Bon Bon Voyage (15 page)

“I'm relieved to hear it,” I replied, thinking that if anyone disembarked during a riot, it would be my wife, whom trouble seemed to dog on her travels, with or without me.

“I think your best possibility would be Tenerife, the second stop in the Canary Islands. You say you're in Canada? The ship won't leave Tenerife until three p.m. the day after tomorrow. Of course, that's local time, but that's the only real chance of arriving by Mother's Day. On the other hand, Casablanca, the next day, is a possibility, but I can't assure you that the ship will actually be able to—”

“It has to be Mother's Day. Do airplanes fly to Tenerife?”

“I have no idea, sir. If passengers get off at Tenerife and don't reboard, they're more or less on their own.”

“Wonderful,” I snarled. “I'll pull up Orbitz. Maybe they can figure out how to get me there in time. And at least I won't have to pay long-distance rates.”

“We have a Web site,” said Rhonda defensively.

“I tried it.”

“Well, most people don't want to catch a cruise on some island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Our Web site may not be set up for such an unusual request. I think you should consider meeting your wife at one of the Spanish ports that finish the cruise. I'm sure she'll forgive you for missing Mother's Day. I don't see here that she has children along. Mostly people don't bring children on our cruises because of the expense. Not that our cruises aren't worth every penny.
Condé Nast Traveller
said—wait just a minute. I'll look up that quotation. It was very—”

I hung up.

We wouldn't reach our first stop in the Canary Islands until tomorrow. In the meantime, what, if anything, could I do to find out the fate of Mrs. Gross? Of course, I could just wait until we arrived in the Canary Islands and see if she turned up there, but that seemed so unlikely. The islands are in the Atlantic Ocean, which was, as I noticed, bumpier than the Mediterranean. I'd even felt a bit queasy at breakfast, but that had passed.

I consulted with Luz over waffles bathed in lingonberry sauce, but she said that ordinarily the thing to do would be to contact missing persons at the local police department after forty-eight hours had passed, or, possibly, the FBI, but since we were in the middle of the ocean and we didn't really know how long Mrs. Gross had been missing, the whole thing was a puzzle. Then Luz went off to visit Dr. Lee in his clinic.

I, having been given at least a few ideas, went to the computer room. There I accessed Google, where I got e-mail addresses for our state department in Washington, D.C., our embassy in Rabat, and our consulate, which was in Casablanca. Wouldn't you know? The rioters might well have cut off communication to the consulate. Then I searched for the Tangier police department without much luck. I did learn that Morocco was the first country to recognize U.S. independence, and I found some articles about people being beaten up by Moroccan police, a rather discouraging piece of information. Did I really want to set a violent police department on the trail of poor Mrs. Gross?

About then, an Irishman, who seemed to run the computer room, although he wasn't always there, stopped by to ask if I needed any help. Since he was eyeing the page I had on the screen, the one about police brutality in Tangier, I asked how to find information on Casablanca, which I wanted to read since I might not get to go there. He immediately lost interest and went away, and I sent e-mails off telling the various American diplomatic sites my concerns about Mrs. Gross. I really doubted that my e-mails would do much good.

After all, the government couldn't even keep up with all the spy information they collected. Consequently, there was no reason to think they'd get to my e-mail about Mrs. Gross before both of us were dead of old age. But at least I was doing the best I could, and lunch was about to be served.

22

I'm not sure which I found more discouraging, the realization that my morning of computer research and messaging was probably a waste of time or the realization that the waistline of my slacks was still tight. At least I could do something about the latter. At lunch I had water instead of wine and a nice leafy salad instead of an entrée. I even gathered an interesting piece of information. While I was trying to talk Luz into joining me in detecting, for old times' sake if nothing else, a lady interrupted us to say that she'd seen Mrs. Gross the night before she disappeared and that Mrs. Gross had announced her intention of going to find the ombudslady to complain about the alien hair in the shower.

A lead,
I thought,
finally!
I'd track down Sandy Sechrest to see if she could provide a later sighting of Mrs. Gross, but earlier than the fake computer entry that had her leaving the ship at ten thirty the next morning. Unfortunately, Luz refused to go with me. She said she was going to our suite to relax in the silk “robe-thing” the boutique had provided. So attired, she planned to finish off the rest of Vera's bonbons and watch television. I tried to imagine my crusty friend devouring bonbons while reclining in a silk robe and watching some romantic movie, of which Herkule had mistakenly provided many.

Then I discovered that the chef was offering seven flavors of freshly made gelato. All my good intentions about waist control fled, and I ordered small helpings of all seven, the four fruit varieties with strawberries and cream, the three others with chocolate sauce and nuts. Our waiter gave me a peculiar look but produced the requested dessert, and I must say, eating it made me feel much better, even considering the defection of my friend.

Sandy was in her miniscule office, writing up a free facial for a customer whose silk sweater had been shrunk by the laundry service. When she heard my story about Mrs. Gross, she was, naturally, distressed, although she, too, thought Mrs. Gross would turn up sooner or later, even if it was in court bringing suit against the line for leaving her behind. “I do so try to keep everyone happy,” said Sandy plaintively, “but sometimes nothing I can do works.”

“I know you do,” I replied consolingly. The poor girl looked on the verge of tears. “But did you see Mrs. Gross the night before we docked in Tangier?”

“Oh, yes,” she said sadly. “She told me about some hair in her shower, which she insisted was not her own, and I offered to contact her steward the very next day, but that just wasn't good enough. To tell you the truth, she seemed to have had a bit too much to drink. She was very aggressive; she even cursed and demanded that I write up her complaint, so of course I did. Then she decided to look for her own steward and give him a tongue-lashing, and if she didn't find him, she said she'd find the head steward, Mr. Patek.

“I really didn't want her to do either. The poor stewards are, I'm sorry to say, badly overworked. If her steward had managed to finish for the night and get to bed, I hoped she wouldn't wake him up. As for Mr. Patek, well, I don't even like to take complaints to him myself. He can be very— well—abrasive. Goodness knows what he'd have said to her, and I'm the one who'd have had to calm her down.”

Now that was interesting. “Where would she have found Mr. Patek?” I remembered him from the champagne reception. A dark-skinned, sour-looking man.

“By that time, probably in crew quarters. He has his own stateroom—all to himself—but I didn't tell her how to find it. Actually, I was lucky. She didn't ask. She just went away, muttering to herself. Considering her condition, I imagine she went off to bed. I certainly would have, if I'd been that— well—inebriated.”

I thanked Miss Sechrest again, was again urged to call her Sandy, and went in search of Mrs. Gross's steward, not an easy task since no one would tell me the deck and number of Mrs. Gross's room. I got that by asking Mr. John Killington to hack into the ship's computer for a second time. He was glad to do it. With the information Mr. Killington provided, I found the room and the steward, but he said he'd remade her bed about eight thirty in the evening and hadn't seen her since, although it looked as if someone had slept in the bed when he arrived to do the room the next morning. When I asked how late he'd been on duty that night, his face lit up, and he said he'd been in his own bed by midnight, and no one had paged him the whole night. Of course, I then asked how to find Mr. Patek, because John Killington hadn't been able to find the chief steward's office or cabin number. Mrs. Gross's steward looked terrified and said he wouldn't tell me if he knew.

Since I had no more ideas to pursue, I went to our suite, where I found Luz sprawled on the couch in her silk robe, eating bonbons and watching not a romantic movie, but something that involved a lot of gunfire and wrecked, burning cars. “I don't know what to do next,” I said woefully over the sounds of shouts and machine guns.

“Sit down and watch the movie. It's an old Bruce Willis flick. And I've got a cop movie with that Australian guy and his black partner to watch next.”

“At least you could suggest something,” I said.

Luz picked up the remote and turned the DVD off. “Hell, I guess keep following her trail. If she ended up in her room that night, that ugly brown dress and her ton of green rocks would be there.”

“Emeralds,” I murmured. It was a good idea, if they'd let me into her room. However, if the steward was that afraid of Mr. Patek, he probably wouldn't open the door.

“If you're not back in time to dress for dinner, I'll come looking for you,” said Luz, grinning, and she clicked her movie back on.

I decided to talk to my friend Herkule, thinking that perhaps he could help, and he did. As we took the elevator to Mrs. Gross's floor, we discussed the desserts, the raspberry brûlée, the gelato—Herkule loved food, and even when he didn't get to taste the exciting offerings prepared for the passengers, he always tried to slip into the kitchen to take a look. Not, he added, that the crew wasn't well fed. He never went hungry, but the food for the passengers, it looked so succulent, which was one of his new words, yesterday's actually. He mispronounced it, but I did admire his relentless pursuit of English.

Herkule was able to talk his fellow steward into opening Mrs. Gross's room, as long as all three of us stayed in the room while I was searching. The brown evening dress was not in her closet. Nor was it in her dry cleaning bag, and her steward insisted that he had never picked up any dry cleaning or laundry for her. Then I searched drawers and suitcases and found no emeralds.

“Is expensive—emeralds?” asked her steward.

“Very,” I replied.

“Probably in safekeeping box.”

“Is that behind the desk downstairs?”

“No, here.” He revealed a small safe tucked under a night table beside her bed. Of course, it was locked.

“No trouble,” said Herkule cheerfully. He punched a long series of numbers into the keypad, and the door swung open. “For when passenger forget own numbers,” he explained, an explanation I didn't find all that reassuring.

Even less reassuring was the safe with several pieces of expensive jewelry but no emeralds. Mrs. Gross, her dress, and her emeralds were gone. I didn't know what it meant, but it couldn't be good news.

Before we went off to dinner, an announcement from the captain came over the loudspeakers; he warned us to expect gentle swells during the dinner hour and evening. I'd hate to find out what he called a big wave. Vera and Carolyn and I didn't have too much trouble wobbling in to dinner, but Harriet Barber damn near broke her neck. When she finally fell safely into her chair, she said, “The captain might change his mind about how gentle these swells are if he had to wear high heels.”

“Why do you wear them?” Vera demanded. “You're old enough to have figured out that panty hose and high heels were devised by men. Before that it was corsets and Chinese foot binding. Keep the women hobbled so they can't assert themselves; that's the idea.”

“I accomplish all sorts of good works wearing heels,” snapped Harriet.

“And don't get paid for it would be my guess.”

“Vera,” murmured Carolyn, trying to shut her mother-in-law up. She hadn't said a word since she told me about the missing clothes and emeralds. Depressed, I suppose. Here I was supposed to be on vacation, and I was going to have to help her find the old lady.

“Ours is a family business,” Randolph explained solemnly, “and Harriet brings in more customers than anyone. She's out in the community working for better social services and good schools, and in return all those people she helps bring their loved ones to us.”

“That's not why I volunteer in the community, Randolph,” said Harriet crisply. “I volunteer because I'm a good Christian woman.”

“And everyone she brings in is a good Christian corpse,” added Vera.

“I'd be willing to bet that no female sailor on a sub would wear high heels,” Barney Levinson declared in support of Vera.

“Damn heels leave holes on the greens,” said Greg Marshand. “I've seen it. The young folks get dressed up for the big parties and then stagger out onto the greens and tear them up.”

“I didn't notice,” murmured Carolyn sadly. “Did Mrs. Gross wear high heels? Maybe she fell down searching for Mr. Patek, hurt herself, and died.”

“Holy crap, Carolyn. If that had happened, someone would have found the body,” I said.

“I just
hate
nasty language,” Carolyn exclaimed, bursting into tears, and she left her macadamia key lime pie only half finished.

“PMS,” said Vera. “She'll be okay in a couple of days.”