Several Deaths Later (10 page)

    Tobin glanced around at the crowd and, not seeing who he was looking for, said, "Cindy, would you mind waiting here?"

    "For what?"

    "I forgot something in the room."

    "Forgot what?"

    "Gee, I'm glad you don't ask a lot of questions."

    "Well, you're lying to me, Tobin."

    He sighed. "I need to go find somebody."

    "Who?"

    "Alicia Farris."

    "The producer's wife?"

    "Right."

    "Why?"

    "I'm not sure."

    "Bull."

    "I'm not. I mean, I just want to ask her what she knew about the red-haired woman."

    "And you can't take me with you?"

    "It'll be easier if I go alone."

    "Thanks a lot."

    "I'm sorry but it will." Now she sighed. "All right."

    "C'mon, Cindy. I'm really not trying to hurt your feelings."

    "I know."

    "I won't be long. I promise."

    She made a little flouncing motion, as if her entire body had simply given in to his deserting her. "Just go on, Tobin. Just go on.”

    

    

    Not even after Ken Norris's murder had Tobin thought of all the neat places a killer could hide aboard a cruise ship but now as he made his way down two decks and along shadowy passageways, he realized that, especially late at night, a killer would have no problem at all hiding and then fleeing back to his or her room. No problem at all.

    When he came to the Farrises' cabin, he put his ear to the door before knocking.

    Inside he heard drawers being opened and closed hurriedly. It did not seem likely either Jere or Alicia Farris would frantically search through their own drawers-not unless they were planning to go someplace… and where could they go in the middle of the ocean?

    He moved away from the door and pressed himself against the wall.

    More drawers were jerked open, slammed shut. Closet doors on rollers were hurled back. Then, more faintly, things in the bathroom medicine cabinet were pushed around.

    All Tobin could do was wait.

    Two minutes later the door squeaked open and a figure he did not at first recognize moved out into the hallway.

    True to TV movie fashion, the figure wore a dark beret, a dark sweater, a dark jacket, dark socks, and dark shoes.

    Unfortunately, her hair was not dark but dishwater blond.

    He got her by the wrist. "You're the last person I would have suspected of being a thief."

    Joanna Howard, the quiet makeup girl, glanced up at him and said, "Oh, God, Mr. Tobin, are you going to tell anybody?"

    From the opposite end of the hall, he could hear passengers coming. This corridor was no place to talk.

    He kept hold of her wrist. "Come on," he said.

    

    

    "I don't know why she started suspecting us," Joanna Howard said ten minutes later.

    Tobin had gone to one of the lounges and gotten them diet 7-Ups. He puffed on a cigarillo and let her explain.

    "This is Alicia, you mean."

    "Yes."

    "Suspecting what?"

    "The fact that Jere and I were having an affair."

    "You and Jere?"

    She smiled, looking sad as she did so. "I know, neither one of us are likely types, are we?"

    Tobin shrugged. They stood on the sports deck watching the ocean churn behind them. He was chilly.

    "Unfortunately for the institution of marriage," Tobin said, "everybody seems to be the type at one point or another."

    "It wasn't sleazy."

    "I'm not saying it was."

    "And it wasn't just a one-night sort of thing."

    "I don't imagine it was."

    "And I really think we may love each other. We've talked about it, anyway." She paused and glared at him. "What's so funny?"

    "The idea of talking over if you're in love or not. I'm not sure that's necessary. It seems to me you're either in love or you're not."

    "That's because you've had so many affairs, Mr. Tobin. Jere and I-well, we're not really experienced." She flushed. "He's my first real lover and even though he won't exactly admit it, I think Alicia was the first woman he ever slept with." In her beret and dark clothes, she was fetching. But how sad she looked leaning against the railing with the furious white wake waters below them, the dark and silver ocean covering all else.

    "You could get hurt."

    "He wouldn't do that to me, Mr. Tobin."

    "He might not want to but he might have to."

    "If he decides to stay with her, you mean?"

    "Yes."

    "I'm prepared for that." But there was a catch in her throat and Tobin knew better.

    "So why were you in their room?"

    "Because I'd acted impulsively. Stupidly, really."

    "Tell me."

    "I'd… I'd been afraid of exactly what you were talking about."

    "Of being dumped?"

    "Yes."

    "And?"

    "And so tonight I wrote him a letter. It was a very… it was kind of a real blunt letter."

    "Telling him you love him?"

    "Yes."

    "And telling him you want a decision right away?"

    "Yes."

    He smiled and slid his arm around her shoulder. "Joanna, we've all written letters like that. We get lonely and scared and it's only natural."

    "Yes, but I made the mistake of sliding it under his door because he told me Alicia was going to a party tonight and that he was just going to go to bed. They don't have a very good relationship and do a lot of things alone like that." She paused, shook her head. "So I pushed it under the door and knocked, hoping he'd wake up and see it. Then I went back to my cabin and waited for a phone call. I thought he'd read it and call me right away. I mean, I figured my knock had awakened him for sure. But then no call came. I waited for nearly two hours. Then I got this terrible feeling. What if he changed his mind at the last minute and went to the party and when they got back to their room they would find my letter on the floor? She'd see it for sure."

    "So you sneaked back to their room. How'd you get in?"

    "Credit card."

    "Really?"

    "One of the crew showed me how to do it."

    "Nice crew."

    "But it wasn't there."

    "The letter?"

    "No."

    "And that's why you were tossing the room?"

    "You mean opening drawers and stuff?"

    "Right."

    "I just went crazy. Started throwing stuff around and… I really got scared. If she ever saw a letter like that she'd-she'd have proof then, not just suspicions."

    "So you didn't find the letter?"

    "No."

    He said, "Two more people were murdered tonight."

    He wasn't sure why, but he was very interested in her reaction. "Who?"

    He told her. "Did you know or speak with either of them ever?"

    "No." Then she seemed to understand his motive. "You think I had something to do with it, Mr. Tobin?"

    He laughed and touched her shoulder again. "No, I don't, Joanna." He glanced at his watch. He'd left Cindy alone now for nearly half an hour. He said, "Did you put the room back in order?"

    "Yes. I was very careful."

    "Then all you can do is wait."

    "What if she came back for something and found it on the floor?"

    He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. "There are all sorts of possibilities and every one of them will make you crazy if you think of it too long. So why not go have a drink somewhere and wait till you hear from Jere? That's really about all you can do now."

    This time she touched him. "You're really nice, Mr. Tobin. I'd heard a lot of stories about you, but." She stopped herself. "Well, you know, everybody tells stories about everybody."

    "I know," Tobin said. "'Yosemite Sam.'"

    She giggled. "Coming from you, it sounds funny."

    Suddenly all Tobin wanted was to go back and find

    Cindy. To hell with murders. To hell with this young woman's love affair.

    "I'll walk you back to your cabin," Tobin said.

    "See," she said, "you really are nice.”

    

    

    He took her to her cabin and said good-night and said to try and get some sleep and then he went back to the deck where the bodies had been found.

    The passengers were gone, and so were the corpses, and so were the captain and the stewards in white uniforms.

    And so was Cindy.

    He checked his own cabin and then he checked her cabin and then he tried a few of the lounges where, of course, the murders were the number one topic. In one of the lounges he saw a crew member and described Cindy to him and asked if he'd seen her and the guy said, "Oh, the babe from Kansas City? God, isn't she all right?" He shrugged. "She was in here a while ago but she left."

    "Alone?"

    "Huh-uh. With everybody's least favorite TV cop."

    "You're kidding? Kevin Anderson?"

    "Right." He grinned. "Why would she take him when she could have had me without hardly begging at all?”

    

    

    

    He didn't find her. He checked out her cabin several times and he checked out the various lounges but he didn't find her and he recalled once a high school girlfriend who'd made him unbelievably jealous, and how in his battered Ford he used to drive around and around her house, knowing she was out on a date with someone else, there being a kind of solace in the mere motion of driving around and around her house, there having been no solace in anything else during those terrible nights, knowing she was irretrievably gone from him. He hated being jealous, the way it demeaned him, but he never seemed able to escape its clutches long. He had been known to get jealous during the first ten minutes of a blind date when, at a party, his date had seen an old boyfriend and merely nodded, proving to Tobin (as he had admitted to Dr. Spengler during six useless months on the couch) that he was probably at least 37.8 percent crazy after all.

    He went back to his cabin and stripped and lay down and took his emergency cigarette from his dinner jacket and, of course, being months old, it was hard and stale but Tobin tried not to notice that as he sat on the edge of his bed in his underwear inhaling the thing, thinking of Cindy in the arms of Kevin Anderson and wishing that he were not five-five and not so complicated and that Cindy and he could fall madly in love for the remaining three days of the cruise. It was testament to his frame of mind that he only rarely thought about the bodies he'd seen earlier on the deck, or about the dead Ken Norris.

    And then, cigarette half-smoked and already starting to feel guilty about his indulgence ("Now isn't that a stupid reaction to something like Cindy dumping you-smoking? Exactly who did it help? You? Anybody? No."), a knock like a rock fell on the door and of course he thought: Cindy. She's spent enough time with the TV playboy and is sorry and now at last we're going to make love and spend three fleshy, blissful days together.

    But it wasn't Cindy at the door. Not at all.

    It was Captain Hackett.

    

    

    

    "Small caliber bullets, close range."

    "Dr. Devane used to be a coroner," Captain Hackett explained. "He's now a full-time physician aboard the ship."

    "I see," Tobin said.

    "Upstate New York," the doctor said. "Where I was a coroner, I mean." He seemed to think his former address had some bearing here. He was the same brown-haired man Tobin had seen on deck earlier. He wore a blue suit and a white button-down shirt and a red tie. He looked like a politician. He had the teeth for it, anyway, and that odd, cold distance Tobin had always sensed in politicians.

    They were in Captain Hackett's office, sitting at a round table covered with rolled-up nautical maps. A decanter of brandy and three glasses were on the table. A facsimile of a Chesterfield lamp was pulled down near their heads for illumination. In the portholes the night was velvet black. None of the men could be said to be quite sober.

    "Do you know who they were?" Tobin said.

    "The woman's name was Iris Graves." The captain poured each of them more brandy as he spoke.

    "Know anything about her?"

    "I've been through her belongings. She seemed to be a reporter."

    "Really?"

    "Yes. And you won't believe for what paper." The captain laughed.
"Snoop."

    "That thing in the supermarket?" the doctor said. "Exactly."

    "The hell of it is," Tobin said, "they sometimes get things right. Or half right." Then he thought back to her wrestling match with Alicia Farris. The notebook they'd been fighting over became very large in Tobin's mind. "How about the man?"

    "Sanderson. Everett Sanderson."

    "Occupation?"

    "Not sure."

    "You went through his things?"

    "Yes. But except for a few letters addressed to him, there was no other form of identification," the captain said. "Plus he bought his ticket under the name of Kelly."

    "Why would he do that?" the doctor said. He sounded irritated at the mere thought of dishonest people.