Santa Cruise (10 page)

“I worked very hard on the seating arrangements,” Dudley said defensively. “Those children are with us because of their caring, loving natures that their mother captured in her beautiful and heartwarming Christmas letter.”

“Well, one of the girls was so caring, she yanked the chair out from under Crater and he fell backward when he tried to sit down. That's why he was carried out of the dining room strapped to a stretcher.”

“We missed all that?” Ivy asked, dismayed.

“I'm afraid so,” Eric answered.

“Well, that's all right,” Ivy decided. “I now have these wonderful people on my side, helping me to get to the bottom of things.” She pointed to Jack. “How many people have the head of the Major Case Squad of New York City working with them?” She then pointed to the others. “How many people have a renowned private investigator, a famous suspense writer, and a prize-winning amateur sleuth taking the time to dig for the truth?
Not many,
I tell you! But Ivy Pickering is proud to say, ‘I have them all.' “

By now Eric's mouth was wide open. He had met the couples earlier, when he'd been forced to give up his room to the Meehans, but he had no
idea that Alvirah's guests included the head of the Major Case Squad of New York City. Eric was worried—Bull's-Eye looked exactly like the exfighter who became a famous writer. The news headlines announced that Bull's-Eye was missing, and his picture was all over the media. Would Jack Reilly have any suspicions that the man Pickering had seen was not a dead writer, but an escaped criminal? Thank God Ivy said the ghost was jumping up and down in boxing shorts. Eric hoped Jack Reilly would not make the connection. For an awful moment, Eric had a vision of himself in a prison cell with no window, never mind a balcony. He had to find Bull's-Eye and the Bean Counter before somebody else spotted them. He knew they couldn't be in the chapel but he wanted to check it out anyway, then he'd work his way through the ship.

Eric forced himself to smile. “Well, we can all feel safe with such impressive law enforcement figures on board,” he said heartily. “Now, if you'll excuse me . . .” He started past them up the companionway.

He's not going to see Mr. Crater, Dudley realized. The ship's infirmary is on the lowest deck. What's he up to?

In the next ten minutes, Eric raced through the chapel, looked into his uncle's suite—even
though the door was locked and no one would have been able to get in—and checked out all the hiding places that he could possibly imagine. Large as the
Royal Mermaid
was, there weren't many spots to hide. Whenever Eric spotted a Santa, he rushed over to him only to be disappointed. They've got to be starving by now, he told himself. Was there any chance they'd risk going to get something to eat?

Eric looked at his watch and realized that the buffet wouldn't be open yet. I'd better go down and check on Crater, he thought, and then I'll head to the Lido.

N
ora and Luke begged off joining the group in the piano lounge.

“We got in late last night and were up so early this morning,” Nora pleaded. “We'll see you guys at breakfast.”

Willy yawned. “Alvirah, you've got enough stamina for everyone on the ship. Do you mind if I turn in, too?”

Ivy, whose heart had begun to sink at the prospect of losing her intimate visit with the celebrities, perked up when Alvirah said, “Go ahead, Willy. I won't be long.”

“I'll find a nice quiet table for us,” Dudley promised.

At the entrance to the lounge, Ivy spotted a couple sitting at a window table. “Oh, there's my roommate, Maggie,” Ivy exclaimed as she looked across the room. “Who's the Santa Claus with her?”

“I can't tell from here,” Dudley said. “But I think it's Ted Cannon. He's one of the taller Santas.”

“Would you like to invite them to join us?” Regan asked Ivy.

“No,” Ivy answered decisively. She was really fond of Maggie, but her friend had been laughing just as hard as everybody else when she told them that she had seen Left Hook Louie. Besides, she wanted a chance to talk to Regan, Jack, and Alvirah with as few others around as possible. She didn't mind Dudley so much—the poor guy just looked worn out.

Dudley led the way to a corner table. He gestured grandly to Alvirah, “Ms. Meehan, where would you like to sit?”

“Never with my back to the door,” Alvirah joked. “I don't want to miss a thing.”

“Neither does anyone else in this group,” Regan murmured. She always teased Jack that the only disadvantage of being with him was that he could never sit facing the wall because of his job. This meant that if they couldn't find a banquette and sit side by side, Regan's view would be solely of Jack, which, as he pointed out, “was treat enough for anyone.”

“Dudley, how about if you sit next to me?” Alvirah
suggested. “Whew,” she said, grabbing onto a chair. “The sea must be getting choppy.”

“The sea is an unpredictable lady,” Dudley said knowingly, helping Alvirah ease into a chair. “As are most ladies,” he added with a raised eyebrow. “We men never know what to expect. Isn't that right, Jack?”

Regan was amused at the expression on Jack's face. She knew it must have aggravated him when Dudley insinuated they were birds of a feather. Jack had already told her that he thought Dudley was a harmless bumbler.

Alvirah was regretting the fact that she had not worn her sunburst pin with the hidden microphone. It had often picked up something someone had said that turned out to be revealing when she listened quietly to the replay.

As soon as everyone was seated, a waiter materialized and took their orders.

Alvirah turned to Dudley. “You've had quite a day, haven't you?” she asked sympathetically. “Any news on that waiter who took a swan dive into the Port of Miami?”

Dudley felt a faint fluttering in his stomach. He hadn't had the courage to go to his office and read his e-mail. He was grateful for the fact that most of the time local TV stations weren't
picked up by the ship's communications system. He knew that the Commodore's business office in Miami had probably contacted him about any coverage of the incident that had broken on the evening news. I'm like Scarlett O'Hara, he admitted to himself ruefully, I'll think about it tomorrow. He was able to answer Alvirah honestly, “I haven't heard anything else. As the Commodore announced, his offense was of a domestic nature. The man was
way
overdue on his alimony.”

Ivy wagged her finger. “That's one good thing about never meeting the right person. I've never had to worry about a deadbeat ex. When I was little, Papa gave his paycheck unopened to my mother every Friday night, and she handed him his allowance. It worked just fine until he asked for a raise.” She smiled at the waiter as he placed an apple martini in front of her. With great anticipation, she took a sip. “The things they can do with apples . . .” she exulted. “Oh, I should have waited until you were all served. I'm so wound up, but I feel safe with all of you.” As soon as everyone had their drinks, she held up her glass. “Let's have a toast!”

“Cheers,” they chorused as rain suddenly began beating noisily against the windows.

“I wouldn't want to be out there,” Regan commented
as the ship suddenly rolled from side to side.
“Listen
to that wind! It's starting to howl. This storm moved in pretty fast, didn't it, Dudley?”

“As I said, the sea is an unpredictable lady,” Dudley pronounced as he clutched his glass. “I've been through many such storms that have caught us by surprise. If this is like most others, it will go as fast as it came. And that's what I predict.”

“As long as there are no icebergs out there,” Ivy said cheerfully. “I've had enough surprises for tonight. Well, here comes Benedict Arnold.”

“What?” Regan asked, puzzled.

“My roommate, Maggie.”

Maggie Quirk was crossing the room toward them, followed by Ted Cannon, who had removed his beard and cap. “Whoa!” Maggie cried as the ship suddenly lurched again. She grabbed Ted's arm.

“The ship didn't roll, Maggie!” Ivy called out sweetly. “You just imagined it!”

Maggie smiled as she approached the table. “Ivy, I'm sorry. At first, we all thought you staged that scene because you wanted so much to have a murder mystery on board. Now everyone knows that something
really
frightened you.”

“There certainly is something going on,” Jack agreed, as he and Dudley stood. Introductions were made and extra chairs pulled up to the table.

“Ted knows I'm your roommate, so he asked me about you,” Maggie explained.

Alvirah noticed the cap in Ted's hands. “That's where it came from!” she exclaimed.

“Where
what
came from?” Regan asked.

Alvirah fished in her pocket. “The little bell we found in the chapel. It's the same as the two on the tip of Ted's cap.” She turned to Dudley. “How many bells are supposed to be on those caps?”

Dudley hesitated. “Two.”

“Dudley,” Alvirah said, “we should check the eight caps the Santas are wearing and see if they all still have two bells. If they do, then it looks as if someone who had one of the stolen Santa suits was in the chapel.”

Regan stared at Dudley. He would certainly have recognized the bell as coming from one of the caps. He hadn't mentioned it before. Clearly, he doesn't want us to think that the person or persons who stole those outfits is wandering around the ship in them. And if that were the case, were they somehow connected to whatever it was that Ivy saw?

Another rolling motion of the ship knocked their glasses over.

“Time to call it a night,” Jack said as they all pushed back from the dripping table. “Be careful,
everybody. This storm feels as though it's getting worse.”

Trying to be cheerful, Dudley proclaimed, “Don't worry, everyone. You're snug as a bug in a rug in this old tub.”

The psychic's warning flashed into Alvirah's mind.
“I see a tub. A large tub. You are not safe in it. . . .”

T
his is nuts!” Bull's-Eye spat out the words as he and Highbridge huddled behind the barn, driving rain hitting them from every direction. “We're getting soaked. When it gets light, what are we going to do? Even if it's stopped raining, we're gonna look like a couple of drowned rats. There's
no way
we'll be able to walk around in these Santa suits.”

Highbridge longed for his Greenwich estate with the wonderful bubbling Jacuzzi in the master bathroom and its view of Long Island Sound. I had so much family money I didn't even
need
to cheat investors, he thought. But it had been so much fun. Now, as he sat miserable and wet, wearing a scratchy Santa suit, he realized he should have gone into therapy and worked out his criminal instincts. And all the money he had wasted on his gold-digging ex-girlfriend who was now schussing down the slopes of Aspen with someone else.
If he didn't get to Fishbowl Island there was one thing he could count on—she'd never qualify for a cruise like this by visiting him in the clink. The thought of trading his Armani wardrobe for an orange jumpsuit riddled him with even more anxiety, if that was possible.

“Eric's got to be looking for us,” Highbridge said. “It's his neck, too, if we're found.”

Suddenly the blades of a windmill on the ninth hole, which had been spinning wildly, came loose and went flying through the air. They landed inches from their sandaled feet.

E
ric knew that if he ran into Alvirah Meehan on an isolated deck, he'd toss her overboard. If it weren't for her, Bull's-Eye and Highbridge would still be safely in his stateroom, and he'd be that much closer to his big payoff. The way things were, they had told Eric they wouldn't give him the second half of his money when their people picked them up off Fishbowl Island. And he'd be lucky if one or the other of them, once they were safely outside the United States, didn't write a letter explaining to the authorities exactly how they fled the country.

Eric had another thought. If he came across Dudley on an isolated deck, it would be an even greater pleasure to throw him in the drink. All this was coursing through his mind, as he was temporarily forced to abandon the search for his two charges and check on Crater. Grabbing on to the bannister, he hurried down flight after flight of
steps to the medical facility in the bowels of the ship. With each descending flight, the rocking of the ship lessened somewhat, but even so he had to steady himself along the guardrail of the passageway outside the infirmary.

Expecting to find an empty waiting room, Eric was disagreeably surprised to find it filled with queasy passengers demanding ear patches for their seasickness. Bobby Grimes, whose drunken outburst had been the talk of the cocktail party, was holding his head in his hands. When he spotted Eric, he barked, “I knew I should have stayed home.”

I wish you had, too, Eric thought, as he crossed the small reception area and opened the door that led to Gephardt's office and the treatment rooms. The nurse behind the desk was sorting medication. She had the aura of a guard dog. Looking at Eric, she frowned in disapproval.

“My uncle wants me to speak to Crater,” he told her. “Which room is he in?”

“Second on the right,” she answered crisply. “Dr. Gephardt is with him.”

The door to Crater's room was open. Gephardt was beside the bed. Eric heard him say, “This shot will definitely relieve those back spasms, Mr. Crater. It should also help you sleep.”

“I want to go back to my room,” Crater protested, his voice drowsy.

“Not tonight,” Gephardt said firmly. “Your back is bad, and we're in a storm. The last thing we need is for you to fall again. Down here you're in the calmest part of the ship, and we can keep an eye on you.”