But I was on water, and after a moment, I felt the drift and realized that we had cast off. The ship was headed out to sea. I poured some wine and we looked at each other as we held our glasses up in silent toast, and then I looked to the dark ocean.
“What are you thinking?” Danielle asked.
“About Francis Martelli. Guy X. I thought he was meeting Anastasia.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You saw him do a bag drop.”
“I did.”
“But he didn’t meet Anastasia.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“So what was he doing?”
“Sneaking something off the boat,” she said. She picked up her burger. It was huge and a detachable snake jaw was required to eat it. She took a big bite and munched on it with a smile. I loved watching her eat. Not toast or cauliflower, but something big and messy and bad for you like a burger. She attacked it with a zeal I thought most people reserved for sex, but when I looked around the world, I suspected most people really didn’t have that much zeal for anything at all anymore.
“What, though?”
“My first thought was it might be the missing rings.”
“I thought that too. But he went through the metal detector. His bag was searched.”
Danielle wiped her mouth with a napkin. “Yeah, I was thinking about that. Maybe he was receiving something.”
“Only to bring it back on board?”
“Doesn’t fit, does it?”
“But here’s the thing. I can connect him to Anastasia. Frederick took a photo of the guy coming out of his house. What if he was right about the link but wrong about the reason?”
“How?”
“What if Anastasia and Guy X aren’t having an affair at all? What if they were conspiring to steal the rings.”
Danielle took another bite and thought it through. “Doesn’t mean they aren’t having an affair.”
“No, you’re right, it doesn’t. But whether or not they are romantically involved is secondary to whether they are in cahoots to steal the rings.”
“Cahoots?”
“I watched Bonanza when I was a kid.”
She shook her head.
I sipped my wine. It was nice but it wasn’t hitting the spot. I wondered if I had gotten a touch dehydrated on the beach, so I poured myself some water. “But why try to kill Frederick?”
“There’s motive either way. An affair is a motive, so is theft. All it suggests is that either way, Frederick was superfluous to the plans.”
I thought about that. I didn’t feel good about it. I had no idea what was going on, but I was fairly certain that Danielle was right. It wasn’t a good ending for old Frederick. Danielle sat back with her wine and we looked at the ocean as the ship turned and began to pick up speed. We dropped into silence, together with our own thoughts.
“Can I say something?” Danielle said, putting down her wine.
“That never goes well for me, but okay.”
“I’ve been thinking.”
“About the case?”
“No. Something else.”
“Double down on the not good for me.”
“Will you shut up for a second?”
I nodded and put my water glass to my mouth.
“What I mean is, last night. I thought I’d lost you. Twice.”
I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to respond but I went with the shut up.
“Once when you jumped off the deck, and once when we found you in the water. I can’t tell you how that feels.”
“I know how that feels.” I put my hand over my mouth. “Sorry. I’ll stop talking.”
“No, go on. When did you feel that?”
“When you got shot that time.”
She nodded. “Yeah, okay. I can see that. How did that feel?”
“Not great. Unimaginable, really. I can’t see this life without you in it. I’m not sure I’d want a life like that.”
She nodded again. “But there’s more. The confusing part.”
She sipped her wine and continued. “I thought I’d lost you, and that feeling was the worst feeling I’ve ever had. And then I found Chief Mahoney and he radioed it in and then we went down to the rescue tender. As soon as we were on the water, I felt better, like I was doing something. And as soon as I was doing something, I knew I’d find you. I just knew.”
“And you did.”
“We did. I saw Mr. Connors. I didn’t see you until we pulled alongside. I thought he was the one kicking.” She stopped and took a deep breath. “I thought you were dead.”
“But I wasn’t.”
“No, but that didn’t help the feeling of losing you. I don’t want to feel that way, MJ.”
“Me, either.”
“And that’s the confusing part. I want to tell you to stop it. To stop doing that sort of thing, putting yourself in danger like that. To save me from that feeling. But I can’t ask you that.”
“Why?”
“Because of the other feeling.”
“Which is?”
“Pride. You literally jumped off a ship into the ocean to save a guy, who, yes, might be a client, but is really someone you don’t know at all. He doesn’t mean any more to you than any other person on the planet. And you jumped off a ship because you knew he couldn’t swim and he was going to die if you didn’t.”
I shrugged. I had no words.
“So I can’t ask you to stop it, can I?”
I shook my head. “No, you can’t. Anymore than I can ask you.”
“I didn’t jump off a ship, MJ.”
“Not today. But you’re a cop. You do that sort of thing every day. You save people and risk yourself every single day. And you don’t go looking for a parade because of it. You just do it. And every day when you go out the door, I get that little knot in my guts.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Well, trust me. I know what you’re feeling because I feel it, too. When you got shot, I was worried and sad and angry. But I was also proud. You weren’t going to let the bad guys win. That’s not who you are.”
“We’re a hell of a pair.”
“Just think how many people we’re saving by not having to be in a relationship with either of us.”
“Making a lot of people happy and they don’t even know it.”
“Right on.”
We sipped our drinks and nibbled at our fries. They were cold.
“So what is the deal with Fred and Ana?” Danielle asked.
“Let me correct you there. They are definitely not Fred and Ana. It’s Frederick and Anastasia, all the way.”
“They are, aren’t they? But what’s their deal? Do they seem happy to you?”
“One of them is paying me to spy on the other’s affair, and we think the other may have tried to have the first killed. So no, I don’t think they’re too happy.”
“But they must have been once, surely? I just can’t see it.”
“You need some old photographs.”
“Of what?”
“Of Frederick and Anastasia. They’re an odd pair, I'll give you that. But they aren’t what they were. None of us are. When people get older, everyone assumes they were always old. But let me tell you a story. About a young guy who gets a bad knee and has to give up his Saturday pickup basketball game, and he puts on some weight, and then he can’t keep up with his kid anymore. So he tells himself he doesn’t do that roustabout stuff now, he’s an adult, not a child. And he drifts away from all his basketball buddies, and his bad knee turns into hip pain, and then he’s taking drugs to soften the wear, and then stepping down the front steps hurts, and he’s forgotten what it felt like to be pain-free. Like all that stuff before had been someone else’s life. And the pain just wears him down, and no one knows because it’s all on the inside. He’s on edge, and he’s always irritable, and he knows it and hates it, but that just makes it worse. And then he loses his wife to cancer, and he can’t see any damned point to it anymore. He’s jus
t unhappy all the time, except when he drinks the pain away. And the neighbor kids all think he’s the local grouch, because he’s always so mean and grumpy. Don’t throw your baseball on his lawn. You’ll never get it back from the mean old man. But that mean old man would love nothing more than to be able to throw a ball with a kid, like he had years ago. If you saw an old photograph you’d know. You’d see this young man and the love of his life, arm in arm, laughing. And you probably wouldn’t believe it was him. Because it all happens so slowly, and so quickly at the same time.”
I sipped my water. I had no idea where that had come from. It had been one hell of a trip and I was no longer responsible for my rambling brain. That was my story and I was sticking with it.
Danielle just looked at me. Or through me, or maybe inside me. I couldn’t tell. Law enforcement types have those kinds of eyes. They can look like Santa one second and your high school principal the next.
“MJ,” was all she said. She reached across the table and took my hands, which meant I couldn’t pick up my wine, which I suddenly wanted.
“You know what I think?” she said.
“Tell me.”
“I think we should grow old disgracefully.”
“That’s been my plan since high school.”
“Law-abiding, mind you.”
“To a point. But sure.”
She smiled, and then she lost it.
“Tell me,” I said.
“You just made me think of my dad.”
“I didn’t want to press,” I said. “Tell me when you want to tell me.”
“You kind of just described him.”
“I just described a lot of people. How is he?”
“He’s not himself, MJ. And he knows it. And he hates it. That’s why he didn’t want me to come. He doesn’t want me to see him.”
“He’s still your dad.”
“Of course he is. I don’t care. I mean I care, but what the ALS is doing to his body doesn’t mean I don’t want to see him.”
“Is that it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is that the thing that makes him not want you to see him? His body?”
“He’s in a chair. He can’t walk anymore. He’s incontinent. He’s embarrassed.”
I said nothing.
“What?” she asked. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I’ve never met the man. But you’ve told me plenty. And I’m sure losing his physical abilities is part of it. But you’ve always described a different guy. The young guy in the old photo that I see? He’s a book guy. He’s going to be an English professor. He loves the theater and reading and all that discourse stuff that they love at college. He’s a man of ideas and thoughts.”
“But the doctors say the ALS isn’t affecting his mind.”
“I’m no doctor, but I call baloney on that. The ALS might not be causing memory loss, but it sure as hell is messing with his mind. The way he thinks, the way he sees himself. The way he thinks others see him.”
“But you say he’s a thinking guy. He’s still got all his thoughts. It’s his body that’s failing him.”
“I’m gonna go all philosophical on you now, but what is an idea if that idea cannot be expressed?”
She took a deep breath. The ship sounded its horn. It was loud.
“You’re saying he can’t express what he’s thinking and that’s what’s making him withdraw?”
“It’s a theory.”
“I didn’t see it that way.”
“I never had an English teacher who didn’t love to jabber on about language, quote Shakespeare or Whitman.”
“My dad loved Keats. He used to read it to me.”
I nodded.
Danielle finished her wine. “Thanks, MJ.”
“Back at ya.”
“I don’t know what to do about it but I’m sure there’s something.”
“Stephen Hawking wrote physics papers, for crying out loud.”
“I’m sure he had all kinds of expensive equipment. Like you say, Dad was an English professor. And I’m a special agent. We’re not exactly flush.”
“I know a lot of people. We’ll find a way.”
“A legal way.”
“Absolutely. One hundred percent, guaranteed, almost certainly legal.”
She smiled like she had indeed just looked at an old photograph, and I captured the smile for later. Much, much later.
I felt the breeze on my face as the ship gained speed. I was done. I had no more coherent thoughts to share on anything, and my body was ready to fall into a week-long coma.
Then my pocket vibrated. I pulled out the comms device. There was a message. It was from Lucas.
There’s action on the beach.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I told Danielle what it said.
“Maybe Guy X dropped the bag for someone else to collect,” she said.
“Two drops sounds convoluted.”
“What are you going to tell him?”
“I told him we’re back on the boat.”
“Is he on the beach?”
“I don’t know.”
“It might be dangerous. He should back off.”
“Lucas can handle himself.”
“Even so.”
The device pinged with another message.
I know. Heard foghorn.
I repeated the message to Danielle. Then I heard the ringing from inside the suite. I jumped up and went in and found my phone on the bar.
“Lucas,” I said. I walked back to the balcony and put it on speaker so Danielle could hear.
“Mate, you were right.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“I’m sitting out here filleting some fish and I hear another boat.”
“Another boat?”
“Yeah. A speedboat. Twin 75 Mercuries, I reckon. Coming in from the south.”
“Not a delivery?”
“No chance. Wrong boat, wrong time. You don’t do deliveries at night on the banks, and you especially don’t do them without running lights.”
“They’re running dark?”
“They are. So they slow down as they get off the east side of the island.”
“Are they there now?”
“No, mate.”
“Where’d they go?”
“To the light.”
“What light?”
“Will you stop yabbering for five minutes and I’ll tell ya? A light came on, a signal from the beach.”
“Like a spotlight?”
“Kind of. Probably a high-powered flashlight, if I had to say. But it signaled the boat for sure, because the engines started up again and they motored nice and easy into the beach.”
“They’re on the back beach?”
“No.”
“No? Where are they?”
“They’ve just left the beach. They’re headed back to the south.”
“What’s down there?”
“Not much. Eventually you’ll hit something. Maybe Chub Cay.”
“Is that inhabited?”
“It is.”
“Ferries?”
“Yep. And an airstrip.”
“We need to call the cops.”
“This ain’t Miami, Miami. It’s the Berry Islands. At best it’ll be a cop, singular, and he or she might be anywhere. And these guys might bank around to the north of the cay and head for Great Harbour Cay. Hell, if they’ve got twin Mercuries, they could head for Florida.”
“Then we have to stop that boat.”
“That’s why I’m calling. I’ll pick you up.”
“Lucas, the ship’s left already. We’re at sea.”
“Yeah, I know. Get off.”
I looked at Danielle. She shook her head.
“I can’t get off a moving ship.”
“Sure you can. Put on a life jacket and get in the drink. I’ll come get you.”
Danielle shook her head again.
“It’s dark out.”
“Take a flashlight. And you’ve got your locator beacon, right? I can track that. I’ll be there in five.”
He hung up. I stared at the phone for moment. I couldn’t believe that I was actually contemplating jumping off a moving cruise ship for the second time in two days. It was becoming a thing.
Danielle didn’t look happy.
“You can’t be serious, MJ.”
“What’s the other option? Leave it to Lucas? It’s not his case. He’s not being paid to do this.”
“You’re not being paid to do this. Not to jump off a cruise ship. Look, what I said before, about being proud. I wasn’t proud that you jumped off. I was proud you did it to save a person. Jumping off is just dumb.”
“The coast guard does it all the time. Out of helicopters.”
“To save people, MJ. Not to chase a boat that could very well have no connection to anything.”
“Oh, it’s connected all right. You know it is.”
“And what if it is? What are you going to do if you catch them? Ram them?”
“I hadn’t gotten that far.”
“And just because you didn’t get hurt last time doesn’t mean the jump alone won’t kill you.”
“I don’t plan on jumping this time. Come on, let’s go.”
I dashed into the suite and called the security control office and told them to find Chief Mahoney and to get him to meet me. Then I handed Danielle my phone.
“I’ll keep this one,” I said, holding up the comms unit.
We jogged to the stairs and ran down them. There was a line on every deck for the elevator. Dinner was in full swing. We kept going. Down and down. To the deck I had noted before. The stairs didn’t deliver us exactly where I wanted to be. Instead, we came out on the crew deck and hit the I-95. The corridor was as busy as its namesake. Crew were rushing in both directions. It was organized chaos. I took Danielle’s hand and dropped into a gap in the traffic and dashed toward the bow of the ship. When I saw the door I wanted, I cut in front of a guy pushing a cart of unbaked bread rolls and pulled to the side of the rush. The guy gave me a dirty look and kept going. It really was like the freeway.
Army arrived shortly after us. The traffic seemed to move around him. He had the other security officer, Porter, with him.
Cruise Control Page 16