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

by Anna Celeste Burke

  “We won’t let her get away. What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to try to play mental telepathy with my husband of a week or so and see if we can’t stop this before that tender reaches the shore.” I’d try to use a little more than thoughts to get my message across. I composed a short message and texted Jack. That whooshing sound made my heart sing.

  I kept that message open on my phone again just in case he didn’t get it or read it. Plan B was to sit next to him and pretend to show the proud papa baby pictures of his happy cats.

  MAGGIE’S BAD NEWS. MAYBE ARMED. BILL TATE HOSTAGE ON TENDER NEARING SHORE. JEWELS IN PIG. IDEAS?

  “Hi, I’m back!” I said in a cheery voice. “Please go on with your conversation. I’ll just listen in until I catch up.” Maggie smiled, but by the wariness in her eyes, I’d say her antennae were up. I smiled back at her and walked to my seat, trying my best to do as I told Adam I intended to do—read my husband’s mind. His phone was out on the conference table, face down. Had he received that message and read it? There was no way to know for sure by his expression or demeanor.

  “Baby pictures,” I said as I sat down, handing my phone to Jack. He said nothing but smiled as though happy with what he was seeing. I breathed a bit easier, knowing that if he hadn’t already done so, Jack was working on the problem now. That’s when Max threw a monkey wrench into the entire process.

  “Baby pictures?” he asked, just as Maggie seemed like she was about to start speaking again. “We’ve been looking at horrid pictures. Show us something pleasant, Georgie.”

  “Yes, why not? Let’s take a moment to stretch. You all have been going at this for nearly an hour,” Maggie said. Agent Jennings and his partner from the FBI looked askance. Jack stood and stretched, then took my phone straight to them, and shared that photo. An almost imperceptible jolt ran through them.

  “What a cute child,” Jennings commented. Monkey wrench number two flew from Max.

  “Child? What are you saying? I thought you were talking about the cats. Let me see that!” He reached for that phone, and almost had it in his grasp when Jack let it fall.

  “Oops,” he said.

  I glanced out of the corner of my eye, trying to discern Maggie’s next move. She bent down as if to scratch her leg. I saw her palm something and caught a flash of metal as she stood.

  “Max,” she said. As he moved toward her, I panicked. The chairs around that table were on wheels. Before Max could make a move, I shoved the chair next to the one in which I was sitting, hard, using both feet. That sent it careening into the one next to her. That one slammed into her, and her body bent sideways. I hoped she would fall, but no luck.

  As Maggie regained her footing, she turned toward me with the most vengeful look on her face I had ever seen. Wielding a small knife above her head, she lunged in my direction.

  Max was the closest person to her. His fists balled up and his face turned the scary purplish color that signaled he was in full-blown tantrum mode. His eyes bulged, and spit flew as he screeched.

  “How dare you!” Hurling himself after her, he launched himself like a rodeo cowboy onto the back of a bronco. She shrieked and bucked him off. As he fell, he grabbed her by the hair and yanked her backward. All the other men in the room flew into action as Maggie stumbled again but still did not fall. Captain Andrews shouted above the noise.

  “Stop right where you are, or I will shoot you.” Maggie instantly transformed from raging Valkyrie into a simpering Gollum.

  “Please, please, don’t shoot,” she pleaded as the scalpel in her hand dropped to the floor. Her head down and hands up, tears flowed. Adam Drake came bounding into the room.

  “I know you said to wait, but I heard shouting.”

  “It’s okay, Adam. Maggie’s disarmed.” I said. “Who brings a knife to a gunfight?” I asked as I stared at the guns in the room pointed at Maggie. Jennings and his partner were armed, as was Captain Andrews and his second mate.

  “Someone with a ‘psycho’ logical problem,” Jack retorted. “Do we have anyone who can meet and greet a party heading by tender to Bora Bora? Georgie tells me Bill Tate’s on board, possibly in a compromised situation.” All eyes turned to me as Jack shared that information.

  “I know this is hard to believe, but Paolo Vannelli and a coworker, Martin Santo, have absconded with a pig full of stolen jewels. Martin Santo happens to be a she and not a he, by the way. He’s on board as a crew member. She’s on board as a passenger—Tina Marston. They’re on the ship’s tender not far from shore. There are other crew members on that launch. I don’t know how many or if they’re in on the scheme.”

  “We’ve got this,” Jennings replied, putting his gun away and pulling out a satellite phone. His partner put Maggie in a chair and cuffed her to it. Jack and I spent a few more minutes explaining what we understood so far about the bizarre situations we had encountered on this ship.

  It became apparent to me as we spoke that there were still plenty of blanks to be filled in by talking to Paolo, Tina, and Maggie. I would have nominated Paolo as “culprit most likely to sing like a canary,” beaming that Pavarotti smile as he spilled the beans. After seeing Maggie decompensate into a simpering heap before us, she now went to the head of the line. A lot depended on who could pin the murders on whom. As far as Max was concerned, the blanks that bothered me were minor details. Footnotes to a story already written.

  “Well done, Georgie. Excellent work, Jack. I knew you two would have this dustup settled in no time.” He beamed at the two of us. “Of course, you did have a little help from me this time, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, you’re a man of action,” Jack responded.

  “A demon on wheels,” I added. Mad Max was on the move again, before I got those words out.

  “How soon can we get that tender back here? How many others do you have available, Captain? What sort of timetable are we on at this point? Let’s order lunch.”

  “We’ll be back,” I hollered to a room that was buzzing with sound and motion. “Let’s go check on the kids,” I said. “No one’s going to miss us for a while.”

  “Too many cooks, crooks, and cops!” Jack took my arm as we slipped out the door. “Now tell me about this business with the pig.”

  “An interesting new wrinkle in our adventure, isn’t it?

  19 Maui Bound

  On the plane to Maui with the cats asleep at our feet, everything was quiet. After the frenetic activity of the past couple of days, it felt almost as if we were motionless, suspended in time and space among the clouds. Once the FBI had freed Bill and taken Paolo and Tina into custody, the rest of the day was spent wrapping up loose ends. Mostly, that effort fell to Jack.

  The shock of what had gone on in that meeting room finally reached Max and he straightened up his act, relinquishing his effort to hijack control of the ship and its itinerary. When Max gets down off his high horse, he can be quite resourceful. Gerard was well enough to oversee preparation for the luau, but he had lost a Sous Chef and a kitchen assistant, along with his pig.

  Max found another pig and had it delivered to the ship. He also found Gerard another helper in the kitchen—me. So, on my honeymoon cruise, anchored offshore Bora Bora, arguably one of the most romantic destinations on the planet, I suited up in kitchen whites. Max promised to make it up to Jack and me, by suggesting we stay a few extra days at the bungalow he had reserved for us in Maui. To be honest, I felt comforted by carrying out old, familiar cooking tasks, but took Max up on the offer anyway. That turned out to be a very good idea. By the end of the day, I was even sorer than I had been after my tango with Perroquet. Max owed me those extra days.

  My discomfort was worth it. The luau was delightful. Spirits were high as Bora Bora came to us. A swarm of canoes surrounded the ship. Singers and dancers in traditional dress boarded the ship. They were loaded down with flower leis and gifts from the islands. The spirit of Polynesian hospitality on their lips and in their smiles, they sang thei
r goodbyes hours later as their canoes returned to shore set against a blazing sunset.

  This morning Jack and I lounged as long as we dared before packing. Then it was a scramble to disembark and catch our flight for Maui. We had exchanged a few updates, but had not spent much time processing the misery that had occurred on board. All that had gone on in the last couple of days seemed inconceivable as I considered it again in the womblike calm of the seats Max had arranged for us in First Class.

  The calm after the storm, I ruminated. A storm at sea, courtesy of lost souls, bent on destroying each other—over a bauble. I drifted back to that moment when Jack had spoken with such wisdom about my lost pendant: “It’s only a thing.” So true. Then again, it is, and it isn't. The shiny things we love so often become symbols of the more intangible objects of our desire—love, safety, security, esteem, and escape from the drudgery and uncertainty of everyday life. How many lose their lives, I wonder, searching for the intangible in the tangible? I reached out and covered Jack's hand, lying on the armrest between us.

  “Why do you suppose Maggie didn’t just flee from that meeting?” I asked.

  “Where could she go once the jig was up? She was well past thinking clearly about anything by that point. The discovery of Abby's body and the imminent arrival of the FBI left her with less room to maneuver or escape. Getting the jewels off the ship along with the evidence she had helped gather and stored with such care might have gone a long way toward covering her tracks if the plan had succeeded. Too bad for her that you spotted that pig."

  "Those last two days had to have been spent in a state of desperation. Maggie never showed a bit of that until the very end with that ridiculous effort to attack Max and me."

  "Her whacked out ‘psycho’ logic drove her to take one last crack at leaving more suffering in her wake. Why not make Max or you pay the price even though she’d painted herself into that corner? You can't rely on reason to understand irrational behavior, Georgie. Don't get me wrong. Anyone can stumble across the line into crime through ignorance, by giving into a moment of passion or weakness, or by being misled—like Justin. Willful, deliberate planning to live on the other side of that line is another matter. I see it all the time but don't even try to understand it anymore. My job is to stop it if I can.”

  “I hear you, Jack. Maggie would have been left to her own devices even if Paolo and Tina had made it to Bora Bora since they had no intention of keeping their rendezvous with her.”

  “What can you expect from partners committed to a dishonest enterprise? Especially when one of those partners is as disturbed as Tina Marston."

  "Martina Vannelli, you mean. I almost feel sorry for Paolo. If what he says is true, he's been bailing her out, literally and figuratively, since their parents died and left them to fend for themselves as teenagers."

  "With someone like Paolo, it's hard to know how much of what he says is self-serving or playing for sympathy," Jack cautioned. "He didn't fabricate Tina's police record. She's a compulsive liar with no military service to her credit. ‘Monster Marston’ was a variation on a name she got working out in the gym hoping she could get a job as a performer with one of the Cirque du Soleil type troupes in Vegas. A charming, scary psychopath, ‘Monster Martina’ as they called her there was a monster all right. No amount of effort on Paolo's part could change that. He would have been better off to let the justice system deal with her, I'm afraid, and move on to make a life for himself. He's a talented guy."

  "True, attractive and likable too, when he isn't overreaching," I said. "That's what Gerard saw in Paolo, I'm sure, and why he was such an advocate for him. Maggie, too, since she and Paolo were a couple during his stint as a pastry chef in Vegas. I suppose, since they kept in touch and he talked her into taking the job with the cruise line, their partnership might still have been about more than business. Well-educated and reasonably good at her job, it's a shame that wasn't enough for her," I said.

  "It was way too late to go back to that life once she lost control over the monster on her team,” Jack said shaking his head. “I haven’t heard the whole story yet, but Dr. Maggie Hayward wasn’t squeaky clean when she and Paolo were in Vegas. Physicians are hesitant to turn on their colleagues, so unless she opens up about her past, or Tina decides it’s to her advantage to blacken the name of her associates, we might never get a complete picture of what makes Maggie tick.”

  “Clearly that scalpel Maggie brought with her wasn’t the murder weapon,” I offered.

  “No. I figure that must be long gone—probably overboard as you suggested.”

  “It sounds like Jake and Abby figured out they were in with a bunch of loose cannons the moment Tina went off-plan and snatched that necklace the first night out. Maggie had gone to all that trouble to have a copy made from photos she took when Marsha Stevens wore it on a previous cruise. Too bad it was such a cheap knockoff," I said.

  “Jake was better as a fence than he was as a procurer of that fake. Maggie's ambition is partly to blame. Stealing that necklace was a move up for all of them since it was much more than their usual take on a cruise. Still, if they’d kept to the plan, it wouldn’t have had to pass for the real deal for long. Maggie would have made the substitution on the last night of the cruise while Paolo kept Marsha entertained. He would have used drugs like those he gave Gerard on Marsha to ensure she was in no shape to notice the switch until the next day when he and the rest of his thieving pals would have already slipped off the ship.”

  “I'm not sure their plan would have worked, Jack, even if Tina hadn't gone on that rampage. Hetty Green seems convinced that Marsha's no pushover for men like Paolo. If Abby and Jake hadn't complained to Maggie about Tina, they might both be alive."

  “Maybe, but there was no love lost between any of the members of this pack of wild dogs as Maggie referred to them. Abby had snubbed Jake’s advances, repeatedly, so why not help Tina feed her to the fishes? It didn’t hurt that one less person meant more to go around for the rest of them.”

  “Yeah, I know, ‘one less mouth to feed.’ What goes around comes around, though, doesn't it, Detective?”

  “He got his, didn’t he?”

  “Fast, too. Before Jake could get a moment’s satisfaction from sending Abby to her watery grave,” I said sadly, trying to understand how one human could do such a thing to another. “That didn’t quite work out, either, since Abby didn't remain in that grave. The recovery of her body revealed a lot about their modus operandi as you coppers say.”

  “That’s the story behind the story with this gang of thieves. Clever planning that doesn’t quite work out because they don't stick with the plan."

  "It was a stroke of genius for Abby and Tina to come on board in dual roles—as passengers and crew members. Thanks to Abby's skills as a makeup artist, they were able to pass as men. That gave them much better cover than they would have had as two young, attractive women on the crew. Maggie was something of a mastermind," I said, hating to give her even that much credit.

  “Paolo helped, too, with glowing recommendations that got Abby and his sister, Tina, hired a couple of years ago, although he and his sister were both using aliases. With Paolo and Maggie among the professional staff and two team members bunking together in the crew quarters, they had access to the ship covered.”

  "Not to mention, that as passengers, Abby and Tina could mingle, figure out who on board had jewelry worth stealing, and pick it off in the spa or elsewhere. Most of the time, they could do that without even being noticed using Tina's well-honed pick-pocketing skills. Still, they screwed it up—horrifically,” I said.

  “Yep, with stupid tussles in the commissary kitchen over some piece of jewelry Tina was convinced Abby had hidden there or in her cabin. The mess they made drew unwanted attention from Gerard. That only got worse when Tina threatened him with that ridiculous duck stunt.”

  "Sending Justin after us was another huge overreaction by Tina, too. It’s amazing how helpful their patsy turned out to be
as naïve and silly as he was.”

  “Justin's not going to get off completely, Georgie, but he’ll be in much less trouble than he would have been because of his willingness to cooperate with the FBI.”

  “Willingness to cooperate!” I exclaimed. “He thinks he’s a big shot! He acts like being used as a sucker was the best thing that ever happened to him.”

  “Whatever he thinks, the best thing that ever happened to Justin was ending up in the brig so soon after his rampage as Perroquet. That kept Tina from getting to him,” Jack said making a slashing gesture at his throat.

  “Oh, Jack. Stop it. It is some consolation that Justin survived. At least the victims of Tina’s murderous rages were her scuzzy companions and not unsuspecting passengers like the targets of their thievery.”

  “Tina is the weak link in this chain of loosely connected ne'er-do-wells who first met a few years back in Vegas. I don’t have the whole story about what went wrong. Tina went too far during some scam they had going and beat the ‘mark,’ as con artists like to call their victims, so badly he ended up in the hospital. Maggie’s the one who suggested they leave the country, visit long lost relatives in Italy, and evade the legal trouble Tina faced. That could have been self-serving if Maggie was already mixed up in their schemes.”

  "Trashing Abby’s cabin was insanely stupid!" I said. "Tina left her blood at the scene.”

  “Maggie made good use of that situation. She made sure we found that shoe that eventually could have put Tina at the murder scene,” Jack said. “That’s the one piece of evidence Maggie kept. We found it in her luggage. She must not have had complete confidence that Paolo and Tina would do the right thing when they got to Bora Bora with that pig. Her ace in the hole when it came time to face justice, so she wouldn’t get nailed for murder."