Cruise Ship Cozy Mysteries 01 - Killer Cruise

by A. R. Winters

  “Wow. I’d fall off the barstool if I drank that much,” I said.

  “I’ll remember to look out to catch you when you’re six drinks deep, then,” he said.

  I gave him a funny look.

  “I mean, if we ever end up sitting at a bar,” he said somewhat awkwardly.

  “Gee, thanks,” I said. “If I ever do embarrass myself so horrifically, I’m glad to know that you’d stop me from injuring myself too badly.”

  At around 11 p.m., Janice stood up shakily, and after a couple of visits to the walls either side of the door, she left the bar.

  “Now what?”

  “Just a moment,” he said, working his magic at the computer.

  “And, there.” He made a final click of his mouse to expand a new video feed.

  We were watching a view of the pretty fountain in the atrium outside the Dive Bar, and after a couple of seconds, Janice stumbled into view. She lurched forward, almost falling, and then caught herself with a quick series of steps to maintain her balance. She made it forward until she crashed into the low wall around the fountain, and sat down on it. She glanced around her as if to see if anyone had noticed. They had. Several other guests could be seen nudging each other and nodding their heads in her direction, though no one actually went and spoke to her.

  “She doesn’t look like she’s in a state to murder anyone, does she?” I could hear the disapproval in his voice. Ethan Lee was a stickler for the rules, and clearly that included social rules such as not getting too drunk as well as the standard laws and official workplace rules.

  “No, she doesn’t,” I said with a frown. “Maybe she sobers up fast though.”

  “Perhaps.”

  We fast forwarded through her sitting on the wall, until she finally got to her feet again, and made stately progress across the atrium, each and every one of her steps slow and careful.

  Just as she reached the other side, a group of about thirty middle-aged women appeared from the casino.

  “Uh-oh. That’s half of the bridge club,” he said with a frown.

  “Bridge club?”

  He nodded. “Didn’t you meet them yet? There’s a bridge club from Idaho—thirty married couples. The women were on a girls night out. The men were bowling.”

  “Neat. I’ll have to write about them.”

  “Yep. That’ll probably be an interesting feature. But look here. She’s caught up with them—like a beach ball in a tsunami.”

  I couldn’t see her anymore. Amongst the large crowd of late-middle-aged women, she blended in and then faded away. We tracked the whole mob of them with the next pair of cameras down some hallways, but she seemed to have disappeared by the time they got to the elevator hall.

  “What happened to her?” I asked.

  “No idea. Perhaps she sat down somewhere out of view of the cameras.”

  I tapped my hands on my knees. “I’m surprised she even made it back to her cabin at all, but I’m not sure I want to write off her involvement just yet.”

  “Yep. She really doesn’t look like she could lift up a heavy lamp and wallop someone with it. But you never know—perhaps with a surge of adrenaline?”

  “Yeah... maybe.”

  We couldn’t discount the possibility of Janice having killed her husband, but her alibi of being drunk as a lord at Christmas certainly held up. And her subsequent behavior had seemed to support it. I myself had seen her starting her daily cocktail regime before lunchtime. After watching the security feed, I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that she spent a considerable portion of that evening sleeping in some quiet corner before waking up again and stumbling back to her cabin.

  “Anything else you think we should look at?”

  At that moment, the flip switched and the little lightbulb in my head burst to life. Something so obvious I felt like a fool for not having said it earlier—and Ethan even more of a fool for not having done it already.

  “What about the camera outside Murphy’s room?”

  He chuckled and shook his head. I glared at him, clearly telegraphing his insult, and the chuckling stopped.

  “Hey, now. It’s a good idea, but we don’t have cameras in the VIP hallways.”

  “Why not?” I asked, annoyed.

  “Our VIPs often guard their privacy very tightly. And there was an incident a few years back—you mustn’t mention this to anyone—but we had a rather well-known politician on board, and during the evening he had a visitor. A young lady. This was caught on the hallway cameras, when we had them, and unfortunately a security officer decided it would be a ripe opportunity to blackmail the politician.”

  I stared incredulous. “So they yanked all the cameras?”

  Ethan nodded. “It turned out that the politician was very friendly with the owner of Swan Cruiselines. The security officer was fired and not paid a penny. Since we had evidence of his clumsy blackmail attempt, he would have been prosecuted and imprisoned for years, had the crime been reported. But the politician didn’t want the publicity, obviously. Instead, the officer was dismissed, the politician received substantial compensation from Swan—and the cameras in the VIP hallways were all removed.”

  I was shaking my head to myself. “Who was the politician?”

  Ethan grinned at me and shook his head. “If I told you I’d have to—“

  “—kill me?” I interrupted with a laugh.

  “— I was going to say fire myself.”

  We both chuckled.

  “But I can tell you it’s someone you would have heard of, a pretty big cheese. Now promise you’ll never ask me who it was again.”

  I glared at him. “But I don’t want to promise that! I want to know who it was!”

  He shook his head at me. “Promise.”

  With a loud sigh of annoyance, I nodded my agreement to his ridiculous terms. “Okay. I promise not to ask who the cheating politician was.”

  “Good.”

  “Though when I write my little piece about you, I am going to mention how annoying you are.”

  He patted me on the knee and laughed. “Don’t worry. Everyone knows that already.”

  I stood up. “You may be done for the day, but I’m not. I’ve got to go to the Japanese restaurant and take a picture of the tuna.”

  “I’ve got fish to fry too,” he said with a grin.

  “It’s raw, not fried.”

  He gave me a playful push on the shoulder. “Get out of here.”

  So I did.

  Chapter 25

  I had a stupid grin on my face for almost my entire walk back to my cabin. I planned to drop by and dump my computer, so I couldn’t forget the darn thing again, before going to the confusingly named Chez Tokyo.

  I used my keycard to unlock my door, and I was actually humming as I kicked open the door and walked inside.

  Then I paused, tilting my head to the side in mild consternation.

  On the desk attached to the wall was my Welcome New Employee folder, which I’d placed there after that first meeting and not touched again since. The thing was—I had placed it right-side up, pushed against the wall, with the left-hand edge running along the edge of the desk. But now, it was at an angle, as if I had just tossed it there.

  “Maybe the ship’s movement...” I muttered.

  Then a chill ran down my spine.

  The folder was also upside down.

  If the ship had moved it a few inches, it wouldn’t have flipped it over. A movement that violent would have caused us to lose several dozen passengers at the same time and no doubt been an international incident. This folder had been moved by a person, not by the ship.

  “Sam?” I called out, tentatively.

  I had a brief moment of hope that my friend was back. But then, I realized that I’d just left her jailor in his office. He would have mentioned if she’d been released.

  My eyes flicked around the room nervously. The good thing about having a tiny cabin was that there was basically nowhere to hide.

&n
bsp; Making sure my door was still wide open so people could hear my screams if worse came to worst, I crouched down and peered under our steel-framed bunk beds to see if there was anyone hiding there. They weren’t—and nor could anyone. The space under the bunks was occupied by empty suitcases.

  With our clothing inside, the closet was way too small to hide a person, but I checked anyway. There were two doors on the closet, with one side for me and one for Sam. I gently pulled them open and sure enough, just as I recalled, there was no room for anyone apart from the wriggliest of children to hide.

  That left our tiny bathroom. Standing as far back as I could, I pushed the handle down and then kicked the door open, jumping backward as I did so in case someone burst out.

  They didn’t.

  Inside, I could see the entire room, including behind the door thanks to the mirror above the sink, and it was devoid of any person.

  If there had been someone here, they weren’t now. Not anymore.

  But someone had been there. I was absolutely certain.

  I looked around the room again, this time not looking for people, but for any further evidence of an intruder.

  My bed looked suspicious. My pillow was leaning against the wall, but I was pretty sure that it hadn’t been when I left. I only put it against the wall to lean on when sitting on the bed, but I hadn’t done that yet today; I’d left the room after I got up and this was the first time I’d been back. Furthermore, my bedcovers looked to be more wrinkled than I’d left them that morning.

  Everything felt just a little off. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, knowing that a stranger has been in your space, in your home, when you weren’t there. And couldn’t they come back? If they’d been there once, why not again?

  With my computer, I logged on to the staff website and found the phone directory. When I’d located Ethan Lee’s number, I punched it into the ‘landline’ phone. While it was ringing, I wondered whether it should perhaps be called a sea-line phone, or a ship-line phone. Then I shook my head, annoyed at my own stupidity. What was I doing, making puns like that when I’d had an intruder?

  “Hello?”

  Just the one word gave me a sense of welcome relief, his deep, rich voice imbuing me with confidence.

  “Hi. It’s probably nothing but... I think someone broke into my room.”

  “Was something stolen? Shall I send my guys to take a report?

  “No, no, not like that. I mean, I think someone came in my room looking for something. I don’t think anything’s missing, but things have been moved around a bit.”

  “Things? What things?”

  “Well, I had a brochure on my desk, and I think it was moved.” I suddenly realized what I must sound like. My brochure was moved an inch? Oh cornstalks, I was sounding like an idiot.

  “Moved? Anything else?” He didn’t sound annoyed or amused. He sounded genuinely concerned.

  “I think my bed was messed with—the pillow was moved, the sheets more crumpled. I know it sounds like nothing, but I’m sure of it. I’m sure someone was in my room.”

  There was a moment’s silence. “Does anyone else have access?”

  “Umm. You locked up the other person with access, remember?”

  “I meant apart from her. So you’re sure it was no one you know?”

  “Well I’m pretty sure. I... I’ll check.”

  I remembered Cece and her open-any-door keycard. Maybe she had let herself in for an innocent reason. It didn’t seem likely.

  “I’m going to come there. Wait for me.”

  I was going to protest that there was no need, but he’d already hung up.

  Not wanting to embarrass myself in case it had actually been Cece, I quickly called her room number.

  “Yo, who dis?”

  “Hey, it’s Adrienne. Quick question, did you drop by my room earlier?”

  “Nope. You missing me?”

  I giggled. “Sure. Sorry, I heard someone came by my room is all. I’ll tell you about it later.”

  “Cool. Dinner at seven?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  I hung up. I didn’t want to tell Cece what had happened just yet, not with Ethan already on his way down.

  I sat on the edge of my bed, hands on my knees, trying to focus my thoughts and stave off the rising panic.

  Who could it have been?

  What did it mean?

  I managed to get myself more and more worked up, until finally, he arrived.

  “Adrienne?” he called from outside.

  I rose to my feet and let him in.

  Chapter 26

  A s soon as the door was open, Ethan had his hands on both of my shoulders.

  “Are you okay?”

  I nodded, grateful for his presence, for the fact that he had believed me despite my ‘evidence’ being so flimsy.

  “I’m fine,” I said and had to stop myself sniffing. I wasn’t going to cry. I mustn’t, or so I told myself.

  “Show me what’s happened.” He was already looking around the room, scanning everything with an analytical gaze.

  “Okay, but you’re going to think it’s stupid.”

  He shook his head. “No, Adrienne, I’m not. I’m not going to think it’s stupid. You believe something has happened, and if you believe it, that’s good enough for me.”

  The corners of my mouth curled up. It felt good to be taken seriously.

  “You’re going to have to trust me on this, but do you see the brochure on the desk?”

  “Yep.”

  “It’s been turned over. It was the right way up, and now it’s upside down. Also, it’s shifted from its position on the edge of the desk.”

  “And you’re certain you didn’t bump it on your way out this morning? Perhaps with a bag or something?”

  I shook my head. “Certain. Even if I had, it wouldn’t have flipped over entirely.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Anything else?”

  I pointed out the position of the pillow, but couldn’t really show him how the sheets had been crumpled since I had been sitting on the bed.

  “It certainly seems like someone has been in your room, without your permission.”

  I nodded. Before he’d arrived, I’d been worried he wouldn’t believe me, or he be dismissive due to the lack of compelling evidence. But he believed me.

  “Adrienne, you need to stop investigating this murder. It’s too dangerous. Do you understand?”

  Suddenly I wished he hadn’t believed me. If I’d known he was going to pull this, I wouldn’t have told him about it in the first place.

  I shook my head at him. “No way. We’re obviously getting close.”

  “Someone broke into your room, Adrienne. Speaking of which, would you like me to move you to another?”

  I didn’t want to change rooms. This room was mine and Sam’s, and if I moved, then it would be to a room that had no connection to Sam. Stupid as it sounds, it felt like I would be abandoning her all over again.

  “No. If they can get into this room, they can get into any room, right?”

  “I suppose so. But Adrienne, I’m serious about you halting your investigation. You can’t continue. Not now. I can’t risk it. By all rights, I shouldn’t have gotten you involved in the first place but, I did, and now I’m going to have to ask you to stop. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is.”

  His demeanor was as firm as the steel door to the cabin and I knew he wasn’t going to back down. The thing about people like Ethan Lee is they’re stubborn, and if they’ve got their mind fixed on something, they’re not going to change it.

  I know it because I’m the same way. If he was going to be adamant about me not continuing to investigate, I was going to be adamant about keeping on. But I couldn’t tell him that. When an immovable object meets an unstoppable 5’8” girl, the unstoppable girl gets crushed. So she has to sidestep him.

  “I understand where you’re coming from,” I said, nodding contritely. “Maybe things are getting dan
gerous.”

  Sweet, I congratulated myself. Nicely dodged. No outright promise to stop my investigation.

  “What I’m going to do is find out who came into your room.”

  “Oh? How’s that?”

  “The logs, remember? Every time a keycard is used, it’s logged. I’ll find out who it was—or at least whose card was used—to break into your room. I’ll let you know what I find out first thing in the morning. Okay?”

  “Okay. I appreciate it.”

  “And you’re sure you’re okay in this room? Remember, the door has a deadbolt. If you lock it, no one will be able to get in from outside, keycard or not.”

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine. I’ll keep it locked.”

  “Good. And if you think you’re in any danger, please, call me or the security office right away. I want to know if anyone even looks at you funny. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  I bade him goodnight, and then went and splashed some water on my face.

  Despite what I had said to Ethan, I didn’t want to spend the night in my cabin. I grabbed my pillow and blanket. I was going to take them to Cece’s room before dinner, and assuming she agreed, I was going to crash there.

  When I arrived at Cece’s cabin and told her why I was carrying my sleeping accoutrements, she jabbed her thumb toward the top bunk.

  “Thanks, Adrienne,” she said.

  “Thanks?” I was confused. I was meant to be thanking her, but she’d preempted me already.

  “Sure. You’re basically inviting a murderer to come to my cabin. That’ll be awesome. I’ve never met a murderer before.”

  I giggled. “Nah, they won’t know I’m here.”

  “Shame. Maybe you could Tweet it out? I could do with some more excitement in my life.”

  I just shook my head at her. I envied her ability to make light of basically anything. I bet if there were a nuclear apocalypse, she’d spend the last three minutes before impact making wisecracks about toasting marshmallows or needing to put on some SPF 5000 sunscreen.

  “That’s why you called me earlier, huh? You were checking I didn’t use my magic card to get into your room?”