Death Sets Sail_A Mystery

by Dale E. Manolakas

  Before Frederick got close, a short agile man in tan slacks and a cacao brown short-sleeve shirt intercepted him. The two men did not shake hands. Nor did they smile. The statuesque, calm Frederick looked down at the man who was as unattractive as Frederick was attractive.

  The short man blocked Frederick’s path. Under his receding, graying brown hair was a face contorted in anger, with dark eyes glaring up at Frederick.

  “Let the games begin.” Amy whispered under her breath.

  ⌘

  Chapter 6

  A Barkingly Contemplative Embarkation

  Amy observed the men arguing and I, in turn, observed her. Her eyes were slits now, and her face was frozen in an intense but emotionless mask, with her jaw clenched and bulging.

  I looked at the men. Their argument was escalating, but still indiscernible to us. Frederick gestured in our direction.

  Then the shorter man thumped his finger on Frederick’s chest and shouted, “I’m here. Deal with it!”

  “So is Amy. Deal with that!” Frederick turned and pointed at Amy standing next to me.

  “What?”

  Passengers within earshot looked at them and then over at us.

  “Get out of my way,” Frederick ordered as he strode around the man and straight towards Amy.

  “Wait.” The thwarted man grabbed Frederick’s arm and wheeled him back around.

  “Stay the hell away from me!” Frederick jerked loose and pushed the man away.

  The man caught his balance and advanced on Frederick, until they stood chest-to-chest, both poised to fight, like cocks posturing before a bout. Then he broke his stare-down with Frederick and glanced at Amy with a deep sadness in his eyes. A sadness at odds with the transparent hate darting from Amy’s hazel and golden eyes. He turned and retreated into the startled crowd.

  Frederick watched him. Then he saw how shocked his surrounding fellow boarders were. He also disappeared beyond the span of the disturbance into the morass of waiting passengers, his path to Amy abandoned.

  “You know them?” I asked.

  “Of course I do.” Amy calmly eyed the ghost of their fight.

  “How?”

  “What?” Amy regarded me with a detached, artificial smile.

  “How do you know them?”

  “Who doesn’t?” Amy said evasively. “Frederick Larsen and Mendel Weitzman They’re Otto’s legacy.”

  “Mendel Weitzman. I should have recognized him.”

  I caught a glimpse of the globetrotting womanizing tabloid-regular at the snack bar. He had regained his composure. As he waited to order, he tucked his cacao brown shirt back neatly into his tan slacks.

  Mendel was a prolific thriller writer whose plots were driven by man’s basest sexual appetites, purportedly mirroring his own. When it came to his characters’ quests for sexual gratification, Mendel didn’t discriminate as to gender, or any mixture thereof. He graphically satiated sequentially or concurrently each mainstream, deviant or criminal appetite. Two of his books were toned down and made into films, still rated “X.” His fictional world was reflected in his parties, or vice versa, at his homes in New York, London, and the star-studded Malibu Colony on the beach north of Los Angeles.

  Before I could ask Amy why they had pointed at her, the loudspeaker announced our boarding and detailed the procedures.

  The mingling crowd immediately responded. It shifted and redeployed in accordance with the instructions toward the two wide entrances at the far side of the massive building. The cavernous space was shifting its density. Every inch at the entrances was swallowed-up by the passengers redeploying and herding to board.

  When I turned back to Amy, she was making her way to the entrances and disappeared into the crowd.

  As I stood contemplating the scene I had just witnessed, I felt a hard thump on my shoulder.

  I spun around.

  * * *

  I was, regrettably, face-to-face with my classmate Agnes who was dressed in her usual wrinkle-free attire. This time it was new black pants and a black yellow polka dotted shirt. In class, her clothes were well worn and no longer wrinkle-free, yet still un-ironed, and she covered them with long, mismatched, obviously acrylic sweaters.

  “Veronica! We found you. Did you see that fight between that nice Frederick Larsen and that horrible Mendel Weitzman?” Agnes slowly enunciated in her clear, elementary school teacher diction, inbred after twenty-five years.

  Agnes, a big woman in her fifties, had married an Italian-American auto mechanic born and bred in San Pedro, California. Her great American novel was a generational saga about him and his big Italian-American family. Unsurprisingly, it had a transparently false voice because she knew nothing about Italians, Catholicism, or the Italian-American experience. Agnes did nothing to make herself more attractive or charming. She was content with herself, her teacher persona, her relish of Italian food, and her usurpation of her Italian-American husband’s life.

  “Did you hear what it was about?” I asked.

  “Yes, and . . .”

  “I heard them.” Agnes was interrupted when Jody rushed over.” They were fighting about Otto Stein. Mendel accused Frederick Larsen of literally murdering Otto. Then Frederick laid into him.”

  “Frederick Larsen a murderer?” I was stunned. “No way.”

  As usual, Jody spoke with no social filters. She was too loud, too frank, and had no grace at all. Her social IQ was at the moronic level, yet her actual I.Q. was probably genius. But who would know?

  “Jody is nuts. All I heard was Otto’s name and curse words,” Agnes corrected as any authoritative schoolteacher would. “No one actually accused anyone of murder.”

  “I heard the word murder,” Jody insisted.

  Jody was thin, tall, thirty-something, and always looked the same. She had a squeaky clean pale elongated face colored lightly with blush and rose lipstick. Her dark long hair was always pulled back in a low ponytail and her hazel eyes always seemed open just a little too wide as if she were continually surprised. For eight years in Mavis’s classes, Jody had been writing the same frontier American coming of age novel for teenage girls. Her perfectionism pushed her into the pitfall of endlessly researching every aspect of the old American West. In my more experienced opinion, she should write about something she knows, like me, and get it done. At least get it finished, if not done, which most authors defined as edited and out. “Done” defined by me, was naturally just completing a first draft and then moving on and shelving it for later.

  “Agnes is right,” Herbert confirmed in his annoying tenor nasal voice as he joined the group. “Jody, your imagination is too ramped up. Take a Lude.”

  Herbert smirked, showing his yellow overlapping front teeth as he peered at me through his thick black rimmed glasses, which magnified his eyes to a bug-like immensity. Herbert’s long dark hair that he swept over his balding head had fallen out of place. His powder blue polyester leisure suit had been mothballed from the sixties and his unbuttoned white shirt oozed dark chest hair over the first closed button

  Herbert, an older retired stereotypical pocket-protector engineer, lived an isolated existence. He wrote about sado-masochistic murders with marginal grammar, the depth of a celibate, and cardboard characters. In class, when he read the graphic sexual torture scenes, he got aroused. He breathed heavily and his sweaty hands gripped the pages too tightly. I never laughed, but it took all my self-control. One young woman walked out of class during one of his readings and never returned.

  I looked at all three of the stooges and believed they were fictionalizing what they had heard for self-aggrandizement. I, naturally, recognized the animal because I was not above doing the same and, indeed, frequently indulged myself.

  Mavis suddenly popped out from among the passengers swirling around us toward the boarding gates with her carry-on trailing behind her.

  “Veronica, glad you’re here.”

  “Hello, Mavis,” I gushed, ingratiating myself to the woman who had
made all this possible. “Good flight?”

  “Surprisingly, yes. This is exciting, isn’t it?”

  “And getting more so. Jody says she heard Mendel accuse Frederick Larsen of murdering Otto.”

  “Really? Well, I wouldn’t repeat that.” Mavis ended the topic. “But, what I would like to know is who was that woman talking to you? Frederick Larsen pointed at her.”

  “Oh?” I did not want to share or engage in anything with my classmates on this cruise.

  “Well, who was she?” Agnes asked.

  “Some agent.”

  “An agent?” Jody repeated. “Did you get her card? I could use it, too.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Relax. We’re all on the same cruise, Jody, and I’m sure there are agents galore.”

  “That’s right,” Herbert added. “Just chill out. We haven’t even boarded yet.”

  “Yes.”

  I agreed with Herbert. Jody could get a million agent’s cards, but was never going to use them since her book would remain forever unfinished. She had the opposite problem as me. Researching and over-editing every paragraph of her ever on-going book because of her compulsive perfectionism. I did not want that lovely woman Amy to associate me with Jody’s unfiltered, ungracious, very loud verbal spews.

  “Now children, no squabbling. Let’s board.” Mavis moved our little stationary island into the flow of the passengers. “Passports out?”

  Mavis had her teacher hat on. In class, she endlessly traded on earnest enthusiasm for all her students and their writings, even though some were obviously more flawed than others. Her professional knowledge and charm blended to attract eager novices and keep them coming back, like me.

  I grabbed my carry-on and Mavis hers. We fell in step behind the three who looked around quietly, in awe of the scene.

  Far ahead of us, beyond the long row of check in stations, Amy went through the arches at the end of the hall to board the ship. She did not stop with the other passengers to have her ritual pre-boarding picture taken.

  At Agnes’s urging, and over my objection, the five of us took a boarding picture together. I knew I would never buy a copy. Upon boarding we were greeted by crewmembers decked out in crisp white uniforms, who welcomed us with even crisper British accents.

  Then, thankfully, Mavis and I were directed to our cabin, located in a different direction than Jody, Agnes, and Herbert’s cabins.

  * * *

  Mavis and I coiled single file through the emerald green fleur-de-lis carpeted corridors, our carry-ons trailing. We passed streams of fellow travelers, some like us wheeling carry-ons behind them. Everyone’s eyes ping-ponged from their printed room cards to the gold-colored room numbers next to the doors.

  There was general silence amongst the lost. A few of the friendlier and less focused souls greeted us with excited eyes and quick hellos.

  I spotted a uniformed Queen Anne someone and held up our printed room card.

  “Do you know where our cabin is?”

  “Stateroom, madam.”

  “Ah, stateroom. Yes. Where our stateroom is?”

  He gave us passable guidance and we did find our stateroom—an economy cabin gilded in name only.

  To our surprise, all of our luggage had been delivered.

  “Sorry.” Mavis put her carry-on in the corner. “I guess we didn’t need our insurance.”

  “But we could have.”

  We unpacked. Mavis took a nap. I stood alone out on the green AstroTurf balcony. The New York skyline fading against the dusk enthralled me. I could hardly wait to see the Statue of Liberty as we cruised out of the harbor.

  As I leaned on the varnished walnut balcony rail, I couldn’t forget Frederick and Mendel’s argument and the look on Amy’s face. I recalled Frederick and Otto at the Academy Awards and the next night in class when Mavis reminded us to mention her if we got an Oscar. Short of that she wanted to be in our acknowledgments—yet I had written my acknowledgements and not given her a drop of ink!

  But then, our teacher-student relationship had only morphed to more when I recently gained notoriety solving the well-publicized Hollywood Valentine Theatre murders. That harrowing and newsworthy event put me on the map, justified or not, as a promising mystery writer and amateur sleuth. It also upped my coinage in the movie industry’s wingspan that hovered over the megalopolis that is Los Angeles. I became recognized, justified or not, as an amateur but excellent actress. I was suddenly connected not only to the theatre, but also to the film industry and several “industry” personages with star power.

  From the balcony, the New York skyline began to sparkle. I sat on the chaise lounge to rest a minute.

  On this elite writers’ cruise I had to navigate carefully through the minefield of not being published. It did make me a fraud of sorts, but fortunately not to my hometown fans in Santa Monica. They admired me and, in my mind’s eye, I was an author. My gift was being detached from today’s reality and visualizing more—much more.

  I am well known at home as a professional writer because I act like one. I have books in progress, which I talk about incessantly. I wear old jeans and write from the heart about people I know or, more often, don’t know. And, of course, I regularly have a case of the dreaded writer’s block. In fact, I spent hours with other morning sojourners at my local coffee place talking about a cure for it, nursing an overpriced paper-cupped decaf tea.

  I commiserate woefully about my writer’s block with artists, actors, entrepreneurs, retirees, and the chronically unemployed. They all “speak” writer’s block in Santa Monica. Everyone planned to write or finish writing something someday: screen plays, books, television pilots, or wildly embellished memoirs of common lives.

  But, in point of fact, I speak writer’s block with the most authority of them all because I have overcome it repeatedly and heroically, as is demonstrated by my several unpublished books. I am popular and missed when I actually stay home and write—which is rare now.

  Today, however, if I were at my coffee klatch, I would not have complained about writer’s block. Instead, I would have shared in collective sorrow about Otto Stein’s death. After all, I knew Mavis, a personal friend of this newsworthy icon, and I was a member of his pet club, the MWW. Whether an unpublished student guest member or not, I had paid my dues, for years.

  All this cachet for my fellow “coffee klatchers” would have to await my return though. I was here to seize my destiny and Mavis’s friendship.

  My mind meandered back to Curtis and I fell into a deep sleep.

  * * *

  “Veronica, wake up.” Mavis shook my shoulder. “We’re passing the Statue of Liberty and look at New York lighting up the sky line!”

  Mavis’s dark eyes twinkled, her graying light brown hair bobbed along her shoulders, and her freckles bounced on her cheeks.

  “We’re on our way.”

  “We are?” I stood.

  I was hazy from my deep sleep. But not hazy enough to fail to marvel at the skyline and the illuminated Statue of Liberty across the water in the quiet light after sunset and before dark.

  “Pictures! We have to take pictures!” I ran in and got my state of the art smart phone.

  We took pictures of each other in the foreground with the Statue of Liberty behind. As we did, I thought of my first beginner’s writing class with Mavis years ago at the local college extension program. She was a roly-poly bundle of energy then, too. I memorized every gem she taught us.

  “Cheese.” I snapped a great shot of her.

  I was here on this balcony with Mavis because of my new mini-celebrity status earned from the Hollywood Valentine Theatre murders. I didn’t care that, in truth, I was only at the right place at the right time. An old college fellow thespian and director gave me a role when his actors began to die. That led to the sequence of events resulting in my solving the murders. I embraced the accolades and, of course, repeated my ever more embellished story—often.


  I had parlayed my fifteen minutes of fame into months of glory. My social functions and speaking engagements multiplied—not only as a writer and crime aficionado but also as an actress of some note. And, more importantly, this popularity gave me endless excuses to avoid writing, editing, and publishing. I had a fabulous life without subjecting myself to that self-abusive risk of rejection.

  The Valentine murders also made my website, an authorial requirement, more interesting than my favorite best selling author’s. And now, I had added my Queen Anne cruise amongst the “biggies” in the writing world. My website was exciting and dynamic. Like me! Like my life!

  I do emphatically protest if anyone discounts my life as based on untruths. It is not. It is founded, at the very least, on half-truths waiting to be fulfilled. I understand my life has an element of hopefulness the average person might envy, but rest assured it is not a house of cards. It is a map to my future as a mystery writer. It is the path I follow.

  * * *

  Mavis went back in to dress for dinner. I gazed at the lights of New York City diminishing in the distance. We were now a floating island unto ourselves crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

  I was excited, focused on my MWW companions and rubbing elbows with the best in the world. To me this was better than making it in New York City. It was making it in the worldwide writing arena, now afloat for five glorious days.

  I rushed in and dressed for dinner—my first one with my new colleagues.

  I regretted never publishing. I could have gone indie and self-published an e-book on Octopus Books. It was the steroid ramped-up near monopolist for e-book self-publishing that was appropriating ever more royalties from authors. But it was the only real game in town—anti-trust violator or not. It just looked like too much work to me though: formatting, browsing, downloading, creating covers, choosing fonts, marketing my own material on dot coms or social networks—Booksie, Nooksie, Facebook, Twitter, and whatever other permutations there were for the disconnected to connect, at minimum, with a cyber life.