Fleur De Lies (15 page)

Nah
, that wasn’t possible, was it? But if it were …
Good God
.

“Are you on your way back to the boat?”

I avoided colliding with the man by mere inches. Startled, I did a double-take, laughing with relief when I saw his face. “Patrice! Fancy running into you here. I mean, literally running into you. Sorry.”

“You recognize me out of uniform?”

“Any reason why I wouldn’t?”

“Most guests don’t.”

“It seems to be a universal problem. Don’t take it personally. Free afternoon?”

“
Oui
. One afternoon and one morning a week. Rouen is a good port. Many sales along the Gros Horloge.” He smiled, looking a little embarrassed. “Cycling shoes. A man can never have enough.”

“You’re a cyclist?”

“I ride a bicycle. There is a difference. But the Tour de France
passes through much of the countryside nearby, so I avail myself of the same roads. Do you need directions back to the boat?”

I chuckled. “Nope. They’ve been involuntarily imprinted on my brain. I couldn’t forget them even if I wanted to.”

“The police cars will probably still be there when you arrive.”

Unh-oh
. “Police cars?”

“
Oui
. Something to do with the woman who suffered the fatal accident in Étretat yesterday.” He lowered his voice. “One of the staff overheard the conversation the police were having with the captain, so there’s a rumor flying around the ship now.”

“What kind of rumor?”

“Apparently, what was initially thought to be an accident was no accident at all.”

thirteen

“Drug overdose,” said Nana.

My jaw hit the floor. “You’re kidding.”

“They run one of them toxicology panels. Got it firsthand. Straight
from the horse’s mouth. That Irv fella what sits in the lounge in a stupor all day? He told us. He can be pretty chatty between cocktails.”

“How did Irv find out?”

“He heard it from the bartender, what heard it from the purser, what heard it from the waiter what was servin’ some snacks to the gendarmes when they was talkin’ to the captain in the dinin’ room.”

I grinned. “Yup. It doesn’t get any more firsthand than that.”

I’d found most of the gang on the top deck, sitting beneath the
canopy, fondling their iPhones and sipping drinks that sported little
parasols, swords, and pink flamingo swizzle sticks. Their eyes were
glassy. Their mouths were curved into silly grins. They looked a little punch-drunk, as if they’d just been forced to sit through eight hours
of nonstop campaign speeches—and something else was different about
them, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

“Did Irv know what kind of drug she overdosed on?”

“Not yet,” said Tilly. “But his plan was to continue tippling in the lounge until the end of the day, so he’s well positioned to hear further information. He told us to check back with him later.”

Stunned, I pulled out a chair and flopped down at the table with them, my thoughts heading off in eight different directions. “A drug overdose? Does that mean she didn’t die from a brain hemorrhage?”

“The toxicology report doesn’t change the results of the postmortem,” said Tilly. “But what it might indicate is that the overdose
caused
the brain hemorrhage. The police were in her cabin earlier. No doubt searching for the drug in question. If they find it, I believe they might suspect an accidental overdose. If they don’t, I assume they may reclassify her death as a homicide.”

Nuts! We were home free. A natural death. No suspicions. No flags.
I sighed.
Here we go again
.

“If the police don’t find the drug in her cabin, what are the
chances they’ll search for it elsewhere aboard ship?” asked Dick Stolee,
trying unsuccessfully to hide a nervous tremor in his voice. “You think they’ll search all the guest cabins?”

“What do you care?” questioned Grace, eyeing him suspiciously. She gasped. “Oh, my Lord! ARE YOU HIDING ILLEGAL CONTRABAND IN OUR CABIN?”

“
Shhhh!”
He shot a furtive look to left and right.

Tilly raised her forefinger. “If you’ll allow me to make a grammat
ical correction, Grace. Contraband is always unlawful, so the expression ‘illegal contraband’ is redundant … much in the same way as ‘close proximity’ or ‘false pretense’ or ‘foreign import,’ or my absolute favorite, ‘two twin beds.’”

Grace drew her lips back over her teeth in an unflattering sneer. “What about ‘buzz off’? Is that redundant?”

“I thought ‘two twin beds’ was one a them oxymorons,” said Nana.

Tilly shook her head. “An oxymoron is an expression that seems to contradict itself, like ‘jumbo shrimp,’ or—”

“Isn’t ‘two twin beds’ hotel lingo for a double?” asked George.

Dick Teig snickered. “ ‘Oxymorons’ are what Bernice calls us when
we’re all in the same room together. You know. More than one moron.” He squinted in thought. “ ‘Oxy’ means ‘more than one’, doesn’t it?”

“Quiet!” snapped Grace, her gaze boring into her husband like a drill bit into butter. “Out with it, Dick. What are you trying to hide from the police?”

He slouched in his chair, shoulders slumped and head bent, looki
ng as if he were about to confess to leaving the toilet seat up for fifty years on purpose. “Rocks,” he mumbled.

“Did he say, ‘rocks’?” questioned Alice.

“You’re hiding diamonds?” shrieked Grace.

He shot up higher in his chair. “Diamonds? Where would I get diamonds?”

“Where would you get rocks?” demanded Grace.

I leveled a look at him. “Oh, my God. You took stones off Étretat Beach.”

Dick Stolee hung his head with guilt. Dick Teig froze in place. “What’s wrong with that?” he asked in a tentative voice.

“Didn’t you hear Rob before we got off the bus? He warned us that it’s expressly forbidden to remove stones from the beach.”

“I didn’t hear him say that,” swore Dick Teig.

“We weren’t supposed to remove stones from the beach?” asked Alice. “Why didn’t anyone tell us?”

Oh, God
.

Dick Teig stood up. “How many people heard Rob tell us that we—”

“No voting!” I stabbed my finger at Dick Stolee. “How many did you take?”

“Two,” he said in an undertone.

I waited a beat. “Only two?”

“And they’re smaller than my thumbnail. Pebbles! Nobody’s gonna
miss them, Emily. I bet no one even knew they were there. I’m no thief
.
Honest. They were just so unusual, I couldn’t resist.” He heaved a sigh.
“Should I turn myself in to the police?”

“No!” cried Grace. “What if they throw you into a jail cell and let you rot there for the rest of your life? You’re not going anywhere long term until you clean out the garage.”

“He’s
not
going to be thrown in jail.” At least, I hoped not. I softened my gaze, relenting. “Okay, Dick, the beach might be able to spare two of its pebbles, but the next time Rob informs us that a town has ordinances that must be respected, you’d better—”

“Two stones,” snorted Dick Teig. “Hell, I took a whole handful.”

“I took at least a dozen,” confessed Alice. “They’re so smooth and white, I plan to make a paperweight out of them.”

I tossed my head back and groaned. “Guys!”

“I only took one,” said George.

“Yeah,” Nana piped up, “but it’s as big as your head.”

“Had to be.” He smiled. “I’m gonna use it as a doorstop.”

I shot them a disgusted look. “Anyone else want to own up to petty
thievery?” I eyed Tilly and Nana expectantly.

“Don’t look at me,” clucked Nana. “I was busy talkin’ to the Frenchie
in the neon thong, so I didn’t have time to steal no rocks.”

George’s mouth popped open. “Marion! You were flirting with the fella in that … that”—he swept his hand from his neck to his groin—“in that green rubber band that barely covered his privates? He looked like he was wearing a slingshot!”

“It’s not a slingshot. It’s called a mankini, and you can buy ’em over the Internet. He says all the hotties are wearin’ ’em.” She waggled her eyebrows at George, eyes glowing with anticipation. “And they come in jumbo.”

“So what are we supposed to do if the police search our cabin and find the goods?” persisted Grace. “Plead the Fifth, throw ourselves on the mercy of the court, or send them down to Alice’s cabin? She swiped a lot more than my Dick.”

Alice gasped. She threw me a desperate look. “They can’t arrest me, can they, Emily? It would be so unfair. I’ve never even had a parking ticket.”

“Don’t listen to Grace,” I soothed. “She was just pulling your leg.”

“No I wasn’t,” quipped Grace.

Dick studied his wife’s face, thunderstruck. “Grace Stolee, I can’t believe my ears. After all you and Alice have meant to each other through the years? The friendship, and church groups, and book clubs, and fundraisers? What kind of heartless creature are you? Can you actually sit there and tell me you’d be willing to throw Alice under the bus to save me?”

“Damned straight.”

He threw his shoulders back, his chest swelling with pride, his eyes a little dewy. “Aw, shucks, honeybun. That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me in decades.”

“Okay, that settles it.” Alice dusted off her hands. “I’m throwing my stash over the balcony rail. Sentence commuted.” She arched a self-satisfied brow at the Stolees before turning back to me. “If the police don’t know I
have
the rocks, they can’t haul me away for destroying evidence, can they?”

My eyelid began twitching like a Mexican jumping bean doing the Macarena.

Tilly thumped her walking stick on the deck. “I’m not so sure I’d count on the police conducting a cabin-to-cabin search. If Krystal ingested an over-the-counter drug, like aspirin, ibuprofen, or acet
aminophen, a search would be entirely futile. All of us probably
carry the big three. But if she overdosed on an exotic prescription drug, now that’s a different matter.”

“If I killed someone with meds I brung with me,” said Nana, “I’m chuckin’ ’em over the side with Alice’s rocks. No way I’m lettin’ anyone find ’em in my pill caddy.”

“Are you sure it was pills?” asked George. “What if the killer used something more common, like a cleaning compound or hair product or … or hand sanitizer?”

Alice sucked in her breath. “You think Margi did it? Oh, my stars. Why would she kill someone after buying all those new clothes? They’ll never let her wear them in prison.”

“Margi Swanson
did not
kill anyone,” I stated firmly. “And further
more, we don’t have any information about when Krystal ingested the drug, so no one’s going to know anything until someone figures that out.”

“Emily’s right,” Tilly agreed. “If the drug was fast acting, the implication would be that someone on the tour might have slipped it to her. But if it was slower acting, then she could have ingested it even before she boarded the plane. Is it possible that someone back home wanted her dead?”

Uff-da
. I hadn’t thought of that. Bobbi and Dawna had reason to want her out of the picture, but had someone back in Texas beaten them to it? “I’ve just realized that I don’t know anything about Krystal other than she was blonde, beautiful, turned heads, had a fond
ness for snakeskin, and was probably the top sales rep for her cos
metic company.” I regarded the gang expectantly. “Anyone want to volunteer to dig up more background on her?” This was the nifty part of traveling with seniors with major iPhone addictions. They were always looking for an excuse to surf the Web.

Breathing stopped. Heads froze. Eyes shifted. Phones remained idle in their hands.

Hunh
. What was wrong with this picture? They should have been gunning to see who could access Google first by now. I frowned.
Ohhh
, I got it. “Cell signal down?”

“WHAT?” Alice cried.

They whipped their phones up to their faces, exhaling a collective sigh of relief when their devices lit up in their hands. “False alarm,” sang out Dick Teig.

I searched their faces in disbelief. “No volunteers? Not even one?”

Nervous glances. Guilty expressions.

“Okay, what’s going on?”

The Dicks looked at Tilly. Tilly looked at George. George looked at Nana. “It’s like this, dear,” she hedged. “The crew’s keepin’ us so booked up with lessons and lectures and demonstrations, we don’t got no time to dig up no dirt on no dead girl, so we’re gonna have to pass.”

I stared at them, gobsmacked. “You’re passing up a chance to be glued to your iPhones?”

Tilly shook her head. “There’s a bit of overkill involved in our schedule, Emily. I think we’re all suffering from mental exhaustion brought on by overstimulation. But it’s absolutely inspiring.”

“We’re so hyped up, we’re pooped,” said Grace.

“But if we take time away to dish up the dirt on that girl, we’re afraid we’ll lose our momentum,” explained Alice.

“Sorry,” said the Dicks.

I waved off their apologies, feeling as if I’d just been jilted by my longtime steady. “No, really, it’s okay. I’m perfectly capable of doing this myself. It’s just that … you’re so much better at it than I am.”

“Malarkey alert! Malarkey alert!” warned Dick Teig. “She’s using flattery to change our minds.”

“I am not. You
are
better with Internet searches. You … you’re like a bunch of ten-year-olds.”

“Aw,” gushed Nana, “that’s an awful nice thing for you to say, dear.”

I realized this might be one of the few instances where being compared to a group of juveniles was actually a compliment. “So what have you learned from your lectures and demonstrations that’s left you so inspired?”

They all began talking at once.

“… woozy from all the wines we tasted from the different regions of—”

“The more I sampled of the
brie
cheese, the less it tasted like old dirt, but the
Pont l’Eveque
—”

“… said I excelled at fields of flowers, but she thought I might be even better with nudes. We just need a model.”

“… tasted like a moldy sock even
with
the garlic cracker.”

“… started snoring through the slide presentation and …”

“… so surprised when she offered five-minute makeovers with sample-size products that she actually let us keep. My eyes look so much bigger with—”

“… been set on cremation since I paid your Grampa Sippel’s funeral expenses, but them Walt and Ed fellas was so convincin’ that I’m gettin’ a notion to order the Fisherman’s Retreat casket what’s got the eight-inch memory foam mattress on the inside and the authentic fiberglass fish scales on the outside. It’s an exact replica of the spotted bass what your grampa mounted forty years ago.”

As their chatter grew faster and louder, I let fly my signature ear- piercing whistle to restore order.

Ear-muffling ensued, followed by cussing and collective wincing.

“Thank you. Sounds like you’ve had a whirlwind day. Just one question.” My voice cracked as I choked out the word. “Nudes?”

“You’re all still here!” Jackie bounded onto the deck. “Fabulous! Now I don’t have to run around looking for you.” Pausing by the rail, she clapped her hands to cheer on the people who were trooping up the stairs behind her. “Quick like bunnies,” she encouraged as Margi, Osmond, Lucille, Helen, and Bernice popped into view and joined her.

There was only one thing wrong.

“Oh, my God! Why are they wearing cervical collars?”

I watched in horror as Osmond, Lucille, and Helen shuffled toward the canopy, backs stiff, chins elevated, heads immobilized. Springing to my feet, I grabbed several chairs from other tables and motioned the Dicks to help Lucille and Helen while I assisted Osmond. Seizing his elbow, I ushered him to the nearest chair and sat him down. “How did this happen? Did you reinjure your neck? Are you in pain?” A possible explanation struck me. “Please don’t tell me you were in the lounge doing the chicken dance again.”