Killer Cruise

by A. R. Winters

  “After I saw you, I went to the VIP section to interview a passenger, and now I’m on my way to check out some of the kids activities,” I said.

  “Good. And you didn’t record the customer complaining about anything, did you?”

  I shook my head emphatically. “Nope, he didn’t have a single bad word to say about the ship. Not a thing!”

  She beamed at me. “That’s exactly what I want to hear, do you see?”

  I nodded back. “Got to go, the hand-painting activity is going to end soon and I want to get some shots of the kids completely covered in paint.”

  “Good! Don’t let me keep you!”

  Muttering under my breath, I hurried away from her, walking a third of the way around the ship before ducking back inside.

  I needed to keep busy to stop my head from shouting, ‘Hey, let’s think about that dead body that your friend might’ve but almost certainly didn’t kill!’ so I spent the next four hours manically running from one place to the next, taking pictures of everything.

  Paint-covered children, beautiful shots of the international buffet just before the non-vips were allowed to ravage it, a beaming masseuse next to her table in the beauty parlor, a picture of an elderly couple playing squash who I didn’t hang around to watch—I was worried I might end up next to another dead body if they kept exerting themselves—and a shot of a cheerful sushi chef that I deleted after I saw how he was holding the knife.

  When I had nearly thirty pictures ready to go, I loaded up an app that would allow me to drip-feed my social media posts throughout the day. Sylvia would get her hourly posts, but I didn’t need to be sitting there eighteen hours a day posting them.

  One reason I’d been working so hard at my job—apart from it literally being my job—was to take my mind off the body. The death. The murder. But it hadn’t worked, not really. I had one persistent, nagging thought in the back of my mind all day: Sam. And what did she know?

  I may have promised the stern but alarmingly attractive first officer that I wouldn’t mention it to anyone, and I did, kind of, intend to follow through with my promise, but I needed to talk to Sam.

  When I think about talking to ‘other people,’ I don’t tend to include Sam in that category. She’s not other people—she’s Sam, my best friend. Back in Nebraska, we were basically the same person. A matching set, at the very least. People would ask ‘Where are Sam and Adrienne?’, or ‘What are Sam and Adrienne doing tonight?’ She wasn’t other people; she was like another part of me.

  And anyway, I wasn’t necessarily going to tell her everything, or so I lied to myself. Maybe I could casually slip in a question, again, about what had happened the night before. And this time, I wouldn’t take dismissal as an acceptable answer.

  With all my social media posts ready to send themselves out—#Cruisin247 #NonStopFun #ShipLife #NOLAstyle—I could afford a bit of me time.

  Although Sam’s role would have her working in several different locations throughout the ship, I knew she was based at one of the cruise stations in non-vip class. When I arrived there, however, I didn’t find Sam. At least, not immediately. This wasn’t a surprise since she was supposed to be chatting it up with customers, not sitting around drinking coffee all day. What I did find, however, which was almost as nice, was Cece. She was no Sam, but already I could tell she was going to be a great friend.

  “Hey! Come to see how the other half lives?”

  “We all live in the same place.”

  Cece ignored my comment and instead took me by the elbow.

  “You’ll never guess.”

  “Guess what?” I asked innocently.

  She leaned in toward me as if afraid of being overheard. “A passenger died.”

  It was supposed to be a secret! “What? How do you know?”

  “I’ve got a friend who works in security. Apparently someone called it in. It’s supposed to be kept secret though, so don’t tell anyone! The first officer is a bit of a stickler for the rules so don’t let him know you heard.”

  “Oh, wow. Dead, huh?” I was bursting to tell her that it was me who’d found the body. I was already negotiating with myself that it was okay to tell Cece since she knew about the death already.

  “And,” she said, pressing her mouth up near my ear again, her hot breath tickling, “it looks like murder.”

  “Murder?” I said.

  Cece whipped her index finger up to her lips. “Shh!”

  “What are you two whispering about?”

  We both turned to the source of the inquiry quickly, though I already knew who it was.

  “You know that guy you walked back to his room last night?” I grabbed her arm. “He’s dead. Murdered.”

  Cece punched me on my arm. “Hey! You knew already. How did you know?” Her face had scrunched up into a display of mock irritation, clearly having been proud to be sitting on such juicy gossip.

  “Mur…dered…” said Sam, drawing our attention back to her. She looked pale, and her normal bubbliness looked to have been popped.

  “Did you hear anything else about it?” I asked Cece.

  She held her palms up. “Nope. Just that he’s dead and it probably happened last night. After…” Cece’s eyes went wide.

  Sam’s face was now a pale shade of green that I had never seen back home.

  “Did anything happen last night?” I asked her.

  Sam shook her head robotically, then grabbed her stomach. “I’ve gotta go…”

  Cece and I stared on as Sam fled from our presence, scuttling away from us.

  “She’s seasick,” I explained nervously.

  “Seasick? After five years?” Cece shook her head to herself in amused disbelief.

  Except now I wasn’t so sure that was the only reason she had turned green and fled.

  Chapter 4

  I found Sam back in our little cabin. She was lying on her bunk, curled up and facing away from me.

  After she had left us earlier, I returned to exploring the ship and took some more interesting pictures—ones with pizzazz—while trying to think up some witty captions to go with them. The only problem was that I wasn’t feeling witty. My first drafts of the captions kept ending up like ‘Elderly couple hit ball against wall,’ or ‘Passengers prepare to gorge,’ or ‘Paint-covered children will soon be returned to annoy parents.’ Not exactly my A game.

  “Come on, girl. Let’s go for a walk,” I said, yanking at the hem of her blue uniform blouse.

  “No,” she said quietly.

  But I wasn’t taking no for an answer. I dug my fingers into her side where I knew she was exceptionally ticklish, and she spasmed and rolled off the bed onto the floor with an annoyed harrumph.

  She sat up against the bedframe with her arms wrapped around her knees. “I just want to lie down,” she said, but her heart wasn’t in it.

  “No, you don’t. Up, up, up, let’s go. There’s a crew breakroom that supposedly has good coffee somewhere down near the engine room. We’re going to check it out.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “And I don’t care. You’re my best friend and it’s your job to hang out with me. Come on!” I grabbed her arm and yanked her up reluctantly to her feet.

  “The stale air will do you good,” I told her.

  A weak little smile appeared on her lips. As crew members, we weren’t supposed to use the passenger facilities, so although there were several beautiful café-bars in the ship, we still had to use the amenities provided for crew members and staff. I figured I could probably get away with visiting the fancier places—I wanted to take a picture of a coffee with a sea background for the Insta-feed, Sylvia, because it’s part of my job!—but Sam definitely wouldn’t be able to.

  We took the stairs down, which were white-painted steel and rang noisily with our steps, emerging on a level with various maintenance rooms and areas that did all kinds of things I wasn’t quite sure of. I understood the engine room—it made the ship go—but the rest of it wa
s just an industrial-looking mystery.

  The middle area of this lower deck was reserved for various crew facilities. There was a small gym, a room with four ping-pong tables, one of the staff canteens, and a breakroom with a self-serve coffee machine.

  The breakroom was like most of the non-passenger areas of the ship: a brightly lit room with low ceilings, filled with utilitarian plastic and metal furnishings.

  Several orange plastic picnic benches dotted the room, and on the back wall were two large coffee machines.

  “Sit here and I’ll get us some coffee,” I said, indicating one of the fixed plastic bucket-seats on the bench closest to the door. Sam slid into the seat and rested her head on her hands.

  No one else was in the room, so I saved time by using both machines at once. Using both hands, I pressed two buttons for ‘Cafe Latte’ and immediately there was a whirring sound as the machines ground up some beans, followed by the sound of whistling steam and then trickles of strong coffee and milk started to pour down into the automatically-dispensed cups.

  “Smells good, doesn’t it?” I said cheerfully as I put the two cups down on the table.

  “Yeah,” said Sam, unconvincingly.

  “So,” I said.

  “He was found murdered, huh?” said Sam, slowly coming to life.

  “Yep. From what little I saw of him, I bet there were a few people who wanted to kill him.”

  “Yeah,” said Sam with a snort. “I bet there were. He was a horrible man.”

  I took a sip of the hot steaming coffee and was surprised to find it actually was decent. I put my hand on my friend’s wrist. “Sam, what happened last night?”

  She bit her lower lip. I knew what that meant; she didn’t want to tell me, but she was going to anyway. I’d seen her do that at least a hundred times since we were kids.

  Just as she had let her lip go and opened her mouth to speak, the door swung open again. We both turned to look.

  A ship’s officer, clad in a white uniform, had entered the room and gave it a cursory visual inspection. I watched him head toward the coffee machines—except he didn’t. Instead, he approached us.

  “Samantha?” he said to my friend.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m afraid I’m going to need to ask you to come with me.”

  We exchanged worried glances.

  “Why?” she asked.

  The man hesitated a moment before responding, as if choosing his words carefully. “We need to ask you a few questions about an interaction you had with one of our early-boarding VIP customers last night.”

  Sam took a sip of her coffee, placed it back down on the table, and then stood up with a sigh.

  “I guess I’ll see you back in the room.”

  “Follow me please, ma’am.”

  My heart heavy with guilt, I watched as Sam was led away. This was all my fault. I had told the first officer that it was my friend who’d escorted Patrick Murphy back to his room the night before.

  I drummed my fingers against the table as my apprehension grew. Something had obviously happened with Sam and Murphy the night before, but what?

  Maybe he’d fallen and hit his head and Sam left him. He would have deserved it, I thought uncharitably. But no, Sam would’ve never done something like that. She may have had a wild streak and been a bit of a rule breaker in our heyday, but she was good-hearted. She wouldn’t just leave an injured person, even if that person had somehow wronged her.

  It must have been something else.

  She definitely didn’t kill him.

  Definitely.

  I sipped the coffee.

  Right?

  Chapter 5

  I only drank half my coffee before deciding I didn’t want any more. It tasted bitter now. After tossing the cups, I went to find someone to talk to, and since my best friend had been dragged away, there were basically only two other people I knew on the ship… and I wasn’t about to talk to Sylvia, do you see?

  Cece’s cabin was just around the corner from mine and Sam’s.

  “Hey! Cece?” I called from outside the room. My hand was still sore from banging on Patrick Murphy’s door so I wasn’t about to do the same thing again here.

  “Come in!” she yelled from inside.

  The door hadn’t been fully closed, and it opened with a gentle push. Cece was sitting on the lower bunk, her back against the wall of the cabin. She’d been looking at her phone.

  “Hey!” she said when she saw me, with a wide-mouthed, toothy smile. Although we’d just met, she was so friendly it was like I’d known her for years.

  She explained to Sam and me that she was from originally from Puerto Rico, though her father had actually been from New York while her mother was from San Juan. She was fluent in Spanish as well as English, and I thought the fact she only worked as a housekeeper was a waste of her talents, but she claimed it was better than having to deal with the customers personally. And anyway, she was only working this job to save up enough to cover her living expenses when she eventually went to college.

  “Grab a chair,” she said, pointing at the only chair in the room—the one by the small desk that was fixed to the wall.

  I pulled it out and sat down with a theatrical sigh.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I think they’re questioning Sam now,” I said with a poker face. “An officer came and took her away.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Idiots.”

  I raised my eyebrows and couldn’t help but smirk a little, though part of me felt guilty at mocking the senior crew members she was referring to. “Idiots? How so?”

  Cece dropped her phone onto the pillow beside her. “There are, like, a hundred people who they should interview ahead of Sam if they want to find out who killed Murphy.”

  “A hundred, huh?” I said with a grin.

  She nodded at me, and then brushed aside a dark lock of hair that had fallen in front of her eyes. “Oh yeah, pretty much everyone hated that guy.”

  “And lots of people knew him, because he took, like, a hundred cruises a year?” I said with a grin, mimicking her exaggeration.

  “You got it!”

  “Well, I guess they’re just being methodical. Sam could very well be the last person to see him alive when she took him back to his room last night.”

  “Yeah,” she said, unconvinced. “I suppose so. I’m sure Sam’s seen worse over the years though, right? I mean, Murphy is right on the line.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, there are, and there have been, worse passengers—but they get banned. He always managed to stay just on the right side of not being blacklisted, you know? If your friend was going to kill a pig of a passenger, she probably would have done it to someone more deserving.”

  I giggled but then felt guilty. “Yeah, but, she would never, you know, kill anyone,” I said.

  “Yeah, yeah. I know. I’m just saying, Murphy was bad, but she would have seen far worse in half a decade on the seas.”

  I wanted to tell Cece the truth—that Sam had never even seen the ocean until a couple of days before—but I couldn’t. Not yet, anyway. I liked Cece a lot, but we’d only just met. If Sam wanted to reveal the truth to her, that was her decision, not mine. I’d just have to keep playing along for now.

  “Even if he wasn’t blacklisted, he’s definitely dead now,” I said. “No more cruising for him. So who do you think did it?”

  Cece pushed herself up on her bed so that she was sitting up straight and gave me a grin. “You gonna post it on Twitter?”

  I shook my head with a laugh. “What, like a murder mystery for the guests? I don’t think Sylvia would be down with that. Nah, I’ve been ordered not to mention anything negative about the cruise.”

  “Shame. It’d be a lot more interesting if you could post about all the shenanigans the passengers get up to. Like, most embarrassing passenger. Biggest fashion fail. The buffet’s biggest abusers.”

  I shuddered just thinking about
Sylvia’s reaction to any of those ideas.

  “She’d probably throw me overboard if I did any of those.”

  Cece giggled. “I guess, if I had to choose a most likely suspect, I’d have to go with one of the chefs.”

  “The chefs? Do they even see the customers?”

  Cece shrugged. “Yeah, sometimes. There are stations in the international buffet staffed with chefs, and of course sometimes customers ask to speak with the chef to compliment them. Or, in Murphy’s case…”

  “Berate them?”

  “Uh-huh. He was horrible to the staff. You know how they say the customer is always right?”

  “Yeah…”

  “Well, not only did he believe that, but he also seemed to think it meant the staff was always wrong. Like, all the time. Couldn’t do anything right in his eyes. So I wouldn’t be surprised if it was one of the chefs who poisoned him. There was one guy, Greg, they got into it yesterday—Murphy was saying he was going to get him fired.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. I couldn’t imagine ever trying to get someone else fired from their job. In college, I’d worked as a waitress for a while and I knew just how bad some customers could be though, so I certainly believed her.

  “You think he was poisoned?”

  Cece shrugged. “That’s what I heard.”

  I frowned. “I… there’s something I didn’t tell you yesterday.”

  “Ooh, a secret? Already hiding skeletons in your closet, Adrienne?”

  I couldn’t hold in my chuckle at her accidental pun. “Suppose that’s one way to put it. Actually, it was me who found him—I found the body. That’s how I knew about it yesterday.”

  “No way!”

  “Way.”

  “That’s so unfair,” she complained. “I’ve been doing this gig for years and I’ve never once found a body. You got one on your first day!”

  If I had a pillow or cushion or anything soft nearby, I would have chucked it at her. Who wants to find a dead body?

  “You’re terrible!”