Every Body on Deck

by G. A. McKevett

  “I don’t know what you think you’re doing,” Olive was shouting. “You can’t keep me from getting on my ship if I want to.”

  Olive stepped forward, placed her open palms on Waycross’s broad chest, and gave him a hard shove.

  Savannah watched, knowing that it would take a lot more than that to knock her brother off his feet. Waycross had been the only red-haired boy in the tiny town where they had been raised. More than once, Savannah had seen him taunted, bullied, and in some cases even attacked, because of his carrot top.

  The abuse had never soured him. Waycross was as sweet as the day he was born.

  But you couldn’t knock him off his feet. No one could, and certainly not a petite blonde with a bad temper.

  However, Savannah saw something else that concerned her far more. From the top of the gangway some of the ship’s own security guards were watching the hostile exchange and obviously discussing it between themselves. Savannah had a feeling that it was only going to be another moment or two before they descended the gangway and took matters into their own hands.

  “Uh-oh,” she heard Dirk say, and they both redoubled their speed.

  The guards were halfway down when Savannah and Dirk reached the quarreling trio. Dirk pulled out his badge and held it high for the guards to see. Apparently, they figured he had things in hand, because they turned and slowly made their way back into the ship.

  “What is wrong with you people?” Olive said. “All I want is to get back on my ship and . . .” Her words trailed away as she recognized Savannah and Dirk. “Oh. It’s you two.”

  “Yes, it’s us,” Savannah told her. “We need a few words with you.”

  Olive shook her head and stomped her foot like a two-year-old who had been denied her favorite sweet. “No! I’ve had an absolutely awful day. My feet are killing me. I’m all dirty, and I’m not talking to anybody until I’ve had a shower.”

  Savannah had to agree with her there. The young woman did have a distinct smell about her—the odor of sweat, and plenty of it, mixed with the underlying pungency of gasoline, and yet another unpleasant scent that Savannah couldn’t immediately identify.

  Olive Kelly did need a shower, no doubt about it. But there were more important matters at hand. Especially since an Alaska State Trooper cruiser had just raced up to the pier with lights flashing.

  It screeched to a stop, and in an instant, Sergeant Bodin and Corporal Riggs bailed out.

  Savannah turned to Olive just in time to see the young woman’s initial reaction when she spotted the troopers coming toward her. Beneath her toasty, perfect, copper tan, Olive Kelly turned pasty white.

  Her knees seemed to buckle, and for a moment, Savannah thought she might faint.

  Reaching out, she grabbed Olive’s arm to steady her, and she could feel her body starting to shake violently.

  “What is this?” Olive asked, her voice trembling as badly as her limbs. “What’s going on?”

  Dirk put out his hand and grabbed her by the other arm. “Miss Kelly, that awful day you’ve been having? It just got worse. Let’s just say that you needing a shower . . . well, that just became the least of your problems.”

  * * *

  “This is just plain stupid,” Dirk whispered in Savannah’s ear, as they watched Sergeant Bodin interrogate Olive Kelly. “You can’t do a proper interview in a bank, for Pete’s sake!”

  “It’s the only building in town with bars,” Savannah replied in an equally hushed voice. “I heard they had a robbery fifty years ago, and that’s when they installed them on the windows.”

  “Just in case there might be another one in the next half century?”

  “I reckon.”

  “But where’s the intimidation factor? How are you supposed to drum up any claustrophobia, or good, old-fashioned fear of the justice system?”

  He had her there. Savannah looked around at the room, which was comfortably furnished with contemporary furniture in warm, earthy colors. Overall, the space was simply but tastefully decorated with framed black and white photos of Alaskan mountain beauty on the walls and a few tropical plants in each corner.

  Someone was even taking the time and trouble to water the plants and dust the tables.

  Savannah was impressed.

  Olive Kelly, the detainee who was being “grilled,” sat in a plush faux-leather chair as she was being questioned by Sergeant Bodin, who sat in a matching chair. Between the interviewer and the interviewee was a tasteful, oak end table, spread with numerous copies of Architectural Digest and House Beautiful.

  Savannah and Dirk sat nearby on an equally cushy sofa. Their matching coffee table provided such selections as Forbes, Consumer Reports, and Alaska magazine.

  Savannah surmised that this room was probably used by people opening checking accounts and applying for loans.

  She also strongly suspected it had never been used for a homicide investigation. Not even once.

  Dirk glanced down at his watch and shook his head, disgusted. Again he leaned over and whispered in Savannah’s ear, “If I had her back home in my sweat box, she’d have spilled her guts a long time ago.”

  “Sh-h-h,” Savannah whispered when she saw Sergeant Bodin shoot them a warning look.

  As Savannah watched Olive Kelly wipe the sweat off her forehead and cheeks with the sleeve of her sweater, it occurred to her that in this case, Dirk’s so-called “sweat box” wasn’t needed. This office, semiluxurious at least by Saaxwoo standards, seemed to be doing the trick just fine.

  Something told Savannah that Olive would fold like a flimsy cocktail umbrella if she were being questioned in the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria.

  Although Savannah agreed with Dirk that if he had Olive in the tiny, claustrophobic, gray interrogation room back in the San Carmelita police station, this little song and dance would’ve been over long ago.

  Even Sergeant Bodin seemed to be getting bored with the routine. For nearly an hour he had gone around the same circle with Olive.

  She had a simple, straightforward story, and she was sticking with it. No matter how many times they had circumscribed her tale of woe, it always came back to the same thing.

  “He told me to do it,” she was saying, as she twisted the handful of tissues that she had been using to wipe her eyes and nose. “I never would have left the ship if he hadn’t told me that I had to. It was life or death.”

  “It sure was,” Sergeant Bodin agreed. “As it turned out, it was murder, and you’re our only suspect.”

  Olive perked up slightly. “If it’s another suspect you want, go find the guy who called me. The one who threatened me.”

  The sergeant groaned. “Right. The guy who told you to go buy some gas and leave it up by the glacier, and if you didn’t, he’d kill you. That guy?”

  “Not just me,” Olive said, trying to wipe away the streaks of mascara that were streaming down her cheeks with her overused tissues. “He said he’d kill Mr. and Mrs. Van Cleef, too. All three of us.”

  “Unless you bought them some gas?”

  “Yes! I swear to you, that’s why I did it. Sneaking off the ship like that, buying the gas, and leaving it up there beside the road . . . Why else would I do all that stuff? It sure wasn’t because it was fun. I did it to save our lives!”

  She collapsed into tears, covering her eyes with her hands. “Now you’re telling me that they’re dead anyway. So I did all that for nothing!”

  Savannah saw the sergeant’s shoulders sagging with frustration and fatigue. Having been where he was many times, she knew what it was like to try to wring information from a suspect who was either too cunning or too stupid to provide any.

  Then, there were the innocent ones. You could interrogate them for a month and they would give you nothing, because they had nothing to offer.

  Savannah hadn’t decided yet whether Olive Kelly was cunning or stupid. She was quite sure that she wasn’t innocent.

  Savannah suspected that Sergeant Bodin wasn’t sure about Oli
ve either. From the weary look on his face, she had the feeling that he would prefer to be wrestling a grizzly or resisting a lust-besotted moose in rutting season.

  She got the distinct impression that he was more of an “outdoor law enforcement” kinda guy.

  Quietly, trying not to attract attention, Savannah reached into her purse and pulled out her cell phone. She crossed her left leg over her right and hid the phone in the crook of her knee. She felt Dirk lean against her, as he watched what she was doing.

  She quickly texted Sergeant Bodin the message: If you want to take a break, I’ll have a go at her.

  Once his phone had dinged and he had read the message, it didn’t take Bodin long to decide. He jumped up out of his chair as though someone had lit a string of firecrackers under his bottom.

  “I’ve had quite enough of you, Miss Kelly,” he told her as he walked to the door. “I’m going to go have a cup of coffee, and when I come back I’m arresting you for the murders of Natasha and Colin Van Cleef. It’ll be first-degree, premeditated homicide, too. Nobody’s going to kill two people in this area, my area, and get away with. So you better spend the next five minutes doing some real serious soul-searching.”

  Okay, Savannah thought. It’s going to be good cop–bad cop. No problem.

  Donning her very sweetest, most understanding, big sister face, Savannah rose and sat down in the sergeant’s recently vacated chair.

  Looking across the end table at Olive Kelly, Savannah had to admit that it had been a long time since she had seen anyone that frightened.

  Olive was shaking as violently as someone who had been left out in a blizzard on Christmas Eve, wearing nothing but their underwear.

  She was crying so hard that Savannah glanced around the room and located the nearest trash can—beneath the end table next to them—just in case she started to throw up.

  “Now, now, don’t cry,” Savannah told her as she reached into her purse and brought out a handful of clean tissues. “Here you go,” she said, holding them out to Olive. “Looks like you could use a fresh supply.”

  When the young woman reached for them, her hand was filled with the dirty ones, and she didn’t seem to have the presence of mind to get rid of them herself.

  Gingerly, using only her thumb and forefinger, Savannah picked the soggy wad out of her hand and dropped it into the waste can. Then she pressed the new ones into her palm. “Come on now, sugar,” she told Olive. “This ain’t gonna cut it. Dry your eyes and blow your nose. He’s going to be back soon, and you and I have to figure out what you’re going to tell him.”

  “But I already told him the truth, and he didn’t believe me,” Olive wailed.

  “Okay,” Savannah said. “I believe you. I believe that what you’ve told him, so far, is true. But the problem is: you haven’t told him the whole truth. Once you do, I think everything will be just fine.”

  Savannah glanced quickly over at Dirk and saw him give her “the sign.” He lightly brushed his forefinger down the length of his nose and smiled.

  It was the gesture they made when one knew that the other was telling a whopper of a lie. A sign that the fib-teller’s nose was in danger of growing a foot or more.

  Okay, so she knew that everything wasn’t going to be peachy for Olive Kelly, no matter what she said. Being the one who dragged a gas can to a fatal vehicle crash, that wouldn’t be easy to explain away.

  But nowhere in the Manual for Law Enforcement Investigation 101 did it say that an interrogator had to speak only the truth to a suspect. Soul-blackening, nose-growing lies, while perhaps a bit distasteful, were considered a “means” that was justified by the “end.”

  At least, that’s what Savannah had told herself over the years when her Sunday school teachings collided with the reality of her job.

  So it was only with the slightest quibbling of her conscience that Savannah intensified her “compassionate” smile, reached over, and patted Olive Kelly’s trembling hand.

  “Okay, sugar,” she said. “Let’s take it from the very beginning.”

  “All right.” Olive took a deep breath, gathering herself and, Savannah hoped, her wits. “I got up this morning. I put on my robe. I went to the bathroom and peed.”

  Savannah heard Dirk groan.

  “We can skip that part,” Savannah told Olive. “Let’s start with the moment you got your first communication from this mysterious man.”

  “He called me on my cell phone, and it really scared me, because he had a creepy voice.”

  “Creepy, as in how?”

  “Like the creepy kind they use in creepy movies, when they really want to creep you out.”

  Savannah made a mental note to give Olive Kelly a thesaurus for Christmas.

  “Okay. He had a creepy voice. Exactly what did he say?”

  “I’m not really sure, because I had just woke up. I didn’t even have my hair brushed yet. But he asked me if I wanted to save my own life and the Van Cleefs, too. Of course, I said, ‘Sure.’ I mean, who’d say no to a question like that?”

  “Nobody at all,” Savannah replied solemnly. “You did the right thing.”

  “Then he told me I had to get off the ship as soon as I could. He said to catch a taxi there by the pier, you know, where they line up.”

  Savannah nodded. “I’m familiar with the area. Go on.”

  “He said I should catch a cab and tell the driver that I wanted to go to the nearest service station. When I got there, I was supposed to buy a can and have them fill it up with gas. Then he said to tell the driver that I wanted to go to the Visitor Center up at the glacier. I wasn’t sure what a glacier was, I’m still not, but I figured the driver would know, so I wasn’t worried about it.”

  “Good thinking.”

  “Thank you.”

  “What happened then?”

  “Then he told me that I was supposed to get out of the cab there at the Visitor Center and wait for the taxi to leave. Then I had to walk back down the road, carrying that big, heavy can, back the same way I had just come. That didn’t make any sense to me at all.”

  “I can see why you were confused.”

  “But I did it anyway. I wanted to save the Van Cleefs’ lives if I could. My own, too.”

  “You were very brave. I’m sure they would have appreciated it, if they’d known.”

  Olive’s lower lip trembled. “I’d like to think so. I really would. Otherwise I went to all that trouble and ruined my best shoes for nothing.”

  Savannah glanced down at the expensive sandals that were now in tatters. With any luck, the lab would be able to get some gasoline droplets off them.

  But, of course, she didn’t bother to share that with Olive.

  “What else did the creepy guy tell you to do?”

  “He told me to walk two hundred steps away from the Visitor Center and put the gas can behind a tree on the side of the road.”

  “Any particular tree?”

  “Yeah, the one with the red flag on it.”

  “Wow. A red flag and everything. I’m impressed.”

  “It made it easier. There are a lot of trees out there, and they all kinda look alike.”

  “That’s true. Did you do that? Did you put the gas can behind the tree with the red flag?”

  “Sure I did. It was a life-and-death situation, and after I put the can down, I did what he told me and started walking back toward town. It was a long walk, and my shoes were falling apart and giving me big, ugly blisters on my heels.” She lifted her foot and presented her evidence. Her heels were, indeed, badly blistered. “I don’t know what I would’ve done,” she continued, “if a nice lady hadn’t come along in her van and given me a ride. I think I would’ve been crippled for life.”

  Olive was silent for a moment as she thought it over. Then suddenly, her eyes flashed with indignation. “You know, now that I think of it, that wasn’t very considerate of that guy not to warn me about wearing proper shoes to run that stupid errand of his. All he had to say was
, ‘Wear some sneakers,’ and I would’ve had a lot easier day. He’s really not a very nice person. If I ever meet him, I’m going to tell him so, too.”

  Savannah sat for a while, studying the young assistant. So far, she believed every word Olive had spoken. Every ridiculous word. But one aspect of the story was very hard to believe.

  “How did you remember all of those directions that he gave you?” Savannah asked her. “Those are pretty detailed. Especially things like walking two hundred steps away from the center and the red flag on the tree. Did you take notes when he called you?”

  “No. I didn’t have a paper and pencil. Remember, I was still in my pajamas.”

  “Right. Then how did you recall all of his instructions?”

  “I didn’t remember them. I kept forgetting. I had to call him a bunch of times and ask him what was next.”

  Savannah lit up. “You called him? You had his phone number?”

  “Sure. He called me. His number’s in my phone.”

  Savannah mentally smacked herself on the forehead. Olive’s phone. Of course!

  Duh, Savannah, she mentally scolded herself. You’re losing it, girl.

  While she was reminding herself of her own shortcomings, Dirk was grabbing Olive’s purse. He opened it, and Savannah expected him to reach inside immediately and pull out the cell phone.

  Instead, he just sat there, staring rather wide eyed into the open pocketbook. Then he turned to Olive with a deeply suspicious look on his face.

  “What is it?” Savannah asked him.

  He handed the purse to her. “Look for yourself,” he replied.

  She did, and she was most surprised to see, not just Olive’s cell phone, but a syringe as well. A large syringe that still held a bit of clear liquid that appeared to be tinged with blood.

  It was no common junkie’s syringe.

  This gear was large enough to administer a very serious dosage of something to someone.

  Possibly even two someones.

  At that moment Sergeant Bodin reentered the room. “So? Have we come up with anything new?” he asked.

  “I think so,” Savannah said as she handed him the purse. “I think we might have found our answer as to why Colin Van Cleef didn’t apply his brakes at any point going down that hill. And maybe why his wife didn’t suggest it.”