Curried Lobster Murder: Book 14 in The Darling Deli Series (11 page)

She chose a direction at random and took a step toward an all-night bar when she heard a quickly cutoff shout coming from the other way. Her heart began racing. Had Antonio found Hector? Was she too late? She took off in the direction that she thought the shout had come from, and found herself in front of the closed door of a theater.

Hesitantly, she reached out and grasped the door handle. She wasn’t certain that Antonio
had gone in here—the shout could have come from further down the hall—but she couldn’t pass the room without at least checking to see if the door was unlocked. Bracing herself, she pushed. It swung open silently at her touch.

She slipped inside the large room, letting the door close silently behind her, her eyes glued to the stage, which was only dimly lit by the night time lights. Two people stood on it. One was a hooded figure clothed in black—definitely not Antonio unless he had managed to change clothes in the space of a few seconds—and the other she recognized as Hector even from this distance. Hector was backing slowly toward the edge of the stage, his hands up.

Now what
? wondered the deli owner desperately. She had found Hector in the nick of time, but had no way to save him. The theater was huge—there was no way she would be able to get down there in time, and even if she could, she had no weapons of her own. In the hand of the hooded figure she could clearly see the glint of some kind of blade.
Is this what happened to Bobby Babcock?
she found herself wondering, suddenly unable to get the gruesome image of the bleeding man out of her mind. She couldn’t let that happen to someone else, she just couldn’t.

An idea was beginning to form in her mind, but she didn’t know if she would have the time to implement it. She knew that the stage lights would be extremely bright, and if she could figure out how to turn them on she might be able to catch the killer unawares. She knew that her plan was partially flawed, since Hector would be just as blinded as the person threatening him with the knife, but it was her only option, short of charging the stage herself.

The only problem was, she had no idea where the switches for the stage lights were. There was likely some sort of control room, which was quite possibly locked. Even if she could find the right doorway, and it
wasn’t
locked, what were the chances that she would hit the right switches on the first try?

She was out of time anyway. Hector had reached the edge of the stage, and could go no further without tumbling into the orchestral pit. It was a jump that he could easily make, but that would mean turning his back on the person who was slowly approaching him with the blade,
which he was reluctant to do.

Desperate to prevent another death, Moira did the only thing she could think of.

“Hey, stop!” she shouted, her voice echoing in the huge, empty theater. Her ploy had the desired effect; the person with the knife lowered it a fraction of an inch and looked up, trying to find her among the dark seats. She had expected Hector to take this opportunity to leap down from the stage, but he appeared to be frozen in place.

“Go on, move,” she muttered under her breath, but it was too late; the hooded figure was already turning back to him, evidently determined to finish what it had started before dealing with the new threat of Moira.

The hooded figure was only feet away from the terrified Hector when a third form rushed in suddenly from stage right. The person, whom she recognized as Antonio, slammed into the hooded figure, knocking him or her off the stage. The deli owner heard the sounds of a scuffle and then a shout, and saw the hooded figure take off toward one of the exits.

Concerned for both men, she hurried down to the stage to find Hector helping Antonio up. Her now-former prime suspect had a shallow cut on his upper arm, but otherwise seemed unharmed. The hooded figure had dropped his knife in panic as he fled.

“You saved my life,” Hector was saying to Antonio in a shaky voice. “That psycho was going to kill me.”

“It wasn’t just me—Moira helped,” Antonio said gruffly. “Without her shout, I might not have been able to get the drop on whoever that was.”

“I didn’t even know you were offstage,” the deli owner admitted, shaken. “I… I thought that the hooded person was you.”

“What?” Antonio looked at her, shocked. “Why?”

“Well, because whoever it is has been targeting people from the contest. You were the first to get disqualified, and you looked so upset, I thought…”

He snorted. “Well, you were wrong about that. But you were right about whoever it is targeting the contestants. I’ve been suspicious about the same thing since Daphne got sick, and you getting sick just solidified my suspicions. Hector was the logical next target, so I decided to follow him. I caught up with him in time to see him slip into this empty theater alone, and followed to see what was going on.”

Moira frowned. “Why would you come in here?” she asked Hector.

“I heard someone ask for help,” he told them. “It was a woman’s voice. She called me by name, and I thought she sounded familiar, so I decided to check it out.”

“Do you know who it was?” she asked.

“No… well, I do think it was one of the women from the contest, but I couldn’t tell you which one if my life depended on it.” He shuddered. “Sorry, bad choice of words.”

Antonio looked up at her. “Well, it wasn’t you, and it wasn’t Daphne because she’s still in the infirmary. That leaves Sofia, Nadine, and Michelle.”

Moira paled. There were three possible murderers on the ship, and one of them was friends with her daughter.

The three of them agreed to split up. Hector would report what had happened to the security office. Antonio was going to go try to find the other women, and Moira was going to find her daughter. She was expecting a long search, and was surprised when she ran into Candice on her way back to their rooms.

“Mom, there you are. I was wondering where you went. Sofia decided to go to bed a little bit after you left, and I wanted to make sure you were okay before hitting the hay myself.”

“Oh, my goodness, I was so worried about you,” the deli owner said, enveloping her daughter in a hug.

“Why? What happened?” Candice asked, her forehead creasing with concern.

“Let’s go back to our rooms, I’ll tell you all about it there.”

With their doors safely locked, Moira told her daughter all about her encounter with Hector, Antonio, and the mysterious hooded stranger.

“Someone is definitely trying to sabotage the competition,” she said. “And at this point, I’m more concerned about keeping you safe than unmasking the bad guy. Will you promise me that you won’t leave your room tonight?”

“Of course,” Candice said. She raised an eyebrow. “Will you promise the same thing?”

The deli owner hesitated, but recognized the look in her daughter’s eye. The young woman wasn’t going to sit by while her mother roamed the halls with a killer running around, any more than Moira would be able to hide in her room with Candice out there. Keeping her daughter safe might mean staying holed up in her own room while someone else put their life on the line, but it was an easy choice to make. Her daughter would always come first.

“Yes,” Moira said. “Neither of us will leave our rooms until morning, and then we go straight to the security office, together. Deal?”

“Deal.”

“Good. Now, I’m going to go try to video call David and see if there’s anything he can do from Michigan to help us here. You just sit tight, and get some sleep if you can.”

She slipped through the door that joined their two rooms together and sat at her desk, bringing the tablet to life with the press of a button. Even though it was late, David answered her video call in a timely manner.

“Hey,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “I’m surprised you’re still up.”

“I’m surprised
you’re
still up,” she replied.

“I’ve been doing research, like I promised,” he told her. “I haven’t found anything useful, though.”

“That’s okay,” Moira said. “I have.”

She told him about what had happened in the theater. When she was finished, they both fell silent for a moment, David shaking his head slowly.

“Don’t leave your room,” he warned her first.

“Of course I won’t. I already made that promise to Candice. Is there anything you can do there? Would the police be able to help?”

He gave a grim laugh. “Moira, you are far, far out of the jurisdiction of any law enforcement agency I know. You’re going to have to depend on whatever security they have on the ship to help you.” He groaned. “I hate this.”

“I know,” she said. “Me too. I feel so helpless, I just—”

She broke off, something about his expression sending a jolt of fear through her.

“Moira,” he said quietly. “Who’s behind you?”

She spun around just as the woman lunged at her, nylon rope held tightly between her gloved hands. Moira avoided the loop of rope by pure chance, kicking out as the woman stumbled toward her. The force of their collision sent Moira into the desk, where the tablet fell over with a clatter, and the woman stumbled to one knee.

“Mom,” Candice shouted from the next room. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine, sweetie,” Moira shouted back, determined to keep her daughter safe if it was the last thing she did.

The woman was beginning to get up. The deli owner tried to grab the rope from her, and a silent struggle ensued. In their throes, the woman’s hood fell off, revealing not Sofia, but Nadine. The other woman yanked the rope out of Moira’s hands as her grip went limp in surprise.

“You?” Moira blurted out, confused. “Why?”

“I need that money,” Nadine hissed. “You’d do the same in my position.”

Moira tensed, ready for the woman to reach for her with the rope again, but now that she had been identified and confronted, the other woman seemed less eager to attack her.

“No, I wouldn’t,” Moira whispered back, still determined to keep Candice from realizing that anything was wrong. “No amount of money is worth killing someone.”

“Your kid is, though.”

The deli owner blinked, confused. “I don’t understand.”

“My husband is leaving me, like I told you,” Nadine said. To Moira’s surprise, her voice cracked. “I need the money to hire a lawyer that will help me fight for my kids. Otherwise he’s going to get full custody. I’d kill everyone on this ship if it meant I could keep my babies.”

“Oh.”

The deli owner let her hands drop, shocked by Nadine’s revelation and shocked by her own reaction to it. It didn’t excuse her murdering people, of course, but she couldn’t help but feel some sort of bizarre sympathy toward the other woman.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Nadine grunted.

“Like what?”

“Like you care what happens. Like you could even begin to understand what I’m going through.”

“Of course I can understand that, I’m a single mother, too,” Moira said. “What was your plan, though? Just kill us all? Don’t you think the judges would notice?”

“I didn’t want to kill anyone,” Nadine said, twisting the rope in her hands nervously. “Bobby… I lost control with him. At dinner that first night, he was bragging and bragging about how good his restaurant was and how many local contests he had won. I knew I couldn’t beat him, and I panicked. But with you and Daphne, I was careful. I just gave you enough rat poison to make you sick.”

“What about Hector?”

“He didn’t eat with me,” the other woman said plaintively. “I asked him to, and he refused. How else was I going to slip poison to him? I know I’m not good at cooking, not like the rest of you. If you were all still around for the competition tomorrow, I would have been the next one disqualified. I had to act fast.”

“I see,” Moira said, striving for a soothing tone. “It’s okay. Look, why don’t you sit down? We can figure this out together. I—”

Without warning, the other woman lunged at her with the loop of rope, this time managing to slip it around Moira’s neck and tighten it before she could get her fingers around it. The deli owner struggled, her panic making her stronger than usual, but even her fear couldn’t overpower the other woman’s determination. Her lungs aching, she began to see black spots in front of her eyes and she felt her arms losing strength as she scrabbled mindlessly at the rope around her neck. When the door between her room and Candice’s room slammed open, the noise felt faint and distant, like a car door slamming far off.

A moment later, someone loosened the noose from around her neck and she thought she heard male voices talking, but she was too focused on the miraculous feeling of air coursing into her lungs to pay them any attention. Her throat ached, but she could breathe, and that was all that mattered.

“Thanks,” she said hoarsely, reaching out to take the cup of warm tea and honey from the medic. Candice, who was sitting next to her on a bench in the infirmary, winced at the sound of her mother’s voice.

“How bad does it hurt?” she asked.

“Worse than a cold. Not as bad as the fire,” Moira said. The smoke inhalation from the barn fire a few weeks ago ranked as one of her worst experiences; even being choked into unconsciousness by a madwoman couldn’t compare.