Deadly Cruise: A Humorous Cruise Ship Cozy Mystery (Cruise Ship Cozy Mysteries Book 7)

by A. R. Winters

  The audience responded with a collective gasp.

  I frowned. They didn’t seem to be taking it very seriously.

  There was an elderly couple just in front of me. The woman, who had curly white hair and gold wire-rimmed glasses, leaned over to the gentleman she was with, who was wearing a fedora and trench coat.

  “That’s a good idea, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, yes. A knife in the back for the scream queen. How original.”

  I tapped the man on the shoulder.

  “It really happened. It’s not a prank or a trick.”

  The two of them smiled at me. “You are innocent, aren’t you, dear?” They turned away to look at Judd, who was now preparing to speak.

  I frowned to myself, angry on Zoya’s behalf.

  Before Judd could speak, I heard the sound of sobbing. Ah-ha. At least someone was taking it seriously.

  I saw a crying Kirk Field. He’d claimed to be her biggest fan, so if that was really true it was no wonder he was so upset. He had his hands over his face, and I could see the occasional drip of a tear leaking out.

  While Judd began his talk, it didn’t seem appropriate for me to comfort Kirk. And I didn’t want to either, to be honest. He was, to be frank, a little weird.

  Kirk lowered his hands. He was wearing the same seventies suit he’d been wearing on the first day, but now there were two streams of tears running down his face. I offered him a supportive smile. He covered his entire face with two hands again and dropped his head down toward his lap.

  At least he managed to keep his sobbing quiet. I turned back to focus on Judd.

  “There’s just something about the understated darkness of the noir genre that really appeals to me. The moods. The lighting. The props—a burning cigarette, never-ending flasks of whiskey—they just create an atmosphere that’s so powerful.” Judd swung his fist through the air to demonstrate.

  Film noir wasn’t something I’d ever understood, probably because I hadn’t knowingly watched any. I was aware of the genre, but I had never sought out any films to watch. What struck me though, listening to Judd talk about it, was how little the death of Zoya had affected him.

  He was speaking with passion, joking and horsing around as he gave his talk. On the one hand, I suppose it’s what a professional does—they do their job, even when tragedy strikes. But I would have expected him to be just a little less enthusiastic. A little less chipper. A little more morose.

  I watched him intently, not so much listening to the words, but focusing on his face and tone as he spoke. Wasn’t he being just a bit too blasé about Zoya’s brutal murder?

  About fifteen minutes into the lecture, I realized I hadn’t absorbed any of what he was talking about. I wasn’t going to get much more out of it, so I took a few more pictures of him at the front of the room and then slipped out.

  I wanted to talk to him, but I wouldn’t be able to do that until the lecture and follow-up Q&A were over.

  When I left the area, I found Kelly sitting at a table in the restaurant, with a big steak and baked potato in front of her and a large glass of soda.

  When she saw me looking at her, she looked like a child who’d been caught with a bag of candy they weren’t supposed to be eating. Her mouth was so full she reminded me of a hamster as I smiled at her in greeting.

  “Hi, Kelly. Late lunch?”

  She made a kind of mmhmm sound and waved a fork in confirmation. Finally, she swallowed.

  “Adrienne, what’s up?”

  “Couldn’t focus on the talk. I don’t think film noir’s really my thing.”

  “Me too.”

  “Kelly, you know, I don’t think the guests really got what you meant when you told them that Zoya was dead.”

  “What do you mean?” she said, a forkful of baked potato hovering in front of her.

  “Some of them thought you were joking.”

  “Joking! Why would I joke about that?”

  “Well, maybe not joking, but like it was part of some kind of prank, or maybe an event. You know—a slasher movie actress getting slashed herself.”

  Kelly frowned. “I thought she was stabbed, not slashed.”

  “She was, but you get the point, right?”

  “Shoot. Should I go back and tell them again?”

  I shrugged. “You might want to clarify for them. Otherwise, they might be expecting her to make a dramatic return or something.”

  “Shoot. I guess I’ll pop back in after Judd’s talk has finished and tell them again.”

  “Good idea. I’ll leave you to it. Enjoy your meal!”

  Kelly bobbed her head up and down and popped the forkful of potato she was still holding into her mouth.

  “See you, Adrienne!” She just about managed not to spill any food out of her mouth as she spoke.

  I waved at her and headed out. My new plan was to assemble the photos I’d taken into some collages, think of some witty captions, and to get them all lined up to go online over the coming hours.

  Then, as soon as Judd was done with his talk, I’d be able to chat with him without having to worry about getting back to work in a hurry.

  I slipped outside and onto a bench in the shade. This job isn’t so bad, I thought, as I ‘worked’ by poking at my phone screen.

  An hour later, I was loitering outside John Grillman’s, waiting for Judd to appear. I wasn’t sure if he actually would; there was a movie due to play as soon as he was done. He might decide to stay and watch it, though presumably he’d seen it dozens of times before already, so I hoped he wouldn’t.

  While I waited, I finished lining up the last of the images to go up online later that day. I was proud of my work, having applied some filters to the pictures of flasks and guns to make them look like I’d stepped into the past to take the pictures.

  I almost missed Judd leaving because I was staring at my screen. He was out the door and walking at a quick pace before I could even call out to him and greet him.

  I followed him, intending to shout after him, but he was in such a hurry I could barely keep up.

  “Cornstalks,” I muttered to myself.

  I would just see where he ended up. I hoped he wasn’t going to his cabin.

  He was walking like he was on a mission, legs flying and arms swinging. I had to break into little mini-runs to keep even a dozen paces behind him, since my footsteps were so much shorter than his.

  When he didn’t head toward the direction of the VIP cabins, I was relieved. Instead, he went outside, and before I knew it we were outside by the Lagoon Pool, the largest outdoor area of the ship.

  The sun was still high in the sky and it was delightfully warm outside after the airconditioned interior of the ship.

  The air smelled of chlorine, from the water lapping at the edges of the pool, and of hamburgers grilling at the barbecue set up near Hemingway’s bar.

  And Hemingway’s was where Judd was going. He made a beeline for it, cutting through rows of sun loungers and across footpaths, like a missile aiming for its target.

  “Beer me, Johnny!” he said before he’d even reached a barstool.

  I caught up to him a few seconds after he’d sat down. The young blond-haired bartender with his usual half-unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt had already flipped the cap off of a bottle of beer and set it down on a napkin in front of the film producer. No sooner had it touched down than he grasped it in hand and raised it to his lips.

  The way he poured half of it down his throat before drawing another breath made it look particularly enticing, though the eagerness with which he’d been after the alcohol detracted from it.

  Clambering up onto the barstool next to Judd, I caught the bartender’s eye.

  “The usual,” I said to him with a grin.

  With a flash of teeth, he nodded. My usual here was fresh squeezed orange juice, but he served it for me in a cocktail glass complete with paper umbrellas and cocktail straws.

  “How’s it going?” I said to the producer as he finis
hed off the bottle.

  “Thirsty,” was his one-word reply. “Hey, Johnny, that hit the spot. Now do me one of those strawberry daiquiris. Extra strong.”

  “Sure thing.” He set my own drink down in front of me.

  “What’s that?” asked Judd. “Vodka and orange?”

  “Pretty much.” I’d found that drinkers liked you a lot better when you drank with them, so if he wanted to assume my orange had vodka in it, I wasn’t going to correct him.

  “Good. Thank goodness that talk’s over.”

  “It looked like you were enjoying yourself.” Although I hadn’t watched most of it, at the beginning he seemed enthused about the topic.

  “Looks can be deceiving. I love the movies, but I hate the people. They ask the stupidest questions.”

  “Oh?”

  “Some idiot at the back kept asking me about Zoya. Didn’t understand she has nothing to do with film noir or any other kind of detective movie.”

  “Ah.” He was clearly referring to Kirk. “I’m sure the news of her death upset a lot of people.”

  To my surprise, Judd leaned back and laughed, grasping the bar as he did so he didn’t topple off the barstool.

  “Something funny?”

  “Yeah. The death is tragic, of course. Very sad.” It didn’t sound sad the way he said it. “That cruise director lady came back in after my questions and answer session. She was worried people hadn’t understood before, so she announced Zoya’s death again.”

  “Huh.” That didn’t sound funny to me.

  “But this time,” continued Judd, “she really hammered it home. ‘Dead. Really. Not an act, not part of a show. Dead as a doornail. Left this mortal coil. Stabbed in the back and murdered.’ She kept going on, and on. It made half the audience cry.”

  Oops. That was my fault.

  “How terrible,” I said.

  “Nah.” He shook his head. “It was pretty funny. And it got me out of answering any more questions, so I was happy.”

  “I’m sure all her friends in Hollywood will be sad to hear the news.”

  Judd laughed again, this time a dry, cynical laugh. He then leaned forward and, without lifting the glass, took several large gulps of strawberry daiquiri through the straw.

  “Friends? Zoya? Yeah, right.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She wasn’t the kind of person who had friends. She had colleagues. She knew a lot of people. But I don’t think anyone actually liked her. That’s why work for her dried up. No one wanted to spend any more time around her than they had to. She was difficult to work with and a pain on set.”

  “Oh,” I said. “At least her fans loved her.”

  “Yeah. They used to. I don’t think there were that many who still remembered her. Probably all the ones who did are on this ship right now.”

  I sipped my own drink, feeling even sadder for Zoya now. She had all that fame in the past, but what did it mean if you didn’t have any friends?

  “She thought she was all that,” Judd continued, clearly on a roll now. “Thought she was one of the great actresses. She was always trying to give everyone else tips and shortcuts. She had a couple of lucky breaks and found some fame, but she didn’t realize it was luck—she thought it was talent. It’s a big problem in Hollywood. People can’t tell the difference between luck and talent.”

  “I guess that happens everywhere.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe. I wouldn’t know. I spent my life in Hollywood.” He seemed pensive for a moment. “What a waste, huh?”

  “No! I’m sure it wasn’t.” After a moment, I corrected the final word. “Isn’t.”

  He laughed again, this time at himself. There was no need to grip onto the bar for balance this time, though.

  I tapped my finger on the manila envelope that was in front of him.

  “Is that the script Zoya gave you?”

  “Yep. You’re interested in movies?”

  “Yes. Well, no. I mean, a little. Not like the other people on this cruise. But this movie—you said it’s about a girl who gets kidnapped on a road trip, from Nebraska?”

  He turned his head and peered into my eyes. “Road trip? I didn’t say road trip earlier.”

  “Err, didn’t you?” I thought he had. What he’d mentioned sounded so similar to my own story that I must have imagined that detail myself.

  “No, I didn’t.” He continued to stare at me for several more seconds, as if trying to read my mind by staring at my face. Then, he lost interest and went back to his drink.

  “Umm, in that script, does the girl eat a Millie and Me candy bar?” That was the particular candy bar that I’d been fed by my captors. It used to be a favorite of mine, but ever since… well, I tried not to even think about them anymore. Thankfully, they weren’t that common.

  The question seemed to trigger Judd. He slammed his hands down on the counter.

  “What is this? Spill it. Did Zoya get the script from you? Did she steal it? If so, I want to know now.”

  “No! Nothing like that. I just… heard her talking about it. Sorry. Just making conversation, really. It’s part of my job, but I’m not always very good at it—I’m supposed to get to know our most important and valued VIP guests.”

  Nice one, Adrienne! I congratulated myself. With a couple of half-truths and some quick thinking, I could dig myself out of this hole.

  Judd seemed to relax a little on hearing that.

  “I see. Good. The script still has potential, even without Zoya around.” He paused thoughtfully. “Maybe even more so without her around. I don’t know if you’d believe it, but she actually wanted to play the role of the kidnapped girl. Woman, I suppose. I was going to offer her the part of the mother instead. I don’t think she realized quite how old she was. I think the idea of playing a supposed good girl who turns out the be the villain was really appealing to her though.”

  Wait. A good girl who turns out to be the villain? Maybe this wasn’t my story after all. I mean, I wasn’t a villain. Was I?

  “It sounds like an exciting story. I’m sure it’ll be a hit.”

  Judd raised both his palms up. “Maybe. You can never tell with these things.”

  While we were talking, a flustered Polly Stratton walked by, phone pressed up against her ear.

  “I don’t care! Just get it done! No, no, no! No! I said—” and then she was past us, her voice fading into the background of people splashing in the pool and chatting.

  Judd stared after her for a moment, seemingly amused by her as well. He finds a lot of things funny, I thought.

  He said, “I don’t know what she’s so stressed about. She should be relieved.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yep. The other night, after the debacle in the ballroom, she asked Zoya to pose for pictures for her bag business or whatever it is she sells. But not only did Zoya say no, she threatened to sue her for the existing stuff she was already selling!”

  “Really? No way!” I remembered how excited Polly had been at the prospect of working with the actress. I guess it hadn’t worked out. After the fight outside the ballroom, she had followed Zoya while the rest of us returned to the dinner. She must have caught her at a really bad time.

  “Now Zoya’s dead, so she won’t be getting sued, right? She should be happy.”

  “It wasn’t even Zoya in the poster.” I said, a little annoyed on Polly’s behalf. I’d liked Polly when I first met her, and the fact that the actress had been so down on her business didn’t seem fair. “She should have been happy for the publicity.”

  “Yeah, well. Like I said, Zoya wasn’t exactly a people-person.”

  I sucked down some more orange juice while I thought. Polly had chased after Zoya. Then been rejected. And then Zoya turned up dead in the morning. A coincidence? Or…

  “Nice talking to you, Judd. I’ve got to go.”

  I pulled the straw and umbrella out of my drink and dropped them on the bar. I picked up the glass and downed what was left in a si
ngle gulp.

  Judd looked impressed as he waved me off. “I don’t envy you having to work after that.”

  I arched an eyebrow at him as I left. I needed to speak to Ethan right away.

  Chapter Ten

  There were two questions I urgently wanted answers to.

  Was Polly Zoya’s killer? And what was the real story behind the movie script—was it just a coincidence that it was about a kidnapped Nebraskan girl, or was someone pulling strings behind the scenes again to rile me up?

  I was buzzed into Ethan’s office right away, and I found him sitting behind his large mahogany desk, a stack of papers in front of him.

  “Hey,” he said with a happy smile. “I was just going to call you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yep. I’m bored with this. I was going to see if you wanted to grab some ice cream.”

  “That sounds good. Can we talk a little first?”

  “Sure thing. What’s on your mind?”

  “How’s it going with the investigation? Did Judd tell you anything interesting?”

  I was curious about what he might have told Ethan. I assumed they had their conversation before he gave his talk.

  “Not really. He just filled in a few more details about the meeting he was supposed to have with Zoya. He also told me a bit more about her past, and how she wasn’t all that well liked among her peers.”

  “Right, he told me the same thing. What about Susan? Did you get anything else out of her?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing relevant. According to Ryan, Zoya had been dead for some time before Susan found her. So her story about running across the body that morning seems to check out. Of course, the fact that it happened hours beforehand doesn’t rule her out. It just means you didn’t catch her in the act.”

  “Right. Be careful with what she tells you though. She is an actress, after all.”

  “Yep. I’m not trusting anything she says unless it can be verified. But that goes for just about everyone else, too.”

  “Except me?” I said with my most charming smile.