The Body on the Lido Deck

by Jane Bennett Munro

  “Oh, for God’s sake.”

  “It didn’t work, you know. Scotland Yard told Nigel that they have the video that Joe sent them.”

  “Good for them. Are you quite finished?”

  “Not quite. You see, it would explain so many things if you were the murderer. You were the one who put the evidence away. You could easily have disposed of it. You could have been hiding in the infirmary all the time we were in there looking for the evidence—and hit me on the head and stole my cell phone. You could have stolen my laptop too. You knew everything we did. You were in on the entire investigation. Remember when you said that the murderer has been one step ahead of us from the get-go?”

  “I do. He has.”

  “Can you prove that you couldn’t have done all those things?”

  Rob leaned back in his chair. “Of course I can. Dave Lynch called me to the captain’s cabin and was with me right up until we put Leonie in the cooler and left the infirmary. I went to my cabin and he went back to the bridge. Oh, and we both ran into Officer Grant outside the infirmary. He wanted to see the body, so I let him in and gave him the key to the cooler and then Lynch and I left.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I exclaimed. “You couldn’t have told us this before?”

  Rob shrugged. “You didn’t ask.”

  “So Officer Grant could have told us too, and he didn’t.”

  Rob smiled. “You probably didn’t ask.”

  “What about the night we wanted to get into the infirmary to get the evidence? You weren’t there. Where were you?”

  “I told you. I got a call from maintenance.”

  “Oh, right. But nobody knew what you were talking about when you got there.”

  “Correct.”

  “Can anybody corroborate that?”

  “The captain. I called him to report it.”

  “Can anybody corroborate where you were? You could have called the captain from anywhere.”

  “How about all the people I asked about who was injured who told me they knew nothing about it?”

  “Can anybody corroborate that you went to your cabin after you stitched me up and not to security?”

  “Certainly. Officer Grant’s cabin is right next to mine. His door was open. I said good-night to him.”

  “So you don’t have my phone or my laptop?”

  “No, I don’t have your phone or your laptop,” he mimicked. “How would I? I don’t have keys to passenger cabins.”

  “What if somebody gets sick?”

  “I have to get someone from housekeeping to let me in.”

  “But you didn’t ask anyone from housekeeping to let you into my cabin?” I pursued.

  “No, Toni, Goddamn it, I didn’t! Now can we please stop this nonsense?”

  Rob had raised his voice, and apparently it had alerted security, because the next sound I heard was a key turning in a lock and the door to the infirmary opening. “Everything okay in here?” a voice called. A burly security guard came around the corner, hand on his utility belt. I wondered if his hand concealed a gun. When he saw Rob and me sitting quietly in our chairs, not killing each other, he removed his hand. No gun. “Sorry. I thought I heard somebody yelling.”

  “No worries,” Rob said calmly. “We were just having a discussion. It got a little lively.”

  “You heard us yelling from outside the infirmary?” I asked the guard.

  “Yes, madam, I did.”

  “Would you mind assisting us in a little experiment?”

  Rob looked quizzical. “Toni, what are you doing?”

  “I want to know if you can hear someone yelling from inside the cooler.”

  The guard looked from Rob to me and back again. “Are you two having me on?”

  “No,” I told him. “We’re dead serious. No pun intended.”

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked.

  “You go back outside and close the door. Dr. Welch will put me in the cooler and close the door. I will yell and bang on the door. Give us thirty seconds, and then come back in.”

  “Okay, if you insist.” The guard turned and started to walk away.

  “Are you serious?” Rob demanded. “You want me to lock you in the cooler?”

  “Yes. Let me yell and pound for thirty seconds, and then let me out.”

  “Okay, if you insist,” Rob said. We went back into the morgue, and Rob and I horsed the cooler door open.

  So much for our experiment.

  The cooler was already occupied.

  Again.

  23

  What I like about Clive

  Is that he is no longer alive.

  There is a great deal to be said

  For being dead.

  —Edmund Bentley

  “WHO THE HELL is that?” I demanded.

  “That,” Rob said, “is Meacham.”

  “That’s Meacham?” I asked in amazement. What with all the talk about the legendary Bert Meacham, I had envisioned someone like Ichabod Crane, tall and thin like a scarecrow with a sunken chest, wild black hair and deep-set eyes. The individual in the cooler was male, but there the resemblance ended. Will Meacham was no more than five foot eight and stocky, with curly sandy hair and freckles. He looked more like Andy Hardy than Ichabod Crane. Andy Hardy with a blue tongue tip protruding between puffy lips. Furthermore, he was much too young to have been on all three ships.

  “What the hell’s he doing here?” I demanded.

  Rob turned up his palms. “Your guess is as good as mine. I’m just as surprised as you are to see him here. What? Now you think I killed him too?”

  I sighed in frustration. “Damn it, Rob, how would I know?”

  The burly guard came in. “Your thirty seconds are up. I didn’t hear anything. Who’s that?” Then he got a good look at the body. “Blimey, it’s Will.”

  “The mysterious Meacham,” I told him.

  “Does Officer Grant know about this?”

  “He does now,” said a new voice, and Officer Grant loomed up behind the security guard. “What’s Meacham doing here?”

  “I don’t think he’s doing much of anything,” Rob said, casting a disparaging glance upon the body. “I wonder what killed him.”

  “That’s easy to figure out,” I said. “What’s hard is figuring out who killed him.” As I said this, I loosened Meacham’s collar and spread it wide. “Look. Ligature mark.”

  “He was strangled,” Officer Grant said.

  I pried up an eyelid. “Petechiae,” I observed. I pulled down the lower lip. “More petechiae. And look at this ligature mark. What do you suppose made it?”

  Grant peered at it. “A rope?” he guessed.

  “Look at this pattern,” I pursued. “It looks like something woven. You know, Mrs. Levine’s ligature mark looked like this too.”

  “So you think the same person killed both of them?” Grant asked.

  “Maybe,” I said, “but not necessarily. All this shows is that it’s a similar ligature.”

  “You think she was strangled with something woven?” Rob asked. “Like a piece of cloth?”

  “Got a flashlight?” I inquired of Officer Grant. He shook his head, but the security guard handed me one off his utility belt. I aimed it at the ligature mark and saw something glint. “What have we here?” I mused. “Rob? Got some forceps?”

  Rob opened a drawer. “These do you?”

  “Perfect.” I used the forceps to extract the glinting object from the folds of Meacham’s neck. “This looks like metal. Something gold.”

  “What does that mean?” Grant demanded. “He was killed with jewelry? You think a woman killed him?”

  “It’s possible that whoever killed Mrs. Levine used her necklace to strangle her, and then again to strangle him,” I said. “Because Mrs. Lev
ine didn’t have a necklace when we found her body.”

  “How long do you think he’s been dead?” Rob asked.

  I manipulated an arm. “Rigor is fully established. That takes about four hours. Maybe longer in the cooler.”

  “How much longer?” asked Grant.

  “Hard to say,” I responded. “What’s more important is that rigor can last from thirty-six to forty-eight hours, and even longer in the cooler. So he could have been dead since …” I counted on my fingers. “San Juan. Maybe even St. Maarten. But he couldn’t have been here in the cooler that long, because Mrs. Levine was in here until they took her ashore in San Juan.”

  “You can’t narrow it down any more than that?” Grant asked.

  “No, sorry, I can’t tell you when he was killed. Only the killer knows for sure.”

  “I suppose you can’t tell where he was killed either,” Grant said.

  I sighed. “No, I can’t.”

  “He’ll have to be off-loaded tomorrow in Fort Lauderdale,” Rob said.

  “I know that,” Grant said. “What are you getting at, Doctor?”

  “Maybe there’ll be an autopsy. Then we’ll know all that.”

  Grant turned and started to walk away. “Possibly.”

  “Officer Grant!” I said.

  Grant stopped and turned back.

  “How are Hal and Nigel doing, do you know?”

  “I haven’t a clue. No news is good news, as they say.” He turned and walked away, and I didn’t try to stop him. Instead, I asked Rob for a urine cup to put the metal fragment in, and I put it in my boat bag. I wasn’t having any more truck with trusting evidence to the infirmary, by cracky.

  Then I asked him for a swab.

  “You still want to look for blood in the cooler?” he asked, as if our conversation had cleared him of complicity.

  It hadn’t. “Of course. Why not? If you’re innocent, it shouldn’t bother you.”

  He folded his arms. “Well, it does. Why isn’t my word good enough for you?”

  “We can’t take anybody’s word in a murder investigation,” I told him. “The swab, please? And something to put it in also.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” he complained. “You never give up, do you?”

  “Nope.”

  He opened a drawer. “Here they are.”

  “Thank you.” I took one, moistened it with a drop of water, and then reached around Meacham’s body to get into the edges and corners. The swab came away stained dark brown. “Yup. This is blood. See?” I showed it to Rob, who snatched it out of my hand and threw it in the trash can.

  “What the hell did you do that for?” I demanded.

  “I’m not going to let you do this, Toni. I’ve no intention of letting you ruin my reputation.”

  “Why would I want to ruin your reputation?” I asked. “How is this going to ruin your reputation?”

  “If you intend to use that swab to prove that I killed Leonie, don’t you think that would ruin my reputation?”

  “All it would prove is that she was alive when she was in the cooler. It wouldn’t prove you killed her.”

  “That’s how much you know. Don’t you think that the mere suggestion that I might have killed a patient will have a deleterious effect upon my reputation? Do you have any idea how hard it was to get this job? What shipping line would hire me after this? Not to mention the effect on my license. Every time I try to get a job from now on, there would have to be an inquiry.”

  “Rob, I think you’re blowing this all out of proportion.”

  “I don’t think so,” he argued. “If you can show that Leonie was alive in there, how does that make me look? I pronounced her dead. Lynch was here when I did that. It makes me look incompetent.”

  “Rob …”

  “Also, I shut her up inside that cooler. It’s airtight. She would have run out of oxygen eventually. That would have been murder.”

  “She had a depressed skull fracture and an intracranial bleed that would have killed her too. It’s a toss-up which would have gotten her first, you know that.”

  “I know that, and you know that. But we’re physicians. What do you suppose someone like Mrs. Levine would have made out of it?”

  “I shudder to think. But look, Rob, Nigel saw it too, remember? He was here when we did the autopsy on the head. Nobody is going to question you for pronouncing her dead.”

  “Not unless somebody talks.”

  There was a threatening quality in his tone that made the hair rise on the back of my neck. Surreptitiously, I began to sidle toward the door. But it was too late. He turned and saw me. “Oh no you don’t.” He reached out to grab my arm, but I was too fast for him. I raced out of the morgue and got as far as the infirmary waiting area.

  Rob caught up with me just as I reached the door, with a most un-Richie-Cunningham-like look on his face. “Damn you, get back here. I wasn’t kidding, Toni. I’m not done with you yet.” He grabbed my arm and began to drag me back into the main patient area. I struggled and tried to pry his fingers off my arm, and he hit me.

  He clouted me so hard on the jaw that I fell to the floor. Then he bent over me. “Toni, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. Are you all right?”

  I looked up at him in disbelief. “No, Goddamn it, I’m not all right. What the hell do you think you’re doing? I think you broke my jaw.”

  “I don’t think so. You wouldn’t be talking if I had. I’m so sorry, Toni. Here, let me help you up.” He reached down to take my hand and haul me to my feet, but I wasn’t having any truck with that. I doubled up and kicked him in the crotch with both feet.

  He howled in pain and doubled over. “Goddamn you, you bitch.”

  I scrambled to my feet and ran as if the devil himself were after me. I yanked the door open and ran out into the corridor, yelling for Officer Grant as I went. Where the hell were all those security guards who were supposed to be concealed within the infirmary to protect me? I was going to have a few choice words for Officer Grant whenever I saw him next.

  I ran down the corridor to the security department where a security guard had just come out into the corridor. He caught me by the shoulders. “Here, here, what’s all this?”

  “Help me,” I gasped. Behind me I heard running footsteps, and I looked back to see Rob coming down the corridor after me. He was limping. “Please,” I pleaded. “Don’t let him hurt me.”

  The security guard let go of me. “Madam, you shouldn’t be down here at this hour.”

  I recognized him as Hodges, one of the guards who had been outside the doors to the Lido pool area the day we discovered Leonie’s body.

  “You don’t understand,” I protested. “Dr. Welch shouldn’t be trying to kill me either, but he is.”

  At this point Rob came up to us, panting. The guard held up a restraining hand. “Hold it right there, Doctor.”

  “It’s all right, Hodges,” Rob told him. “Dr. Day and I were just having a little disagreement, that’s all.”

  Little disagreement, my ass. I opened my mouth to object, but Hodges beat me to it.

  “No, Doctor. We saw the whole thing on the security cameras. You hit the lady. We’ve already reported it to the captain.”

  “I’ve already apologized for that,” Rob protested. “She kicked me in the crotch. Did you see that on your security cameras?”

  “We did, sir. And I can’t say as I blame the lady.”

  Rob turned to me, looking like Richie Cunningham again. “Toni, please, forgive me. Please don’t file a complaint. It’ll ruin me. Come back to the infirmary with me and I’ll give you an ice pack for that bruise.”

  I shook my head. “No, Rob. I’m sorry. I know now why Leonie left you. You’re an abuser.”

  Rob reached out toward me, and I backed up. Hodges restrained him. “No, sir, leave t
he lady alone.”

  Rob dropped his arm. “Toni, you don’t understand.”

  “I understand all too well, Rob. This isn’t my first rodeo.” Both Rob and Hodges looked mystified at that, and I hastened to explain. “My first boyfriend was an abuser. I nearly married him, too. I broke it off when he raped me and beat me up.”

  A second security guard came out the door and joined us. “The captain and Officer Grant will be here straightaway.”

  “Thank you, Tibbetts. Better get back to the screens now.”

  “Yes, sir.” The guard disappeared.

  “You’d all better come in here too,” Hodges said. “We may as well sit while we wait.”

  Inside, Hodges provided us all with chairs. I thanked him, and the others all murmured assent.

  “Now then,” said Hodges, “just what the bloody hell is going on here?”

  “We’re trying to solve a murder,” I said. “I was asking Dr. Welch about his whereabouts when Leonie Montague was killed and crushed in the roof, and when Mrs. Levine was killed, and when Joe Gerard was attacked right here in this room, and he attacked me.”

  “You’re that lady doctor, aren’t you?” he asked. “The one who asked if we’d seen anybody carrying a human head.”

  “Yes, that was me,” I said. “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”

  “That would depend on how personal it is.”

  “Are you any relation to Evelyn Hodges?”

  “She was my sister.”

  Surprised, I said, “I’m talking about the cruise director who was murdered on the Southern Cross twenty-five years ago.”

  “So am I,” Hodges replied. “She was my sister. She left a four-year-old daughter, my niece Maggie. My folks took care of her, and now they’re gone too. Sometimes I wonder what Maggie is up to these days, but after so much time …”

  Oh my God. “Then you don’t know.”

  “I don’t know what?”

  “That Maggie changed her name when she became a professional singer.”

  “No, I didn’t. What did she change it to?”

  I knew it was going to be a shock to the poor man, but there was really no way to make it any easier. “Leonie Montague.”