Destination Murder

by K. J. Emrick

  “Cookie, the computers were smashed. You don’t need to be a technical genius to…”

  “Oh! And that means it was premeditated. Right? Someone took out the cameras first, and then went after Joseph! Jayce must have been planning this all along.”

  “Cookie.”

  “Poor Joseph. What could have made Jayce want to kill him? There must be a motive.”

  “Cookie,” he said again, very firmly. He put his hand on her knee, and squeezed gently. “Stop. Just… stop. There is no ‘we’ in this case. There’s me doing the investigation, and you taking a step back to let me do my job.”

  She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The ride he was taking her on was plummeting downward again, twisting her stomach into knots. “You’ve got to be kidding. After everything I’ve done? I found a suspect and connected him to Joseph. What have you been doing, Mister Police Officer?”

  He took his hand back, folding his fists into his lap. “I’ve been doing real police work. I spent most of the night trying to collect fingerprints off the storage room where we found Joseph. I’ve been interviewing the crew. I’ve been talking to Jessica, only I’m still not sure if she told me everything because she already talked to you. Now I have to worry if she got confused and thinks she told me something when she’s really remembering what she told you!”

  Pausing for breath, he stood up and pushed his hands back through his hair. “Listen, this is going to be hard enough without you… helping. Know how I had to lift fingerprints? I’ve been shaving lead dust off pencils and then using packaging tape to pull up anything I find. There’s probably fingerprints on Joseph’s neck where he was choked, too, but I’ve got no way of finding them out here. We’re in the middle of the ocean still, Cookie. We don’t have the luxury of screwing this up.”

  Pencil lead and clear packaging tape. Cookie couldn’t help but admire that kind of ingenuity even if she was steaming at the man. “You’re going to earn detective of the year, doing things like that.” It was meant to be a compliment. Mostly.

  “Yeah, well. It might not amount to anything because we can’t do anything with them until we get back to land and submit them for analysis. Plus, we need a suspect to even compare them to.”

  Stubborn, arrogant man. “We have a suspect! Jayce is our suspect. You can at least ask him for his fingerprints, can’t you?”

  “Sure. And he can tell me to go screw myself, and then we’re exactly nowhere. There’s a reason you don’t go and start interrogating suspects right off the bat, Cookie. If you spook the guy, he’ll just lawyer up and when we get back to shore he might disappear altogether. We have to do this right.”

  “You don’t think it was him, do you?” she pressed, folding her arms and daring him to disagree.

  “Look, he might be. He might not be. We’ve got a ship full of suspects and while I admit that it looks like there’s a connection between him and Joseph—”

  “Looks like?” she exclaimed. He ignored her.

  “—that doesn’t mean he’s the killer. It just makes him a person of interest. You can’t just stalk the guy!”

  “I didn’t stalk him.” How could he even think that? “He came up to me while I was eating breakfast, just like I told you.”

  He closed his eyes, and Cookie could swear he was counting to ten. “All right, look,” he said, lowering his voice and coming over to sit next to her again. “Let’s put all that aside for now. It’s done. You found out some interesting stuff, now please, just let me run with it. No, don’t say anything. Just let that go for a minute. I want to talk about something else.”

  Cookie tried to hang on as the conversation took another turn. Warning bells were going off in her mind. Was it ever a good thing when a guy said he needed to talk?

  “I think,” she tried, “that we need to talk about Joseph’s murder first, Jerry. We’ll be back at shore in, what, two days? That’s not a lot of time. Especially considering what you said about Jayce maybe disappearing when we get back. We need to find out why he did this and put him into some kind of custody before we get back.”

  “I think we have more important things to talk about.”

  “Oh? More important than catching a murderer?”

  He was nodding his head, a very serious look on his face. “We need to talk about us.”

  Now the warning bell became a loud gong and Cookie suddenly didn’t know what to do with her hands. She lifted Cream up onto her lap just to give herself something to do. “I’d rather talk about Joseph’s murder,” she told Jerry.

  “I told you, leave that to me. Please, Cookie. I know what I’m doing.”

  “So do I,” she said abruptly, standing up with her doggie friend still in her arms. “I’m going to take Cream for a walk. The brochure said they frown on pets making messes in the cabins.”

  “Cookie, I really think we need to talk.”

  She heard him, but she didn’t stop. She was too afraid that his next words were going to echo those of her husband’s, all those years ago, just before he left her. With her heart aching she closed the door to the cabin behind her.

  Now it was just her and Cream.

  Chapter Five

  Since this was the first time that Cookie had ever taken a cruise she had no way of knowing if this was how every cruise line that allowed pets onboard did things. If it was, someone must be making a fortune off artificial turf.

  At the very back of the lowest passenger level was a huge room meant for pet owners and their little friends. The Doggie Do Park was a cute name, considering what the huge space was meant for. There were half a dozen other people in there at the moment, each of them patiently walking their dogs around, and around, and around, waiting for them to do their business.

  The floor was some sort of artificial grass, laid out in squares that were two feet wide. Cookie could just imagine that when any of them got too, er, used up then that square would be lifted out of place and a fresh one installed. It was ingenious, really. This way the dogs could still feel like they were doing their business out in nature and the rest of the ship wouldn’t have to put up with the mess and smell of dogs being dogs. There were even rubber fire hydrants at regular intervals that looked just like the real thing. She just felt sorry for the crewmembers stationed around the room, brooms and shovels at the ready.

  How they kept this room smelling decent, Cookie had no idea. Air freshener pumped through the vents, maybe. Well, that was one mystery that could remain unsolved. It was all she could do to focus on Joseph’s murder and the deeper, more confusing mystery of Mister Jerry Stansted.

  Just inside the door were garbage receptacles with a hole on the front to throw away used poop bags, and a dispenser on the top for considerate pet walkers to take fresh bags from. Cookie took two. Cream had been cooped up for a while and had held his own quite well, but that just meant she had to be ready for whatever was coming.

  They walked around for a bit while Cream sniffed at the floor and pawed at different spots, his ID tag jangling softly on his collar. He met up with a couple of the other dogs to exchange brief, panting conversations. Then he went back to sniffing out a piece of artificial grass to call his very own.

  “Come on, now,” Cookie said to him absently. “When we get back home you’ll have the run of the lawn, I promise. For right now I’m pretty sure each of these spots is the same as every other spot.”

  He sneezed, as if saying not to argue with a dog’s nose. Then, thankfully, he found just the right place.

  While she waited, she thought about Jayce. Why would the man risk leaving her a note like that? She must have really touched a nerve with something she’d said. Going back over their very brief conversation for anything she might have missed didn’t take very long. She would love to ask him directly what had set him off, dangerous though it might be. Would talking to him again do her any good?

  Jerry had warned her to stay away from Jayce. For her own good. But, wasn’t that her decision? Didn’t she have a
right to go where she wanted and do as she pleased? How could she let herself be warned off this mystery when it involved her daughter? No. Jerry didn’t get to tell her what to do. Not when he’d been slowly growing more distant day by day. He wanted to talk about her and him? Seriously?

  Well, maybe he should have thought about that before he started acting like a big jerk.

  “Excuse me?” One of the crewmembers, a young woman who looked to be barely out of her teens, was tapping Cookie on the shoulder. “Are you all right?”

  “Oh. Yes. I am, thank you.” Cookie realized she’d just been standing there thinking, while Cream had finished up and wandered off. Quickly she bent and cleaned up his mess, flipping the bag inside right again and tying it tight. “I’m afraid I spaced out there for a bit.”

  “No worries,” the girl told her. “There’s a track around the outside of the room if you’d like to take your dog for a walk.”

  “My goodness. They did think of everything, didn’t they?” Cookie chuckled.

  “We’re here to make your travelling experience a memory to treasure,” was the quick, precise answer. Even with a smile added in, Cookie had the feeling the crewmember had said that same line so often that it was memorized.

  Scouting the room for Cream, she found him off in the corner playfully nipping at the feet of a much larger collie. The man holding the collie’s leash was very patiently letting his dog bounce back and forth with his newfound playmate. The two dogs were already acting like the best of friends. Too bad it wasn’t that easy with people, Cookie thought.

  “I see you found my little friend Cream,” Cookie said to the collie’s owner. “Sorry if he’s been any trouble.”

  “Not at all,” the man replied, his kind words highlighted with an easy smile. “He’s made my Chaz here very happy. Hello, by the way. My name is Avery Basford.”

  “Um, hello. I’m Karen Williams. My friends call me Cookie.”

  His hazel-brown eyes, the color of raw walnuts, lit up with amusement. “Cookie and Cream. Well, well. You must have a fine sense of humor to have come up with a name like that for your companion. I do appreciate that in a woman.”

  Cookie found herself liking Avery Basford. Maybe, sometimes, it really was that easy with people.

  He looked to be about her age, maybe a little bit younger, with gray peppered through the black of his messy-on-purpose haircut. He was lean and trim in his dark slacks and open-necked polo shirt. He was taller than she was by quite a bit. Taller than Jerry, even.

  She wasn’t sure why she had compared him to Jerry just then. There was no reason to think of Avery in that way. Except… Cookie thought maybe that was exactly how she was looking at him. It was hard not to. He was handsome and friendly, and besides that he obviously loved dogs.

  Oh, Lord help her. She had a crush on a guy she just met.

  “I should… probably go,” she told him, bending down to scoop Cream up into her arms. “I have things I need to do.”

  “Really? Cookie, did no one tell you this is a cruise? The only thing you should have to do while you’re here is have fun.”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? As it turns out…” Should she tell him about the murder? About how she was investigating to prove that the step-brother of one of her good friends had murdered her daughter’s husband? Or about how her boyfriend had told her to stay away from the whole mystery and let him do all the work?

  Her lips pressed tighter together. In that moment, she wanted nothing more than to take Avery up on his offer and just have a few minutes of fun on this trip.

  That’s what she wanted to do, but her son-in-law was dead, and her daughter was an emotional wreck, and her granddaughter was going to need someone to be there for her, and… oh, yes. She already had a boyfriend.

  Maybe. Except, her boyfriend wanted to talk about their relationship and maybe at the end of that conversation she wouldn’t have a boyfriend anymore.

  Cream was pushing against her restraining arms and whuffing up a storm, trying to get down to where Chaz pranced from paw to paw on the turf. The dogs wanted to play with each other. Cookie reminded herself that it wasn’t just the people on this trip who needed her. Cream needed attention, too.

  “What do you say?” Avery asked her, seeing her conviction flagging. “How about we walk around the track a few times. It will be good. For the dogs, I mean.”

  His smile was infectious. She found herself staring at his perfect teeth, and agreeing with everything he had just said. “Yes. Good for the dogs.”

  The track was layered in red rubber, making it springy and firm and perfect for walking. Cookie had been promising herself for months now that she was going to start exercising and trim her waistline down. Somehow she never had time. Rushing back and forth in the kitchen when she was baking her goodies for the next day was the closest she ever seemed to get. Part of the problem, of course, was that she didn’t enjoy working out.

  Walking next to Avery was different, though. It didn’t seem like work. It was just… fun. Cream and Chaz jumped at each other on the track ahead of them. They watched their dogs, and talked about where they were from and the weather and simply anything that didn’t matter. It was so nice to forget about things for a while and just be with someone who wanted to listen to her. For a time, she forgot entirely that she was on a boat. It was almost like they were outside, in a dog park somewhere, just the two of them.

  The rocking of the ship ruined the illusion, of course. And then, inevitably, the conversation turned back around to the terrible events that Cookie just couldn’t escape.

  “Awful news about that murder,” Avery said to her, in an offhanded sort of way. “Don’t you think?”

  She should have expected this to come up sooner or later. It would be gossip around the entire ship by now. Her daughter’s husband gets murdered and people get an exciting story to tell their friends when they get back home. Avery wasn’t being a gossip hound, though. She could tell he was only mentioning it to make conversation. Besides, there was no way that he could know she was directly related to the murder. Literally.

  “Yes, it was terrible thing,” she told him, and then she debated for several seconds about whether she should let him know it was her son-in-law who was murdered. “Avery, I—”

  They had walked all around the track again, and now as they approached the end near the front doors once more she saw Jerry standing there. He was watching her intently, and she realized he wasn’t just watching her. He was watching his girlfriend walking with another man.

  Oh. Right.

  “Avery, I have to go,” she said, giving him an apologetic smile. Suddenly walking with him seemed to be just like pouring gasoline on whatever fire was burning up her relationship with Jerry. “Thank you for the walk. And the talk. Oh, and the company for Cream. He needed to get out of that cabin for a while.”

  He nodded, kneeling down to hook the leash back up to Chaz’s collar, looking disappointed. “Will I see you again?”

  Cookie bit the inside of her cheek, but then shrugged. Jerry had already made it pretty clear that he was losing interest in the way things were between them. Why shouldn’t she show some encouragement to an attractive man like Avery? “Maybe you will see me around,” she told him. “After all, the ship isn’t that big.”

  Embarrassed at how bold she was being, Cookie rushed off with Cream, to the end of the track where Jerry was waiting for her.

  “Who was that?” he asked.

  “A friend.” She walked past him and out into the hallway. She had no intention of letting Jerry ruin what had been a nice, distracting moment for her. His footsteps caught up to her but she still wouldn’t turn around to face him. She made sure to walk just that much faster than him. “Why are you following me around the ship? How did you find me in the first place?”

  “It didn’t take my great detective skills,” he tried to joke with her. When she didn’t react, he sighed loudly. “You told me you were going to take Cream fo
r a walk. This is the place to walk your dog. And I’m not following you. I came to find you.”

  “Oh? That sounds exactly like you’re following me.”

  “Call it whatever you like. You had someone threaten you, both in person and then separately by a note. I don’t think now is a good time for you to be rushing around the ship having doggie playdates.”

  She stopped so abruptly that her sneakers squeaked against the polished floor. Jerry nearly bumped into her as she whirled around on him. “No? Do you know that when we came on this trip I was hoping that you and I could rekindle some of the old flame we had? I was hoping that maybe we could finally work through this… this whatever it is growing between us. This wall. Instead, my son-in-law is dead, and you’re treating me like I’m in the way, and you’re even more distant now than you were before we boarded! So, excuse me if I took a few minutes to walk Cream and find a new friend.”

  “New friend,” he repeated in a dry tone. “Is that what you’re calling it?”

  “Jerry, he’s just a man I met. We were talking and walking our dogs. That’s all.”

  Only, if she was being honest with herself that wasn’t all there had been to it. There was something about Avery that made him easy to be around. She had enjoyed being with him. The clock on the wall had let her know that she’d been in there with him for more nearly forty minutes. It had felt like no more than ten. At her age it was rare to meet someone who she clicked with so neatly. That hadn’t happened for her, in fact, since Jerry had first walked into her bakery years ago.

  Jerry started to say something and then stopped to wait for a group of passengers to walk by with their Pomeranian. “Cookie, we really need to talk.”

  “So you’ve told me. I don’t think there’s anything left to say. Whenever I try to talk, you shut me down.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Yes, it is. I’ve tried talking to you about this mystery and still you—”