Killer Cruise

by A. R. Winters

  “Adrienne James, social media manager,” I said, emphasizing the manager to make myself sound more important than I was. “Please tell the first officer that I would like to speak to him, immediately if possible.”

  “Of course, ma’am,” he said with a respectful nod. I was kind of disappointed that he didn’t salute me.

  He returned a moment later. “Follow me.”

  The first officer’s cabin had a commanding view that overlooked the ocean. We were very high up here, much higher above the sea than any building back home in Cornridge was even above the ground. His office had large windows that filled the room with natural sunlight. There was a large, impressive-looking desk which Ethan Lee was sitting behind when I entered. But as soon as I arrived, he stood up and made his way around to greet me.

  “I expected I would see you again,” he said.

  I tried to figure out his tone. Was he excited to see me, or resigned to it? I couldn’t quite tell.

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “Come.”

  He pointed to the right-hand side of the room, where there was a pair of three-seater sofas on either side of a glass coffee table, which looked to be bolted to the floor.

  We sat down across from each other, the sofa creaking as the genuine leather adjusted to my presence.

  I appreciated that he wasn’t going to sit behind his giant desk with me on the other side, because this conversation was going to be nerve-wracking enough without that level of intimidation.

  “So?” He leaned forward, hands on his knees and eyebrows raised.

  “Where’s Sam?” There was no point in beating around the bush.

  “I’m afraid Sam is in custody.”

  “You locked her up?”

  Ethan Lee gave a firm nod. “Unfortunately, she was the last person seen with the victim. Furthermore, she has been incredibly cagey both about her past, and what happened that evening. At the moment, she is our best, and only, suspect. While we don’t have any definitive evidence that she killed him, as head of security I believe it’s best that we keep her in a secure location, until she can be handed over to the authorities shoreside when we returned to port next week.”

  While he spoke, I was digging my fingers into my palms, and slowly shaking my head to myself.

  “Look. I know Sam. I’ve known her my entire life. I can assure you she’s not a killer. She had nothing to do with this man’s death. You’ve got to let her go.”

  “I don’t have to do anything.” His look and tone were serious and I didn’t think I was going to get far with him. “My duty is to the ship, to the passengers, and to the other crew members.”

  “But you’ve got no reason to suspect her—”

  “Apart from the fact that she was with the victim before he died?”

  “—There must be loads of potential suspects. From what I heard, Patrick Murphy was widely hated. I heard he has a reputation among the female staff members, in fact. I bet there are lots of people who wanted him dead.”

  The corners of his mouth flickered just a moment, as if he was almost amused by the idea that many people wanted Patrick Murphy dead. He knew there was some truth to that statement.

  “He may not have been the most popular passenger with the staff, but I don’t think your argument is helping her case.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Why not?”

  “Well, if you’re saying he often upset women who may have wanted to kill him, then perhaps he upset your friend, Sam, and so she, well… did.”

  I blinked. “That’s not what I meant. I meant that someone he may have angered in the past could have killed him.”

  First Officer Ethan Lee shrugged, and I couldn’t help but watch the way his shoulder muscles flexed underneath the clean, perfectly pressed, torso-hugging white shirt. “Any suggestions?”

  “You tell me. I bet you’ve got a record a mile-long about that guy, right?”

  His eyes narrowed slightly. “We do have a few comments on file. But as you know, guests who cause serious disruption are barred for life. I mean, sure, there are rumors about him having an affair with a member of the staff, and about inappropriate comments with others—”

  “An affair? Who with?”

  “Forget I said that. I’m sure that’s just gossip. All I’m saying is that, sure, he had a bit of a reputation, and he has upset some staff members in the past, but not to the extent of killing him.”

  I wasn’t getting anywhere.

  “I want to see Sam.”

  He drummed the fingers of his right hand on his knee while he thought for a moment.

  “Okay,” he said after a second’s hesitation. “I’ll take you to see her. She’s in one of our secure holding cells.”

  He stood up, and walked over to the door to his cabin.

  “Follow me.”

  So, I did.

  Chapter 8

  I followed him out of his office and into a service elevator, which took us down several decks to the security office. We didn’t enter the main office area, but instead carried on just beyond it to a section labeled holding cells. There looked to be about six of them, but it was outside the first row of steel doors that he stopped.

  “Haven’t filled the rest of them up with staff yet, huh?”

  He gave me a hard look before turning back to the door, using his key card to unlock it. As soon as the lock whirred, I heard someone jumping to their feet on the other side of the door. Ethan pushed the door open.

  “Sam!”

  “Addy!”

  We gave each other a tight hug for a few seconds, then broke apart. My eyes ran around the room and then went wide.

  “This jail cell…”

  Sam looked over her shoulder. “I know.”

  Ethan Lee gave us a quizzical look.

  “It’s the same as our room. Our room is a jail cell.”

  Ethan chuckled. “Really?”

  “It’s insulting,” said Sam.

  I nodded my head in emphatic agreement.

  He briefly raised his eyes up to the ceiling as if in thought. “My cabin isn’t like this.”

  We both rolled our eyes.

  He continued, “I guess Swan International commits more resources to the passenger areas than they do for us crew.”

  I snorted. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “So when am I getting out of here?” Sam had begun to pace up and down across the room, three short steps each way.

  “I’m afraid you will be confined here until we have returned to port.”

  “But I didn’t do anything!”

  Ethan Lee shrugged. “It’s only a week. You’ll be fine.”

  “But it’s not fair. I’m telling you—I didn’t do anything!”

  “If you are indeed innocent, then I can understand why you would think that,” said Ethan with just a hint of sympathy. “But the initial evidence we have points to you at the moment, and I would be remiss in my duties if I were to let you carry on as normal.” He paused for effect. “And I am never remiss in my duties.”

  “If there was evidence pointing in another direction, at a different suspect, you would have to let her go, right?”

  “But there isn’t.”

  I turned and spoke directly to Sam. “I’ll get you out of here. I will find out who really did it, or at least dredge up some other likely suspects, and then he’ll have no choice but to let you go.” I jerked my head in the direction of the first officer.

  “Now look here,” said Ethan Lee. I had a flashback of Sylvia and her incessant do you see, “you are most assuredly not permitted to start investigating. You’re a social media director, not a private investigator. If you start causing trouble, you’re going to end up in the brig as well.”

  “I wouldn’t have to investigate if you hadn’t wrongfully arrested my friend while a killer’s still roaming the ship doing who knows what,” I said with a haughty sniff.

  “Well, we’ll just see about that once the police conduct their investigation back
in New Orleans, won’t we?”

  I ignored that and took Sam’s hand instead. “I’ll get you out, Sam. I promise,” I said in a low voice. Not so that Ethan couldn’t hear—he still could—but low enough so that he would know he wasn’t supposed to hear, not if he was polite.

  Luckily, he was.

  “Stay strong.”

  Sam took her hand back, raised her arms and flexed her biceps at me with a forced smile. I gave her shoulder a final squeeze and a plastered on fake smile of my own to reassure her.

  “Please be careful, Addy. Like you said, Patrick Murphy was killed by someone, and if you get too close…”

  “Don’t worry about me. I can look after myself. And I will be careful. If I find the killer, I’ll let the mall cops know,” I said with a head nod toward the first officer, getting a genuine giggle out of Sam, “instead of tackling him or her myself.”

  We hugged again and then there was nothing else to do but leave.

  As Ethan Lee marched me away like I was a prisoner too, I determined that I was going to find out who really killed Patrick Murphy and get Sam out of there.

  Whether First Officer Ethan Lee liked it or not.

  Chapter 9

  While the first officer hadn’t directly threatened my job, the subtext had been clear. It would be under threat if I continued my investigation into Patrick Murphy.

  This made me immediately toss aside any idea of doing any further investigations, and leave my best friend to rot in her crew cabin-jail cell to deal with her problems all by herself.

  Not.

  No, I was of course going to proceed—I couldn’t abandon Sam in her time of need, could I? But I was going to have to stay under the radar. If Ethan Lee didn’t want me investigating, then I wasn’t going to let Ethan Lee see me investigating.

  It was a hot afternoon when we docked at Cozumel, a Mexican resort island that was popular with cruise ships like ours. A large portion of the tourists aboard our boat disembarked, but not all of them.

  “I paid for a seven-day cruise, and I’m gonna spend all seven days cruising. Even when we’re in port.” That was said to me by an elderly man who was working on his tan, sitting topless next to his walnut brown wife who was so much in agreement with her husband that she didn’t feel the need to talk at all.

  I had been hoping for an interesting mini-interview with them, but it turned out to be a bust.

  I would have loved to go ashore myself to have a look around as I’d never visited Mexico or any other foreign country, but I was supposed to remain on the ship. I figured if I kept up this job for a while, I might be able to persuade Sylvia that I should go ashore with some of the passengers next time, to show what some of our cruisers got up to outside of the ship. But for the moment, for this first assignment, I was to stay aboard the ship the entire time.

  “You’re not going to put our pictures online, are you?”

  “Would you mind if I did? This is an important part of my job.”

  The well-tanned man stood up. “No way. Nix it. I don’t want hackers and stalkers chasing me down. I know what happens if you put pictures online.” He turned to his wife. “Don’t I, Jan?”

  She lowered her sunglasses, gave a sharp nod, then pushed them up again, her communication duties over.

  “Well okay, see you later. Enjoy your day.” I tried to leave them to it.

  “If I get hacked, I’ll sue!” called the man as I began to edge away. “Don’t online me! You hear?”

  I assured him as best as I could that I wouldn’t online him, and made my escape. If I’d wanted to get into an argument, I could have pointed out to the couple that they had actually agreed to a photo waiver when they’d booked their tickets; it was part of the terms and conditions. But Sylvia had instructed me to delete or remove any photos of customers who were unhappy, and of course, most of the photos that went online were artistically anonymized unless the guests asked otherwise, so I guessed the point was moot.

  As I walked around the outside of the deck, I took a few photos of the island, though they all needed some serious filters applied before they’d be even the slightest bit interesting. Luckily, I could do that.

  I stopped under a sunshade and selected the best of my Cozumel photos. I applied a filter that gave it a kind of golden glow, and then tried to think of an inspirational quote to put underneath.

  If you can dream it, you can do it. Swan Cruises.

  Anything is possible on a Swan Cruise.

  Tropical times on the high seas with Swan.

  Can you spot the pirate?

  I decided to go with the first one. Sure, it was cheesy, but people love that kind of thing. At least, I thought Sylvia would like it, and she was the most important pair of eyes on my social media posts.

  I was slowly making my way to an area called the Promenade. It was a rather elegant-looking section just outside the casino, and I figured there had to be something interesting going on there.

  I felt a stinging jab on my arm, and my hand whipped up to rub it.

  “Oops, too hard?”

  I turned to see a grinning Cece looking at me with just the slightest hint of contrition.

  “You must’ve been working out.”

  “Yep. Eight hours every day.”

  I tilted my head at her in surprise, until I realized what she meant. “They’re working you hard?”

  “Hardly working. What’s up? Any news from Sam?”

  I filled her in on my meeting with Sam and Ethan Lee. She didn’t seem surprised by any of it.

  “He did say one interesting thing though,” I told her after explaining most of what had transpired. “He said that there was a rumor that Patrick Murphy had an affair with a member of staff.”

  Cece was already bobbing her head up and down. “Yeah, didn’t I say that before?”

  “Nope.”

  “I mean, it’s probably just gossip. But there was a rumor that he and Sylvia were having an affair.”

  “Sylvia? My boss Sylvia?”

  Cece nodded. “I meant to say something about it after she found us in Murphy’s cabin.”

  “That might explain why she was there.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yep. Maybe she was looking for evidence of their affair, so that she could remove it and cover her tracks.”

  Cece nodded thoughtfully. “Or she’s a romantic, and she couldn’t believe her beautiful lover was really dead, and just wanted to spend a few moments by the bloodstain that’s all that’s left of him.”

  I snorted. The word ‘beautiful’ can only be applied to a very select group of men, and Patrick Murphy was so far outside the bounds of that kind of man I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “More likely there was something incriminating in the cabin and she was trying to hide it,” I said.

  Cece clapped me on the shoulder. “You are a detective! Okay, no rest for the wicked. It's time for me to carry on my workout."

  I giggled at Cece and waved goodbye. I was off to talk to Sylvia, if I could track her down.

  It didn’t take long. She was at the Promenade.

  “Adrienne, darling, have you been getting some fabulous pictures and posts for me?"

  "Sure have," I said with a grin. "Say, I heard about that cabin that you found us in yesterday. I hadn't realized…"

  “So you know about that awful business, do you? Well, make sure you keep it under your hat. That is definitely not to go out on the social media accounts. That would ruin a lot of vacations, do you see?"

  "Oh, yes. I see. I'm only posting the most positive, happy, exciting things I can find. And don't worry, there's plenty of them on the ship!" I was being so chipper I felt like I was going to be sick. I was never one for too much sugar.

  Sylvia was, however, and she beamed at my peppy attitude.

  "The man who died, I heard he was something of a regular." I wondered if I could get her to admit to an affair.

  "That's right. He was one of our Platinum Star VIP repeat custom
ers. Four, five, sometimes six times a year, he'd be on these cruises. This was his favorite ship. He said he could never develop the same affection for the other cruise lines.”

  "He found us affectionate, did he?"

  Sylvia shifted a little uncomfortably, regretting her choice of words.

  "I heard he could be a little too affectionate with some of the female staff, though," I said.

  "Hold on a minute," said Sylvia, ignoring what I’d said and putting her hands on her hips. "Wasn't it your cabinmate who they've arrested?"

  I nodded at her. "Yes, though I'm sure she didn't do it. She's a tough cookie, but not a murderous one. And the night before, that Patrick Murphy really upset her."

  "Did he? He did have a bit of a…” Sylvia extended her hands as she was talking and waved them in the air in front of her, “…way about him."

  “You mean he was handsy?”

  Sylvia glanced around to make sure we weren't being listened to by any passengers. Then she gave me a nod.

  I began to reassess her. Maybe Cece had it wrong about Sylvia and Murphy having an affair. Maybe someone got the wrong impression after watching him being inappropriate with her, and she was too much of a ‘customer is always right’ drone to formally file the complaints that she should have. Maybe she did report it, and the powers that be didn’t care because his repeat business was more important to them.

  It was entirely possible Murphy had harassed her rather than having an affair with her.

  "Sylvia, where’d you go after our meeting the other day?"

  She dropped her chin, raising her eyebrows and giving me a laser-focused glare. "What?"

  "Oh, nothing. I was just wondering." Wow, way to botch that one, Adrienne. That question was far too direct. My investigation was supposed to be discreet.

  "I don't know where you get the gall! I suggest you mind your own business about what other staff members, especially your superiors, do outside of their working hours. Do you see?"

  I nodded. “Yeah. Sorry. Got it.” She was annoyed at me now and I felt the conversation had run its course. “Oh! Look over there! The cocktail that woman is holding looks exquisite. I want to try and get a pic before she drinks it." I began to hurry away. “See you later!” I called over my shoulder.