Laura Marlin Mysteries 2: Kidnap in the Caribbean (7 page)

Tariq looked up at her. ‘Is everything all right?’

Laura skipped down the remaining stairs and unlocked the cabin. She was allowing her imagination to get the better of her. Thousands of people took tumbles down steps every year without imagining it involved a hidden assassin.

She smiled. ‘I’m fine. How about we take Skye on deck and try to make friends with a waiter or chef? I’d like to find him a nice juicy bone for his dinner.’

FOR A SIBERIAN HUSKY
like Skye, genetically programmed to run through snow for hours at a stretch, pulling heavy sledges, a cruise ship was not the best environment. Laura spent a lot of the first day worrying about how he was going to cope with being cooped up in a cabin with only a limited amount of exercise in the mornings and evenings. Until, that is, she met Fernando.

Fernando was a waiter who seemed to spend more time smoking on deck than carrying trays, but he was dog crazy. When Laura and Tariq showed up at the galley door looking for a bone for Skye, he went into raptures over the husky.

‘Oh my,’ he said, palms pressed to his cheeks, ‘never did I think I would have such a lucky day as this. A Siberian husky – a champion among dogs – on board the
Ocean Empress
. Oh my, life suddenly looks very much brighter.’

Not only did he immediately rush away to fetch Skye a T-bone steak, he had an exercise solution – one he used with his own greyhound back in New York.

Laura couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘A treadmill?’

‘You mean, one of those running machines in a gym?’ Tariq asked.

Fernando grinned. ‘Wait till you see for yourself.’

It turned out that the manager of the ship gym was his best friend and glad to assist them. As soon as Fernando had finished his shift, he introduced everyone and showed Laura how to train Skye to use the treadmill. At first, the husky was scared of the noise the machine made, but in no time at all he was sprinting along as if he were competing in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Alaska. He caused quite a sensation among the other passengers. Fernando was very impressed.

‘You’d never know he only had three legs. He’d give Mattie, my greyhound, a run for her money and she’s like a pocket rocket.’

He was so taken with Skye and Skye with him that Laura agreed right away when he begged her to allow him to exercise the husky in his free time.

‘This is the thing that will save my sanity. Otherwise all I do is miss Mattie and get bored. Nothing to look forward to but ocean, more ocean and more ocean.’

Laura found it extraordinary that anyone could get bored on the floating city that was the
Ocean Empress
, where it was possible to try half a dozen different activities and eat in a different restaurant every day of the cruise.

On their third day at sea, a Tuesday, she and Tariq spent the morning playing mini golf and chatting to her uncle. Lunch was a fudge sundae for each of them. They’d had so many pancakes for breakfast they couldn’t fit in anything else.

In the afternoon, the last of the clouds blew away and a silky blue sky arched over the ship. Sea birds wheeled overhead. Passengers in bikinis and board shorts baked on sun loungers, sipping exotic cocktails with umbrellas in them.

Laura and Tariq had a lovely time shooting down water slides and kayaking along fake rapids. It was a relief to know that Skye was happy and taken care of. Calvin Redfern had woken that morning in a lot of pain, but for now he was engrossed in his Matt Walker book and finding comfort in a large chocolate cake.

‘It’s funny how life can change in the blink of an eye,’ Tariq said. He was thinking of his nightmarish existence as a modern day slave before a chance encounter had brought him into contact with Laura.

Laura turned over onto her stomach so she could watch the activity in the wave pool from beneath the brim of her baseball cap. ‘Yes, it is. We’re pretty lucky.’ She was thinking of how, in just a few months, she’d gone from a dreary orphanage, where she’d been bored half to death and had nothing in common with anyone, to a Caribbean cruise ship adventure with her best friends.

From the other side of the pool came a screech that ended in a gurgle. Jimmy Gannet had exuberantly dive-bombed an inflatable dinosaur, not realising until he was in mid-air that there was a small girl floating dreamily on its back. His mum and dad rushed to inspect the damage. From a distance, they resembled a pair of excitable parrots.

‘Every silver lining has a cloud,’ quipped Laura.

‘Tariq! Laura! My dear children, how are you?’ cried Rita Gannet. She came rushing over, leaving Bob to deal with the irate mother of the crying girl. ‘Oh my goodness, we simply could not stop talking about you and your uncle after you left last night,’ she said, whipping off sunglasses the size of small planets. ‘Jimmy’s imagination has been quite fired up by it. I’ve never seen him so excited by anything.’

Laura fought the urge to run away. Jimmy’s father had fished him out of the pool and was escorting him in their direction, wrapped in a huge flowery towel.

‘Are you sure she’s okay, Dad?’ he was saying. ‘I feel terrible. I didn’t see her there.’

‘Sure she is, son. Some people have nothing better to do than complain, that’s all,’ complained Bob, striding over and flopping down on a candy-striped lounger. The lounger collapsed in the middle, trapping him in its the depths like a Venus flytrap swallowing a bug.

Tariq, Rita and Jimmy rushed to help, but most of Laura’s energy went on trying to stop a fit of giggles. In the end, she had to stuff a corner of towel into her mouth.

‘Damn this cheap and nasty pool furniture,’ Bob mumbled when he finally crawled scarlet and sweaty from the clutches of the chair. ‘Rita, add that to the list of things we’ve found wrong so far, and we’ll try to get some money back.’

‘Yes, dear,’ said his wife. ‘How are you enjoying the ship so far, kids? Is your uncle on the mend, Laura? What’s wrong with him, anyway? Is he seasick?’

‘He’s much better, thank you,’ responded Laura, ignoring the question.

‘Great, great. And what are your plans for tomorrow?’

Laura glanced quickly at Tariq. She knew what was coming next. The Gannets wanted a playmate for Jimmy. She wracked her brains for an excuse. ‘Well, we hadn’t decided … We’re not sure …’

Then she remembered Tariq’s words. She knew he was right, they should give Jimmy a chance. ‘Actually, we were thinking of trying the rock climbing wall.’

Bob poked his son. ‘Rock climbing! Awesome. You’d love that, son, wouldn’t you? Didn’t you once say that you dreamed of being a mountaineer?’

‘Dad, Tariq and Laura don’t want me hanging round and anyway I’d rather be with you and Mum.’

‘Nonsense,’ retorted his father. ‘They don’t mind at all, do you kids? The more the merrier. It’ll be fun for you to be with children your own age.’

‘You’d be very welcome, Jimmy,’ Tariq said politely. ‘We’d be glad to have you along.’

‘See, what did I tell you?’ Bob boomed, clapping Jimmy on the back. ‘Now how about it, son? It’ll give you a chance to discuss all that detective stuff with Laura.’

‘Can’t think of anything I’d like more,’ Laura said insincerely.

Jimmy looked as if he’d rather stand knee-deep in a tankful of piranhas, but he gave a weak smile and said, ‘Sure, Dad. That would be great.’

‘Fantastic,’ said Rita. ‘It’s a date.’

‘WE’RE DOING THE
rock climbing with him and that’s it,’ Laura told Tariq as they headed back to their cabin after taking Skye for his early morning walk on Wednesday. ‘There’s no way I’m having Jimmy Gannet hanging around and ruining our whole holiday. He’s a disaster waiting to happen, that boy.’

She stopped. ‘What is it, Skye?’

The husky had halted abruptly at their cabin door, hackles raised.

‘It’s probably the cleaner,’ Tariq said, nodding at the housekeeping trolley parked two doors down, but he hesitated before slipping his key card into the lock. ‘That’s weird, the door has been locked from the inside.’

Laura pushed past the growling husky and knocked hard. ‘Is anyone in there?’

‘Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten your key as well?’ demanded a pink-faced maid, emerging from cabin 130. ‘You kids! What am I going to do with you?’ She had a cheerful smile and a roly-poly figure all but sewn into her blue and white uniform.

Laura placed a warning hand on Skye’s collar. The hairs stood up on the back of her neck. For some reason, Jimmy’s words about the ‘insect’ man watching them board the ship came into her head. ‘As well as what?’

The maid unlocked the door with a master key. ‘As well as your young brother. Now don’t forget it again, because I’m leaving now and have the rest of the day off.’

Skye almost wrenched Laura’s arm from its socket, so keen was he to burst into the cabin. But his growl soon changed to a whine. Stretched out on Laura’s bed, reading her Matt Walker book and listening to the iPod Tariq had been given for his birthday, was Jimmy.

Far from appearing embarrassed to be caught in their cabin, Jimmy grinned at their expressions. It was barely nine o’clock but already he looked as if he’d been through a wind tunnel. His hair was sticking up in all directions and there was ketchup on his shirt.

‘Hello, Laura and Tariq and big wolf dog,’ he said, removing the headphones from his ears. ‘Surprised to see me? I must say that, for a detective, you’re pretty lax about your security, Laura.’ He held up the book. ‘I don’t think Matt Walker would approve.’

Laura snatched it from him. She was trembling with fury. ‘What do you think you’re playing at, Jimmy Gannet? Or is this normal behaviour for you? Are you in the habit of breaking into people’s rooms and going through their things? Do you realise that we could call security and have you arrested?’

Jimmy propped himself up on the bed and regarded her with amusement. ‘You get all red when you’re cross. Now that I’ve decided to be an ace detective myself, I wanted to see how easy it would be to get inside a locked room. And it was. Very easy. It only took about two minutes.’

‘But why our cabin?’ asked Tariq. ‘Couldn’t you have experimented with your parents’ cabin or something?’

Jimmy said coolly: ‘Where’s the challenge in that? Anyway I was hoping to meet your famous uncle. Where is he anyway? Hiding under the bed?’

Laura glared at him. ‘So how
did
you get in?’

He snorted. ‘Easy as pie, wasn’t it. I told the cleaner that I’d locked myself out and that I couldn’t find my mum or my sister, and she let me in straight away. Well, I’m a kid, aren’t I? She’s not going to think that a ten-year-old is going to make up a story like that – not on a fancy cruise ship. She did ask me if I had any ID, and I told her that the best proof I could give her was that she’d definitely find a Matt Walker book in the cabin. And sure enough, there was.’