Innocent Murderer (5 page)

“Cordi. Jesus girl, you look awful.” She dumped the contents of her arms onto the table under my porthole and then plopped down on the end of my bed, jerking me against the motion of the waves and causing a small revolt in my stomach.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“All you have to do is get your sea legs. Nothing to it.

You'll be right as rain tomorrow, but I've got lots of anti stuff to get you through the worst.”

I was hoping the worst had already happened.

She got up and rummaged through her vials of pills throwing me Gravol caplets, time release, multiple strength tablets, suppositories, and drink crystals. She hauled out various coloured wristbands and stood guard while I chose a pair and put them on, their little plastic cups digging deep into my wrists like tight socks.

“That's the way it's supposed to be,” said Martha as I protested and began to take them off.

“Leave 'em on, Cordi, leave 'em on. You won't notice them in five minutes, I guarantee it.”

“Yeah, right. That's because my hands will be numb.”

She fished out a bunch of sugary looking globs. “If you want to go natural instead of all these pills and stuff, here's the best sugared ginger in the world.” She threw me her little package. I sniffed at it suspiciously and the smell made me gag.

“Guess it won't be natural,” said Martha as she scooped up most of the mess and stashed it in one of the drawers under my bed. “The best medicine for you right now is to get moving, take your mind off your stomach. Come on up to the bridge. I've been told the captain wants to see you.”

Five minutes later we were weaving down the hall
–
way of my deck, four, and hauling ourselves up the nar
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row staircase to the bridge. We made way for a woman coming down the stairs, who turned out to be in the writing course. Martha introduced her to me as LuEllen. She was one of those masculine types, short-cropped hair, no jewellery, and wearing baggy clothing that completely hid her figure. She was wearing a baseball cap thrust low over her forehead and a jacket with a hunched up scarf so that I could not see her face. But I was more interested in what she had in her arms, or rather arm — the sleeve of her right arm hung empty and useless. In the arm that was there nestled a little, white, long-, curly-haired dog, about the size of a cat. She could have hidden it in her clothing and I wouldn't have been the wiser, unless it yapped.

“How're you doing, LuEllen?” asked Martha, as she munched on her apple. But LuEllen obviously was not feeling very talkative. She just nodded at us and walked on by, but not before the dog made an unsuccessful lunge at Martha's apple.

“Moody,” said Martha, “but she's had a few rotten curves in her life.”

I thought about the arm and wondered what the other curves were, besides a rude dog, when we reached the bridge through the back door.

“Are you sure we're supposed to do this?” I asked as Martha pushed her way through a deserted map room to the bridge proper.

“Absolutely. I've already been up snooping around and the captain was up here and told me that the bridge is always open to us, unless he clamps down because of bad weather or dangerous navigation.”

It felt weird. The only other ship I had ever been on had not allowed anyone on the bridge except crew.

“Besides, we're here on official business.”

I looked at her in surprise.

“I told you the captain asked to see you.”

“What does the captain want with me?” But Martha had already stepped onto the bridge.

We emerged onto the brightness of the deck and a magnificent, foggy view of the ship. Spread out three decks below us was the bow of the ship, with its tangle of anchors and cables, and about twenty tourists hanging over the rails to look at the sea below. Just beyond the fog was Frobisher Bay, where in the late sixteenth cen
–
tury, Martin Frobisher led three explorations in search of the Northwest Passage and to mine gold. He struck out on both counts. The gold he found was worthless marcasite, and the strait did not lead to the mysteries of the Orient but to a huge inland sea — Hudson Bay. He struck out with the Inuit too. His uncompromising char
–
acter did not sit well with them. When five of his men were captured he seized three Inuit in return and took them back to England as curiosities. They died soon after.

I could hear someone's raised voice knifing its way through the bridge. “Admit it, Jason. You damn well blew it. You're the goddamn captain of this ship and it's your responsibility to hire the right people.”

I turned to stare at the source of the problem, the cadence of the voice familiar. Without her wet weather gear hiding her face I was once again astonished by how beautiful Terry was, her golden blond hair fashionably messy, her clear blue eyes and pale chocolate milk skin, her trim figure, dwarfed by the man beside her.

“I don't hire the tourist crew,” he said.

“But as captain of this ship you are ultimately respon
–
sible for everyone's welfare.”

“For god's sake,” he said. “It was an emergency, Terry. If she hadn't taken over the boat who knows what would have happened.”

“I'm not talking about O'Callaghan. She at least tried to fix the mistake.”

“Then who…?”

“Don't be so dense.”

“You mean Peter?”

“Yeah, I mean Peter, if that's the name of your incompetent driver. Can't even keep his own passen
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gers under control so that we were left with a total greenhorn to bring the Zodiac home. That's got to smack of negligence.”

“Wasn't it you who stood up?”

“Of course it was me, but if he'd let us know every
–
thing was okay, that the waves were manageable, I would never have panicked.”

“Let it go. You're blowing it up out of all proportion.”

”Oh I am, am I? I could have been killed!” She raised her hand to the side of her head. “I've got a lump the size of a golf ball on my head and it didn't just magi
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cally appear. I'm lucky I don't have a concussion and O'Callaghan is lucky she didn't drown us all. A few calming words from this Peter guy would have prevented all this, including his own injury.”

I was wondering what a golf ball sized lump would do to your judgment when apparently Terry read my mind. She turned and looked right at me, her anger changing disconcertingly to sweetness and light, a daz
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zling smile creasing her face in all the right places. “Oh, look who we have here: Cordi O'Callaghan — heroine.

Thank you so much for saving my life.”

I couldn't tell from the tone of her voice whether she was being genuine or sarcastic, but Jason seemed to have no doubts. “That's enough Terry,” he hissed, tak
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ing her roughly by the elbow so that she stumbled. “I won't have you disrupting my ship again. You should never have come back.”

She laughed with a dry, empty sound. “Is that a threat captain?” she asked sweetly, “You're assaulting me if I'm not mistaken.” She jerked her arm free.

He looked momentarily disconcerted. “Let's just say I'll be watching you.”

“He'll be watching me. How sweet.” She laughed again, this time a gentle chortling sound that matched the perfect contours of her beautiful face. I wished she'd been this charming with me when we first met. Then I'd be on dry land thousands of kilometres away from here.

Jason said nothing and she patted him on the arm.

“Take care of those pretty little eyes of yours. You wouldn't want to strain them now would you?”

Jason's jaw was so clenched that a muscle twitched in his cheek. He looked furious, but there was also some
–
thing else there — wariness? Apprehension? I couldn't be sure and it didn't last long.

I cleared my throat, rather too loudly, and Terry turned toward me with a ready-made smile plastered on her face, as if nothing had just transpired at all. “Wel
–
come to the bridge, Cordi. Have you met Jason?”

He was tall, very tall, but it was his thinness that stood out. There was not an ounce of fat on him and his face was long and narrow and carved by age, or weather, or both, making him look old. “You must be Cordi O'Callaghan. The one who solved the murder up in Dumoine, Quebec? Very nice work.” He held out his hand. “I'm Captain Jason Poole. And you already know Terry. Welcome to the
Susanna Moodie
.”

I gripped his hand and then he turned to Martha and introduced himself.

Terry looked at all of us. “I'd better get back to my stateroom so that I can finish preparing my lectures for the masses.”

Jason said nothing at all and I just nodded my head as she strolled off the bridge. I inclined my head at Martha. “Martha told me you wanted to see me.” I really hoped he'd be fast because I could feel the woozy feeling coming back as I watched the bow of the ship, or what I could see of it through the fog, knife its way through the water.

He smiled at me. “Your friend and several others have already told me what you did to get the passengers safely aboard. I wanted to personally thank you and apol
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ogize for the crewman's ignorance in forcing you to crane the boat on your first voyage. It won't happen again, I assure you. But I need to get to the bottom of all this.”

This was embarrassing. I mumbled a few stupid words before finally finding a couple of smart ones. “How is the driver?”

“He has a concussion. The doctor says he'll be okay.

But I did want to ask you your version of what happened.”

He listened carefully while I went through it all.

When I had finished he scratched his head. “Was Terry seasick or did she just panic the way she said?”

“I don't know. As far as I could tell she looked pretty desperate.”

Jason seemed to have finished with me, judging by the interest ebbing from his eyes, but I wasn't finished with him.

“You seem to have met Terry Spencer before?” I asked, hoping for — I don't know what.

“Yeah,” he hesitated and clenched his jaw. “Along with our naturalist talks we have writing courses on this ship quite often — usually creative writing, different groups, anyone can join. Terry Spencer has been before. Just between you and me she's a bit of a handful. Bright, but so demanding and arrogant that no one wants to touch her.

At least, not in that way.” He flung this last aside in almost accidentally and then threw his hands up in the air in self-defence. “Hey. What can I say? She IS beautiful.”

Chapter Five

“B
eluga whale off the starboard bow!” The intercom system woke me from a groggy, Gravol-induced sleep.

I opened one eye and looked through the porthole. I was greeted by patchy, milky white fog and floating chunks of white pack ice as far as the fog would let me see. No horizon for me to fix on, just a great white abyss. How the hell anyone could see a beluga whale in such a world of white was more than I could fathom. You were much more likely to hear the “canaries of the sea,” with their squeals, whistles, and little puffs. The sea was moving us in a rolling rhythm that made me want to lie back down and sleep forever. I could hear the rumbling throb of the engine coming from deep within the ship, shuddering through its core, totally out of sync with the sea, something I wouldn't have even noticed if I hadn't felt so sick.

I glanced at the clock and groaned: 6:00 p.m. I'd missed the crew briefing, but I could make the passen
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ger orientation — just. Even if I didn't get any questions asked of me I had to be there. Terry had left no doubts about that. I gingerly stood up, swaying with the ship. I could do this if I didn't think too much.

One of my two rooms, the sitting room, had a win
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dow that looked out over the bow and I'd been spending a lot of time looking out of it, trying to find the horizon and stabilize my semi-circular canals. There was just one easy chair. The bedroom was even more sparse; just the beds, a table, and a lamp. No shower. No bath. Just a sink and a toilet.

I pulled on my pants and a fleece jacket and headed into the hallway, which was so narrow that an over
–
sized person might feel somewhat claustrophobic. For me, narrow was good. I could lean on both walls. The stairs were a bit of a challenge since the ship seemed to lurch out of reach of my foot every time I was trying to find a step.

People were milling around outside the dining room, so at least I wasn't late. I poked my head inside the room. It was plain, just like my room — only the bare neces
–
sities. It had already been set up for dinner and people were sitting at tables of eight with perky red and white checkerboard tablecloths, fake flowers, and cheap cut
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lery — this was definitely no luxury liner. I saw that Terry was there and in a sea of strange faces I gravitated towards her. But I never made it. Someone touched me on the shoulder and I turned to see the hairy man who had been knocked out in the Zodiac.

“Cordi O'Callaghan?”

I nodded and he held out his hand “Peter Stanford. Your friend Martha pointed you out to me.” I followed his gaze and saw Martha and Duncan deep in conversa
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tion. How had I missed them?

“I gather I owe you my thanks,” he said.

I glanced at the bandage on his head, which was holding back some serious curls that threatened to engulf his face. He smiled as I took his hand.

“They said you were on death's door.”

“Somewhat exaggerated,” he said. “The doctor kicked me out of sick bay half an hour ago. Just in time for the orientation meeting.”

I couldn't tell whether he was happy or irked at having to be here so I said something nice and neutral. “Have you been to many?”

“Tons. I've been lecturing on Arctic seabirds for ten years. But my current field of research is the nesting hab
–
its of gyrfalcons.”