The Body on the Lido Deck

by Jane Bennett Munro

  Nigel returned. “You were right,” he told Hal as he sat down in the vacant chair. “This is the crew list from the Southern Cross twenty-five years ago when Evie Hodges was murdered. Here it is. Wilbert Meacham, Able Seaman.”

  Hal looked at the document Nigel held out. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  “Able seaman,” I mused. “That means he knows what to do with ropes, doesn’t it?”

  “And now he’s a security guard,” Nigel said. “Which means he knows how to avoid security cameras.”

  “And nobody ever sees him,” I said. “He’s the invisible man.”

  “A perfect candidate for our murderer,” Nigel said.

  Grant signaled to Arturo. “What motive would Wilbert Meacham have for killing an entertainer?”

  Arturo leaned over the bar and said, “Yes, sir?”

  “Coffee, please,” Grant said.

  “Right away, sir.”

  “Toni’s already figured that out,” Hal said. “He didn’t kill Leonie. He just mutilated the body.”

  “Dear God, why?”

  Hal nodded at me. “Ask her.”

  Grant shifted his gaze to me. I shrugged and turned up my palms. “I just thought that if the person who killed Leonie had a motive that required a body to be found—like an inheritance, for example—it would defeat the purpose to mutilate the body beyond recognition. So maybe the body was mutilated by someone with a grudge against the killer.”

  At that moment Arturo brought Officer Grant’s coffee. I looked up and happened to catch his eye. He averted his gaze instantly, and I wondered how much he’d heard and whether it mattered. But I didn’t have time to worry about it, because after Grant signed his receipt, Arturo went back behind the bar—and hopefully out of earshot.

  “Also,” I went on, “we know that crushing Leonie in the roof took two people. And we also know that Meacham isn’t the only person with a grudge against the captain.”

  “Who else has a grudge against the captain?” Grant asked.

  “His son,” I said. “Keith Sloane. He works in maintenance.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “You weren’t there when they found Leonie’s skullcap in the food grinder,” I said. “Keith was the one who found it. When the captain spoke to him I saw the expression on his face. If looks could kill, the captain would have been our next victim.”

  “Dear me,” Mum said. “I wonder why. Maybe I should chat up Sarah about it.”

  “Fiona, really,” Nigel said. “You’re getting as bad as Toni.”

  “Nigel, darling, really,” Mum returned, “just whom do you think she gets it from?”

  Grant shook his head as if trying to disperse a cloud of gnats. “So if you think that Meacham, with help from Keith Sloane, mutilated that girl’s body, then it follows that you think Captain Sloane is the murderer. Seriously?”

  “I don’t want to believe that,” I said, “but if it was Meacham and Keith who mutilated the body, and if they did it because they have a grudge against the captain, he must be.”

  “But darling kitten,” Mum interjected, “you don’t really have any proof that this Meacham and the captain’s son were the ones who mutilated the body. You only know that it took two people.”

  I sighed. “You’re right. But I do know that Leonie sustained her head injury in the captain’s cabin. That does tend to implicate the captain, wouldn’t you say?”

  “That would depend on who else was in the room,” Nigel said. “If anyone was.”

  “Well, if she was assaulted by someone else in the captain’s cabin, the captain would know who it was, wouldn’t he?” I asked.

  “Then why hasn’t he said anything?” Grant demanded.

  “Perhaps he’s protecting someone,” Hal said.

  “So who would the captain want to protect?” I said. “I can only think of one person.”

  “His son,” Hal said.

  “That’s the one.”

  Grant clutched his head in both hands, nearly dislodging his cap. “I’m going to have to talk to the captain. But what the bloody hell am I supposed to say to him?”

  “You could simply ask him who else was in his cabin when Leonie had her accident,” Nigel suggested.

  “He won’t give up his son that easily,” Grant objected.

  “You can’t know that until you ask him,” Nigel said practically. “Shall I go with you?”

  Grant shrugged. “It probably wouldn’t hurt.”

  Nigel turned to me. “Toni, old dear, have you any other bright ideas?”

  I shook my head. “No. I do have to go talk to the doctor, though.”

  Nigel nodded. “Right-o. Fiona?”

  “Yes, dear,” Mum said. “Please extend an invitation to Sarah to join me for breakfast. That should get her out of the way so the captain can talk more freely. There might be some things he wouldn’t want to say in front of her, don’t you see.”

  “But you’ve already had breakfast, love.”

  “She doesn’t have to know that. Oh, all right, then, if she’s had breakfast, ask her to join me in an Irish coffee. That would be nice on a nasty day like this, don’t you think?”

  “Jolly good, then,” Nigel said, and he and Grant departed in the direction of the stairs.

  I drained my coffee cup and stood up. “I guess I’d better get busy too.”

  “Want me to go with you?” Hal asked.

  “That might be a good idea. You can keep me from falling down and hitting my head again. Mum, are you going to stay here and wait for Sarah?”

  “I may as well, kitten. If I move, nobody will know where to find me.”

  “True,” I said, and Hal and I headed for the elevators.

  As I’d predicted, the infirmary was a busy place. Phoebe was passing out seasick remedies to a patiently waiting line of passengers, and even a few crew members. Rob was nowhere in sight. A heavyset woman in a white lab coat manned the desk. She looked at us and sighed. “If you need something for seasickness, you’ll have to get in line.”

  “We don’t,” I told her. “But I need to talk to Dr. Welch whenever he has a minute.”

  “I’ll give him the message,” she said. “Who are you, and where can he find you? He can talk to you when he has his break in about twenty minutes, unless he’s in the middle of something.”

  That sounded chancy to me. I was loath to leave and perhaps not get to see Rob at all today. “Maybe I’ll just wait here,” I told her.

  She shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  “What about that security guard?” Hal said. “Is he still here? Maybe we could talk to him.”

  “Who would that be?” she asked.

  “Joe Gerard,” I said. “We were with Rob when he found him bleeding all over the floor in security. He knows us.”

  She glanced at her computer screen. “Yes, he’s in room three. Doctor wanted to keep him here for observation, at least until he regains consciousness.”

  Hal and I glanced at each other, startled. “You mean he’s still unconscious?” I demanded.

  She nodded. “At least he was the last time we checked on him.”

  “But he was vomiting when we last saw him,” I protested. “I thought he’d regained consciousness then.”

  “Well, he lost it again,” she said, “because he’s been unconscious since I’ve been on duty.”

  “Can people vomit when they’re unconscious?” Hal asked.

  “I’ve seen them do that,” I said, “with severe head injuries. It’s the cerebral edema that causes it. Rob might need to put him on a Solu-Medrol drip to reverse that.”

  “Sounds like a good idea,” said a voice behind me, and we turned to see Rob coming out of an exam room. “Toni, what are you doing here?”

  “We need to talk to you,” I said.
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br />   “Privately,” Hal added.

  “What about?”

  I glanced at the receptionist, who was following our conversation as if it were a tennis match, her piggy little eyes switching from Rob to me and back again. “The usual subject,” I said.

  “Also we wanted to talk to Joe Gerard,” Hal said, “but apparently he’s still unconscious.”

  “He keeps drifting in and out,” Rob said. “It’s not a good sign. I think he may have a subdural hematoma.”

  “That’s not good,” Hal said. “He needs a neurosurgeon.”

  “I know. I’ve notified the captain that we need to medevac him to a hospital on the mainland.”

  “How long will that take?” I asked.

  “Several hours, I should think. I’m just hoping it’s not too late for Joe. Maybe a Solu-Medrol drip will help.”

  “Do you have any mannitol?” I asked.

  “Unfortunately, we don’t,” Rob said. “If we’re lucky the medevac people will bring some with them.”

  “Mannitol?” Hal asked me sotto voce. “What’s that?”

  “It’s an osmotic agent,” I told him. “It draws edema fluid out of the brain. I remember we used to use it in the emergency room when I was an intern.”

  Rob glanced at his watch. “I’ll have a break in about fifteen minutes. Want me to meet you somewhere? Lido deck?”

  “How about the Ocean Lounge?” I asked. “It’s kind of chilly up on the Lido deck today.”

  “Okay. See you there.”

  “What now?” Hal asked as we got back into the elevator. “Ocean Lounge?”

  “Let’s go tell Mum where we are, in case she wants to join us,” I suggested.

  But when we reached the Lido deck, we found it empty. Arturo informed us that my mother had left with another lady. That sounded promising, so we went back down to the Promenade deck and the Ocean Lounge. We were in luck. Mum and Sarah were already there. Mum waved at us and invited us to join them. “We’re having Irish coffees,” she said. “Would you like one?”

  “Sounds good to me,” Hal said, and Sarah signaled the bartender. He held up two fingers inquiringly. Sarah nodded. The bartender gave her a thumbs-up and got busy.

  “Have you found out anything new?” Mum inquired.

  “Rob thinks Joe Gerard may have a subdural hematoma,” I said. “He’s trying to get him medevaced to the mainland.”

  “Oh, yes, Colin got that call just before I left to come down here,” Sarah said. “It’s all arranged.”

  “Oh, good,” I said. “I hope they get here in time.”

  “Is it that bad?” Sarah asked. “D’you mean to say he might not live?”

  “It’s possible,” I said. “In any case we won’t be able to get any information from him, even if he does make it.”

  “About that awful Meacham person, you mean,” Sarah said.

  “Or if he was able to e-mail any of the security footage to Scotland Yard before he was attacked,” I said.

  At this point the bartender—a craggy-faced Indonesian with spiked hair whose nametag bore the improbable but highly appropriate name of Boozey—brought our Irish coffees. I wondered how much he had overheard. Sarah signed the receipt. By common consent, we didn’t resume our conversation until Boozey had returned to the bar.

  “Security footage?” Sarah asked. “What security footage?”

  “There was a reflection of a face that showed up in the glass door leading into the pool area of the Lido deck,” I told her, “and Nigel thought that someone at Scotland Yard might be able to enhance it enough to identify it. But now all that footage has been deleted from the computer. We’ll never know if Joe had a chance to send it to Scotland Yard before he was attacked.”

  “Oh dear,” said Sarah. “Isn’t there an IT person on board who could find deleted files? I’ve heard that sometimes that can be done.”

  “Officer Grant was going to check that out,” I said. “Nigel said that if the IT people on board couldn’t retrieve the files, we might have to send the entire hard drive to Scotland Yard for their forensic techs to do it.”

  “You’d better hope that Meacham didn’t destroy that hard drive,” Hal said darkly. “It could have been thrown overboard by now.”

  “Hal darling, please don’t say that,” Mum begged.

  “It may be okay,” I said, hit by a sudden thought. “Those files may be backed up on a main server, or maybe to the Cloud.”

  “Cloud? What cloud, kitten?”

  “Some programs allow data to be stored in cyberspace, and they call it the Cloud. I’ve even got some on my own computer at home. I’m sure Officer Grant will check that out, though.”

  “Here comes the doctor,” Mum said.

  I looked up to see Rob approaching, his scrubs covered by a white lab coat. He sank into a chair with a gusty sigh and ran his fingers through his red hair until it stood on end, like Boozey’s. “The helicopter’s on its way, but it’s probably too late,” he said. “He’s already starting to have decorticate posturing.”

  “Oh no,” I said.

  “What’s that mean?” Hal asked.

  “It means his brain swelling has damaged the cerebral cortex,” I said. “Did you start the Solu-Medrol drip?”

  “Of course I did,” Rob said irritably. “What do you think?”

  “Don’t talk to my wife like that,” Hal said.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “He’s exhausted. I almost hate to start asking him questions now.”

  “But you’re not going to let a little thing like that stop you, are you?” asked my husband, who knew me so well.

  Rob signaled to Boozey, who came right over. “Bloody Mary. Hold the veg.”

  Boozey gave him a thumbs-up and returned to the bar.

  “I hate to interfere,” said my mother, “but are you sure you should be drinking whilst on duty?”

  Rob rubbed his eyes. “I’m not on duty right now. I’m free until five o’clock, except for checking on Joe.”

  “Good,” I said, “because we really need to talk about Leonie.”

  Rob squinted at me through reddened eyes. “What about Leonie?”

  “I told you what happened last night in the captain’s cabin. I fell and hit my head, the captain sent for you, and you came and took me down to the infirmary.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Didn’t he send for you when Leonie fell and hit her head? Did you take her down to the infirmary? Did you put her in the cooler?”

  “Of course. What did you think?”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  Rob threw his hands up in the air. “You didn’t ask!”

  I threw my hands up too. “Oh, for God’s sake!”

  Boozey, with Rob’s Bloody Mary on a tray, took a step back. “You two gonna fight?”

  Rob waved a hand negligently. “No, of course not.”

  After Rob had signed his receipt and Boozey had returned to the bar, I resumed my questioning. “Tell me what happened. From the beginning.”

  “She was still alive when I got there,” Rob said. “Dave Lynch and I put her on a gurney and took her down to the infirmary.”

  “What time was it?”

  “About quarter past five.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I tried to assess the wound. I cleaned up as much of the blood as I could, and then I felt the depressed skull fracture. I knew this was not just a simple suture job. Then I noticed that she’d stopped bleeding.”

  “Dead girls don’t bleed,” I remarked.

  “Right. So then I checked her pupils and they were fixed and dilated. No respirations, no pulse. So Dave and I put her in the cooler and left.”

  “What was the time of death?”

  “Five thirty-five.”

  That couldn
’t be right, I thought. If she’d been crushed in the roof at five minutes after six, she would have been dead for thirty minutes. That was too long. “So what time was it when the captain called you?”

  Rob thought for a few seconds. “About five.”

  “Then the accident must have happened about, what, ten minutes before that?”

  Rob shrugged. “Probably. I don’t really know.”

  “Was there anybody else there?”

  “No. Just the captain.”

  “Was he upset?”

  “Well, yes, a girl was bleeding and unconscious in his cabin. What do you suppose?”

  I sighed. “I guess that was a stupid question. What I was trying to get at was, supposing Leonie was his daughter. Was he that upset?”

  Sarah spoke suddenly, startling me. She’d been so quiet that I’d actually forgotten she was there, so fixed had been my attention on Rob. “Colin and I don’t have a daughter, you know. Just a son.”

  Oh my God. I thought Mum would have brought that up by now. But maybe she didn’t have any more of an idea than I did about how to broach that subject tactfully. But Sarah spoke again, saving me the trouble. “Colin, like most men, has had affairs, but as far as I know, none of them have resulted in children.”

  Okay, I thought, now I know what to say. “This would have been before you were married,” I said. “Our cruise director, Jessica, grew up with Leonie. She told us that Leonie’s mom had an affair with an officer on another ship where she worked as an entertainer, that she had a child, and that she went back to work as a cruise director when the child was four—and then was murdered on that ship.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Sarah. “What’s that to do with Colin?”

  “Captain Sloane was first officer on that ship,” I said.

  “Oh, I remember,” Sarah said. “The Southern Cross. It happened just before it reached Southampton. They called in Scotland Yard, as I recall. We were engaged then,” she added as an aside to my mother.

  “The Scotland Yard detective inspector they called in was Nigel,” I told her.