by Nic Saint
Yikes.
“What’s happening, Max?” asked Dooley once I’d retracted my head again.
“Um… looks like David and Laura are in love,” I said. “And they’re not afraid to show it.” At least where Mrs. Biles wouldn’t see it. Good thing these cruise ships consist of many nooks and crannies—perfect to conduct these illegitimate love affairs.
“But… isn’t David Laura’s dad?”
“Technically… not, I would say. He’s married to her mother but he’s not her dad.”
“So who is her dad?”
“Well, the guy who fell off a yacht in the South of France and drowned, remember?”
“Oh, of course. Jason Bourne.”
Just then, Salvatore decided to join us. The teacup Maltese had gone for a little walk on his own and now returned. And as he came tripping up to us, he said, “So now you know.”
“Now we know what?” I asked, feigning ignorance.
“Don’t offend my intelligence, Max. Now you know that Laura and David are an item.”
“Why didn’t you tell us before?”
“Not my place to tell. They’re in love, but they can’t be together. It’s all very sad.”
“But they are together,” said Dooley. “They’re together right now.”
“Yeah, but not really. They can’t be together the way your Odelia and Chase are together.”
“But why not?”
“Because David is married to Laura’s mom, that’s why.”
“Oh, right,” said Dooley. “It’s all very complicated, isn’t it?”
“Look, if they really want to be together, all they need to do is break the news to Mrs. Biles,” I said. “I’m sure she’ll understand.”
“That’s what you think,” said Salvatore, shaking his head. “Bertha will go ballistic. The woman is crazy about her husband, and if she finds out he’s been cheating on her with her own daughter?”
“She’ll blow her top,” I supplied. “Yeah, I guess you’re probably right.”
“Of course I’m right.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“Since the day Bertha and David got married. I walk into the room where they store the wedding presents and saw them at it.”
“Bertha and David?”
“Laura and David. They looked more in love than any couple I’ve ever seen, including Bertha and David before he met the daughter.”
“He hadn’t met Laura before the wedding?”
“Nope. Laura lived in San Francisco at the time, and David and Bertha’s affair was one of those whirlwind romances. Laura only got to know the groom at the wedding.”
“Looks like she got to know him pretty well,” I said as we listened to more kissing sounds.
Salvatore heaved a sigh. “So sad.”
“I still think they should tell Bertha. It’s not fair, all this sneaking around behind her back.”
“Laura is afraid that if they tell her she’ll never talk to them again.”
“Which is entirely possible. Bertha lost her first husband, and now this. She’ll never forgive them.”
“But they can’t go on like this, Salvatore!” Dooley cried. “They just can’t!”
“And why not? They’ll keep seeing each other in secret, and then one day, hopefully in a distant future, when Bertha is no longer with us, they’ll make it official—after respecting the proper mourning period, of course.”
“But that could be years and years and years!”
“I know. But that’s the way it is.”
“This is almost like General Hospital,” said Dooley as he darted a quick glance at the unhappy couple. “They’re still kissing,” he announced excitedly. Then his eyes went wide. “They’re going to get caught! What if one of the other passengers sees them and tells Bertha?”
“Constantly having to live like this,” said Salvatore, shaking his head. “Can you imagine? Always having to hide and being afraid their secret will be discovered.”
“How horrible,” said Dooley, but his eyes were shining, and I knew that the moment he talked to Gran he would tell her all about it.
16
We’d returned to our cabin and entered to find… Ruby Kettering with her nose stuck in the closet, keenly fingering one of Odelia’s nicer blouses.
“Oh, hi,” said the girl, and color immediately crept up her neck, then her face, then all the way to the roots of her hair.
“In spite of everything she seems to be able to feel regret,” Dooley rightly observed. “Which means she’s not a psychopath, Max. Because psychopaths can’t feel remorse, or empathy for their victims. I saw that on the Discovery Channel once.”
“Good to know,” I said, as I gave the young woman a very hard look. Not that this had the slightest effect on her, as her gaze was fixed on Odelia, and she now swallowed with some difficulty. I saw that on her wrist she had on one of Odelia’s bracelets, and if I wasn’t mistaken I could even see she’d put one of Odelia’s hairpins in her hair.
“Ruby,” said Odelia finally. “I think you and I need to have a talk.”
“But… I just came in here to tidy up your cabin,” said the girl. “I, um, I figured you were so busy with the investigation you could use a helping hand. And I just happened to see your cleaner leave, and one glance told me she hadn’t done a good job, and since you were both so nice to me before, I just figured—”
But Odelia held up her hand and said, with a rather hard edge to her voice, “Save it.”
“But—”
“Enough, all right? Enough with the lies and the excuses. Come on. Let’s go.”
“Let’s go? Where?” asked the girl, a hunted look having come into her eyes.
“Out,” said Odelia, and grabbed the girl’s wrist and yanked her along in the direction of the balcony.
“You’re not going to throw me overboard, are you?!” said Ruby. “I can’t swim!”
“I saw you in the pool yesterday and you were doing just fine.”
“I’m—I’m allergic to saltwater!”
“I’m not going to throw you overboard, you silly girl.” She opened the balcony door and stepped out, taking Ruby along.
Almost automatically, Dooley and I followed. I guess by now we’re more or less trained to always go where things are happening, to observe and report. It’s like second nature. Then again, maybe spying on humans is second nature to all cats.
“Take a seat,” Odelia snapped as she indicated a chair. Ruby did as she was told, then removed the bracelet and the hairpin and placed them on the table. “I just wanted to see how they would look on me. You have such a great style.”
“Thanks,” said Odelia curtly. “Now tell me, Ruby. Why do you keep putting yourself in this position? In other words, why do you keep stealing stuff? And don’t give me some lame-ass excuse. I want you to tell me the truth, all right?”
“All right,” said the girl, much sobered. “Um, well, I guess it all started when my mom and dad decided to get a divorce.”
“A divorce? What are you talking about?”
“Mom and Dad are divorced,” said Ruby in a small voice as she massaged her wrist. “They got divorced when I was thirteen, but they went through one of those amicable divorces, and they’ve kept going on vacations with me, and they never fight in front of me, which makes it all just a little bit worse, I guess.”
“So your mom and dad are divorced but they still sleep in the same bed?”
“Mom sleeps in the bed and Dad sleeps on the couch. They’ve tried to make things as painless for me as possible, which somehow has made it more painful. The harder they try, the worse I feel. They try so hard to be civil to each other that it’s created this totally weird atmosphere around the house.”
“They still live together?” asked Odelia.
“No, Dad moved out and lives in an apartment down the road. But he drops by all the time, and I spend every other weekend with him, and sometimes we all spend the weekend together.” She sa
gged a little. “I just want to shake them, you know, and tell them to just scream and shout at each other. It’s obvious that they want to, but they keep this strained politeness going, probably because they talked to some psychologist who told them they needed to do things this way for my sake.”
“And when did you start stealing stuff?”
“Three months after the divorce was final. I don’t know. I guess I wasn’t feeling well, and I saw this cool top that I just had to have, and I knew Mom didn’t have the money to buy it, and I didn’t want to ask my dad, since he had enough on his plate already, so I just took it. And of course I was busted by the store detective. And then the strangest thing happened: Mom and Dad both showed up, and for once they were almost like a real couple again, you know. They were shouting. Not at each other, but at me, but still, it felt more real than this crazy kind of half-life we’ve been living. It felt good, and so I guess I did it again. In fact every time things aren’t going so well, and I have a feeling I’m living with two zombies instead of two human beings, I steal stuff and for a moment things are all right again. It just makes me feel… I don’t know. Alive, I guess.”
“I understand,” said Odelia, and I could see that she felt sorry for the girl, in spite of the fact that she’d just tried to steal some of her favorite stuff. “So don’t you think there’s some other way you can make your parents act more like humans and not like zombies?”
“I don’t know. If there is, I haven’t found it yet.”
“Maybe you could try talking to them?”
“Talking to them?” said Ruby, as if the concept of talking to her folks was alien to her.
“Yeah, you know, telling them some of the stuff you just told me?”
“I don’t know…” said the girl dubiously. “It just might make things worse.”
“Or it could make things better.” Odelia placed a hand on the girl’s arm. “I think your parents have no idea what’s going on, or what they’re doing wrong, and as long as you don’t tell them, they will never know. And you can’t really go on like this now can you? One of these days you’ll find yourself in some real trouble—trouble your mom and dad won’t be able to get you out of.”
“You mean like with this rapper?”
I almost gasped at this, and I could see Odelia was taken aback, too. “You mean… you killed him?” she said immediately.
The girl laughed. “Of course I didn’t kill him. I would never do a stupid thing like that. No, I mean, being a suspect, just because I’ve stolen things before.”
“Yeah, you’re getting quite a reputation, Ruby, and if you’re not careful this thing could haunt you for the rest of your life. It could impact your whole future. The colleges that won’t accept you, the job interviews you don’t get invited for—everything.”
“I know,” said Ruby quietly as she chewed a fingernail. “Don’t think I haven’t thought about that, Miss Poole. Or is it Mrs. Kingsley?”
Odelia smiled. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“It’s just that… I don’t know how to stop.”
“Talk to your parents. Can you do that for me? Just give it a try.”
The girl shrugged. “All right. If you think it’ll make a difference.”
“I’m sure it will. Trust me.”
17
The rest of the day passed by more or less uneventfully, insofar as one can pass a day in a cabin next to which a rapper has recently been murdered and divested of a diamond stuck to his forehead. Lucky for me the idea of implanting diamonds or other jewelry had never occurred to Odelia, or any other member of her family. Then again, what is the world coming to, if rappers can’t even have twenty-million-dollar diamonds inserted into their visage without fearing for their physical integrity? A sad state of affairs, I must say.
And so it was that we enjoyed a peaceful slumber while our humans checked out a town called Kingstown in a country named Saint Vincent, or at least I think that’s what it was called. Frankly speaking I had little interest in the places the Queen of the Seas was visiting on this ten-day voyage. After a while the names of all of those places start to blur together. Especially since I had absolutely no intention of visiting even a single one.
You may call me a cultural barbarian, or a lazybones, but cats are generally not keen on daring feats of architecture erected many years before, or even enjoying a leisurely time at some street café or dining at a five-star restaurant to sample the local cuisine. The only cuisine I’m fond of sampling is my usual dose of kibble and my favorite pouch of wet food. So maybe I’m a philistine, but these simple joys of life are what drive me.
Dooley felt exactly the same way, for he hadn’t budged from the couch he’d fallen asleep on the moment Odelia and Chase left for their trip into town, and neither had I.
The sun had risen, and was about to set on a new day when finally there was a commotion in the corridor and the door swung open and Mr. and Mrs. Kingsley walked in. They were both laden with shopping bags, presumably filled with gifts and mementos to be doled out once we returned to Hampton Cove, and both looked happy and relaxed.
“Max,” said Odelia the moment she took a seat on the couch and in doing so rudely awakened Dooley, causing the latter to stretch and yawn. “You really missed something. Kingstown is absolutely gorgeous. The beautiful colors of the houses! The lush botanic gardens! Dark View Falls! The kindness of the people! The taste of the seafood!”
“That’s great,” I said without much enthusiasm. Neither the color of the houses, the kindness of the local populace or even the taste of seafood could have impelled me to spend the whole day traipsing about and getting sore paws. “So what did you buy us?”
“Um…” She gave me a look of slight embarrassment.
“I thought as much,” I said, and replaced my head on my paws for more of that pleasing slumber I’d engaged in while she and Chase wore out their shoe leather.
“I bought a hat,” she said, and placed a large straw specimen on top of me. I gave her a look of irritation which totally missed its mark because the hat obscured me from view. She then picked it up again and placed it on her own head. “What do you think?”
“Suits you,” I said, even though I usually refrain from making any fashion advice. In my experience fashion advice has a tendency to come back and haunt you when some other individual begs to differ and the recipient of my advice turns their ire on me.
“Better get ready, babe,” said Chase. “We don’t want to be late for the show tonight.”
“Show? What show?” I asked, wondering what else I’d missed.
“Oh, some local singer is coming on board with her band,” said Odelia. “She’s supposed to be really good.”
“Wasn’t Lil Thug supposed to play tonight?” I asked, a little surprised that one day spent in Kingstown had made my humans forget all about the murder that had taken place next door. It just seemed a little callous, to be honest.
“Yeah, poor Lil Thug. He’ll be sorely missed. But at least we know who killed him.”
“We do?” I asked, greatly surprised.
“Oh, didn’t I tell you? Yeah, they caught the killer.”
“They did? Who is it?” I asked, sitting up a little straighter now.
“It was the assistant,” said Odelia as she dove back into her shopping bag and started extricating the different items she’d bought. Mostly clothes, I saw, and not a sign of cat food. “Yeah, she was trying to sell some of Lil Thug’s personal items to different shops. Local police were alerted by a suspicious shopkeeper and they arrested her.”
“But… I didn’t know Lil Thug even had an assistant,” I said, much astonished by this unexpected denouement.
“Well, he had, and turns out she’d paid a visit to her client last night, shortly after dinner. She must have killed him then, and stolen the diamond and some other stuff.”
“But I thought the CCTV camera had picked up that no one had come or gone?”
“It hadn’t. This was befo
re Garth’s initial time frame. It now looks as though the ship’s doctor established the time of death too narrowly. He thought Lil Thug died sometime after midnight, but it must have been much earlier, as the assistant was caught on camera leaving around eight. So she must have killed him then.”
“Midnight or eight is a big difference, Odelia,” I pointed out. “Are you sure the assistant did it?”
“She was caught selling off personal items belonging to her client,” said Odelia with a shrug.
“What personal items?”
“Um… a watch, jewelry, antique snuff boxes. Apparently Lil Thug was a collector.”
“That doesn’t mean she killed him. She could have had them in her cabin for safekeeping. What did she say when they questioned her?”
“I don’t know, Max. We only talked to Garth briefly when we arrived. He’s very happy that it’s over.”
She didn’t seem all that interested in the case. Too busy showcasing her Kingstown shopping haul to Chase, who underwent the procedure with an indulgent smile.
“So did they find the diamond?” I finally asked.
“Not yet, but it’s only a matter of time before they do,” she said, a little distractedly. “She must have sold it before the police caught up with her.”
“Okay,” I said dubiously.
This type of shoddy police work didn’t sit well with me, but obviously Odelia and Chase were happy to finally be rid of the case, so they could return to the enjoyment of their honeymoon. And who could blame them? No newly married couple likes to spend their entire trip on the hunt for a murderer or cooped up in a small office with the ship’s security guy interviewing witnesses. They get plenty of that kind of stuff at home.
So I decided not to pursue the matter. If Odelia was satisfied that the rapper’s assistant had done the deed, then so was I. Besides, the official investigation had only just gotten started. Once the proper authorities took over, I was sure they’d be dotting those I’s and crossing the t’s like nobody’s business.
Dooley, dozing happily, now opened his eyes. “What’s going on, Max?” he asked.