A Cruise to Die For (An Alix London Mystery) (11 page)

“Ah gotta get me mo’,

Baby, Ah need it now.

But Ah ain’t nobody’s h—”

“Uh, Donny, shouldn’t you be looking where we’re going?”

He glanced forward long enough to adjust their course to avoid a fishing boat that was tootling in from a day at sea—apparently a good day, too; she could smell the fish. The two-man, rubber-aproned crew looked up from their work to grin in her direction, and one of them waved a fish at her.

She waved politely back.

“I thought everybody heard of Pocahontas,” Donny said, still in semishock. “She’s famous.”

“I’ll be sure to look her up.”

“You don’t got to look her up, she is right on board. I brought her over last night.”

“She’ll be on the cruise?”

“Sure. Hey, anything you want to know about her, you just ask me. You want to hear what her real name is? Isabelle Clinke.” He snickered. “I call her Izzy. I know her real good. I know them all real well. Hey, maybe sometime, I can take you for a ride if you want, what do you say? In the
Hermes
. I could tell you some pretty wild stories. And we could stop somewhere for a picnic, you know? Some quiet island, maybe?” He turned his head and she could see the gleam of those wolflike teeth.

“Maybe,” she said with a noncommittal smile.
Maybe when hell freezes over
.

Under ordinary circumstances she would have been a good deal more committal than that, but the last thing she needed was to start cutting off her contacts. She was there for the purpose of getting information, and she anticipated that the crew would be a primary source of it. Especially this particular crew: Papadakis had made a practice of hiring only people he knew, mostly from his own ancestral village of Karavostassis on the nearby island of Folegandros, and most of those, like Donny, were his cousins or nephews or nieces. He had paid to have them taught English and to attend training that met international requirements for the crew of a yacht the size of the
Artemis
. They were, so it was believed, an extremely tight-knit, loyal group—no outsiders allowed—which was why the FBI had never been able to get any of their own aboard until the opportunity for Alix London had come along.

So she simply smiled and let him continue to swagger and brag about the intimate terms he was on with the guests, and how close he was to his cousin and great friend Panos, and how much Panos depended on him for
advice. He also managed to let drop that he was a sometime swimsuit model, that he spoke four languages, and that he had been the marathon-swimming champion of the Cyclades in 2010. At one point he did make a passing remark that perked up her ears as being of possible interest—something that implied that all was not well between the Papadakises—but following up on it too obviously was out of the question, so she let him meander on to something else.

“You need anything, anything at all,” he said as they came within a hundred yards or so of the smallest of the liners, an almost aerodynamically beautiful four-decker with an impossibly spotless, smudgeless, dingless, Prussian-blue hull and white superstructure, “you come to me.”

“Thank you.”

The sounds of an on-deck cocktail party reached her as they swung even closer: music, tinkling glassware, chatter, and shrill, slightly false laughter. She looked up toward the open deck near the stern and saw that it was filled with people, most of whom had glasses in their hands.

She also caught a glimpse of the silvery, foot-and-a-half-foot-high lettering on the hull.
Artemis
.

Alix was amazed. She’d known the
Artemis
was big, and she’d even seen pictures of it, but somehow the actual physical hugeness of the thing had never quite penetrated. She just hadn’t expected that a two-hundred-and-thirty-nine-foot yacht would be so
long
, that it would loom over her like this, that its broad, clean side would be so intimidatingly massive.

And here she’d always thought her Uncle Julian’s eighty-footer was something.

Wow.

E
ntry to the yacht was midway down the port side, by means of a bay door hinged at the top so that it swung upward, allowing a small floating dock to be extended from the entry and laid down on the water. Alix was assisted onto this by a hand from a capable-looking young woman in a snappy tailored uniform—short-sleeved white cotton blouse with gold buttons, epaulets, and a trim blue skirt—the same Prussian-blue as the hull—that came down to just above her knees. As with Donny, the shirt bore a discreet
Artemis
logo in woven blue script.

“Welcome aboard, Ms. London,” she said. “My name is Artemis.”

“Artemis? Really?”

“Yes, really. Sometimes I think it is why Mr. Papadakis hired me,” she said with a smile, although it must have been a pretty tired joke with her by now. “I am the chief stewardess.”

As expected, her accent was Greek, although her syntax, unlike Donny’s, was flawless. If she and Donny really were relatives of Papadakis’s, then the Papadakis gene pool was awash with DNA for good looks, of which poor Panos had missed out on his fair share, assuming the photos she’d seen were accurate.

She moved aside to let Alix precede her into a simple foyer. “Mr. and Mrs. Papadakis have asked me to apologize on their behalf,” she said smoothly. “They would have liked to greet you personally, but they are occupied in hosting a pre-launch reception on the aft deck for island dignitaries and friends. And for those of our cruise guests who wish to attend, of course. They are hoping that once you have had a chance to refresh yourself and see your stateroom, you will want to join them.”

“Of course.”
Stateroom
, she thought.
Well, that’s another good sign
. Originally she hadn’t been sure whether she’d be treated as one more member of the crew or as a bona fide guest. But now—stateroom, the VIP treatment in general—it was clear that it was to be the latter. Good, that was going to make her privy to more of the information she was supposed to be keeping her eyes and ears open for, and, what the hell, admit it: It was going to make the whole enterprise a lot more enjoyable.

Artemis led the way into the yacht’s main atrium, of which the centerpiece was a four-story spiral staircase with veined marble steps and dark, richly polished wood banisters and support columns. The walls were done in tones of rust and sand, with accents in the same exotic wood that was on the staircase. Evenly spaced along the walls were eight fluted, shoulder-high marble columns (with capitals of the Ionic order, as Alix dimly remembered from some long-ago art history class), each one supporting a Classical bronze or marble head. Greek sculpture was something she knew little about, but these beautiful and evocative fragments struck her as being of museum quality. The teakwood floor had been so freshly sanded that its earthy fragrance still hung in the air.

Artemis took her up one flight of the spiraling stairs, paused at the top, and surprised Alix by saying, “This is Miss London,” to the smooth wooden post around which the staircase wound. “She will be one of our cruise guests and is entitled to full freedom of the ship.”

After a moment the pole said, “
Efkharisto,
Artemis.”

“I know
efkharisto
means ‘thank you’,” Alix said, “but I never heard it from a pole before.”

Artemis pointed to the recessed junction between the pole and the sixth step upward. “Video camera,” she said, “and speaker.”

Alix peered. “I still don’t see it.”

“That’s good; you’re not supposed to. There are many of them on the ship, in all the public areas. Mr. Papadakis is a cautious man.”

Alix frowned. The idea that she and the other guests would be under continual surveillance for the next week struck her as being closer to the
paranoia that Ted had mentioned than to caution, even considering the multimillion-dollar cargo they were carrying. All of the cruise guests, after all—and there were only six of them, five collectors and herself—had been personally invited by Mr. Papadakis. What did he imagine could possibly happen? Did he really think one of them would walk off—swim off? Jet boat off?—with a Renoir?

Artemis saw what she was thinking. “They will not be operational during the cruise, Ms. London. It is only for this afternoon’s occasion with so many people aboard, not all of whom are personally known to Mr. Papadakis. There are almost one hundred of them. They have already seen the pictures and had their tour, and now that food and drink are available, they have been asked to remain above deck, where the reception is underway. That is why the cameras are operational.”

“I see. Where
are
the paintings, anyway?”

“Why, right here. In the music room. Behind you. And others on the walls of the main salon, just beyond.”

Alix turned to look. The digital auction catalog that Edward Reed had e-mailed her was divided into two sections, Impressionist and Modern, and it was immediately obvious that the music room had been given over to the Impressionists. There they were, hung on the ash-paneled walls of a thickly carpeted room that spanned the width of the yacht, a glorious cross-section of the art of painting as it was in France in the final quarter of the nineteenth century. From the catalog she recognized the Degas, the Manet, the Renoir, the Cézanne, the Gauguin, beautiful paintings all.…

“Wow,” she breathed, taking a step toward them without consciously intending to, almost as if the pictures were powerful magnets and she was an iron filing that couldn’t help itself. On her second sleepwalking step she came smack up against a distinguished-looking man who had stepped into her path from the side.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t—”

“No, don’t apologize. My fault entirely. I should have been watching where I was going.”

“Distinguished looking” didn’t begin to do him justice. In his fifties, slim and elegantly tuxedoed, very erect, with a pencil-thin mustache that belonged on a thirties’ matinee idol, his longish but carefully styled dark hair made even more perfect by the wings of silver that swept back from his temples, he radiated civility and good breeding. His accent, much like her father’s but more la-di-da, completed the picture.

“You’re Alix London?” he asked.

“I am, yes. And you’re—?” There was something familiar about him, she thought.

“My name is Edward Reed.” Nope, nobody she’d met before. “I’m curating the auction—”

“Of course, “she said, holding out her hand. “You’re an art dealer in Manhattan.”

“A gallerist, yes,” he said, gently correcting her.

She’d heard that some high-end dealers, feeling that the term “dealer” implied that they practiced a low form of trade or were in it for the money (
surely not!),
now preferred to be called “gallerists,” but this was the first one she’d actually met. Until now it had struck her as a silly affectation, but on Edward Reed it was a good fit.

“Miss London—”

“Alix.”

He acknowledged this by dipping his chin. “Alix, I was just in the process of looking things over down here. The hordes were driven through earlier and left only a few minutes ago, and I wanted to make sure everything was in order, which it seems to be. But while we’re both here, it would be my privilege to introduce you, shall we say, to the collection.” He smiled invitingly.

And the smile made her realize why she’d thought she knew him. Edward’s smile, his aristocratic bearing, his flawless grooming, his polite,
cultivated speech—all brought back memories of the patrician collectors and connoisseurs she’d met through her father in the pre-
Venezia
, pre-prison days when Geoff was a welcome regular at society events, at the Met, at the Frick, and in the elite condos of the Upper East Side. These people were cordial, considerate, perfectly mannered, and unfailingly polite. And yet, without their being openly supercilious or condescending, you were always aware of a subtle dismissiveness just below the surface, a cool, objective distance they preserved between themselves and others who were not of their own exalted breed. It was a type that sometimes fascinated, sometimes repelled her. Which it would be with Edward she didn’t yet know, but so far she found him agreeable enough.

“Oh, I’d like that,” she said. “I’m very eager to—” She suddenly remembered Artemis, who was standing politely by. “But Artemis was just taking me to my room, and I don’t want to hold her up.”

Edward flashed his smile at Artemis. “Oh, but I’m sure the lovely Artemis would allow us a peek. Just the gem of the collection, its shining jewel, perhaps?” His eyebrows lifted. “Yes?”

Artemis glowed. “A few minutes won’t hurt.”

“No more than five, I promise. I want the pleasure of being there when Alix sees it for the first time.”

The gem of the collection (she wondered uncharitably if he might be referring to the super-high estimated sale price that had been set for it) hung at the front of the room. Edward smiled at it as if at a precocious child of whom he was particularly proud. “
Luncheon at the Lakeside
.”

The simple four-by-six card beside the painting agreed with him.
Édouard Manet, 1861, Le Déjeuner au Bord du Lac.
An engraved brass plate nailed to the bottom of the gilt frame simply said, “Manet, 1832–1883.” The canvas was fairly large, about three feet by four.