[Scarlet Wilson 05] - Miz Scarlet and the Perplexed Passenger Read online

“Don’t worry,” the gallant Kenny reassured her. “I’ll be in the next cabin with Thad.”

  Dr. Thaddeus Van Zandt was the man who had convinced my mother to take this last-minute cruise. He had just passed his six-month cancer check-up with flying colors, so they were celebrating.

  “I’d feel safer if it was an adjoining one,” my mother remarked.

  “We could probably move you to another cabin, but I’m not sure we have an accessible one with a balcony,” said Marley.

  “I’d just as soon it not have one, if it’s all the same to you.” Poor Laurel was clearly shaken, not only by the thought that she saw the cadaver tossed into the Atlantic Ocean, but also that the killer was still among us.

  “Let me check.”

  Five minutes later, Marley offered us an interior cabin with a window overlooking the Royal Promenade. “Will that be okay?”

  “That’s fine,” Laurel told him. “How soon can we be out of here?”

  “Don’t you want to wait until Thaddeus comes back from his workout?” I inquired. He’d been gone for almost an hour.

  “No. I just want to go.”

  “How about if we take you two ladies down to the Café Promenade for a cup of coffee while the stewards set up the cabins?” suggested the man in charge.

  “But we have to pack,” I reminded them. “It will just take me a few minutes. Why don’t you three go on ahead? I’ll meet you in the café. I won’t be long.”

  “Let the stewards do that for you, Scarlet,” Marley replied. I started to protest, but he had no intention of taking no for an answer. “They won’t forget anything, I promise.”

  “At least let me get our things from the safe.”

  I grabbed my purse and a tote bag, worked the combination lock on the safe door, and pulled out our travel documents, two jewelry pouches, our cell phones, and a camera. Was this really happening to us? We’d been sailing for less than twenty four hours and already our vacation was beginning to unravel. This seemed like the perfect stateroom when we picked it. It had a roll-in shower, enough room to maneuver around furniture, and a balcony that would accommodate her wheelchair. Because of that accessibility, my mother happened to be looking out at the sea when a dead man took his final plunge. Would we spend the next few days cooped up in our new stateroom, hiding from a killer?

  “Ready?” the Royal Caribbean security man wanted to know. With a final look around the room, I shrugged and followed the group out into the hallway. If there’s one thing I hate when I’m on vacation, it’s not having the chance to check under the beds when I leave. Those doubts always follow me home. What if I dropped an earring on the floor? What if I forgot my favorite pair of flats? What if...what if...what if....

  Once in the elevator, Marley, Kenny, and I leaned against the walls, making room for my mother’s wheelchair. The car took us down to the fifth floor.

  On the short stroll down the Royal Promenade, I took in the sights, sounds, and smells of Royal Caribbean’s seaworthy version of a busy marketplace. Gazing up at the rows of bow windows above the glitzy, light-encrusted walkway, I wondered which was ours. How noisy will it be tonight? Is it too late to change my mind? Then again, I reminded myself, this wasn’t about me. Laurel was the one whose tranquil afternoon was disrupted by the sight of a dead body dumped at sea. She wanted to be anywhere but Stateroom 7620, and I could hardly fault her for feeling that way.

  We grabbed a table inside the busy eatery and spent the time talking about everything but the murder over Seattle’s Best coffee and chocolate chip cookies. It only took twenty minutes or so before Marley’s phone pinged, notifying him that our new stateroom was ready.

  “They’ve put you in 6615. I think you’ll find it a good substitute, Mrs. Wilson. Tolliver, you and your cabin mate are in the adjoining stateroom, 6613.”

  I was eager to see my new digs. Marley, however, had other plans. He decided to play tour guide, pointing out the different shops and eateries along the way.

  “You should check out the Hoof and Claw, Tolliver,” the security official told Kenny. “There are forty kinds of beer and live music almost every night.”

  “That sounds good to me,” said my companion. As a connoisseur of craft beer, he never missed an Oktoberfest.

  By the time we got to Sorrento’s, the smell of pizza was alluring as it wafted through the marketplace, a reminder that it was almost dinnertime. Nearly every seat was taken at the tables scattered outside the restaurant. I watched a black-vested waiter with a white apron tied around his waist carry a tray loaded with drinks.

  “This is a great place to grab a slice any time,” Marley advised us. “Pepperoni is my personal favorite, but the special pie is pretty good too.”

  He led us down the hall and we waited for a few minutes in the lobby, mingling with the crowd exiting the indoor shopping mall. As the doors of the elevator slid open and a group of six stepped out, we gave them a wide berth and then took their place inside the shiny gold-walled car. Kenny pushed the button for the sixth floor.

  “Thaddeus has probably returned by now and is wondering why the connecting door between our staterooms is locked,” Laurel fretted. Her beau, as she liked to call him, had gone off on his own for some afternoon exercise a short time before the unfortunate incident.

  “Don’t worry.” Kenny gave her shoulder a squeeze as we were about to get off the elevator. “I’ll go find him and let him know what’s happened. We’ll meet you on Deck 6.”

  “Would you? You’re such a dear.”

  “I am,” he agreed, winking at me as he reached over to press the button that would take him another floor up. “I won’t be long.”

  A short time later, Marley introduced us to our new stewardess, Bimi, who met us in the hallway with her master key in hand.

  “I hope you’ll be comfortable here, Mrs. Wilson,” she told Laurel as she unlocked the door to our new stateroom. Marley ushered us inside.

  I watched my mother take in the details as she gazed around the cabin. It wasn’t much different than the one we had vacated, save for the bow window that replaced our balcony. This one was also large enough to accommodate her wheelchair, with wide aisles between the dresser, twin beds, and small sofa. A quick peek at the bathroom showed a pretty good set-up for my mother, with plenty of space to roll in and shut the door, a fold-down bench and handheld attachment in the shower, and a sink low enough to allow her to wash up without getting out of her chair.

  “As long as we’re not murdered in our beds in the middle of the night, I’ll be happy here,” Laurel decided.

  “Please let me know if there is anything you need,” said the polite young woman with the exotic almond-shaped eyes.

  “Thank you, Bimi. I will.”

  My mother seemed to relax in her new surroundings, and looking around, it was easy for me to see why. The built-in window seat provided the perfect spot to watch the action on the Royal Promenade below. For Laurel, the avid people-watcher, it was an opportunity to indulge her curiosity about her fellow passengers.

  “What do you think, Scarlet?” Marley turned his attention to me. I was suddenly all too aware of his powerful masculine aura. For a moment, I felt myself flush under his unrelenting interest. Is that his way of flirting with me? Surely he knows Kenny and I are together!

  “Under the circumstances, I can’t complain,” I concurred, turning away. I shook off the feeling that he was a little too interested in me as a woman and focused on the matter at hand.

  Despite my initial misgivings, I found the ambience of the room was not disturbed by unwanted noise from below. I chalked that up to the fact that our stateroom was situated on the quieter end of the Royal Promenade, away from restaurants, lounges, and the public gathering spots. “It’s a nice surprise.”

  “Knock, knock!” Kenny appeared in the doorway with his cabin mate, who was still wearing his sweat suit. “May we come in?”

  Thaddeus didn’t wait for permission. He hurried over to my mother.

>   “Laurel, I just heard what happened. Are you okay?”

  “I am. I can’t say as much for that poor man!” she sighed.

  He put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, leaning in to kiss her cheek before he set himself down on the edge of the bed. She reached up and linked her fingers with his. It was such a simple, intimate gesture. I still wasn’t used to my mother dating, let alone double-dating with me. Officially, Kenny and I were the chaperones on this voyage and so far, it was more “Murder on the Orient Express” than “Affair to Remember”.

  “It must have been a shock for you. It’s hardly a sight you expect to see while you’re enjoying the fresh sea air,” he told her.

  “It’s a first for me,” Laurel admitted.

  “In an odd way, it’s really good that you saw it happen. Otherwise, no one would ever have known what happened to the victim. Without a body, the investigators would have just presumed he drowned, and they would have had to decide whether he committed suicide or accidentally fell.”

  “I suppose it is a rather strange twist of fate,” she decided.

  “At least now his family will know the truth.”

  “And there’s a chance to find the killer before we dock,” I pointed out helpfully.

  “Sure. He’s one of almost five thousand people on this ship,” Marley shot back.

  “Five thousand...that many?” It seemed a staggering number of prospects to whittle down.

  “Well, there are some thirty five hundred passengers and almost another fifteen hundred crew members,” Marley acknowledged. A few seconds later, the security man’s phone pinged. Retrieving it from his pocket, he gave the tiny screen his full attention. I carried on without him.

  “Holy cow, where do you even start to eliminate possible suspects?” I did the math in my head, wondering what my best friend, Laurencia Rivera, better known as Larry, would say when she found out about the murder at sea. She’s an experienced homicide investigator for the Connecticut State Police and a stickler for investigatory protocols. “You’re talking about motive, access, possible witnesses....”

  Thaddeus was still consoling my mother after her ordeal. They paid no attention to me.

  “Scarlet!” Kenny gave me a little nod of his head, beckoning me to follow him through the connecting door to the next stateroom. Marley was already in there, talking animatedly on his cell phone.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. Kenny had his back to me, so I couldn’t read his expression.

  “Wrong?” He turned to me quickly, looking puzzled.

  “You have bad news to tell me. Why else would you call me in here?”

  “No, no. I just thought we should give Thad and Laurel a little privacy.”

  “Oh, you scared me. I thought something terrible had happened.”

  “Not really. But let me get you up to speed on what’s been going on. We just got back from the makeshift morgue down in the infirmary. The ship’s physician doesn’t have a lot of experience with dead bodies, so Thad stepped in to give a preliminary finding.”

  “Dr. Van Zandt was especially helpful,” Marley chimed in briefly, as he ended one phone call and began another.

  “He was?” I was caught off guard.

  “Sure. Didn’t you know he’s a volunteer coroner up in Maine?”

  “Laurel never mentioned any of that. I thought Thaddeus was just a retired surgeon who officially hung up his scalpel and spends most of his days fishing.”

  “In the last three months, he’s handled a murder-suicide, did the autopsies of a couple of drug traffickers whose meth lab exploded, and identified a skeleton found in the woods six years after the victim went missing.”

  “Wow.” That explained why Thaddeus was more than happy to throw himself into the intrigue back at the Four Acorns Inn in Cheswick, Connecticut. “No wonder he likes a good mystery.”

  “Who better to take poke through cadavers to look for cause of death than an experienced surgeon? You know how tight law enforcement budgets are these days,” Kenny pointed out. “But it’s especially helpful on the ship. We had a video conference with the FBI team assigned to the case. They’re going to come aboard when we get to King’s Wharf.”

  “What did he find out?” I asked, expecting an answer. Those lips I love to kiss seemed to suddenly clamp shut tighter than a miser’s coin purse -- a sure sign there was more to the story than meets the eye. “Well?”

  Kenny’s eyebrows shot up. “What makes you think Thad found something out?”

  “Your buddy’s on the phone.” I motioned to the man in the corner.

  “That doesn’t prove anything.”

  “Maybe not, but he seems pretty worried.” It was true. Marley’s brows were knitted together so tightly, it looked like he had a caterpillar crawling across his forehead.

  “You know how it is, honey. The press will be waiting at the dock for the ship to pull in. The cruise line doesn’t want bad publicity. Do you have any idea how many people will cancel their cruises if they think there’s a murderer on the loose? We have to wrap up this investigation quickly.”

  “We? Does this mean you’re working on the case?”

  “Strictly as a consultant.”

  “I see.” I studied him carefully, letting the seconds pass as he squirmed under my scrutiny. Kenny was holding something back, but what? The regional head of Mercer Security had a background in public safety and had led his own share of investigations while on the job. I’d learned from experience that whenever he didn’t want me to know something about a case, he got tight-lipped, to prevent himself from spilling the beans. He could barely open his mouth at the moment, so I figured it was jaw-dropping news.

  “This isn’t a domestic situation,” I said, thinking out loud. “A wife doesn’t usually stab her husband in the back and then lift him over the balcony and into the sea. And the body wouldn’t have been traveling at such a high rate of speed if it was launched from Deck 8. It would have taken a few seconds for Newton’s law of universal gravitation to kick in. That must mean that either he was tossed over the railing near the top of the ship or,” I paused to consider the other possibilities, “there were at least two people throwing him overboard.”

  I watched those gorgeous eyes of his open wide and then narrow. Kenny, more than a little flummoxed with my educated guess, went into avoidance mode.

  “How do you come up with this stuff?” he wanted to know. To me, it seemed so obvious. I gave him a playful poke in the belly.

  “I’m right, aren’t I? This isn’t a case of the angry wife topping off the errant hubby, is it?”

  He heaved a long, exaggerated sigh, a sure sign he was about to launch an effort to distract me from my interest in the case. That was the Kenny Tolliver version of a wind-up pitch, so I knew to be prepared to bat it into the outfield.

  “Really, Miz Scarlet, must I remind you that we did not come aboard this ship for the purpose of sticking our noses where they don’t belong? We are supposed to be accompanying your mother and Thad on a fun voyage to Bermuda.”

  “And yet you just called me in here because, as you said, you wanted to give them their privacy.”

  “Yes, but only for the moment. We’ll be joining them for dinner and I’ll remind you that your mother is rather distressed by the events of the day. I don’t really think she’ll appreciate you raising the subject over soup and salad.”

  “How about over the main course, or would you prefer I wait until dessert is served, Captain Peacock?” I inquired, teasing him with his high school nickname.

  “Cute.”

  “Yes, that’s me. Now, as I was saying....”

  Chapter Three --

  “I’m saying leave it alone. This isn’t a case for Scarlet Wilson, innkeeper slash amateur sleuth.”

  “Nice. Maybe I’ll get some business cards made up with that job description when we get back to the States. In the meantime, I’ll remind you that I just found out you’re working on the case as a consultant.”

&
nbsp; “I’m only doing it to help out the cruise line and to make sure no other passengers wind up dropping into Davy Jones’ Locker. I’m not part of the official investigation, Scarlet.”

  “Meaning what? You’re going to sniff around, looking for the perp in between hitting the buffet line and the golf simulator?”

  “The perp? You’ve been hanging out with Larry a little too long. You don’t become an investigator just by befriending a homicide cop, Scarlet. You have to be trained, which you are not.”

  “That doesn’t mean I can’t be helpful. Besides, what am I supposed to do while you’re gallivanting around on the decks of the Liberty of the Seas? You just announced I have to give Laurel and the doctor a wide berth, so they can have their privacy.”

  “You can’t relax over a book or hit the spa for a mud pack?”

  “Since when have I ever been a spa girl?” I shot back. I was starting to chafe at the bit.

  “I hate to break into this scintillating conversation, but I’ve got to get back to the security office.” Marley pocketed his phone and tapped his forehead with a couple of fingers, giving the man standing next to me a mock salute. I received a slightly formal bow.

  “I’ll catch up with you later, Horny,” Kenny told him. Horny? It took me a moment to realize this was an unfortunate nickname for the security man. Did most people call Marley this? I caught him giving me the eye. Then again, maybe the guy earned it.

  “We’ll talk, Ken Doll.” Ken Doll? I’d heard him called Captain Peacock, Tolly, and even Tolly Pop, but never Ken Doll.

  “How well do you two know each other?”

  “He didn’t tell you? This guy was my lab partner in Mr. Dinkle’s first period chemistry class senior year.” Marley chuckled.

  “You went to high school together?” I inquired. A couple of decades ago, my heart broke when Kenny’s dad was transferred to New Jersey, effectively putting an end to the promising start of a great romance. This was the first time I’d ever met anyone who’d known Kenny after he moved from Connecticut. “I had no idea. I just assumed you traveled in the same law enforcement circles.”