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

by A. R. Winters

  This story sounded like a load of hogwash to me.

  “What?”

  “I realized I was still carrying that prop!”

  “You mean the knife? You were carrying it?”

  “The prop, yes. Anyway, we had a good laugh about that! We stopped at some sun loungers and put it down where the staff would find it. That’s when Zoya signed the contract.” Polly smiled at the thought of it again.

  “Was the man who took the photo still with you?”

  “Oh no, we wouldn’t be talking business in front of strangers! He was long gone. It was just us two by then. We were both thrilled about what we were going to do. Zoya had all kinds of ideas for launch events. It’s such a shame…”

  I stared down at the contract again. The signature at the bottom looked very much like Zoya’s signature. But there was one little problem with it.

  She had told me that was her autograph, not her signature. It was something I’d heard a lot of celebrities do—to avoid people forging their signatures on checks or contracts, they had two different ways of signing their names. One for autographs, and then their genuine legal signature that they didn’t share with the public.

  Polly’s contract had the autograph on the bottom of it.

  I tried not to let on to what I had spotted.

  “What?” Polly’s tone seemed to grow colder.

  “Oh, nothing. Just thinking how sad it is that you won’t have her there to promote the products with you. It would have been a great help in terms of marketing.”

  In truth, I suspected that her dramatic death would be way more helpful for Polly’s sales than her very-faded star power would have been.

  I stared at the contract again, with the giant Z signature.

  “Why do you keep looking at that?” Polly’s hand rested on top of the contract protectively.

  It suddenly felt chilly in her room. And the scent of flowers didn’t remind me of summer blooms so much as the smell of wreaths on a grave.

  “No reason. She had an amazing signature, didn’t she?”

  I reached out and picked up the contract with a forced smile on my face. I held it in front of me, as if wanting to admire it up close.

  “Just a sec,” I said, rising to my feet.

  “Hey! What are you doing? Give me that.”

  “Nuh-uh!”

  Holding the contract, I pushed over the chair I’d been sitting on and made a break for the door.

  Polly was faster and had better reflexes than I’d hoped.

  She hopped over the chair and while I was pulling open the door to her cabin, she pounced on me, landing on my back.

  “Argh! Get off! Get off!” I shouted as we both tumbled to the floor of the hallway outside her cabin.

  “Give me my contract!”

  I managed to roll over on the ground, contract still clutched in my right hand, while Polly sat on top of me, trying to stop me from wriggling with one hand and grasping for her contract with the other.

  “Give me it!” she screamed.

  “No!”

  Polly reached for the paper I was still clutching, but I managed to shove it under the small of my back.

  “Help!” I shouted.

  Like magic, there was the sound of footsteps hurrying down the hallway. I twisted my head and was thankful to see someone coming toward us. Not exactly my dream hero, but he’d do.

  “Kirk! Call security! Ask for Ethan Lee!”

  The Zoya superfan stopped in his tracks, staring at the two of us struggling on the floor of the hallway. He didn’t move.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I said call Ethan Lee! Now!”

  Polly got a hand under my back, and I could feel her hand reaching for the contract I was trying to press my weight down on.

  “It’s mine! Give me it!” she screamed.

  “Hey!” came a deep, angry voice.

  My spirits soared. While Kirk was still standing there, Ethan had somehow materialized.

  Two strong hands grabbed Polly underneath her arms, dragging her off me.

  “Get off me! Get off me! Arrest her!” Polly yelled.

  Ethan of course did nothing of the sort. Ever prepared, he withdrew a plastic cable tie from his pocket and secured Polly’s hands behind her back.

  Panting, I climbed to my feet.

  “How…?”

  “I was coming here to ask Polly about what was going on at the pool deck. Looks like I was just in time. Now what’s going on here?”

  “They were fighting!” said Kirk. “I found them!”

  I glared at him. He’d been no help whatsoever. I wiped my brow and turned to Ethan.

  “Let’s go to your office.” I looked pointedly at Polly. “All of us.”

  With Polly glaring at me the whole way, the three of us began the walk. After a few steps, I realized Kirk was with us too.

  “Not you,” I said, annoyed.

  His shoulders slumped and he turned around, disappointed not to be involved. I felt a little bit sorry for him, but not much.

  A few minutes later, we were inside Ethan’s office, ready for the explanations and recriminations to begin.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Polly sat on one of the chairs in front of Ethan’s desk, hands secured behind her back, a furious look on her face.

  “Hold on.” Ethan went behind his desk and withdrew a large pair of steel scissors from a drawer. “Please don’t do anything stupid.”

  He stood behind Polly’s chair and snipped away the cable tie he’d used to secure her wrists.

  “Gee, thanks,” said Polly, holding her hands in front of her and rubbing at her wrists.

  “Adrienne, what happened?”

  Polly began speaking at once. “She stole my—”

  Ethan glared at Polly so harshly she stopped speaking in mid-sentence.

  I put the contract down on Ethan’s desk, and he stood beside me while we examined it.

  “Do you see here,” I said, pointing, “the signature?”

  “Yes…”

  “That’s not Zoya’s signature.”

  “Yes, it is!” said Polly from behind us. “Check any of her signed posters!”

  “She’s right about that,” I said. “This is Zoya’s autograph. It’s for fans, for public use. It’s not what she uses for official contracts.”

  “How do you know that?” asked Ethan.

  “She told me. And I’ve read it before anyway—lots of celebrities do that, to avoid people forging their signatures.”

  “That’s how Zoya signed it!” Polly protested. “She was exhausted, so maybe she signed with the wrong signature by mistake.”

  “Yeah, right,” I said. “I don’t believe that for an instant. You forged her signature—the wrong one—after she turned you down. She didn’t want anything to do with your business. And that’s why you had to kill her.”

  “Kill her? Me? I wanted to be in business with her! I’m the last person on this ship who would want her dead!”

  “She didn’t want to be in business with you. That’s what I heard.”

  We were at an impasse. Ethan walked around his desk and sat down, nodding his head toward the other guest chair for me.

  “Adrienne? Could you explain exactly what happened?”

  I did as asked, retelling Polly’s own story which she nodded along to as I did so. When I’d mostly covered it all, Polly wanted to have her say. She leaned forward in her chair, still absent-mindedly rubbing at her wrists where the cable tie had dug into the skin.

  “Look, that guy who took our picture, he can vouch for the fact that Zoya was alive, and that we were getting along very well!”

  “What guy?” asked Ethan. I hadn’t mentioned that specific part yet, wanting to save the information about our mystery man for after the main events had been covered.

  “It was a man with a bald head and Hawaiian shirt,” I said, raising my eyebrows at him. He gave a little nod to indicate he understood I meant the mys
tery man.

  “If we can track this person down, we’ll ask him about it,” said Ethan. “But I’m afraid that doesn’t prove anything, Polly. Zoya wasn’t killed until hours later, after the movies had finished at the drive-in.”

  “He would at least be able to tell you that we were friendly with each other!”

  “All right, thanks. We’ll definitely look into it. There’s a lot of passengers aboard though, so without a name it might be hard to find this man.”

  That was an understatement. We’d been looking for the guy for months and only ever caught glimpses of him ourselves. He was more elusive than the perfect diet.

  “This is all nonsense!” Polly had her hands on her knees. “Please, Zoya and I were bonding before she died. We spent more than an hour together that evening, and it was a pleasant one. If you’d seen us, you’d know I had nothing to do with her death.”

  “An hour? What did you talk about for an hour?” asked Ethan.

  “You know. Life. Fans. Things like that. She told me about a big new opportunity she was looking forward to. A movie.”

  “The one she had the script for?” I asked with renewed interest.

  “I guess. She was excited about it.”

  “Did she tell you where she got it from? Or anything about the origins of the plot?”

  Polly gave me a funny look. “No. Why would she?”

  “You said you talked for an hour. That’s lots of time to talk about all kinds of things.”

  “Yeah. Well we did. Anyway, we would have talked more, but she had an appointment.”

  “An appointment? It must have been a pretty late-night appointment.”

  “Yep. That’s what she said. ‘Work never ends,’ and that day she would be ‘burning the candle at both ends.’” Polly sighed. “But then look what happened.”

  Ethan perked up at this revelation. Personally, I thought she was making it up.

  “Who was she going to meet? Who was the appointment with?”

  Polly just shrugged. “I have no idea. I think she was keeping it close to her chest.”

  “Strange, if you were such good friends,” I said coldly.

  “I didn’t say we were best friends. I just said we were bonding. These things don’t just blossom in one day, you know. But if we had really been able to work together on those designs, I’m sure we would have been close friends. We were kindred spirits.”

  “Is there anything else you can tell us?” asked Ethan.

  “I can’t think of anything. You need to find that bald man. He’ll tell you how friendly we were.”

  “We’ll do our best. Thanks for your time, Polly.”

  I frowned at Ethan, not believing he was going to let her go. She had a fake signature on her contract and we had a picture of Polly threatening Zoya with a knife.

  She stood up. “The contract?”

  “I need to hold on to that for now and examine that signature. If it really is what you said, and Zoya was just tired, we’ll be able to prove it. If that’s not the case…” He raised his eyebrows at her. “We’ll be speaking again soon.”

  “But it’s my contract! Give it to me!”

  “No. And it would be in your best interest to email me a copy of that photograph, too. The one of you and Zoya and the knife.”

  Polly stared at Ethan, as if considering arguing further. I think she realized she would have better luck arguing with a brick wall, and she turned and stomped out of the room, still rubbing her wrists as she did so.

  “I can’t believe you let her go! That’s a fake signature, and there’s a picture of her threatening Zoya. And remember we heard that Zoya rejected her offer of working together?”

  “I know all that. But we don’t have any proof the signature is fake. Maybe it wasn’t true about Zoya rejecting her. Maybe she really was trying to keep things quiet until a big announcement. Maybe she was tired and used the wrong signature. We don’t have any real evidence yet. We’ll keep a careful eye on her though.”

  “She attacked me! Isn’t that evidence enough?”

  “It would be… but if it really is a genuine contract and you just took it from her, maybe she genuinely thought you were… you know…”

  “What? Crazy?” I stared at Ethan, daring him to say it.

  “I’m just saying she might have thought that. Not me! You’re probably the sanest person on this ship.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh at that, somewhat lightening my miserable mood. It definitely wasn’t true, but I guess it was Ethan’s way of trying to make me feel better. He, for one, certainly had his head screwed on better than I did.

  I’m probably saner than Cece at least, I thought with a little grin. And definitely more than the rapidly-becoming-a-hermit captain. And all of the movie people. Realizing that I was in fact pretty sane compared to some of them actually did make me feel better.

  “Let’s try and look for our mystery man too,” said Ethan. “And we haven’t gotten anywhere with the ring either. If it was the captain, perhaps he heard about you wearing it somewhere.”

  My cheeks began to flush. It was time to come clean. At least partially.

  “I… The morning after that dinner, I still had it on my finger. I forgot to take it off overnight. That morning, I went to the Captain’s Club to take some breakfast pictures. He might have seen me wearing it then. I put it in the safe right after I was in there, before I went ashore.”

  Ethan chuckled. “It must have been comfortable if you forgot you were wearing it!”

  I didn’t answer that since I hadn’t exactly forgotten I was wearing it. It felt good to get at least part of the confession off my chest, though. Even more pleasing was that Ethan wasn’t annoyed with me for wearing it in front of the captain, despite him warning me not to the night before. That kind of evened out my annoyance at him for letting Polly go.

  “Right.” Ethan stood up again. “Sorry to say, but I’ve got to get to the bridge. I’m on duty there until late tonight.”

  “Sure thing. I’ve got stuff to do too.”

  Ethan walked me outside before we parted with a hug, each heading off in our own direction.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The following morning, I was sitting outside at The Boulevard Café aka Minnie’s domain, my hair wet from the shower, while I waited for Sam. I hadn’t gotten a chance to speak with Sam the previous day, and I was still stewing over what happened with Polly.

  “Hey.” Sam knew something was up immediately. “What’s the matter?” she said as soon as she arrived. She could always tell when I wasn’t myself.

  I explained what had happened with Polly and how Ethan had let her go despite what I thought was a weighty amount of evidence.

  “It is pretty compelling. But—” she sucked in air through her teeth “—it is just circumstantial, right?”

  “Well, have you got any better explanations?”

  “Not exactly. But I don’t think Polly did it. Even if she did fake a contract. She may just have been taking advantage of the situation.”

  “Oh?”

  Before she could go on to explain, Minnie arrived with a beaming smile on her face. We ordered coffee and bagels, and she promised to be back with them in a jiffy.

  “Last night, I was talking to Susan,” Sam began. I hadn’t seen my friend the night before, as I was already asleep before she returned to the room. She’d been kept up late ‘babysitting’ Susan Shelly—one of the drawbacks of being a customer liaison to the VIP guests.

  “What did she say? Do you think she did it?”

  “No, no, not her.” She lowered her voice. “Tom Devlin.”

  “Ah. I thought it was him too, until yesterday. What did Susan tell you about Tom?”

  “Apparently, Zoya got revenge on him for a bad review by revealing an affair to his wife. It cost him a fortune!”

  “I heard that yesterday too. It does give him a motive. But that’s all. We don’t have any evidence that it could have been him.” I recapped the
issue with the fingerprints.

  “See! The fact that he wouldn’t give up his fingerprints is pretty damning, isn’t it? Oh, and it wasn’t just the divorce he was annoyed about.”

  “There was something else too?”

  “Yep. He was just about to get a job hosting an entertainment talk show on cable TV. But because of his messy divorce, the offer was withdrawn right before he was supposed to sign the contract. Apparently, there was a whole host of women he was sleeping with. One of them was the wife of the producer of the television show. It all came out because of Zoya’s meddling.”

  “Sounds like he deserved it.”

  Judd and Susan hadn’t gotten around to telling me that part of the story when I’d been with them at breakfast in the Captain’s Club. Although it made his motive even stronger, it still didn’t prove he had anything to do with her death on board. It had seemed to convince Sam though.

  “Here you go, girls. Enjoy these beautiful bagels on this beautiful morning.” Minnie took in a deep breath of the fresh air, as if especially grateful for it that morning. I knew she did the same thing every morning, though. She seemed to savor every moment of life. It made me feel like a miserable grump in comparison.

  After we thanked her, Minnie waddled away, humming a hymn to herself and singing a line or two as she went back to serving other customers.

  “Ugh. Look, it’s the woman who kept me up last night,” said Sam quietly, flicking her eyes behind me.

  A moment later, sure enough, Susan Shelly was there. She was holding a bunch of flowers and what appeared to be a box of chocolates.

  “Ah, I wanted to talk to you,” she said as soon as she spotted me.

  “Well, here I am. Is it your birthday?” I asked.

  “Oh, no. I stopped having birthdays in the ‘eighties.” She took a moment to laugh at her little joke before continuing, “These are just some little gifts from a fan. You know how it is.”

  I didn’t know how it was at all, but I smiled and nodded like I did.

  “What did you want to see me about?”

  Susan put her presents on the table and pulled out a chair, sitting down to join us.