Chorus Lines, Caviar, and Corpses (A Happy Hoofers Mystery)

by Mary McHugh

  “Which ‘little ladies’ was he referring to?” Gini said, more loudly than she meant to.

  I laughed. What had been annoying last night just seemed funny this morning when the whole place was falling apart.

  “Relax, Gini,” I said. “That’s just the way he talks.”

  “He better not talk about any ‘little ladies’ to me,” Gini said, looking around. “Where is that waitress? I need some coffee.”

  “This is so weird,” Janice said. “My mother and her friends are always talking about some cruise they’ve just been on, where all they do is eat. They have bullion and nibblies in the middle of the morning, then some sumptuous feast of lobster and shrimp and oysters at lunch, a mid-afternoon snack, and then high tea—make that super-high tea—in the late afternoon, with pastries and little sandwiches. Here, we can’t even get a lousy cup of coffee.”

  We all laughed. Mary Louise said, “I know what you mean. My aunt was on one of those cruises. According to her, the passengers rest up until dinner, eat six courses, and finally waddle up to the buffet table again at ten for a late-night, stave-off-hunger meal.”

  “Right,” Janice said. “I never heard any of them describe a cruise like this where you have to fight for every mouthful of food, and then it’s awful.”

  We each bubbled over with stories about our own relatives, who described every vacation by what they ate. No tales of whales leaping over the bow of the ship in Alaska. No rapturous descriptions of the quetzals and exotic pink egrets on a Costa Rican cruise. Just mouthwatering reminiscences of chocolate ganache cakes, strawberry shortcakes smothered in whipped cream, and hot fudge sundaes too big to finish.

  “They end every story with, ‘Of course, we don’t eat like this at home!’ ” Janice said, and we all dissolved into laughter again. We love stories about our older relatives, because they often seem to be having a better time than we are. They travel and eat—the heck with the calories.

  “Oh look,” Mary Louise said. “Something’s happening in the kitchen The waitresses are actually bringing out food.”

  Olga ran past me. I grabbed her. “Olga, what’s happening?” I asked.

  “Sergei is in kitchen. He is cooking.” She almost smiled. “He makes good food. Wait. You see. What you want?”

  “Bring us whatever looks good,” Gini said. We sat back and opened our guidebooks, anticipating the day’s attractions.

  In a few minutes, Olga brought us each a plate with something creamy and fragrant on it.

  Gini closed her eyes and murmured “Mmmmmmm” at the first bite of a mushroom omelet, cooked to perfection. Freshly baked croissants nestled on the plate next to the main course.

  Heidi, her hair securely fastened in steel barrettes, stopped by our table. Her face looked dark and troubled.

  She looked relieved to see the smiles on our faces.

  “Is gut?” she asked.

  “Heidi, this is fabulous,” Gini said. Gini never says “fabulous.” “Sergei is really good.”

  Heidi was visibly pleased. “Sehr gut,” she said.

  “We were wondering about the chef, Heidi,” Mary Louise said. “Has he turned up?”

  Heidi looked out the window and frowned. “Not yet,” she said. “But ve are sure he is somewhere.”

  “Have you notified the authorities?” Alex asked as she started to walk away.

  “You mean the police?” Heidi said. “Oh, ja. I think someone called them. Do not worry about that chef. That Allgood. He vill turn up.” She took a deep breath. As she walked away, she said, “Ve are still hoping ve can go to Kizhi today.”

  “What’s the matter with Heidi?” Gini said after she left. “She’s not her usual disciplined self today.”

  “She’s probably worried about her job,” Alex said. “But I hope she’s right about our going to Kizhi. It’s fascinating. The buildings are so old they’re protected by the government. The whole location is considered a museum because of the age and value of the buildings. I hope you get to see it, because it’s really remarkable.”

  “Hope to see it?” I asked. “Do you think there’s a chance we won’t be able to get there today, Alex?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Alex said. “Once Russian police start investigating something, it could take them all day to find the chef. We won’t be allowed to leave the ship until they find him.”

  “Do you think something happened to him?” Mary Louise asked.

  “I don’t know, but if he really has disappeared, I don’t think anyone will miss him,” Alex said.

  “Except Brad,” Janice said. “I don’t see him anywhere in the dining room. If he were here, he would have come over to say hello.”

  “Probably still asleep,” I said. “Don’t look so worried, Jan.”

  “Well, you did say you and Gini saw him going to Allgood’s cabin last night, didn’t you?” Janice asked.

  “They were headed that way,” Gini said “And we heard Ken say something about having vodka in his room, but we don’t know if they actually went there. Brad could have changed his mind.”

  “I tried to warn Brad off, because I was really concerned about him,” Janice said. “One of the waitresses told me the chef threatened one of the sous-chefs—might have been Sergei—with a knife. I was worried about Brad, so I went looking for him. Just before dinner, I found him out on deck. I told him what the waitress said. He told me the chef went nuts when he tried to work with the kitchen staff, but that this was just an isolated incident. He said he thought the chef was a good person and he was going to have a drink with him after dinner. I told him to be careful.”

  “When Gini and I saw him last night, he didn’t look violent at all,” I said. “He and Brad were very chummy.”

  A loud siren’s wail interrupted our conversation and was soon joined by another.

  “What’s going on outside?” Pat said.

  We ran to the deck to find that the ship was swarming with Russian police. The sirens and horns of police boats down below us shattered the stillness of the morning. We looked over the rail and saw that the police were dragging the river. The other passengers were milling around trying to find out what was going on.

  “Tina,” Sue said, coming up beside us, “what’s happening down there?” The painter from Colorado was wearing a long peasant skirt and wide-brimmed hat.

  “We don’t know, Sue,” I said. “We just heard all the noise and came out to see.”

  “I’m going down there and see if I can find out what’s going on,” Alex said. “I’ll be back.”

  He was gone about ten minutes. We could see him talking to the police and then he headed back to the ship.

  “What did you find out?” Gini asked him.

  “The police think the chef was murdered,” Alex said. “They broke into his cabin and found it trashed. There was a trail of blood leading to the rail on the deck. They think he was murdered and thrown overboard. I’m going back down there and see if I can find out more. I just wanted to be sure you were all right.” He was looking at Gini when he said that. She smiled at him.

  As he ran out to the pier at the little island where the Smirnov was docked, we heard a shout from below.

  Men from the other boats converged on the spot where the shout had come from. We could see them pulling something out of the water onto the pier. It was hard to tell what they had found.

  “Does it look like a body?” Janice asked.

  “I can’t tell,” I told her. “There’s too much confusion down there.”

  One of the men in the police boat turned and waved to a uniformed man who was standing on the deck of our ship.

  The man, obviously an authority of some kind, shouted in Russian and ran down the ramp off the ship onto the pier and then onto the police boat. Alex tried to follow him, but the man in charge motioned for him to stay back. We heard Alex shout something in Russian, but the man was kneeling by a lump of what looked like wet clothes, and he didn’t answer. There were too many people aroun
d what we assumed was a body for us to see what was happening.

  “Let’s go back in the dining room until Alex comes back,” Janice said.

  “Good idea,” I said. “Want to come with us, Sue? Where’s Mark?”

  “He’s still shaving,” she said. “We can’t both get in the bathroom at the same time. He’ll be along soon. I’d love to come with you.”

  The dining room was a scene of total confusion. People moved from table to table asking each other what was happening. One of the waitresses was doing her best to serve everybody at once. She was hopeless. Heidi picked up a tray and helped her.

  At a nearby table, Barry was sounding off in his official, jury-addressing voice. “We have a right to know what is going on here. Somebody should make an announcement.” He stood up and looked around for Heidi. “You should tell us what protection is provided for us if there is a murderer on board,” he said loudly to her. “If anything happens to any of the passengers, this cruise line will have a lawsuit on its hands.”

  This was a side of Barry I hadn’t seen before. His bullying, trial lawyer side. Good thing Bill wasn’t here, I thought. He wouldn’t have liked Barry at all. And now I knew I didn’t like him either.

  I’m one of the few people in the world who actually likes lawyers, because I’ve met so many interesting, civic-minded, generous, brilliant ones. I resent the ones who give lawyers a bad name. Although, I must admit, I do laugh at jokes like: What do you call a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? Answer: A good start.

  Heidi only had to hear the word “lawsuit” once. She rushed over to Barry and tried to calm him down. “Please, Mr. Martin. Everything is under control. Ve don’t even know if there has been a murder. The Russian police are very efficient. They will ensure the safety of everyone on this ship.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Barry thundered. “The chef is missing. The police have pulled a body out of the river. Nobody has seen the chef for hours, and you call that under control?”

  Heidi’s voice dropped about two octaves. “Please sit down and have a complimentary drink, Mr. Martin. I assure you, everything will be just fine.”

  I avoided Barry as my gang and I joined Tatiana and some of the British passengers at a table near the window. The Brits looked up as we joined them. They were all talking quietly in a language only they could understand.

  “Thisisreallyveddydisturbing,” one of the women said.

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  “Veddy disturbing,” she said into her cup of tea. I realized she was the same woman who wasn’t veddy good in the morning.

  “Oh, yes, yes, it certainly is,” I said, determined not to say anything American.

  I introduced my friends to Tatiana, who looked worried.

  “Hello, Tina,” she said. “What’s happening out there? I tried to ask Heidi what was going on, but she’s too busy to answer. It looked like they pulled something out of the river. Could you see what it was?”

  “All we could see was a bundle of wet rags,” I said. “We think it might have been a body. Maybe the chef’s body. His room was trashed. Blood all over the place, Alex said. But nobody knows anything for sure.”

  Alex came back into the dining room and hurried over to our table.

  “Alex, what’s happening?” Gini asked.

  “They found a body,” he said. “They think it’s the chef because they found his passport in the jacket pocket. It was in a waterproof pouch, so they could still read it. The victim’s face is unrecognizable, but he’s about the right size for the chef and the jacket was from an English store. I couldn’t find out any more than that because they made me leave.”

  “Didn’t you tell them you were from the Times?” Gini asked.

  “Of course,” Alex said, “but that only made them more anxious to get rid of me. I know the inspector, though. I’ll see what I can find out from him. I’ll let you know.”

  He squeezed Gini’s shoulder and went back outside.

  Heidi stopped at our table. “You vant more coffee?” she asked.

  “No, we’re OK, Heidi,” I said. “Are you all right?”

  “Hardly!” she grunted. “Two people are missing, somebody is definitely dead, all the passengers have to stay on the ship, and I could lose my job. Everything is definitely not all right. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. And it’s all my fault.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “How could it be your fault?”

  She looked around, her eyes darting from side to side. “I threatened to fire Allgood,” she said. “What if he did something to himself? Or maybe he drank too much because he was depressed over possibly losing his job and passed out and fell overboard. That would be all my fault.”

  I put my hand on her arm. “Heidi, you did what you had to do. He was a terrible cook and a terrible person. You did the right thing. Don’t blame yourself. And what do you mean two people are missing? Who else are they looking for?”

  “Nobody has seen that young man, Brad Sheldon, who was vith the chef last night. He has to be somewhere on the ship, but no one can find him. He’s not in his room. The police are looking for him because he was the last one to see the chef alive. Natürlich, they vant to question him. I vouldn’t be surprised if he killed Allgood.”

  “Well, whatever happens, it’s not your fault,” Pat said. “Don’t worry. The police will figure it out.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Heidi said, looking around and then heading for another table.

  I took a sip of my coffee, which was way too strong. Seeing Olga passing by, I raised my hand to stop her.

  “Olga, could I have some cream for my coffee, please?” I said.

  Olga stared at me, uncomprehending.

  Tatiana motioned to her and quietly asked her in Russian for the cream. Olga nodded and went back to the kitchen.

  “Tatiana, English doesn’t seem to be a very popular language over here,” Gini said.

  “Well, remember, you were the enemy while these kids’ parents were growing up. They didn’t hear a lot of good things about Americans at home. English is not their favorite language.”

  “Then how come you speak it so perfectly?” I asked.

  “My father loved English. He was a linguist and studied many languages, and he wanted me to love it too. Anyway, English seemed like a very useful thing for me to know. It actually opened up the world for me. I lecture frequently in England and in the United States.”

  “Tina said you’re giving lectures here on the ship,” Gini said. “I’d love to hear you.”

  “You’re all invited,” Tatiana said. “And, in return, maybe you’ll teach me some tap steps?”

  “We’d love to,” Janice said. “We’ll make you an honorary Hoofer and teach you our routines.”

  “Attention,” Heidi said in her loudest, most commanding voice.

  We all stopped talking, sure she had something terrible to tell us.

  “If you vant,” Heidi said, “vun of our guides is giving Russian lessons in library downstairs. Is difficult language, but you might vant to learn. Anyway, starts now.”

  “Oh let’s do that,” Mary Louise said. “I’d really like to learn a few more words than hello and good-bye. Anybody else?”

  “Sounds good to me,” I said. “And it will take our minds off what’s happening on this ship. Let’s go.”

  Tina’s Travel Tip: Try to learn a few words of the language of the country you’re visiting, in case you need more sour cream in your borscht.

  Chapter 7

  Privyet, Stranger

  As we started down the steps to the library, Janice and Gini caught up with us.

  “Where are you guys going?”

  “They’re supposed to be having a class in Russian now. Want to come?”

  “Why not?” Janice said. “All I know how to say in Russian is da.”

  “That figures, Jan,” Gini said. “That’s all you know how to say in any language. Yes, yes, yes.”


  “That’s better than your nyet, nyet, nyet,” Janice said. “I have way more fun.”

  “You’re probably right,” Gini said laughing. We filed into the snug little library, the shelves filled with books mostly in English. Chairs were lined up, and we were surprised to see that almost every seat was taken. As we sat down, a large woman with a southern accent behind us said, “Have you heard anything about the chef? Is it true he was killed last night? Was it because of his cooking?”

  “I haven’t heard anything,” I said, “but I don’t think anyone would kill him for that.”

  “My husband was ready to murder him after he ate that terrible dinner,” she said.

  Elena, a young Russian guide with shoulder-length blond hair, welcomed us to her class and stood in front of a blackboard.

  “Welcome,” she said. “I will give you some simple words and phrases that might be useful. You can find them later at www.russianphrases.com if you like. I just want to help you pronounce them.”

  She handed out lists of Russian terms to all of us, in both the Cyrillic and English alphabets.

  “One very important thing you must remember,” she said, “is that, like many other languages, there is a formal Russian and a more informal, more personal, form of address. It’s like vous and tu in French, for example. You don’t address a cab driver or a waiter or any stranger with the informal phrase. It’s considered rude.”

  “I don’t speak French either,” the woman behind us said.

  Elena looked puzzled. “That’s all right,” she said. “We don’t have to worry about French this morning. We’re just going to concentrate on Russian. Let me give you an example of what I mean about formal and informal greetings. When you say hello to a stranger, you use the more formal zdravstvuyte.”

  She pronounced it slowly, something like zdra-stvoo-tye.

  “If you get to know someone well, you can use the more informal hello, privyet”—she pronounced it pree-vyet—“which is the same as ‘hi’ in English.”

  She continued down the list of words she had written for us, helping us to pronounce spa-si-ba for “thank you,” to which you would say pa-zhal-sta for “you’re welcome,” and it can also mean “please.” She went on to proshu proshsheniya, which means “excuse me”; Kak dela? which means “How are you?”; Menya zovut—“My name is”; da-svi-dani-ya for good-bye and finally the very useful ya budu borscht sbal’shim kalichistvuhm smitany, or “I’ll take borscht with lots of sour cream.”