Death Sets Sail_A Mystery

by Dale E. Manolakas

  My thoughts raced for a way to redirect the conversation’s inevitable progression to my body of work. All of a sudden, I was rescued by a commotion in the bar.

  * * *

  Mavis, Mary, and Sean were going loudly from table-to-table asking for Esther.

  They looked like penguins in a line flapping their wings to waddle faster. They moved their hands at their sides propelling themselves forward because their chubby, elderly bodies wouldn’t carry them as fast as they wanted.

  “Yoo-hoo,” Mary called out and waved at me from half way across the room. “We can’t find Esther.”

  All three fluttered up to our table and stood before us, ample-bellied to varying degrees and out of breath.

  “He’s dead.” Mavis’s freckles jumped on her animated cheeks in the candlelight.

  “Dead as a doornail.” Sean pulled out a chair and sat to catch his liquor-coated breath.

  “It’s unbelievable.” Mary grabbed a seat too.

  “Who’s dead?” I asked, thinking it had better be someone really important, like a world leader, considering they interrupted my romantic rendezvous.

  “Mendel.” Mavis pulled over a chair and sat too. “The steward just found him.”

  “But how?” Curtis asked. “He was sleeping it off in his bed.”

  “We don’t know. Had to be a heart attack,” Sean opined.

  “Or, maybe he aspirated on his own vomit,” Mary volunteered. “It happens. I’ve used it in a short story or two.”

  Mavis ignored her companions’ speculations.

  “Have you seen Esther? I have to tell her.”

  “No.” I looked directly at this now annoying habitual suck-up. “The last time I saw her she was talking to you in the hall. Don’t you know where she went?”

  “Obviously not,” Mavis muttered, eyeing Curtis with inferences abounding in her gaze.

  “I can’t believe this,” Curtis said.

  “I can’t either. Poor man,” I echoed.

  “Hello.” Curtis reached over and shook Sean’s hand. “I’m Curtis. With a financial planning group here. It’s hard to believe the man died. He seemed okay when we left him tonight.”

  “Nice to meet you. You helped with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Curtis, you already know Mary and Mavis from Mendel’s stateroom, I think.” I rehabilitated my manners and identified them all as MWW members—naturally, under the circumstances I skipped their mystery writer’s plugs as inappropriately timed.

  “Of course.” Curtis acknowledged.

  Mavis stood and interrupted the very brief introductions. “Esther would want me to take care of this. I have to go to Mendel’s stateroom.”

  “I’ll help,” Sean volunteered, standing at attention.

  “Don’t leave me out!” Mary got up, too.

  Mavis, Sean and Mary stood regrouping into their threesome. Having amply caught their breath, they followed Mavis dutifully out of the bar.

  * * *

  As they marched away, I looked at Curtis and he looked at me.

  “Let’s go.” Curtis stood.

  “You read my mind.” I remembered how ill Mendel looked when we left him.

  “I feel badly about leaving him there alone.”

  “Me too. I need to know what happened.”

  As we trailed behind the investigatory body in the lead, I was happy Curtis was going with me.

  I had to admit to myself though, even if the ever-chivalrous Curtis had not decided to join the group, I would have followed anyway. As any mystery writer will tell you, we all would choose an unexplained death to romance.

  ⌘

  Chapter 14

  Death, Dereliction, and Disappointment

  On the way, Curtis and I brought up the rear. I was excited; morbidly so, I admitted to myself, but nonetheless excited. Moreover, I was on my way to examine Mendel’s mysterious and sudden death in the company of a very handsome man.

  Then, unexpectedly and unhappily, Mary dropped back and chatted up Curtis nonstop.

  She was just like Helga; a giant sponge for information. I was getting an immersion into the habits of successful and productive writers. They spent every waking moment absorbing information, observing, and writing. Apparently, it was not a myth. I had seen enough on the cruise thus far to conclude that it was true. Not unpredictably, I now aspired to become an even bigger sponge than they were.

  Mavis interrupted and reiterated intermittently that one of us should go to find Esther.

  We all ignored her. We were on a path to adventure, with or without Esther.

  As we hurried down the Queen Anne’s corridors, Mary had elicited all the Curtis preliminaries; literally everything I would have wanted to learn about him on this first date if it had not been interrupted by Mendel’s death. Listening to Mary’s interrogation, I knew almost too much about Curtis, including that he was very polite and patient. However, I liked every bit of what I heard.

  Curtis had an office in one of the Century City twin towers on the 22nd floor in West L.A. He was a very successful investment advisor for the extremely wealthy. He was doing the crossing with some of his firm’s clients to promote business and afterward have meetings in London. He said nothing about a wife, girlfriend or children. And, I already knew he got his tan from his Marina del Rey sailing.

  As we turned the corner to enter the hallway leading to Mendel’s stateroom, the steward was halfway down, holding the door for Frederick and Brent as they entered.

  “Hurry.” Mary trotted ahead, taking the lead and waiving at us to follow. “He may not be dead? Let’s hope not.”

  Although a blood lusting writer of torture murders, Mary wanted Mendel to be alive. Her values were more Midwest than she liked to show.

  * * *

  When we got to Mendel’s, we single-filed in and hovered silently in a group with Frederick and Brent. The steward stepped inside and propped the door open a crack with the privacy lock’s brass bar again.

  Mendel lay on the bed where we had left him, except now on his side. He was pale and his face was turned toward the nightstand. His dark eyes were open and stared into the lamp. Eerie jagged shadows were smeared across his face from the displaced lampshade.

  Mendel’s mouth gaped open with dry, caked drool and vomit streaming out at the lowest corner. Mendel’s graying, light brown hair was matted and wet. His pillow was soaked where his head had been. Mendel’s arm was fixed in a reach toward the phone on the nightstand.

  “Too bad. He is dead.” Mary was solemn. “Poor man.”

  Frederick was the first to break rank. “Steward, where’s the doctor?”

  “Coming.” The steward cowered by the door, away from death.

  “What does he mean ‘coming’?” Frederick’s ice blue eyes burrowed through the steward’s anxious eyes. “My God. He should be here. A man’s dead!”

  “Precisely,” the steward quipped in British understatement.

  Frederick began to pace up and down at the foot of the bed.

  “Why is his pillow so wet, and his shirt?” I asked.

  I looked more closely at Mendel. After all, this was not the first real dead person I had seen. I had been initiated into dead bodies by seeing those strewn about the Valentine Theatre. That was my boot camp into discovering bodies and exposing murderers.

  “Sweat?” Sean answered from his NYPD perspective. “Not unusual.”

  “What should we do?” Mary was clearly a woman of action. “We should do something.”

  “I agree. Shouldn’t we do something?” Mavis echoed, looking back at the steward.

  “Do what precisely? He’s dead, madam. Looks like a heart attack.”

  “But someone has to try CPR.” Curtis stepped closer to the bed.

  “Yes, CPR, but it needs a hard surface.” Mary pointed to the floor.

  “She’s right. I’ll help get him on the floor.” Frederick reported for duty with Curtis.

  “Ready?” Curtis stood tall to
do his responsibility.

  Frederick grabbed Mendel’s outstretched arm to slide him onto the floor for CPR. But Mendel’s arm was rigid. Neither his arm nor his head, which was tilted toward the lamp, nor any part of his body moved. Mendel’s eyes, now out of the shadows, were unmistakably lifeless.

  “He’s stiff.” Frederick jumped back.

  “Rigor mortis.” Sean announced. “Leave him be. I’ve seen hundreds of dead bodies on the force. He’s dead, Curtis; there’s nothing to be done.”

  “God.” Frederick grabbed a towel from the bathroom and wiped his hands.

  “I don’t believe this.” Brent said. “He looks like he was reaching for the phone.”

  “For help.” I concluded.

  “Rigor mortis?” Brent came closer. “How long has he been dead?”

  “Well, it only takes two hours to start in the smaller muscles like the face and neck. Then it works its way through a man like this in about four.” Mary spewed information like a medical text as she took a seat in a chair. “That’s how I show time of death in half my slasher murders. My last one, where the husband actually did a copycat murder, had . . .”

  “What?” Frederick cut her off, “Then he died when we were still here! That’s no heart attack. I didn’t see anything like that.”

  Mavis took a seat on one of the chairs again.

  “Well, it could have happened just as we left,” Mary opined.

  “This is so horrible. When did you find him?” Curtis asked the steward.

  “Just now, when I brought him something to eat.”

  “That damn drunken doctor,” Brent seethed. “He’s been lying here dead this whole time.”

  “Do you think we could have saved him?” Mavis asked.

  “Maybe,” Sean replied. “But not if it was a massive coronary.”

  Suddenly, the door flung open, slamming into the wall.

  The doctor ambled in, pushing the steward aside. All eyes turned to him except, of course, Mendel’s.

  * * *

  The doctor was still three-sheets-to-the-wind, if not more. “Something wrong with our dear man again?”

  “He’s dead, sir,” the steward reported at attention. “Heart attack, in my opinion, sir.”

  “Oh? Too bad.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Too bad?” Frederick blurted.

  “Yes, a real shame.” The doctor checked Mendel’s outreached wrist for a pulse. “Stiff, huh? No pulse. Drank too much for the old ticker, eh? But not our fault. He was alive when we put him to bed.”

  “Certainly, sir,” the steward agreed.

  Curtis and I stared at each other in disbelief. Mavis immediately stood taking a position of authority in the absence of Esther.

  “Aren’t you going to take this seriously? A man died under your care. It seems to me that, at the very least, you should inspect the body before you pronounce his death and the cause. Or get him to the infirmary and take a better look. Seriously, this is awfully casual.”

  “Yes, I agree.” Mary joined Mavis shoulder to shoulder. “There are things that need explanation. What is all that dried stuff down his chin?”

  “That ‘dried stuff,’ as you so elegantly put it is drool and I smell vomit. Quite normal after you’re properly sloshed.” The doctor started to leave.

  “He could have aspirated in his own vomit?” Curtis joined protestors, making it a trio. “Don’t you think you should know?”

  The doctor turned, studied the trio and then sized up all of us.

  “You’re all with that mystery writers club, aren’t you?”

  Brent started to object, but was cut off by Mary.

  “So?” Mary threw back her shoulders and pulled her chin in until it went from double to triple with indignation.

  “Well, we’re not writing a mystery novel here. This is real life. People die on cruises, especially drunks. Overboard. Heart attack. You name it. I’ve seen it all. You should all go back to writing your little books.”

  The doctor strode back and threw the bed sheet sloppily over Mendel’s head, leaving his one stiff arm pointing above it.

  “And, if he aspirated, he wouldn’t be on his side and the vomit wouldn’t be there . . . outside his orifice.” The doctor pointed at the mess as he lectured. “It would be inside his esophagus. Thus, by deduction . . . heart attack. What else could it be?”

  “You make it sound like you lose passengers all the time!” Brent cross-examined.

  “Do I? Sorry.” The doctor headed for the door again.

  “Wait a minute,” Brent objected. “You’re not just going to leave him here?”

  “Uh, of course not,” The doctor turned back, steadying himself with the doorjamb, and barked orders at the steward.

  “Get security to take him to the infirmary for now. We’ll put him on ice tomorrow.”

  “Yes, sir right away.”

  The doctor resumed his exit, steadying himself on the door jam.

  “Wait,” Frederick called. “Where are you going?”

  “Back to my black jack table.”

  “Then that’s it?” Frederick grabbed the doctor’s sleeve.

  The doctor turned and jerked his arm loose.

  “What else do you want me to do? Bring him back to life?”

  “Don’t be an ass,” Frederick seethed his face turning red with anger. “Do your job.”

  “I did my job. And to please you . . . all of you . . . I’ll give him another look-see in the morning. Then, I’ll write my report and send it up the proper channels. The usual.”

  The doctor marched out.

  * * *

  Our group, to a person, stood there incredulous. We watched the doctor exit with the steward on his heels as the door slammed shut. No one spoke.

  Finally, Curtis spoke. “The usual? Evidently, his ‘usual’ is nothing. The ‘usual’ nothing.”

  “I hate to think we could have saved him,” Brent replied.

  “We’ll never know. There is no process here.” Curtis was dumbfounded as he surveyed the group.

  Brent stood, thinking. “Apparently not.”

  “Yes, apparently,” Frederick agreed.

  Sean looked at them both and shrugged. “This is no New York City.”

  “I feel really awful about this,” I said. “We should have paid more attention. I remember him trying to speak, but he couldn’t. His pupils were small . . . tiny. But, I’m not a doctor.”

  “I didn’t see anything. I just thought he was drunk,” Mavis said. “And he was!”

  “That goes without saying,” Mary’s impatience with Mavis was elevating.

  “But half the people on this ship are . . . well, let’s be honest . . . drunk,” Brent said. “Does that mean they get no care and die?”

  We all looked at each other.

  “I saw him try to sit up, but he couldn’t because his arms were shaking so hard. Is that a heart attack?” I asked. “And I remember the look in his eyes. He was afraid, but he didn’t say anything. Oh no . . . maybe he couldn’t?”

  “You’re reading too much into things. Imagining things mean something they don’t.” Mavis made slight of my input. “What do you know? You’re . . .”

  “What?”

  I glared at her and she shut up. I knew what she was going to say: That I was unpublished. I didn’t see what that had to do with my observations or my humanity and her lack thereof. I didn’t like her discounting me.

  “Couldn’t speak? What do you mean?” Sean interrogated me in what I imagined from television shows was the good old NYPD style.

  “His tongue was not working, like it was twitching or something.”

  Sean thought a moment and then pulled the sheet back, exposing Mendel’s body again. “I’ve seen a lot of bodies. But I’ve never seen a doctor so casual about a healthy man dying . . . even if he was drunk as a skunk.”

  “Cruise personnel are useless. They are paid to cover up anything unpleasant,” Brent said.

  “W
e’re on the high seas where it appears the rules are different,” Curtis agreed.

  I went over and inspected Mendel’s body with Sean.

  “This rash was here before. What is it, Sean?” I asked.

  “I hadn’t noticed it.” Sean glanced at me with his sharp greenish-blue eyes. “You’re very observant.”

  I lapped up the compliment in front of Mavis. I liked that Curtis and Sean were taking me seriously.

  “Veronica may have something here. It’s like a real case I worked years ago. The rash, the unexpected death. In fact, I used it in my first book Death Trolls,” Sean said. “Actual sales were not that good, but I learned a lot about writing. I learned about plotting and . . .”

  “Sorry, Sean, but the case? What happened?” Curtis interrupted.

  “Oh, yes,” Sean cleared his throat. “Sorry. It’s the rash. And the shaking . . . the small pupils. Those are definitely signs of poisoning.”

  “No!” Frederick blurted. “That’s absurd.”

  “Poisoning!” Brent was alarmed. “But how could that happen here? Couldn’t it just be an allergic reaction to something?”

  “Maybe,” Sean pondered as the resident retired homicide detective.

  “Interesting.” I leaned in close. “Look at the eyes.”

  I wanted to contribute, so I stole a hackneyed phrase from the many mysteries I had read.

  “The eyes tell it all,” I added, hoping no one had read the same books.

  I had actually sprinkled that phrase around my second book. I thought it made the protagonist sound smart. And as it turned out, in my book, she was. The eyes did tell her that the victim had been suffocated. In the end, the petechial hemorrhaging proved it.

  Sean looked directly at Mendel’s open eyes. “They do look a bit yellow and the pupils are small. Tremors, did you say?”

  Mavis took a look too, but was close-mouthed. As far as she was concerned, her job was to report to Esther and nothing more.

  “I don’t like this.” Mary got angry. “And I don’t like the doctor’s attitude. He can’t dismiss us just because we happen to be mystery writers. What did he say? ‘This isn’t a mystery book.’ He can kiss my Motown ass.”