1 Shore Excursion

by Marie Moore

  “Will they bury her at sea?” blurted Mrs. Murphy, who was obviously more curious than distraught. “I’ve never seen a burial at sea.”

  “NO, Gladys, they will NOT!” Jay shouted. He had just entered the back of the room, and he looked all in.

  “Now, please, everyone, go on to lunch if you can,” he continued. “It’s open seating, and if you can’t, just go to your cabins and order room service or lie down or something and let us try to sort things out. When we have further information, we will share it with you. Right now, they are saying there will be no alterations in the day’s activities, but if you choose not to participate, believe me, everyone will understand.”

  After they were gone, Jay and I went back to the conference room on the Promenade Deck. He had no new information from the captain.

  Jay was pacing, couldn’t stand still, couldn’t sit, like a big cat. He ran his hands through his red hair again and again.

  “They’re stonewalling, Sidney. I couldn’t find out anything. Everyone that I spoke with said they would get back to us later.”

  I sank into a conference chair and put my head down on my arms on the cool gleaming wood of the table, thinking about it all, turning the whole terrible thing over in my mind.

  “Did you actually speak with the captain, Jay?” I asked without moving my head. I thought if I didn’t move it, it might stop aching.

  “No. The First Officer, a guy named Avranos, said that Captain Vargos was in a meeting and could not be disturbed. But what about the High Steppers, Sid? When you told them, what did they say? How did they take it? Pretty bad, I bet. Did anyone say if they saw or heard anything?”

  I looked up at him. He had stopped pacing and had perched on the big table, staring at me with a grim look in his brown eyes.

  “Oh, Jay, it was awful. Poor little Hannah just cried and cried. Even old Mr. Bostick was honking away into his handkerchief. But, no, no one mentioned hearing or seeing anything. Ruth had that single cabin on the port side, remember, and the rest were all on the starboard. So if they were all in their rooms sleeping when it happened, it’s not surprising that they didn’t.”

  “So no one truly knows what happened.”

  “No. No one except the …”

  I just couldn’t say the word.

  “Murderer,” Jay said, finishing the awful thought for me.

  We had dealt with a lot of crises together over the years, some of them pretty bad. Nothing remotely equal to this.

  Everything was complicated by the steadily worsening weather. Squalls had been predicted on leaving Harwich, and as the wind rose, the pitch and yaw of the behemoth we were riding increased proportionally. Even with her sturdy construction, the Rapture was having a hard time handling the weather.

  “Great, just great,” Jay said, as we began to hear glassware crash in the dining room.

  “That’s really what we need just now, an effing gale, with poor little High Steppers yammying everywhere and all falling down and breaking their hips!”

  We assumed that the captain had immediately informed the authorities and the cruise line about Ruth, of course, but no one had as yet shared any decision as to the plan of action. Jay and I agreed to wait for their decision before laying the bad news on Itchy. We had no way to contact them, really. The storm had knocked out the cell phone system connections and the Internet in the computer room wasn’t working either. We had been told that it would be some time before it could be repaired.

  So here we were, sailing merrily along in the middle of a huge storm in the North Sea with the High Steppers, dead Ruth Shadrach, and whoever had killed her.

  Cruise lines are equipped to deal with dead passengers. No one likes to talk about it, of course, and it’s not something you want to feature in the brochure, but it happens, and when it does, they know what to do. What they are emphatically not equipped to deal with is murder.

  “Jay,” I said, “Did you try to come in my cabin this morning about three a.m.?”

  He stared at me as if I was nuts.

  “I guess that’s a no,” I said, “but I had to ask, because somebody did. They turned the handle on my door. If it had been you it would have been okay. But if it wasn’t you, then it’s definitely NOT okay.”

  Jay moved his stuff into my cabin that afternoon, without being asked. I told you that he is really a terrific guy, and if the High Steppers or IFT disapproved of my new roomie, I didn’t care.

  5

  The sea was still pretty choppy the next morning, and the sky was overcast, but the worst of the storm seemed to have passed during the night. The closet doors had stopped banging open and closed about four a.m.

  When the first door banged open, then shut, about 2:30, Jay sat straight up in his bed screaming, “Get out of here, you son of a bitch!”

  It took a while for him to really wake up and be convinced that it was not a murderous intruder, only the big bad closet. I laughed so hard I got the hiccups.

  “Not funny, Sidney, not funny! What if some madman had chopped his way into our cabin?”

  “This killer is not a wild beast, Jay. This one is sneaky. He slips around like Gollum and throttles old ladies.”

  “That’s comforting, Sidney. I love that thought.”

  “What do you think about a motive, Jay? There has to be a motive. I mean, who would want to kill Ruth, and why?

  She didn’t have any enemies. I bet about the only bad thing she ever did was not return her library books on time.”

  “Not to speak ill of the dead, Sidney, but Ruth was pretty annoying. I enjoy most of the rest of the High Steppers most of the time, but I have to tell you, Ruth was not my favorite. Is being totally annoying a motive?”

  “Now was that nice? And no, it’s not a motive. People don’t want to be nick, nick, nicked all the time, Jay, but they don’t usually kill folks over it.”

  “Maybe there is no reason. Maybe it’s just random. Wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe he was trying to rob her cabin and she caught him. I like that idea better than a sneaky murderous fiend slinking around the ship, stalking the High Steppers.”

  “Jay, Ruth was a retired schoolteacher, living on a fixed income. She didn’t own anything a random sneak thief would want to steal. She was in her bed, in the middle of the night, in her own room, minding her own business, when she was killed. That’s not the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s not random. That’s targeted.”

  “Hey, don’t get all worked up, Sidney. It’s four a.m. Turn off the light and go back to sleep. I’m sorry I woke you, Dick Tracy. I didn’t mean to get you started. Quit worrying sweetie, go back to sleep. You need sleep. Tomorrow we’ll get on the horn and make Itchy fly us all home asap. Let the cops figure it out.”

  Just after dawn I pulled on fleece pants and a sweatshirt, left Jay snoring on the opposite berth, and went out on deck in search of coffee.

  I had decided in the long stretches of the night that Jay might be right and as soon as we reached the first port, Oslo, we would somehow convince Itchy to abort this voyage from hell and get us back to New York pronto, even if that meant refunds, something they hate to provide under any circumstances. That is, if the authorities would let us go. It made my head hurt again just thinking of it.

  In the meantime, jolly old Sidney’s job was to keep up everyone’s spirits.

  * * *

  I smelled Dr. Sledge’s pipe smoke before I saw him. His sturdy, square body leaned against the rail, his pipe clenched firmly in the corner of his mouth. The few remaining strands of his thin reddish hair were being ruffled by the wind It wasn’t raining then, but we were in heavy seas. Thick bands of dark clouds filled the sky.

  He waved me over.

  “Hello, Miss Marsh. This is fortunate, indeed. I was just coming to find you, and you have saved me the trouble.

  “Hope you don’t mind the pipe,” he added, puffing, obviously not caring whether I did or not.

  “Nasty habit, pipes,” he muttered. His pale blu
e eyes scanned the darkening horizon.

  “The captain informed me early this morning that, weather permitting, the authorities from Empress Cruise Lines will attempt to board the ship later today by fast boat or helicopter to clear this Shadrach thing up.”

  “What do you mean, ‘clear this Shadrach thing up?’ ” I stared at him in sheer amazement.

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  “Don’t you mean, find out who killed her?” I said.

  “Those are harsh words, Miss Marsh, and we mustn’t jump to conclusions, must we?” He turned to face me. “I am only repeating to you what Captain Vargos told me early this morning.

  “My preliminary examination indicates only that Ruth Shadrach died of strangulation. How she came to be strangled will have to be investigated. Hopefully, the matter can all be sorted out before we reach Oslo tomorrow, so the ship won’t be delayed in docking.”

  “Dr. Sledge. Ruth Shadrach was murdered.”

  “Tut, tut, Miss Marsh. There you go again. I said that Ruth Shadrach died of strangulation, my dear. Not that she was necessarily murdered.”

  “What! Of course she was murdered, you know it! How can you say anything else? You of all people! I saw her, Jay saw her, you examined her. Those knots weren’t tied around her neck by accident. All it can be is murder.”

  He took a long draw on his pipe.

  “I wouldn’t be so eager to promote a charge of murder here if I were you, Miss Marsh,” he said, eyes grim, pipe clenched firmly between uneven yellow teeth.

  “A murder on a cruise ship would be a difficult thing for everyone concerned, don’t you think? Particularly for you and your travel company. After all, if we’re talking about murder here, then you and your group—her only companions—must be the prime suspects, what? Good day.”

  He tapped his pipe on the rail, put it in his pocket, and with a brief nod, strode off down the deck.

  “Me and the High Steppers. Murderers. That jackass!”

  For a moment I was blind with rage. I could barely think, much less speak.

  And yet, I thought, as my brain began to recover, that is, of course, what they all will think. As Mrs. Weiss said, no one knew her but us.

  Now what were we going to do? This was beyond terrible. No one had ever even died on one of my trips before, much less been murdered. But they weren’t going to get away with this and blame it on the High Steppers. I needed a plan, pronto.

  * * *

  I found most of the ladies in the tea room at ten o’clock, learning ribbon embroidery.

  I’m sure that it seems as strange to you as it did to me that despite what had happened, life on board would continue fairly normally. But in fact, normalcy was precisely the goal of the ship’s staff.

  The Rapture is a huge ship, carrying 2,367, no, make that 2,366 passengers, most of whom had not only never known Ruth Shadrach, but also were quite unaware that anything had happened to her.

  The passengers had not been informed of her death, and if Dr. Sledge’s attitude this morning reflected that of the line, they wouldn’t. The orders from the top must be “business as usual”.

  Even given the circumstances of poor Ruth’s untimely demise, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Cruise lines go to great lengths to hide anything unpleasant that might spoil the trip for paying customers.

  The same thing sometimes happens on ships when a hurricane is in the Caribbean. Will you be relatively safe? Yes. Are your ports suddenly changed? Yes. Are you always told exactly why? No.

  The weather conditions may be referenced and a fairly plausible reason given for the sudden shift in itinerary, just not the alarming one. No one wants passengers to panic.

  Meanwhile, back at home, your family and friends, frantic with worry after watching The Storm Report hyped on television, are crashing your travel agency’s phone lines.

  Because of the misty, overcast day, I felt sure that only dedicated deck walkers were aware that the ship’s speed had slowed considerably—that we were now taking a very long time in getting to Oslo. The notices left in the staterooms by the stewards that morning had been, I thought, deliberately vague: “Mandatory Port Talk with the Captain—Broadway Showroom—4:00 p.m.”

  I sat there watching my dear little ladies sew, intent on their pretty work, their tight gray perms nodding over heaps of brightly-colored ribbon. They looked so vulnerable, so good, steadily working, chattering away. Knowing that many of them, including Ruth, had pinched pennies for a long, long time to afford this cruise, I silently swore that somehow, someway, I would find the slimy creep who had done this to her and to all of us, before things got any worse.

  I went to find Jay and enlist his help.

  * * *

  I found Jay, all right, in the hot tub. Drunk. Or at least well on his way, along with the magician and two of the dancers from the show.

  “Hi, there, sweet Sidney, you little Southern magnolia, you! Come on in, the water’s fiiiiiine!”

  “Just what do you think you are doing?” I snapped.

  “What do you mean, what am I doing, little Miss Church Choir? I am enjoying myself, that’s what I am doing.” He shrugged elaborately.

  “What about the High Steppers, Jay? What about Itchy Feet Travel? What about poor old Ruth Shadrach?”

  He took a long sip of his drink, smacked his lips, leaned back and closed his eyes.

  “Have a Bloody Mary, Sidney. I recommend it. They are delicious. Dee-li-cious. I’ve had several already.

  He opened one eye and looked at me, then closed it again and continued. “Ruth Shadrach is D—E—A—D, dead, dear girl. And I think that as soon as old Itchy finds out about it, you and I are, too. They don’t like it when messy stuff happens on their tours. Looks bad for the company. Bad for business. Bad for the ship. Bad for you. Bad for me.

  “So have a drink on the house while you can, shweetheart, have two. Have three. You might as well.”

  I stormed off down to the cabin only to find that Abdul, the room steward, was in there vacuuming. He immediately tried to leave. Stewards pride themselves on never letting you catch them cleaning. I grabbed my clipboard and pen, told Abdul to carry on, and left.

  The library was—hallelujah—empty.

  I sat down at the table facing the ocean and fumed about Jay. Most of the time, like I said, he’s great. But when the whisky captures him, as my Uncle Earl would say, he’s impossible.

  Jay or no Jay, something had to be done. We had attempted to reach my boss Diana at Itchy for instructions right after I spoke with Dr. Sledge, but had been told that all communications were still down because of the weather. Now with no Jay and no Itchy, it looked like everything was pretty much up to me.

  I switched on the desk lamp and began to write, making a list of all the High Steppers, beginning with the one I had known the longest.

  1. Mrs. Weiss (Hannah), 88, oldest of the group, plump and short with grizzled hair and a Miss America grin, been around the world twice, considers herself the leader. On long bus trips, she brings a deli in her purse.

  2. Ethel Goldstein, 84, Mrs. Weiss’ roommate, best friend and rival. Fashionably thin, Bloomingdale’s wardrobe and big black-framed bifocals. HER purse contains a pharmacy.

  3. Dr. and Dr. Johnson (Fred and Maxine), tall, retired economics professor from Columbia and his equally tall, history professor wife. Black, early 70s, highbrow types. Dedicated travelers; in recent years, mostly with us.

  4. Mr. Bostick (Al), 79, retired theater owner from the Jersey shore. Widower. Long, oily, iron-gray hair and a lecherous grin. Will grab or pinch if you get within range. Loves to gamble, complains and swears a lot. Jay says he’s a pain in the ass, but I think he’s just lonesome.

  5. Mrs. Fletcher (Gertrude), 79, retired NYU librarian. Tight gray perm, wears sensible knits and stout shoes, day and night. Now living with her daughter (obviously a saint) in upstate New York. I think Gertrude’s the pain in the ass. Daughter’s husband pays for her trips.

/>   6. Brooke Shyler, 83, flaming red hair, socialite, upper East Side penthouse, loves travel. Rail thin and patrician, with classic features, expensive high fashion clothing, and a warm smile.

  7. Angelo and Maria Petrone, 75ish, from Queens. Angelo worked his way up to owning a building contracting business while Maria raised six children, most of whom are now working in the family business. He is still muscular, but is developing a gut and has short thick gray hair, tattoos on his biceps, and a booming laugh. Maria is dark and still pretty but carrying a bit too much weight now for her small frame. She bought a rainbow of polyester pantsuits for the trip and sparkly evening clothes.

  8. Charlie and Amy Wu, 60s, second-generation restaurateurs from Chinatown. The Wus are short, almost the same height, and are energetic, fit, and well-dressed. They own a lot of real estate and at least two profitable businesses in Chinatown and are rumored to be involved in many more, perhaps even some shadowy ones. Very pleasant people who are good customers of our agency, but do not mingle much with the group, preferring to book side trips on their own.

  9. The Levy sisters, Marjorie and Esther. Outspoken and very liberal, politically active types from the Upper West Side. Both have a lot of gray hair left over from the ’60s; Marjorie’s is long and pulled back into a ponytail, Esther’s is short and wiry. No makeup, no bras, Birkenstock sandals with socks. Second trip with IFT, don’t expect they’ll be regulars.

  10. Chet Parker, slim, medium height, 30ish, antiques dealer from Chelsea. Hair highlighted blond and carefully cut. Blue eyes, fine features. New to the group. Fastidious dresser with high fashion clothing and accessories. God only knows what he’s doing with the High Steppers.

  11. The Murphys, father Pete, mother Gladys, fat, sad-looking daughter Muriel, first cruise, triple cabin, from Brooklyn. Pete is tall and rangy with big rounded shoulders, coarse features and a big crooked nose that once must have been broken. Gladys favors loud pantsuits with flowered print nylon blouses by day, fussy bejeweled and fringed evening wear by night. All Gladys’ clothes are too tight for her and she accents them with lots of costume jewelry. Her maroon hair is backcombed and curled. She talks all the time, leaving little for Pete to say. Muriel is beyond overweight and she, like her mother, has garish taste in clothes. She wears too much makeup and has a lot of longish fuzzy red hair, thick lips, pasty skin and bulging green eyes that sometimes do not focus well because of her fondness for alcohol.