“You can call it stalking,” Rob said. “Others call it haunting. It’s gotten so that whenever anything goes wrong on a cruise ship, it gets blamed on Bert Meacham.”
“Like an evil spirit that haunts any ship captained by Colin Sloane,” I suggested.
“Exactly.”
“Which would give Captain Sloane a reputation for being a cursed captain,” I said. “Nobody’s going to want him to captain their ships. That could ruin his reputation.”
“Except,” Rob said, “that his wife’s family owns this shipping line.”
“If that’s true,” I said, “he could very well be haunting this ship. I mean, what could possibly go more wrong than a grisly murder?”
“Maybe,” Rob said, “but Meacham is a common enough name. He could be a different guy altogether.”
Maybe, I thought, but what were the chances? I changed the subject. “This is crazy,” I said. “I’m actually beginning to think of our captain as a victim rather than a suspect. You know, maybe he really didn’t remember that Joseph Gerard was on that other ship.”
“So now you want to give him the benefit of the doubt?”
“Reasonable doubt,” I said. “Juries are supposed to vote ‘not guilty’ if there’s reasonable doubt. You know, I asked the captain straight out if he was the one Evelyn Hodges had an affair with, and he wouldn’t answer. He said the conversation was over and walked away. He answered all my other questions, but when I asked that one, he refused to discuss it.”
“So what is your conclusion?”
I shrugged. “Either he’s the one, and therefore Leonie’s father, or he’s covering up for whoever is.”
“Which doesn’t necessarily make him the murderer,” Rob pointed out.
“Of course not. Why would a father want to kill his daughter, and especially in such a grisly manner? The only reason I even considered that is because somebody murdered Leonie’s mother twenty-five years ago. What are the chances that a mother and daughter would both get murdered on cruise ships twenty-five years apart? I thought maybe Evie confronted her lover and told him he was a father and demanded child support, or threatened to blackmail him, and that was why he killed her.”
“So you think this person killed Leonie because he was afraid she’d expose him as her mother’s killer?”
“I did think that,” I said, “but now I’m not so sure. The captain said there was nobody from that crew on this ship except him, and Jessica said Evie never told anybody who Leonie’s father was. The two murders may be completely unrelated.”
“Three murders,” Rob said. “Don’t forget Mrs. Thingummy.”
“I’m not likely to,” I said with feeling. “This was fairly straightforward until she showed up.”
“And now she’s gone too, and we’ve no evidence.”
“Except the pictures on my cell phone,” I said, “which is also missing. Whoever knocked me out saw to that.”
“This murderer,” Rob said, “has been one step ahead of us from the get-go.”
“I know. This has to stop.”
“What are you going to do now?”
I yawned. “Get some sleep. Things might make more sense in the morning.”
I hadn’t noticed the pitching of the ship much from the level of A deck, but when I got off the elevator on the Nav deck seven decks above it, I found myself bouncing off the walls on my way down the corridor to our cabin. If I could have just laid myself out flat on the bed when I got there, I would have been all right. But I had to wash the blood out of my hair first, and that required me to take a seasick pill before getting in the shower, and then the running water woke up Hal.
“What are you doing?” he demanded fretfully, standing in the bathroom doorway, squinting in the light.
“Washing the blood out of my hair,” I told him.
“Oh, right,” he said sleepily. “Are you okay?”
“Pretty much,” I replied. I turned the shower off and stepped out onto the bathmat, keeping one hand on the rail by the door to steady myself against the motion of the ship. Hal handed me my bathrobe, and I put it on. He pulled me over closer to the light and parted my hair to look at my laceration. “Nice job with the stitches. Nigel told us about the security tapes—and that you came right out and practically accused the captain of killing Leonie.”
“Not exactly,” I protested. “I simply asked if the same thing happened to Leonie as happened to me.”
“And what did he say?”
“Nothing. He just sat there, looking as if he’d seen a ghost.”
“Were you knocked unconscious?”
“No. I was bleeding, though, and Sarah told him to call the doctor, and he sent Officer Lynch to do that, and then Rob showed up and took me down to the infirmary … oh my God.”
“What?”
“I bet that’s what happened when Leonie fell and fractured her skull. He called the doctor then too. Or maybe Officer Lynch did, or one of the other officers. I bet Rob came and took the body down to the morgue. I bet Leonie was right there in the cooler—that is, until somebody took her out to crush her in the roof.”
“I’ll bet you’re right,” Hal said. “Looks like our young medical officer has some explaining to do.”
By the time I dried my hair and got into my pajamas and could finally climb into bed it was nearly two in the morning. It was delightful to snuggle up to Hal under the covers, listen to the rain lashing the glass doors that opened onto the veranda, and fall asleep to the rocking of the ship. But it was a very short night.
A commotion in the corridor outside our cabin woke us up while it was still dark outside.
“What the hell?” Hal said, raising himself up on his elbows.
“Only one way to find out,” I said sleepily, burrowing farther under the covers.
“Easy for you to say,” he grumbled. He swung his feet out of bed, went to the door, and flung it open. “What’s going on out here?”
I heard Nigel say, “We’ve a bit of a problem.” With his British tendency toward understatement, that was roughly equivalent to “Oh my God, something awful has happened! What are we going to do?”
So I got up too and stuck my head out the door. Nigel and Officer Grant stood in the corridor, Nigel in his pajamas, Officer Grant still in his uniform. “What’s going on?” I asked.
“There’s been another murder,” Nigel said.
Wednesday
AT SEA
14
‘Tis education forms the common mind:
Just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.
—Samuel Pope
“HURRY AND GET dressed,” Nigel continued. “There’s no time to lose.”
“What time is it?” I asked, squinting in the bright light from the overhead lights in the corridor.
“Five a.m.,” Officer Grant replied.
“Who’s the victim?” Hal asked.
“We don’t know yet,” Nigel said.
“I got a frantic call from our young physician just now,” Officer Grant said, “but he didn’t identify the victim.”
So we got dressed, and Nigel and I accompanied Officer Grant to security, while Hal and Mum went up to the Lido deck for coffee. We were to join them up there once we’d seen what this was all about.
It didn’t take a brain surgeon to see where the trouble was. Rob knelt next to someone crumpled on the floor next to an overturned chair. Was it the mysterious Meacham? I wondered. But the person wasn’t dead after all; he was moaning. Dead people don’t moan.
They don’t bleed either. The victim’s head lay in a pool of blood and continued to bleed profusely. When I got closer, I noticed that his hair was red, even where it wasn’t bloody. I looked up at Rob quizzically.
“Yes, it’s Joe Junior,” Rob said. “We need to get him to the infirmary so I can sew him up.
Dash it all, I’m going to be running out of sutures if this keeps up.”
“I thought you told Officer Grant he was dead,” I said.
“No, I never said that,” Rob said. “What, you think I don’t know whether somebody is dead or not?”
“He told us there’d been another murder.”
Rob shrugged. “You must have misunderstood him. Joe’s still very much alive. Unless somebody else has been murdered.”
“Where’s Meacham?” Officer Grant asked. “He was supposed to relieve Joe. Why isn’t he here?”
We all looked at each other as if one of us was supposed to know the answer to that, but of course nobody did. “If Meacham isn’t here, who called you?” I asked Rob.
“I don’t know,” he said. “He didn’t identify himself. Before I actually got here, I wondered if it was another bogus call.”
Someone knocked on the door, and Officer Grant opened it to admit a young lady in scrubs who was pushing a wheelchair. Rob straightened up, hands on hips, and sighed. “Phoebe, for God’s sake, I need a gurney, not a wheelchair.”
She shrugged. “Sorry, Doctor. You didn’t ask for a gurney. You just said you needed to transport a patient.”
Joe groaned.
“And bring an emesis basin when you come back,” Rob added.
He’d just barely gotten the words out of his mouth when the patient vomited. My stomach clenched in sympathy. I knew exactly how he felt.
Phoebe did an abrupt about-face and left the room. Nigel made a face and said, “Do you need us anymore, Doctor?”
“Do you need me to help you suture?” I asked.
Rob shook his head. “Phoebe can assist me.”
“I suppose someone ought to tell his dad,” I suggested.
“I’ll take care of that,” Officer Grant said. “You folks don’t need to stay. I’ve got to find out what happened to Meacham.”
“What’s Meacham’s first name?” I asked suddenly.
Grant frowned. “Why do you want to know that?”
Rob came to my rescue. “I told her the story about Bert Meacham,” he said.
Grant’s face cleared. “Oh, that. No. This is Will Meacham.”
“So,” I said, “not the same guy. Rob was right.”
“Who’s Bert Meacham?” Nigel asked.
“I’ll tell you upstairs,” I said.
Hal and my mother were enjoying plates of scrambled eggs and bacon when Nigel and I got off the elevator on the Lido deck. It smelled so good that Nigel and I decided to get some too. Transporting our breakfasts from the cafeteria line in the restaurant out to the pool area was another thing entirely, as the pitching of the ship made it nearly impossible to keep our footing while balancing loaded plates and full cups of coffee. Still, we managed, mainly because Arturo came out from behind the bar to grab our plates before we dumped their contents all over the floor, which was awash in water that had sloshed out of the pool during the night.
Someone had cordoned off the pool with orange cones and caution tape and had started draining the pool. The water level had dropped considerably, although it was still high enough to slosh. Nobody would be swimming today, because it wouldn’t be safe, and in any case the pool area was nearly deserted.
Hal and Mum had picked a cozy table on a raised platform right in front of the bar. It was illuminated by several tall light standards with shades shaped like dolphins and was surrounded by rattan chairs with fat cushions into which one could snuggle while contemplating the spectacle of the storm-tossed sea, its waves reflecting the dark gray sky. Besides which, it was the only place where the floor was dry. All the lights were on inside the pool area in an attempt to counteract the dinginess of the weather outside while the rain beat against the windows and the ship continued to rock and roll. “Where is everybody?” I asked as I sat down.
“I rather suspect a lot of people are seasick,” Nigel said. “Young Dr. Welch will have his hands full passing out Dramamine.”
“It’s early,” Mum said. “Not even seven o’clock yet. I expect most people are still in bed.”
“I doubt anybody’s going to be opening the roof today,” I said.
“So who was murdered?” Hal asked.
“Nobody, as it turned out,” Nigel said. “The security guard who was on duty last night was attacked, but he’s very much alive.”
“Reports of his demise were premature,” I quipped.
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” Mum asked. “But who attacked him?”
“We don’t know yet,” Nigel said.
When we’d all finished eating and were enjoying our coffee, Nigel leaned back in his chair and said, “Now, what about Bert Meacham?”
“Who’s Bert Meacham?” Hal asked.
“He’s a ghost,” I said, “who haunts cruise ships. Everything that goes wrong on a cruise ship always gets blamed on Bert Meacham.”
“Including that poor girl’s murder?” my mother asked.
“Probably. The thing about Bert Meacham is that he always seems to haunt ships where Colin Sloane is.”
“No shit,” said Hal with interest. “So he’s here.”
“Presumably. The story goes that Bert Meacham was in Colin Sloane’s class in maritime college, and Colin Sloane caught him cheating on an exam and got him kicked out of school.”
“That would tend to make someone hold a grudge,” Hal said.
“So Meacham was obliged to work his way up from the bottom instead of graduating from college as a third officer, which put him in a position to mess with things and cause accidents and equipment malfunctions and such, and he always managed to get onto the same ships where Colin Sloane was part of the crew.”
“So you’re saying that this Bert Meacham is a real person,” Hal said, “not a ghost.”
“Well, Captain Sloane’s been a captain for a long time,” I said.
“I think Sarah said twenty-two years,” Mum said.
“So by now this Bert Meacham has assumed almost mythical proportions, because he always works the night shift, and nobody ever sees him.”
“Where did you hear this story, kitten?” asked Mum.
“Rob told me last night when he was sewing up my head. I was telling him that we’d been looking at security tapes and that Officer Grant had asked Joe Gerard Junior to send all the video to Scotland Yard by e-mail and to get Meacham to relieve him so he could devote all his attention to it.”
“A different Meacham, I hope,” Mum said.
“Yes,” I said. “Officer Grant says his name is Will, not Bert.”
“So when we went down to security this morning,” Nigel said, “we found young Gerard suffering from a bleeding head wound and a concussion, and Meacham was nowhere to be found.”
“Well, now, that’s spooky,” said Hal.
“It gets spookier,” said a voice behind me, and I turned to see Officer Grant. “Mind if I join you?”
We all assented, and Grant sat down next to me. “What’s spookier?” I asked him.
“Meacham,” he replied. “We’ve looked everywhere. He’s still nowhere to be found. Nobody’s seen him. It’s a real mystery.”
“Surely,” my mother said, “there’s no shortage of hiding places on a ship this size. You must have overlooked something.”
“We checked his cabin,” Grant said. “His things are gone too. His roommate hasn’t seen him. Of course his roommate was partying in the crew bar all night, so he’s not much help. It’s as if Meacham never existed.”
“Maybe he jumped overboard,” I said. “Of course, that would show up on security tapes, wouldn’t it?”
“That’s not the worst thing,” Grant said. “All those tapes—or rather video files—that young Gerard was going to send to Scotland Yard are gone too.”
“That means Meacham coshed him to knoc
k him out while he made away with all those tapes,” Nigel said.
“Actually, they were video files that were deleted from the computer,” Grant said.
“Don’t they say that deleted files are never really gone, that they’re still somewhere on the hard drive if you just know how to recover them?” I suggested. “Isn’t there someone in the IT department who knows how to do that?”
“That’s an idea,” Grant said, sounding happier. “I’ll get someone on it right away.”
“You might have to get someone trained in forensic computer technology,” Nigel said. “You may have to send that hard drive to Scotland Yard. Of course, you’ll have to do that from Fort Lauderdale.”
“And by then this ship will have sailed with a whole new crew and passengers, and all the evidence with it,” I said. “You can’t detain a cruise ship.”
“So does that mean we have two ghostly Meachams?” Mum inquired. “We’ve a Bert and a Will. Could they be brothers or something?”
“Could they be the same person?” Hal asked. “Maybe Meacham has a middle name that he’s using on this trip.”
“Well, let’s see,” I said. “What’s Bert a nickname for? Bertram? Burton?”
“Albert,” Hal suggested. “Egbert. Herbert. Norbert. Filbert.”
“What’s Will short for?” Mum asked. “Besides William.”
“Willard,” I said. “Willis. Wilton. Willoughby. Wilbraham. Wilbur.”
“How about Wilbert?” Hal suggested.
“Wilbert,” Nigel repeated. “Excuse me a minute. I need to check something.” He rose from his chair and left.
Grant leaned back in his chair. “Looks like you folks have the Lido deck all to yourselves,” he observed. “How are you handling all this rough weather?”
“As long as I take my pill, I’m fine,” I said. “I’m rather enjoying it.”
“I am too,” Mum said. “I really feel quite safe. Is it because the ship is so big?”
“That’s part of it,” Grant said. “But there’s a bit of engineering involved. There are stabilizing fins on the sides to counteract side-to-side rolling, and heeling tanks prevent the wind from blowing the ship over by moving water from one side to the other to keep it upright. Unfortunately, nothing can prevent the up-and-down pitching, which is what makes people seasick.”
The Body on the Lido Deck Page 17