by R. T. Jordan
“If you so much as investigate rats in the galley, you’ll find yourself back in protective custody for the duration of this cruise,” Captain Sheridan grumbled. “Everybody out! Go to your respective staterooms and don’t try to return until late tomorrow morning. Miss Pepper is going to bed!”
Tim and Placenta gave Polly a kiss good night. As the trio engaged in a group hug, Polly said, “Cori and Rosemary. Find out what they know.”
CHAPTER 15
“Polly Pepper is the most fascinating person either of us will ever know, but frankly, her detention is our freedom,” Placenta said as she and Tim left Polly’s stateroom and walked toward the main bank of elevators.
“Some vacation. We should have known Polly would find herself in hot water,” Tim said. “Wherever Polly goes, dead people spoil the party.”
“And we get sucked into the final exit mess. Forget Polly’s investigation,” Placenta said. “I’m not spending the night on anybody’s tail—other than Lawrence’s. Let’s hit the piano bar and have a drink while he’s still playing. If you’re nice, I may introduce you to the bartender.”
“Been there. Done that.”
As the two stepped into the elevator and pushed the button for the Promenade Deck, they talked in hushed tones about what they’d overheard Cori and Rosemary say regarding Polly “cashing in.” Tim shrugged and said, “We don’t really know that they were talking about Polly.”
“Who else?”
“Someone in the casino? I don’t know.”
When they arrived at the bar it was crowded with older couples dancing on the parquet floor, and singing along to “The Twelfth of Never.” Tim and Placenta found seats on a long bench behind a small round table that was bolted to the floor. They were close enough for Placenta to see and be seen by Lawrence, who winked when she caught his eye. A cocktail waitress arrived and placed two napkins on the table before them. Tim looked at Placenta and said, “This one night, let’s not have champagne!”
“Right-o. A dirty martini, straight up,” Placenta said to the waitress. “Gin! Not vodka!”
“Same here.”
Humming along with “The Candy Man,” Placenta divided her attention between talking with Tim about the handsome sailors who were guarding Polly, watching Lawrence’s fingers dancing over the piano keyboard—and thinking of his fingers dancing around her navel. A particularly interesting couple at a table several feet away in front of them caught her eye. She nudged Tim and nodded in their direction. “Our friendly cruise director, and the lovely and talented Rosemary. They seem to be having a wee tiff.”
Tim and Placenta watched as Rosemary gave Saul a short but strong shove. As she rose to leave her seat, Saul grabbed her wrist and forced her to sit down.
“Ouch!” Tim flinched when he saw the pained expression on Rosemary’s face. “Let’s join the lively couple and see what’s up.”
Tim and Placenta made their way to Saul and Rosemary’s table. They came up from behind the pair and arrived just in time to overhear Saul complain, “We’ll all roast in hell.”
Rosemary sneered, “I’ll happily stoke the coals under your butt!”
“Plans for a barbeque?” Placenta squealed as she and Tim caught Saul and Rosemary by surprise. “I have a fab recipe for a chipotle and red wine barbeque sauce. It’s positively delish. I’ll give it to your executive chef. The passengers will mutiny for more!”
Saul looked away, and Rosemary fumbled to open a cosmetics compact to check her lipstick in the mirror. They remained quiet.
“I couldn’t help noticing your darling tennis bracelet from across the room,” Placenta said, pretending that admiring Rosemary’s jewelry was the reason for their visit. “A present? Did the bruise come with it?”
Rosemary quickly covered her wrist with her other hand. “It’s nothing,” she said, and gave Saul an elbow to his ribs.
“Such a crazy day! Death always makes me thirsty!” Tim said, attempting to engage them in conversation. He looked around for the cocktail waitress. “Ah! Perfect timing,” he said, as she found where they’d moved to, and set two martinis on the table. “Another round here.” He indicated Saul and Rosemary, and handed their margarita glasses to the waitress.
The objections from Saul and Rosemary came in a simultaneous burst of “Thanks, but no thanks.” However, Tim made a grand gesture of insisting on playing host and sent the waitress off to fill the order. “It’ll be fun,” he said. “We finally have a night without my mother.” He looked at Rosemary. “Did Saul tell you she’s been put away? Captain’s orders. And they’ve thrown away the key for the next twelve hours.”
Rosemary was snotty. “Probably a safety measure—protecting the other passengers. Your mother’s a little … eccentric.”
Placenta gave Rosemary an icy stare. “If you mean that in the same way that Saint Oprah is eccentric as she single-handedly saves the planet one free car giveaway at a time.”
Rosemary made a patronizing nasal sound and tried to squeeze out from behind the table. “I need to go. It’s been fun, but …”
Placenta did not budge. “Your drink’s on its way,” she said with a sharp edge to her voice. “Afterward, you can sleep like the dead.”
At the keyboard, Lawrence segued from “Little Green Apples” to “Weekend in New England.” Placenta sighed and raised her glass to the pianist. She looked at Saul. “Did you ever think about what song you’d like played at your funeral?”
The cruise director gave her a look that translated to unexpected wonder at her lack of tact.
“That’s a rather odd question,” Rosemary said, looking down her nose.
Placenta was unfazed. “Nonsense. One should be prepared for the inevitable. You’re dying. I’m dying. Saul’s going too. Heck, everyone on this boat will take a final breath someday. ‘I’m Still Here’ can’t always be your theme song.”
“I’m torn between ‘Send in the Clowns,’ and ‘Alone Again, Naturally,’” Tim said.
“Then something sad and classical, played on a harp, to wring as many tears as possible from the mourners,” Placenta continued. “‘Pavane for a Dead Princess.’ ‘The Meditation.’ ‘Somewhere in Time.’”
Rosemary looked at the two interlopers. “Death and dying. The subject seems to hold a great fascination for you and Polly Pepper. What’s the story? Is it prurient? Or a side effect to all the champagne that you people swill?”
The waitress returned and set the two margaritas before Saul and Rosemary. She collected Tim’s Zip ‘n Sip quicktrack liquor card and applied the price of the four drinks to Polly’s charge account. He and Placenta raised their glasses to Saul and Rosemary and said, “To the remainder of this Kool Krooz adventure! May we all arrive in Juneau without anyone accidentally or on purpose falling overboard, or having their lives otherwise sucked out of otherwise perfectly healthy bodies.”
“Hear! Hear!” Placenta agreed, and took a dainty taste of her gin. “And, for the record, we’re only interested in the deaths of people we know and or love, such as Laura Crawford, Ricardo Montalban, Suzanne Pleshette, Robert Goulet, and Vampira. Oh, and for another record, our champagne is far from swill.”
Tim took a fortifying swallow from his glass and looked at Rosemary. “Yeah, even in Hollywood, we tend to like lively living things. The Geiko Gecko is a good example. Cuter than hell, eh? If I could find an adorable Aussie with an accent like that, I’d be a happily married man.”
Tim suddenly interrupted himself and snapped his fingers. “Dumbo’s mother’s song! That’s what we should play at Laura’s memorial service. I’ll get Polly to ask Renée Fleming to sing.”
Placenta brought a hand to her chest. “Personally, I can’t watch Dumbo. Separation anxiety. Walt Disney was a sadist. I mean, why would anyone make cartoons about innocent forest and jungle creatures and beautiful princesses becoming orphans, for crying out loud? The horrors of those stories stay with children for the rest of their lives. But that song is perfect for sending a loved on
e off for their eternal sleep.”
“There won’t be a dry eye in the house, even among the guests who hated her guts,” Tim said, “which, unfortunately, will be ninety-nine percent of those present.”
“Why go to someone’s memorial if you disliked them?” Rosemary sniffed.
“To be seen, of course,” Placenta said. “We’re talking Hollywood C-list celebs, but they’ll get free hors d’oeuvres.”
Tim turned to Rosemary. “What’s it like knowing that you were the last person on this ship to see a famous celebrity before she had her head cut off?”
Rosemary was surprised and miffed by the question. “How would any normal person feel?”
“I asked how did you feel?”
Rosemary pursed her lips. “No matter how much of a pain in the neck a person is, they don’t deserve to be driven out of this world the way Laura Crawford was. And, just so you know, I wasn’t the last person to see her alive. There’s the guy who slit her throat. Remember him? I just found the bloody corpse.”
“How do you know it was a guy who killed Laura?” Placenta asked.
Rosemary shrugged.
“Any idea who?” Tim asked. “A customer? Polly said you mentioned a man getting a treatment in the next room.”
Rosemary smirked. “Treatment is the operative word. I rather think he had other priorities than murder.”
“I don’t follow,” Placenta said.
“Don’t be naïve,” Rosemary sassed. “Talia, the other masseuse, provides ‘special services’—for select customers. Rich ones. If you get my drift.”
Placenta pretended to take a long moment for the information to filter into her head. Then she feigned shock and amusement. “This really is a Kool Krooz,” she giggled. “Romance on the high seas. But not very much like the Doris Day musical.”
“Not very much like romance, either,” Rosemary sniggered. “Now, I really need to leave. I have an appointment to keep.”
“At this hour?” Placenta said, looking at her watch.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but some of my best appointments are kept at hours later than this one, honey.” As Rosemary once again attempted to leave her bench seat, it was Tim’s turn to keep her corralled. “What did you and Laura talk about when she arrived for her massage? What was her mood like?” he asked.
Rosemary was miffed that her exit was obstructed. “Her mood? Unpleasant. I’m quickly getting that way myself,” she declared while trying to force Tim to move. “She came in with attitude. To her, I was nobody and she was supposed to be someone. Once. A long time ago. When she arrived at the spa, I got the impression that she didn’t want to talk, so I kept my mouth shut until …”
Saul listened closely to what Rosemary was saying.
“… the door to the room opened unexpectedly,” Rosemary added. “Someone, a man, stood there for a moment then said, ‘Sorry. Wrong number.’”
“You saw who it was?” Tim asked.
“No. Just his form. The room was dark, except for the candlelight,” Rosemary remembered. “It was just a quick ‘hi, bye’ sort of thing. Obviously, someone made a mistake. The guy was probably embarrassed that he’d barged in on a treatment. He left in a split second. No harm done.”
“Wouldn’t you normally lock the door to prevent that sort of thing from happening?” Tim said.
Rosemary shrugged.
“Who would open a closed door in a spa?” Placenta thought aloud. “Everything that goes on there is private. Another reason to lock the doors to the treatment rooms. Perhaps it wasn’t an accident. Maybe someone wanted to make sure that they knew where Laura was.” Placenta looked at Rosemary. “You’re lucky that he didn’t walk in, lock the door behind him, and butcher the two of you at the same time.”
Rosemary reached for her drink and took a long swallow. “So why didn’t he? That is, if this guy was the killer. Why give up a perfect opportunity to do his job, then and there?”
“Waiting until you left?” Placenta said.
“He couldn’t be guaranteed that there would be another opportunity. I mean, even I didn’t know that I’d soon leave Laura unattended.”
“Perhaps he was a scout, the advance man, for the killer,” Tim suggested. “He kept an eye on the victim-to-be for his boss.”
“Nah.” Placenta dismissed the idea. “Most killers work alone. Unless …”
“Mob?” Tim said.
“I never heard that she was in any way involved,” Placenta continued. “Generally, that kind of stuff is at least hinted at along the short Hollywood grapevine.”
“What about a contract?” Tim added. “God knows Laura had a lot of enemies. But come on, just ‘cause you hate someone’s guts doesn’t mean you have them removed from the planet.”
“Not unless your name is Simpson or Blake or Spector or Peterson or that other Peterson or …” Placenta said.
“So much for your ‘polite Hollywood society’,” Saul said.
Placenta cackled. “‘Hollywood, polite, and society’ are three words not generally used in the same sentence. There’s David Hyde Pierce genuine polite. Then there’s Victoria Principal not-actually-shooting-the-maid-that-she-allegedly-threatened-at-gunpoint-because-the-dog-didn’t-do-#2-as-quickly-as-diva lady-wanted, polite. If you work as a maid for V.P. you’d better feed her dog a lot of prunes, or you’re out of a slave labor job fast.”
An increasingly mellow Saul took a sip from his margarita and said, “I shouldn’t be telling you this….”
“Of course you should,” Placenta encouraged. “We’re all friends.”
“Okay. A few years ago we had a passenger who won a sweepstakes for a weeklong cruise. Turned out, his was the only name in the pot for the prize. It was set up. A phony contest. To get him on a ship in international waters. He was murdered. Shot at close range. Between the eyes. In his stateroom.”
“No muss. No fuss.” Rosemary continued the story. “When the killer finished his job, he locked the stateroom door from within, hung a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the handle outside, and no one found the body until debarkation day.”
“By then, the killer had left the ship,” Saul said. “I’m telling you this so you’ll know that I have some experience with contract killers.”
“Good to know,” Tim said dismissively. “I guess expert killers have plenty of practice. They probably don’t leave much of a mess. An assignment comes, the job is completed quickly and efficiently. There’s a negligible amount of evidence. Then they disappear.”
Placenta continued. “I’m trying to imagine a hit man coming into a spa room and, while his target has his or her face down on the massage table, he puts the barrel of a gun with a silencer to the base of their skull, pulls the trigger, and pow, it’s over. So easy.”
“But the person who killed Laura must have been an amateur ‘cause he made a terrible mess,” Rosemary said.
“The fact that he improvised a weapon by sharpening a DVD instead of using a knife or a gun, tells me that he hadn’t spent a lot of time planning how to get rid of her,” Tim said. “He wasn’t prepared.”
Placenta crossed her arms and took a deep breath as she considered Tim’s conjecture. “Polly always said, ‘An amateur in the theater is as dangerous as Dick Cheney’s brain in The Situation Room. When they screw up they go to extremes to cover their butts.’ I think you’re absolutely right. We have an amateur killer running around this ship. I’ll bet that Polly is closer than she thinks to finding out his identity. Just like that note and the Q&A card at yesterday’s show.”
“The closer she gets, the more afraid he’ll become, and the possibility of him killing again, in order to save his own skin, rises,” Tim agreed. He turned to Saul and said, “About the obituary in the Daily Wave—who has access to the computer it was on?”
Saul twisted his mouth and said, “It’s the crew’s communal computer. We all use it.”
“Does everybody use the same password to log in?”
“It’s alwa
ys on. No password needed. But there’s usually a long wait because everyone uses the same machine to download their e-mails.”
“Is there a sign-in roster so we’ll know who used the computer today?” Placenta asked.
“That wouldn’t help. The obit was sent via text messaging from someone who wasn’t a crew member,” Saul said.
“To whose account?”
“Our office assistant, Julie,” Saul said. “She opened it and pasted the material into the Daily Wave document. We’ve already checked on the address of the sender. But we don’t have the technical support to find out where it came from. The police in Juneau will have to take on that problem.”
Tim sighed. “So Captain Sheridan isn’t really mad at Polly, he’s protecting her.”
“Mad?” Saul laughed. “He wishes he was the captain of a seventeenth-century vessel so he could legally put Polly Pepper out on a raft and send her away. He’s furious! He’s had more than his share of suspicious deaths on his watch over the past couple of years. If one more dead person takes this cruise, he’ll be in deep doo-doo at the main office. Captain Sheridan wants to retire with full benefits, but he’ll be replaced if anything else goes wrong.”
“So he doesn’t have a heart after all,” Tim said. “He’s doing what the amateurs do, protecting his pension.”
After drinking his second margarita, Saul became more animated. He started swaying to the music and when Lawrence started playing “Funkytown,” Saul reached across Rosemary and took Placenta’s hand. “Let’s dance!”
Before Placenta had a chance to object, Saul pulled her up from her seat and escorted her to the dance floor. As they started gyrating and bumping hips, Placenta gave Lawrence a wide-eyed look and shrugged. He smiled back and nodded approval.
Saul couldn’t quite find the beat of the music. He moved his arms around and bounded to the left and right, but he had no rhythm. “You’re a regular Derek Hough,” Placenta lied, realizing it was her job to make them look good.
Saul smiled and continued bobbing his head and flailing his arms. “After my crummy day, this is just want I needed. I’ll be lucky if I still have a job when we reach port.”