by Marie Moore
The main thing Oslo has going for it, I think, is that it’s not Helsinki, where after a gander at the big shipyards and a whirl around the Sibelius monument you can have a high old time sipping on cloudberry liqueur and munching on a little reindeer pâté. Maybe I’m wrong. There’s a good chance that my impressions of both cities have been unfairly prejudiced by the company I keep.
I instinctively prefer the magnificent scenery of those countries—the mountains and the fjords—to their cities. Oslo and Helsinki are both kept clean and neat and have some very impressive public buildings. I shouldn’t make a judgment, I guess, after three admittedly brief visits. I know I must be missing something, because both have many fans. Perhaps I just need a better tour guide.
After all, one of the reasons I love travel is that I find something interesting wherever I go. I just feel more kinship with some places than with others.
So I had no regrets as I stood by the aft rail watching the lights of the most famous city in Norway fade into the mist. It wasn’t quite dark, though the early dinner seating was well under way, just that eerie twilight that passes for evening in Scandinavia in the summer.
Maybe I always come in the wrong season. I should return alone for a long visit in deep winter. I could watch the magic of the Northern Lights, cook myself in a hot tub, allow someone to beat me with birch branches, and then jump naked into a snow bank.
Right. I guess I’m just not the fjord type. I prefer summertime, hot, steamy Southern nights, Jack in the Black, smoky barbecued ribs washed down with sweet lemon iced tea, and red-clay hills covered in kudzu.
Dreaming of Dixie, I was caught by surprise when two strong arms slipped around me and pinned me against the rail, and someone started nuzzling my neck.
“Okay, Jay, okay. Give it up. I know you love me, but don’t overdo it. A High Stepper might be watching and get the wrong idea.”
“Ah, but it is not Mr. Wilson who holds you close, not this time,” Captain Vargos said in his deep voice. “I missed you at dinner.”
I turned to face him, swallowed once more in the depths of his blue eyes. He pulled me close and I knew he was just about to kiss me when something began buzzing at his waist. Releasing me, Vargos snatched his cell phone from his belt and snarled into it, “Vargos.”
As I watched him listening intently to whatever the caller was saying, my doubts were fading, melting away in the moonlight. I no longer believed he was lying about the wife. Zoe can be a cat, and her information must have been wrong. And, if he wanted to keep his day job, he did have to answer to Empress. Instead of escaping while he was distracted by the phone call, I waited, in the curve of his arm, for him to finish his conversation.
It wasn’t much of a conversation. He just stood there listening, holding the phone to his ear, jaw clenched, looking grim.
Finally, whoever was on the other end finished speaking.
“I’ll be right there,” Captain Vargos said. “She’s with me now. I’ll bring her. Send someone to find Wilson.”
He looked down at me, his eyes troubled. “We have an emergency, Sidney,” he said quietly. “There’s no time for explanations. Just come along quickly, if you will. Follow me. This way, please.”
Releasing me, he jerked open the heavy door marked “Authorized Personnel Only” and bolted down the port stairway. I followed. I had no choice.
* * *
Muriel Murphy wouldn’t get her first Baked Alaska that night after all.
Al Bostick lay naked on top of all those exotic desserts in the freezer, frozen solid, a plastic trash bag knotted around his throat.
Vargos took off his coat and wrapped it around me. I shook uncontrollably from the cold, the shock, and the horror that had been Al Bostick.
“Come out of here. You’ve seen enough,” he said. He turned to a busboy. “Please bring her some coffee.”
Vargos took me up one flight of stairs, sat me down in the executive chef’s office, and gave me his handkerchief to blow my nose. It seemed so strange to me—sitting there looking through the glass door—to be watching the evening meal in motion, as if on a normal evening.
Waiters and busboys hustled heavy trays, and chefs, cooks and kitchen help all worked together like one efficient machine. Meanwhile, on the level below us, two burly Asian deckhands stood guard in front of the door of the frozen food locker. I stared in frustration at the captain, tears rolling down my cheeks, wiping my nose with his handkerchief.
“There is no reason for you to look at me like that, Sidney. I didn’t kill him.”
“Maybe not, Captain Vargos, but if you hadn’t tried to hide Miss Shadrach’s murder, if you had ordered a full investigation immediately, hadn’t gone along with the cover-up, this may not have happened. Al Bostick might still be alive.”
He pulled me to my feet then, strong hands gripping my shoulders, and I looked up into those dark blue eyes.
His voice was deep and gentle. “Sidney, I am not an evil man, and I am not unfeeling. I only did what I had to, what I was told to do, that is all. There is no cover-up. No conspiracy. The cruise line sincerely regrets Miss Shadrach’s unfortunate death and has just been trying very hard to keep things pleasant for the sake of the other thousands of passengers until this voyage is completed. You know how important that is. Please be reasonable. Today’s unfortunate tragedy will have to be investigated thoroughly, too, until an explanation is reached and the culprit is found. Please try to understand.”
“All I know, Captain, all I understand, is that my High Steppers are getting killed, and every official connected with this ship, including you, is acting as if it’s not happening, as if it doesn’t matter.”
He removed his hands from my shoulders, walked around the desk, and spoke briefly into the telephone.
“Someone will be here in a moment to escort you to your stateroom, Miss Marsh. For your own safety, please don’t attempt to leave it again this evening. I will have a tray with your evening meal delivered to your cabin, and when I wish to speak with you again, I will send for you.”
And with that he walked out of the door, slamming it behind him.
The door opened again and a husky Russian in a cook’s helper uniform motioned for me to follow. When I didn’t move on my own, he grasped my upper arm in a firm grip and, without a word, marched me past the pastry racks, out through the double doors and down the passageway, into the staff elevator and up to my cabin.
He waited for me to open my door with my key, then motioned for me to enter. Despite my protests, he closed it firmly, and I heard the master lock above the knob click into place. I immediately tried to open the door, but it was firmly bolted.
11
I was infuriated and insulted. Here I was, locked in my cabin and treated like a child. I tried the rest of the evening to escape, first by beating on the door until the big guy opened it, then pleading and finally shouting at him. Nothing worked. My guard just folded his arms like a big genie, shook his head, and closed and locked the door again.
My room phone wasn’t working; it obviously had been turned off. My cell phone said “No Service.”
I broke my best hairbrush when I threw it at the door. After that, and a good cry, I felt better.
About 11:00 p.m., to my great relief, a knock on the door brought a steward with a dinner tray, and hot on his heels, Jay.
You would think that in such a crisis I would have no appetite, but the opposite was true. I was starving. I tore into the dinner tray, blessing the chef.
“Really, Sidney, it’s as if you spent the last week on a diet of bread and water. Where are your manners?”
I didn’t answer for a minute. I was too busy chewing.
“Funny, Jay, really funny. To hell with manners, Jay, and to hell with you, too,” I said when I could. “You can’t criticize me. You had your meal. You weren’t starved. You weren’t a prisoner.”
“Oh, come on, Drama Queen. Give Vargos a break. He may have had your best interests at heart, trying
to keep you safe until a few things could be sorted out.”
“My. Best. Interests?”
“Calm down, Sidney, calm down and listen. Just hold on a minute. Listen to me. Everything’s okay. It’s all okay. It turns out that Bostick’s death is not even connected to Ruth or the High Steppers or us or anything after all. They’ve already caught the guy who did it—some Chilean deckhand.”
“What do you mean, Jay?”
“Well, see, it seems like this guy, this deckhand, had a thing going with some dancer from the cabaret, and when he found out that she had shacked up with Bostick, he lost it. That was the end of old Al.
“All they have to do now,” he continued, with this happy little smile on his face, “is figure out the police jurisdiction—which is kind of complicated, of course—and we’re on our way.
I stared at him without saying a word, but he refused to meet my eyes.
He continued babbling. “Oh, and you’ll be happy to know that I already called Diana from the bridge. She’s okay with everything. So just chill out, sweetie, everything’s fine. Everything’s cool. And look! I brought you a chocolate martini!”
“How do they know for sure that the deckhand is the murderer, Jay, or that this death has no connection to Ruth or the High Steppers?”
“They’ve got it in black and white, Sidney. Black and white. The guy wrote a confession, see, in a note, right before he jumped overboard.”
“Jumped overboard. Is that what you said, Jay? Jumped overboard? He wrote this handy dandy confession and then jumped overboard? He was overcome with remorse, I suppose. His poor little old heart was just broken all to pieces?”
“Right. So now we don’t have anything to worry about, do we?”
I climbed into my bed, switched off my light, turned my face to the wall, and pretended to sleep. Not because I didn’t have anything to say or anything to worry about.
Because there was no point in continuing a conversation with someone who deliberately refused to use his brain.
* * *
I was scarfing down poached egg and toast in the dining room when we sailed into Copenhagen.
Normally, I try my best to be at the rail for the sail-in when we enter a port. I love sail-ins and I truly love Copenhagen, but I’d had a tough time falling asleep, overslept and barely had time for breakfast.
Copenhagen is terrific and I was really rushing because I didn’t want cause any delay for my group or myself in going ashore. Shore time in a city and country you love is precious indeed. Choosing the buffet on the Lido deck would have allowed me to see the sail-in, but I didn’t want to risk an encounter with a certain ship captain. He was never in the dining room at breakfast, certainly not when nearing a port. After the horrible events and bitter words of the previous evening, I needed space and time to think.
The High Steppers had been shocked, of course, with the news about Al Bostick but not overly saddened or even too surprised. He had not been at all popular. Many of them were repulsed by his mannerisms and his dress. He had insulted most of the women, loudly and regularly referring to them as “old bats.”
“That’s tough about Al,” Angelo said, when he heard the news. “But that rascal was playing way out of his league. A man his age, coming between some hot-blooded guy and his girl … Well, I ain’t saying he had it coming or nothing, but he was asking for it, messing around like that. I had no problems with Al, kinda liked the guy. But my wife, man, I can tell ya, he sure wasn’t her cup of tea,”
Angelo’s assessment was the nicest I heard. No one proposed a memorial service.
I thought the day onshore, off the ship, would be good for everyone. We all needed a breather.
In this port, I was scheduled to escort the all-day City and Castles Tour through the shining metropolis of Copenhagen and on to magical Northern Denmark and two of its magnificent castles. I had been looking forward to it. I had done the same tour once before and knew that both the castles and the scenery are lovely.
Before leaving the cabin, I put some serious money, a credit card, and my passport in the little pouch I wear around my neck and under my shirt while on excursions. My ship’s card, a few euros for drinks and snacks, and a little string bag for purchases went in my left pocket. I stashed my compact camera and cellphone in my right.
I always try, with varying degrees of success, to get my clients to store their valuables wisely. In areas where pickpockets work, the lack of a purse keeps you from being a target. Plus, sightseeing is a lot more fun and less tiring if you don’t weigh yourself down with an extra thirty pounds.
Jay was gone when I woke—not too unusual, because he often ran on the jogging track early in the morning—but this morning he’d probably gotten an early start to avoid talking to me.
That suited me just fine, because I really didn’t want a lot of conversation with him either until his moral compass had swung back to normal.
Before I finally slept, I had thoroughly dissected that incredible fable that Jay had spun for me in the light of my deep and intimate knowledge of his psyche. I concluded that—while our clients might want to fully accept, even welcome the convenient explanation of Al Bostick’s untimely demise—he couldn’t possibly expect me to buy it.
Jay is not a simpleton. Far from it. So there was no way that he could possibly believe that (a) Bostick’s death was not connected to everything else; or (b) that the deckhand/alleged murderer—if he even existed—could be anything other than another innocent victim of whatever awful thing was wreaking havoc on the Rapture.
My group had somehow become deeply entwined in this terrible and dangerous mess, whether anyone wanted to admit it or not, and no one seemed to be inclined to want to face up to it or do anything about it but me. I had asked Jay to go with me to Bostick’s cabin to look around for any clues, but he told me the cabin had been immediately sealed by the ship’s purser and was being guarded against unauthorized entry until the investigation was completed. I could tell that he was glad of that fact, which meant he wouldn’t have to deal with it. He was totally shrugging off Bostick’s death.
Jay is a decent man, the best friend I ever had, and he is no dummy, but sometimes he strays from high moral ground in favor of expediency.
Someone had tossed him this ridiculous story about the deckhand, and he had grabbed it with both hands because that was the easier option.
* * *
“Sidney, Sidney, there you are! Aren’t you going with us on the tour to Hamlet’s Castle? I need my sticker, and they have already called some groups to assemble on the Continental Deck gangway.” Gertrude Fletcher pounced on me like a duck on a June bug, glaring down at my breakfast through her bifocals.
“Oh, my goodness, yes, Mrs. Fletcher. I’m so sorry,” I said, hurrying to finish. “I’m afraid I overslept. I’ll be right there.”
I rose, grabbed my bag and sunglasses, and followed her out of the dining room.
“Well, you’d better hurry, or we’ll be left,” she sniffed. “Jay Wilson’s tour has already gone. I guess he managed to get up on time, no matter what the two of you did last night!”
I bit my tongue and followed in Gertrude’s wake to my shore excursion group waiting on C Deck, thinking that the mysterious Chilean deckhand had really gotten it wrong.
He had snuffed the wrong High Stepper.
12
The High Steppers waited impatiently in the sun while Phillip Wu and the Murphys took at least five hundred pictures of the statue of The Little Mermaid. The graceful statue is certainly beautiful and beloved by the Danes, but nobody needs that many pictures of her. Gertrude finally barked at them to stop.
“Enough, already. Get back on the bus. You’re wasting our time!”
For once, I think everyone was secretly cheering for Gertrude.
Every now and then someone steals the lovely little mermaid from her rock but somehow the Danes always find her, fix her and put her back. She has become a national symbol and is a monument to the enchantin
g tales of one of their native sons, Hans Christian Andersen.
We climbed back on the bus and Kirsten, our very knowledgeable local guide, continued her narrative. “Copenhagen was once a fortified city with high ramparts, surrounded by a deep moat. As you can see, it is now a city of canals. Her citizens actively use the canals, sometimes even living on them in houseboats.”
The bus crossed a bridge and we looked down on a derelict boat where a scantily-clad woman with long blond hair tended potted plants. A thin, bearded man, naked except for some bright purple shorts and some impressive tattoos, was smoking something that probably came from the plants.
I heard my old biddies fussing behind me, clucking about the Danish hippies, and I reflected that it might not be such a bad thing to be sitting on that beat-up boat in the bright morning sun, wearing an old bikini, listening to the blues, sipping a cold one. Instead, I rolled over the cobblestone streets in the bus with the High Steppers as Kirsten continued her narrative.
“We will soon pass the magnificent Christenborg Palace, now the seat of the Danish Parliament. In olden times, Denmark was an absolute monarchy.
“Before long we will be leaving the city and traveling to the north of Denmark, where we will be visiting some of the most famous castles of the Danish kings and nobles, including the highlight of the tour, the very beautiful Kronborg Castle at Elsinore.
“Legend has it that Kronborg was the castle of Shakespeare’s famous Danish prince, Hamlet. Whether or not the legend is true, I’m certain that you will enjoy such a beautiful castle, situated along the narrow stretch of water dividing Denmark and Sweden.
“Across this narrow strait, the lord of the castle once stretched a giant chain to stop passing ships and demand that they pay a toll.
“Now if you’ll look to your left, just beyond that wall ...”