Birds of Prey : Previously Copub Sequel to the Hour of the Hunter (9780061739101) (10 page)

“What if something bad really has happened to her?” Naomi asked at last.

That's how people in America talk about the unthinkable. We don't say, “What if she's dead?” We say, “What if something bad's happened?” Maybe if we don't actually mention the word “death” or “dying,” we can somehow dodge the bullet and keep death from happening to us or to the people we care about. After spending almost twenty years on the homicide squad, I'm not much good at using euphemisms. I'd rather have all the cards—even the worst ones possible—out on the table.

“You mean, what if Margaret Featherman is dead?” I asked bluntly.

Naomi bit her lip and nodded.

“Then the cruise line calls in the FBI to investigate,” I told her.

That news seemed to jar Naomi more than I expected it would. “The FBI?” she asked. “Really?”

I nodded. “In the past several years, cruise lines haven't exactly been forthcoming about unpleasant incidents on board their various ships. There were instances of theft and sexual assault and at least one mysterious death that were all ‘under-reported,' I believe is how they termed it. In other words, they tried to sweep their problems under the rug in hopes of sparing themselves any bad publicity. If it didn't happen, there was no need to report it. Finally, there was enough of an uproar that the feds stepped into the breach. My understanding is that if a ship visits American ports or if American citizens are involved as victims, then the FBI is called in to investigate regardless of where the problem occurs.”

After that, frowning and lost in thought, Naomi Pepper seemed to drift far away from me. “Look,” I said finally in an effort to bring her back. “I'm sure you're worried about Margaret. That's perfectly understandable. But I'm also sure that she's fine. It'll probably turn out to be exactly the way you said it would. She'll come back on board tonight having failed to swipe her card as she disembarked. Or else she's stowed away in somebody else's cabin right now, screwing her brains out. Eventually, though, she and her current Lothario are going to have to come up for air or food or both. Unless I'm mistaken, the ship's security tapes will probably be able to lead us to wherever she's holed up.”

“Security tapes?” Naomi asked. She looked shocked—even more so than she had appeared earlier when I mentioned the FBI. “You're saying this ship has security monitors?”

Something that continues to amaze me about women and men is the difference in what they observe. Ubiquitous ceiling-mounted security cameras had been one of the first things I had noticed after coming aboard the
Starfire Breeze
. Naomi Pepper had missed them entirely.

“How could you not notice?” I asked. “Little video cameras are everywhere on this ship—in all the corridors and all the public areas. In fact, we're probably showing up on somebody's monitor even as we speak.”

This time when Naomi raised her eyes, the look on her face was one of pure panic. “You mean everything that happens on board is on tape?”

“Most likely.”

At that point, all color drained from Naomi's face. Her breathing sped up. For a moment I thought she was going to hyperventilate.

“I saw Margaret later,” she admitted softly. “I mean, I saw her after you and I ran into her upstairs in the buffet. I was with her again late in the afternoon.”

I've spent a lifetime asking questions. It's one of those old work habits that's virtually impossible to break. “Where?” I asked.

“I went to her cabin. If that shows up on the tapes, then they'll probably come looking for me as well, just like they did with Marc. They'll be looking and asking questions.”

“Of course they will,” I agreed. “That's the way investigations work. If the worst happened and if Margaret Featherman does turn out to be dead, the authorities will be in touch with everyone who talked to her or had any contact with her in the past few days. That includes you and me and everyone else at our table. There's no reason to be upset about it.”

“But I am upset,” Naomi returned. “What if they want to know what Margaret and I talked about?”

“That's simple,” I replied. “You tell them. End of story.” Naomi said nothing. “So what did you talk about?” I asked finally after another long pause.

Naomi grimaced. “It was . . .” She paused. “It was very unpleasant.”

Talk about being slow on the uptake. That was when I finally realized that Naomi and Margaret must have had some kind of quarrel. Whatever the topic of discussion had been, it was something Naomi didn't want to share with me any more than she wanted to tell it to some note-taking FBI operative. And that's when I had the first tiny glimmer that maybe Naomi Pepper knew far more than she was pretending to about Margaret Featherman's unexplained absence. That would explain her obvious reluctance to discuss it. It would also explain her virtual panic at my mention of security cameras in the ship's corridors.

Those thoughts entered my mind, but I immediately pushed them aside. If she was involved in what had happened to Margaret, I didn't want to hear it. After all, Naomi Pepper and I had spent several very pleasant hours together in the course of the last few days. She was someone I was comfortable with; someone whose company I could see myself enjoying; someone I could like. Surely I couldn't be that unlucky. Surely lightning wouldn't strike me twice in exactly the same way. Cops—even ex-cops—aren't supposed to become involved with people who turn out to be homicide suspects—or worse.

As I said before, questioning people is a hard habit to break. Even though I didn't want to know the answer, I couldn't keep from asking, “How unpleasant was it?”

We were sitting in the Sea Breeze Bar on the Promenade Deck. Throngs of people came and went, talking and laughing. Naomi's gaze settled into one of those distant thousand-yard stares that excluded me and left her blind and deaf to everything going on around us.

“Naomi?” I prompted.

Her eyes strayed back to me. “It happened such a long time ago,” she said in a strangled whisper. “Why would anyone want to bring it up this many years later?”

“Bring what up?”

“My daughter,” she said. “Missy.”

“What about her?”

For the longest time Naomi averted her eyes. Once again she bit her lower lip and didn't answer.

“Missy is Harrison Featherman's daughter,” she murmured finally in little more than a strangled whisper. “She's Harrison's and mine.”

That got me. With those few words, my opinion of Naomi Pepper plummeted several notches. Dr. Majors is forever telling me that feelings aren't right or wrong. They simply are. At that point, I had no reason to feel betrayed—certainly not the way Margaret Featherman must have felt betrayed when she learned about it. And, as far as I'm concerned, maybe
betrayed
is the wrong word.
Disappointed
might be closer to the mark. I had thought Naomi Pepper to be a better person than that.

“You're telling me you had an affair with the husband of one of your best friends? That the two of you had a child together?”

“It wasn't like that,” Naomi said quickly. “Not an affair. It wasn't like that at all.”

Right,
I thought.
And the moon is made of old green cheese
. “Just how was it then?” I asked.

“We were all friends back then, Beau, good friends. By that time everyone else had managed to have their kids. Gary and I kept trying and trying, but nothing happened. I wanted a baby so badly that it broke my heart every time I saw a pregnant woman in a grocery store or at the mall. It seemed like everyone in the whole world could get pregnant at the drop of a hat—everyone but me. Finally, Gary and I went to see a specialist—a fertility expert—to have ourselves tested and to find out what the problem was. The doctor told us straight out that Gary's sperm count was so low that we'd probably never have kids.

“I was so upset by the news that I didn't know what to do. I went into a state of total depression—clinical depression. It was all I could do to get out of bed in the morning. I spent all day every day lying there like a lump watching one useless television program after another. Gary would come home from work at night and I'd still be in my nightgown and bathrobe. The previous day's dirty dishes would be in the sink and there'd be nothing cooking for dinner. Gary tried what he could to get me to snap out of it, but nothing worked. I just kept sinking deeper and deeper.” She paused.

“And then?” I prompted.

“Finally, one Saturday afternoon, the four guys were all out playing golf together. They got together a couple of times a year, for old times' sake. Dick Metz and Leonard Carson were in one cart, and Harrison and Gary were in the other. It was at a time when I was really low, and I'm sure Gary must have been at the end of his rope. He wound up telling Harrison about what was going on with us. He asked for advice—not as a doctor and patient, but as a friend. Harrison told him we could either blow twenty or thirty thousand bucks on a fertility expert and try artificial insemination, or we could get someone else to help us out.”

“Meaning Harrison Featherman was offering to stand stud service?”

Naomi blushed in the face of my indelicate question. She blushed but she answered all the same, meeting my eyes as she did so. “So you see, it wasn't an affair at all. We only did it that one time, and that's all it took. It wasn't because of me that we couldn't get pregnant. It was just like the doctor said. So you see, it was Gary's problem and Gary's solution.”

“I'm assuming you never got around to telling your good friend Margaret about any of this,” I offered.

Naomi nodded. “Right. I never told anyone. Gary knew, and so did Harrison, of course, but they wouldn't have told her. And I wouldn't have either. Didn't.”

“But she did find out.”

“Somehow, but not until yesterday.”

“Who told her?”

“I have no idea. I was alone in the room in the afternoon, taking a nap. She called and lit into me on the phone. How could I have done such a thing when all this time she thought I was her friend? She was screaming and ranting and raving so loud I'm surprised the whole ship didn't hear her. Fortunately, I was the only one in our cabin at the time. I tried explaining to her that what happened had nothing to do with our friendship. She demanded that I go to her cabin right then to talk about it, and so I did. I didn't want Sharon and Virginia to come into the room and hear what was going on. After all, it was bad enough Margaret knew my awful secret. I didn't want the rest of the world to know about it as well, although now I'm sure word will get out anyway.”

I have to admit I was skeptical that no one had known about all this earlier. “You mean to say no one ever figured any of this out on their own? Doesn't Missy resemble her biological father?”

Naomi shook her head. “Fortunately she looks just like me—sort of the same way Chloe looks like Margaret.”

“In other words, Harrison Featherman turns out to be your universal sperm donor. He can sire kids all over the place and no one comes back on him about it because the offspring all look like their various mothers instead of like their father.”

Naomi swallowed before she answered. “If Melissa had resembled Harrison—if people had noticed—I suppose I would have had to say something. But she didn't. And all my friends knew I was so overjoyed at getting pregnant and having a baby that they just celebrated with me.”

“So who spilled the beans yesterday?”

Naomi shook her head. “I have no idea, and Margaret didn't say. She just asked me straight out whether or not it was true. I told her yes, it was. I didn't want to lie about it.”

“You mean, you wanted to stop lying about it.”

“Yes,” Naomi said quietly. “I suppose that's right.”

“What time of day was this?”

Naomi shrugged. “It was late in the afternoon when she called me—around four-thirty or five o'clock. I'm not sure. And it must have been between five and six when I left her cabin.”

“Where did you go then?”

“I didn't want to go back to the room. I had been crying, and I didn't want to have to face Virginia and Sharon looking like that. So I went up to the spa. Fortunately, they'd had a last-minute cancellation, so I was able to get in for a massage. After the massage, I spent some time in the hot tub and didn't go back down to the room until I figured Virginia and Sharon would already have left for dinner.

“While I was upstairs in the spa, I kept trying to figure out what to do. I thought about just skipping dinner altogether, but then I thought, no. Since Margaret knew, I made up my mind to go to dinner and face the music. I was sure she was going to bring it up regardless of whether or not I was there. The only thing I could do was be there to defend myself.”

“You thought she was going to tell?”

Naomi nodded. “In fact, that was the last thing she said to me as I left her room—that if I thought she was going to keep this dirty little secret a secret any longer, I was crazy. So when I went to dinner, I felt like a prisoner being led to execution. I was determined that when she brought it up, I'd tell everybody the truth and get it over with once and for all. And if Virginia and Sharon decided to write me off, then I planned to leave the ship, go to the airport in Juneau and catch the first plane back to Seattle. But then, when Margaret didn't show up at dinnertime, I was grateful. I felt as though God had given me a reprieve.”

I nodded, remembering how Naomi's flagging spirits had gradually revived during the course of dinner. Of course they had. Every moment Margaret delayed putting in an appearance meant one more moment of respite for Naomi before Margaret blew the whistle, which she no doubt would have done. My few dealings with the woman had shown quite clearly that she was absolutely ruthless and that she thrived on public humiliation—other people's public humiliation.