Cashed In

by Jackie Chance

  “So I got my video camera, bribed the people in the cabin directly below yours to let me in and taped my camera to their shower curtain rod and lifted it up to your balcony. I could see you on the bed and panicked. But then you started snoring so I felt better.”

  “You have that on video?” I asked.

  He nodded proudly.

  “Let’s put it on the website,” Ingrid offered.

  He grinned at Ingrid, and she grinned back. I guess he’d forgiven her for yesterday’s dalliance. They would’ve probably spent hours grinning at each other except I broke it up with the story of what happened to me on the promenade.

  “Awful,” Ingrid murmured at one point when I paused to catch my breath. She turned away and began reviewing my jewelry.

  “So who is this g-guy?” Jack mused when I’d finished, throwing a secret look Ingrid’s way.

  “I still don’t know.”

  Ingrid shrugged, still avoiding eye contact. She was hiding something for sure. But what? And why?

  Jack had been busy since he’d left me snoring. He’d found Eria’s cabin on the fourth deck pretty easily later that night as he stalked the hallways and finally found a mute security cretin who sounded like Phil stationed outside a cabin door. Showing great potential to be a real investigative journalist or a career criminal, Jack got some fishing line from his cabin, tied it around the vase of flowers on the glass table at the elevator, pulled the line up from the bottom of his pants, through the waistband, under his suit jacket and held it on his finger. As he walked six feet past Phil, he yanked it. The huge crash at the end of the hall sent Phil racing to check it out. Jack knocked on Eria’s door and she opened it.

  Once inside he got the scoop. She’d found their cabin in slight disarray, clothes here and there, bedcover askew, but it just as easily could have been attributed to Mahdu rushing to get ready for dinner as it could have been an attacker. The walkie talkie was nowhere to be found. His wallet was missing. Ferris was nowhere to be found, his cabin undisturbed. Kinkaid and her cruise cronies had scared Eria into leaving the ship in Cozumel with the promise they would continue to look into Mahdu’s disappearance, although they filled her with propaganda that made her believe he was just taking a hiatus from her or from life. In other words, his disappearance was his fault. They fed her statistics about people (like Rick) who went mysteriously MIA for hours just to reappear and people (possibly like Rawhide Jones, they told her) who got so depressed they jumped or so drunk they fell off the side. Sometimes people had medical conditions they were unaware of, like epilepsy, that left them in potential danger of falling over the railing accidentally. Even though Mahdu had no history of depression, binge drinking or mysterious neurological disorders, and had been heard yelling at another man who was currently missing, Eria was young and scared and intimidated by authorities. I couldn’t blame her for leaving.

  If I were smart, I probably would too.

  “So that was pretty much a dead end,” I told Jack. “Even though you were ingenious.”

  “How did you get out without the security guy seeing you?” Ingrid asked.

  “Eria went on the b-balcony and called out for him to help. He ran past where I hid behind the door and I s-slipped out. Then, I got lucky.”

  “Sounded like you were already lucky,” I observed.

  “I went to the Marker Bar and some off-duty employees were having a late night drink. After eavesdropping a while, I t-talked myself into the group. Two beers later I found out Valka and Alyce Kinkaid are l-lovers.”

  “What!?” Ingrid and I asked simultaneously.

  Jack smiled proudly. “Yep. They don’t think anyone knows but another girl who works at the s-spa says she walked in on them together and backed out before they saw her.”

  “Wow,” I said, “So they could be conspiring—in the disappearances or simply in the cover-up. Or maybe Kinkaid’s phone case was left there during a romantic encounter she wants kept secret.”

  “Or all of the above,” Ingrid pointed out.

  “The plot thickens, because once I made it to my c-cabin, Kinkaid appeared and told me that they had a t-tape of me slipping into Eria’s room and, if we were running s-some kind of life insurance scam, they could help prove it.”

  “Intimidation tactic,” I said. “She just wanted you to know they were watching you, because you were hanging with me yesterday.”

  “What amazes me about this whole thing is how well their c-cover-up is working. Even the few cruise employees who know about the d-disappearances, or will admit to knowing, t-tow the party line.”

  “Lemmings,” I said.

  Ingrid and Jack cocked their heads at me.

  I explained, “Most people are lemmings, following the guy in front of them, doing what they’re told without question. It’s a theory I consider every time I do an ad campaign.”

  “Except us, Bee, we’re antilemmings,” Jack said excitedly, bouncing on the balls of his deck shoes.

  “Right you are. Okay, antilemming league, how would you like a project for the day?”

  I left the ship, having my cruise ID card scanned and a piece of paper pushed into my hand, giving me instructions on how to stay safe while visiting Mexico. Of course the best way to stay safe in Mexico was to stay out of Mexico which is why at the bottom of the paper it said: “Following these is no guarantee against injury or death.”

  Jack had told me before I left that he’d just read on the Internet that human heads were washing up on the beaches of Acapulco—apparently messages from the insurgents that they were serious about killing the tourism trade, literally.

  “You don’t have much cash on you, do you?” the cruise employee asked me as he handed back my card.

  “Five dollars in my right shoe, five in my left, ten in my bra,” I answered. “My cell phone is in my pocket.”

  “You’re rich here, even without money. You’re American. You can be ransomed. Be careful,” he warned. “And good luck getting cell service.”

  I had to elbow my way through a ragtag group of protestors holding signs proclaiming the government a fraud, the president a cheat, tourists stupid for spending money to promote corruption, not quite that eloquently, but that was the general gist.

  Elva and Howard were waiting on the corner of the filthy dock with two other cruisers, obvious in their matching Absolute Hold ’Em golf shirts and plaid Bermuda shorts. The quartet was surrounded by a bunch of skinny, ragged hoodlums brandishing knives at each other. It was only when I was running up to the mob to save my parents that I realized the gangsta wannabes were our official armed guards giving a display of their bodyguard skills. Scary.

  “This is our daughter,” Elva announced, pointing me out to the assembled group.

  The gangstas all settled down, sheathing their knives, mostly in ankle scabbards or waist scabbards under their loose T-shirts.

  “Oh, my dear,” Elva exclaimed to one of the boys. “Aren’t you afraid the knife will come loose and, uh, scar your manhood?”

  One who apparently knew English translated for the others and they elbowed each other, hooting with laughter, the boy in question slapping Mom on the back. “Gracias, por su cuidado con mi cojones, vieja,” he said.

  Well, and wasn’t this going to be fun?

  “What did he say?” Elva asked me.

  “He told you thanks for caring.” I left out the mention of his testicles and, especially, the “old woman” part. Knife or no knife, Mom would take him on about the latter.

  “You. Are. Welcome,” Elva mouthed slowly.

  “De nada.” I told her under my breath.

  “De. Nada.” She enunciated again like the boy was mentally challenged. Ack.

  The boy bowed his head and snickered. His friends jostled him. Dad had struck up a conversation with one of the protestors, a guy with an ugly scar that spanned his face from his left ear to above his right eye. Dad took out his wallet and handed him a five. I rushed over there, leaving Mom with her new buddies.
“Dad, don’t pull your wallet out like that,” I whispered harshly, smiling at Scarface as I guided Dad away. “In fact you shouldn’t have it at all away from the ship.”

  “Girlie, you should be more trusting of human nature. People are good.”

  Unless they are desperate. Unless they are offered an opportunity to be bad and get away with it. Unless they decide to advertise their cause by surfing disembodied heads onto the steps of resorts. How had I been raised a cynic by such Pollyanna parents?

  The tour guide had arrived by the time Dad and I returned to our cozy group. He gave us a rundown on safety precautions, pretty much a candy-coated version of the cruise handout, and then we were on our way to our little bus. I couldn’t help looking down at the water off the side of the dock to see if I could locate any floating heads.

  We paused at some street vendors who displayed handmade silver jewelry in their hands. A mariachi band was weaving its way through the crowded dock. When the other cruise passengers on our tour stopped to shop, I pulled my cell phone out and dialed Frank.

  I got a signal for a second, then lost it. I moved a couple of feet to the right and tried again. This time it went through. I was so prepared for the voice mail that when Frank answered, I almost dropped the phone. And when I didn’t do that, I walked three steps to the left and lost him anyway.

  Damn.

  I returned to my good spot and dialed again. Frank answered on the first ring. “Honey Bee.”

  “Frank!” I said, pressing the phone to my ear. There was a lot of background noise, from my end certainly, and I couldn’t tell how much from his end. I was so relieved to hear his voice that I spoke what I felt when I heard it. “I miss you.”

  “I miss you too. I’m so sorry I’ve wrecked our vacation.”

  “It’s okay.” Even though it wasn’t. I didn’t know what to tell him. I didn’t want him to worry, but I needed advice. “I just wish you were here.”

  “I wish I were touching you right now, Honey Bee,” his deep, reassuring baritone rode smoothly through the phone, spilling right into every erogenous zone I owned.

  “I think I’m desperate,” I purred back.

  “Desperate for what?”

  “Generally desperate—desperate for your counsel, desperate for your voice, desperate for . . . lots of things you could do for me.”

  “Hmm . . .”

  “Don’t do that.” I moved too far left again as I squirmed. I moved back. “Are you there?”

  “I’m here, unfortunately, and want to be there,” he said. “So, because I’m not, you need to tell me what’s going on.”

  “You didn’t get my e-mail?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, damn, I don’t know where to begin then,” I said, sticking my finger farther into my ear to drown out the mariachis. It sounded like they were in stereo.

  “Start anywhere,” Frank urged. “I’ll catch up. How’s the tournament?”

  “I’m still in it.”

  “Of course, you had the best teacher in the world.”

  “Complimenting both you and me in one sentence. Talented. I haven’t been catching the best of cards, though, which disproves Richard’s theory of gambling and love.”

  “Who’s Richard? Should I be jealous? And what’s his theory?”

  “A nerdy but nice mathematician on board. No. And his theory is if you are unlucky in love, you will win at cards.”

  “So you think you aren’t lucky in love and therefore should be winning? I’m offended.”

  “Well, I’m the one who got stood up.”

  Frank was quiet.

  “Frank?”

  “I’m with you in more ways than you can imagine,” he finally said, quietly.

  Humph. He didn’t know I was imagining warmed Dove soap scent around every corner of the ship. Good thing too or he’d get a big head.

  “Sure I shouldn’t be jealous?” he prodded. “There’s no one on board you’ve met who you want to tell me about, is there?”

  Did he have a sixth sense about Ian?

  “I met Ingrid,” I said in a challenging nonanswer.

  “Bee!”

  His tone was suddenly urgent in warning. It caught my attention so sharply, I looked around. I saw an object sailing through the air at the other end of the dock and ducked behind one of the street vendors just as it exploded. The force knocked the rickety vendor stand onto me, the vendor and a dozen other people who’d piled behind it with us. We held ourselves still, waiting in the sudden silence. As the smoke and dust began to clear, we began to move along with other huddled groups. Unconsciously I’d used my body to shield a small boy, whose mother, carrying an infant, grabbed his hand, thanking me profusely. She dragged him off, running. Others ran, others stood stunned. Sirens whined in the distance and a half dozen people closest to the blast lay alive but bleeding.

  I looked frantically for my parents and finally saw them safe in the bus two hundred yards away. My phone had been knocked out of my hand in the scramble for cover, and I’d be lucky to find it again. Then I heard the ring under a pile of woven blankets. I dug toward the sound and picked it up. “Hello?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. It wasn’t a big bomb. How did you know something bad was going to happen?”

  “I’m in security. We have an instinct about these things.”

  The sirens were getting closer. “The cops are almost here. I guess I should go help the injured.”

  “Bee, listen to me, go ahead on your tour. You don’t want to talk to police in Mexico. You don’t want to go to jail in Mexico.”

  “Why would I go to jail?”

  “Because that is where most people end up when the Mexican police are involved. Unless you have a lot of money on you.”

  I doubted the twenty dollars I had on me would do. “But I actually wanted to tell them about all these disappearances we have on board the ship—”

  “Bee, a bomb just went off and you think they want to hear your story about missing Americans? Get out of there and watch your b—”

  Static roared in my ear. Damn.

  My mom had spotted me and waved out the bus window. A pair of our gangsta guards came walking my way, also waving at me to hurry. One of them had a gun. Where did that come from? The sirens were getting louder. I ran, still trying to dial Frank. The phone reported no service.

  As I stepped up into the bus, the driver gunned the accelerator. The boys jumped in behind me and shoved me up the stairs. I crawled into the first seat and saw the police cars wheeling around the corner. And down an alley I saw the sun glint off blond hair. It was only after we’d sped past, that what I’d seen registered. I’d swear it was Ian Reno, a tall blond young man wearing shorts with toucans on them and a small dark-haired woman in khakis in an intense conversation with two men.

  Twenty-three

  Undaunted by the explosion (in fact, thrilled by it since it would make her the talk of bridge club for generations), Elva was bound and determined to see the Chichén Itzá ruins. We really didn’t have a choice, as the police were in the process of blocking off the entire pier, the Gambler was pulling away from the dock and the tour director admitted we wouldn’t be able to get to the ship until later that afternoon, once they sent the dinghies for us. So it was spend the day with the Mexican cops or go climb around on ruins where people now long dead had lived.

  What a vacation.

  The day actually went smoothly after the big bang with which it began. I never could get a cell signal again, so was left replaying the conversation with Frank over and over in my mind. I hadn’t told him I was in Cozumel—how did he know I was in Mexico? Of course, he had the cruise itinerary so he could have guessed, but how did he know I was taking a tour? But the biggest question of all was how did he know I’d been in danger? Maybe he heard the zing of the bomb over his fancy high-tech security-expert phone. Maybe he didn’t know but was getting ready to yell at me about something and hollered my name that I interpreted
as a warning. Maybe we were so psychically interconnected he could feel what I felt no matter where we were.

  Okay, I didn’t believe that one, but it sounded cool.

  Every time I gave up trying to solve that puzzle I returned to Ian in the alley. Had it really been him? Who’d been the American woman with him? And why were they in a dark alley in Cozumel?

  The bomb at the pier had probably increased our safety the rest of the day because police had gone to all the tourist venues, gathered up the protestors and hauled them off to jail. So much for free speech. The paddy wagon was just speeding off as we arrived. The ruins were empty, so it was a quiet day except for the time when Mom talked one of our bodyguards into showing her how to rappel.

  I’d had to put a stop to that before Elva killed herself.

  By the time we headed back to the ship, my mind was in so many pretzels I wasn’t sure if I’d ever think straight again.

  Jack was waiting for me when we got on deck after bribing our way through the police barricade. Good thing Dad brought his wallet after all. Because while they seemed titillated by where my remaining ten dollars had been located, I don’t think it would have kept them from detaining us. Dad’s couple hundred did.

  “Guess I have to win the tournament to pay you back, huh, Dad?” I asked, giving him a squeeze.

  “Aw, you’re worth it—most of the time—when you aren’t ruining my fantasies.”

  “What are you talking about, Dad?”

  “I always wanted to go out with a rock climber.” He reached over and pinched Mom on the rear then chased her up the stairs. Oh dear.

  Jack watched them go, looking a little soft around the edges himself. “C-cute c-couple,” he murmured. “For a pair of geriatrics.”

  “Who are you?” I asked. “I thought you were Jack Smack, tough investigative journalist?”

  “So? I c-can appreciate a healthy human relationship, can’t I?” Jack demanded defensively.