Cooks Overboard (8 page)

Where was the galley? She’d been told it was just below the main deck, near the crew’s mess, but she’d never been this far down in the ship before. She thought she was on the right deck, though. Maybe she should have taken the elevator instead of the stairs, but the elevator was so slow. She’d expected there would be a large sign on the door, something like the kitchen sign in a big hotel.

There seemed to be nothing but closed doors down here. The galley wouldn’t have regular doors. They’d be swinging ones—or so she hoped. Things weren’t that different on a freighter, or were they?

The decks below the main deck were larger than those that rose above it in the superstructure at the rear of the freighter. But even here, in the hull of the ship, most of the space was taken up by massive containers.

She turned a corner and saw two large doors up ahead. It had to be the galley—with double doors large enough to roll carts of food out to the mess and up the elevator to the passenger’s dining room. She walked up to it and pushed the door open.

A flashlight blinded her, then went off. Startled, she froze momentarily, then turned to run when a hand grabbed her wrist and yanked her into the dark galley. “No!” she screamed as she was flung into the room.

She stumbled forward, banging into a rack of pots and pans. They fell over with a loud clatter, and so did she.

She lay without moving. The only sound she heard was the swishing of the galley door back and forth until it stilled.

Was she alone? She waited, scarcely breathing, listening for any sound that might tell her that her assailant was still in the room.

Nothing except the heavy pounding of her heart.

She inched her way toward the door and was ready to run out when she heard a
plop-plop-plop
sound in the hallway. She scooted back to where she had been and found what she wanted—an enormous cast-iron frying pan.

Now that her eyes had grown used to the dark, she could see the narrow line of light from the hallway beneath the galley doors, so she knew where her assailant would be coming from. She carefully, quickly eased to the side of
the door, the frying pan hoisted over her shoulders like a baseball bat.

The door was pulled open slowly, then stopped. From the dim night-light in the hallway a hand reached into the galley. She was sure she was going to faint.

A long gown floated against the door’s opening. It was either a woman or a ghost, she thought. But there were no such things as ghosts, so it had to be a woman. Must be Nellie or Ruby. No problem. Although it seemed a little tall for Nellie…even for Ruby.

Maybe she should call out, greet them.

But what if she was wrong?

Something rubbed against the wall, up and down, up and down. Then it stopped. She gripped the frying pan tighter, raising it higher.

Suddenly the lights came on.

Angie screamed.

Julio screamed.

Julio?

Angie kept the frying pan raised, not sure if she could trust him or not. The steward stood before her wearing a long nightshirt and slippers with no backs, the kind that flopped when you walk in them.

“
Señorita
, you scared me!” he cried. “What are you doing here in the dark? In the middle of the night? With a frying pan?”

“Someone attacked me.”

“
Madre mia!
Are you all right?”

She slowly lowered her arms. “Just a little
banged up. I came down here because I felt seasick,” she said. “But someone was here ahead of me. With a flashlight. Did you see anyone in the hall?”

“No,
señorita
, no one at all.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Me? I wanted some warm milk. I could not sleep with so much trouble—first the cook leaving, then my friend Sven getting sick. I am troubled.”

“You’re not the only one,” she murmured.

“Where is Mr. Smith? Why are you here alone?” he asked.

“Paavo’s sleeping like a baby.”

“Then please join me. I will have my warm milk, and you can have your soda, and we will wait out this storm together.” He pointed at the frying pan she still held. “I think you can put that down now.”

She eyed him suspiciously. “I’ll put it down…but I’ll keep it in easy reach.”

Paavo became aware, in a semiasleep state, that the storm was much worse than anyone had expected it would be. The best thing to do was to try to sleep through it, to ignore the roar of the sea, the banging of rain against the windows, the almost human cry of the wind through the ship.

He reached out to Angie. She wasn’t there. She must have gotten up to use the bathroom. Maybe her getting up was what had awakened
him. He rolled over to go back to sleep.

When he awoke again, the sun was peeking over the horizon. He turned over to check on Angie, but she still wasn’t beside him. Was she up already? That wasn’t like her. He remembered a terrible storm last night. He sat up, suddenly wide awake. Where was Angie?

He got out of bed and hurried to the sitting area. Empty. The bathroom door was open. Empty.

The wall bed was down. What was that supposed to mean? Had she tried sleeping on it? Had she grown so out of sorts with him that she didn’t want to sleep with him anymore? Things had seemed okay between them last night. He remembered her talking…she was talking about writing a cookbook again…and he remembered getting more and more sleepy…he must have…oh, hell.

Christ, where was she? His heart began to race. He couldn’t see her leaving the cabin on her own. She never got up this early on vacation. She never got up early, period. A cold, ugly dread seeped through him. He was ready to run out, then realized he was in his pajamas. He needed to put on his shoes and pants at least. God, what if she’d been hurt? She’d been curious about this ship, about the strangeness going on here, but he’d dismissed it, ignored the danger. That was what civilians did, he’d supposed: ignore danger, then rush headlong into it.

He tore off his pajamas. Before leaving the
city, he’d decided he was through with police work, through investigating, through having to deal with all the grief caused by men who went bad.

Yet, early in the cruise he’d begun to develop an uneasy feeling about this ship. Like Angie, he’d noticed that things had been moved around their room as if it had been searched; he’d noticed Livingstone’s strange questions, Sven Ingerson’s strange words and illness, even the way everyone seemed to be constantly watching Angie. Most of those things were explainable and clearly meant nothing ominous. But not all of them were.

He put on underwear and his jeans. The damnable part was that he hadn’t allowed himself to differentiate the serious from the trivial. He’d chosen to ignore them all instead of trying to find out what the hell was really going on here. And now he didn’t know where Angie was.

He pulled a sweater over his head. In a flash, his mind filled with all the horrible possibilities of what could happen to a young woman on a ship like this, in the middle of the ocean. That was the trouble with having been a homicide inspector. He’d seen people’s worst nightmares come true.

She had to be all right. He had to find her.

His head pounded with the effort of pushing away his grisly thoughts. Where were his shoes? Everything was topsy-turvy in the cabin. He was ready to tear something apart—

Just then the door opened. Angie came waltzing into the room, and when she saw him, she smiled. “Well, look who’s awake,” she said cheerily. “Good morning.”

He stared at her. That was all? Just good morning? She was still wearing her night things, her robe. She looked happy, dammit, while he’d just aged ten years. “Where the hell were you?”

She arched an eyebrow. “I couldn’t sleep. I was with Julio. And I’ve got so much to tell you!”

Had he heard right? “Julio! At this time of night?”

Her eyes narrowed ominously. “It’s morning now. Anyway, I wanted some 7-Up to settle my stomach, and—”

He stepped closer, suddenly furious. “You called him in the middle of the night?”

She gaped at him, acting shocked that he was talking to her in that tone. Well, what did she expect after what she’d done? “I didn’t call anyone! I went to the galley.”

“How innocent. And he just happened to be waiting?” Even he hated the way he sounded, but for the life of him he couldn’t stop himself. “I suppose he offered comfort. And you took it!”

Her cheeks flamed. “Thank goodness he was there,” she yelled. “All things considered!”

So she
was
glad! She
did
like the man! “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Angie lifted her chin, clearly every bit as angry as he was. “We sat in the galley and talked. Julio is a nice man. Very nice, in fact. He’s plan
ning on going back to school and becoming a geography teacher. This is his field research.”

“Sure it is.” At least the weaselly twerp hadn’t said he needed field research to become a gynecologist.

“Don’t be snippy.”

She took off her robe and tossed it across a chair. The nightgown looked as thin and beautiful at dawn as it had last night. He remembered how it felt in his hands, how she felt in his hands. He wondered if Julio had caught a glimpse of it.

He stepped closer to her. “Don’t you know better than to traipse around like that?” he shouted.

She folded her arms. “You are clearly in no mood to listen to a word I have to say.”

“I
am
listening. But so far, I haven’t heard anything worth listening to!”

“You are unbelievable!” she cried, flinging out her arms in fury. “And I didn’t traipse anywhere. I was seasick.”

He clenched his fists, imagining the steward’s scrawny neck in them. “Well, Julio seemed to have taken care of your problem.”

“He did.” She spoke through gritted teeth. “Very nicely, thank you.”

What did she mean by that?
“You could have woken me up. I would have helped you.”

“Excuse me. I’m going to bed. I need some sleep.”

He watched her flounce away.

“Wait a minute. What are those bruises on your arm?”

She glanced over her shoulder at him. “I guess Julio likes to play rough.”

She slammed the bedroom door shut.

Eduardo Catalán enjoyed watching the terrified expressions on the faces of the clerks in the harbor master’s office when Colonel Hector Ortega himself marched up to the front desk. He had put his military jacket on over his wrinkled white shirt, the same one he had worn the day before. Now, standing before one of the clerks, his thick brows arrogantly lifted, he demanded to know when the
Valhalla
would arrive.

“The…the what?” were the most coherent words the unfortunate young woman could stammer.

“
Valhalla!
A freighter. A Norwegian freighter. It is coming from the United States. Do you not know about it?”

The woman’s cheeks went from white to red. “We…we have many ships arriving here,
señor
, and many freighters, and—”

“I know that!” he roared. “I do not care about your many ships. I care about one ship. One!”

“Yes,
señor—
”

“Colonel!”

“I mean, Colonel.” On the verge of tears, she picked up her schedule and ran to the back of the office for help.

“You see, my colonel,” Catalán said, “why you must allow me to handle such annoyances for you. The people who are supposed to serve these days…they are so abysmal.”

“I need to know right away, Eduardo,” the colonel said as he turned his back to the clerks bustling about searching for the answer to his question, “exactly where she is.”

“Colonel Ortega,” the clerk called softly.

The colonel spun around. “You have the information.” His words were a command, not a question.

She nodded timidly. “The
Valhalla
left Long Beach two days ago. It hasn’t reached Cabo San Lucas yet. It’s scheduled to be there two days, then head to Mazatlán after that.”

“Long Beach? It was not scheduled to stop in Long Beach!” he bellowed.

“I am sorry, Colonel. That is my information.” She backed up.

He spun around, his eyes bulging as he spat out his words to Eduardo. “Why does she not take a plane like everyone else in the world? Do something,
amigo
, to get that ship here sooner. I do not like to wait.” Then he stormed from the building.

The American turned away from the rack of brochures he’d hovered over the entire time Colonel Ortega had been talking to the clerk. Ortega rarely moved from his mountain retreat. To see him in the city meant that something was happening. Something big.

And George Gresham knew he was the one to find out what it was all about.

Gresham took off the blue denim cap with fish lures on it—his tourist disguise—and ran his thick, square fingers through his blond crew cut, trying to ignore the ever-enlarging bald spot on the crown. As a field operative, he’d always kept his hair short. Now he kept it short thinking people might not realize that some of it was actually missing.

But he had no time for misplaced vanity. He had to keep an eye on Ortega. He was beside himself with joy that this little jaunt had paid off. It showed his instincts were as sharp as ever.

The
Valhalla
. Not only would the colonel be waiting for it, but George would be there, too. Especially to find out who the mysterious “she” was that Ortega talked about.

He couldn’t wait to tell the others.

Angie went up to the bridge to watch the
Valhalla
sail into the small, colorful harbor of Cabo San Lucas. The other passengers already lined the rail.

When she had awakened in late morning, with a dull headache from her miserable sleep and aches all over her body from the way she’d fallen in the galley, Paavo was gone. She didn’t know where. She was so steamed at him for assuming the worst that right now she couldn’t say she cared.

The captain stepped out of the pilot house and called the passengers together. He looked considerably better this morning than he had the night before, actually sober for once. Johansen was nowhere to be seen.

“Quiet, please,” he cried. “May I have your attention?”

The tiny band of passengers huddled
together waiting for him to speak couldn’t have been any more quiet if they’d been dead.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he shouted. “I have bad news for you. The dockworkers at Cabo San Lucas have gone on strike. The strike is expected to last for a number of days. They have threatened me—I mean, our crew—with violence if we attempt to load or unload the containers ourselves. Therefore, we are not stopping until we reach Mazatlán. We’ll try this port again on our return trip. I apologize for any inconvenience.”

“Gracious,” Nellie cried. “Do you think it’s safe, Marvin?”

“Might turn ugly,” Ruby said. “Might come on board. We could be captured. Raped.”

“Oh, Lord!” Nellie pressed her hands to her chest.

“Not to worry,” Marvy Marv muttered.

“What?” Harold asked, putting his hands to his ears.

“What will you do?” Angie asked Ruby. “Weren’t you and Harold planning to leave the ship at Cabo?”

“Were. But we changed our minds. Can’t find good bridge partners too often. We’re staying with the Neblers. Tierra del Fuego or bust, that’s our motto.”

Angie was speechless. Borrowing the binoculars Marvy Marv wore around his neck, she studied the harbor. For a place with a dockworkers’ strike going on, it looked surprisingly busy, and
the piers bustled with longshoremen handling cargo.

Yet the
Valhalla
wasn’t allowed to dock. It didn’t make sense.

“Miss Amalfi?”

Angie was lying on a chaise longue by the pool with a light sunscreen on her face and sun-tan oil slicked over every inch of skin not covered by the skimpy teal-blue DKNY bikini. She opened her eyes at the sound of the silky voice calling her name. Mike Jones stood at her feet, a smile digging his dimple deeper than ever. “Good afternoon,” she said.

He grabbed hold of a chair under an umbrella-covered table, spun the chair around backward, and sat down straddling it. “I wanted to ask a favor of you,” he said.

“Sure. What can I do for you?”

“Since you know a lot about cooking,” Jones began. “I was wondering if you could you guide me in the preparation of a really nice meal for tonight’s dinner. I know the passengers are all upset about not being able to land, so I thought a good meal might make it up to them a bit—if you see what I mean.”

“That’s a very thoughtful suggestion,” she admitted, wondering why she felt so amazed that it had come from Jones. “Tomorrow we’ll arrive in Mazatlán, and everyone can disembark there, so you’re quite right—getting through this evening will be the problem. If we give the
passengers good food and some wine with the meal, they’ll most likely feel a whole lot better about themselves and each other.”

“I was hoping you’d see it that way. Andrew Brown will be there to assist as well—he does the chopping and lots of the tedious work.”

“A sous-chef, of sorts.”

“Whatever.” He gave her a perplexed grin.

“I’ll come by in about an hour, and we’ll see what’s available in your larder,” Angie said.

He stood. “I appreciate it, Miss Amalfi. By the way…great swimsuit.”

The emergency alert sent every free doctor and nurse in the intensive care unit running to help.

Wearing a resident’s white coat with a stethoscope strung around his neck, a spiral-bound reference book jammed into his pocket, a satchel in one hand, a clipboard in the other, and a tired, glazed expression on his grimly determined face, a long-legged man continued resolutely down the hospital corridor.

Staring at him, a nurse frowned with confusion and hurried after him. He stopped at Sven Ingerson’s room and lifted the medical chart from the rack on the door, then wearily glanced up at her.

“I need to check in on Mr., uh—” He scanned the page on the chart as he put it on his clipboard. “Ingerson.”

“You do?”

“Did you need to see this patient now, nurse?”

“I don’t believe so,” she replied, wide-eyed and worried-looking.

As he glanced from the chart to her, his brow furrowed deeper. He put his hand on the door, ready to push it open and enter.

She took a step toward the room.

He froze. “Are you new here?” he asked sternly.

“Yes,” she said hesitantly, easing back. “This is my first day in this unit.”

He nodded briskly. The young nurse stood, alert but anxious as he opened the door a crack and peered at Ingerson.

The patient appeared to be asleep, masses of tubes stuck into his arms and nose.

He scanned the chart again. “Hmm.”

“What is it, doctor?” the nurse asked.

“Shouldn’t he be awake by now?”

“But…as you see in the chart, the botulism was too far advanced by the time we saw him. He’s not expected to last the night. All we can do is keep him comfortable.”

“Yes.” He took off his stethoscope and lightly rapped it against his hand while staring at her. He ran a finger up and down the long, flexible cord. His gaze jumped from it, to her thin neck.

“There’s an emergency under way,” he said abruptly. “Don’t you think you should check on the other patients while their nurses are busy trying to save a life? I don’t need my hand held.”

The young nurse blushed fiercely. “Oh, I’m
sorry. I didn’t mean…excuse me, doctor.” She hurried down the hall.

As soon as she was gone, he entered the room, shutting the door behind him. “Sven,” he called, his hand on the patient’s chest. “Sven, wake up! The Hydra sent me. The Hydra. Even if you’re asleep, you’ve got to know what that means.” He waited. “Come on, Sven! I can’t give her no for an answer, and you know it.”

He lifted Ingerson’s eyelids. “Yo, Sven!” He shone a light into the glazed eyes, but Sven seemed to be somewhere over the rainbow.

He turned around and started to go through Ingerson’s belongings—the clothes he’d been wearing and his papers—but quickly gave up and simply stuffed them all into his satchel. He walked over to Sven again. “Wake up, goddammit. She’s going to fry us both. I might as well crawl into the bed next to you right now, ’cause that’s where I’ll end up if you don’t tell me where in the hell you put the microfilm, or whatever it is. She won’t tell me what’s on it, the bitch. What does she think, that I’ll steal it from her or something? Goddammit, Sven.” He grabbed Sven by the shoulders and started shaking him. “Wake the hell up!”

“Doctor?”

He looked up. The young nurse was standing in the doorway staring at him, her mouth gaping.

He withdrew his hands and stepped back. “It’s the latest technique, nurse,” he said. “The
brain, you see, actually does hear and understand what’s going on, even if the patient appears to be in a deep sleep or coma. So, you just demand that he wake up. Sometimes it works.”

He grabbed his clipboard and headed out the door. “And then sometimes it doesn’t.”