Cruise Millions: A Humorous Cruise Ship Cozy Mystery (Cruise Ship Cozy Mysteries Book 6)

by A. R. Winters

  The entirety of his outburst was directed straight at me. My heart started to pound and I felt a cold sweat forming on my forehead. In seconds, he’d managed to make me feel guilty, as if I’d done something wrong, even though all I did was state a simple fact. A fact we had video evidence of.

  The captain was standing up straight, but then he slammed his hands down onto the table, his palms landing with a loud smack. He leaned forward, glaring at me.

  “For your information, I was taking a sizable donation of toys to a children’s charity that I support. There’s an orphanage I’ve been donating to for years. I like to do it quietly. I’m not a proud man. I’m not a boastful man. I do it because I care, not for the praise I would get from others who do nothing.”

  I couldn’t help myself and I let out a single puff of air in disbelief.

  I should have tried to stop myself, but it was just a natural reaction. I couldn’t believe the words I was hearing from the captain. Him? A secret donation to charity? It was unbelievable.

  “Thank you, sir,” said Ethan, grabbing me by the arm. “That’s all we wanted to know.”

  I let Ethan lead me out of the room but I was in no way happy about it. On the other hand, I wasn’t about to stay in there alone with a possibly murderous captain.

  As soon as the door was closed behind us, he turned me to face him.

  “Why did you do that? We were just getting somewhere!”

  Ethan shook his head, a soft smile on his lips. “Slow and steady wins the race.”

  “Yeah, right. You don’t buy that story about a donation, do you?”

  Ethan raised his palms in a how-would-I-know gesture. “If he’s telling the truth or not, I don’t think we were about to find out in there. There are other ways of either confirming or discrediting what he said though, right? Instead of fighting with the captain, we should have checked out the story he just told us and gather our own intel.”

  “But the suitcase—” I was suddenly aware of the orderly who was standing near us. Despite his blank expression, he still had ears. “—its contents could be gone!”

  “That video footage was from yesterday. It’s already gone.”

  He was right. My shoulders slumped and I banged my fist against my thigh. I’d really felt like we were getting somewhere, and that Ethan had slammed on the brakes.

  Maybe he was right.

  Slow and steady.

  Ethan put two fingers under my chin and raised it. “We’ll figure this out. Don’t worry.”

  I stared up at him and suddenly my anger didn’t seem to be anger anymore. I wasn’t quite sure what it was until Ethan leaned down and gently kissed me on the lips. “We will figure it out.”

  He was right. We would.

  “Is that allowed?” asked the orderly stationed outside the office.

  Ethan turned on the heels of his shiny black shoes, his cheeks crimson. He had completely forgotten about the near-silent man watching us.

  “You didn’t see anything!” I called to the orderly.

  “What she said.” Ethan, with cheeks still flushed, took me by the arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The rest of that afternoon, I kept finding bits of mud everywhere, especially in my hair. Big globs of it had splattered unnoticed during Helen’s tantrum, and some of it had landed on my head and caked in.

  I wanted to shower right away, but I got an ‘urgent’ message from Kelly, saying that I had to document the ship’s Silver Surfer Swim Club’s water yoga class.

  Once that so-called emergency had been dealt with, I was sent on another mission to photograph and caption the Kid’s Club’s sports afternoon. Since I’m usually left to roam the ship as I please, choosing what events to cover, I suspected Kelly was trying to keep me away from the Claim Your Million events by making sure I was busy elsewhere.

  By the time I got back to my cabin, there was only one thing I wanted: a shower. Not only was I still muddy, but an eager young artist at the Kid’s Club had painted one of my arms green, and another eager young Picasso had managed to get some pink on my supposed-to-be-blue uniform blouse.

  Before I could turn on the shower, my phone buzzed with a reminder from my calendar. It was the Claim Your Million Cocktails and Networking Party. The participants were supposed to dress in their finest business attire and practice their networking skills while sipping on cocktails at a party hosted by none other than Paul Parker.

  I swiped the reminder off my screen. Since I was no longer welcome there, it looked like I had my evening free instead. If they wanted pictures, Kelly would have to take them—or delegate the task to someone else.

  That meant I had time for a long, well-deserved shower, which would also give me a chance to think about the whereabouts of Alejandro and the mystery of what happened to Lesley.

  Three!

  That’s how many washes it took to get the mud out of my hair. But I didn’t mind too much, since I didn’t have anywhere to rush to for once. Long showers are meditative, and under the hot, powerful stream of water, I thought about everything we’d learned about Lesley’s death so far.

  But without Alejandro, there wasn’t anything more I could do. I needed to find Alejandro so we could get some actual proof, and then Cece could be cleared.

  When I was finished, I put on a silver Swan robe—the same kind given out to the guests—and sat at the small metal desk with my hairdryer. Just before I turned it on, I heard a strange noise. I put down my little red travel hairdryer and listened.

  I heard the sound of footsteps, and they stopped just outside my door. I cocked my head, like a dog trying to listen intently. I crept to my feet, and tiptoed over to the door.

  Had I imagined it? No. The sound of footsteps resumed. Someone had stopped outside of my cabin door, and that person was now leaving. They hadn’t knocked on the door, so they couldn’t have been there to visit. Memories of the Arizona postcards returned.

  I jumped to my feet and rushed over to the door, yanking it open.

  Some kind of plastic card hit my bare leg, but I didn’t take the time to examine it. My eyes were on the man going down the hallway away from my cabin.

  It was a bald man, and when I opened my door, he turned back to look at me.

  I recognized him at once. It was the infamous fake housekeeper, the same one who tried to break into Ethan’s cabin on the last cruise.

  Panic flashed through his eyes when he saw me, and then he turned his head back and took off running.

  “Hey! Get back here!”

  Of course he ignored me. But I wasn’t going to let him get away. I grabbed the belt of my robe and cinched it tight before sprinting after him.

  I was surprised to find myself nearly catching him as we reached the end of the hallway and he turned to the left, toward some stairs. He glanced over his shoulder and was shocked to see me so close. With renewed speed, he broke away from me.

  He hadn’t expected me to give chase. He’d mistaken me for too much of a lady to chase him in just my robe—but he didn’t know me. I can be very unladylike when I want to.

  The man darted into one of the staff-only stairwells, and launched himself up the stairs three at a time. Only able to manage two at once, I lost ground on him as I raced barefoot up the cold metal staircase after my quarry.

  “Come back here!” I yelled.

  What was the connection between this fake housekeeper and Alejandro? Were they working together somehow, and if so, what was their aim?

  He left the stairwell, and rushed out to a hallway that led outside.

  I followed him onto a deck near the back of the ship, realizing where we were. This was the constitutional deck, which wrapped around the entire ship to serve as a walking path. But that evening it wasn’t a pleasant walking course. It was more like a running track.

  The sun had just set and the evening was cool after the balmy day, and the light breeze whipped through my robe as I chased the fake housekeeper down t
he deck.

  I could hear where we were going before I could see it.

  “Let’s make some mo-ney!” screamed a crowd of people, followed by an even noisier cheer coming from directly ahead. After a few more steps, I caught a glimpse of the event ahead.

  So much for avoiding the Cocktails and Networking event, I thought. I was going to be right in the thick of it instead.

  “Stop that man!” I yelled in vain. The people ahead were still too busy cheering and congratulating themselves to hear my shout.

  The man burst into the floodlit area of the event ahead of me. He tried to cut between two people talking, but as he did so he knocked someone’s glass out of their hand.

  I slowed down when I saw the pink contents of a cocktail glass fly up, straight into the face of the pink-haired woman who made eggshell vases. Her mouth rounded into a perfect O of surprise. At least the drink matched her hair.

  “Excuse me!” I shouted as I followed, bursting through the space between the pink-haired woman and Milton McPherson.

  I chased the man through the crowd of people attempting to network with each other. The next victim of the fake housekeeper’s reckless dash across the ship was Dan Diamond, who had his vodka and energy drink cocktail tossed all over his lime green shirt as my target shoved him aside.

  The fake housekeeper peered over his shoulder to see if I was still following him. When he saw that I was, he grinned at me. That made me falter half a step.

  He wasn’t supposed to grin! He was supposed to be surprised by my awesome athletic prowess. Or shocked that I’d nearly caught him. Or annoyed that his escape wasn’t going smoothly. He was not supposed to smile.

  Helen Johannsen had to step back to avoid being barreled over by the man.

  “Stop him!” she yelled.

  “Trying to!” I shouted as I flew past her, the hem of my robe whipping against her legs as I did so.

  “You! I should have known…” she said, but I couldn’t hear what she followed it up with.

  “Out of the way!” shouted the fake housekeeper. He pushed between Paul Parker and Stan Westbrook, who seemed to be deep in conversation—at least until their glasses of whiskey got knocked out of their hands.

  “Coming through!” I yelled at the shocked men, leaping over the puddle of ice and whiskey on the floor.

  He had now cut through the cocktail party, rounding the back of the ship. In a moment, we’d be racing down the other side of the constitutional deck. I was panting heavily by then, and wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep it up. I hoped he wouldn’t try and run several circuits of the ship.

  “Stop!” I yelled in vain.

  While he didn’t stop, he did do something interesting. He stuck his hand in his pocket and withdrew a little tube. He snapped the little plastic stick between his hands, and I realized what it was as it became luminous: a glowstick.

  Holding it in his right hand, the man hurried down the deck, leaving behind the shouts at the cocktail party.

  Paul Parker was really going to hate me after this.

  Both the fake housekeeper and I had slowed down now. He was still going at a brisk jog and I was keeping up. I figured I would wear him down eventually, or pant out my last breath trying.

  But it turned out he actually had a plan.

  A grim one.

  On our right-hand side were the ship’s lifeboats. As we passed the second one, he tossed his glowstick at it. The green stick bounced off the hull of the small boat, and tumbled to the deck below.

  “Look!” came a shout from up ahead.

  I skidded to a halt.

  Just where the glow stick had fallen, I found who I had originally been looking for that day. Lit by the eerie yellow-green light of the glowstick, was a pair of unmoving eyes staring out at me.

  It was Alejandro.

  And he was dead.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The fake housekeeper was gone.

  The yellow-green glowstick still lit the scene, and I realized the mystery man had led me here deliberately.

  But why? Who was he?

  “Look! There she is!” said a female voice.

  I’d been crouching down, looking at the face of Alejandro, and now I stood up straight again. I folded my arms in front of me, now feeling the chilly night air against my skin.

  “Typical. Can’t let us have one event…” said Helen Johannsen.

  While I stood there above Alejandro’s body, which was lying in the shadow of the lifeboat, I realized that the ‘millionaires’ in front of me hadn’t noticed the corpse. After coming from the brightly floodlit area of the cocktail party, their night vision was poor. And Alejandro wasn’t exactly drawing attention to himself as the life of the party right now.

  As far as they knew, I’d been playing chase with a stranger. They obviously didn’t have a very high opinion of me to not wonder at the spectacle of it.

  “Excuse me! Excuse me!” I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard the familiar voice. It was Ethan, wading his way through the small group of annoyed millionaires.

  Ethan got to the front of the assembled group. He looked at me. He looked down. His eyes went wide, and fast as a flash he spun around, his arms outstretched, drawing everyone’s attention to himself and away from me and what I was standing above.

  “If you’d all like to go back to your cocktail party, please, that would be appreciated. No buts… Nothing to see here… Thank you… Off you go… have a great evening… Good night, Helen…”

  Ethan had them turned around and heading back to their networking event in no time. As soon as they were on their way, he rushed over to me.

  “Is that…?”

  “It’s Alejandro. He’s dead.”

  Ethan snatched his radio off his belt and called the security office. As soon as he got a response, he ordered four security guards to get up to us as fast as possible and for someone to call the ship’s doctor.

  Once he’d called for backup, Ethan surveyed the scene again. His eyes lingered in the shadows at my feet, where he could see the outline of the body. They also seemed to linger on me as well. He was probably wondering why I was running across the ship in just a robe.

  “None of them noticed?” said Ethan.

  “Nope. I don’t think they were close enough. The body was in the shadows, and they were all staring at me. I think they were still blinded from the bright lights of the party.”

  “I’m glad I was putting in an appearance at that awful event. I did a double take when you rocketed through.” He slowly looked me over again, taking in the fact that I was barefoot and only wearing a flimsy Swan robe. My damp hair clung to the sides of my face and I wasn’t sure who looked worse, me or Alejandro. “What in the ocean’s name happened?”

  I explained how the fake housekeeper had been outside of my room, and I’d chased him through the ship until ending up at the cocktail party.

  “You think he led you here deliberately?”

  “Yep. He wanted me to find the body. That’s why he led me right here—and threw this.” I pointed at the glowstick.

  Ethan rubbed his chin, but he didn’t say anything. He wasn’t sure what to make of the turn of events, and nor was I.

  Ethan crouched down next to the body. I joined him, sitting on my heels as we both looked at the motionless face of Alejandro.

  “Look.” Ethan pointed at the back of Alejandro’s head with his index finger. “There appears to be a head wound.”

  “It looks nasty.”

  “I’m no expert, but it looks like he was conked on the back of the head with something blunt and heavy.”

  “Like a champagne bottle?” I said.

  “Could be.”

  “He’s wearing the same clothes as when he left my presentation.”

  “I was right then, he didn’t leave the ship,” said Ethan.

  “And I guess he wasn’t in the captain’s suitcase either.”

  My legs wobbled from crouching and I stood up again,
Ethan joining me with a sigh of exertion as he rose.

  “Sir!” called a female voice.

  It was the leader of the four security guards who he radioed. Three men trailed behind her, all dressed in security uniforms and with suitably sober expressions on their faces.

  “Just a moment,” said Ethan to the new arrivals. He turned back to me. “I don’t suppose you could do me a huge favor, could you?”

  “Sure. Of course.”

  “Could you go and write up your statement? You know the drill. Get all the details down before you forget. We don’t want to be up half the night recording statements.”

  “No problem.”

  Ethan surveyed the scene. “I’ve got to get this sealed off, get Ryan up here, and get this body down to sickbay without upsetting too many passengers. And that’s before we even try and figure out just what’s going on.”

  “It’s going to be a long night,” I said in sympathy. “I’ll make sure you get my report by the morning.”

  “Thanks.” He looked down at me, and I think he was half-tempted to kiss me good night. But there were four other people watching us while they waited for instructions. Five, if you included Alejandro—or whoever he really was.

  “Good night, Ethan. And good luck.”

  “Thanks. I think we’re all going to need it. If you see any sign of this fake housekeeper guy, you call me immediately. It doesn’t matter what time it is. Okay?”

  “Will do. Are you sure you don’t want me to stay and do something?”

  “No. There’s nothing you can do now. The best thing you can do is get that report written so I can send it off to HQ first thing in the morning.”

  “Good night, Ethan.”

  As I left, I could hear him ordering them to seal off the area, commanding them to block this section of the wraparound deck with whatever they could find: sun loungers, benches, planters, and anything else they could use to make sure none of the wannabe millionaires made their way back there.

  Walking back through the ship, it seemed darker and colder than normal. Maybe it was just the sweat from all that running that turned cool on my skin. Or perhaps it was seeing the body. I shuddered at the memory.