by Kitty Margo
“It sounds to me like the dear girl has every right to be concerned.” It was apparent by her downcast expression that Natalie needed a change of subject. “What did you do last night?” I asked cheerily.
“I watched mama sleep for a while. Then I came here and found you and Irene knocked out, as usual.” She quirked an eyebrow at me as though, thanks solely to me, the life she was now living was the epitome of boring. “So I just peeped into rooms seeing what the other passengers were doing.”
Hey, I didn’t chop off her head. “Did you learn anything interesting?”
“I learned that Herman has three teenaged boys in the room with him, so Barbara Jean won’t see much action in his cabin.”
“I would think a person Barbara Jean’s age would be too old to see much action anywhere.”
“You would think that.” She laughed. “However, you would be dead wrong. Believe me, on my tour of cabins late last night I was quick to discover that age is just a number and appearances can be deceiving.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know that nice couple who always say grace before a meal in the dining room? He owns a winery in Canada and she is a stay at home mom of three kids?”
“Yes.”
“They were having a threesome when I popped in, and not with two women. Mom seemed to be having the time of her life. She was doing so much moaning and groaning that at first I thought they were watching a porn flick. If you ask me she needs to get out more.”
I was too shocked to respond. Not that sweet soccer mom.
“Oh, and you remember the elderly newlywed couple who were groping each other on the serenity deck the other day? The newlyweds?”
“Yes.”
“He suffers from erectile dysfunction and brought his wife on this cruise to rock her world.”
“In what way.” Erectile dysfunction and rocking someone’s world just seemed at odds with each other.
“Well, it seems that he secretly had surgery a few weeks ago and now has the ability to make his manhood puff up like a blowfish.”
“How do you know this?” I whispered.
“I listened as he described the procedure to his wife and, quite honestly, I learned more than I ever wanted to know about penile implants.”
“How does it work?” I’ve always been curious.
“The man in question has a three chamber inflatable implant. He has a cylinder in the shaft of his penis, a reservoir in his belly that holds salt water, and a pump in his scrotum that he squeezes to push the salt water from the reservoir to the cylinders in his penis making it firm and rigid. It must work, because let me tell you he was going to town on her and I didn’t hear a single complaint.”
“Natalie Buchanan!” I cried. “You stayed in the room and watched them having sex?”
“Not really. I was just interested to learn how those inflatable pumps work. And anyway, Maggie, in case you forgot, I’m dead. So, please, don’t judge me for trying to live vicariously through others.”
Another valid point.
Natalie breathed a deep sigh. “Afterward, when everyone was… happy, he released a valve on the pump that drained the salt water out of the cylinders and back into the reservoir. It really was the neatest thing to watch.”
“I can only imagine.” So much for spontaneity.
“Yet, the most shocking of all was the tattooed couple we met in the smoking section. You remember the man had a blue Mohawk and the lady had fire engine red hair. The one with all the piercings and those hideous gauges in their ears.”
“Yes, they look like members of an outlaw motorcycle gang.”
“Well, they aren’t. They read their bibles a couple of hours at night and then get down on their knees and pray before bed.”
“Well, I’ll be. I guess you can’t judge a book by its cover. But, Natalie, honey, you really shouldn’t be looking at people while they are sleeping.”
“Trust me, Maggie. From the elderly, to the middle aged, to the barely out of their teens, most of the passengers on this ship were certainly not sleeping last night.”
~*~
A few hours later, after another fabulous lunch on the Lido deck, we decided to check out the Serenity Deck. You do a lot of eating on a cruise ship. I knew I had found my own little slice of heaven. No children were allowed. Hallelujah! Lounge chairs, waiters passing by with a never ending supply of yummy umbrella drinks, and two hot tubs.
Not that I was about to get into a hot tub with just anybody. You don’t know what people have done in those things. Nope. Let Irene sink into that cesspool of germs and talk until she turned blue in the face while risking all manner of vile infections. I found a lounge chair and opened my novel.
My book had fallen to my chest and I was just about to doze off when I heard Natalie say, “Whatcha doing?”
“This is the Serenity Deck,” I was quick to remind her. “Perhaps you should Google the word serenity in case its meaning has slipped your mind.”
“Oh, quit your bellyaching. I came to tell you something important.”
Good. Had she remembered who murdered her? “What?”
“They’re having a hairy chest competition on the Lido deck and it’s the funniest thing I have ever seen. They have these three male contestants. Two of them have beer guts and seriously hairy chests, but there is one gorgeous hunk that makes me wish I still had a body.”
Before I could comment, she began crying and cold water started dripping on my feet. Even though my heart broke for her, and when I reached out I was only able to comfort a warm breeze, I have to admit the cold water felt damn good.
While Natalie floated over to hover beside a young girl her age and read a young adult romance with her, Irene pulled up a lounge chair and settled in with a historical romance. We were just getting comfortable when this rather attractive young man sauntered by and plopped down on the bottom of her chair. He was smiling from ear to ear and obviously tipsy. “I see you have already started ringing up a bar tab,” she quipped.
“Nope, I smuggled three Listerine bottles full of vodka onboard in my suitcase.” He said this like it wasn’t the oldest trick in the book. Then, out of the blue, he looked at Irene and purred, “My name is J.R. Would it be possible for me to massage your feet?”
What? Seriously? Irene’s eyes were flashing hearts.
Now pedicures are like an obsession for Irene. She goes at least once a month and has her toenails painted a pale orange with a white flower design on her big toes. She has the leg massage, and the hot wax, the works. So, I have to admit, her toes are rather cute. “Sure. Go ahead,” she said without hesitation.
No she didn’t! “Irene, don’t make a spectacle of yourself in front of the Red Hatters!”
“Who cares what the Red Hatters think? They are just jealous because nobody offered to massage their feet.”
Evidently J.R. was a master of the art. He dug his hands deep into her calves and before long his tender ministrations had Irene so relaxed that she could hardly keep her eyes open.
“God help me! Sure as the world she is going to be singing with the angels if you don’t stop,” I snapped, hoping to yank Irene from her reverie. Leaning over, I tapped J.R. on the shoulder. “Young man, you do realize that she is probably the same age as your mama?”
When he didn’t seem to care, I continued, “And you might think she has money and you have finally found your sugar mama, but she hasn’t got a pot to piss in. So, trust me, you are barking up the wrong ass tree.”
Irene wasn’t getting away without a tongue lashing either. “He is half your age and there you are letting him rub all over you! Have you no shame?”
“I’m not ordering flowers and booking a Jamaican honeymoon, Maggie.” Irene lowered her sunglasses and cut her eyes at me. “He is just rubbing my damn feet.”
“I just love feet,” JR moaned as his eyes rolled back in his head. “Oh, God. I love feet.”
“Lord, help me.” I grumbled, huffing out a p
ut upon sigh. “Here Irene is obsessed with pedicures and leg massages and she comes on a cruise and meets a man with an honest to goodness foot fetish as I live and breathe. She must have been born under a lucky star.”
Chapter Twenty
Maggie
If you ask me, the ship had a convoluted way of getting to the Serenity Deck and then back to our room. You have to walk down one flight of stairs, go down the hall, walk up another flight and then look at a wall map to try to figure out where you are. Who designed something so crazy anyway? We wouldn’t have been on the stairs to begin with if Irene hadn’t refused to step foot on an elevator.
So, here we go traipsing up and down the stairs until I decide that my poor old smoking lungs have had enough torture for one day and put my hiney on an elevator. I can walk on flat land all day, but steps do me in quick, fast, and in a hurry. Besides, Irene is a grown woman, she can find her way back to the room without my assistance. On second thought, I had better send Natalie to keep an eye on her just in case. I have a hot date with the lady at the spa.
An hour later, I was getting the most divine hot stone message with my face wedged in that cut out on the table. I hadn’t been this relaxed in… forever. Hot hands Magarahan was working some divine smelling lotion into my shoulders when I opened my eyes briefly and there was Natalie hovering under me with her face inches from mine. I shrieked to high heaven and came about a foot off the table as my heart threatened to fly right out of my chest. I must have scared the living daylights out of the masseuse because she cried, “What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”
“Oh no,” I assured her, trying to steady my rapid breathing. “I must have dozed off and had a dream.”
“Are you sure,” the young girl worried. “Would you like a glass of water?’
“Yes, please. If you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” she assured me, hurrying out of the room to fetch my drink.
“You took ten years off my life!” I snapped at Natalie.
“At least you have a life,” she spat right back. Then she closed her eyes for a second and calmed down. “I just saw Irene wandering around looking for our room, and as usual, she was stopping to chat with everybody she passed. The only problem is she was two decks below ours. You know the poor thing has no sense of direction whatsoever.”
Ours? The way she said that made our current living arrangement sound so… permanent. “She’ll get her bearings by the time the ships docks back in Miami.”
“That was just flat out wrong to say,” Natalie giggled.
“No, it wasn’t. I was simply stating the obvious. And you know good and well that I would tell her the exact same thing if she were here.”
“I know you would.” Natalie stuck a finger to her lips and gnawed on her fingernail. “I remembered something earlier.”
“Why now?” I hissed. “As you can see, I am trying to relax and get a peaceful massage.”
“Because I am dead, so I can’t get a relaxing massage. That’s why!”
“Okay, tell me what you remember,” I whispered, before once again yanking my foot out of my big mouth.
“I am… was a biology major, and also in my free time, a nature photographer.”
“Really. I had no idea you were a photographer.”
“Mom says that I have… had a gift.” Once again her eyes misted with sorrow.
I urged her gently, “What did you remember, Natalie?”
“Last week I was walking around the pond behind my parent’s house looking for a shot that would put me on the cover of National Geographic, when I happened to stumble upon an unusual sight.”
“What?”
“All of the marine life in the pond, fish, turtles, frogs, and snakes were dead. Of course fish die all the time, but not usually every living thing in a pond unless something has contaminated the water.”
“Did you report your find to a game warden?”
“No. I snapped pictures of the kill and then collected a bottle of pond water intending to have a friend at the university run some tests on it. Then I put a couple of fish on ice so they wouldn’t decompose more, hoping he could run labs on them as well.”
“Smart thinking.”
“Thanks.” Her lips curved into a bright smile at the praise. I decided right then to make a point to compliment the poor ghost more often. “I thought so.”
“Then what happened?”
“That’s all I remember.”
“Just keep trying. Maybe you will eventually remember more of what happened that night.”
Natalie was fading before my eyes. “I’m not sure I want to remember what happened that night.”
I sighed dismally and whispered, “I wouldn’t either.”
I didn’t see her the rest of the day. She had probably zipped back home to watch her mama grieve. Apparently that’s how she spends most of her day when she isn’t annoying me.
Chapter Twenty One
Irene
The following day we took a tender to the shipping company’s private island and the ocean breeze felt absolutely heavenly. However, one look at the blazing sun beating down on the island assured me that I was about to step into hell. I was wiping at the sweat pouring from my brow when Maggie immediately started in with all that activity crap the second her feet touched sand.
She wanted to parasail, snorkel, zip line, and scuba dive all in one day. Which meant I would be stuck on the beach with Barbara Jean who has been waited on hand and foot most of her life and still expects it. Not bloody likely! She needs to get it through her thick skull that if she expects preferential treatment from me; she had better add my name to her payroll.
We have had to pick up after her, bring her water when she was supposedly too weak to get out of bed, order her room service and pay the tip, remind her to use sunscreen, beg her to please not have bowel movements in our bathroom, and in general watch her like a hawk. She really does need a full time sitter.
Herman, the Frank Sinatra wannabe, was sitting in a lounge chair in front of us and overheard Barbara Jean say she was in desperate need of a Pina Colada. Before you could snap your finger, he was standing in front of her with two. Maggie and I have decided that he must be widowed since he still wears a wedding band.
Now don’t get me wrong. The Caribbean is a beautiful, beautiful place. However, it is also as hot as forty hells on that oven of a beach and the humidity slaps you right square in the kisser. For me, it was misery on a grand scale. I had already told Maggie that if it got too hot I was returning to the ship. It was a good twenty degrees past too hot. Barbara Jean stayed behind with her new best friend.
Returning to the room, I inhaled the air conditioned air as it washed over me and cooled my body temperature by a good 20 degrees. Closing the door behind me, I stopped dead in my tracks and listened to the oddest sound. Someone was crying. But who? There was no one in the room except me.
“Natalie,” I whispered.
The crier hiccupped loudly and burst into another round of sobs.
Sweet Jesus, was I suddenly able to hear a ghost? Please, please, please let this be a one time thing and not become a habit. “Natalie” I whispered softly. “Are you in here?”
“Yes,” she mumbled through a deluge of tears. “Can you hear me?”
“I don’t understand it, but evidently I can now.”
“Good.” She breathed what sounded like a relieved sigh. “I need a shoulder to cry on, Irene, and I don’t feel like going to the island to find Maggie.”
“I’m your girl, sweetie.” I smiled softly. “Did something happen to upset you?”
“It’s all just getting to be too much for me to handle. I went home earlier to see my parents and they were both crying. I don’t know how much more of this I can take, Irene. I honestly don’t. My dad is so upset that he has been unable to work. I feel so guilty because this is the first time the feed mill had been closed for more than a day since it opened in the 1930’s. My parents are falling apart and there
isn’t a thing I can do to help them. I feel so helpless.”
I just listened and let her pour her heart out. Poor thing. She was dead, yet she felt so much compassion for others. The fact that I couldn’t hug her or really console her was heartbreaking to me.
I grabbed for the wall when the boat suddenly tipped to the right. “What was that?” I wondered aloud, my stomach jumping into my throat.
“What was what?” Natalie asked innocently.
“You didn’t feel it?” I cried, astonished. “It felt like the ship just tilted to the side.”
Her answer was to cry even louder. We are talking a seriously stressful wail. “What can I do? Somebody please tell me how to help my parents before I lose my mind!”
When she said this the boat immediately tipped to the other side. I fell sideways and fortunately landed on the bed.
“I can’t take much more of this!” Natalie wailed. “Of all the people in the world, why did some maniac have to choose me to murder? It’s so unfair. Why did my life have to turn out like this!”
Suddenly the boat started rocking from side to side, tossing me from one end of the cabin to the other. When I landed, I grabbed hold of the leg of the dresser and held on for dear life screaming, “Natalie, if you are doing this stop before you hurt somebody!”
I glanced up to find cosmetics jumping off the dresser, closets doors slamming, and shoes becoming airborne. I was so terrified that I didn’t know whether to try to go upstairs to our muster station, go downstairs and get off the ship, or go to the balcony and jump overboard. I grabbed my life jacket and turned toward Natalie. “Follow me.”
“Where are we going?” She sniffled.
I turned around to look at her and realized that the ship was perfectly still. Wait! Had Natalie been the source of the commotion? I had to sit down on the bed to keep from falling. “Why did you do that?” I whispered.
“Do what?” she questioned.