Cruise Ship Cozy Mysteries 01 - Killer Cruise

by A. R. Winters

  I got the most amazing cocktail photo; the way the aquamarine blue liquid played against the bright pink of its umbrella with the blurry ocean view behind made it look like a carefully arranged promotional shot. In other words, precisely what it was.

  I quickly put it in my social media queue, ready to go out that afternoon. Pleased with myself, I was thinking about what to do next, when I realized that Sylvia was heading my way again.

  Before we could even think about exchanging further pleasantries—or perhaps some other choice words, she was approached by a glamorously-dressed woman who looked as if she'd crossed the half-century mark a decade ago but was determined not to let anyone know it. She drew any casual observer’s focus away from encroaching wrinkles with a liberal splash of diamonds and rubies about her person. Her expensive-looking violet sundress and generous layer of makeup finished the job.

  I started to hurry away, but something about Sylvia's disposition toward the woman stopped me. There was a slight nervousness to Sylvia's attitude that made me think there was some issue between her and what looked like to be one of our VIP guests.

  I stepped a little closer, not exactly sneaking up on Sylvia, but surreptitiously approaching from an oblique angle. That's journalist speak for sneaking up.

  “…Mrs. Murphy, is your new cabin to your liking?"

  I blinked and stood stock still. Mrs. Murphy? Just then, the memory struck me like a lightning bolt. When I’d been outside Patrick Murphy's room, I saw the sign that read "The Stateroom of Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Murphy." Yet, somehow, I had completely overlooked the fact that he was married until now.

  “…unacceptable, bedroom… acceptable, the housekeeper… completely unacceptable, the…”

  She seemed as lacking in the charm department as her husband had been. Although I only heard a couple of snippets of conversation, I could already tell that she was more concerned about her room than she was about her dearly departed husband. Though then again, people have been known to mask their grief in mysterious ways.

  Sylvia seemed to grow bored of Mrs. Murphy's list of positives and negatives about her new room and glanced over her shoulder. Awkward. Our eyes met for just a moment and she flashed a fierce look my way. Turning back to Mrs. Murphy, she lowered her head and began to step slowly toward the rail above the ocean, to shepherd Mrs. Murphy away from me.

  I stood watching them for a few seconds more. I considered taking a picture of the two ladies, with the ocean behind them, but decided I had enough Sylvia in my life already. Instead, I needed to figure out how the mysterious wife factored into everything. She was mysterious to me, anyway.

  Where had Mrs. Murphy been the night Mr. Murphy was killed? And why was it that I found the body the next day rather than her? Those were some intriguing questions.

  They say in journalism classes that it's always someone close to the victim, at least in ninety percent of murder cases. That made her the most likely suspect, didn't it? So why did Ethan Lee have my friend locked up instead of Mrs. Murphy herself? Right now, that was the million-dollar question.

  I was going to leave them to it. I was. I wasn't going to try and eavesdrop anymore. Really. But then, their conversation seemed to grow heated.

  "...DO YOU SEE!?"

  Uh-oh. It looked like a fight was about to break out. Sylvia had lifted her arm into the air and...

  "Is everything okay?" I asked while grabbing Sylvia's arm at the elbow. Smacking guests was such a big no-no that it hadn't even been covered in our introductory meeting the other day. I was sure Sylvia would regret it if she actually went through with her intended swing at the recently bereaved widow.

  "Who are you?” asked Mrs. Murphy with a lot more venom than the question is usually asked.

  I let go of Sylvia's arm and she lowered it back to her side with a shake of her shoulders, as if ridding herself of a momentary madness.

  "I'm—"

  "She's no one," said Sylvia with a glare.

  The widow didn't believe that. She stared at my chest, reading exactly who I was.

  "You! I know who you are. Your roommate killed my husband! The nerve! And now you're interfering! Are we sure it wasn't both of you?"

  I flapped my mouth like a fish out of water and, in that moment, I truly understood the meaning of the word flabbergasted for the first time in my life. Not only was she accusing Sam of killing her husband, she was roping me into it as well.

  "No!" I said, probably too loudly. "My friend did not kill your husband. She had nothing to do with it and nor did I."

  "Well, she was the last person to see him alive. Who else could it have been? She probably tried to seduce him and went insane with anger when he rejected her."

  Him reject her? I knew the woman just lost her husband, but I was tempted to lift Sylvia's arm back up to where it was, and this time I'd egg her on if she wanted to slap the horrible old widow silly.

  The only problem with that idea was that Sylvia had disappeared. I glanced over first my left shoulder, then my right, but with no success: Sylvia had snuck away.

  "If only I'd been there," she said, suddenly wistful, "but I was at The Dive."

  "What, the entire night?" I asked, more rudely than was normal for me. The Dive was one of the bars on the ship and although its name referred to diving under the seas, the customers tended to associate it with a 'dive bar' on land and it was renowned for attracting some of the more colorful behavior on board the ship.

  Mrs. Murphy slowly shook her head, ignoring my question, and turned and began to walk away.

  How rude, I thought.

  But speaking of rude, what happened to Sylvia? She should have been trying to stop Mrs. Murphy and me from fighting but instead she just took her chance to cut and run.

  That wasn't very cruise director-like behavior, was it?

  Chapter 11

  C ece was wearing rubber gloves and had a silver paisley-printed bandana tied around her head when I found her.

  "That's a pretty awesome look. Can I take a picture?"

  She shrugged. "Why not?" She leaned against her cleaning cart and gave me a come hither expression.

  I giggled. "And how about just a regular smile? You don't want to give the passengers any ideas..."

  "Good point," she said, giving me a smile that was happier than any I had managed in the last couple of days.

  "What's going on?"

  I filled her in on my strange interaction with Sylvia and Mrs. Murphy.

  "Mrs. Murphy—Janice, that's her first name—is almost as bad as her husband."

  "Oh?" My eyebrows had shot up and I was wondering whether our pool and cabana boys were safe with her on the prowl.

  "I mean, in terms of her complaining about the staff. Not creeping on the staff. She's not as bad as him in that regard, at least.”

  I shifted my weight from foot to foot nervously.

  "What is it?" asked Cece, one hand leaning on her cart, the other on her hip.

  "I was wondering..."

  "Go on..."

  "Could I borrow your keycard again?"

  One side of her mouth lifted in a half-smile and she nodded to herself. "I figured you'd ask."

  "Oh?"

  "Sure," she said, drumming the palm of her hand against her cart. "We got interrupted before you could do any real snooping—I mean, investigating—last time, right?"

  "Yep. Thanks, Cece." She was already holding her card for me to take, so I did. She was clearly working, and I wanted to get this over with as soon as possible so I wished her a good afternoon and hurried off, determined to get her keycard back to her as soon as possible.

  It was with some trepidation that I returned to the scene of the crime. Sylvia hadn't reported me before, but surely that was only because she was doing the exact same thing as me. If I was caught by someone else, things would look bad for Sam; it would be difficult to explain away her best friend snooping around the scene of the crime.

  I made sure there was no one around when I ente
red the cabin. The good thing about the VIP sections of the ship is that there are far fewer cabins than in the less extortionately-priced areas, and so a lot fewer people wandering about.

  I used the card to unlock the door and slipped inside as quickly as I could without being seen.

  Inside, the cabin was just as I remembered it, with the lamp still smashed on the floor and the stain around the sofa still fully intact. Presumably they were leaving the room untouched until we returned to our home port and the NOLA police, or FBI, or whoever it was who investigated murders at sea could be allowed in.

  "Me," I murmured to myself with a little smile. "Me—that's who investigates murders at sea!"

  I didn't want to contaminate the crime scene, but I did want to look around.

  "Oh, drat," I said when I remembered what Cece had been wearing: pink rubber gloves. I should have brought some of my own. I couldn't leave fingerprints around the victim's room.

  I didn't know what I was looking for, but I thought I might very well recognize it when I actually found it. Whatever it turned out to be.

  In the end, I found two items of interest, one much more so than the other.

  The first thing I found was next to the four-poster bed on the nightstand. It was a printed receipt from a bank, detailing a fifty-thousand-dollar deposit that Murphy had made to a bank on Grand Cayman.

  I read it carefully but got nothing meaningful from it, apart from learning that he had an account in the Caymans. At least once.

  But then lots of people did, particularly wealthy businessmen—didn't they? I mentally filed it away as some useful background information, but on its own, it didn't tell me anything about who murdered him.

  The next thing I found was in the living room by the sliding glass french windows. There was a small table there, upon which sat a book about art history. Fascinating as art history is, that isn't what caught my eye. What did draw my attention was the letter being used as a bookmark to a chapter about the painter and architect Raphael.

  Reading personal letters is almost as bad as reading someone's diary, but us muck-raking journalists sometimes have to do these things for the benefit of society. So it was with some small amount of guilt, but a greater feeling of duty, that I unfolded the letter and began to read it.

  Within seconds, I was shaking my head.

  "Unbelievable."

  Murphy had written a letter to the captain—note, it wasn't to the cruise director, or the head of food service, but to the actual captain of the ship—requesting that a chef named Greg Washington be fired. This reminded me of something Cece mentioned; when she first told me about the murder, not realizing that it was me who discovered the body, she had been under the impression that Murphy had been poisoned. And that it was one of the chefs who had done it.

  In the letter, Murphy complained about the chef's rudeness (he called him 'friend' on one occasion and 'man' on another), his lack of hygiene (a lock of hair poked out under his chef's hat one afternoon—who knows what disaster could have unfolded if one of those hairs was loose?), and the fact that the mushrooms in an omelet he’d prepared had been cooked in olive oil instead of butter. But the biggest complaint was saved until last:

  Furthermore, although I am hesitant to jump headfirst into rash accusations, I believe that Greg Washington is trying to poison me. On more than one occasion, I have tasted a little too much salt—surely there can be no better explanation than that he is using the salt to cover up some variety of poison? This may sound rash, but after the eighth time, I was forced to correct Washington's mistakes during a breakfast service he gave me a look that could only be described as 'murderous.' It's clear to me that this man, rather than being grateful for my generously given guidance, is in fact now after my very life.

  I urge you, in the very strongest way, to dismiss Washington from the ship at the earliest opportunity. Lives are at stake!

  I held the letter for some time, staring at it. Murphy came across—as I had heard from just about everyone—as a rude, ungrateful, boorish prig. But if he really thought Washington was trying to poison him...

  Maybe the cook had resorted to other, faster means?

  I carefully used my shirt to rub any of my fingerprints from the letter and placed it back in the book, which I also wiped down.

  This was the best information I had yet. I was feeling optimistic about what else I might find in the room when disaster struck.

  BEEP.

  WHIRR.

  CLICK.

  The door to the stateroom unlocked itself. Someone else was coming in.

  Chapter 12

  Sprinting, I ran across the room to get out of the line of sight of the door and ended up in the master bedroom.

  I could hear footsteps making their way across the floor of the room and the rustle of clothing. I whipped my head around, looking for somewhere to hide.

  I couldn't get under the bed. It had a box spring that went down almost to the floor itself. There was a large closet, but I didn't want to risk opening and closing its door—it'd definitely make a noise.

  Out of options, I fled across the room and into the en suite bathroom.

  Lacking a laundry hamper big enough to squeeze into, there was only one place to hide: the bathtub.

  I yanked off my heels, so they wouldn't click on the porcelain of the tub, and hopped inside as nimbly and quietly as I could. Holding my breath, I held my shoes with one hand and ever so gently moved the shower curtain down the rail to hide me from view.

  I did it!

  With my breathing so shallow I worried I was going to faint, I listened as intently as I could.

  They were still there.

  Whoever it was, they were walking around the main part of the cabin. Was it someone from security investigating the scene? Or was it the murderer returning to remove any incriminating evidence?

  I was half tempted to sneak out of the tub again and see if I could get a peek at who it was. But that was the stupid half of my brain, and luckily the more sensible half won out. Instead, I just stood there, sniffing the scent of potpourri from the container on the bathroom counter and listening to the intruder as the rustled about.

  For what must’ve been a hundred years, I stood motionless and silent in the bathtub, while the intruder did whatever it was they were doing. They weren't noisy, but they definitely lifted things up and put them down, and moved things around.

  I wondered whether they were wearing gloves and rather hoped they weren’t, just in case I hadn't removed my own fingerprints as well as I thought I had. While I'd been wiping down the art history book, the door had started to open, so there was a chance I might have missed a print or two there.

  Finally, finally the intruder left. But I didn't. I stood stock still in the bathtub for another five minutes or so, listening intently in case I’d misjudged what I thought I had heard.

  Eventually, my fear and nervousness turned to boredom. That's when I knew it was time to leave. I scrambled out of the tub, put my shoes back on, checked myself in the mirror, and decided I'd had enough sneaking around for now.

  Peering around the doorframes to confirm I was actually alone in the suite before entering the bedroom, and the main living room, I made my way back to the main cabin door. A quick glance revealed to me that the intruder seemed to have been as careful as I’d been. Nothing seemed obviously out of place, and I didn’t want to risk any more time in the cabin.

  Before exiting, I put my eye up against the peephole to check whether there was anyone on the other side.

  No one.

  Quiet as a 5'8" mouse, I opened the door, slipped outside, and pulled it closed behind me as soundlessly as I could. Putting a genuine smile on my face—I was proud of my investigative journalism skills—I tugged at my uniform to make sure everything was shipshape, and made my way down the hallway as if I owned the place.

  Early that evening, I found Cece in the crew bar in the bowels of the ship. When no one was looking, I slipped her keycard
back to her and sat down on the stool next to her.

  "Any luck?"

  "Yep," I said with a grin.

  Cece lowered her gaze at me, an expression of impressed surprise on her lips. "Yeah?"

  "You were right about him and the chefs. Well, Greg Washington. There was a letter in his cabin to the captain asking for Greg to be fired."

  "Wow. What a—"

  "—AND," I interrupted, not yet finished, "one of the reasons he gave is because he thought Greg was trying to poison him!"

  "Well, isn't that something?" she said with a whistle. "Of course, that doesn't necessarily help you."

  "Sure it does," I said with a frown.

  "But Murphy's head was bashed in with a lamp. Do you think that's what he meant? Lamp poisoning? Externally administered?"

  I snickered. "Well, maybe he was just wrong about that part. Or maybe Washington thought the poison would take too long and chose to do something a little more immediate."

  Cece drummed her fingers on the counter. "Maybe. I'm not sure Greg is really the murdering type though—at least, not ‘smashing someone's head in with a lamp’ murderous."

  "No?" I said, trying to hide my disappointment. I had kind of been hoping that he had a shady reputation.

  "You should meet him." She was serious.

  "But he might be violent!"

  "Maybe," she said with a nonchalant shrug. "But he'll be in the main staff mess hall after dinner service tonight. He always is. Even if he is violent, he's not going to whack you in front of everyone, is he?"

  Her logic was sound, but the casual way she was telling me he probably wouldn't murder me in front of a crowd was disconcerting.

  "Okay. I'll be here. Can you point him out to me?"

  She clapped me on the shoulder. "Yep. I'll be here too. Don't worry."

  Pleased but nervous, I left Cece alone and went back to my cabin to write a couple of mini-articles about shipboard life. I was going to do one about the most scenic spot for a cocktail, and another about 'hidden spots' you might not know about on the ship.