Blue Voyage

by Diana Renn

  “And then what?”

  “Then you can talk to the authorities, once someone at the embassy tells us who, and tell them everything you know about Lazar and his operation.”

  “Oh, God, no.”

  “I know it’s scary to talk to people in uniform. Believe me. But if you’re honest and helpful, I bet they’ll let you off easier.”

  “I guess I can do that,” said Sage, but she still looked worried.

  “By the way, where’s Riza now?” I asked. “Is he going to pop up somewhere and throw a wrench in our plan?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Riza and I are done. That’s the one thing I know for sure. I can’t believe I let him persuade me to work for Lazar. I don’t want to see him ever again.”

  “Good,” I said. “Don’t. You could definitely do better.”

  Birds were flying overhead. The rain had acted like one of those white noise machines outside my shrink’s office, masking our conversation, but now that it was letting up, I worried we might be overheard. We went back to Sage’s hideout office.

  “I should go,” I said. “Some of the Geezers are actually here, and so’s my mom.”

  Sage smiled sadly. “How’s your aunt doing?”

  “Better. I’d tell her you said hi, but—”

  “I’m in hiding,” she finished. “I know.”

  “We’ll get you out,” I promised, trying to sound confident.

  “Hey,” she said, softly, as I turned to go. “Some of what I said on the cruise was true, you know. I’m not a total liar.”

  “I know.” I smiled. “I’m not a total liar, either.”

  “Like, I really do love Freya Stark. Have you had a chance to read the book yet?”

  “Um, no? I’ve been a little busy looking for you and for an ancient cursed artifact, and trying to save people’s lives. I haven’t quite gotten around to it.”

  “Right.” She smiled wryly. “Got it. Well, anyway, thanks. And Zan?”

  “Yes?”

  “Be careful. There’ve been a couple other kids who got recruited by Lazar’s organization, for their language and acting skills. There was this Russian girl, and a guy from Chile . . .” She trailed off and bit her lip.

  “And?”

  “They went to Cappadocia on a special assignment for him. And they never came back.”

  “He killed them?”

  “Presumably, though the deaths looked accidental. Riza says Lazar is famous for never shooting at close range or getting his hands covered in blood. Their bodies were found in a car. A car that had gone over the edge of a cliff. These guys mean business, Zan. And they’re masters at the art of the cover-up. You have no room for errors.”

  36

  The spa party returned by taxi to the Mavi Konak. The ladies shared their stories, all except for me. I sat in the backseat, wedged between Maeve and Fiona. As they chattered away, I looked closely at each of their pink faces, glowing from their exfoliating scrubs, and wondered which of these women might have the urn in her room back at the hotel. I wished they’d been scrubbed one more layer down to reveal a guilty look. But their faces betrayed nothing, except for good spirits and health.

  “So the woman tells me, ‘We’ll wash your hair just like your own mother used to, when you were a child,’” Maeve spluttered between laughs. “Then she proceeds to pour bucket after bucket of scalding hot water all over my head! I tell you, my mother never washed my hair like that. If she had, I’d have run away from home!”

  “Me too!” Ingrid exclaimed. “Oh, it was horrible! I couldn’t see! I couldn’t breathe!”

  “And what about that massage?” said Fiona. “Where you’re lying on that slab, like a piece of meat being tenderized?”

  “I think I went down six layers of skin,” said Mom.

  “Look at this,” said Alice, displaying her chafed arms. “It’s me at age twelve! I’m back!” She nudged me and winked. “You think we’re a bunch of old coots, don’t you, dear? But beneath all these wrinkles, we’re still us.”

  “Yes, appearances can deceive,” said Maeve, waggling a finger at me.

  “Oh, youth is wasted on the young,” sighed Alice when I didn’t respond.

  Everyone laughed. Mom looked especially happy. She seemed younger, healthier, more relaxed, as if the spa really had returned some past version of herself and she’d gone back to the serene and beautiful mom I used to like hanging out with. The mom who’d seemed happy with my dad, happy with her family around her, back in the days before Dad ran for office, before I got sticky fingers in stores and developed a taste for booze and parties. Back when life was easier for her, for all three of us.

  Maybe the things Dad had done and the things I had done had changed Mom, too. I only noticed it now that she seemed to be changing back.

  But my mirth evaporated and deep dread returned as we neared the hotel. I closed my eyes, not wanting to face what surely awaited me.

  Opening my eyes when we pulled up to the curb, I immediately saw a familiar car parked in front of the hotel. A white Ford Focus.

  And a familiar face. Orhan got out of the white car, smiling at my mom.

  “Orhan!” Mom said, fluffing her damp hair and exiting the cab. The other women and I got out, too, all of us staring at the two of them. “You made it! How was the drive?”

  “Long,” he admitted. “But I am so eager for this wonderful opportunity! I will not let you down.” He grinned wider at Mom, clearly admiring her hip-hugging capri pants and her loose blouse. Spotting me, he said cheerfully, “Hello, Zan! It is nice to see you!” Then he greeted the Geezer ladies, who looked dumbstruck at the sight of the chef from the Blue Voyage cruise.

  “Opportunity?” asked Aunt Jackie, who had come to the front door to greet us.

  Orhan gave a little bow. “Your catering service has arrived!”

  We all looked at Mom. “Kitsie?” said Aunt Jackie. “What’s going on? And by the way, has anyone seen my cell phone? I can’t find it anywhere.”

  “Let’s all go inside and get out of the traffic fumes, shall we?” said Mom.

  In the lobby, while Mustafa got Orhan his room key, Mom and Aunt Jackie pulled off to the side of the room to talk. I followed at a short distance. They talked in near-whispers, but I hid behind a tall potted plant and managed to hear every word.

  “This is the surprise caterer?” Aunt Jackie whispered. “You brought him all the way from the coast?” She glanced at his suitcase. “And he’s staying here, too? For how long?”

  “Please don’t be mad, Jackie. I called at least ten caterers, and they were way out of our budget. Orhan’s barely charging us anything, and you know he’s an excellent cook. We’re just paying for his ingredients, a free room for a couple of nights, and gas money for the drive.”

  “Really? That’s it?”

  “That’s it. He’s not after money. He wants job experience. And we owe him, don’t we? He put up Zan and me when we were stranded in Marmaris. He’s so excited to help us with this event, and he’ll have a chance to interview for some high-end Istanbul restaurants while he’s in town. It’s a career move for him.”

  “That’s true, he was good to you and Zan, to all of us,” said Aunt Jackie. “But he’s still a stranger in many ways. We know so little about him. Why is a man in his thirties, who isn’t married and is living with his mother, just now finishing a school program? That’s a bit unusual in Turkey. What’s he been doing for the last ten or fifteen years?”

  Mom frowned. “I don’t know. I never thought of that.”

  “Well, I have. You’re my sister, and I worry. Even if I am the younger, crazy one. I’ve dated guys on the rebound before, in my past, and I know that can blind you to certain things. Like people’s motivations.”

  “This isn’t what it’s about.” Mom looked hurt. “I mean, yes, okay, I wouldn�
�t mind having a date for the party. But I brought him here to help you.”

  I’d heard enough. Maybe Mom deserved a couple of evenings of feeling like some guy was interested in her. I liked Orhan well enough. But it was too weird, having him here. And I wasn’t ready for both of my parents to be dating other people.

  “What’s with her?” I heard one of the Blue Voyage ladies ask as I dashed up to my room.

  “Teenager,” said Maeve in an ominous voice, as if I had a disease.

  As I fumbled with my room key, I heard footsteps behind me.

  “Zan, wait,” said Nazif, coming up behind me just as I pushed the door open. “Did you talk to Sage? Do you have the urn?”

  I looked down the hall left and right. “Can we talk in my room?”

  He hesitated. “My father is concerned we are spending so much time together.”

  “Are you concerned?”

  “No. The opposite! But—”

  “I won’t keep you long. I just don’t want to discuss this in the hall.”

  I held the door open for him, and he came inside. I shut the door behind us, all my senses alive as I realized we were alone together in a hotel room with my mom and all the adults downstairs.

  But Mom could come up any minute, and with the clock ticking on finding the urn, the stage was hardly set for romance. We stood on opposite sides of the couch, Nazif venturing into the room only a few steps.

  I pulled myself together and told him, quickly, what Sage had told me about working for Lazar and how our theory about her had been right: she had tried to double-cross him, but then chickened out and had the urn stolen out from under her. “We’re pretty sure the urn is right here in this hotel,” I said.

  His eyes widened. “How could that be?”

  “All the passengers on our boat were in the area when it fell over the side of the hill, and we were all looking for it. Sage thinks someone found the boulders she’d hid it under and quietly took the urn.”

  “So you’re going to interview all the guests?”

  “No.” I sat on the edge of the couch and played with the fringe on a pillow so I wouldn’t have to meet his steady gaze. “I know that would be the most honest thing to do. But if someone’s kept the urn this long, there has to be a reason. I can’t expect them to tell the truth. I need to look in their rooms. In their luggage. Which, I know, is technically breaking and entering,” I added quickly. “But I don’t have strong enough evidence to get the police involved in a search. I don’t see any other way.”

  “Of course,” he said. “This is what you must do.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I don’t want to see you become Lazar’s next victim because of this business. We know he had a hand in your uncle’s death. If you have a chance of finding the urn, you should look. And I will help you.” He took the ring of room keys off his belt and jangled it slowly.

  “Right now?”

  “No. The guests will soon be in their rooms,” he said. “And not while you are working, either. It is too risky to search in three separate rooms when guests may be on the premises, coming and going at any time. You could be caught. And if you are, and if you do not find the urn, it will reflect badly on the hotel.”

  I nodded. I didn’t want that to happen. I couldn’t do that to Aunt Jackie.

  “It is best if you search during the party tomorrow evening, when everyone will be out at the same time,” he went on. “I will perform a twenty-minute puppet show. You can take my key ring then and search the three guest rooms.”

  “It’s a plan.” I smiled. Even though it meant delaying the search a little bit longer, and I was dying to ransack everyone’s bags right away, we had to be careful. Like Sage said, I had no room for errors. “Thanks, Nazif. But if you don’t feel comfortable with it, you can get off the train here, you know. I mean, this doesn’t have to be your problem.”

  “But it is my problem,” he insisted. “This smuggling situation, this is all of our problem here in my country. Lazar is stealing our history. And if we are very careful, and we get that urn, I believe we can stop him.”

  Orhan cooked his signature eggplant dish for Mom, Aunt Jackie, and me that night. We brought dinner to the rooftop and feasted beneath the stars.

  I looked up at the indigo sky and thought how lucky I was to be able to enjoy that view. I wasn’t in hiding like Sage, or in a police station or jail. No one had shown up to question me about the Lycian Society break-in yet. I was sure that soon Lazar would be off the streets.

  “I have news from the coast,” said Orhan. “Remember the other yacht that was near us a lot on the cruise? The large one with the American couple on board?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “The Gulet Anilar,” said Aunt Jackie.

  “It was found off the coast of Bodrum. Abandoned,” said Orhan, in a dramatic voice.

  “Abandoned!” I cried, almost knocking over my water glass.

  “Oh my God,” said my mom.

  “It was not a legally registered yacht,” said Orhan. “It also had gone through several name changes and paint changes. Before it was the Anilar, it was called the Altin. And before that, it was something else,” said Orhan. “The captain is missing now, as is the crew. The coast guard and police in Bodrum have taken the boat into custody for further inspection into its history, so the original owner can be traced.”

  “That boat must have been worth so much money!” Mom exclaimed. “Who would do such a thing? The captain?”

  “He may have abandoned ship because he did not want to be arrested,” said Orhan. “Same with the first mate and the cook. But the owner of the boat, not being registered, is unknown. The boat in fact may have been stolen from some other place, even another country. This is all over the news back in Dalaman.”

  My mind raced. Riza was gone, then. Probably deep in hiding like Sage. So who was in charge of the boat and its strange itinerary during our Blue Voyage? Had Lazar and Vasil boarded the boat to take command of it until Sage produced what they’d come for? And had they ordered it to be abandoned when they realized the police might be closing in?

  Now I had an even stronger feeling that Inspector Lale could in fact be trusted. And should be trusted. After all, when we’d spoken on the phone before, she had told me she was looking into the Anilar and its crew. Maybe she’d come so close that they were all forced to sacrifice the boat. An insider wouldn’t sabotage a smuggling ring that way. Whatever was happening on the coast right now was definitely upsetting Lazar’s plans.

  “Excuse me,” I muttered, shoving my chair back from the table.

  “Everything okay?” Mom asked.

  “Stomach problem,” I said, and I ran down to my room and got the business card out of my backpack. Then I ran down to the lobby. Mustafa was busy in the back office, talking to the new maids he’d just hired that day. I glanced at them through the office window as I passed by with the phone. They didn’t look like spies at all, just two plain-looking older women. But I wasn’t taking chances. I took the receiver to the outdoor garden where I could talk in private.

  This time, Inspector Lale picked up on the second ring.

  “It’s Zan,” I said. “Can we talk?”

  Later that evening, the other guests joined us on the rooftop for dessert and conversation. I didn’t converse, though. I sat alone on an outdoor sofa in the corner, near Nazif’s roof, trying to reassure myself that I’d done the right thing by inviting Inspector Lale to the party tomorrow night.

  She’d apologized for not returning my calls quickly enough and for being hard to reach. “We’ve uncovered the connection to the Anilar,” she said. “We are one step closer.”

  I wasn’t ready to tell her about Sage yet, since I now felt protective of her again. But I did tell Inspector Lale about my uncle’s possible connection to Lazar. My secret plan was to make sur
e Lazar was at the party by sending him an official invitation through that neighborhood simit vendor, whom I’d seen walking around the street off and on ever since he’d delivered that first forged note from Lazar.

  “It’d be good if you could come and bring some backup,” I said to Inspector Lale. “I can’t say much right here in case anyone overhears me, but I think you should come to this party, just in case Lazar or any of his friends show up. We advertised all over the neighborhood, so I’m sure he knows about it. He might take an open house as an open invitation to look around the hotel for Sage, or the urn he thinks she might have.”

  “I will definitely be there,” she assured me.

  I finally felt some degree of relief. Part of me wanted Inspector Lale to interrogate all the cruise guests about the urn and go through their luggage. But without clear evidence that any of them had taken it, I knew she’d be powerless to search their belongings. And if she questioned a guest who was hiding the urn, that guest could get scared—and get rid of it. The risk was too great.

  But with both Lazar and Inspector Lale at the party, all I had to do was get the urn from whichever boat guest had it and deliver it to him with Inspector Lale as a witness. Then he could be arrested on the spot. And if my theory about the urn proved incorrect and I couldn’t find it in the guest rooms, I could at least tell Lazar I’d looked for it. That conversation alone, witnessed or recorded by Inspector Lale, would be enough to book him. Even though the urn would remain at large, we’d have a murderer off the streets. It seemed like a fail-proof plan.

  Mom was waving me over to join her and the other guests under the little white lanterns we’d strung up for the party. “Don’t sulk alone in the corner,” she said. “We’re party planning. It’s happy stuff. Come and talk with us.”

  I reluctantly took a seat near the cruise guests.

  “I hope one of us wins the raffle,” Ingrid was saying. “Did you all hear about the prizes?”