Birds of Prey : Previously Copub Sequel to the Hour of the Hunter (9780061739101)

by Jance, Judith A.

  “Mike and Lucy Conyers are second seating,” Lars told me as we started toward the elevators. “I told her Beverly and I will come sit with Mike tonight so she can have a little break—dinner and maybe a show later. I don’t think Beverly will mind, do you?”

  “No,” I assured him. “I’m sure she won’t.”

  Lars sighed and shook his head. “Ya, sure,” he added solemnly after a pause. “It’s a hell of a thing when they get so bad you can’t leave ’em alone. It’s like having a baby all over again, only worse. The person you knew isn’t there anymore. You can’t reason with ’em. Can’t get ’em to understand. And you can’t leave ’em alone for even a minute because they’ll get lost or set fire to the house or take too many pills.

  “And I know why he keeps looking off the back of the ship. Aggie did that, too. Sat in the car looking out the back window instead of the front. Like she didn’t care at all where we were going. She just wanted to remember where she’d been.”

  Lars knew what Lucy Conyers was going through, all right.

  “What deck are they on?” I asked.

  Lars plucked a piece of paper out of his shirt pocket. “Aloha seven-six-three,” he told me. “Are you going to help out, too?”

  “I’ll try,” I said. “There may be something I can do.”

  Lars is usually bolstered by attending meetings, but this time that wasn’t true. Hearing about Lucy and Mike Conyers’ tribulations and revisiting his own bad old times seemed to have sapped the stamina right out of him. He looked as though he could use a boost.

  “Want to stop off in the buffet for a cup of coffee?” I asked.

  Lars shook his head. “I think I’ll head back to the room. Don’t much feel like shooting the breeze,” he said.

  That surprised me. Lars has a weakness for coffee. Under most circumstances, an offer of free coffee would have been downright irresistible for him, but since he turned me down, I didn’t stop off at the buffet, either. Instead, I went straight to the Aloha Deck and parked myself in the elevator lobby nearest 763. It was only a matter of minutes before Lucy Conyers showed up.

  “Hi, Lucy,” I said, introducing myself and falling in step beside her as she started down the corridor toward her stateroom. “I’m J. P. Beaumont. People call me Beau. I didn’t get a chance to meet you during the meeting. Lars Jenssen is my grandfather.”

  “What a nice man!” she exclaimed. “He offered to bring his wife and come watch Mike this evening so I can go up to the dining room for dinner.”

  “It sounds as though you can use the break.”

  She stopped in front of the door to the cabin marked 763—an inside cabin with no way to see out. Mike and Lucy’s kids may have paid for their parents to go on the cruise, but they hadn’t sprung for an outside cabin with a lanai or even so much as a window. No wonder Lucy Conyers felt as though she was locked in a jail cell. She was.

  Lucy stood in front of the cabin door making no move to insert the key card in the slot. It struck me that she was savoring this last bit of freedom before facing up to whatever awaited her inside.

  “Just gettin’ away long enough to come to the meetin’ was a big help,” Lucy said. “You have no idea!”

  “I’m sure I don’t,” I agreed. “It must be rough.”

  She nodded. “But I’m feelin’ better somehow. Not quite as hopeless as I was before, and not wonderin’ where my next drink is comin’ from. It’s so nice of all you people to worry about me. I’m very lucky.”

  That made me feel like a first-class turkey. I wasn’t there chatting with Lucy Conyers because I was a kind, concerned human being. Behind the nice-guy mask, I was actually pumping her for information.

  “You mentioned during the meeting that your husband was afraid someone might throw him overboard, too. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “You also said he’d been watching TV since we first set sail.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So when did he first start worrying about being thrown overboard?”

  “That didn’t come up until last night,” Lucy answered. “I was in the bathroom. He came and pounded on the door and told me I had to come out quick and see what was on TV. When I came out, there was nothin’ to see but more of what he’d been watchin’ all day long—waves and water and nothin’ else. But Mike was all excited, pacin’ back and forth and wavin’ his arms. He kept sayin’ that somebody had thrown Peggy off the ship and that they’d be comin’ for him next.”

  “Who’s Peggy?”

  Lucy shrugged. “Beats me. The only Peggy I know anythin’ about is Mike’s mother, but she’s been dead for thirty years, and she didn’t drown, neither.”

  “What time was this?”

  “When I was in the bathroom? It must have been around six or so, although it could’ve been earlier. All I know is by the time I got around to looking at the TV set, it was still light enough to see. I tried tellin’ Mike that he was mistaken—that Peggy was dead and he was just makin’ things up as he went along. I suppose it could be that there was a log in the water that looked like it was a person. I don’t know. I can’t tell what the man saw or didn’t see, but I can tell you for sure that I didn’t see nothin’. ‘Sides, sometimes Mike’s like that. He imagines things that aren’t real. He sees and talks to people I can’t see or hear, people who aren’t there at all. When Mike’s seein’ things like that, there are times I think I’m gonna go stark ravin’ crazy myself.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t seeing things this time,” I suggested quietly.

  Lucy Conyers’ jaw dropped. She peered up into my face. “What do you mean?”

  “Most people on board the ship don’t know about this yet, but a female passenger is missing. The last time anyone saw her was late yesterday afternoon. She didn’t come to dinner last night, and she wasn’t in her cabin overnight. Since Mike was watching the view from that stern camera, I think he actually may have seen her go overboard.”

  Lucy’s eyes widened. “Is that possible?”

  “It is.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Go find the ship’s first officer and tell him what’s happened—that your husband may have seen someone go off the ship into the water late yesterday afternoon. Then the authorities can review the tapes from the ship’s security cameras and see if they picked up any sign of what happened.”

  Lucy dropped her eyes and glanced at her watch. “I can’t,” she said. “I told the attendant I’d be back in an hour, and it’s almost that now. Could you maybe do that for me? Talk to the ship’s first officer, I mean.”

  “I’ll be glad to, but since the subject came up in the course of a meeting, I can’t do that unless you give me permission.”

  “Actually, me and Mike would be really grateful if you did,” Lucy said. “You see, it would be such a relief for me to know that Mike really did see somethin’—that he wasn’t just imaginin’ things for a change. Meanwhile, if you’ll excuse me, I’d best be goin’ inside. I’d invite you in, but I can’t never be sure of what I’ll find. Mike don’t always cover up properly, if you know what I mean. It’s embarrassin’ as all get-out for me, although it don’t seem to bother him none. Not in the least. And that’s the strange part. Back when we was young, Mike was always sort of modest-like. In fact, years ago, you wouldn’t have caught the man wearin’ a pair of shorts, or swimmin’ trunks, neither.” She laughed. “He hated his legs then, and they’re a whole lot funnier-lookin’ now.”

  Shaking her head, she put the key card in the slot, and the door clicked open. As it swung in on its hinges, I caught sight of a totally naked man sitting sprawled on the love seat. As soon as the door opened, a uniformed room attendant—a male—appeared from some other part of the room and bolted toward the door.

  “So glad you’re back, Mrs. Conyers,” he muttered as he pushed past me into the hall. “But I must go right away.”

  “Of course, Ricardo,” Lucy Conyers said to him. “Thank you so much.
”

  Then she stepped inside and closed the door behind her, shutting both Ricardo and me in the hallway. Ricardo didn’t pause to exchange pleasantries. Two doors down the hall he ducked into a service lobby while I headed back toward the elevator. From there I went straight to the purser’s desk.

  Among the hired help, there seems to be a caste system on board cruise ships. At least that was true on the Starfire Breeze. Sailors who did grunt labor on board were mostly of Far Eastern extraction—mainland Chinese and Korean. Room attendants, kitchen help, and servers in the buffet areas tended to hail from the Philippines. In the dining room, the wait-staff personnel seemed to be Portugese or Italian, with the supervisors—headwaiters and maître d’s—all Italian. The young folks in crisp white uniforms who worked behind the counter at the purser’s desk and the people who manned the cash registers in the concessions—the gift shops and bars—tended to be Brits or Americans, while the captain and other top-echelon officers were Italian.

  At the purser’s desk I waited in line with other American tourists trying to sort out their various travel concerns. At last, when I reached the counter, I said to the young man who greeted me, “I’d like to speak to the first officer, please.”

  “You are?”

  “J. P. Beaumont,” I told him.

  “And what would this be concerning?” he asked.

  “It’s about Margaret Featherman,” I replied.

  That announcement had no effect at all on any of the other passengers who were also at the counter being waited on just then, but the reaction among the uniformed crew was an instantaneous dead silence. It reminded me of driving across a bump with a CD playing in a vehicle. After that moment of utter silence, cheerful smiles were reapplied and conversations resumed.

  “Won’t you come this way, sir,” the young man serving me said. He showed me into a small office. “Please have a seat,” he told me. “First Officer Vincente will be with you as soon as possible.”

  That proved to be true. First Officer Luigi Vincente arrived within a matter of minutes. He was a tall, unsmiling man with a close-cropped head of curly, slightly graying hair. “I understand you have information concerning Margaret Featherman?” he asked.

  “That’s correct. The videos that are filmed off the stern of the ship—how long do you keep them?”

  He shrugged. “The security tapes taken of each voyage are kept for a month-long period. After that, the tapes are reused. Why?”

  “Would it be possible to review the tapes made by the stern camera last night between five and six?”

  “This is not so easy, but I am sure it would be possible,” First Officer Vincente told me. “Why do you want to see them?”

  “Because I have reason to believe someone on board saw a woman fall into the sea. It seems likely to me that woman would be Margaret Featherman.”

  First Officer Vincente’s face turned red. “Someone fell off the ship? Impossible! Who says they saw such a thing?” he demanded. “And how? Was he there when this happened?”

  “The passenger who saw it was in his cabin,” I replied. “It’s an inside cabin on the Aloha Deck. He was watching the video display of the ship’s progress on his television set.”

  Vincente considered the implications. “This seems quite unbelievable,” he said. “Preposterous, in fact. How is it that no one else noticed such a thing?”

  “Humor me,” I said. “Take a look at the tape.”

  I expected to be summarily dropped and told to go mind my own business. Instead, after a moment’s consideration, First Officer Vincente made up his mind. “Come with me,” he said.

  He led me through a maze of back-of-the-house corridors and into a staff-only elevator. Once on the elevator, we dropped far into the bowels of the ship, where he once again led me through a trackless maze of interior corridors.

  I wondered about it at the time. I was sure this territory was usually off-limits to fare-paying passengers, yet after only one initial objection, he led me on. In the process he ignored questioning looks from several of his fellow officers who let us pass without comment. Obviously, on the Starfire Breeze, if Luigi Vincente thought I was all right, so did everybody else.

  9

  EVENTUALLY FIRST OFFICER VINCENTE motioned me into a darkened room lined with dozens of glowing video monitors. Inside, a uniformed crew member snapped to attention the moment we appeared. If I had studied the arm-patch guide on my television monitor, I would have known the technician’s exact rank from what was on the sleeve of his uniform. As it was, all I knew about him was what his name tag said—Antonio Belvaducci. After an urgent consultation conducted entirely in Italian, the crewman hurried back to his computer console and punched a series of commands into a keyboard.

  “There,” Antonio said in English after several minutes had passed. “I will run the tape on the monitor at the far end.”

  First Officer Vincente led me to the last of the monitors. Someone hastily pushed two chairs in our direction, and we took seats. When the tape came on the screen, the time stamp in the bottom right-hand corner showed 17:15 /03 SEP. Because we were watching in real time, viewing the tape was a whole lot like watching grass grow—and just about that exciting.

  I admit that my mind strayed eventually. I reached the point where I was watching but not seeing. Suddenly, in his chair beside me, First Officer Vincente stiffened. “Wait,” he commanded. “Go back.”

  At the computer console, Antonio froze the image and then turned it back several frames, and there she was. At precisely 17:47 a female figure, arms flailing, came tumbling past the lens of the camera and plunged silently into the sea, where she disappeared from view. Antonio rewound the tape and played the frames again. This time, it was possible to see how she windmilled her arms in a desperate attempt to right herself, as if hoping to enter the water feet- rather than head-first.

  “Can you get closer?” First Officer Vincente demanded.

  It took a few moments for the computer to enhance a small area of one particular frame. When the image reappeared, a cold chill passed over my body as though someone had doused me with a bucket of ice water. From the nose down, Margaret Featherman’s face was shrouded in a layer of duct tape. No wonder she hadn’t screamed aloud. No wonder no one had heard her cries for help. Her mouth had been taped shut.

  “This is terrible,” Luigi Vincente said. “If you will excuse me, Mr. Bowman, I must go at once and inform the captain. When you are ready, one of my officers will return you to the purser’s desk. And perhaps, if it is not too much trouble, you would be so kind as to inform Dr. Featherman of this unfortunate occurrence.”

  I tried to object. “Wait a minute,” I said. “Shouldn’t that kind of information come from someone on the crew, someone with official standing . . .”

  But First Officer Vincente was already out the door. I turned back to the computer operator. “Can you tell me where we were right then?”

  Nodding, Antonio picked up a phone and called what I assumed to be the bridge. For my benefit, he conducted the phone call in faultless English. “Where was the ship at seventeen hundred hours forty-seven last night?” he asked.

  I turned again to the monitor. “Can I see the whole picture again?” I asked, while he waited on hold.

  After a few moments the picture expanded. Now, with my vision no longer focused entirely on the falling woman, I could see a narrow band of shoreline running along one side of the screen. So, rather than in mid-ocean, Margaret Featherman had gone into the water while the Starfire Breeze was somewhere close to land—near enough to see it, anyway.

  “Could someone swim that far?” I asked.

  Antonio gave me what struck me as a continental shrug. “That depends,” he said. “On how far she fell, how hard she hit the water, whether or not she was conscious when she hit, and whether or not she was a good swimmer. The water aft is broken up by the wake of the ship, so that is better for her than if she fell into it when it was flat. Still, it is very difficu
lt to say. The water is cold. Even a very good swimmer would not survive for long.”

  On my own, I knew that the duct tape which had probably been intended to stifle Margaret’s screams might well have worked in her favor. For one thing, when she hit the water, the tape over her mouth would have prevented a reflexive intake of breath that would have flooded her lungs with icy water.

  The crewman’s next comment was directed into the telephone, then he turned back to me. “The bridge reports we were just off Port Walter,” he said. “They say we reduced speed for some time in order to allow passengers to observe a pod of whales.”

  I remembered then the announcement that had come over the loudspeakers urging all interested passengers to come to deck 14 to observe the whales off the port bow. In other words, at the time in question, all eyes on the ship had been glued there instead of aft. The only exception had been poor Mike Conyers, who had been watching his television monitor instead.

  “Yes,” Antonio was saying on the phone. “I will tell him.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “When you speak to Mrs. Featherman’s family, Captain Giacometti wishes you to say simply that she is currently missing. Missing but not presumed drowned. The U.S. Coast Guard has now been notified and is sending Search and Rescue teams to her last-known position.”

  Right, I thought. Too bad they’re twenty-four hours too late.

  While waiting for someone to come fetch me, I remembered all those other security cameras stationed in strategic places all over the ship. I also remembered how it’s always easier to ask forgiveness for something after it’s done than it is to ask permission before doing it. Since First Officer Vincente himself had brought me here, maybe he wouldn’t mind all that much if I viewed one more tape. The operative phrase here is: Give me an inch, and I think I’m a ruler.