Then he sat down and outlined the attack on the Crosswayses last night and the conclusions he and Carolyn had come to. Of course, Vera objected. She said they were just trying to make the workers look bad and break the strike.
Owen, who’s one of the few men I’d seen on the cruise who refused to take any crap at all from Vera, gave her a nasty look and retorted, “You just keep believing that, Granny, but the truth is that the stewards are being used as cover for a hijacking. Herkule told Carolyn that Hartwig had encouraged the walkout. Try to explain that one. So anyway, we’re taking back the ship, probably tonight. Where’s Beau, anyway?”
When we said he’d gone to minister to Carolyn, Owen said, “Good. She was sleeping when I left, but I could see a red patch spreading out from under a Band-Aid on one of her hands. Shouldn’t have let her haul on the rope last night. I forgot all about the cuts. So, do I have any volunteers for the counterconspiracy?”
I said, “I’m in.”
Vera glared, not yet convinced, but Barney said, “What you’re talking about is mutiny.” When Owen started to protest, Barney overrode him. “I’m talking about the people carrying around the guns. If they’re not staging a mutiny, where’s the captain? No one’s seen him or any of the other security men except Hartwig since the night the pills were distributed.”
“So you’re in?” Owen asked.
“I’m in. You’ll need someone to take over the engine room and bridge if they’ve killed that Italian fella or any of the other officers. I should be able to handle a barge like this, even if I did finish my Navy years as a submariner.” He turned to Vera and murmured, “Sorry about that, Vera, but each of us has to do what seems right. If this is what Owen and your daughter-in-law think it is, the crewmembers that went on strike will need all the help they can get, and you’re the woman who can provide it. I don’t even think that we’re at cross-purposes.”
“We’ll see,” she replied.
“Well, I need to catch Beau,” said Owen, stuffing the wig into the boutique bag with the glasses. I didn’t think that was going to do much for the wig, but what did I know? “I’ll keep you up to date,” he added and left.
Jason
I awoke in the morning after a few more hours of sleep feeling no more reassured than I’d been when I first went to bed. Most of my ire was directed at the cruise line. Obviously, they were hiding something, but I decided that I should at least check in with the port authority before I called Florida again. And what was the State Department doing? Shuffling paper, I assumed. I ate breakfast in the hotel dining room, which had a palm tree growing through the roof and odd fruits on the menu. Then I stopped by the reception desk to ask that any calls coming in for me be noted and the callers asked to leave messages if I was not available.
Having accomplished those tasks, I walked to the pier and confronted the officer I’d talked to the day before. “Is very strange,” the officer said without even greeting me. “We radio your wife ship every two hours all night and get no answer. No reports of sightings. Like it disappear. I have radio to fishing boats and other ships that leave this morning to look. Nothing so far. Legionnaires’ disease so bad everyone die maybe. Like plague ships in Middle Ages when our islands first visit by people from Spain and Portugal, no? Very strange.”
Plague ships? I thought. God, but that isn’t what I wanted to hear. I lifted my spyglass and scanned the harbor, hoping against hope that I’d see a cruise ship on the horizon. Instead, I saw a gray vessel in another part of the harbor. “What’s that ship?” I asked. “The gray one.”
“Oh, American Navy ship in for repair,” the officer replied.
“Really?” Was help at hand?
Carolyn
I didn’t wake up until someone knocked at the door. Owen was gone, and I felt panicky. Hartwig had come to throw me overboard. He probably had his own master room card, and this room had a balcony and nowhere to hide.
“Carolyn,” a voice whispered at the door. I crept over and peeked through the peephole, then breathed a sigh of relief. It was Beau, to whom I opened the door, dragging him in hurriedly. Without even letting me get into my spa robe, he began ripping the Band-Aids off my hands and wrists. The text on the packages had lied. It hurt.
“I don’t suppose you brought any breakfast,” I said hopefully. “Donuts would be nice.” It was just possible that he had something to eat in the medical bag, a snack to tide him through a day of seeing blue-haired lady passengers with minor complaints, but who liked the looks of the handsome doctor.
“No,” he replied. “There’s a little infection here.” He rubbed some cream from the bag onto my hand while I peered inside in search of donuts. I didn’t see anything to eat. “Any other cuts?” he asked. I sighed. There was the one above my knee. How embarrassing to have to pull up my nightgown. Even if he was a doctor, he was also Luz’s lover. Reluctantly I exposed the cut made by the falling knife. “You may have a scar from that one,” he said after he’d torn off the bandage. He wasn’t all that gentle in my opinion, but then he was a pathologist. He didn’t have to be gentle with dead people.
At that moment, Owen used his card to open the door and catch me with my nightgown hiked up to my thigh. “Ah ha!” he said. “A spot of hanky panky going on?” I pulled the gown hastily over my knees.
“Well, now we’ve got a problem,” Beau drawled. “I can’t conduct an examination with a smart-mouthed Welshman in the room an’ an overly modest patient, so you head for the bathroom an’ close the door, Owen.”
“I always did say Americans were a bunch of bloody puritans,” Owen grumbled, but he retired to the bathroom, while Beau put more antibiotic cream on my cuts, more Band-Aids on my skin—his didn’t even promise painless removal—and produced a supply of antibiotic pills from which I was to take one every six hours, as a precaution, and because one cut on my hand might be infected already. Just what I needed, gangrene.
Then I put on my robe, Owen exited the bathroom, and we held a countermutiny planning session. According to Owen, Luz and Barney had volunteered. Vera hadn’t, which didn’t surprise me. I didn’t care as long as she kept our plans secret from the enemy, and I trusted her enough for that. Owen then asked Beau if he could provide something that would put the whole crew to sleep, something that could be mixed into their dinner tonight.
“The whole crew?” Beau looked taken aback. “That’s a whole lot of people.”
“Right. Can you do it?”
“How are you goin’ to get it in their food?”
“Carolyn will cajole the chef, won’t you, love?”
“Not if you keep calling me love,” I snapped.
“Puritan,” he retorted, grinning. “So can you, Beau?”
Beau mulled it over. “It’s against my Hippocratic oath,” he muttered. “Do no harm—you’all ever heard of that?”
Owen assured him that no one would know he’d been responsible for the abrupt collapse of a whole crew.
“Well, in that case, I reckon I could come up with something, but it would be green, an’ it can’t be cooked. Cookin’ would ruin the effect.”
“Carolyn?” Owen asked.
“I can only try,” I said modestly. “But I do think the chef and I now have a rapport. I can even think of a culinary vehicle for the knockout medicine—if he has avocados.”
“Right,” said Owen, “So Carolyn, get into your disguise. Beau, start mixing up enough stuff to put the whole crew under. Meanwhile, I’m going to organize a bridge tournament for tonight. While the crew is passing out, we’ll be recruiting help at the tournament.”
“I’m a terrible bridge player,” I admitted.
“Doesn’t matter. Your job will be to convince people to join the counter-mutiny, not to win bridge hands.”
“I’ll bet Luz doesn’t even know how to play,” I warned.
“So Barney can give her a few pointers. Or you can, Beau, if you have the time. She’ll be your partner, so don’t complain, whatever she does.”
Beau agreed. “I like bridge, but I always get stuck with the bridge sharks at home. Luz an’ I can pretend we have our own biddin’ system.”
“At least it’s not poker,” I said gloomily, wondering if Owen would be my partner and tolerant of my erratic bidding. Jason sometimes took offense when I paid more attention to the conversation than the hands. Men are so competitive. “But what about the cross-dressing prom?” I asked Owen.
“I was drunk when I started promoting that. Didn’t find many people who were interested anyway, and bridge will be a better theater for whispered conspiracy.”
38
A Word with the Chef, Please
Carolyn
I hardly recognized myself. My face was about the color of Luz’s, much darker than my usual skin tone. All signs of blond hair had gone undercover with the huge, black wig, which was actually rather becoming. Dramatic. Maybe I’d been too conservative in my hairstyles all these years, although whether I could get my hair to pouf out all the way to my shoulders was another matter. I had the length but not the thickness. The wig felt like real hair. It must have taken the contributions of two or three women to make it.
Of course, eyebrow pencil and mascara took care of the remaining blond hair, and I was wearing a deep red lipstick that would have looked on my real face as if I were bleeding arterial blood from the lips. The glasses distracted attention from my real eye color, because they seemed to turn dark at the slightest provocation, and I’d fiddled with my real clothes, pairing them in unusual combinations, lavender and green for instance. I had to hope that Demetrios could be convinced it was me, but what if the gunmen, and -woman, took me for a stranger and became nervous?
Owen was off to recruit people for his bridge tournament— people he thought likely to volunteer for the takeover. But what if no one would? I advised myself to keep my attention on my own mission. We each had our parts to play, and mine was in the kitchen, to which I traveled by elevator, although I’d much rather have used the emergency stairs again. Owen cautioned that I wouldn’t be able to explain my presence on those stairs if I were caught there. Various people bid me good morning, but not in a particularly cheerful way. It was easy to see that my fellow passengers were becoming irritated with the situation, so maybe we’d have more volunteer rebels than expected, although some of these people were really old. People using walkers and canes probably wouldn’t—I stepped off the elevator and headed for the kitchen.
An assistant chef blocked me at the door when I asked to have a word with the chef. He advised me that the chef was in a bad mood and no longer taking complaints from passengers. “But I haven’t come to complain,” I assured him. “I wanted to tell him that no matter what we’re being served now, I’ll always remember the wonderful meals I had before the work stoppage. My husband and I like to sit on our balcony and reminisce about the tilapia and the braised duck breast and . . .” While I was going on and on, the assistant was eyeing me dubiously. Didn’t he believe me? I really did remember those lovely meals, even if Jason wasn’t here to discuss them with me.
“I’ll—ah—take you to his office and see if he’ll speak to you.” The man studied me again with a mixture of hope and anxiety. “He could use some cheering up, but I warn you, if you’re really just here to complain, he can be very—ah, very—”
“Temperamental?” I suggested, smiling. “All great chefs are temperamental.”
That remark seemed to reassure him, and he went off, while I stood nervously in the glass office, hoping no one would recognize me and report me to Mr. Hartwig. It might well be all over the ship by now that I was “missing.”
“Madam?” Demetrios had arrived.
“Quick, close the door,” I cried. “Don’t you recognize me? I’m Carolyn Blue, but I’m in disguise.”
The chef peered at me. “You’re supposed to be missing. I heard one of the waiters saying that Hartwig was looking for you.”
“He is, and don’t, for heaven’s sake, tell him you’ve seen me. He tried to kill me. At least I think it was he. Can I sit down? My legs are wobbling.”
“It is you,” said the chef, amazed, and helped me to a chair.
“Sit in your chair,” I ordered, “and keep smiling at me. I’m supposed to be telling you how wonderful your meals were, which is true, but I have a different story to tell you, and I need your help.”
Then I filled him in on the whole situation—things that had happened, conclusions we’d reached, the action we wanted to take, and what we wanted of him. “Without you, we can’t take back the ship,” I said earnestly. “You’ll be the hero of the countermutiny, if you agree. Captain Marbella, if the poor man is still alive, will give you a medal on behalf of the cruise company.”
Demetrios had begun to laugh. Was that a good sign? I certainly hoped so. I couldn’t think of anything more to say to convince him, and he might have some chef ’s code of conduct that wouldn’t allow him to put a whole crew to sleep. Well, not the chefs or kitchen and wait staff. They’d be working, although—
“Say no more, dear madam. Only you can appreciate what I’ve suffered these last days since I’ve been forced to cast the pearls of my art before swine unable to appreciate fine food. I shall be delighted to participate. I hope they all fall over and hit their heads when the medication does its good work. Do you have the blessed powders with you? In what shall I include the magic potion?”
“Well, that’s sort of a problem,” I admitted. “The doctor is mixing up whatever it is. He said to tell you that it would be liquid, green, tasteless, and couldn’t be cooked. I did have an idea, but you may have a better one. How we’ll get containers of green liquid to you I’m not sure.”
“That is no problem whatever,” said the beaming Demetrios. He looked so happy that I feared he might jump up and start to dance with glee, which would look peculiar, even suspicious, to the kitchen staff outside the glass windows. “Where cargo is loaded, there is a large—what would it be called? A sort of dumbwaiter. You can load it there and buzz my office. I shall get your signal and meet the bottles here in the kitchen. I will draw you a diagram showing how to find the apparatus.” Which he did, while telling me that he would prepare his famous avocado soup for the wretched crew. “Even when they are all in jail, they will remember their last meal with fondness. It is green. It is not cooked. And it is superb. No one can resist it. They will eat every spoonful and ask for more. And they will be given more if there is more to give. Why take chances that some may not collapse as soon as others?”
Great minds, I thought, run in the same channels. Avocado soup was just what had come to me, not that I said so. I understood that Demetrios would want to think that the whole operation was his idea.
“Brilliant!” I exclaimed, and we engaged in a mutual beaming contest. Then I had a thought that had not occurred to me before. “Actually, there are some few foolish people who shudder at the idea of eating an avocado. What shall we do with them?”
Demetrios frowned. “I do not allow such foolish aversions at my table. They will eat the avocado soup, or they will get nothing else to eat. To make sure, their entrée will be steak and French fried potatoes—with ketchup. No peasant would pass up such a lackluster entrée. They will eat their soup! That is my final word, and on the Bountiful Feast, my word on cuisine is law.”
“Of course.” I wasn’t about to argue with him when he’d agreed to the plan, even relished the thought of his own participation. Maybe Owen and I could subvert some waiter, who would be able to tell us if any of the crew, especially the dangerous ones, had refused the soup.
We parted happily, I toward the door into danger, Demetrios back into his kitchen, clapping his hands and announcing in the jolliest of tones that he had had a brilliant idea. “Avocados,” he cried triumphantly. “Bring me avocados.” Several workers rushed off in search of avocados, while others gaped at the unusual good humor of their leader. The assistant chef squeezed my hand as he escorted me to the door and called
me a miracle worker.
39
Negotiations Pan Out
Jason
I calculated that Mr. Mortimer Balsam, vice president of something at the shipping company, would be on his way home to dinner, unless he was still at work actually doing something to rescue Carolyn and the Bountiful Feast. Using the cell phone number Balsam had provided in response to threats of adverse publicity, I went back to the hotel and called him. He was driving in rush-hour traffic and was not pleased to be contacted, probably for a number of reasons. “If you have no news for me, Mr. Balsam,” I said, “I’m calling the emergency contact number at the State Department.”
“Good lord, man,” came Mr. Balsam’s voice, blurred by traffic noises and sounding as if it came from thousands of miles away, which it did. “It turns out to be a labor problem. We’re negotiating. Should be solved by tomorrow. Then your wife will be sailing into port.”
I didn’t know whether to believe him. A labor problem? “Which port? Can you guarantee it will be Tenerife? You mentioned Casablanca when we last talked. Or maybe it was some other cruise representative I talked to.”
“Does it matter what port as long as she’s safe?” he asked. “You have to give us time to solve this. It’s not something the State Department can or will even consider getting involved in.” He sounded quite pleased with himself, and he might be right about the State Department’s unwillingness to get involved. They hadn’t left any messages for me after my call to them.
“Not good enough,” I snapped. “There’s a U.S. Navy ship in port. I’m going to talk to them.”
Mr. Balsam laughed, but not very convincingly. “We’re not at war, Mr. Blue. We’re in touch with the Bountiful Feast and expect a resolution any minute. Petitioning the U.S. Navy would be a waste of your time and theirs.”
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