Cruise Chaos: A Humorous Cruise Ship Cozy Mystery (Cruise Ship Cozy Mysteries Book 3)

by A. R. Winters

  “I’m not…?”

  “You said you’re in charge. No, you’re not. If anyone is, it’s my husband, the famous and renowned novelist Edward Dane.”

  I gritted my teeth and stretched the corners of my mouth upward. “Yes, he prepared a wonderful plot for us,” I said, nodding as if in agreement with her. “I mean, I’m running the Swan Cruises side of things. The staff, the locations, the day-to-day.”

  “Yes. Like his assistant.”

  “I suppose you could look at it that way,” I conceded. If anything, he was my assistant; all he did was come up with the story. It was me who was going to have to run the whole gosh darned event. “You must be very proud of your husband.”

  She blinked at me in surprise. “Well, of course. If you were married to the cleverest writer in the world, wouldn’t you be? Not that you could be, mind you, but surely you can imagine.”

  The backhanded insults didn’t seem to want to stop coming today. That was fine, I told myself. Teflon skin. Ignore them all. I stuck out my hand.

  “Adrienne James.”

  Ignoring my hand, she took half a step backward and gave me a small curtsy. “Harley Dane, or Mrs. Edward Dane, if you prefer.”

  I did not prefer. I gave her a kind of head-nod-bow in response to her curtsy. They didn’t teach you how to do that back in Nebraska. I turned my attention back to Oliver McGinty.

  “How many books did you contribute to our event?”

  “Oh, not many. About four thousand five hundred and thirty-eight, approximately. It’s a small but representative selection from my stock.”

  “He brought all of my husband Edward Dane’s best books—which is all of them!” said Harley with a happy laugh.

  “It must be wonderful running a bookshop. I’d just love to do that,” I said smiling.

  “If you loved it that much, you’d do it! That’s what I always say!”

  “I suppose so,” I murmured, my cheeks flushing with embarrassment.

  “It’s a rewarding business, but also frustrating at times.”

  “Oh? Why’s it frustrating?”

  He leaned in toward me, looking around furtively as if to make sure some of his customers hadn’t been accidentally packed up and brought along with the books and might overhear him disparaging them.

  “I try to get them to buy good stuff, the classics, a bit of old Wilkie Collins, Conan Doyle, and the like. Nudge them in the right direction. But no, no, these days half my stock is about cupcakes or cross-stitch or magic moon bears.” He shook his head in disappointment at the state of the world. “Still, at least there are people like Edward Dane still writing real mysteries.”

  I nodded my head but inside I was seriously frowning. I happened to like fluffy mysteries about cooking and witches and all kinds of charming, quirky characters. If I wanted blood and gore, I could watch the news. I knew Edward Dane was famous for the brutality of his mysteries, and that was part of why I’d never even picked one up. That was more Samantha’s style than mine.

  “The customer’s always right though, right?”

  “Wrong,” said both Oliver and Harley at the same time, and then exchanged wolfish grins with each other in recognition of their agreement.

  “People don’t know what they should read. I despair of them sometimes,” said the bookseller, his tone dripping with melodramatic sadness.

  “You should see some of the reviews they leave on Edward’s books. It’s like they can’t recognize world-class literature when it’s literally in front of their faces. I’d like to drive around and explain to all those reviewers exactly why they’re wrong! The customer’s usually wrong, that’s what the saying should be.”

  “Right. I guess some opinions can be… wrong,” I conceded and was answered with two strong nods of agreement.

  “Have you and Edward been married long?” I asked Harley, trying to change the subject. She was clearly at least twenty years younger than him, so I doubted it.

  Before answering, Harley raised her wrist to her face and pointedly looked at the gold watch she was wearing, her face furrowed as if making a calculation.

  “We’ve been married three days, five hours and te—no, eleven minutes.”

  “Goodness, just three days?”

  Harley nodded at me. “And five hours and change! You know, sometimes people say marriages don’t last anymore, but I just know that Edward and I are soulmates. We’ll be together forever. I pity all the couples that get married these days, and then are divorced five years later!”

  I would never hope for someone’s marriage to break down, but at that moment, it was fair to say that I wouldn’t have been surprised if her marriage didn’t make it a full week.

  “So this is your honeymoon, is it?” asked Oliver.

  “It is. There’s nothing like a working honeymoon, is there? I can’t think of anything better than helping my genius husband further his already amazing career, even if it is just a silly little event like this.”

  “Hello, dear,” said Edward Dane to his wife as he joined us, punctuating his greeting with a rap on the floor with his cane. “Shall we get this over with?”

  “Yes, let’s. Now, Adrienne, do you have the itinerary? Let’s go over it and make sure you haven’t ruined any of it.” She paused and a brief look of guilt flashed across her face. “By mistake, I mean,” she clarified.

  Gee, yes, let’s see if I ruined it through stupidity—not malice. What a charmer you are, Harley.

  I had a stack of itineraries with me that I’d copied that afternoon after we left the workmen to finish setting up. The whole thing was still exactly the same as what I had been provided with, so if anything was ‘ruined,’ it certainly wouldn’t be my fault. But of course, I would be the one to take the blame.

  “Here you go,” I said handing them out. The four of us would be the only ones to know the outcome of the murder mystery. At least in theory. In practice, Cece and Sam had already wheedled the culprit out of me too. But the regular guests would be completely in the dark.

  There was a lull in conversation as we looked through the outline for the coming days. In the background, the fake fire fake-crackled and had a calming effect, at least on myself.

  “Ha!”

  We all looked at Harley.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. It’s a joke. Right?”

  “What’s the matter, dear?” asked Edward.

  I was curious too. I’d only seen the plan for the first time a few hours earlier and had no part in its creation.

  “This,” she said, jabbing her finger about halfway down the page. “Look.” She held the paper in front of her husband’s face.

  “I see you’ve changed one of the locations,” said Edward Dane. “When I wrote the plot, there was a formal dining room. It seems to have been replaced with a ‘diner.’”

  “Umm. Right. Actually, it wasn’t me who came up with this itinerary. I can look into why it’s been changed, but honestly, I don’t think it would be possible to change it back on such short notice.”

  “Unacceptable,” announced Harley, crossing her arms in front of her.

  Edward gently took his wife’s upper arm. “Oh, if it’s already been done, it’s already been done. I think we’ll just let them run it how they want. She said it’s too late to change it now.”

  Thank goodness someone around here was at least slightly reasonable.

  “Thank you, Edward. Are there any other comments about the itinerary?”

  They all shook their heads and mumbled no. That was some small relief.

  “I’m going to check the other rooms. If any of you would like to join me and inspect them…?”

  “I’ve got to fix these books. They’re all wrong,” said Oliver.

  “I’d like to take a look at them,” said Edward, stepping toward the bookseller, who beamed obsequiously up at him.

  “I’ll join you,” said Harley to me. “Let’s see how much of a disaster this diner is,” she said, spitting out the wo
rd diner like it was something alien and slightly dangerous.

  “Wonderful,” I lied with a smile on my face. “But we’ll start in the lounge.”

  Let the tour begin.

  Chapter 4

  As we were leaving the room together, I decided to try and get to know Harley a little better—find some gold underneath her rather rude exterior.

  “So how did you two meet?”

  Her heavily made-up face lit up. “Oh, it was just the most romantic thing. I was at the Knives in the Dark mystery convention last year, and I won a raffle to have dinner with him! It was the best day of my life. Just him and me and five other competition winners and his agent. I mean, talk about romance! It was like a golden ticket from heaven.”

  My eyes were drawn back to her pearl necklace again. A golden ticket, indeed.

  “What an amazing story. Now, in this room, we should find the lounge.” Sure enough, right below the sign reading Conference Room C (which could not be removed due to fire regulations), was a new painted wooden sign reading Lounge.

  I pushed open the door and my mouth fell open. I hadn’t expected to find people lounging in the lounge. But there were.

  “Hi, Adrienne!” said Cece, waving a hand holding a glass of amber-colored liquid in my general direction from the armchair she was sitting on.

  “Hey,” said Sam who was standing talking to Greg Washington, one of the ship’s cooks.

  “Hi everyone,” I said. “What are you doing?”

  Harley gave me a sideways glance, suspicious of the three loungers.

  “We’re testing out the lounge. Making sure it’s up to scratch,” said Cece before taking a sip of her drink. “It’s pretty sweet.”

  It was indeed quite well done. There were large sofas along two sides of the room, some enormous paintings of important looking old people on the walls, a liquor cabinet, a pair of mahogany coffee tables in front of each of the sofas, and several large armchairs similar to the ones found in the library. There was a faint smell of wood and whiskey about the room, and I was fairly certain some of it was coming from Cece’s glass.

  “Great,” I said through gritted teeth. “This is Harley Dane, the wife of the mystery writer.”

  “Wife of Edward Dane, renowned and worldwide bestselling author of over thirty novels,” she elaborated. I got the impression she was waiting for applause. She got polite smiles instead.

  “Hey,” said Greg with a wave. “You didn’t tell me you were in charge of this.”

  “Err, right.” I had assumed Greg was just hanging out with Cece and Sam, not that he was part of the event. Greg Washington had been working aboard Swan ships for several years, and he was one of the more entertaining and flamboyant people I’d met. We weren’t exactly friends, but we were on decent terms at the moment.

  I quickly thumbed through my stack of notes. I still hadn’t memorized the whole thing yet, and I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to be able to. I found the cast list again, and, sure enough, there was a line that read Butler - GW. I hadn’t realized that referred to Greg Washington, the cook.

  “Right. Yes. You’re a butler, Greg. Except…”

  “Except I’m in a diner. Diners ain’t got butlers, at least not any I’ve ever seen.” He was looking up at me with a look of outraged consternation. It matched his outrageous clothes: lime green pants, a purple button-up shirt that was only buttoned up to mid-chest, and a gold medallion necklace that looked like it belonged in a pirate’s treasure trove.

  “Why is there a diner? It still doesn’t make sense to me. Edward’s plot was literally perfect,” said Harley, shaking her head.

  I smiled at her and then ignored her, turning back to Greg.

  “Maybe we can change your character a little, Greg. How about being a cook in the diner?”

  He dropped his chin and raised his eyebrows at me. “A cook? Are you sh—”

  “You’ll be acting! It’ll be fun.”

  “You made the maid a maid, and the cook a cook. Why don’t you get the captain down here to play a captain too?” said Cece with a wicked smirk.

  Harley touched my elbow.

  “Did you? That’s some good thinking. Smart. When you’re dealing with amateurs, it’s best not to let them go too far out of their wheelhouse. They just can’t handle it.”

  It turned out I didn’t like being complimented by Harley any more than I did being insulted by her.

  The other three people in the room glared at the novelist’s wife, who seemed to be completely oblivious to it.

  “Greg, why don’t you go and check out the diner? I think it’s Conference Room D. And let me know if you need help with a costume.”

  Greg placed his hands on his hips and cocked his head at me. “Okay. If I, a cook, have any trouble finding a cook’s costume. I’ll hurry on over—” Greg started running on the spot, pumping his arms back and forth like pistons as his knees rose almost to his chest with each fake step “—and ask you just where I can get a cook’s uniform.” He stopped running.

  “Ha, ha. Very good, Greg. Now get out of here.”

  Greg lifted his chin into the air and sniffed snootily before heading out of the room to look at the diner.

  “Cece? Sam? I think there’s a box in the library with your costumes if you want to go and check it out.”

  “Sure,” said Sam happily.

  Cece raised her glass to her lips and downed the rest of it. “Come on!”

  My two friends departed to get their costumes, leaving me alone with Harley again.

  “Hardest job in the world,” said Harley, shaking her head to herself.

  I laughed. “Oh, it’s not that bad. It was just all thrust on me at the last minute.”

  “Not you.” Harley raised a hand to her mouth, failing to stop the laughter that erupted for a good solid ten seconds before she regained control. I stared at her stone-faced the whole time, but it didn’t seem to bother her one bit.

  “I meant Edward Dane, my husband, the famous novelist.”

  Famous novelist. Renowned writer. Could the woman talk about her husband without abusing adjectives?

  “Oh, is it hard?” I asked innocently. How hard could it be? Sitting around pecking at a keyboard all day was hardly digging ditches or performing brain surgery.

  “Oh, honey,” Harley’s tone dripped so much condescension I could almost taste it. “There’s a saying. Well, we have a saying. It goes like this: the two hardest jobs in the world are being a novelist, and...”

  I looked at her expectantly. She bit her lip with excitement before she finished. “…being a novelist’s wife! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!”

  I smiled politely while Harley laughed at her own joke for entirely too long.

  “It must be hard for you to explain to regular folk just how hard you have it,” I said, eyeing her pearls and expensive black ballgown.

  “Oh, it is, it is. It’s the day-to-day they just don’t get. You know, writing books is so hard. Edward has to be completely alone to do it. He books these long weekends away, three, four days. He goes off to New York, or LA, or Chicago or somewhere to just be alone with his work. And that’s why it’s so hard—for both of us. He’s all alone working away, and so am I! Pining for him.”

  My heart literally bled for them. It just started pouring out of my chest all over the lounge floor. Not.

  “Being apart for so long must be difficult, especially for a newlywed.”

  She nodded. “Oh, it’s so tough. We were living together for six months before we got married, but sometimes it was like we were living in different states. He just works so hard.”

  “Modern life is tragic.”

  “That’s why we were both so happy about this gig. Sure, it’s only a small time event for obsessive weirdos, but we get to be together while he’s working for once. It made all my friends jealous, I can tell you.”

  “Did it?” I said, only half-heartedly feigning interest in Harley’s sob story. In my head, I was thinking mostly about the u
pcoming days and how the event was going to unfold.

  “Oh, yes. A working cruise? Who would have thought of such a thing?! Of course I am working, like we are right now, but at the same time, it’s a break. And those people who said Edward only married me for my—I mean, people don’t realize what a great team we make together. If only I could help him with the writing too!”

  “Right.” I didn’t have the time or energy to unpack that diatribe, and luckily, I didn’t have to. The PA system saved me.

  “This is an announcement for all members of the staff and crew. Passenger boarding will commence in ten minutes. All staff and crew are to proceed to their assigned stations. Thank you.”

  “It’s nice being boarded first, isn’t it? It’s because we’re VIPs, I suppose,” said Harley airily.

  It’s because you’re working like me is what I should have said, but I bit my tongue.

  “I’m afraid I’ve got to get going now. We’ll have to continue the tour another time.” I gave a knowing look up at the speaker in the corner that had broadcast the announcement. “It’s been a real pleasure. I’ll see you at the cocktail party later.”

  Harley followed me out of the lounge and went back to the library, while I headed back to my cabin. I planned to spend the next hour or so before the welcome cocktails going over the itinerary again. I couldn’t believe I’d missed Greg Washington. What else had I missed?

  Chapter 5

  After examining all the information I’d received yet again, I was pleased to realize how many things had already been put in motion.

  For passengers taking part in the murder mystery event, it was all supposed to kick off with a welcome event involving Mexican cocktails and snacks.

  When I called the head of catering to inquire, I was told that everything had already been arranged, and the cocktails and food would be there on time. I didn’t need to worry about it. Not only were this evening’s refreshments organized, but for all the future events too, from breakfast pastries to afternoon power-juices.

  It was a huge relief to know that all the parts had been put in place before I arrived on the scene. I just needed to manage it all as it happened, rather than having to organize everything on top of it all.