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

by A. R. Winters

  “They are charming, aren’t they?” said Cece with a smirk. “They really deserve each other.”

  Cece reached into the large pocket in the front of her cleaning smock and withdrew a small bunch of keys. She stuck one in the front of the vending machine, and a moment later the front of it swung open, causing me to step back.

  “Want anything?” Cece grabbed a bag of chips that I’d been eyeing.

  “Are we allowed?” No one had issued me a vending machine key.

  “Definitely. It’s one of the many perks of the job.”

  Cece pulled open the bag of chips, grabbed a handful, and then held it in front of me. Before I knew it, I’d helped myself to some of them.

  “I’ll just share yours.”

  “Suit yourself.” Cece pushed the door back closed, locked it, and put the key back in her pocket.

  “…yourself next time!”

  The voice was clearly a woman’s, and it sounded familiar.

  “The woman with the ring—did she have black-and-blonde hair?”

  “Yep,” confirmed Cece between crunching bites of chips. “You know her?”

  “Patsy Prince.”

  Not only did I know her, I also remembered her in Ethan’s office, putting her grandmother’s necklace in his safe. And in the Grand Ballroom when she’d seen Ethan give me the ring. And also at the breakfast in the Captain’s Club, where she’d gleefully pointed it out again. And then on the beach, without her husband, when we went ashore.

  Maybe it wasn’t the captain I should have been following after all. Unless they were working together?

  Finally, the door to the room opened and the Princes emerged. They had stopped arguing and exited their room quietly. I stood at an angle that allowed me to see their reflection in the glass of the vending machine, and I was pleased when they walked the opposite way down the hallway.

  “Come on.” Cece grabbed my arm the second they had disappeared around a corner.

  We walked back to their room, and I was annoyed to see they had hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the door. I frowned at it.

  Cece didn’t. She lifted it up and tossed it onto the floor.

  “Oops.” She kicked it so it slid a little way down the corridor. “These things happen all the time.”

  I covered my mouth with my hand to stop from laughing. In theory, I very much disapproved of what Cece had just done. In practice, however…

  Cece unlocked the door and pushed her cleaning cart in ahead of us, so we would have a good excuse if we were caught. She led us through to the bedroom, where she had seen Patsy with the ring.

  “She was right here, holding it up like she was examining it.”

  At first, I looked on top of the bed, as if she might have just tossed it there. Unfortunately not.

  “I’ll check the drawers. You check the closet,” said Cece.

  This wasn’t the first time we’d searched a room together, and I didn’t find myself plagued by guilt. I was nervous though; you never get over that. They could come back any minute.

  Inside the closet, I went straight for the safe. The door of it was open, and there was nothing inside. I felt a little miffed. The ring deserved a place in the safe. But I was also glad, since I didn’t know how to go about opening the safe without a code. Cece would probably know the trick, though.

  On the other side of the room, Cece was rifling through the drawers in the nightstand, the vanity, and the writing desk.

  “Nothing. You?” she called to me.

  “Not yet…”

  I searched every shelf in the closet, as well as the pockets of all the clothes hanging up. No ring.

  At the bottom of the closet was their luggage. I picked up each piece experimentally, but they all seemed to be empty. I unzipped each one and checked them anyway, since jewelry was light. They were both completely bare inside.

  “Any more ideas? Should we go through to the living room?”

  Cece tapped me on the hip and I stepped out the way. She frowned at the inside of the closet and then picked up the two large empty suitcases. She tossed them through the air, sending them flying onto the bed.

  She stared down at the floor of the closet, as if she expected something to be underneath.

  I turned and went back to the bed. When she tossed the suitcases, I’d heard something. Something that sounded awfully like the clicking clink of metal against metal or gemstones.

  Maybe those suitcases weren’t empty after all.

  “Over here. I think there’s something in this case.” I picked it up with two hands, and shook it in the air. Sure enough, there was a rattling sound again, and it wasn’t the zippers on the outside.

  Cece and I opened up the smaller of the two suitcases. When we had it unzipped and lying completely open on the bed, it appeared to be empty.

  Cece frowned at it for a moment, and then she stuck her hand inside and ran it around the inside edges.

  “Here we go…”

  With a tearing sound, Cece pulled at the thin fabric of the inner lining of the case. But she wasn’t damaging it. It had previously been cut and then re-attached with a long strip of velcro.

  “Ta-da!” As she pulled back the lining, a secret inner compartment was revealed.

  Inside, there was a cloth bag with a drawstring that had been placed between two of the interior bars that provided structure and strength to the case. I picked it up and shook it in my hand. It jangled. Jackpot.

  BZZZ.

  It was my phone.

  “Open it!” Cece urged. She had all the patience of a seven-year-old on Christmas.

  “Hold on.”

  It was Ethan. I held the bag in one hand and made a show of answering my phone. Usually, she was way better at teasing me than the other way around, but I had my moments. She looked incredibly annoyed that I was answering the phone to talk to Ethan instead of diving straight into the bag.

  “Adrienne? Sorry about last night, and not calling yet this morning. I’ve been swamped. It seems not only do we have a killer, we’ve also got a jewelry thief aboard.”

  “A jewelry thief?”

  “Yeah. It might explain what happened to the ring. I’ve had four different passengers since last night come to see me. It’s been non-stop. And not a single lead.”

  “No leads, huh?” While I spoke, Cece fell back on the bed, a massive smile on her face. “I think I might have one for you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. Remember Patsy Prince? Well, Cece and I are in her cabin right now, and we just found… hold on…”

  I put the phone down and opened the drawstring bag, emptying its contents onto the bed to Cece’s delight.

  “The ring—your ring—as well as four others, three sets of earrings, and a couple of expensive necklaces.”

  “Don’t move! I’ll be right there!”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  An hour later, Ethan and I were finally at the mini-golf course. But this time, we weren’t here for a date. We were here after the jewel thieves.

  By checking their purchases on the ship’s computer system, Ethan tracked them to Hemingway’s, where they had bought two mixed drinks. Some early morning dutch courage, perhaps. From a distance, we observed them there for a few minutes, noticing that Jimbo kept checking his watch.

  When they were finished with their vodkas and soda water, they made the short walk over to the mini-golf course.

  Earlier, Cece and I had assumed the Princes would be immediately arrested and locked up. But Ethan had other ideas. He wanted to catch them in the act. There was too much risk in simply ‘finding’ the stolen goods in the couple’s room—they would no doubt claim it had been planted there.

  He wanted some actual proof. That’s why we were playing at being spies.

  The Princes were now standing at the entrance to the mini-golf course, where there was a small wooden hut that handed out the putters and dealt with bookings. The pair was looking at the information sign, as if finding it interesti
ng.

  Jimbo kept glancing to the side, and he said something to Patsy. They both shook their heads, acting as if they had decided mini-golf wasn’t the game for them. Then Patsy began walking away from her husband, in the direction of the path that led from the inside of the ship to the circuitous path around the outside of the deck. Jimbo walked to the nearest railing, leaning back against it trying to look casual.

  Of course we were suspicious. Who doesn’t like mini-golf? And why had they split up? Ethan and I made our own way to the information board, to repeat what the Princes had just done, pretending to find the sign especially fascinating.

  “What do you think?” I said to Ethan under my breath.

  “I think you look very nice today.”

  “About them.”

  “They’re acting weird. Let’s see what they do next.”

  Checking on Patsy again, she was now walking with more purpose. I looked ahead of her and immediately saw her target. Susan Shelly was walking toward the path that led around the ship to the pool deck.

  After successfully intercepting her target, Patsy tapped Susan on the arm, and with a broad smile started chatting away. I was too far away to hear their words, but it was obvious from the body language that it was something meant to delight the actress.

  While his wife talked to Susan, Jimbo hung back, holding his phone in his hand as if he were reading something but repeatedly glancing at his wife.

  After a few moments of conversation, Susan was nodding at Patsy. She turned in Jimbo’s direction for just a moment and gave the slightest raise of her eyebrows. It would have been imperceptible if you weren’t looking for it, but Ethan and I were.

  Right away, Jimbo slid his phone into his pocket and started walking toward the direction Susan had come from. Presumably to rob her cabin. They no doubt knew her schedule already, and that she was due to give a talk at the drive-in. They just needed to confirm that she was actually going where she was supposed to be going.

  “Right,” said Ethan in my ear. “The game is afoot! I’m going after him. Keep an eye on her.”

  Ethan gave my hand a quick, warm squeeze as a farewell. While he went after the husband, I went after the wife and Susan. I wasn’t sure what was about to happen, but it seemed like a ripe opportunity to get closer to Susan again.

  I could hear Patsy asking for an autograph, exclaiming what a big fan of the actress she was. This worked like a charm on Susan, who was smiling and assuring the supposed-fan that she would be absolutely thrilled to give her an autograph.

  “Do you have a pen?” asked Susan.

  Patsy shook her head.

  “Sorry, I don’t! If I’d known I was just going to bump into you, I would have brought one with me.”

  I didn’t believe her for an instant, and it reaffirmed my belief that this was just a distraction while her husband went to rob the cabin. If Patsy really wanted an autograph, she would have gone to one of Susan’s events instead of waiting to bump into her on the ship.

  The actress opened up the canvas bag she was holding to look for a pen. It was a bag like the ones Polly printed images onto, and I wondered if she had received it as a sample.

  I peered over Susan’s shoulder into the bag. There was a thin sheaf of papers poking out the top! They were in the bag upside down, and I could see a more than distinctive giant Z staring up at me. These weren’t any old scraps of paper; it was the contract Polly had shown me in her cabin and I had confiscated!

  Before they even knew I was there, I had reached between the two women and snatched the contract out of the canvas bag.

  Susan spun around, dropping the bag as she did so, her hand reaching out to grab the stolen paper. Patsy turned with her, a look of shock on her own face. I jumped back to avoid Susan’s hand.

  “What’s this?” I said, waving the contract in Susan’s face, then whipping it up in the air to hold it far above my head when she reached for it.

  “I… don’t know? It must have ended up in my back by accident!”

  “Yeah, right,” I said, shaking my head at her. “This is the contract between Zoya and Polly!”

  “It must be a mistake.”

  I rolled my eyes at her. Susan may have been a somewhat talented actress, but her improv skills left a lot to be desired. She couldn’t seem to think up a half-believable excuse on the spot.

  “The last time I saw you, you were coming out of Ethan’s office. You must have stolen it right off his desk!”

  Susan bit her lip, looking at the contract in my hand as if she could get it back through sheer force of will if she stared at it hard enough.

  Patsy had recovered from her surprise at the interruption, and she had taken a couple of steps back. She pressed a few buttons on her phone and then held it up to her ear, while Susan looked at me open-mouthed, unsure what excuse to present next.

  Patsy was clearly going to call her husband to warn him that things were going sour with Susan, and that she might be heading back to her cabin sooner than they thought. I couldn’t have that. While Susan stood opening and closing her mouth while she tried to think of an explanation for the contract, I bent down and snatched up her bag off the floor.

  “Stop!” I yelled at Patsy. Her eyes caught mine, and she looked even more astonished when I swung the canvas bag at her, knocking the cell phone out of her hand.

  While I was dealing with Patsy, Susan recovered. My hand holding the contract had dropped in the scuffle, and she went for it, trying to snatch it away. And she succeeded. Well, almost.

  I managed to pull the contract back at the same time, but neither of us had a good grip on it. At just that moment, a gust of wind blew through, whipping the contract from my fingertips and tossing it up into the air.

  We both stared as it started to fall back down and then was whipped up again by the breeze. It danced in the air, twisting and turning, all the while heading closer and closer to the edge of the ship.

  Just then, I saw Shaun Anderson, the pool boy with a crush on Sam, walking past to take his shift on the pool deck.

  “Shaun! Help!”

  As soon as he saw me, he rushed over.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Stop her!” I pointed at Patsy Prince, who was now on her knees, phone back in her hand. “And don’t let her dial that phone!”

  Shaun stood over Patsy. He held out his hand and raised his eyebrows at her. “Come on.”

  Patsy glared up at him and placed the phone onto his palm. She slowly stood up, winked at Shaun, and then spun around as if to sprint away. But she was too slow. With surprising swiftness, Shaun dropped the phone again and grabbed her by both shoulders.

  She wasn’t going anywhere.

  Susan and I stood side-by-side, watching the contract. It was over the side of the ship now, still dancing in the wind, but it was a dance to its demise as it made its way down to the ocean waves below.

  We both walked over to the side of the ship and watched it land atop the peak of a wave. It instantly became waterlogged then sank beneath the surface.

  Susan had a smug look on her face.

  “Come on. We’re going to Ethan’s office,” I said to her, holding her by the elbow.

  “And bring her too!” I said to Shaun Anderson.

  Before we could head inside, Ethan appeared. In front of him, arms cuffed behind his back, was Jimbo Prince.

  Upon seeing him, Patsy shook her head in annoyance.

  “Well, that’s just great.” She spat onto the deck. “Idiot!” she called by way of greeting to her husband.

  With Shaun Anderson’s help, the jewel thief couple, Susan, Ethan, and I all went down to his office.

  It looked like we had a few things to sort out.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  When we all arrived at Ethan’s office, we sent Shaun on his way, and Ethan sat the jewel thief couple down on one sofa and Susan on another. He and I pulled up the two guest chairs that usually sat in front of his desk.

  “What a g
reat idea it was to go on a cruise!” Patsy said to her husband.

  “It was a great idea. The only problem was you.”

  “Me? Me? If your plan hadn’t been so easy to spot that even these idiots—” Patsy stopped to look and Ethan and me “—can figure it out, it wasn’t much of a plan!”

  “Excuse me. Would you two like to quiet down a minute? You’ll have plenty of time to argue later.” Ethan stared at them, and they shut their mouths for the time being.

  “Right,” I said, fixing my eyes on Susan. “Why don’t you explain to us how you got Polly’s contract?”

  Ethan glanced at me in surprise. He didn’t know about this yet. His eyes flicked over to his desk and back again. He hadn’t noticed the contract was gone.

  “I came here to ask to store some of my most valuable jewelry in Ethan’s safe—”

  “What do you have?” asked Jimbo.

  His wife said, “Shut up, already.”

  “—I had heard that there were jewel thieves aboard.” Susan shook her head in a school-teacherly look of disappointment in the couple opposite her. “And while I was here, I couldn’t help but see that contract. Just sitting on the desk. Adrienne had mentioned it to me, and then there it was.”

  “And you stole it because…?” I asked.

  “Zoya was gone. It didn’t seem fair that she should still be making deals. I figured if she couldn’t make a deal with Polly, then I could. Without the contract, Polly would no doubt come to me—I was the only other horror movie star on the ship.”

  “Seems like you don’t have any problem cheating and stealing to get ahead,” said Ethan.

  “Oh, that’s just how it is in Hollywood. But that’s a long way from killing. From murder. I hope you don’t think I’m connected to that.”

  I did, and there was nothing she could do to stop me thinking that without more evidence. There was something else I wanted to check on, though.

  “Susan, did you notice anything odd about the contract?”

  She wrinkled her brow in thought, and her years seemed to catch up with her. “What do you mean?”