Murder at Sea of Passenger X Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery #5 (Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery Series)

by Anna Celeste Burke

  “You’re lucky you didn’t get kicked out of your internship at Marvelous Marley World for that. If guests in the dining room had seen those fiery apron strings, you could have created an uproar. Or worse—a panic with people screaming ‘fire’ and running for the exits!”

  “I know, Georgie. I do have some bad-prank-Karma coming to me, don't I? I’m way more mature now than I was when we were in our twenties. It’s not that kind of surprise, promise. Besides, passengers seem plenty upset about the missing man. I’m not interested in doing anything to rock the boat!” I rolled my eyes at the corny use of that phrase.

  “Ha ha, Gerard. No one wants to make this situation worse. It’s not pleasant to think about some poor man floating around out there—if he’s still alive.”

  “Certainly, not the sort of thing you want to deal with on your cruise to paradise. Many of the conversations I’ve overheard have been dreadful. Not always oozing with concern for the missing man, I might add. You’d think they’d notice that their kids are standing there with eyes as big as saucers and their mouths hanging open, listening to the nasty tone and offensive language. Some of those parents ought to have their mouths washed out with soap.”

  “Their kids won’t blush as easily as I did as a newbie in the kitchen, huh?” Gerard burst into laughter again.

  “Hopefully our luau will rekindle the aloha spirit. We’ll have entertainment, too. Perroquet and Penelope will sing their little ditty on a mock beach since the real one will be off limits.” Then Gerard sprang into motion swinging his hips in a kind of hula meets the twist. He belted out the first line of that duet by a mermaid and a parrot:

  “We live a tiki-tiki life in a teeny-tiny hut

  On a strip of sandy beach near a brightly-colored reef!”

  At that point, Gerard pointed to me. I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know the routine. We had done it many times years before as coworkers during our internship at Marvelous Marley World. I took my cue, stepped next to Gerard, and went into action. Dancing and singing my part.

  “It’s an easy-peasy life full of fish and coconut

  By lagoons of blue-green water where work is always brief!”

  “Brief? It’s almost nothing atoll—atoll—get it?” Gerard retorted adding a bit of squawk to his voice.

  “Yes, I get it Perroquet!” Standing there with my hands on my hips like Princess Penelope, I abruptly ended our little routine with a question.

  “Be honest, Gerard. Do you hate this song as much as I do? The idea of an oversized parrot and a petite mermaid dancing on a French Polynesian beach just irks me somehow.”

  “The tune does stick with you long after you wish it would leave your head. However, that is absolutely information you should not have divulged, Georgie Shaw. I now know how to torment you anytime I please. Not to mention blackmail! What would Mad Max say if he knew how you felt about Penelope and Perroquet’s tiki-tiki song?”

  “Oh, go ahead. Do your worst,” I said, putting my hands back on my hips. “I grew up with three brothers, so it won't be easy to torment me! And, I don’t mind telling Max to his face that he missed the mark with that little ditty. Can you imagine having to play that tune, over and over, for a five-year-old smitten with the idea of Princess Penelope from Neptune’s Enchanted Underwater Kingdom? Where’s that parrot come from anyway? There aren’t any parrots on atolls!”

  Gerard was laughing at my rant as we headed across the storage space and through a pair of swinging doors into the commissary kitchen. Unlike the empty storage area, this room was buzzing with activity. The staff was busy working on large stainless steel tables. On one near us, a young man was cracking eggs into a large container, holding two eggs at a time in each hand. Crack, open, empty. Grab four more eggs and repeat! Prep work I had done many times to have enough eggs ready to scramble for a buffet. Others chopped fruits or vegetables. A man washed heads of lettuce in a large stainless steel sink, while a young woman wearing plastic gloves wrapped bacon around water chestnuts or pineapple chunks, stuck them with a toothpick, and then placed them on a large sheet pan.

  “Yum, rumaki,” I mumbled realizing that I was getting hungry.

  “Only one of the many 'pupus' for our luau. We’re having those little barbecue ribs, coconut scallop ceviche, beef teriyaki skewers, chicken mango kabobs, crispy prawns, and...”

  “Please, stop! I take back what I said about being able to withstand your torment. Not that you’re playing fair. One of the things I wanted to ask you about was whether you'd considered creating a spectacle of some kind for tonight. You know, something extra for passengers who are disappointed about the change in itinerary and distressed about the missing passenger? Now I’m too hungry to talk about food. Besides, that luau you have planned for tomorrow night is going to be a fabulous way to end the cruise on a happy note.”

  “Georgie, have no fear! I’m way ahead of you when it comes to cooking up a diversion for tonight. This way!” I followed Gerard into another preparation room in the commissary. I could tell the moment we entered the space that this was the pastry shop. Not just by the sights that assailed us. The air was laden with sweet aromas of coconut, spices, and my favorite—chocolate.

  “Behold! A sea of desserts to take their minds off reality and remind them that they came on this cruise for fun and fantasy.”

  “Oh, my goodness! It’s like a scene from that episode of I Love Lucy where Lucy and Ethel are set loose in a candy factory,” I exclaimed. Trays and trays of mouth-watering truffles were set out before us on one of the surfaces in this room. A rack was already laden with trays full of them, too.

  “Peek in here,” Gerard said as he opened the door to a walk-in. Olly-Olly Octopus beamed his wicked smile in a grand display of chocolate. Below him, a smaller, marzipan rendition of Princess Penelope sat among rocky chocolate boulders, her mermaid tail at the edge of a blue-green sugary lagoon. Candy starfish and seashells along with a treasure chest filled to overflowing with gold foil-wrapped chocolate coins surrounded her.

  “Now that’s a spectacle! The kids are going to go wild.”

  “Mostly Paolo’s handiwork. We were going to use this at the luau tonight if cruise events had gone as planned. Divine, don’t you think?” Gerard sighed, and then went on speaking before I could reply to his question. “The kids can devour Olly-Olly Nemesis of the Deep with impunity. We’ll give them little Neptune’s Warrior Tridents to use instead of forks. They can dig in and serve themselves while wearing a crown—King Neptune’s or Princess Penelope’s—as they choose. Hopefully, this will make the evening memorable for other reasons than being stranded at anchor while searching for a man overboard.”

  As he spoke, Gerard walked me through a wonderland of sweet treats. Staff members, who were busy piping decorations onto cakes of every shape and size, greeted us with friendly nods or hellos as we made our way around the space. Pies and tarts were cooling on racks. Cupcakes and cookies were being iced and turned into fanciful creations.

  “All that sugar ought to create quite a buzz. I’m not sure about those pointy tridents, though. I can imagine kids stabbing each other with them once they’ve had their way with Olly-Olly.”

  “There’s certainly plenty of room to run off that sugar buzz in the kids’ areas near where we’ll set this up. It’s a good idea, though, to have them trade in those tridents for foam rubber toys or blow up pool toys or something like that. I’ll make sure the Activities Director has a supply on hand.”

  “They ought to sleep like babies when that sugar drops them like a rock later,” I said. We walked back through the spaces we had traversed to the swinging double doors that led into the storage room. Then to a second set that would return us to a bank of elevators, including the one we had used earlier.

  “Let’s hope so. Time for the surprise in my cabin. I’ve got a splendid lunch set up for us. You can invite Jim Rockford if you like.”

  “Carol’s been talking to you, hasn’t she?”

  “Since I didn
’t go to the wedding, I had to get the scoop somehow. So, yes, I called your assistant and pumped her for info.”

  “Jack and I invited you,” I said.

  “I know. Life at sea is a demanding one. My itinerary is set a year ahead. Now that I’ve met him, I understand what Carol meant about Jack being a man of action. The way he looks at you, I can believe he was in a hurry to make that walk down the aisle. He does look like James Garner, doesn’t he?”

  “I think so. Let me call and see if Jack can get away. Bill, too! Be prepared, though. It’s going to be your turn to get pumped for information. You have to tell them everything!”

  “Tell who everything about what?” Gerard and I both jumped at the sound of the voice that asked that question. Paolo swept in through those swinging doors.

  He was no longer wearing that chef’s hat and his appearance was even more startling without it. His blond hair that hung straight to his shoulders set off his bright blue eyes.

  “Gerard has lunch for us. I want him to tell my husband, Jack, all about the spectacles you two have planned for passengers,” I lied as fast as my lips could move. It wasn't a complete lie. What I had said was true, just not the whole truth. I’m not sure why I didn’t tell him more. How long had he been down here? How much had he heard already? I wondered.

  6 A Dodgy Perroquet

  Stuffed after that lunch with Gerard, Jack seemed quiet but relaxed. I felt wired. When we left Gerard, he was still meeting with Bill Tate going over details after sharing his concerns about the odd things he had noticed in the kitchen and storage areas.

  Jack had taken that “fowl play” episode with the duck, as more than play. Less concerned than I had been about scaring the heck out of Gerard, Jack told him to keep his guard up for the duration of the cruise. Gerard agreed and then asked both Bill and Jack what that meant. I don't know about Gerard, but urging him to take precautions had raised my level of anxiety.

  “Hearing Gerard’s story a second time gave me the heebie-jeebies,” I said once we were alone and on our way to a wraparound promenade on an upper deck. Jack smiled.

  “The heebie-jeebies? I haven’t heard that term in ages! It's from an old song I can barely remember. Where did that come from?” Jack asked.

  “Probably from singing Max’s retro-sounding tiki-tiki song with Gerard,” I mumbled.

  “Singing? Georgie Shaw, what other talents have you been keeping from me?”

  It was my turn to smile. With Jack grinning at me, skin-tingling heebie-jeebies weren’t all that zipped through me. Snap, crackle, pop, and the anxiety fled. Before I answered him, I grabbed his hands and pulled him close.

  “We’ve only been married one week, Jack Wheeler; surely you don’t believe you’ve learned everything there is to know about me, do you? I’m your mystery woman, remember?” The elevator door slid open behind me. I stepped out, still holding onto one hand, pulling him along with me.

  “Well, I am sorry I missed that performance. When you reveal your singing talents to me, I wouldn't mind if you picked a less annoying song.” I laughed feeling more of the tension flee.

  “We are a match made in heaven, aren’t we? I told Gerard how much I dislike that song. He’s already threatened to use that revelation against me.”

  I explained what I meant by that, as we set out to walk off lunch and the remnants of that bout of the heebie-jeebies. The warm, tropical breeze embraced me. The ship at anchor barely moved in the quiet sea. Blue-green waters shimmered in the afternoon sunshine.

  Passengers appeared to be much more at ease than they had been earlier in the day after that announcement about a man overboard. A few hung near the rails watching the vessels patrolling the waters for a missing passenger. Most of the activity was in the family area where parents romped with their kids, splashing noisily in one of the pools, or whooped it up as they slid down a long, curvy water slide. Others lounged in deck chairs, soaking up the sun, reading, or eating and drinking. It would be much quieter when we reached the “adults-only” area of the ship near an elevator we'd take to our cabin.

  “Hard to believe anything has gone amiss—until you see that.” I pointed to a small craft that had joined the fleet of boats searching the sea around us. A couple of passengers looked up from deck chairs in which they had been reading. Their eyes followed as a cabin cruiser passed by slowly. This one searched at a greater distance from the ship than those that had circled us previously.

  “Yes. That mayday went out to all vessels in the area. Volunteers like that guy running his cabin cruiser probably came out here from Raiatea or Bora Bora on his own. I’m always amazed at how willing boaters are to help when someone’s in trouble. We see the same thing back in Orange County when there’s trouble offshore.”

  “I guess I should include that in my calculations of the rising scoundrel quotient in our lives. In my life, anyway, since you’re probably still way ahead of me when it comes to encounters with bad guys. You do have a way of noticing what's right around you as well as what's wrong, Jack.” Jack put an arm around my shoulders, pulling me a little closer.

  “Of course, I do. That’s how I picked you out of that crowd around a crime scene at Catmmando Mountain on Valentine’s Day.”

  “Lucky for me that you’re so perceptive given the evidence was stacking up against me.” I slipped my arm through Jack's as we walked along. “What do you think about Paolo as the ‘cool blond’ who left those hairs on the murdered man? I don’t believe it was an accident that he showed up for dessert. I’m sure he was checking up on us—and on Gerard.”

  “Bill handled that well—keeping the conversation focused on the incidents that Paolo knew about already, and then inviting him to leave before quizzing Gerard about those screams he heard. It would never have occurred to me that the blond was a man. The doc tells me the ones on our victim are phony blond, not natural. I’d never met a blond, blue-eyed Italian before Paolo, but I know they exist despite our stereotypes. Is that hair real or from a bottle of peroxide? I can't tell.”

  “Gerard seems convinced he’s the real deal on many levels. He sings his praises. I hope he’ll take our advice that he keep his suspicions to himself and not discuss the investigation with anyone. Maybe I should have emphasized that meant Paolo, too,” I offered.

  “Gerard seemed suitably impressed about the need to be discrete. Bill had already checked out key staff who have the run of the ship, like Paolo and Gerard. Paolo has an alibi. That doesn’t mean he couldn’t have had contact with the dead man earlier and left those hairs behind, even if he wasn’t the one who stabbed him. Kitchen staff on the early morning shift verified what Gerard told us. Paolo was down in the commissary working on that chocolate octopus you saw. This is off the subject, but that Olly-Olly character is everywhere on this ship. Does the maniacal smile on that thing’s face look familiar to you?” I gasped, realizing what he meant.

  “A self-portrait by Mad Max! The resemblance is undeniable. Max even arches one eyebrow before he flies into a rage. I dread watching him do that when we meet him in Tahiti. Is there any hope you can identify Passenger X before we catch up with Max even if you don’t know who killed Jake Nugent by then?”

  “There's nothing new about Passenger X, but they're not letting up on the search. I fingerprinted our dead man and faxed a set of his prints back to my office, along with copies of the identification he had on him. If he has a record and we can flush out known associates, that might help us figure out who killed him. Maybe the man overboard is among that group, and we'll get a photo that someone on board recognizes. That’s a long shot. There are a bunch of hoops to jump through to send the body back to the U.S. whether we've figured out who killed him or not. The FBI will do that when they take over the investigation. With a bit of luck, Max can unleash his Rumpelstiltskin tantrum routine on the FBI instead of us.”

  “What about finding the third man?”

  “The cruise ship doctor is no Medical Examiner, but she’s pretty sure the assailant
is left-handed. I’ve heard enough reports over the years to believe she's correct. I haven’t had a chance to check the video clip Bill sent me to see if the camera caught that.”

  I sucked in a gulp of air. “Paolo is left-handed, Jack! Maybe he sneaked out of the kitchen and up on deck without anyone in the commissary kitchen seeing him. What if he does peroxide his hair? Can’t you get him to give you a sample?” I felt excited at the prospect of having a real suspect

  “We could ask him to do that voluntarily, but at this point, there’s not enough evidence to demand it. All we know for sure is that Jake Nugent was a passenger who boarded the ship in Tahiti. The identification he had on him matches the information on the Passport found in his room. No one has found a link between him and the crew in the kitchen or elsewhere on the ship at this point.”

  “At least you can be confident you know who’s in the morgue. That’s something, anyway. One down, two to go. What about that swatch of material caught on the rail?”

  “It’s plastic.”

  “Like a tarp or more like a plastic bag?” I asked.

  “Plastic like you’d find in a shopping bag. There’s no logo on it so who knows if it’s from a shop on board or one visited on shore? Bill has pulled Nugent’s shipboard records to see where he’s made purchases on board. If we’re lucky, that fragment of plastic is from something he bought, and one of the staff in those shops might remember him. More important than that is the possibility that he had a pal or two with him when he made that purchase. It’s also possible it has nothing to do with this case. Maybe it wasn’t even left there by one of our trio of thieves—if that’s what they are.” Jack shrugged.

  “What do you mean, ‘if’ that’s what they are? Are you changing your mind about the motive behind the murder?”

  “We’re still operating under the assumption that the killing resulted from a disagreement among thieves. My main aim right now is to preserve evidence until the FBI shows up or we settle on some other chain of custody. That includes the necklace, which, as you suggested, is no prize—it’s a cheap piece of costume jewelry. That’s one reason I added that ‘if’ to my statement about these culprits. It doesn’t make sense.”