by Elaine Viets
“Interesting name,” Helen said. “Is the owner British royalty?”
“No, an American with a sense of humor,” Josiah said. “Before I tell you the family’s name, I need you to promise that you’ll keep it confidential, even if you don’t take my case.”
“You have our word,” Phil said. “Unless you’re doing something illegal that we’re required to report.”
“I’m not,” the captain said. “I’m trying to catch someone breaking the law. That’s why I need detectives. This is my first job as captain and I don’t want to lose it. I like the owner and the ship. Word can’t get around that there’s trouble aboard the Belted Earl.”
“We understand,” Helen said, wondering who owned the yacht: a movie star? A superathlete? A rocker or rapper? Maybe an A-list comedian?
“The yacht is owned by a man from Chicago,” Josiah said. “Earl Grantham Briggs.”
“I never heard of him,” Helen said. She tried not to sound disappointed.
“Most people haven’t,” the captain said, “and Earl likes it that way. Mr. Briggs is well-off and he knows money attracts trouble.”
“Where did his money come from?” Phil asked.
“Something smart and simple,” Josiah said. “He invented a heavy-duty belt for a lawn mower. Every time a riding mower needs a new one, Earl gets a chunk of change. He enjoys his yacht and makes sure it has the best of everything. He spent more than a million dollars upgrading the sound system.”
“That’s astonishing,” Helen said.
“Not in his world,” the captain said. “Earl has money, but he’s a quiet guy. He’s sixty-two and married to Beth, a former fashion model. She’s younger than Earl and very attractive. They have no kids, unless you count Mitzi, Beth’s miniature white poodle. Beth treats that dog like a child—even pushes it around in a stroller.”
Helen had seen women wheeling their dogs around the Fort Lauderdale malls. She felt sorry for them, but this was no time to discuss canine child substitutes.
“Earl and Beth enjoy entertaining,” the captain said. “They live in a perpetual party, and some of their friends are, uh, well, flamboyant. The Briggses entertain at their co-op on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago and their villa in Tuscany. Their yacht is a floating mansion with marble floors, art glass and custom-built oak cabinets.”
“They live well,” Helen said.
“Comfortable, for their society. The ship is relatively small by yachting standards. It’s not some five-hundred-foot tub that can’t turn around in the Lauderdale yacht basin. It has two fourteen-foot tenders, a Yamaha cruiser, WaveRunners and the usual toys. But it doesn’t have a submarine or a helicopter.”
Poor Beth and Earl, Helen thought. Phil caught her eye and she swallowed her snarky comment.
“We cruise mostly to the Bahamas and other Caribbean islands,” Josiah said. “Earl and his friends like to gamble, especially at Atlantis. The wife, not so much. She and some of the lady guests power-shop instead.
“The ship usually has a crew of ten. We lost one crew member on the last trip. Our new stewardess took off with a dude she met at Atlantis. Earl didn’t want me to call a Lauderdale crew agency and have one flown to the Bahamas. He said it was only a thirteen-hour trip back. The other two stewardesses could pick up the slack and I could hire someone when we reached port.”
“I wasn’t happy about sailing shorthanded, but he’s the owner. When we left the Bahamas, I was worried about the wind. It wasn’t dangerous, but it would make the trip uncomfortable. Earl didn’t want to wait for it to die down. He wants to go when he wants to go. So we left.
“Before we passed Chub Cay in the Berry Islands, I did a walk-around to make sure everything was secure. I left the first mate on the bridge watching out for other boats. I went past the bosun’s locker and heard something sliding around inside. That’s where we store the cleaning equipment, the shammies and deck cleaners, along with the rope, fenders and hooks. I opened the locker and saw a gray tackle box behind some rope, sliding around the deck. It hadn’t been stowed properly. The box was plastic and didn’t look like one of ours. I popped it open.”
The captain shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “At first, I couldn’t believe it. The tackle box was filled with emeralds.”
“Real ones?” Phil said.
“Real good ones. The bigger ones, about the size of postage stamps, were stored in the tray. The smaller ones were tossed in the lower compartment. About two hands full.”
“Rough stones or cut?” Phil asked.
“Cut,” Josiah said.
“Somebody knows what they’re doing,” Phil said. “Emeralds can have major flaws that only show up during cutting. Get one of those and a gemstone goes from priceless to worthless.”
“I’m no expert,” Josiah said, “but these looked like the fine emeralds I’ve seen displayed in the jewelry shops at Atlantis. The colors ranged from blue-green to deep green.”
“Any other gemstones in the box?” Phil asked.
“Just emeralds,” Josiah said.
“How do you know a yacht guest didn’t stash the box in the bosun’s locker?” Phil asked.
“If any guests were in that area, we’d know it,” the captain said. “We keep track of them and the staff stays in touch by radio. A crew member would have reported it, asked if the guest needed help and steered the person back to the salon or stateroom or other guest area. Besides, the crew carried on the guests’ luggage and nobody had a cheap one-tray tackle box. Our guests have expensive luggage.”
“So who uses the bosun’s locker?” Phil asked.
“The whole crew has access to it, but mainly the guys use it. Yacht work is divided into old-school his-and-her duties. Men do the outside work, including washing the boat every day. The engineer changes the zillion filters and handles the air-conditioning and other mechanical problems. Women do the serving and cleaning. They’re called stewardesses. We do have a woman chef.
“I should have confiscated the emeralds, but I wanted to catch the smuggler and get rid of him. We had a rough crossing over the Gulf Stream. The guests and owners were seasick and stayed in their staterooms. Most of the crew was seasick, too, but the two stewardesses had to work anyway, cleaning up after the guests and serving them soup and ginger ale.
“The next time I checked the locker, the emeralds were gone. I did a quiet search of the crew cabins and found nothing. The smuggler has to be a crew member. The guests and owners were too seasick to remove that box. Only the crew was moving around during the time it disappeared.”
“Who do you suspect?” Phil asked.
“Three people,” the captain said. “The chef, the chief stewardess or the first engineer.”
“How long have you known them?”
“I took command of the ship in February,” Josiah said. “The other crew was already in place. They’ve been with the yacht for at least three years. That’s a long time in this business. They were hired through reliable crew agencies. The crew work hard and don’t cause trouble.”
“How old are they?” Phil asked.
“The first engineer is thirty. The chef is twenty-eight and the chief stewardess is twenty-nine.”
“Any money problems?” Helen asked. “Major changes in their lives? Late twenties is when people may decide to settle down.”
“Not that I know,” the captain said. “We’re paid well for our work. No one’s been talking about getting married or wanting to quit.”
“What about drugs or gambling?” Phil asked.
“I don’t allow drugs on board,” the captain said. “That’s a firing offense and they know it. Even the owners’ friends aren’t users. Nobody has any gambling debts that I know about. But I don’t go drinking with the crew.”
“Where do you think the smuggler sells the emeralds?” Helen asked.
“Miami or New York,” he said. “I’ve been on guard for drugs. I never expected emeralds. I shouldn’t be surprised. The Bahamas are a smugglers’ p
aradise.”
“Where are the emeralds coming from?” Phil asked. “Colombia?”
“That would make the most sense. I want this person found fast. If the yacht’s boarded by the Coast Guard or searched by the island authorities, it could be impounded.”
“Why would you be searched or boarded?” Phil asked.
“Lots of reasons. Somebody has a bite against the smuggler. Somebody wants a bigger cut. Anything happens and I lose my license and my reputation.”
“But you didn’t do anything,” Helen said.
“Makes no difference,” Josiah said. “I’m in charge. It’s my ship and my responsibility. I want to hire you, Helen, to be the new stewardess. Have you had any experience working in a hotel or as a housekeeper?”
“I was a hotel maid at a tourist hotel here,” Helen said. “I cleaned twenty-eight rooms, seventeen toilets and the honeymoon Jacuzzi each day.”
“Good,” he said. “You have a passport, right?”
“Just got it,” Helen said. She didn’t add that she had a passport, a credit card and a driver’s license since she’d cleared up her troubles with the court. Helen had some things in her past that had to stay buried.
“The owner wants to cruise to Atlantis again,” Josiah said. “We’ll have the same crew. When you work with them, you’ll hear things that I never will.”
“When do you sail?” Helen asked.
“In two days,” the captain said.
“Good,” Helen said. “I’ll be ready by then.”
I’ll spend the next two days trapped in a sad domestic drama, she thought. Then I can pursue a smuggler on a luxury yacht.
Helen could almost taste the sea air—and the adventure.
CHAPTER 6
Stranahan Medical Center was built in the 1950s as a small community hospital. When air-conditioning made the brutal Sun Belt summers endurable, the hospital spread like the tumors it claimed to cure. Stranahan’s main hospital, in downtown Lauderdale, now sprawls over six city blocks and sends its tentacles into the surrounding neighborhoods, turning pleasant family bungalows into cramped Stranahan doctors’ offices. Four more Stranahan hospitals have spread to the city’s richer suburbs.
The medical center is named after Fort Lauderdale settler Frank Stranahan. Its billboards proclaim STRANAHAN—PIONEERING MEDICINE! and feature white-coated, white-skinned male doctors.
The medical center never mentions that Frank Stranahan committed suicide during the Depression, after he lost his money when a real estate deal went sour.
Helen thought poor Frank’s death foretold Fort Lauderdale’s future. Residents continue to try to survive the city’s real estate boom and bust cycles.
Helen parked her white PT Cruiser in the hospital garage, adjusted her prim gray suit and checked that her silver First Communion cross was visible at her neck. Then she picked up her mother’s well-worn Bible and her black video-camera purse and clip-clopped across the pedestrian bridge into the hospital in her sensible heels.
Helen was greeted by a blast of cold air, a medicinal odor and a bored security guard.
“I’m a minister,” she said. “I was told that Mr. Arthur Zerling is gravely ill in the ICU.” On the drive to the hospital, she had carefully chosen her words so she told only the truth. Helen couldn’t bring herself to say that Arthur was in her congregation.
The guard yawned, snapped Helen’s photo and issued an ID badge for Rev. Helen Hawthorne.
“The ICU is on the second floor,” the guard said. “Take the elevator and follow the signs.”
Helen was packed into the elevator with a harried mother and her crying baby, two skinny teenage boys who kept elbowing each other, a staffer in scrubs balancing a container of soup and a large soda, and a worried older woman carrying an African violet. Helen was grateful she had to endure the scents of soup, unchanged diaper, teenage feet and cloying perfume for only one floor.
She dashed out of the elevator and into the ICU. A short, sturdy nurse barred her way. Once again Helen recited, “I’m a minister. I understand that Mr. Arthur Zerling is gravely ill.”
“His wife is with him in Room Two,” the nurse said. “I’ll ask her if you can see him.”
The nurse bustled off on her mission, leaving Helen to get her first look at the couple together. She switched on the video camera in the shoulder strap of her purse and pointed it toward the ICU room. The light was so low, she guessed the Zerlings would be recorded in black and white instead of color.
Helen was shocked by the dramatic change in Arthur Zerling. The vital, vigorous old man photographed on horseback was gone. Arthur had shrunk to a skin-covered skeleton with limp rags of white hair plastered to his skull. Tubes and wires snaked out of his wizened body. A pole hung with six IV bags stood by his bedside like a tree bearing exotic fruit.
Blossom Zerling was reading a Vogue magazine beside her dying husband. She held the magazine on her lap. She’d slipped one arm through the tangle of plastic tubing to hold Arthur’s clawlike hand.
If she was playing a dutiful wife, Helen gave her points for that tender gesture.
When the nurse hurried into the room, Blossom let go of her husband’s hand, gave it a soft pat and greeted the nurse with the smile of someone who expected to be liked. She stood up, towering over the nurse by some six inches. Her crisp white blouse and Escada jeans were well tailored but not tight. Blossom wore her long, glossy brown hair brushed back from her face. Pink lipstick seemed to be her only makeup. She looked like the girl next door—if she lived in an eight-bedroom home.
Prickly, plain Violet was up against a formidable adversary, Helen thought, if Blossom was faking concern for Arthur Zerling.
Blossom tucked the magazine into her pricey Birkin bag and walked briskly out to Helen. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. Her words were softly pleasant and carefully enunciated. “Nurse Abbott says you’re Reverend Hawthorne.”
“You can call me Helen.”
“I’m Blossom Zerling. I know we’ve just met, but could I ask you a favor? Would you sit with Arthur for a little while, please? I live nearby on Hendin Island. I’ve been here at the hospital since six o’clock this morning.”
Eleven hours in that room, Helen thought, then felt a flash of panic. “What if your husband takes a sudden turn for the worse while you’re gone?”
Blossom looked toward her husband’s still form. Helen thought Arthur looked like one of those creepy wax saints in glass cases in old churches.
“The doctor said he could be that way for another day, or a week, or even months,” Blossom said. “His daughter—do you know Violet?”
“Yes,” Helen said. “I’ve met her.”
Blossom sighed. “May I speak to you in confidence, as a minister?”
Something stirred uneasily in Helen. This wasn’t right. She was hired to prove that Blossom was a killer and now the woman wanted spiritual counseling. She nodded yes, unable to say the treacherous word.
“Let’s sit in Arthur’s room a minute,” Blossom said.
Helen took the big turquoise visitor’s chair and put her purse on the windowsill, where the video camera had a clear view of Arthur. Blossom sat on the edge of a small, spindly chair out of camera range. The microphone would still pick up her voice. The blinds were drawn, but Helen could make out Blossom’s earnest face.
“I know I can’t be a stepmother to Violet,” she said. “I wouldn’t even try. It would be an insult to her own mother. Besides, I’m young enough to be her daughter. I try to get along with her, but she’s been hostile from the day Arthur announced we were getting married. I’ve tried to understand. I invited her to dinner when we came back from our honeymoon. Violet acted like a spoiled child. She accused me of marrying her father for his money.
“It’s true I knew Arthur had money,” Blossom said. “It’s no secret that I met him while I was working on a cruise ship. All the passengers were comfortably off. There is an age difference, but I never think of Arthur as old.
As least, I didn’t until he had his heart attack. He is—was—such an active man. He loves life. He loves me. He loves Violet, though she’s …”
Blossom toyed with the zipper on her Birkin bag. “She’s difficult. And furious at her father for marrying me. Arthur and Violet had a terrible fight during our homecoming dinner, and she left before dessert. They made up later, but she’s never pretended to like me.
“When Arthur had his heart attack, Violet wanted to take over his care. She marched in here and accused me of killing her father. Right in the ICU. She screamed so loud, the nurses had to ask her to leave. As security escorted her out, Violet shouted that she would get a lawyer and take me to court. There was no reasoning with her. Well, she filed a petition for guardianship, but it was denied. The doctors said I’ve done everything to ensure he has the best possible care.
“Look at my husband,” Blossom said. Her voice trembled as if she was on the verge of tears.
Helen could see Arthur was a sad ruin. His ravaged frame made a pathetic mound in the hospital bed. His thin arms were bruised from needle sticks and his hands were crisscrossed with tape for the IV lines.
“You knew my husband when he was healthy,” Blossom said.
Again, Helen’s lie made her feel uneasy. She’d never seen Arthur Zerling except in a photograph.
“Arthur has lived life to the fullest,” Blossom said. “He wouldn’t want to be a mindless thing kept alive by machines. He told me. I don’t want that for him, either. Violet loves her father, but she needs to let go and accept that there is no hope.”
“You’re right,” Helen said. “Violet does love her father. She wants to say good-bye to him. Please let her.”
For a moment, Helen thought she saw something hard and feral flicker in Blossom’s eyes. Then it was gone, if it was even there.
“I can’t,” Blossom said. “Violet made such a scene last time, it upset her father. Arthur became restless and thrashed around. He can’t communicate, but she disturbed him. You could feel her hatred for me when Violet walked into this room. It was like another person … like a demon. That sounds fanciful, I know, but it took two nurses to calm Arthur, and the doctor had to order a shot so he could rest. Ask Nurse Abbott.”