Birds of Prey : Previously Copub Sequel to the Hour of the Hunter (9780061739101) (8 page)

Several sections of pictures away, I finally caught sight of Beverly and Lars posed in front of the selfsame logo-emblazoned life ring. Pulling the photo from its place, I went on to peruse the collection of pirate pictures.

“You're not buying any of those crazy pictures, are you?” Lars asked, coming up behind me and standing at my elbow just as the clerk slipped my purchases into a bag. “They cost an arm and a leg.”

“I wanted one of your ‘Welcome Aboards,' ” I told him. “And I really got a kick out of the one of you and the lady pirate.”

“It's yust so much foolishness,” he grumbled. “Some other danged excuse to take your money.”

Not surprisingly, Lars hadn't sprung for a tux. He was wearing a pill-covered tweed sport coat with leather patches at both elbows. His trousers had grown shiny and crease-free through years of wear. His one concession to formality was a tie—a brand-new one that had Beverly's touch written all over it.

“Where's your lovely bride?” I asked.

Lars shook his head dolefully. “Still getting all fixed up,” he said. “She rented one of those fancy dresses from that store right next door to the jewelry shop. She wanted me to rent one of those monkey suits, too, just like the one you're wearing, but I told her no way was I getting in one of those. She yust came back from the beauty shop a few minutes ago. She had her hair done in some god-awful thing she called an upsweep. If you ask me, her hair looks like the fender of a fifty-seven Cadillac.”

“You didn't tell her that, I hope,” I told him.

“Are you kidding? Do I look dumb or something?” Lars laughed and gave me a playful punch to the shoulder. “I don't want to be locked out of the room two nights in a row.”

Lars and I waited for Beverly Piedmont Jenssen near the entrance to the dining room and caught sight of her riding down in the glass elevator. Looking fetching and festive in her black, long-sleeved gown, she waved at us from the elevator. Someone in the beauty shop had given her a hand with her makeup. She looked twenty years younger than she had the last time I saw her that morning. Lars might complain about the cost, but he sure couldn't gripe about the results. That was the good news. The bad news, unfortunately, was that her hairdo really did resemble the fender on a '57 Cadillac. When I stepped forward to kiss her hello, I noticed the silver-and-tanzanite brooch at the base of her throat.

“Nice pin,” I said as she regally offered me her cheek.

“Lars gave it to me,” she said.

Just out of Beverly's line of vision, Lars nodded, winked, and gave me a thumbs-up sign. The wily old turkey had followed my advice after all.

“Will you be joining us for dinner tonight, Jonas?” she asked.

“No. I just wanted to get a look at the two of you all duded up. Are you going to have pictures taken on the way into the dining room?”

“Yes, we are,” my grandmother declared determinedly. “And whether Lars likes it or not, we're going to buy some of them to take home with us.”

To his credit, Lars seemed to know when he was licked. He was prepared to be agreeable, but not so much as to appear out of character. “If that's what you want,” he muttered. “But I still think they charge way too much.”

Once the pictures were taken and Lars and Beverly proceeded into their dining room, I wandered out on deck. It was a cool, brisk evening. I strolled around on the Promenade Deck for a time, then I went indoors and sat in one of the artfully arranged seating areas. All the while I was observing the other formally dressed, party-going folks, I struggled with my own case of pre-party jitters. I kept coming back to my shrink's parting words. “Go and have a good time,” Dr. Majors had said to me. “It's going to be a wonderful trip, Beau. Try to savor every moment.”

Right about then, I was dreading dinner rather than savoring it. In the old days I would have screwed up my courage with several stiff shots of MacNaughtons and gone into the dining room in a warm, boozy haze. Because I'm still on the wagon, I marched into the Crystal Dining Room much later, having ingested no artificial morale boosters other than a single cup of dreadful coffee in the Sea Breeze Bar.

Part of my problem was concern that this dinner would be a repeat performance of the previous evening's grilling session. I have to admit I wasn't looking forward to that. For my money, a little bit of Margaret Featherman's company went a very long way. By the time I entered the dining room, I had decided that if the situation didn't improve, I'd do whatever I had to the next morning to make alternative seating arrangements for the remainder of the cruise.

I've heard it said that ninety percent of the things people worry about never happen. That's how it turned out to be with that night's dinner. All my advance concerns proved to be groundless. After a somewhat awkward start, the whole affair—dinner, right on through the show and dancing afterwards—wound up being a rousing success.

Marc Alley and I were the first to arrive. He was dressed in one of those stylish double-breasted tuxes favored by the younger set. He seemed to be in much better spirits than he had been earlier in the day. “I take it you're over the shock of being deemed unworthy to be counted among the honorable Dr. Harrison Featherman's lucky patients?”

“I guess,” he replied with a wry grin. “Maybe it's the same way a trout feels when the fly fisherman throws him back in the water. Lucky, but still wondering why I wasn't good enough to keep.”

“Don't worry,” I told him. “I'm sure there are plenty of other doctors in Seattle who'll be only too happy to take you and your money.”

The women—two of them, anyway—arrived about then. Sharon Carson and Virginia Metz, dressed in long gowns that did them proud, had evidently stopped in the bar long enough to be in a party mood. And now that word was out that I wasn't a “dance host,” Virginia was noticeably less hostile. When she and Sharon took seats on either side of Marc Alley, my heart fell.

Great
, I thought.
That means I'll be stuck in the hot seat between Naomi Pepper and Margaret Featherman
.

I expected the two latecomers to arrive together. Instead, Naomi showed up alone. She was dressed in a black suit that passed for formal attire but wasn't nearly as dressy as the clothing the other women were wearing. I was hoping we could just take up our conversation where we'd left off at the buffet that morning, but that didn't happen—at least not at first. Naomi seemed to be in a bad mood. She was downcast and disinclined to talk. I wondered if it was something I had said or done. It wasn't until she was halfway through her first glass of wine that she seemed to come alive.

Reynaldo took orders for drinks and then stalled for a while. He seemed to be waiting for Margaret, the table's last missing diner, to arrive before taking our food orders. Eventually, though, the waiter could delay no longer. As he started around the table, I realized that I was enjoying not having to deal with the snide biting commentary that passed for Margaret Featherman's dinnertime conversation. And to be honest, no one else seated at the table appeared to miss her all that much, either.

By the time we had finished appetizers and moved on to soup, conversation was flowing freely. Even Naomi's flagging spirits seemed to have made a remarkable recovery. The only people who remained anxious about Margaret's continued absence appeared to be the wait staff. In the course of the meal, all the servers—everyone from Joaô, up through the headwaiter—made polite inquiries. Would Madame Featherman be joining us? Was she perhaps feeling unwell? Marc and I answered the queries with genuinely puzzled shrugs. The women rolled their eyes and exchanged knowing smirks. I wondered if the wait staff received extra points or a bonus of some kind based on the number of bottles of wine served per table. In that case, Margaret would be sorely missed since, without her in attendance, per capita wine consumption went way down.

Finally, finished with my entrée, I suggested that perhaps someone from the group should be dispatched to phone Margaret's room to check on her and make sure she was all right. Immediately thereafter, Naomi Pepper leaned over to set me straight. “Remember this morning how you said you'd see us at dinner unless you got a better offer?” she inquired in a discreet undertone.

I nodded.

“Margaret probably did just that,” she added. “Got a better offer, I mean. That's par for the course with Margaret. The four of us would plan for weeks to do something together, but then something unexpected would come up—usually a male something—and Margaret would bail on us. We're used to it.”

“Fair enough,” I told her. After all, if Margaret's best chums were prepared to turn a blind eye to her flaky behavior, who was I to object? Besides, without having her in attendance, everyone else seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely. Sharon Carson and Virginia Metz remained totally focused on Marc Alley. Laughing and chatting away, he was apparently rising to the occasion.

All during dinner the ship's photographers worked the room, taking pictures right and left. Just prior to dessert, they showed up at our table. We shifted chairs around so Marc and I could stand behind the three ladies. The resulting photo shows the women wearing dazzling, white-toothed smiles. Marc and I, on the other hand, are wearing a matched pair of inane grins. We both look as though we have no idea about what to do with our hands—which, in actual fact, we didn't.

When it came time to deliver the dessert menus, the reason for the wait staff's continuing concern over Margaret Featherman's absence became clear. The headwaiter himself—
a heavyset man named Angelo—came to the table to make an official and suitably ceremonial pronouncement.

“I am so very sorry Madame Featherman was unable to join you tonight. She spoke to the head chef earlier today and made a special dessert request for your table's dining pleasure this evening. I'm happy to report that the kitchen staff has been delighted to comply. And so, unless there is someone who wishes to choose from the regular dessert menu, Reynaldo will be serving raspberry soufflés all around.”

After that, no one bothered giving the standard dessert menu a look-see. Not wanting to appear ungrateful, we all told Reynaldo that we'd be happy to sample Margaret Featherman's specially ordered soufflés.

When the soufflés arrived, they were wonderful. As soon as I lifted the first steaming spoonful to my mouth, my nostrils were assailed by the aroma of hot fruit rising from the steamy sauce. Instantly I was transported back to my childhood and to my mother's small kitchen in Seattle. There, every summer, the aromas of hot fruit would fill the entire apartment as Mother dutifully canned peaches and apricots and put up raspberry and blackberry preserves.

I've heard it said that remembered smells linger longer in memory than do recollections from any of the other senses. One whiff of that steaming raspberry sauce made a believer of me. Naomi must have caught the faraway look on my face.

“Where'd you go?” she asked.

“Back to my childhood,” I told her. “This sauce takes me back to when I was seven or eight and used to help my mother do canning.”

“Really,” she said. “The only thing my mother knew about canning was to use an opener on a can of Del Monte peaches. But this is wonderful,” she added.

I looked around the room, where other diners were enjoying their non-specially-ordered desserts. “How do you suppose Margaret pulled this off?” I asked. “How do you go about getting a cruise ship kitchen to agree to whip up a special command-performance dessert like this?”

“I understand that nicer ships are happy to comply with special requests,” Naomi answered. “But I'm sure it helps if you go in waving around the promise of a very large tip. From the looks of him, I'd guess Angelo is worried about whether or not the tip will actually materialize, since Margaret herself wasn't here to sample the kitchen's impeccable delivery. The sad thing is, the way tipping works on cruise ships, no gratuities actually change hands until the very last day. In other words, the staff won't know whether or not Margaret stiffed them until it's too late for them to do anything about it.”

“Would she?” I asked. “Stiff them, I mean.”

Naomi sighed. “Probably. It's happened before.”

After dinner we once again repaired to the Twilight Lounge. This time the pseudo-comic/pianist was missing. Instead, we were treated to the talent of an African-American torch singer named Dahlia Lucas who specialized in Billie Holiday ballads and wasn't half bad. As Marc Alley had done all during dinner, when the dancing started up again, he assumed responsibility for Virginia and Sharon, leaving me in charge of Naomi. We danced some, but mostly we listened to the music and watched.

“Are you having fun?” I asked.

“On the cruise, or tonight?”

“Both.”

Naomi nodded. “More than I thought I would,” she said.

“Me, too.”

“And what about your grandparents?” she asked. “Are they having fun, too?”

“I think so,” I told her. “They seem to have gotten over last night's spat. I'm sure everything will be fine as long as Lars doesn't tell Beverly what he really thinks of the way she's wearing her hair tonight.”

“Which is?” Naomi asked.

“He told me it looks like the fender of a fifty-seven Cadillac. The sad truth is, he's absolutely right.”

Naomi laughed. I liked the sound of it. Her laughter seemed to bubble up from her toes. It made me want to laugh right along with her.

“What's the story with her?” I asked, nodding toward the dancers as Marc Alley led Virginia Metz onto the floor.

“She's a breast-cancer survivor,” Naomi answered.

“I figured as much,” I said.

“What makes you say that?”

“The short hair,” I said. “That's always a dead giveaway.”