Princess Charming

by Jane Heller

  Of course, I now knew exactly what line of bull Sam had been handing us: the whole bit about being an insurance agent who was so afraid of flying he had to take a cruise. What a crock.

  Open your eyes and see for yourself what a pain in the ass she is!

  That was another thing Eric had said during the ship-to-shore phone call—a remark Sam had then spun to his own advantage in order to seduce me.

  I can’t decide if you’re a pain in the ass or the find of the century, Slim.

  Wasn’t that the very line he had teased me with? In between nibbles on my earlobes?

  God, he was disgusting. They both were. But you know what really galled me? That Sam would make up that sob story about the poor, sweet, dead fiancée. Jillian. Sniff sniff. I mean, really. Was I a sucker or what?

  Well, they won’t get away with it—either of them, I vowed. I knew I couldn’t run to Captain Solberg with the fact that Sam wasn’t who he’d claimed to be, especially since the captain had seen us together, arm in arm on that receiving line, only the night before. And I knew there wouldn’t be any point in spilling my guts to the police in Saint Croix, where the Princess Charming would be docking within the hour; they would only blow me off the way the cop in Puerto Rico had. No, I would shut my mouth, keep to myself, take a time-out.

  I wasn’t even up to visiting Jackie in the hospital or checking in with Pat. I couldn’t face my friends. Not when the man I’d told them I was crazy about ended up being my would-be executioner. There were some humiliations too unspeakable to share even with one’s closest confidantes.

  No, I wasn’t talking to anybody. I would spend the day in Saint Croix thinking, assessing the situation, deciding my next course of action.

  I washed and dressed purposefully, my mission to distract myself from my pain and suffering.

  And then the phone in my cabin rang.

  I became paralyzed.

  It’s Sam, I whispered. I know it is.

  I let the phone ring and ring and ring, even though a tiny voice inside me wondered if it could be Dr. Johansson, calling to say that Jackie had taken a turn for the worse; or Leah, calling to ask my advice about handling the public relations messes my clients had gotten themselves into; or Pat, merely calling to wish me a good morning.

  No. It was Sam, I knew instinctively. And he was calling for one of two reasons: either to tell me more lies, or to determine if I was in my cabin, alone, so he’d be free to come and kill me.

  The ringing stopped. I exhaled, relieved.

  I continued to dress. Then the phone rang again. And again I let it ring.

  This went on two or three more times before I couldn’t stand it anymore and took the phone off the hook.

  Just after nine, as the ship pulled up to the pier in Frederiksted, there was a knock on my door. I froze until I heard Kingsley’s voice outside my cabin.

  “I have several phone messages for you, Mrs. Zimmerman,” he called out.

  “Oh, thanks, Kingsley,” I said, stepping quickly into my shorts. “Would you mind just slipping them under the door for me?”

  “No problem,” he said and slid three envelopes underneath my stateroom door.

  With trembling hands, I opened each one.

  The first read: “Elaine. Please call. Simon.”

  The second read: “Elaine. I have to talk to you. To explain everything. Simon.”

  The third read: “Slim. Trust me. Sam.”

  Yeah, right, I laughed to myself. I trust you, Sam. You can’t even keep your name straight from message to message.

  I crumpled up the pieces of paper, tossed them in the garbage, and finished dressing.

  And then I grabbed a sheet of Princess Charming stationery and wrote a note of my own: to Pat. I told her that I had plans to go sightseeing alone, that if she was feeling up to it she should go with Albert to whichever scenic spot Ginger Smith Baldwin had chosen for the day’s art safari (I explained that I had misjudged Albert, was no longer suspicious of him, and felt perfectly comfortable with her spending time alone with him), and that I would see her later in the afternoon, in time to escort Jackie out of the hospital and up to her cabin. I also told her I loved her. In case something happened to me in Saint Croix and this was my last chance.

  I stuck the note in an envelope, slid it under her stateroom door, and went ashore.

  The Caribbean sun was as blinding as the steel drums were deafening as I rushed onto the pier, in search of a taxi.

  “Welcome to Saint Croix, the largest of the U.S. Virgin Islands,” said a smiling native woman who handed me a brochure extolling the virtues of Cruzan Rum, a local product which, said the brochure, was rated “Best” in a blind taste test conducted by the Washingtonian magazine, that noted arbiter of rum.

  I smiled back and asked the woman where I might find a taxi. She pointed to the minivans that were lined up at the end of the pier. “They’ll take your tour group wherever you want on the island,” she said cheerfully. “Shopping, sightseeing, even the Cruzan Rum Factory.”

  I thanked her but explained that I wasn’t part of a tour group.

  Her brow furrowed. I felt guilty. She was so sweet and pretty and I had just spoiled her Chamber of Commerce moment.

  “But I’d still love to tour your charming island,” I assured her, glancing across the pier at Strand Street, one of Frederiksted’s most picturesque streets. It was lined with colorful, historic buildings, one of which housed a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise.

  She brightened. “You could join one of the other tour groups,” she said, nodding at the minivans. “Otherwise, you’ll have to pay extra. The drivers don’t like to take a singleton.” A singleton. “Just walk over and ask which tour group can accommodate an additional passenger.”

  “I will,” I said, happy that I would be contributing even in a small way to the financial stability of such a lovely island.

  I hurried over to the large fleet of minivans that stood ready and waiting to carry hundreds of cruise ship captives to various destinations throughout the day. In my haste, I nearly knocked down a “stilt man”—one of those native men who climbs onto a pair of wooden stilts, wears bright clothes, a straw hat, and a voodoo-like mask, towers over everybody on the pier, and provides terrific photo opportunities for tourists.

  “I’m so sorry,” I yelled up to the guy as he straightened his hat and mask.

  “You must be from New York,” he muttered. “Always in a hurry, New Yorkers.”

  I apologized again and walked, more slowly this time, toward the taxis, my heart heavy with the memory of Sam, of the morning he had called my legs “stilts” and I had nearly swooned with the romance of it all.

  “Anyone have space for one more?” I called out to the minivan drivers. They all ignored me. Then a man stepped forward, introducing himself as Lully, and said he could squeeze me in with his group. I was doubtful at first, as Lully’s “minivan” was a dilapidated old Ford Fairlane, but when I peered inside the car, expecting to see at least a half-dozen hot and sweaty tourists, I only saw two, a man and a woman. Relieved, I hopped in.

  “Where y’all from?” asked both the heavyset man and his equally heavyset wife, between whom I was now sandwiched in the back seat of Lully’s Fairlane.

  “New York,” I told the couple. “Manhattan.”

  “Well, how ’bout that, Mother?” The man nudged his wife, then turned to me to explain. “We went up to New York last Christmas, to see ’em light that big ol’ tree at Rockefeller Center. We went to Radio City Music Hall and saw them Rockettes, too.”

  Mother frowned at the mention of the fabled dancers, then leaned over and whispered to me that she hadn’t much cared for their leg kicks or their costumes, neither of which were very Christian, in her opinion. I told her I couldn’t agree more.

  I was attempting to bond with Mother, you understand, seeing as she and her husband and I were to be tourists together for the next few hours in an un-airconditioned car that was badly in need of new shock
absorbers.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Frank Wicky of Hattiesburg, Mississippi,” the man identified himself and his wife. “Glad to know y’all.”

  The idea of moping around the island by myself—or worse, running into Sam!—wasn’t especially appealing. “Glad to know y’all too,” I told the Wickys.

  Lully drove us to Christiansted first, as Mother, who was also known as Agnes, approved heartily of the town’s name. A bustling and very beautiful harbor, Christiansted had an actual “downtown” area, filled with business and government offices, elegant shops, and charming restaurants—all examples of the island’s Danish architecture. (Saint Croix was discovered by Christopher Columbus, who was Italian, but it was the Danes who had the upper hand when it came to design, apparently.)

  “Aren’t we going to get out of the car and walk around?” I asked the Wickys. “Maybe have some lunch?”

  “We take all our meals on the ship,” Mother/Agnes confided. “They’re already paid for.”

  “Besides,” Frank chuckled, “we can see what we need to see from right here.”

  Yeah, sure, I thought sadly, knowing that many cruise passengers felt similarly. For them, seeing a port of call from the back seat of a taxi or through the porthole of one of the ship’s lounges was a safe way to experience a foreign culture, a way to look but not touch or be touched. I gulped back tears as I remembered that Sam and I had spoken of seeing Saint Croix together, of strolling its streets and sampling its food and swimming its waters. When I let myself dwell on what might have been between us, the heartbreak was intolerable.

  From Christiansted, we traveled west, past the University of the Virgin Islands and the Alexander Hamilton Airport and, of course, the Cruzan Rum Factory, eventually making our way back to Frederiksted. Once at the pier, the Wickys shook my hand and said goodbye. (Agnes added that it was a pleasure to meet a New Yorker who did not take the Lord’s name in vain.) And then they walked aboard the ship. After a second or two, I realized that they were leaving it to me to pay Lully.

  As I was reaching into my purse for the money, I suddenly said, “Lully, could I hire you and your car for just another half-hour?”

  “Of course, missus,” he said politely. “You want to do some shopping?”

  I shook my head. “I want to do some crying.”

  I asked Lully to drive me to the loneliest stretch of beach within ten miles of the pier. He obliged. When we got there, he stayed with the Ford Fairlane while I went off to the sand, walking until I found a spot that suited me.

  There, I sat down, legs crossed Indian-style, and stared out at the turquoise water, listening to the sounds of the waves and the seagulls and the more distant squeals of happy children. I had never been so depressed.

  At some point, though, after wallowing in self-pity, I stood up, dusted the sand off my legs, and said out loud: “Never mind about your broken heart. Never mind that you married a man who considers murder a viable solution to a problem. Never mind about any of that. You’re a dead woman unless you keep your wits about you. You had a good cry. Now dry your tears and get back on that ship.”

  I took my own advice. I blew my nose, pumped myself up for whatever was coming next, and summoned Lully to drive me back to the Princess Charming.

  17

  I returned to my stateroom at two-thirty, an hour and a half before the ship was to depart from Saint Croix and head north toward Miami. When I entered the cabin, I saw that several more envelopes had been slipped under the door.

  I was tempted to throw them out without even reading them but then thought, what the hell. I’m on top of this now.

  The messages were from Sam, basically telling me yet again that he wanted a chance to explain, that I owed him at least that much.

  I was about to toss the notes into the garbage when I noticed that one of them was from Pat, alerting me that Jackie was being released from the hospital at three-thirty and that we should meet there to help her up to her stateroom together.

  I was glad that I had gotten back to the ship in time. I’d been so wrapped up in my own little soap opera that I’d nearly forgotten that one of my friends was languishing in the hospital and the other was hobbling around on a sprained ankle.

  I took a quick shower, changed my clothes, and rode the elevator down to the hospital. Jackie looked infinitely better than she had the day before. She was dressed and sitting on her bed when I arrived. Pat was there, too, minus the wheelchair. So, I was surprised to see, were the Cones.

  “We stopped by to see how Jackie was doing,” Kenneth explained. “We brought her a get-well gift too.”

  With a bemused expression, Jackie held up the small box from Little Switzerland, the swanky jewelry/crystal/fine china/perfume shop that had outposts not only on Saint Croix but on other islands in the Caribbean.

  “Show Elaine,” Pat urged as I stood there thinking how generous, albeit inappropriate, it was for the Cones to buy Jackie a gift, let alone one from a store with such expensive merchandise. I guessed their ostentatiousness knew no bounds. They’d met Jackie only once, after all, on that first night of the cruise, the only night she’d come to the dinner table.

  Jackie took the lid off the gift box and carefully lifted out a crystal figurine in the shape of a garden hoe. I stepped closer so I could get a better look at it.

  “It’s lovely,” I told the Cones. “And so thoughtful.”

  “Nonsense. We were out shopping anyway,” Gayle said offhandedly. “We went down our list of people we felt obligated to buy souvenirs for—Kenneth’s important clients, our dearest friends, our household staff, my hair colorist, my massage therapist, the dogs’ therapist—and then Kenneth remembered that Jackie was getting out of the hospital today—and that she co-owns a nursery. When we saw the darling little garden hoe, we simply added her to our shopping list. Of course, we also bought a few things for ourselves.”

  I sighed and thought how simple life must be for people like Gayle and Kenneth Cone. Every day was Christmas.

  “Now, I think we should let Jackie and her friends have some private time together,” Kenneth said to his wife.

  “Absolutely,” Gayle agreed with him. “I have a manicure in ten minutes. We both do, Kenneth.”

  He nodded and off they went. Once they were gone, Pat and I got an update on Jackie’s health.

  “No fever, no stomach problems, no nothing. Just a little weakness in the legs,” she told us.

  “Where is Dr. Johansson?” asked Pat, whose own leg was much less swollen than it had been the day before; she was now hobbling around with the aid of a cane. As for the bruises on her chin and arm, they looked pretty scary but they didn’t seem to bother her. “Shouldn’t he be here to discharge you?”

  “He already did discharge me,” Jackie said. “And to tell you the truth, I’m gonna miss that sweetie’s bedside manner. He says if I take it easy in my cabin for the rest of the day, I can hang out around the ship tomorrow and then go ashore the next day when we dock in Nassau. He asked me to have lunch with him there, if I’m up to it. Saturday’s his day off.”

  “Jackie, you sound excited about it,” I remarked. I was grateful that her vacation wouldn’t be a total loss.

  “Speaking of excited,” she said, and smiled knowingly at me, “where’s Clark Kent?”

  I didn’t answer, which she took to mean I didn’t understand.

  “Come on. I mean Loverboy. Your running pal. The insurance agent,” she tried again.

  “That’s right, Elaine. I thought you were going sightseeing with Sam today,” Pat recalled. “I was surprised when your note said you were spending the day on your own.”

  “Maybe Elaine was out buying Sammy boy a Valentine,” Jackie quipped. “Or maybe she was getting her butt tattooed. With his name on it.”

  Pat turned the color of the red ribbon on Jackie’s Little Switzerland gift box. I remained expressionless. I didn’t know how to explain to my friends that I was no longer seeing Sam, without going into all the deta
ils.

  “What’s the matter, Elaine?” Jackie asked. “Did you and Sam have a fight or something?”

  “Let’s just say that I’ve changed my mind about him. He’s not who I thought he was at all.”

  She looked at me with great skepticism. “Who the hell did you think he was?”

  “I’d rather not talk about it,” I replied. “In fact, I’d appreciate it if you two wouldn’t mention his name again.”

  “Sure. Fine. Whatever,” said Jackie, seeing I wasn’t kidding. “Tell you what. Since it’ll be awkward for you and old what’s-his-name to sit at the same table at dinner, now that you’ve busted up, and since I’m back in the land of the living, thank God, why don’t we all have dinner in my cabin tonight? Just the Three Blonde Mice, huh?”

  “That sounds like fun,” Pat agreed.

  “It sounds like heaven,” I said, relieved I wouldn’t have to go anywhere near Table 186.

  We were back at sea, en route to Nassau, and the waters were rougher than they had been. Despite the ship’s highly publicized stabilizers, she was rocking and rolling and tossing us around quite a bit. Undaunted, Jackie, Pat, and I ordered practically everything on the room service menu and staged an old-fashioned pig-out at the table Kingsley had wheeled skillfully into Jackie’s stateroom.

  “Looks like a party,” he said, surveying all the food and booze we’d ordered. Per had advised Jackie not to drink alcohol, since she was still on medication, but she had ordered a scotch and intended to savor every sip of it. Pat and I had each chosen wine—a bottle of red for me, a bottle of white for her.

  “It is a party,” Jackie told Kingsley. “All-girls night. And we don’t want any crashers. That means no turn-down service, no phone calls, no nothing. Okay?”

  “No problem,” Kingsley said. “When you’re done with the table, just leave it outside your cabin.”

  “Will do,” I said. “Thanks, Kingsley.”

  He waved, hung the do not disturb sign on Jackie’s doorknob, and left.