All went well, until Day Two of the cruise, when he stepped out of his cabin, thinking to take a stroll around the upper deck while his wife got dressed for the first seating in the main dining room. He hadn’t quite shut the cabin door behind him when the sight of a short, chubby man hurrying by drew him up short.
“Beaumont!”
The man turned.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
His chubby partner in crime put his right index finger to his lips. “Shhh, that’s not the name I’m using.”
“Then who are you?”
“Let’s just say I’m someone else for now.”
From inside the cabin, Yarnell’s wife yelled out, “Did you say something?”
“Damn,” he muttered, “she’s got some kind of radar that kicks in every time you’re in the immediate vicinity.”
Whenever he found himself about to be caught in a bad situation, Yarnell usually relied on his unwritten motto: “Given enough time, I can explain everything.” Unfortunately, the hazards of his profession meant that suspicious cops, disgruntled business proprietors, and gun-wielding homeowners seldom gave him the time he needed to come up with a good explanation before loud noises and high-speed projectiles pursued him to the nearest corner. That’s when a good pair of running shoes came in handy as his backup solution.
However, under the present circumstances running wasn’t the answer, thus he decided a simple lie to his wife would probably suffice. He poked his head back through the cabin door. “I was just talking with the room steward, telling him what a great job he was doing.”
“Well, tell him to quit laying my nightie out on my side of the bed at night while we’re gone off to supper. Freaks me out when someone messes with my lingerie. You know how private I am about personal stuff.”
Yep, Yarnell definitely knew that. If Victoria had a secret anywhere in his domicile, it was going to stay that way forever. Most of what he’d managed to see over the years, before the lights got hurriedly turned off, had been patterned and sewn from long flannel, even in summertime.
Out of habit, he nodded his head, even though Patricia couldn’t possibly see him from her position in front of the mirror in the bathroom. “I’ll be sure to mention that.”
He popped his head back out of the cabin, quietly shut the door, and commenced to whisper. “I told you months ago, I needed to take a few days off in February to keep peace in the family. If the wife finds out you’re here, she’ll think I’m using our wedding anniversary cruise as an excuse for us to pull off another job. Then she’ll start remembering about our junior burglar sleeping in the closet back home and I’ll be on the hot seat again.”
Beaumont pursed his lips like he was about to impart some sage advice.
Pause.
“Better not tell her I’m here then.”
“I’m not going to tell her, but you need to stay out of sight.”
Beaumont acted like he was considering the request.
“Okay, I’ll conduct business on my own.”
“What business?”
“Didn’t you see all that expensive jewelry them women was wearing at the Captain’s Welcome Aboard Party last night?”
“Hey, I’m supposed to be on a romantic anniversary vacation here, rekindling the fires of connubial devotion, so to speak,” Yarnell explained. “Anyway that’s what Patricia calls it. I’m not supposed to be looking at other stuff.”
“Well, it’s there, and I’m working on an angle to get some of it.” He paused. “The jewelry, I mean.”
“Well, make like you’re invisible and do it on your own.”
“Some partner you are.” Beaumont stomped off down the hallway for two whole steps. Then he hesitated and turned.
“Just out of curiosity, where’d you leave our protégé?”
“Back at the flat. He’s supposed to be watering that potted plant I gave Patricia for Christmas so it don’t dry out and die while we’re gone.”
“You got your wife a potted plant for Christmas?”
“Yeah, I was making like a customer in this florist shop to see where they kept their safe when some Salvation Army bell-ringer reminded me it was Christmas Eve already. I hadn’t picked up a gift for Patricia yet, so it turned out to be a last-minute thing.”
Beaumont nodded his head. “Lucky for you.”
“Yeah. If the store owner hadn’t been busy locking up his cash register, I’d have never gotten the thing out the door. It was a little big to hide in my coat.”
“What kind?”
“What kind of what?”
“The plant.”
“Oh, it’s one of them Orange Jasmine trees, dwarf size.”
“Ah, a Murraya exotica.”
“Huh?”
“Always green, lots of fragrant white flowers, smells like citrus.”
Now Yarnell bobbed his head. “Sounds like it.”
“Nice choice.”
Then Yarnell remembered Beaumont’s earlier question about just being curious. “Wait a minute, why’d you ask where the thin guy was?”
Beaumont opened his mouth to say something, apparently changed his mind, and finally settled for, “Oh, nothing.”
While Yarnell was still digesting this reply and trying to figure out if there was something else he should be asking, Beaumont turned, was down the passageway, and gone from sight.
For a few moments, Yarnell continued staring at the empty corridor, then finally turned in the opposite direction and made his way to the elevator. On the ride up, he was still mulling over in his mind some of the words from the conversation with his partner in crime when the elevator door slid open. He stepped out and joined the moving crowd, everybody going someplace else to find their next fun.
That night at supper, Yarnell and his wife joined three other couples at a large, round table with reserved seating. After taking his assigned chair, Yarnell realized that by looking slightly to the right of the person sitting across from him, he had a nice view of the captain’s table. Sure enough, there was an expensive jeweled necklace sparkling in the lights from the ship’s overhead chandelier, and that necklace was draped across the upper chest of some white-haired lady in a designer dress. The entire ensemble screamed M-O-N-E-Y. Beaumont was right, this was a target-rich environment for burglars. Too bad he himself was on vacation and forbidden, by Patricia, to indulge in his chosen profession for this one week.
Then he wondered where Beaumont was sitting so as to observe all these intended targets. Trying to be unobtrusive, Yarnell gradually swiveled his head left, then far right to check out occupants of nearby tables. No Beaumont. That was probably a good thing.
Yarnell relaxed as best he could and let his wife carry the conversation with the other couples at his table, especially since he had found out at an early age that he had a very small comfort zone. Strangers in close proximity always bothered him, gave him a twitchy feeling, which usually necessitated the freedom to wander.
According to his street psychologist, Lester Formlick, a head doctor with two online degrees prominently displayed on his portable folding table, these two elements of psychosomatic behavior derived from traumatic incidents within Yarnell’s youth, although Lester never did say which incidents had caused the problem. And that would be ten bucks, please. Any deeper analysis into the roots of the issue came at a highly increased rate.
Yarnell had paid the ten dollars, not sure he wished to delve any deeper into his psyche at the moment. However, to his way of thinking, both elements of his behavior seemed to derive from a short stretch he’d done during his younger years in an iron bar-hotel upstate. Not exactly what one referred to as a posh resort.
These days, the only people he felt truly comfortable with were other burglars in a setting where he could openly discuss professional techniques, who the good fences were, and which gentlemen of the night got away with whatever valuables weren’t guarded well enough by their previous owners. It was like discussing a pro baseball pl
ayer’s stats, except these statistics involved scores made, estimated value of the purloined objects, and the actual dollars earned after said objects were laid out to a fence. Getting caught by the law and the number of years thereafter spent in confinement went into a negative statistics column. Close calls and spur-of-the-moment evasion made for legends in this business, but it wasn’t something a guy could talk about with strangers. Try telling a group of dentists, accountants, or office workers that you were a burglar and see how quick the party stopped.
Just before dessert was served, Yarnell found himself staring at the centerpiece on the captain’s table. From this distance, it appeared to be a potted plant, green, with lots of little white flowers. Almost reminded him of the one he’d bought his wife for Christmas, but he decided not to bring that to her attention on what was allegedly their romantic cruise of a lifetime. Instead, he leaned over and whispered in her ear. “I got to make a pit stop.”
Wandering up the steps from the dining room and on down the hallway, Yarnell entered the men’s room. He was standing at the urinal when another man stepped up beside him on his left and muttered at the wall.
“Did you see him?”
“See who?” asked Yarnell without turning his head.
“The Thin Guy,” responded Beaumont.
Yarnell glanced quickly back over both shoulders. The rest of the room looked vacant to him, although for some reason he felt tempted to check under the stall doors.
“What are you talking about?”
“I thought you were staring right at him,” said Beaumont.
“When?”
“At supper.”
“Where were you?”
“Never mind where I was. Was that him?”
“If you’re talking about our protégé,” replied Yarnell, “no, I haven’t seen him. He should be back at my flat watering the plant, plus working day shift at the mortuary. Why?”
“I swear I keep getting glimpses of him here and there on the ship, but when I get closer, zip, he’s gone. And, I don’t see him anywhere.”
“Have you considered glasses?”
There was no answer.
Assuming that Beaumont’s silence was the result of a bruised ego from Yarnell’s insinuation of middle-age failing eyesight and therefore maybe Beaumont needed to see a doctor about acquiring spectacles, Yarnell waited a few more seconds before glancing over to his left to see how his partner was taking it.
Nobody there.
He zipped up and turned around.
Other than his reflection in the mirror, the remainder of the room was empty.
Yarnell hurried back to the dining room and took his seat. Risking a quick look at the captain’s table, he noticed that the centerpiece was now gone. Strange. But before he could mull over any good reasons for a potted plant to disappear from the middle of that particular table, his wife interrupted his thoughts.
“Do you smell something?”
Cautiously, he sniffed twice. “Like what?”
“Like citrus. There seems to be the faint scent of oranges in here. The aroma reminds me of home.”
Mentally searching for a way to change the subject, Yarnell was in the process of drawing out a long “Ahhh . . .”, when the lady on the other side of his wife leaned over and rescued him.
“It’s just that stuff maintenance sprays into the air-conditioning system,” the lady chimed in. “You know, to freshen up the air, make it smell good.”
“That’s right,” said Yarnell. Then, he glanced hurriedly around, not sure what he expected to see.
On the surface, everything appeared normal.
For the next two days at breakfast, lunch, and supper, Yarnell checked out the captain’s table, but the potted plant never returned. And any centerpiece which did appear on that table was always smaller and arranged in a more artistic manner. Yarnell could now see the face of whoever was seated on the other side of the table decorations, thus he also noticed that the guests seated with the captain kept changing from day to day. He surmised there was a kind of rotating schedule in place that allowed some of the higher-paying customers to claim the boasting privilege of having rubbed shoulders with the ship’s captain. That was fine with Yarnell; he personally preferred the safety of anonymity. However, he found himself constantly checking out other tables to see if that same potted plant had found a new location as centerpiece.
The rest of the week was uneventful.
Until Day Six.
On the late evening of Day Six, Yarnell was in the casino having one of his favorite tropical rum drinks with fresh fruit chunks speared by miniature plastic swords and a green toy umbrella perched in a tall tulip-shaped glass—you could buy these same souvenir glasses in the ship’s gift shop if you had the inclination to take home a memento of your romantic cruise—when a lady screamed. Yarnell, who had just that very moment punched a brightly lit button that instructed his slot machine to gamble the maximum amount allowed, almost pulled the arm off the one-armed bandit. And his subsequent quick inhalation of breath inadvertently drew a gust of high-proof rum up through his drink straw. Tears flooded his eyes. Through the mist, he craned his neck in the general direction of the scream. Frantic word segments came with the woman’s second outburst.
“My jewels are gone,” was the most Yarnell could decipher out of the jumbled words, but that was enough to galvanize him. He was out of his chair in a flash and had taken two long strides toward the nearest exit when he realized that he personally hadn’t done anything illegal. This was one time he was innocent of whatever was happening to someone else’s personal possessions. Besides, as he glanced forward at the doorway to safety, he observed one very large steward now blocking the exit. Yarnell had always prided himself on recognizing undercover security when he saw it in action. Evasion tactics automatically kicked in. Doing a quick left wheel, eight short steps, then an abrupt left face, he turned back toward the commotion, but was at least now standing in the rear of the crowd and off to one side, an anonymous face among many.
From his position of relative safety, Yarnell noted a well-dressed man with hard cop eyes attending to the screamer. Her volume gradually trailed off, dropping at least an octave or two lower in pitch. This was soon followed by a smattering of nervous giggling on her part, although the ensuing laughter of people around her seemed to be of a more genuine nature as the crowd began to disperse.
The muscle-bound steward at the exit was seen to relax and soon melted back into the casino décor.
“He’s good,” was the thought going through Yarnell’s mind. “I’ll have to keep an eye out for that one.” And he once again reminded himself that he was not currently engaged in any illegal activities, nor was he allowed to do so during the remainder of the cruise.
It wasn’t long before his curiosity gained the upper hand. So what had all the ruckus been about if no one was concerned now? Tapping the shoulder of an old man who was none too gently clearing a path through the crowd with a walking cane, Yarnell politely inquired, “What happened back there? The screamer?”
“Not much,” replied the oldster in a raspy voice. “Some old biddy thought her jewels were stolen.”
“Were they?”
“Nope, clasp broke on her necklace, but when it fell away, one end snagged on her blouse. Her diamonds were still there, she was just too blind to see them.”
“Fortunate turn of events in the end,” replied Yarnell.
The old man snorted. “Damn near broke my eardrums.”
“There is one thing,” said Yarnell.
“What’s that?”
“The way she was taking on, we know them diamonds were real and not paste.”
The old man snorted again. “Like I care.”
“Yeah,” Yarnell murmured to himself, “but there are those onboard who do.” Feeling suddenly overcome with the need to wander, he turned away and beat the old man out the door. Air, he needed air, free air and room to think.
It wasn’t until Yarnel
l found himself alone on the aft upper deck that he realized he still had his tropical drink in hand; two flavors of rum, chunks of golden pineapple, green toy umbrella, red-striped straw, souvenir glass, the works. He paused near one of the tarp-covered life boats to lean on an outboard rail and suck up any residual alcohol.
As he stood there, a full moon broke out of the high clouds, casting a silvery glaze on the ocean waves, painting dark stripes and shadows along the upper deck. Light breezes sprang up, keeping the night cool. A quiet place to meditate on potential circumstances.
On his left, one edge of the white boat tarp turned upward.
“Psssst.”
Yarnell shook his head.
The white tarp moved a little farther back and whispered.
“Hey.”
“No pssst,” replied Yarnell, “no hey.”
“Is anybody else in sight?” came the next whisper.
“Only me,” muttered Yarnell.
“Good.” The tarp moved just far enough for Beaumont’s upper body to pop out of the lifeboat. “Watch out, I’m coming down.”
Yarnell took a step sideways, stared straight ahead, and sipped the last of his drink.
Beaumont moved close and rested his elbows on the rail. “Not sure how you found me, but you’ve got excellent timing.”
“I don’t want any part of whatever you got in mind.”
Beaumont opened his dinner jacket and started unwinding a long rope. “I merely require your assistance for a short while.”
“Forget it.”
“Five minutes tops,” urged Beaumont.
“Not if the world were about to end.”
Beaumont tied one end of the rope to the top rail and started fashioning a loop in the other end while he talked. “You realize that if I don’t make some quick money to pay off Bent Nose Tony, then you and Patricia are going to have another houseguest when we get home.”
Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine 03/01/11 Page 11