Final Sail (28 page)

“You found the … uh, person?” Phil asked.

“Can’t wait to tell you about it,” she said, and hit the
END
button. Two could play the “I can’t say anything on a cell phone” game.

Helen stashed her cleaning caddy for the last time, tidied her cabin and packed her small bag. When she opened her cabin door, the yacht was perfumed with a delicious aroma. It didn’t take much detective skill to track it to the galley, where the tall, thin chef was washing down the countertops.

“What smells so good?” Helen asked.

“I’m making pizza for the crew,” Suzanne said. “What’s your favorite topping?”

“I have to miss this party,” Helen said. “I’m meeting Phil right after I go through customs. I enjoyed working with you.”

“My pleasure,” Suzanne said. “I’m guessing this is your first and last cruise as a stewardess.”

Helen said nothing. Suzanne opened the oven door and took out two pizzas, oozing cheese. Red rounds of pepperoni and brown sausage were embedded in the top like greasy jewels.

“I thought so,” she said. “Will you do one last chore and carry these to the crew mess?”

Matt, Sam and Dick, the second engineer, attacked the pizzas as soon as Helen set them on the table. She heard the
spoit!
of beer tops popping. Carl didn’t join the hungry crew. He stayed with Andrei in their cabin. Was the captain worried his fired engineer would damage the yacht?

Helen ran down the passage and asked Carl, “Would you like some pizza?”

“No, thanks,” he said. “I’m staying on board after the captain dismisses the crew and takes you and Andrei to Port Everglades. I can eat then.”

Andrei was slumped on his bunk, sulking. His black polo shirt seemed to accent the dark pits in his skin. Helen didn’t offer him pizza. The poodle abuser could starve.

No one mentioned Andrei during the party, but Helen thought the crew was relieved he stayed in his cabin. She wondered if Dick, the quiet second engineer, would be promoted to Andrei’s job.

While the boys ate, drank beer and cracked jokes, Mira rolled a pink suitcase out to the crew mess. The fat duffel sat on top of it. She was dressed for a colder climate in jeans, a long-sleeved white shirt and a pink hoodie. “New York, here I come,” she said.

“It’s chilly there in April,” Helen said. “Do you have the right clothes for your trip?”

“Nope, but I can buy them in Manhattan,” Mira said. “I can’t wait to leave.”

Helen couldn’t, either. By the time she and Mira had said their good-byes to the crew, the captain had returned.

A sullen Andrei dragged his dark backpack with the square bulge down the gangplank. Helen thought the fired engineer would have a harder time attracting gullible young women without his dashing dress uniform.

The three women rolled their suitcases down the gangplank. Mira ran to a dramatically handsome man of about thirty. His black clothes, thick dark hair and carefully calculated beard stubble screamed “actor.”

“Kevin!” Mira cried, her pink suitcase bumping over the marina’s blacktop, the duffel nearly falling off.

Suzanne drove off alone in a dented red Honda.

Helen and Andrei climbed into the captain’s black Chevy for a short, silent ride to Port Everglades. Helen cleared customs quickly, then shook the captain’s hand, but not Andrei’s. She wanted nothing to do with him.

Outside she spotted Phil’s black Jeep in the lot and ran to him. He was wearing her favorite soft blue shirt, the one that matched his eyes. His long silver hair was tied back in a ponytail.

Helen wrapped her arms around him. “Um, muscles!” she said, rubbing his back. She inhaled his scent of coffee and sandalwood and kissed him hard.

“I missed you,” she said. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

After more kisses she said, “We still have work to do on this case. You need to tip off the feds.”

Helen told him about Mira and the emeralds, then asked, “Who are you going to call? ICE?”

“The agency isn’t called Immigration and Customs Enforcement anymore,” Phil said. “They’ve changed their name to Homeland Security Investigations. I’ll call an HSI agent in Fort Lauderdale. He’ll know if the airport has an HSI special agent on duty. If not, TSA will do the takedown. We need to give him as many details as possible, including where Mira was coming from, how the emeralds were smuggled and a description of her luggage. They’ll love a chance to seize smuggled emeralds.”

“I can even give them the color of her suitcase,” Helen said. “I’m no jewelry expert, but I’d say the cut stones have a retail value of several million. We’d better hurry. Mira and her boyfriend are boarding a three o’clock flight for New York.”

The HSI agent was definitely interested in Phil’s information. Helen heard him reciting the details:

“That’s right. Her name is Mira—short for Vladimira—Fedorova, age twenty-nine, about five foot six, long blond hair, wearing jeans, a white shirt and a pink hoodie. Name sounds Russian, but she’s a U.S. citizen living in Fort Lauderdale. She has a pink rolling suitcase and may also have a large navy duffel. That one’s too big for carry-on. She’s traveling with a dark-haired thirty-something male, first name Kevin. They’re taking the three o’clock flight to LaGuardia. I don’t know if he’s involved. She’s a stewardess on a yacht. That’s how she’s been bringing in the jewels. The captain got suspicious and our agency had an operative aboard. She found the emeralds on a belt in a bag of old evening dresses.”

That’s me, Helen thought. I’m an operative. A successful operative.

Phil repeated the information several times, then hung up. “They’re going after her,” he said. “I hope your hunch is right.”

“It is,” Helen said, with more confidence than she felt. “We should call our favorite TV reporter, Valerie Cannata. We can promise her the story, if she agrees not to use the captain’s name or the ship’s name. Think she’ll go along with it?”

“Hell, yes,” Phil said. “But she can’t do the story unless she can get a camera crew to the airport on short notice. Let’s hope for a slow news day. Coronado Investigations will have to stay out of this story. But we’ll get plenty of publicity when we give her the scoop on the murder of a prominent Fort Lauderdale businessman.”

“You’re that close to a solution?” Helen asked.

“I am,” Phil said. “But I need you.”

Helen kissed him again. “And I need you,” she said. “Could your case wait until tomorrow morning?”

“I think it’s time for some undercover work,” Phil said. “Let’s go home.”

CHAPTER 33

P
hil’s phone rang at nine thirty that night. Helen sat up in bed, flipped on the light and found the receiver.

“Helen! It’s Valerie.”

Helen hastily pulled the sheet up over her breasts, as if the investigative reporter could see her naked.

“I wanted to thank you and Phil for the amazing tip,” Valerie said. “The smuggling story runs at ten tonight.”

“The feds caught Mira?” Helen was still groggy.

“Did they ever,” Valerie said. “Carrying a suitcase jammed with emeralds. HSI says they have a street value of five million dollars. The feds always exaggerate, but I think she had at least three million in smuggled stones. We’re the only station with the story. Thank you, thank you, sweetie. Gotta run.”

“Phil, wake up!” Helen said, shaking her sleeping spouse. “Valerie called. The feds caught Mira. Her story runs at ten. We should call the captain so he can watch it.”

“You make the call and I’ll make a snack,” Phil said. “Scrambled eggs okay?”

“You’re going to wait on me?” Helen said. “What luxury.”

Phil gave her a long kiss. “Scrambled eggs aren’t my idea of luxury,” he said. “I’d buy you a yacht if I could.”

“Wouldn’t want it,” Helen said. “The
Earl
was gorgeous, but there was no privacy. I could hear the guests fighting—and their makeup sex afterward. I knew too much about them.”

Phil slipped on his white robe. A loud meow stopped his march to the kitchen. Thumbs planted himself in Phil’s path. The six-toed cat’s yellow-green eyes glowed in the low light.

“It’s also time for someone else’s dinner,” Helen said. “Come here, big boy, and say hello.”

“I already did,” Phil said. “Several times.”

“I meant the cat,” Helen said.

Thumbs turned his back on Helen and padded after Phil to the tiny kitchen.

“You still aren’t forgiven for abandoning him,” Phil said.

Captain Josiah Swingle wasn’t happy with Helen, either. “I thought we agreed to avoid publicity,” he said.

Helen felt ice forming on her phone. “We made a deal with Valerie,” she said. “If she kept you and the
Earl
out of this story, we promised her another scoop.”

“I’ll watch tonight to make sure she keeps her word,” Josiah said. “I don’t trust reporters. I’ll stop by tomorrow morning to settle my bill. Seven thirty?”

Helen looked at Phil’s deliciously rumpled sheets. She’d love to sleep in, but Phil had to work at Blossom’s tomorrow and Coronado Investigations couldn’t refuse a customer begging to pay.

“See you then,” she said.

Helen stumbled into the living room, still half asleep. Phil carried two plates heaped with fluffy scrambled eggs to the coffee table. His plate was buried under ketchup and hot sauce.

“White wine?” he asked.

“I must be in server heaven,” Helen said.

They sat side by side on Phil’s black leather couch. “It feels so
good to sit here and enjoy my food,” Helen said, “without worrying that I’ll have to scrub heads and serve dinner at three a.m. Now, tell me what’s going on with Blossom and her boyfriend.”

“This will be show-and-tell,” Phil said. “I want to take you to the restaurant where she poisoned Surfer Dude.”

“Can’t wait to eat that food,” Helen said.

“We’ll eat somewhere else,” Phil said. “How about a midnight Mexican dinner?”

“But we’re eating now,” Helen said.

“This is a snack,” Phil said. “We missed lunch. We’ll leave right after we watch Valerie. It’s way up in Palm Beach County. You don’t want to miss the world’s best guacamole.”

Phil switched on channel seventy-seven. Donna, the blond late-night anchor, was as bland as baby food. “And now investigative reporter Valerie Cannata has the scoop on a Fort Lauderdale resident caught smuggling a fortune in jewels,” Donna said.

There was Valerie. Nothing bland about her. Valerie had the eerily youthful look of top TV pros. A red suit hugged her gym-enhanced curves, and crimson lipstick highlighted her full lips. Phil had kissed those lips, Helen thought, then reminded herself that their romance was over long before she knew her husband.

Valerie did her report with the Fort Lauderdale airport as her backdrop. Curious passengers stared as they rolled their suitcases behind the sophisticated reporter.

“Special agents for Homeland Security Investigations arrested a Fort Lauderdale woman, Mira Fedorova, as she boarded a flight for New York’s LaGuardia Airport this afternoon,” Valerie said. “Ms. Fedorova’s suitcase contained more than five million dollars in emeralds, officials said.”

The camera panned across the glittering hoard of jewels, photogenically displayed in the unzipped pink suitcase.

“Never saw a pink pirate’s chest before,” Helen said.

“Sh!” Phil said.

Mira’s mug shot flashed on the screen as Valerie continued: “Ms. Fedorova, a twenty-nine-year-old yacht stewardess, was charged with multiple counts of smuggling. She is being held without bail as a flight risk. Federal agents are still questioning her companion. We’ll have more updates on this breaking story.”

“Thank you, Valerie,” Donna the anchor said. “Remember, this story is on just one station—channel seventy-seven.”

“I knew we could trust Valerie,” Helen said. “But I still held my breath during her report.

“Josiah will be relieved his yacht wasn’t mentioned. Now, on to our other case. What do I wear to this restaurant?”

“Nothing fancy,” Phil said. “It’s a taco truck in a parking lot.”

“Very cool. Just like L.A.,” Helen said.

It was a fine night for a drive on I-95. Palm trees rustled in the light breeze. The air was soft and warm. Cars whizzed past, some weaving in and out of the traffic, others poking along in the slow lane.

“Now, where did I leave off telling you the adventures of Blossom?” Phil asked.

“In the last installment,” Helen said, “you were disguised as Bob the Cool Guy air-conditioner repairman. You followed Blossom to a Deerfield Beach bar and pretended to check the air-conditioning vents.”

“Hey, I wasn’t playing make-believe,” Phil said. “I risked my neck climbing a stepladder and heroically resisted a beer and burger while I listened to Blossom argue with Surfer Dude. His name is Zack.”

“Anything to this Zack besides his blond good looks?” Helen asked.

“Not that I could tell,” Phil said. “The man was greedy and stupid. I was around the corner from their booth, listening as hard as I could. I’d unscrewed the vent cover and heard Zack say, ‘I told you to get rid of it.’

“Blossom started arguing. ‘No. I might need it,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry. I have a good hiding place. It’s in plain sight.’

“‘What is this?’ Zack said. ‘Some freaking TV detective show? Why keep it?’