Bon Bon Voyage (23 page)

“Bloody hell!” Owen exclaimed. “Where did you get all the plasters, and who was the bloke who—”

“I don't know. He was always behind me. I took the fire stairs up to the spa and cleaned up, hid my bloody clothes, and then had to jump into the comfort machine when someone came looking for me.” I had to explain the comfort machine, and Owen thought it was hilarious that I'd fallen asleep in it while people were prowling around in search of me. “Then I disguised myself as best I could and came here in the robe, which was all I could find to wear. I can't go back to my suite because that's the first place they'll look.”

“You've got that right,” he agreed, throwing down the liquor in his own glass and picking up the bottle with a questioning glance at me.

I shook my head. “I need to calm down, not pass out.”

Owen poured himself a second drink—he didn't bother with ice—and stared into the liquor between sips, presumably deep in thought. “Righto. Here's what we do,” he said at last. “You'll stay here because they won't look for you here, and I'll go out and tell your roommates you're alive. By now, they'll be wondering where you've got to. I'll bring back clothes and whatnot. They'll know what to send. What we need is a wig. And some specs. Wonder where I'd find those? Well, I'll have to suss that out. Will you be all right here on your own while I'm gone on an outfitting rummage? Take the spare bed. You can have a nap.”

“As if I could sleep,” I retorted. “I slept in the comfort machine. Now I'm all jittery and worked up.”

“In that case, I'll just stay and—”

“Please don't go in that direction. I appreciate your help, but I really—”

“Course, love.” He put his hand over his heart. “Your virtue is safe with Owen Griffith. On my word of honor as a wild-eyed Welshman.”

Not an oath I found reassuring, but I wasn't in a position to be picky.

“So I'm off. Turn on the telly, why don't you? That's good for a bit of calming down, right to the point of stupor. Or pull up the book I'm writing.” He waved toward the computer beside me on the desk. “If I didn't lock it up at night, some bastard would have nicked it. That's what happened to all the other computers on board. Now be sure to start at chapter one. You won't want to miss a bloody word.” Was my computer gone? I wondered.

We'd searched the frigging ship from top to bottom and hadn't found Carolyn, and she hadn't come back to the room. Beau and I were worried. Vera insisted Carolyn was probably having a rendezvous with the Welshman, but if she was, I couldn't get his room number so I couldn't check that out. I did get the ombudslady to put through a call to his room for me, but no one answered. Probably out drinking with the crew. The bars were full of them, so we'd gone back to the suite, Beau and I with Vera and Barney, and were playing poker when someone knocked at the door.

Vera got there first and said, “What are
you
doing here? You're not welcome.” She tried to close the door in his face, but it was Owen Griffith, and he damn near knocked her over pushing his way in.

I thought she was going to hit him with a lamp, but Barney grabbed her as Owen said, “You want to hear about your daughter-in-law, old lady, or do I need to look for help somewhere else?”

We all calmed down, while Griffith sprawled on the couch and told us the whole story. “She can't stay in your room,” said Vera when he was finished. “She's a married woman.”

“So where do you want to put her? Back in the bloody comfort machine, whatever the hell that is? Or maybe here where they'll come looking for her? Or maybe they've already been here.”

We stared at each other. “Patrick, the Irishman who runs the computer room, asked for her a couple of hours ago,” said Beau. “He asked Luz while we were searching, and we said we didn't know where she was. Then Patek, the chief steward, came here to the room. He said he'd heard she was missing and wanted to know if she'd shown up.”

“Well, there you go. Next will be Hartwig. My bet is he's the one who dragged her into the closet and handcuffed her. She thought the man was too stocky to be Patek, Froder, or O'Brien. So what would your son rather, Mrs. Blue? A dead wife, or one who has to hide out in my room, where I'm at least able to defend her if I have to? Not that I care what you think. She stays with me. Now, I need some clothes for her and whatever else she'll want, preferably not her own clothes since someone might recognize them. Dark makeup. She'll have to take a shower sometime, and there goes the stuff she plastered on her face in the spa. A wig and glasses would be good. Anyone know where I can get those?”

Barney knew a woman who had a several wigs with her, something about her religion. I said that Carolyn had clothes she'd never worn during the cruise, so no one would recognize them, and I had makeup that I was happy to pass on. I hate wearing makeup and was glad to lend it out, and I knew for a fact that the boutique carried glasses that turned color depending on the light. I'd pick some up tomorrow, but they weren't going on my charge card. “You can pay for them, Vera,” I suggested. Beau was worried about the possibility of infection in Carolyn's cuts and promised to slip in with his doctor bag the next morning.

“And how are you going to get back to your room, Mr. Griffith, carrying an armload of women's clothes?” Vera demanded.

Owen produced a bottle from under his jacket. “I'm going to stagger down the halls carrying my Scotch in one hand and the clothes over my arm, telling anyone I see that we're having a costume party tomorrow night in the Grand Salon, men dressed as women, women as men.”

I'd read my way to chapter fourteen by the time Owen reeled into the room, waving a bottle, carrying an armload of my clothes, and calling over his shoulder, “Now don't miss the party. And remember: you don't wear the right costume, you don't get in. We're calling it the cross-dresser's ball.”

“Are you drunk?” I asked once he'd closed the door.

“Not a bit of it, love. Here's your wardrobe.” Under the clothes he held a cosmetic case, all of which went onto the other chair.

“This is a wonderful book,” I told him. “As soon as I hang up my clothes—do you have enough room in the closet?—I want to read some more.”

“It's two a.m., Carolyn. You've got a nightdress in that pile. Put it on, and go to bed. I promise I won't peek if it makes you feel any better.”

“But I'm not tired,” I protested. “What I'd really like is to get out of this room. Take a walk out on the deck or something. After all those hours in the closet and the comfort machine, I'm absolutely claustrophobic.”

“Or else you're afraid to go to sleep in the same room with me.”

“Possibly,” I admitted.

“Bloody hell,” Owen grumbled.

35

The chief security officer was prowling the deck, sleepless and highly irritated. He didn't doubt that he'd pull off the hijacking and pick up his share of the fifty million in Zurich, maybe more than his share if his confederates didn't get their acts together. He sometimes felt that he had to arrange everything himself, do all the thinking, solve all the problems. And there was something about Patek's attitude. He was an arrogant little wog, or whatever it was the English called people of color. Well, he'd be rid of all four of them soon enough.

Froder would begin moving the ship toward Casablanca tomorrow when the Miami people realized there'd be no dickering about the payoff, not with the explosives aboard. Patek did seem to know his stuff in that area. And the helicopter was arranged for. It would arrive the third day, because the Moroccans wouldn't be paid if they didn't show up, and they knew it. Then he and his colleagues would split up and make their separate ways to Switzerland. Each one had part of the number sequence to the account in Zurich, so they, at least, thought there could be no cheating. Hartwig knew better, but he wasn't planning to scam them as long as they did their parts.

That left the damn Blue woman. They'd all scoured the ship for her without any success. Other than the blood on the floor of the closet, in the corridor, and on the stairs, she seemed to have disappeared at the next emergency door up. O'Brien had put together a heat-seeking gadget to track her down in deserted places. Nothing. Vanished into thin air, the bitch. He should have been getting some sleep, while the damn crew was sleeping off hangovers. Instead, he was out here on deck looking for a fucking food columnist who had got away in a spray of blood—unless someone else got to her in the closet. But why would anyone not part of the hijacking want to kill a food columnist?

Hartwig felt like punching his fist through a wall, but he had himself under control. Stupid displays of frustration wouldn't get him to Zurich and then away from there to live the wealthy life he felt he deserved after years as a mercenary in rat-trap countries and then his fucking, midlife career in cruise-line security. He exited to another deck and went outside. No one around. One more turn and he'd—ah, voices! He moved quietly toward the sound and spotted those two ass-holes named, so they said, Crosswayses. They were at the rail.

Saviors of the Seas. He'd figured that out early on and run a check on them. They thought he and other crewmembers hadn't seen them dropping flasks down into the water to take samples, fishing up turds, petroleum waste, and chemicals with cries of triumph and slipping them into marked baggies. He'd have had them in the brig at this point if he hadn't planned a better use for the brig. It now held Marbella and the members of the security team, kept gagged and on short rations.

He was congratulating himself on the plight of the captain when he saw the male Crossways lifting a microphone to his mouth. A burst of rage sent Hartwig hurtling toward the couple. He snatched the microphone away and threw it over the rail. “Calling for help? Fool.” And he lifted Crossways bodily and tossed him over the rail.

“What are you
doing
?” Bev squealed. “For God's sake, you've—”

“No one's sending any messages off the ship,” Hartwig snarled.

“But he was only making—making scientific obser—” Hartwig lifted Bev Crossways next and flung her over, as well, then ran to the door behind the empty bar as her long wail followed her into the sea.

“He—he—” I was stammering, horrified at what I'd seen. Owen and I had been turning a corner during our stroll around the empty deck at the bow of the ship, and I must say that it had been a very refreshing interval. Until we saw the Crosswayses. Since no one was supposed to see me, we ducked under a lifeboat and moved back into the shadow. Then Hartwig accosted the couple. Frankly, his appearance just about sent me into apoplexy, but there was no time for that when I saw what he did.

“Bloody hell,” Owen muttered and ran toward the railing. By the time I caught up with him, he had inflated and thrown one life jacket over the rail and was in the process of freeing another. I peered down and heard the Crosswayses calling for help. In the lights of the ship, I could see them splashing about. “Shut up!” Owen called back and dropped the other life jacket.

“Maybe we should try to lower the lifeboat,” I suggested. “What if the ship pulls away from them, and they're left bobbing—”

“I don't know how to lower the bloody lifeboat, and neither do you. Here, help me with the rope. We'll have to pull them up.”

“Owen, I am not an athletic person. I can't pull a person who is bigger than me all this way—”

“Shut up and help me.”

Well, that wasn't very polite,
I thought irritably, but since I had to assume that Owen knew what he was doing, I did follow his instructions. He knotted ropes together—I'd never noticed how many there were around. And on a cruise ship— who would have thought? My job was to lower the ropes while he knotted on more.
This will never work,
I thought. The Crosswayses had stopped making a fuss and were paddling about, looking up at the rope as it descended.

Kev seemed to know what to do, because he caught it and tied it to Bev's life jacket. Then he waved to us, and we pulled. Well, I think Owen did most of the pulling, while I thanked Luz in my heart for sending me the rubber gloves that had probably been under the bathroom sink for the stewards when they were still doing bathrooms. I couldn't begin to imagine how terrible my hands would have felt had the cuts on the palms and fingers been exposed to rope.

We actually managed to drag Bev up the side of the
Bountiful Feast
and over the rail, although she was crying when she arrived on deck. What was
she
crying about? I wondered resentfully. If I were caught out here, I'd probably be thrown over with no one to rescue me. We'd all be thrown over.

While I obsessed, Owen lowered the rope to Kev, and the three of us hauled him up. Bev and Owen were breathing hard by then, while I was looking over my shoulder for dangerous people arriving to interfere with our efforts. Seawater pouring off him, Kev leaned against the rail, thanking Owen repeatedly and shaking his hand.

“We're not out of the woods yet,” said Owen sharply. “What do you think Hartwig's going to do if he sees you alive?”

“I don't know what he thought he was doing when he threw us over. I was only dictating notes,” Kev replied plaintively.

“Right.” Owen turned to me. “Where do we hide them? Got any ideas?”

“Well, not in your cabin and not in theirs.” Then I had a brilliant idea. “Mrs. Gross's cabin. It's empty, and I know where it is. I even have a master keycard.”