  “I think I’m going to go back to my cabin for a while,” said Zoya quietly.

  While Minnie hadn’t succeeded in fully cheering up the formerly-distraught actress, she had at least calmed her down better than either Ethan or I could have.

  “I’d better get back to my table.” Susan gave a little smile to Minnie, earning a broad one in response as she departed.

  “Gotta go,” said Polly. Instead of following Susan back toward the ballroom, she went in the same direction as Zoya, but with no explanation as to why.

  I stared after Polly for a moment before shrugging. “Thanks, Minnie. They were just about ready to kill each other.”

  Minnie’s shoulders heaved as she chuckled, and she waved away my gratitude with one hand.

  “I have two daughters. They’re almost grown now, but I learned a thing or two about how to stop them from fighting.” She closed her eyes at the memory of it, and then her eyes flicked open again. “If those two start up again, send them over to the café. If they won’t listen to reason, I’ll put them over my knee instead.”

  I had to cover my mouth to contain my burst of laughter. The idea of Minnie trying to spank two Hollywood actresses in their mid-sixties for misbehaving was too much for me.

  “You think I’m joking, don’t you?”

  Not waiting for a response, Minnie winked at us and then started off down the hallway toward the ballroom, pushing her clanking drinks cart as she did so.

  “She was joking, right?” said Ethan to me with a look of mild concern.

  I shrugged. “We’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?”

  With his arm wrapped around my shoulders, Ethan led me back to dinner, and a fine meal it was too.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ZOYA

  A fter returning to her cabin, Zoya Maxwell decided to freshen up.

  She wiped away the tears that had fallen and stained her makeup, and she applied fresh mascara and lipstick. She changed out of the fancy evening gown into a more comfortable pair of slacks and a blouse.

  The woman with the drinks cart had a point. It was only one evening. She’d pinned too much on it, looked forward to it too much, and been expecting too much.

  She should have known things wouldn’t go as smoothly as she hoped. They never did. And it was only one evening. There were plenty more to come.

  Bigger evenings. Better evenings. Evenings with a bigger crowd, with real press, and other celebrities. Premieres! Like the old days!

  This was just a dumb little event on a boat with a bunch of regular people and has-beens.

  She shouldn’t have gotten so upset.

  And to let Susan get under her skin like that…

  Zoya shook her head as she inspected her reflection in the mirror. Perfect. Well, not as perfect as she had been forty years earlier, but as perfect as she got these days.

  And come to think of it, the woman with the cart was actually wrong. It wasn’t even the whole evening that had been ruined. Just a part of it. There was still one more big thing to come, and, fingers crossed, it was going to go smoother than the earlier embarrassment.

  “And it wasn’t even your fault!” said Zoya encouragingly
to her reflection. “No one will blame you. They’ll be angry at the awful person who vandalized the picture!”

  She wasn’t sure if she believed it, but saying it out loud made her feel like it was true. It was something she’d learned as an actress. When you said your lines enough times, you came to believe them; if you said the words and acted the part with enough vigor, you became the character you were playing.

  But you didn’t have to be reading a script. You could make your own script. Script your own life. If you said the words loud enough, with enough conviction, you could make yourself believe whatever you wanted.

  Like no one was laughing at her.

  Like everyone would blame the graffiti artist and feel sorry for her.

  Like the rest of the evening was going to be a success.

  When she was ready, Zoya sat down for another readthrough of the movie script she’d given to Judd Cohn. The big unveiling was being followed by a five-course meal, so she still had more time to kill before her important meeting. A meeting about a movie, over cocktails—it was going to be just like the old days.

  Zoya read through all of her lines. Technically, they weren’t her lines yet. The part hadn’t been given or even promised to her yet. But she knew those lines would be hers. She just knew it. When she was done, she read through them again, this time standing up and walking around as she did so.

  Finally, it was time. Just before ten o’clock. Before she left her suite, she checked herself in front of the mirror one final time.

  “You can do it, Zoya! You will do it, Zoya! Zoya Power! Woo!”

  With renewed confidence in her gait, the actress left her cabin and set off to face the world again. She wasn’t going to let the earlier unpleasantness ruin another minute of her life.

  Zoya took an outside route. The bar she was going to was located in the middle of the ship, and she could get close to it by walking around the constitutional deck before returning inside. She always found the air on warm nights empowering.

  It was a lovely evening outside. The air had just a hint of freshness to it as the skies were so clear. Up above her, a trillion shiny stars watched her progress and cheered her on as she walked, a smile forced upon her lips.