We didn’t find the key, and we had a time figuring out how to get Wyma Jean loose. Catarina was inconsiderate enough to throw a sheet over her, which speeded things up. Half an hour later, Ironsides got all of the survivors together in the control room, to break the news to everyone and figure out what to do. Dykstra and McHugh were the last to show, and when I saw the expression on McHugh’s face, I knew that Frido wasn’t the only one who was having an exciting day.
“Frido put this on the computer! It’s all about McLendon’s Syndrome!” She waved a piece of printout in her hand.
“What’s McLendon’s Syndrome?” Spooner asked.
“It’s what Lindquist’s got. It means she’s a goddamn bite-you-in-the-neck vampire,” snapped McHugh.
When it rains, it pours. Spooner’s tear-filled eyes bulged as she began adding up two and two and came up with some whole number.
“We ought to notify local authorities and place the matter in their hands,” Boo-Boo said sonorously. Bernie looks good in a bow tie, owns a cat, and affects a lisp. Even Davie Lloyd let that remark slide.
“Lindquist, I guess we’re going to have to lock you up,” Ironsides said slowly.
“Hold it. Let me see that printout,” I said, taking it out of McHugh’s hand.
“What difference does it make? We know she killed Frido,” McHugh brayed. “Put her away before she kills somebody else!”
“Frido didn’t write this,” I said.
“What do you mean, ‘Frido didn’t write this’? That’s his name at the bottom!”
“Whoever did this forgot to erase the time group. It was written less than an hour ago. There’s no terminal in the galley. Frido wasn’t on the bridge, was he?”
Ironsides and Boo-Boo looked at each other, and neither of them were smiling.
“Wyma Jean, did you see him use the terminal in your room?”
She shook he head.
“He didn’t use ours, and he didn’t use McHugh’s,” I finished.
“What about the one in stores?” McHugh queried triumphantly.
“One, he didn’t have time,” I said, counting off fingers. “Two, he was probably already a corpse when this message was written. And three, if you’d read yesterday’s log, you’d know the terminal in stores is down and I haven’t gotten around to fixing it.”
Everybody went silent for a few minutes. The Navy has jurisdiction in admiralty cases. What we needed was a good cop from the Naval Criminal Investigation Branch, but there didn’t seem to be one handy. “So if Frido didn’t compose this, who did?” I asked.
“Catarina could have written it,” Bernie said uncomfortably.
“Agreed. But that would make her either very cunning or extremely stupid.”
“Well, it still looks like a vampire killed Frido,” Dykstra said doggedly.
“Then why the message?” I asked.
No one seemed to know, which meant someone was being less than candid with me.
“Personally, I think all of us just became suspects,” I said.
A captain in space has life-and-death power. A captain in space who chooses to exercise that power had better have a damned good reason if he or she wants to retain his or her license. Ironsides put it to a vote. A motion to lock Catarina up for the duration passed five to two. A motion to lock me up failed, three to four, with Spooner and Dykstra unexpectedly on my side.
“Who’s going to bell the cat?” I asked innocently.
Ironsides looked around uncertainly. Bernie looked around to see if his pet was in attendance. Catarina saved them both further embarrassment. “It’s all right, Ken. If they think I’m a danger, I’ll let them lock me up.”
“I just hope everyone remembers that whoever killed Frido will still be walking around,” I added, pouring oil on troubled waters.
After I said that, Ironsides looked like he’d been sucking on lemons. He looked worse after I proposed that we appoint a committee consisting of McHugh and myself to look for evidence, which carried, nobody having the nerve to vote against it.
While Ironsides and Dykstra were trying to figure out how to weld a bar across her cubicle door, Catarina and I sat down on her bed to go over what we knew—quietly, to discourage eavesdroppers.
“I’m still not sure which knife was used,” I said. “There are three or four hanging up that could have done the job, but they’re all where they’re supposed to be and wiped clean. How tall would you have to be to stick Frido, do you think?”
“From the angle of the slash, neither Annalee nor Bernie could have sliced him if he were standing up straight. I didn’t see any bruises or signs of a struggle.”
“I’d like to know why not. I’m wondering why there wasn’t blood all over the place. Frido may have been three-quarters craven by nature, but he didn’t just hold his neck out over a bowl. Or did he?”
“Let’s run through who could have done it. What about Ironsides and Boo-Boo? They were together.”
“But not all the time. Over an eight-hour shift, they both would have slipped away from the control room to hit the head or get a cup of coffee three or four times, but trying to pin them down on times would be like trying to nail down whipped cream.”
“Annalee and Rosalee?” she asked.
I shrugged. “They can alibi each other by saying they were both asleep in their rooms, but it would take a tactical nuke to wake up Rosalee, and Annalee wears earplugs so she can’t hear Rosalee snoring through two doors and a common area. Either one could have left and wiped up Frido. For that matter, either you or I could have slipped away and done the deed.” I was thinking about the locker.
“Maybe. I don’t think you did—I would have heard you leave. And I don’t think I did. Even if I ‘d gone into some sort of trance state, I would have snapped out of it and found myself standing in the kitchen.”
“I feel much better. Well, at least we can eliminate Wyma Jean.”
Catarina scratched the back of her neck. “I’m not so sure. I took a good look at those handcuffs before we took them apart. It would have been easy for her to put them on herself.”
Outside, Rosalee said, “Hey, Ken! We’re almost finished.”
“Sure,” I said without looking. I told Catarina, “Hell, Boo-Boo’s cat didn’t knife Frido, and he’s about the only one we’ve eliminated. We’re no better off than when we started.” I thought for a moment. “If we could only figure out what happened to all the blood.”
“The case of the corpuscleless corpse,” Catarina replied ingratiatingly. She waited a few seconds, then sank the blade. “Blood will tell.”
“I’m swearing off bars,” I said. “I’m not swearing off drinking, but I am definitely swearing off bars, and people I meet in bars, particularly vampires. Why do you spend half your time needling me?”
She smiled innocently, ear to ear, a real jet job. “If I needled you all the time, I’d lose the element of surprise.”
Outside, I could hear Ironsides cursing loudly as he tried to keep the torch lit. “Ken! Will you hurry up in there? We’re going to be done here in a minute!” he bellowed.
“We’re busy trying to figure out who killed Frido,” I told him.
Catarina’s smile faded. “Ken, don’t stick your neck out for me.”
I gave her a funny look. “Why not?”
She hesitated. “Trust me. When we get to Brasilia Nuevo, everything will be all right. Nothing’s going to happen to me. At least, nothing that wasn’t already going to happen to me,” she amended.
“How do you know?” I asked.
Ironsides bellowed again. “MacKay!”
She hesitated again, then shook her head. “Trust me. I just know. Don’t stir things up by trying to play private detective.”
I shook my head. “Sorry, I guess I’m not very trusting. Besides, I’ve already gone and stirred things up. I can’t very well stop now. And in a way, I feel like we owe it to Frido.”
“All right.” She patted my cheek. “Just don’t go st
upid on me. Don’t take any chances. I don’t want someone to panic and stuff you under the sink, if you understand what I’m saying. Why did you do it? Stick up for me like that?”
“With a smile like that, you have to ask? Besides, you didn’t do it. And also, I haven’t got very many friends on this bucket,” I added softly.
“All right, Ken.” She wrinkled her nose. “If you’re going to poke around, sometime when you’re alone you might want to clean the drains in the galley. I think they might be stopped up.”
“Ah, come on, Ken! We’re almost finished!” Ironsides yelled.
I nodded slowly and stepped out to see how Davie Lloyd and Dykstra were making out.
“This will hold her,” Ironsides grunted as I stepped past him. They’d already cut a slot in the door to pass food through, and they were ready to finish fastening the bar. Davie Lloyd fitted it in place and applied the torch.
The right side of the bar slipped and hit the deckplates with a dull thud. “Perhaps if you tried using just the tiniest bit of solder...” I heard Catarina say.
I left them to it and went off to find McHugh, who was wild to start searching. She and I then spent five or six hours poking around everyone’s room and generally trying to dig up dirt.
We hit the staterooms first. We started with Boo-Boo’s and didn’t find much worth mentioning. Boo-Boo had so many little bottles and jars of herbs and medicinal substances that he could have hidden the crown jewels in there, although McHugh made an enthusiastic home-wrecker and absolutely drove Boo-Boo’s cat, Sasha Louise Kitty, to distraction. There was nothing peculiar about Ironsides’s quarters apart from the mould in the corners.
We hit Dykstra next. The only thing that she had that raised eyebrows was a box of tapes that included things like Camus and Sartre.
As I was rummaging through her lingerie, I asked McHugh, “What are we looking for, anyway?”
She stared back at me as if that were the stupidest statement she’d heard in her life. “Evidence!” she snapped.
“What does evidence look like?” I persisted.
McHugh glared. “How the hell would I know? This was your idea, anyway. Hell, there’s nothing here. Let’s do Kundle’s room next.”
We went through Kundle’s room thoroughly. We had all seen the diary he kept once or twice. But I didn’t find it, and neither did McHugh.
“What have we got so far?” I asked her when we finished with the shelves.
“A leash, a dog collar, a bunch of dirty books, a couple bags of Brazil nuts. Jack-all, the same thing we had an hour ago. What, you fall asleep or something and forget?”
I shrugged. “We’ve been through the bathroom. The only thing left is his bed.”
McHugh looked at it and folded her arms. “I’m not touching it.”
“Okay.” I stripped it down gingerly and found nothing. The frame was plastic tubing. I put my hand on it to brace myself while I lifted the mattress, and one of the ends felt loose. When I twisted it, it came off. There were half a dozen sacks of white powder stuffed inside. I pulled the top one out and tossed it to McHugh. She hesitated. “What is it?”
“Good question. I don’t think it’s soap.”
She opened the bag, licked her finger, and ran it across the top. “Funny,” she said, “it tastes like soap.”
It didn’t help her complexion, and when I tried it, it didn’t do a thing for me either. We stuck the bags in the ship’s safe with the rest of the late Frido’s effects and jointly came to the conclusion that while we didn’t know what was going on, it qualified as evidence. People don’t hide things like laundry detergent away for no reason, even slobs like Frido.
The galley was next on our list. I let McHugh poke around the pots and pans while I sat down and tried to figure out what everyone’s motives might be.
Dykstra was the least obvious suspect. She had no discernible reason for turning Frido into fricassee, and outwardly she lacked the wit to invent one. Of course, if anyone on the ship had the physical strength to toss Frido up against a wall and stick in a knife, it was her.
McHugh wasn’t much better as a suspect. Although McHugh was about nine-tenths ruthless and had very little use for Frido, it didn’t feel like her style. Normally, she was about as subtle as a kick in the teeth. I couldn’t see her using a knife on Frido. Maybe a chain saw, or a ball peen hammer, but not a knife. Also, having known her for ten months, I couldn’t imagine her wasting her career or even the time of day on Frido.
Spooner was probably the best suspect I had, and she puzzled me. She didn’t seem like the violent type, but McHugh and I had come across her paraphernalia. Not everyone owns a cat-o’-nine-tails. And her reaction to Frido’s demise seemed a little overdone. Having been married once, I knew that people fooling around with each other are not noted for behaving rationally, and neither was Spooner. I marked her up as a maybe.
That left Ironsides and Bernie Bobo. Boo-Boo had the only obvious motive. The little clown had been lusting after Wyma Jean in his little tin heart for months. He had been correspondingly jealous of Frido and everyone else over a meter tall, and he had hidden it about as well as he did anything else. Unfortunately, I had to cross him off because Bernie was so deathly afraid of pointed objects that he ate with plastic utensils.
His buddy Ironsides was the one I wanted to be guilty. He had no apparent morals to speak of—he’d even been a little sweet on O’Day. Unfortunately, his best friend—if he had had one-would have had to admit he lacked the manual dexterity necessary to knife a blind cripple, and it was difficult for me to detect criminal genius in a man who couldn’t juggle an eight-person watchlist.
Last on my list, of course, was Catarina, who looked to be either the cause or the catalyst of what had gone down. Things had been pretty quiet until she showed up, and she’d said very little about herself, even to me. Still, while the modus operandi had fingerprints and possibly tooth marks all over it, my money said no. If she’d done in Frido intentionally, she’d have made a better job of it, and if she’d done him in in an absentminded way, McHugh’s printout was curiously timed.
I hadn’t done Frido in, I was pretty sure he hadn’t been run over by a train, and we didn’t have a butler. I was inclined to clear the cat. Before I could figure out who killed Frido, the question I had to answer was “why?” Frido hadn’t had a single enemy, although none of his friends liked him.
I’d reached that point in my analysis and was about to go back and start over when Ironsides stuck his head in and interrupted. “Are you two checking for fingerprints?” he demanded.
Annalee slammed a frying pan down on the counter. “Whose? We all eat in here!”
“Besides, I wouldn’t know how,” I added. “Why don’t you go back out front and steer the ship?”
Davie Lloyd’s head disappeared. Boo-Boo stuck his in a minute later. “Ken, can I talk with you in private?”
“Sure, Bernie.” I walked out in the corridor with him.
“Ken, I’ve been hearing noises around the ship the last couple of days.” Bernie looked unusually harried. I probably did, too, so I refrained from making any of the obvious retorts.
“Okay,” I said cautiously.
“Well, I saw a vampire in a movie turn himself to smoke, and I think that’s how Lindquist got in the galley and killed Frido without anyone seeing her.” Having vouchsafed this revelation, Bernie looked up at me in a touching sort of way.
“Bernie,” I said gently, “things like that don’t even happen in movies anymore. Will you please go back to the bridge and help Davie Lloyd steer the ship? Annalee and I can handle this.”
“Honest, Ken. I’ve been hearing things!”
“I’m sure you have. Now, go on back up to the bridge.” I turned him around and sent him forward. Then I went back into the galley.
Annalee was perched on a chair, rifling through some cabinets. “What did Bernie have to say?”
“He’s been hearing things, too.”
�
�Oh, hell.” She looked at me. “That’s all we need. Well, I’ll be damned if I can find anything in here. You want to check the storeroom?”
“Okay, let’s go.”
We walked down the corridor together. “Goddamn cat scratched me, did you see that?” McHugh pointed to her wrist.
“I told you, you shouldn’t have tried to shave her fur off to see if she had messages tattooed on her skin.”
“Well, she could have,” McHugh said defensively. She pulled open the door to the storeroom, walked in, and started on the bottom shelves. “Goddamn,” she muttered, “I swear somebody’s been in here moving stuff around.”
“Frido’s ghost?” I suggested.
“Cut that out!” she snapped. “I told you Wyma Jean’s been hearing things.” She turned her head and looked at me funny. “Do you hear somebody breathing?”
“No.”
“It’s coming from in here. Oh, my God! The ship’s haunted.”
“McHugh, will you stop that?”
“Ken.” She turned pasty white and began inching backward toward the door. “I’m serious. I can hear it. It’s coming from in there.” She pointed toward a vegetable bin. “Oh, my God! It’s moaning.”
“McHugh! There is nothing in that bin except turnips.” I reached over and wrenched open the door.
“There it is!” McHugh wailed.
I stared in amazement. “Clyde, what are you doing here?”
Clyde the bead vendor was sitting cross-legged on top of a pile of tubers, spooning peaches out of a can. He smiled until he recognised me. “Oh, no. You the fellow with the pretty lady wrestler.”
McHugh shifted her weight off her heels and narrowed her eyes. “Say, you don’t look like a ghost.”
Clyde’s eyes went wide. He almost dropped his peaches. “Ghost? Where!”
I took the peaches out of his hand and set them down on the deck. Then I grabbed him by the arm. “He’s no ghost. This little so-and-so tried to pick my pocket in Schenectady,” I explained. “He must have stowed away.”
“Hey, who are you calling a so-and-so? Ouch!” Clyde protested.
“Take him to Iron-Ass and ask him some questions,” McHugh said through clenched teeth as she grabbed Clyde’s other arm. We both yanked.
McClendon's Syndrome (v1.1) Page 5