Princess Charming

by Jane Heller

  “What would you do?” Kenneth said. “Peter had me by the balls. He threatened to tell Gayle and the police if I didn’t take this cruise and kill his ex-wife.”

  I wondered which Kenneth feared more: Gayle finding out about his scandalous activities and divorcing him, or law enforcement officials locking him up and throwing away the key.

  “He wanted that nursery all to himself,” Jackie mused. “What a psycho.” She stuck her tongue out at Kenneth. “What a couple of psychos.”

  I was still processing the realization that I had sat at the same table with Kenneth Cone for seven straight nights, never suspecting that he was leading a double life or had a connection to Peter Gault, when I heard a loud whooshing sound behind me and then felt myself being knocked off my feet by a torrent of water. It was as if a dam had burst and now, suddenly, the water was rushing onto the deck. I looked for Simon and discovered that he had opened the valve that was meant to be hooked up to a large hose, in case of fire on the ship. It was a brilliant move, because the watery onslaught not only knocked me down, it knocked Kenneth down! He landed with a thud after slipping and sliding and trying desperately to regain his balance, dropping Jackie onto the deck in the struggle. All four of us were down, water gushing all around us, as we scrambled to stand back up.

  “Don’t even think about running!” Simon shouted at Kenneth, who was up, then down, then up again. “You’re trapped on this ship, buddy. There’s no place for you to hide.”

  Kenneth was not convinced. He managed to right himself, despite being ankle-deep in water, and sloshed his way toward the doors leading inside the Princess Charming.

  “I’m going after him!” Simon yelled. He was clearly in a state of testosterone overdrive.

  “Not without me you’re not!” I said, dragging myself up out of the water, my hair and clothes a soggy mess. I glanced at Jackie, who was still on her back, floating.

  “Sam saved my life!” she said, the weight of what had happened to her finally sinking in. “He did!”

  I waded over to her. “Thank God you’re all right,” I said, out of breath from all the tumult. “We didn’t know if we’d find you in time.”

  She cocked her head at me. “You two knew that Kenneth was going to try to kill me?”

  “Listen, Jackie,” I said, in a hurry to catch up with Simon, who was in hot pursuit of Kenneth. “You’re okay now, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “You don’t need me to stay with you?”

  “No.”

  “Good. I’ll tell you everything later. Now, I’ve got to go and help Simon.”

  “Who is this Simon you keep talking about?” she asked.

  “Later,” I said.

  Kenneth and Simon had a pretty good head start, but I caught a glimpse of them sprinting toward the doors and ran as fast as I could to at least keep them in sight. My thigh muscles were aching from all the stairs I’d climbed and I had developed an enormous and very painful blister on the big toe of my right foot, but it’s amazing what you’ll put up with to rescue the man you love.

  It quickly became clear to me that Kenneth was leading us on a wild-goose chase—an arduous marathon that became all the more arduous because it was now well past eight-thirty, and the people from the six-thirty seating had been let out of the dining room and were roaming the ship, turning the hallways into obstacle courses.

  First, Kenneth darted into the lounge where Jackpot Bingo was just getting under way. Hundreds of passengers were seated in red velour seats, tense with the possibility that they might hear their number called out over the microphone—the number that would render them the winner of ten thousand smackeroos.

  “Somebody stop that man!” Simon shouted as he pursued Kenneth across the stage that had been set up there, complete with a giant, electronic bingo board.

  No one made a move to stop Kenneth or help Simon. But several people booed the interruption.

  Kenneth’s next mad dash was through one of the other lounges, this one the setting for Ginger Smith Baldwin’s final painting class. Clustered around a table on which a large bowl of fruit rested, a half-dozen people were trying to master the art of the “still life.” One of those people was Gayle Cone.

  “Kenneth! What on earth happened to you?” she said as her husband bounded through the room in his wet clothes, Simon on his tail and me bringing up the rear. “I ordered dessert for you, but you never came back to the table.”

  “I wasn’t hungry,” he said as he ran right past her, knocking over both the table and the bowl of fruit.

  In and out he went, his next stop the meeting room where the cruise director was about to deliver a lecture on the disembarkation process.

  “As you all know, you’ll be leaving the vessel tomorrow morning in Miami,” the cruise director was saying. “So this talk will cover baggage handling, customs regulations, airline flights and transfers, and of course, gratuities for members of our staff.”

  “Stop that man!” Simon yelled as the three of us stampeded through the room.

  “Stop him from what?” asked the cruise director.

  “From killing the passengers on this ship,” I said, gasping for breath.

  The cruise director laughed. “Now that’s a funny bit,” he said, “but you guys have the wrong meeting room. Stand-Up Comedy Night is down the hall and to your left.”

  Stand up, my ass. I wanted to sit down in the worst way.

  Before I could explain what was going on, Kenneth had already taken off in search of another safe haven, Simon at his heels.

  Oh, please, no, I thought when I saw that they were speeding through the nearby exit door and heading up the stairwell. I sighed, taking a couple of seconds to work the kinks out of my legs and feet, then climbed the stairs after them.

  Deck 6. Deck 7. Deck 8.

  For God’s sake, I said to myself. Kenneth’s going all the way to the top.

  Deck 9. Deck 10. Deck 11.

  Yup. Kenneth slammed through the doors leading to the ship’s top level, home to the Princess Charming’s Glass Slipper café as well as her two swimming pools.

  The deck was dark and deserted, except for the pools, which were lit up, and a pair of lounge chairs, which were occupied by a man and a woman engaging in sexual intercourse. When they heard us approaching, they hid under the towels they’d been using as blankets.

  “My goodness! I never expected to see the three of you up here!” said the woman, peeking out from her towel.

  “What did you say, Dorothy?” asked her companion.

  I don’t believe this, I thought.

  Simon ignored the Thayers. “You’ve got nowhere to go now, Kenneth!” he shouted, wheezing from all the running. “This is the end of the line!”

  Kenneth turned around to assess the situation, and in the process, he stumbled slightly. The momentary slow-down was all Simon needed to close the gap between them. He tackled Kenneth, right next to one of the swimming pools. They started punching each other, like a couple of drunks in a barroom brawl, and all I could do was watch in horror. I felt as impotent and helpless as Simon must have the day Jillian fell overboard during the storm. I had to do something, had to take action.

  “Dorothy! Find a phone and call Security!” I screamed, loud enough so even Lloyd could hear me. With any luck, a handful of armed and very large men would arrive on the scene before it was too late.

  “Of course, dear,” said Dorothy, struggling into her clothes, grabbing a startled Lloyd by the arm, and scurrying off.

  Kenneth and Simon continued to wrestle, grunting and cursing and threatening to do permanent damage to each other’s manhood.

  Suddenly, their fighting carried them right into the swimming pool, their bodies plunging into the water with a gigantic splash!

  “Oh, no!” I screamed, louder this time, circling the pool to get a better look at who was doing what to whom. They were still underwater and I couldn’t see anything but a big clump of black tuxedos. When they finally em
erged, it was Kenneth who had the upper hand—more specifically, he had both his hands around Simon’s head and was dunking him in the water, vowing to hold him down until he drowned!

  At that precise moment, Captain Solberg’s voice came over the PA system.

  “Dis is your captain speaking,” he said. “Vith your nine p.m. veather report. Da last von of da cruise.”

  You’re telling me, bub, I thought, tuning him out as he went on and on about the temperature, the wind speed, the projected arrival time in Miami, and other matters that were totally irrelevant to me now.

  I paced back and forth along the deck of the pool, pleading with Kenneth to let go of Simon, promising him I wouldn’t tell a soul about his call girl service, even offering to work part-time as one of his call girls, if he’d have me.

  He didn’t pay any attention to me. He was too busy trying to keep Simon’s head underwater, trying to kill my brave, courageous sweetheart.

  Well, he wasn’t going to get away with it. Just then, my eyes lit on the pool skimmer mounted a few feet away in a storage area. I wasn’t an expert on pool maintenance, being a city girl, but even I knew that a pool skimmer was basically a long pole with netting at the tip and that it was designed to rid pools of debris.

  Kenneth Cone was debris, all right, and so I grabbed the skimmer, stuck it into the pool, and dragged the net across the surface of the water until I was able to ensnare Kenneth’s head in the weave of the white fabric.

  “Yesss!” I said when I hooked him.

  He went berserk when he realized he was trapped in the netting. “What the fuck is this?” he snarled, pulling and tugging on the skimmer with one hand while continuing to hold Simon underwater with the other.

  “You might as well call it quits,” I said as Kenneth kept struggling unsuccessfully to extricate himself.

  I counted the seconds, waiting for him to surrender, heaving a huge sigh of relief when I finally saw Simon’s head pop out of the water.

  “Simon!” I cheered as he gasped for breath, coughing up all the water that had accumulated in his lungs during the dunking. “Simon! Speak to me! Let me know you’re all right!”

  He couldn’t speak, but he waved an exhausted arm at me.

  It took another couple of minutes before he was able to focus on what had happened—particularly on the fact that I had Kenneth in my web, so to speak.

  “Pretty clever, Slim,” he said hoarsely as he watched Kenneth squirm inside the mesh of the skimmer. “You’re really something.”

  I smiled, remembering that he had said the very same thing the first time we had sex. Unfortunately, I couldn’t savor the compliment this time, since I was concentrating on containing Kenneth.

  “Thanks, but I can’t hold on much longer,” I said, my grip on the skimmer weakening, my arms about to give out. “Do me a favor while we wait for Security to show up, would you, Simon?”

  “Anything,” he said wearily.

  “Punch the guy’s lights out so I can drop this damn skimmer, okay? I think one good shot in the nose ought to do the trick.”

  “I didn’t know you were the violent type,” Simon mused.

  “I’m not,” I said. “I’m just getting in touch with my masculine side.”

  He smiled, his handsome face a pulpy mass of bruises, his left eye almost totally closed.

  He blew me a kiss, mustered all the strength he had in him, and then drew his fist back and pounded Kenneth right smack in the nose.

  I heard a bone break. Oh, well.

  Kenneth slumped, his body a dead weight. It was over.

  “Nice one,” I told Simon.

  “A pleasure,” he said, rubbing his knuckles.

  While I lifted the skimmer out of the water and dropped it onto the deck, Simon grabbed hold of Kenneth’s tuxedo jacket and pulled him to the shallow end of the pool, dumped him on the steps, and left him there.

  “He’s still breathing, isn’t he?” I asked as I peered at our catch of the day. “We want him alive, so he can serve an extremely long prison sentence.”

  “He’ll be fine,” Simon assured me.

  “I love you,” I said as Simon emerged from the pool and wrapped his soaking-wet arms around me.

  “I love you too,” he said.

  “You mean that?” I said. “I was afraid you’d be angry at me because I was the one who saved your life.”

  He laughed, and his laugh told me that he was finally free of the psychological burden he’d been carrying since Jillian’s death.

  “I love you,” he said again, so there would be no doubt.

  I smiled, feeling happier than I’d ever felt, more tuckered out too. “Listen,” I told Simon. “The night wasn’t a total loss for you in the It’s-the-man’s-job-to-save-the-woman’s-life department. You didn’t save mine but you saved Jackie’s. One out of two isn’t bad, right?”

  “I love you,” he said a third time, silencing me with a long and very convincing kiss.

  We were in the midst of that kiss when four security guards arrived, accompanied by Captain Solberg.

  “Vhere is da stockbroker who tried to murder da landscaping lady?” Svein asked. Apparently, Jackie had recovered from her near-death experience and told the captain everything.

  Simon and I pointed to the still-out-cold Kenneth, whose body was draped across the pool steps, water lapping against the Armani tux.

  After taking a quick look at him, the security guards had a little conference. Eventually, one of them radioed for Dr. Johansson, having determined that Kenneth required medical attention.

  “Ve’ve already contacted da police in Miami,” Captain Solberg said. “Dey’ll take Mr. Cone into custody vhen da ship arrives dere tomorrow morning.”

  “What about Peter Gault?” I asked. “Have the police up in Bedford, New York, been alerted?”

  “Yes, of course,” said the captain, as if he’d been on top of the case from the get-go. “Mrs. Gault has nothing more to vorry about.”

  “I’m very relieved to hear that,” I replied, then regarded Simon, who looked as if he’d just gone fifteen rounds with Mike Tyson. “Now, let’s get you to the hospital,” I said to him.

  He shook his head. “Let’s get me to bed. Yours.”

  “But you need a doctor, Simon,” I insisted. “Your face looks like roadkill.”

  “Your love will heal me,” he said through swollen lips. “It already has.”

  I linked my arm through his. “To bed then,” I agreed, my own body about to collapse from exhaustion.

  Propping each other up, we walked slowly away from Kenneth, from the security guards, from Captain Solberg, back inside the ship, down in the elevator.

  We had arrived at Deck 8 and were ambling down the corridor to Cabin 8024, so tired we could barely lift one leg in front of the other, when I asked Simon, out of the blue, “Are you allergic to anything?”

  “Penicillin,” he said. “You?”

  “A lot of things. I’ll make you a list when we get home,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “What section of the Sunday Times do you like to read first?” I asked next.

  “Travel,” he said.

  “Of course,” I said.

  “You?”

  “The obituaries.”

  He nodded. We kept walking. Only a few more steps and we were there.

  “Is your mother the type you have to visit all the time, the type who acts hurt if you don’t?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Yours?”

  “Yes. But she loads me up with leftovers when I visit,” I said. “She’s a very good cook.”

  “Aren’t you?” Simon asked.

  “No,” I admitted. “But I’m a very good microwaver.”

  He nodded.

  “Well, that’s all I need to know about you for now,” I said as we had made it to my cabin at last. “The other things will come out as we go along.”

  “I thought you didn’t like surprises,” Simon remarked.

  “I ne
ver used to,” I said.

  He nodded.

  I inserted the key into the lock, opened the cabin door, and helped Simon inside.

  Disembarkation

  The M/S Princess Charming docked in Miami at seven o’clock in the morning on Sunday, February seventeenth. We were supposed to be off the ship by nine-thirty, and since Simon didn’t leave my cabin until eight, I really had to hustle in order to shower, dress, throw all my clothes into my bag, and fill out the Customs form in time. When I had finally completed all my tasks, I stuck my head out the door, hoping Kingsley would either carry the bag out to the disembarkation area or arrange for a porter to do it. He was down at the end of the hall, wishing passengers a safe trip home. I caught his attention and motioned for him to stop by my cabin.

  “Here’s my suitcase,” I told him when he arrived, smiling and full of good cheer. “And here’s a little something for you.” I handed him one of the windowed Princess Charming envelopes we’d been given specifically for gratuities.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Zimmerman,” Kingsley said, referring to the envelope, not the suitcase. “It’s been a pleasure to serve you, and when you’re planning your next cruise, think of Sea Swan.” I would never forget Sea Swan. “I do have some bad news, unfortunately.”

  “Bad news?” I laughed. How bad is bad when you’ve just spent the last night of your vacation tangling with a hit man? “Go on, Kingsley. What is it?”

  “It’s your suitcase, Mrs. Zimmerman,” he said. “It won’t make it onto your plane back to New York.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “All passengers were required to leave their bags outside their cabins by midnight,” he explained. “With over two thousand people on the ship, we need several hours to sort the baggage and route it to the right airline terminal. Since yours didn’t get onto the trucks, you won’t have it back until tomorrow. Or maybe the day after.” He braced himself for a tongue lashing.

  I shrugged. What did I care? I had lived without my suitcase for my first three days of the cruise. I could live without it for my first three days on dry land. Besides, I wasn’t intending to actually wear any of the Perky Princess purchases I’d packed in the bag. Not to the office, anyway.