I pushed Carter on his shoulder. "Wake up, Chief. We're almost home."
He opened his eyes and yawned. "Finally."
I laughed and sat down in the back of the compartment where I could fasten a seat belt. Carter stood up, adjusted his tie, walked over, sat down next to me, and did the same.
"How was the flight?" asked the stewardess.
"Fine," I said. "Faster going home than getting there."
"Did you sail?" she asked as she picked up the magazines she'd brought to us earlier.
"On the Hilo," answered Carter.
"Did you hear about what happened?"
I asked, "No. What?"
"Three people died. It was about two weeks ago. It was in all the papers."
Carter said, "Really?"
Right then, another stewardess popped her head in and said, "Connie, could you help me, please?"
Connie said, "Be right there, Barbara." She smiled at both of us. "Thank you for flying with us. Please stay seated until the captain announces it's safe to get up." With that, she left, taking the magazines with her.
I leaned into Carter. "I can't wait to get home and sleep in our own bed tonight."
"Isn't that funny?"
"What?"
"What you said about our own bed."
"Why?"
"Our bed is gone. That's your grandfather's bed. Doesn't that seem strange to you?"
I put my hand under his arm. "Not after that first night. It's such a damn big bed, and it's perfect for all sorts of things that I'm sure my grandfather would never have imagined."
Carter snorted at that and took my hand in his. We sat there as the plane began to descend.
After a minute or two, Carter leaned forward and said, "Look. There it is."
I looked out the window on the port side of the ship. "It's beautiful," I said. And it was.
The Golden Gate Bridge was off in the distance, its orange paint illuminated by powerful lights in the fog, and looking very much like home. I sighed and said, "I love you."
Carter pulled me in close. "I love you, too, Nick."
I almost laughed because I wasn't really talking to my husband. I was talking to my first real lover, the City I loved the best.
Author's Note
Thank you for buying and reading this book!
I wanted to do a closed-room story and this is what came from that.
The most famous closed-room story, to my mind, is Murder On The Orient Express by Agatha Christie. In that instance, a single car of the famous passenger train is the location of an odd murder. The train becomes stranded in the snow and Hercule Poirot must solve the case with only his powerful mind and the clues that are on board the train with the passengers.
That's why Ros insists on a Monsieur Poirot summary, which Nick, being Nick, fails at wonderfully.
There are several points of this story that were inspired by the more famous one. A grisly murder that everyone seems to remember. The absence of any police. The fact that no one can easily enter or leave the vessel while it is underway. The fact that the captain asks Nick to take charge of the investigation.
Nick has the benefit of radiograms and ship-to-shore communication, something Monsieur Poirot lacks, causing him to rely solely on his "little gray cells."
While the 1974 film version of Murder On The Orient Express is a stylish extravaganza, Poirot, as portrayed by Albert Finney, comes off as a prodigiously brilliant buffoon.
The 2010 episode of this story in ITV's Agatha Christie's Poirot long-running series has a more lifelike Poirot, who has just come off a horrible assignment where an officer he was investigating committed suicide right in front of him. This Poirot, as brilliantly portrayed by David Suchet, seems to be on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
I've watched both versions a number of times. I was at first offended at seeing Suchet's Poirot running around the train like a maniac. But, after watching a number of times and particularly after writing this story, it now makes sense and feels more authentic than how he was portrayed in the book.
The psychological pressure placed on the detective is something that Dorothy L. Sayers demonstrated very well in her Lord Peter stories (all of which I adore). When Lord Peter becomes the agent of someone's demise, he doesn't handle it well. At all. In the final Lord Peter book, Busman's Honeymoon, it is his wife, Harriet, who holds him as the cock crows, signaling the hanging of the murderer that her husband helped bring to justice.
I hoped to show in this story that Nick and Carter have been under a lot of stress, what with all that has happened to and around them. I wrote that explicitly, but also tried to show it in a number of smaller ways throughout the story. The fact that Nick can lounge in the sun for a number of days without doing a bit of work may demonstrate it better than anything else I could come up with.
It's probably idiotic to even write any of this down. I'm certainly not comparing my stories (or my writing) to either Miss Sayers or Dame Agatha. I put all this down because these are the bits and pieces that swirled around me while I watched and listened as Nick and Carter set sail aboard the Hilo.
Many thanks, as always, to everyone who has read, reviewed, and emailed me about the Nick & Carter books. It is deeply gratifying in ways that words will never do justice to. Thank you.
Acknowledgments
Although the S.S. Hilo is fictional, it is based on the Matson ship S.S. Lurline. I relied heavily on To Honolulu In Five Days by Lynn Blocker Krantz, Nick Krantz, and Mary Thiele Fobian. This amazing book, published by Ten Speed Press out of Berkeley (now part of Random House), is sadly out of print but definitely worth grabbing if you have any interest in exploring what it was like to sail from San Francisco to Honolulu in the 1950s. It is full of delicious details and amazing photographs chronicling the history of the ship, what it was like to be aboard, and what delights awaited its passengers once they arrived in Honolulu.
I am deeply grateful to the authors. And, as I explain in the Historical Notes, while the Hilo is based on the Lurline as a ship, no one should confuse the fictional Coral Lines with Matson, Inc.
Historical Notes
This book takes place from Wednesday, August 11, 1954, through Thursday, August 26, 1954.
The S.S. Hilo is a fictional ship whose layout and daily routine is based on the S.S. Lurline, the third ship of that name built in 1932 and owned and operated by Matson, Inc. The Lurline has a storied past that is too long to recount here but definitely worth exploring for those who are interested.
Coral Lines, as the fictional owner and operator of the Hilo, is depicted as being good, probably even great, at operating a deluxe cruise ship but possibly inept at managing its employees. Here there is no resemblance to Matson, Inc., whatsoever.
The Matson White Ships, as the Lurline and her sisters were called, were famously known for perfection in every way. I specifically fictionalized the ship, its crew, and the line so as not to sully that well-deserved reputation in any way.
While the Hilo is fictional, the hotel where Nick and Carter stay for a couple of nights in Honolulu is not. The Royal Hawaiian Hotel, affectionately known as The Pink Palace, also has a storied past. It still stands on Waikiki Beach and, although it no longer resembles its 1954 self, it is quite a wonderful place to visit.
The Thompson House is fictional. Its location above Waiakalua Beach, however, is real. I did give that stretch of Kauai coastline a surf break that, as far as I can tell, it doesn't actually have.
In this story, six real people appear, none of whom are still living.
Rosalind Russell was an actress who worked briefly for Universal, then moved to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and finally worked as a free agent. She also performed on Broadway, most famously in the role of "Auntie Mame" (which occurs after this story). She was married to Frederick Brisson, a Danish-born Hollywood and Broadway producer. They had one son. I hope I have done them both justice. It's possible that Nick's Ros is more open-minded than the actual Ros, but I hope not. I don
't think we've seen the last of her or Freddie in Nick and Carter's life.
Gail Storm was an actress who appeared on the radio, in films, and on television. She was also a recording artist, a stage actress, and a Las Vegas headliner. Her first television show, My Little Margie, ran on NBC and CBS from 1952 t0 1955. Her second program, The Gale Storm Show (aka Oh! Susanna), featured her character as the social director of a cruise ship based on the S.S. United States. It ran on CBS and ABC from 1956 until 1960. She was married to Lee Bunnell until his death in 1986. They had four children. As far as I can tell, she would not have liked Nick one bit.
Barbara Hale was an actress who most famously played the role of Della Street on the CBS TV series Perry Mason from 1957 until 1966. She and Raymond Burr reprised their roles in the 1980s and 1990s in a series of made-for-TV movies. She also worked for RKO, starring in a number of films starting in the 1940s. She was married to Bill Williams, who was also an actor. He had an early television show called The Adventures of Kit Carson that ran in syndication from 1951 through 1955. They had three children.
In some ways, Miss Hale's Della Street character is the inspiration for Marnie. She sadly passed away on January 26, 2017, about a month before this writing. I don't think, however, that we have seen the last of her or her husband in Nick and Carter's life.
A final note about the call letters for KMI. Eagle-eyed readers might have noticed that when station KMI is called out, the letters are pronounced as "King Mike Item." This uses the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet, which was in use from 1941 until 1956 when it was replaced by the NATO Alphabet, now known as the ICAO Phonetic Alphabet. In the current alphabet, the call letters would be pronounced, "Kilo Mike India."
Station KMI is now defunct. It was the AT&T High Seas station used for ship-to-shore communication on the West Coast of the U.S. Its receiving station was at Point Reyes, California, north of San Francisco. Its transmission station was inland at Dixon, California, between San Francisco and Sacramento.
More Information
Nick Williams Mysteries
The Unexpected Heiress
The Amorous Attorney
The Sartorial Senator
The Laconic Lumberjack
The Perplexed Pumpkin
The Savage Son
The Mangled Mobster
The Iniquitous Investigator
The Voluptuous Vixen
The Timid Traitor
The Sodden Sailor
The Excluded Exile
The Paradoxical Parent
The Pitiful Player
Nick & Carter Stories
An Enchanted Beginning
Golden Gate Love Stories
The One He Waited For
Their Own Hidden Island
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