“What are you thinking?” said Mary. “It looks like you just thought of something.”
I shook my head rapidly. “Oh, no. Sorry. I was in a world of my own for a moment. I was thinking about another scene we’re doing later, in the diner, and whether my cast member will be there for it.” I peered around the room as if looking for something before turning back to them. “Time to get going now, I’m afraid. Good luck with the mystery!”
What Oliver had said reminded me I still needed to sort out that black dress for Cece. And furthermore, his comments about who knew what happened in the script made me reconsider Edward and Harley’s involvement. They knew better than anyone how the murder was to be committed. But did they have a motive? Had Felicity annoyed them somehow? Or found out something about them?
Determined to find out, I made my way over to the couple, who were sitting on one of the leather sofas. Edward was sitting back with his eyes closed, cane resting against his leg, while Harley was alternately looking around the room and down at her phone.
“Hello!” I said cheerily, trying to forget how they had refused to alter the script when I’d asked them to earlier.
“Hi,” said Harley, looking up at me with a smile. Her earlier outrage at my audacity to ask her husband for a small favor seemed to be completely forgotten.
Edward opened his eyes briefly, mumbled some kind of acknowledgment, and then closed them again.
He was tired. Perhaps he’d been up late the night before. I filed that away in my mind as a possible clue.
“I was wondering, Harley, whether I could ask you a favor, on behalf of one of our staff?”
She gave me a curious look. “A favor? What kind of favor?”
“Unfortunately, the correct costume didn’t arrive for one of the girls. Something unwearable was delivered instead. She has everything she needs except for a black dress. I—”
“Oh, I have a black dress!” she said, clapping her hands on her knees. “Does she want to borrow it? I don’t mind.”
“Fantastic! That would be amazing, Harley. That’s really kind of you. She’ll be absolutely thrilled. Perhaps I could drop by your stateroom later to pick it up?”
“That’ll be fine. No problem.” Harley lifted a hand and waved it across the room. “It seems to be going quite well, doesn’t it?”
“It does. I think the story is so good, they’ve been able to forget all about the incident this morning.”
Harley nodded. “Yes, I thought that would happen. Edward’s stories are almost hypnotic, aren’t they? Once people are in them, they just can’t put them down—or in this case, they can’t walk away!”
“Right.” Especially Felicity Bull, I thought to myself. “It really is a great story.”
Harley’s face fell a little.
“Though it was a horrible coincidence.”
“Hmm?” I said as if I didn’t have any idea what she could possibly be referring to.
“What happened this morning. It was almost the same as in the script. An uncanny coincidence, don’t you think?”
“Oh, certainly,” I said with a nod. “Very uncanny.”
Or not a coincidence!
“Very creepy.” Harley sighed and stared down at the floor.
“Did you speak to her at all, yesterday?” I asked.
She did something strange then. Instead of answering, she first looked to her husband, as if checking for confirmation or permission. But he still had his eyes closed and was oblivious to our conversation. He may even have been asleep.
“No,” she said finally. “I don’t think I said more than a greeting to her. It’s terribly sad though. Who could do such a thing?”
I shrugged as if I wasn’t really interested. Actually, I was very interested. The way she had looked to her husband left me feeling suspicious. Had they spoken? Did Felicity have something on them, like she had on most of us? They were questions I wanted to find answers to.
“I’ll come by later, just before dinner, for the dress,” I said, feeling that the conversation had run its course for now. I’d got all I needed out of it at least.
“Right. See you later. Good luck!”
With a smile and a wave, I said goodbye to Harley. I’d had an idea and I wanted to put it into action as soon as possible.
I was going to ask Sam to cover for me while I went outside.
“Hey—” I began when I caught up with her. But I was immediately cut off.
“Arrrrrrgggghh!” came a loud, heart-wrenching cry from near the back of the room. This was immediately followed by a high-pitched scream.
I, and everyone else, stared as a woman took two steps backward and then collapsed onto the floor with a thud.
Poison was the first thing I thought as I hurried across the room just as fast as I could in my gown. When I got close, I saw who it was. It was the lady who worked in catering who I’d asked to take Felicity’s role. Betty Dwayne, that was her name.
I stared down at her and saw her chest rising and falling. I looked at her face and saw that she was trying to suppress a giggle. Gosh darn it, she was acting. And the lady had talent, too.
“Don’t panic everyone, this is part of the event,” I said. Everyone had gathered around, but those further back weren’t able to see her smiling face—all they’d heard was her blood-curdling shriek, and there were some seriously concerned looks going back and forth until I made my announcement.
Slowly, Betty came around, and shortly thereafter she was sitting up on the floor, concerned amateur sleuths around her quizzing her on what had happened.
“Look! There’s a bloody footprint!” She pointed to the floor where there was most definitely not a bloody footprint. The participants were going to have to use their imagination for this part. “I can’t stand the sight of blood. It made me faint straight away.”
Pushing back through the throng, I made toward Sam on my way to the door.
“Hey. As I was saying, could you do me a favor?”
“Sure, what is it?”
“Everything seems to be running smoothly now. Could you keep an eye on them all and keep it moving along? I’ve got to do something. I shouldn’t be more than half an hour.”
“Sure, hon, no problem. Take your time. I’ll keep them all in line.”
“Thanks. You’re a lifesaver,” I said.
We exchanged a quick hug and I hurried out. I needed to find Cece right away.
Chapter 14
I hurried through the ship, smiling and greeting passengers as I went and drawing many admiring glances at my lovely gown as I made my way forward.
I found Cece in her room, and she told me to enter as soon as I knocked and she heard my voice. Cece’s cabin was the same as mine and Sam’s, with the exception that Cece had hers all to herself. For reasons that had never been made clear to me, she didn’t have a roommate, unlike pretty much every other member of below-the-waterline staff and crew.
Cece was standing by the door when I entered, one hand on her hip and an expectant look on her face. She always knew when something was up.
“Ooh, what are we doing?”
“Guess,” I said with a laugh.
On two previous occasions, I’d involved Cece in similar schemes, so I was pretty sure she knew what favor I was going to ask.
My friend’s hand dropped to her stomach where the keycard in her lanyard hung. She pulled it out. “Breaking and entering?”
“Yeah, but no breaking. Keycarding and entering.”
Cece snorted and punched me on the shoulder.
“No breaking? That’s no fun.” She grinned at me. “Let’s do it!”
Cece was in possession of a master keycard, which allowed her to access any part of the ship. It had come in handy more than once, and I hoped that today it would prove as useful as ever. Much like her lack of a roommate, the reason why she had a master keycard that opened every door on the ship was a mystery to me.
“Where are we going?”
I peered
up and down the hallway to make sure no one was listening. Then, I lowered my voice. Just in case. Sound had a habit of traveling much further than you thought in the hallways of the ship, especially the below-water-level ones which were mostly painted-metal surfaces. Everything echoed and bounced around down here.
“Felicity Bull’s cabin. I need to check a few things out in there.”
“I knew you were going to say that!”
Cece’s card worked like magic, and we were inside Felicity Bull’s room as soon as we arrived.
“Eww,” said Cece. “It smells like chips in here.”
And, strangely, it did. The whole room reeked of corn chips, and as soon as we were inside, I could see why: there were half a dozen empty packets of the snack lying on top of the room’s desk.
“That’s weird,” I said, pointing at the chips.
“It’s not that weird,” said Cece rather defensively, I thought. “I’ve had whole weekends where I ate nothing but chips. Anyway, it’s no weirder than eating eight scoops of ice cream.”
I glared at her. She’d found out about my genius method of dealing with the blues on our last cruise and I didn’t appreciate being compared to Felicity Bull, of all people.
“Actually, that’s not why it’s weird. It’s weird because Felicity told me she had a corn allergy and couldn’t eat any of our Mexican food last night.” I stared across the room, shaking my head. “Some allergy.”
“It was probably just part of her spying. You know, she’d pretend to have an allergy to see how we’d deal with it. Whether she got special treatment and so on.”
“That makes sense. Which reminds me. I should tell catering they don’t need to produce special corn-free alternatives anymore.”
“Because she’s dead,” said Cece.
I smacked her on the arm. “Yes, because she’s dead, and it isn’t funny! This is serious.”
“Sorry,” said Cece, but I could see from the twinkle in her eye that she wasn’t that sorry. “Why are we here again? It wasn’t just for empty chip bags, right?”
“You know the real murder was set up exactly the same as the fake murder we were going to use for the murder mystery, right?”
“Right...”
“So who knew the story better than Harley and Edward Dane?”
“No one, I guess. But why would they want to kill Felicity? Did they know her?”
“That’s what we’re here to find out! Have a look around and see if you can find anything to connect Felicity to the Danes. Some reason they may have had to kill her.”
We began to search the cabin. Luckily, Felicity hadn’t been given one of the VIP staterooms; she just had a standard balcony cabin, so there wasn’t too much ground for us to cover.
As I peered around the room, I noted there was still quite a lot to go through. She wasn’t exactly tidy. I started near the bed, going through the bedside drawers and even dropping to my hands and knees to peer underneath it. All I found was an empty glass jar of salsa that had been discarded and rolled under the bed and a paperback romance novel by the bed. I frowned at the book. She could have at least gotten into the spirit of the event and read a mystery.
“Hey, check this out,” Cece called.
She had pulled out a box from underneath a table and placed it on the counter. There was a big rolled-up sun hat on top, which she brushed off onto the table. When the box was opened, it was revealed to contain dozens of manila files, each one labeled with the name of an employee.
“What is this?” I asked.
“It’s the employee records. They keep tabs on all of us. There’s a big database somewhere shoreside which has details for each of us. They keep everything, from reports, work schedules, payments, warnings, comments from supervisors. Everything. And it looks like Felicity Bull got her hands on printouts for all of them.”
I pulled out my own file and began to go through it. There wasn’t any particular detail that surprised me—my memory is pretty good, after all—but I was surprised by the thoroughness of the file. Pretty much every day I had been employed by the company had been logged in some way, even if it was only the hours I was ‘on duty.’
“Look at this,” I said with a frown. There was a yellow sticky note stuck to the front of my file, on which someone—presumably Felicity Bull—had scrawled a note. “It says, ‘Investigate further, inappropriate liaisons and dereliction of duty re: allergies.’”
“Not bad, could be worse. What about me? Do me!”
I pulled out Cece’s file. Since she’d been employed by the company much longer than me, her file was much thicker than mine. From a quick glance, I saw there had been several disciplinary notes added to her file in the past.
“Looks like you’ve had a few warnings?”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Not that. I mean did Felicity write anything?”
There was a sticky note attached to her file too.
“Uh, yeah. It says possible inappropriate relationship, and possibly working as escort stroke working girl under the table.”
Cece glared at me like it was my fault.
“Well, that’s your fault.”
“Mine!? How do you figure that?”
“It’s because she saw me wearing my hot maid’s outfit, which you ordered me to wear.”
I threw an empty chip bag at her, but it twisted in the air and fell to the ground at my feet.
“You can blame Kelly for that. And anyway, you should have known not to wear it once you saw it.”
“No way.” Cece flicked her hair behind her. “I thought it was part of the plot. I thought it was going to be an interesting murder mystery, with some glamour and romance.”
"If you say so," I said, entirely unconvinced. I was pretty sure Cece had known the outfit was a mistake, but wore it anyway because she wanted to show off for the doctor. And the rest of the ship.
"Are the Danes in there?"
"No. Looks like it’s only staff members, those of us working in customer relations and on the murder mystery."
"She probably didn't have enough space in her luggage to bring files for everyone on the ship."
"Right. So she just focused on the area she was involved in."
I flicked through the rest of the files, seeing if there was anything of particular interest. “Oh, check this out,” I said, waving a file at Cece.
“The captain? What does it say?”
I tapped the yellow note on the front with my finger.
“Check it out. It says that this is his 'last chance,' and she's really gone to town underlining it.”
“What did he do? Why's it his last chance?”
I looked through the file but couldn't find any explanation for the note on the front.
“I don't know. It looks like he's been working for Swan for years, but there's nothing in his file that seems particularly relevant.”
“He must have done something.” Cece furrowed her brow in thought. “Maybe something scandalous that Swan didn't want getting out. That's why it's not in his file.”
“Perhaps.”
After looking through the rest of the files, I didn't find anything too noteworthy. Most of the yellow notes she'd attached to the files covered the same information that we found in the notebook in the library.
“I see Betty Dwayne's not in here.”
Cece gave me a quizzical look. “Who on earth is Betty Dwayne?”
I grinned. It was rare that I knew something about the ship or the people aboard it that Cece didn't already know. Not only had she worked here longer than me, she had a much better gossip network to keep her fully apprised of every little thing that went on aboard.
“She works in catering. At least I think she does. She took Felicity's part in the murder mystery today.”
Cece put a hand on her hip and stared at me, as if trying to figure out whether I was making it all up.
“Are you sure about that? I've never heard of a Betty Dwayne.”
“Maybe,” said Cece, unconvinced. Her hands dropped to her side. “I'm going to check the bathroom.”
I looked through the rest of the files, but there was nothing overly surprising. I was disappointed that she hadn't made notes on the passengers as well. I'd have been very interested to know just what she thought of Oliver McGinty or the Danes.
BZZZZ.
The gown I had bought had a large single pocket in the front which was probably meant to just be part of the design, but I'd used it to store my cell phone. Sure, it created an unsightly lump in the front. But it was awfully convenient.
“Hello?” The screen had shown the number of the caller, but it wasn’t one I recognized.
“Is that Adrienne? It's Harley. I'm back in my cabin now if you'd like to come and collect that dress.”
“Oh! Yes, that'd be great. I'll be there soon. Thank you so much. You're a lifesaver.”
I hung up the phone and Cece emerged from the bathroom.
“Is that my dress, finally?”
“Yep. Find anything in there?”
She shook her head. “Nope. Anything else good in those files?”
“Not that I can see. Let's get out of here. When I pick up the dress, I'll see if I can find anything at the Danes’ to link them to Felicity.”
“Sweet. I better get back to my day job, too.”
“Don't forget your scene later.”
She punched me on the arm. “As long as you don't forget the dress.” A mischievous smile appeared on her lips. “If you do forget, I'll wear the other costume.”
“Cece! You'll get in trouble.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Looks to me like the ship's biggest pearl-clutcher is no longer with us.”
“Come on,” I said, dragging her toward the door. I knew she was only teasing me, but I wasn't sure how much more of it I could take.
Chapter 15
Cece went off to start her next shift of housekeeping, while I headed to the Danes’ cabin to borrow the dress. On the way, I dropped by the pool deck to make sure it had been cleaned up after the morning’s events.
Cruise Chaos: A Humorous Cruise Ship Cozy Mystery (Cruise Ship Cozy Mysteries Book 3) Page 10