by Maddy Hunter
Chapter 2
She ran straight at us and grabbed Nana’s arm, screaming hysterically, “Tell the bridge! Please! They have to stop!” She choked on an agonized sob. “They can’t let him die!”
“Where’s the bridge?” I screamed back.
Nana pointed left.
Tilly pointed right.
I yanked out my floor plan and located the bridge one deck down at the bow of the ship. “Stay here! I’ll be right back.” While Nana and Tilly ministered to Bailey, I raced past the elevator, flew down the stairs, charged through an endlessly long corridor, and burst onto the bridge with a painful stitch in my side, and a breathless entreaty. “STOP THE ENGINES! MAN OVERBOARD!”
Heads turned. Eyes riveted on me. My ears pounded with the sudden silence until a uniformed officer with a well-trimmed white beard sang out, “Stop all engines,” which prompted a chain reaction of activity. As I stood there panting, the bearded officer hurried across the room to me, scrutinizing my face with sober eyes.
“Who has fallen overboard?”
I opened my mouth to respond, only to realize, I didn’t know.
“I still don’t see no sign a him,” Nana reported an hour later from her lookout at the ship’s rail. The wind that buffeted the stern had exploded through her hair and snarled it like a cheap angora sweater, but she was far too interested in the activity in the sea below to notice. She readjusted her binoculars. “He seemed like a real nice man, even if he did get a little snippy with them fellas what disagreed with him. Be an awful shame if he missed the whole trip.”
We were dead in the water as the ship’s launches searched the immediate area for the body of Professor Dorian Smoker. Bailey had been carted off to the infirmary to be treated for symptoms of shock. Tilly and I were huddled in a sheltered spot away from the rail, where her visor would be less apt to fly away, and my short, sassy Italian ‘do’ wouldn’t be whipped into a style worn only by rock stars and mythological creatures who sported more than one head.
“I don’t mean to be the voice of doom,” Tilly remarked as she cast a somber look toward the launches circling in the water, “but if they haven’t found his body by now, they probably won’t recover it until it floats to the surface in a few days. Tissue decomposition takes place rapidly in tropical waters. If this were an Alaskan cruise, they might not recover the body for months.”
My knees went a little gimpy as I realized that at any moment, the mission to “search and rescue” might be downgraded to “find and retrieve.”
I hunkered closer to the bulkhead as a trio of curious onlookers, clad in cargo shorts and hiking boots, lumbered past me to join Nana at the rail. One was a giant of a man whose red-gold hair and beard smacked of ancient Viking roots. I remembered seeing him in the second row at Professor Smoker’s lecture, his head towering above everyone else’s. Giant Vikings aren’t exactly commonplace, unless it’s Sunday afternoon and you’re attending an NFL game in the dome in Minneapolis.
“Forgive me, madame,” he asked Nana in English too perfect to be his native tongue. “Do you know what they’re looking for?”
“They’re lookin’ for that nice Professor Smoker, on account a he fell off the ship. The men in them little boats fished a life buoy outta the water a little while ago, but I haven’t seen ’em fish out the professor yet. You wanna borrow my binoculars and have a look-see?”
The giant translated Nana’s spiel for his two male companions in a rapid-fire language that sounded a bit like “gangsta” rap minus the expletives. Only when one of the men muttered a thoughtful “Uff da,” did I realize it wasn’t gansta rap. It was Norwegian! They really were Vikings! Or maybe distant relations.
The three stood conversing in curious undertones for a half minute before the giant handed the binoculars back to Nana. “The professor could not swim?” he asked.
Tilly thumped her walking stick on the deck for attention. “Swimming is one thing, young man. Getting sucked beneath the keel of a nine - hundred - and - sixty - two - foot ship is something else entirely.”
He turned from the rail to face Tilly, eyes wary, lips stretched razor-thin. “A tragedy, yah. For us, too. We traveled many miles to hear the professor speak.”
The ID dangling around his neck read Nils — World Navigators Club, and he looked as if circumnavigating the globe at the helm of a sailing ship would be second nature to him. His face was bronzed and leathery, his eyelashes bleached to pale gold. Crow’s-feet slashed outward from his eyes as if he’d spent his entire life squinting into the sun. I suspected he probably knew everything there was to know about navigating, and absolutely nothing about the most important aspects of life at sea — SPF and sunblock.
He said something to his companions, who pushed away from the rail and turned around to face us. They were both half a head shorter than Nils. One was sandy-haired and solid, with tree trunks for legs, a broad chest, and a World Navigators Club name tag that identified him as Gjurd. The other boasted feathery white-blond hair, a lithe, wiry body, a wide gap between his front teeth, and a name that J. R. R. Tolkien might have given to one of his elves — Ansgar.
“You will excuse us, please?” Nils offered politely, nodding to each of us.
“Before you go —” Nana grasped Nils by the arm and looked far up into his face. “You’re a tall one, aren’t you? You oughta meet Emily’s ex-husband sometime. She’s tall, too. And it’s even worse when she’s wearin’ them stiletto heels. She’s fixin’ to become a famous romance novelist. Isn’t that somethin’? She woulda come on the cruise with us, but she come down with a bad case a writer’s block, so she’s in therapy instead.”
Nils stared at Nana, stoic and confused. I clapped a hand over my eyes and shook my head. Oh, God.
“Do you happen to have any M&M’s on you?” Nana inquired. “I only need two.”
This prompted a boisterous discussion among the three men that ended when Ansgar asked a question that Nils translated. “Plain or peanut?”
Almond, crispy, and peanut butter obviously hadn’t made their way to Norway yet.
“Don’t matter what kind. They just gotta be blue.”
Nils unzipped a pocket in his cargo shorts and pulled out a small crinkly bag. “Skittles are similar, yah?”
Nana shook her head. “They gotta be M&M’s. But if you see a roly-poly gal with only one eyebrow walkin’ around, offer her some a them Skittles. Her name’s Helen, and you’ll make her day.”
Nils forced a cautious smile before he and his companions strode off in the direction in which they’d come. In bygone days, these guys would probably hop into their Viking ship and storm down the coast to plunder and burn. Civility had certainly altered their way of life. A bout of plundering these days probably meant hopping into the Anchor Bar and knocking back the entire bowl of beer nuts.
“Looks like they’re throwin’ in the towel,” Nana reported from the rail. “The launches are headin’ back to the ship, but they’ve left some markers in the water.”
Tilly shook her head. “Considering the currents and tidal activity, his body will probably reappear nowhere near this area, but I suppose that’s protocol.”
I stepped out from my little cubbyhole near the bulkhead to eye the sleek contour of the two decks that rose above us. “Exactly where was he standing when he fell?”
Tilly pointed upward. “Deck twelve. One level up. Near the golf simulators on the port side.”
I braved the wind to stand next to the rail, which was a mile-long beam of polished wood mounted atop slanted Plexiglas panels. It was pretty high, hitting me just below my collarbone, which meant it probably would have hit Professor Smoker about midchest. “How do you manage to fall off the deck of a ship when the guardrail is almost as tall as you are?”
Nana shuffled over to us in her spanking-white, size five sneakers. “After what happened on the Italy tour, I thought you said you was never gonna be suspicious about another freak accident, Emily.”
I gnawed my l
ip thoughtfully. Yup. I remembered saying that. And meaning it…at the time. “But this is so bizarre. Look at this thing.” I slid my hand along the guardrail. “It’s built like an obstacle in a steeplechase. You’re not going over this thing unless you’re on a horse.” I frowned distractedly. “Not to jump to any conclusions or anything, but if you ask me, I think it’s impossible for anyone to fall off this ship.”
“I quite agree,” Tilly said, “which leaves us no alternative but one.” She thrust her walking stick at my shoulder bag. “I believe the infirmary is on deck three, Emily, but you’d best dig out your map. I think we should pay Ms. Bailey Howard a sick call.”
“Emily figured out in no time flat why so many guests ended up dead in Florence, didn’t you, dear?” Nana leaned over to pat my knee as we sat in the waiting room.
I slid down a notch in my chair. Florence. Not to belabor the point or anything, but I DIDN’T WANT TO THINK ABOUT FLORENCE!
“She wowed the group so much with her fancy theories, there was even talk a someone interviewin’ her for one a them early-mornin’ programs on KORN, or a human interest story for the Register.” Nana framed her hands in the air around an imaginary headline. TOUR ESCORT CRACKS TUSCAN CRIME-WAVE.”
The last big human-interest story in our local paper had been entitled, UNDEFEATED FIVE-YARD DASH CHAMP VOWS “I’LL BE BACK!” It was a gripping account of Bernice Zwerg’s bunion surgery and had kept readers on the edge of their seats until the very end. The buzz at the local Farm and Fleet was, Pulitizer.
Tilly’s brow lifted in admiration. “A feature article about Emily? I must have missed it. When did it appear?”
Nana shrugged. “It didn’t. Folks decided she ruined her credibility with all her second-guessin’, so they interviewed Dick Teig and done an article on Italian couture for the plus-size male instead.”
We were in the bowels of the ship, in a twelve - foot - by - twelve - foot room painted igloo white and lit by overhead pillow lights so glaringly bright that I was glad I was wearing sunblock. Chairs of chrome and white leather lined the walls. A tidy reception desk dominated the room. Pamphlets on seasickness, respiratory illnesses, and UV rays hung in plastic pockets on the wall, right next to dozens of heavy-duty white paper bags that looked suspiciously like the ones the airlines stash in their seat pockets for motion sickness. Geesch. There certainly were a lot of them.
“Is there candy in that dish?” Nana asked, nodding toward a glass bowl on the reception desk. She pinched her eyes shut. “You look, dear. I can’t handle the suspense.”
I wandered over. “Skittles,” I called back to her.
She sighed her disappointment. “They got any blue ones?”
“I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting!” A middle-aged woman dressed in nurse’s whites rushed through the door from the treatment area. “We usually only get this backed up when the seas are high and the decks are awash.” Folding her hands at her waist, she took a deep breath, tilted her head to the side, and gave us a benevolent smile. “Now, what seems to be the problem today?”
I mimicked the head tilt and returned her smile. “Would it be possible for us to see Bailey Howard?”
“Are you family?”
“We’re part of her…cruise family,” I improvised. “We’re the people who helped her right after the incident happened. We’re pretty concerned about her.”
“The good Samaritans. I’m so happy to meet you.” She clasped each of our hands in a warm welcome. “I’ve given Bailey a mild sedative to calm her down, but no one feels calm in a health facility. I expect the best medicine for her right now would be some sympathetic company who’d sit down and hold her hand for a while.” She wagged her forefinger at us. “You wait right here. I’ll see if she’s up for visitors.”
As I waited, my attention kept drifting to the motion sickness bags hanging on the wall. Unlike the lifeboat situation on the Titanic, there looked to be more than enough bags for everyone, but I certainly hoped we didn’t have to use them. Two thousand sick people would never fit into this infirmary.
Nana pulled out her cruise ship itinerary. “You s’pose this incident with the professor is gonna affect our schedule? If we don’t get to Kauai in time to do that zodiac raft ride along the Na Pali coast tomorrow, that’d be a real shame, ’cause they say it’s like ridin’ the waves on a waterbed. I always wanted to try out one a them waterbeds. But I s’pose we can sign up for somethin’ else.”
The cruise line offered so many island excursions that my group hadn’t been able to agree on just one or two, so we’d decided to split up to sample a wide range of what was being offered. I suggested that when we returned to Iowa, we all write short articles describing our individual adventures, which I could use in a travel newsletter I’d distribute to all the bank’s customers as a promotional tool. Everyone had thought it was a great idea except Bernice, who threatened to hold out until we talked “royalties.”
“What are you signed up for tomorrow, dear?” Nana inquired.
“The kayak adventure.” I’d kayaked on Lake Mendota when I’d attended the UW, and I was looking forward to wielding a paddle again.
After a few minutes the nurse returned and motioned us into the inner sanctum. “Bailey wants to thank you for your help. Follow me, would you?”
We trooped down a whitewashed corridor ablaze with incandescent light. Muffled voices floated out to us from behind examining rooms to our left and right, and at the end of the corridor, in a room opposite one labeled X-RAY, we found Bailey Howard lying in a standard-size hospital cot, her eyes red and puffy behind her designer frames.
“Have they found him yet?” she asked without preamble.
I opened my mouth to reply, surprised when nothing came out. Bailey took one look at my face and dissolved into tears. “He’s gone, isn’t he? He’s really gone.”
I scurried to her cot and sat down on the edge. Nana poured water. Tilly yanked a tissue out of the box and held it at the ready. “I’m so sorry,” I said, squeezing her hand.
She bowed her head, tears streaming down her cheeks and onto her chin. The nurse gave me the eye and quietly retreated. Bailey squeezed my hand tightly. “This isn’t real. It can’t be. How do I go back to school and tell them Professor Smoker is dead?”
Chances were the wire services would pick up the story and spread it worldwide before Bailey ever got the chance, but that’s not what she needed to hear right now. “The cruise staff may have asked you this already, but is there someone you’d like us to contact for you? Your parents? Boyfriend?”
She slipped off her glasses and swiped tears from her face. “I don’t have a boyfriend. And my parents are a joke. They’re both off finding their ‘inner child’ — with new spouses half their ages. I don’t even know where they are right now.”
“Tissue?” asked Tilly.
Bailey dried her eyes on the tissue and slid her glasses back on. “Thanks. The three of you have been so nice to me. You’ve been nicer than people who know me.” She sniffled, looking suddenly guilty. “But that’s my own fault, I guess. When you’re working on a dissertation, you become pretty self-absorbed. Since I’ve been in grad school, I’ve shut out everyone except Professor Smoker…and…and the members of my major committee.” She bowed her head. “He was everything to me. Mentor. Cheerleader. Coauthor of a half dozen critically acclaimed papers that appeared in some of the most prestigious refereed journals in the academic world. What am I going to do without him?”
When her bottom lip began to quiver, Nana pressed the water glass into her hand and encouraged her to drink. Nana visited hospital patients every week as part of her Legion of Mary duties, so her bedside manner had become the stuff of legend.
“We’ve all lost people who’s dear to us,” Nana empathized. “When I lost my Sam, I didn’t know how I’d go on. Fifty-three years, we was married. We’d pretty much turned into each other, except for he had more hair growin’ out his ears, so when I lost him, I lost a big piece
a myself.”
“I’m sorry.” Bailey sniffled again. “Was he ill for very long?”
Nana shook her head. “It happened real sudden-like.”
“Heart attack?”
“Ice shanty. And Tilly here lost her brother a few months back, didn’t you, Til?”
“A tragic accident,” Tilly said glumly. “He fell from his saddle during an ostrich race in Kuwait and was trampled by the rest of the pack. It was sad he couldn’t have held on. He’d been in first place until then, and the grand prize was an oil well.”
Bailey stared at Tilly, her breathing shallow.
“Even Emily’s lost someone,” Nana continued.
Bailey turned her soulful gaze on me and sniffed loudly. “Who did you lose?”
I whipped my head around at Nana. “Who did I lose?”
“Your young man, dear.”
Bailey sucked in her breath. “You lost someone in a tragic accident, too?”
Why was it that the subject you wanted to talk about the least was the subject everyone else wanted to talk about the most? “I didn’t lose anyone,” I defended, but my halfhearted denial tipped Bailey off immediately.
“That’s okay,” she rasped through her grief. “You can tell me. What happened? Did your guy find another woman?” When I winced, she clapped her hand over her mouth. “Another man?”
“That woulda been her first husband,” Nana said.
“ALL RIGHT!” I sputtered. “You want to know what happened? I’ll tell you. But first you tell me: when a man tells you he loves you, what usually happens after that?”
“In what society?” asked Tilly.
“Great sex,” said Nana.
“He asks you to marry him,” said Bailey.
I pointed my finger at Bailey. “Exactly. He proposes marriage. And when he tells you he has an important question to ask, you expect him to say, ‘Will you marry me?’ Right?”
The three women nodded.
“Well, not Etienne Miceli. Nooo. A marriage proposal from my black-haired, blue-eyed Swiss/ German/Italian police inspector with the washboard stomach and one percent body fat? Huh!”