Cooks Overboard (5 page)

By ten in the morning, Angie was lying on a lounge chair on the main deck in a white Ann Taylor linen sundress and Liz Claiborne straw hat, with a pair of Armani sunglasses shielding her eyes, a dab of sunscreen on her nose. She’d missed breakfast. It was served at some ungodly hour, like seven-thirty or eight. She didn’t see any of the other passengers, and the few crewmen she saw working didn’t appear to speak English.

So she’d gathered her belongings and decided to sunbathe. She was watching a school of porpoises not far from the ship and pondering the abruptness of Paavo’s decision to quit his job when he joined her.

He sat in a lounge chair and unfolded a copy of that morning’s
Los Angels Times
.

“Where did that come from?” she asked.

“A few copies were left in the passenger lounge, along with
USA Today
.”

The Times
looked thick enough to keep Paavo occupied for half the trip. “Did you hear anything about the steward?” she asked.

“He was taken to an emergency room. That’s the last anyone knows.”

“They just left him there?”

“Apparently.” For all Paavo’s interest, he could have been discussing the weather.

The ship was now heading toward Baja California without one of its stewards. The whole thing seemed rather heartless to her, but if no one else cared, she shouldn’t let it bother her. Next stop, Cabo San Lucas.

With more than a little pique, Angie reached into the big tote bag she’d been filling with more and more essentials as the trip continued. She took out the latest novel she was reading. Hemingway. In the past, she’d never appreciated his books much, she was sorry to say, but a cruise seemed a good place to do some serious reading—and to impress Paavo while she was at it.

Before opening the book, though, she stole a quick glance at the newspaper headlines. She was already missing the
San Francisco Chronicle
, laden with gossip about politicians and society people—who, in San Francisco, were generally one and the same. Nothing in the more serious
Times
caught her attention. Paavo had told her they needed to leave the real world behind them. But now, as he pored over this great sea of newsprint, he didn’t seem to be applying that philosophy to himself.

“Any news stories about San Francisco?” she asked.

“We’ve been gone only one day,” Paavo said. “What could have happened? Wait, here’s something.”

She leaned forward with interest. “Oh?” Was it about the recent furor over one of the Forty-Niners dating a member of the board of supervisors, or maybe the escapades of a married judge and an equally married, well-known pop singer?

“A chemist from the Lawrence Lab, Dr. Conrad Von Mueller, was found dead in his office.”

“A murder.” She eased herself back against the sofa and opened her book. “I should have known.”

“Maybe not. The paper doesn’t say what he died from. But the story being in the news implies he didn’t the of natural causes.”

“Pardon me. I couldn’t help overhearing. Someone is dead?” The question, asked in an upper-crust British accent, cut into their conversation.

Angie gazed up and up at a mountain of a man. The most striking thing about him was his huge head, its bald crown shining and bulbous, circled by a fringe of thinning gray hair. His lower face bulged out into flabby, red-veined cheeks, followed by jowls extending almost to his chest and rendering his neck a long-ago memory.

His chest rolled onto a massive stomach, over which he wore a vest with a pocket watch. His
white suit jacket was open, hanging loosely on either side of his paunch, its buttons and buttonholes strangers. In his hand was a white Panama hat.

“We were talking about a newspaper article,” Angie said, curious about the newcomer. “My name is Angelina Amalfi, and this is Paavo Smith.”

“Charmed, madam. And Mr. Smith. Ah, such a relief that it was just a story,” the Englishman said. “I’ve been informed that a steward was taken ill on board. It wasn’t the food, was it?”

“No one else is sick, so I wouldn’t worry about the food,” Angie said. “And you are…?”

“Oh, my!” the Englishman cried. “Pardon my bad manners! I just joined you last night. My name is Dudley Livingstone. I’m a collector. South American artifacts, to be precise.”

They shook hands.

“Did you board in Long Beach?” Angie said. “I didn’t realize we were taking on more passengers.”

“I was quite fortunate.” Livingstone eased his great bulk into a metal deck chair beside them. Angie watched the chair legs bow slightly. “The ship I was supposed to have been on left three days early, and I missed it. I’d been spending the past twenty-four hours berating the Los Angeles port authority when they got word about the emergency on this ship. Since the
Valhalla
is going to Chile, which is where I’m headed, the harbormaster arranged for me to get on.”

“You were lucky,” Angie said. “We weren’t supposed to stop there.”

“So I understand.” Livingstone folded his hands over his round belly. “So, do tell me, are you going far? All the way to South America, or will this be a short jaunt?”

“We’ll be leaving the ship in Acapulco,” Angie answered.

“A beautiful city. One of my favorites,” Livingstone said. “What about the others? Do you know?”

“One couple disembarks at Cabo San Lucas, I believe. I’m not sure about the other. How long will it take you to get to Chile?”

“Nearly two weeks, I expect, with all the stopovers along the way—which is, of course, the joy of freighter travel,” he said. “I do hope I’ll have some companions beside the crew. But anyway, back to the newspaper article. It sounded rather interesting. Who did you say was dead?”

“Some professor from the Lawrence Lab,” Paavo answered. “Conrad Von Mueller.”

Livingstone’s gaze darted from one to the other “Von Mueller! He’s very famous. I can’t believe it. Surely you are both aware of his work?”

“No.” Paavo glanced at Angie. She shook her head. “What was his work?”

Livingstone eyed them both carefully. “Oh, a little of this and a tad of that. Chemistry, you know. Since you were talking about him, I had
naturally assumed…” He let his voice trail off.

“You can tell us about him,” Angie said.

“Why bore young people with talk of old scientists?” Livingstone stood. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Miss Amalfi.” He placed his hat on his head. “And you, Mr. Smith. I look forward to conversing with you much more in the future.”

As soon as Livingstone left, she turned to Paavo.

“So tell me,” she said, leaning forward, “what did you think of him?”

Paavo was already scanning the newspaper again, looking for an article to catch his attention. “What do you mean?” he asked.

She gazed at the paper, then at him. The urge to jump up and shake him was overwhelming. What was wrong with him? “I didn’t believe a word that man uttered! Did you?”

Paavo buried his nose deeper into the news. “Why shouldn’t I?”

“Because it was so phony, as you well know!” That settled it. Something was definitely wrong with her inspector. He was usually the one to point out such things to her, not the other way around. She could handle his changing jobs—in fact, this particular change she welcomed—but a personality change along with it was beyond the pale.

She lowered her voice and kept talking. “People don’t just get on board container ships at the last minute. And his interest in Von Mueller was most peculiar.”

Blue eyes caught hers a moment; then Paavo gave a slight shake of his head and turned back to his paper. He flipped to another page. “Strangers have to talk about something to each other. Why not the news?”

“It wasn’t that kind of chitchat,” Angie said. “Tell me the truth. Didn’t his questions—his whole manner—strike you as a little bit curious?”

His jaw worked a moment. “He seemed eccentric, I’ll go that far.”

“Aha! You did notice.” What was she doing? Why was she prodding him to question the people around them? She should be glad he wasn’t interested.

“It doesn’t mean a thing,” he added.

She gave up. She needed to change the subject, because this one was too frustrating. “By the way, what were you looking for in the bathroom cabinet?”

He put the paper down and gave her a strange look. “Now what are you talking about?” He had a long-suffering tone that she didn’t much care for.

“Last night I noticed the toiletries were jumbled. I assumed you were looking for something of mine. I wondered what it was, that’s all.”

“I didn’t touch anything of yours in the bathroom cabinet,” he said firmly.

“Well, somebody did. Are you sure?”

He just looked at her.

“Well, they were jumbled together. I wonder what it means?”

Picking up the newspaper once more, he snapped the page open then folded it back. “It probably means no more than that we hit a big wave and everything slid.” He lifted the paper high and continued reading.

She was ready to toss the
Times
overboard.

“I don’t know why you’re acting this way, Angie,” Paavo said with a measured lack of interest. “Enjoy your vacation.”

“Are you enjoying it?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said. “Can’t you tell?”

Later that morning, as the freighter slowly headed southward along the coast of Baja California, Angie stretched out on a lounge chair on the sundeck in a red bikini. She ignored the fact that the crew, who normally almost never appeared in the passenger areas, seemed to suddenly find all kinds of reasons to walk by.

She had decided that she shouldn’t be pointing out oddities about this trip to Paavo. He was doing the right thing by ignoring them. That was what he’d do in his new persona: learn how not to be a cop. It wasn’t being dull—it was being an everyday kind of guy.

Oh, well. She situated herself so that her head and shoulders were shaded by the big umbrella that rose from a round patio table. The umbrella could be angled wherever needed.

She kicked off her sandals so that her feet,
with their fuchsia-colored toenails, would tan without strap lines. Next, she picked up the book her sister Francesca had recommended to her, but she doubted she’d make it past chapter two. She didn’t need a book to tell her that she and Paavo were on totally different planets.

As she glanced over at Paavo, the big umbrella shading her creaked and bent at the center joint, allowing the sun to hit her full in the face. When she put her hand up to shade her eyes, she could see he was zipping through an old Ross Macdonald mystery he’d found in the passenger lounge. She had to admit his book looked interesting. She put hers down.

“You know,” she began as she stood up and pushed the umbrella back upright so that it shaded her once again.

“Hmm?” He kept reading. He was getting close to the end. Maybe she shouldn’t bother him?

She stretched out on the chaise longue once more. “Am I disturbing you?”

“Not at all.” He kept reading. Obviously, he’d given her an honest answer.

“Have you given any thought to what you’ll do after leaving the police force?”

“Not yet. Something will turn up. Maybe I’ll join the merchant marines and ship out. I could learn to enjoy a life at sea.”

“You’re kidding me.”

He didn’t say yes…or no. “If nothing else,” he added, “I could always apply for a private eye license.”

“Hmm.” Somehow he didn’t seem like the
Magnum, P.I.
type. He was more
NYPD Blue
material.

“I’ve been giving a lot of thought to my own career as well,” she said after a while. The umbrella creaked and inched downward. She looked up. It stopped moving.

“Oh?” At least he didn’t say, “What career?”

“I know a lot about cooking…” The umbrella creaked again.

“Yes…”

“I thought it was time to put that knowledge to good use. I should write a cookbook.” The umbrella suddenly tilted so far to one side she was completely in the sun.

“That sounds like a good idea,” he said without looking up.

“The problem is,” she said, getting up once more to lift the umbrella back into place, “what kind of cookbook? I mean, there are all kinds out there now. Ethnic cookbooks, special diet cookbooks, single-food cookbooks—you can even get books on ways to cook parsley if you look hard enough. I mean, who cares? It’s not anything to build a meal around.”

He put down his book. “I guess not.”

She twisted the umbrella, tugging on and tightening any screws and handles she could find, until she was sure it wouldn’t move again. “I need a different angle.” She flung herself back on the chaise longue. “Not food, not ethnic, not low calorie, low fat or any other diet-
related book. Something new, something different—something that’ll make people throw down their money! But what?”

“I don’t know.”

She frowned at him.

“What about,” he began, racking his brain in the face of her unhappiness, “a cookbook for people who don’t cook, like me? A no-cooking cookbook?”

She heaved a big sigh—both because she was glad to have fixed the umbrella and because of the weightiness of her career problems. “I doubt many people who don’t cook will want to buy a cookbook reminding them of that fact.”

“You may be right,” he admitted.

“I’m afraid so. But that’s not a bad approach—a style-of-cooking cookbook. Let’s see. Microwave ovens already have plenty of cookbooks. Same with crockpots. Toaster ovens? Not very interesting recipes. On the other hand, I haven’t seen many cookbooks on using a convection oven.”

“I’ve never heard of a convection oven.”

“They’re quite popular.”

“If you say so.”

The umbrella suddenly flopped so far over, it was almost upside down. Angie jumped to her feet. She was going to tie the blasted thing in place—if she could find something to tie it with. “Maybe that’s why there aren’t a lot of cookbooks about using them. Or maybe it’s easy to just adjust a regular recipe, so no one needs a
special cookbook. What we need is something simple, but not too simple.”

“Er…right. You’ll come up with a good idea, I’m sure. Give it time.” He picked up his book again.

A small chest with some ropes and tools was fixed to a nearby bulkhead. She rummaged through it and found exactly what she needed—a roll of nylon line, almost like that used on a fishing pole. Nellie and Marvy Marv put down their magazines and watched her.

“A new kind of oven,” she called to Paavo as she pulled the line from the chest. “A new kind of heat. You know, they’re doing all this stuff to save on fossil fuel, but what’s the best kind of heat to cook with? Gas. But gas is a depletable substance. That means we’ve got to find something else.”

She tied one end of the line to the umbrella pole that kept bending in the wrong direction, pulled the umbrella upright, then anchored the line by tying it to a metal ring sunk in the deck. It wasn’t easy to see, so she’d have to find something colorful to tie on the line so that no one would trip over it. “A new source of heat…of energy.”

“I don’t think gas will be depleted in any amount of time we need to worry about.” Paavo turned a page.

“That might be true, but you’ve got to do more than think about the here and now.” She looked at the umbrella. Finally it seemed secure. “On the other hand, if you were a
father…” Suddenly the thought of Paavo as a father to her children made her skin feel even hotter. He’d make a wonderful father, a wonderful husband. She forced her attention back to making sure the umbrella was angled properly. It seemed to be.

“If you were a father,” she said, doing all she could to keep her voice steady, “you’d worry more about the future.”

Ruby Cockburn stepped onto the deck. She was going to say something when she caught Angie’s last words. She snapped her jaw shut.

“What?” Harold asked.

She jabbed his ribs to silence him. “S-e-x,” she mouthed, then pointed at Angie and Paavo. He nodded and they moved closer.

“If I were a father,” Paavo said, “my number one worry would be how to stop your father from killing me.”

Angie could hear the smile in his voice. She could have pointed out that if certain legalities were observed, her father would have no objection at all to her carrying Paavo’s child…except for the fact that Sal Amalfi didn’t like him one little bit.

But what was a family without a few members who couldn’t stand each other?

“That’s probably true,” she said finally. All in all, maybe this wasn’t the time to get into a conversation with more ramifications to it than she was ready to deal with.

She sat down once more and began rummag
ing through her large tote for something brightly colored to tie onto the hard-to-see fishing line. “Anyway, we need a new source of heat and energy. If one were out there, in the hands of the right people, I’d use it, and I’d be the first one to show others how to use it as well. I could revolutionize the world!”

Just then, a loud “Yeeoooowwww!” sounded across the deck. The umbrella rocked wildly. Angie spun around, realizing someone must have tripped over the line she’d just rigged up.

Dudley Livingstone. With his plump body and white clothes, and his arms waving helplessly, he looked like a tipsy Pillsbury Dough Boy. He caught himself against a table before he fell, which was good. If a man of his girth had landed on the deck, it wouldn’t have been a pretty sight—for him or the deck.

But even more surprising than Livingstone’s tripping over the wire was the fact that, when Angie looked up to see what was going on, she discovered that not only had Dudley Livingstone been close enough to hear every word she’d been saying, but so had all the other passengers, and Julio as well.

Why were all of them interested in what she had to say?

She caught Paavo’s eye. Surely, this struck him as odd.

The Hydra moved back into the shadows. She’d noticed the passengers moving closer as Angie
Amalfi spoke, and had worked her way nearer as well. A new source of heat and energy? So she
did
know. Now the question was, had Sven been working with her from the start?

She should have known better than to trust the Norwegian with something this important. She was going to have to remedy it fast. Damn! She couldn’t afford any more mistakes. Too much was riding on this plan—it had to work, and work well.

If anyone else caused her trouble, they were dead.