Peggy Dulle - Liza Wilcox 03 - Secrets at Sea (2 page)

“Are you going to get another patrol dog?”

“No. I’m going to let Chase go with one of my other officers. Being the chief, mostly I do paperwork these days anyway.”

“It sounds like you’re bored.”

“Yeah. I like chasing the bad guys, not filling out the paperwork to incarcerate them.”

“Somebody’s got to do it.”

“I know. I just wish it wasn’t me.”

My phone beeped. Justin. “Hey Tom, I’ve got another call. Can I call you back?”

“Later tonight, okay? I’ve got to go to court this afternoon and testify. It’s another part of my job I don’t like.”

“I’ll call you tonight.”

“Talk to you later, honey.”

“Bye, love.”

I clicked over and Justin said, “What took you so long?”

“I was talking to Tom, and it takes me a while to figure out how to switch between people on this phone.”

“How’s the sheriff doing?”

“He’s fine,” I said quickly, wanting to know what Justin had found on the Internet. “How did your research go?”

“It’s funny. I’ve never seen a day so boring. I’ve been through newspapers, journals, and magazines both in our country and abroad.
Nothing much happened on that date. There was an earthquake in Argentina, a couple bank robberies in the Midwest, and lots of gang activities in LA but nothing which struck me. And there certainly wasn’t anything I thought you’d have a connection to either.
Nothing,” Justin hesitated and then continued, “except your parents’ plane crash.”

Justin knew about my parents. He was fourteen when their plane went down. He came over every day and sat with me, and we talked, not necessarily about my parents but about events happening in the world and with his life. It was nice to concentrate on something besides my grief. I’ve known Justin since he was five years old and his parents moved in across the street from me. I taught him in kindergarten, and we have been close ever since.

“Teach? Are you there?” Justin said.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m here.”

“Thinking about your mom and dad?”

“Yes.”

“It’s getting close to the anniversary of their death.”

“Yes. You couldn’t find anything for August 13, 2004?”

“Well, I did find something, but I’m not sure it’s important.”

“What did you find?”

“An obituary for a man.”

People die all the time. If I started looking at the obituary section of the paper, I’d have a million cases to solve. “Who?”

“His name was Adam Sherman, and he died on a cruise ship a few weeks earlier. It took his wife that long to get his body released from a Mexican coroner, organize the funeral services, and get the information into the newspaper.”

“Was it the cruise my mom and dad were on?”

“I think so. Did they ever tell you someone died on their cruise?”

“No.”

“I don’t know if it’s important or not, but that’s all I can find for the date.”

“Was there anything suspicious about his death?

“Not really. He got sick and died. It wasn’t like he was shot, stabbed or fell overboard.”

“Well thanks, Justin.”

“Do you want me to keep looking?”

“No, that’s all right.”

“I feel like the Super Cyber Sidekick has let you down.”

“Never, Justin.”

“If you want me to investigate Adam Sherman, let me know.”

“No, I don’t think it means anything.”

“All right. Goodbye, Teach.”

“Goodbye, Justin, and thanks.”

I closed the phone and set it on the table. My computer beeped again. I had forgotten to turn it off, I was so busy talking to Jordan, Tom, and then Justin. I went over to the kitchen table and pushed the space bar. The computer said I had a new email. My finger hesitated. Did I really want to see it? Maybe it was just another unwanted ad for Viagra or something from a bank in South America. I pressed the key.

The new email was from the identical undeliverable address with the same date: August 13, 2004. I closed my eyes and clicked the button to open the mail. My stomach tied up in knots again and I felt like I would vomit. Slowly I opened my eyes. No message again, just an attachment.

I opened it. Staring back at me was a picture I’d never seen: my mom and dad with another couple, all smiling and holding on to each other. Under the picture was typed: William, Joyce, Adam, and Betsy having the time of their lives.

Adam?

Was Adam the Adam Sherman in the obituary? And did his death have anything to do with my parents or their death on August 13, 2004?

Chapter 2

I did some research on the Internet about the cruise my parents took each year. They always used the same cruise line, went at the same time, the last week of July, and with a group of ten people. None were relatives, just friends they’d made on the first cruise. Before their deaths, they had cruised together for six years.

Was Adam Sherman part of their group? I had no idea. I never knew their cruising buddies’ names. None lived close to my mom or dad, so the only time they were together was on the cruise. They’d meet the day before in a Long Beach motel and board the ship the next afternoon. I studied the picture on the screen. Were there other pictures of the cruising group I’d never seen?

I got up and went down the hallway. At the end, in the ceiling, was a door to my attic. In there was a huge plastic box full of photographs. My mother never put them in albums, but she loved to take pictures. She’d just throw them into a box and tell me that putting them in an album was her daughters’ job. Neither Jordan nor I ever got around to doing it.

I climbed the stairs. The attic temperature was smothering, and by the time I found the box, sweat dripped off my entire body. The plastic box was buried under two large black suitcases, my grandmother’s old sea chest, and several bags of my parents’ clothes that I hadn’t parted with yet. I took the box down the stairs and put it on the kitchen table. Before starting my search, I took a long shower. It helped cool me off and gave me time to think about what pictures I might find and how they would affect me. I had deliberately not opened the box when I took it from my parents’ house. It was filled with memories that were still too painful. It had been almost four years since their deaths, but the wound was as fresh as it had been on the day I’d gotten the phone call.

Remembering the cold and empty call made a chill run up my spine. “This is the police department in Barton, Nevada. I’m afraid there’s been a plane accident. William and Joyce Wilcox were killed.”

Silence. I didn’t speak. The person on the other line kept talking, but I never heard them. I was an orphan. The two people I loved most in my life were gone.

I had gone through all the grief stages. At first I denied it, telling the person on the line it was a mistake. Someone else was dead, not my parents. Then I was angry. Mad at my dad for insisting he was still young enough to pilot his Cessna. Mad at my mom for letting him and mad at them both for leaving me with a sister I couldn’t stand.

I started bargaining with God. If only it was a mistake, then I’d pray every night for the rest of my life. We hadn’t been raised to go to church, but I promised to find and join the nearest church if only there was a mistake and my parents were still alive.

Eventually depression, the fourth stage, set in. I could barely drag myself from bed to go to school. I’d come home and climb back into bed, but I wouldn’t sleep. I’d lie there and cry. Justin starting coming over after school and he’d sit with me and talk about stupid things. He made me laugh. It kept me from climbing back into the darkness.

Time went by and I pushed their deaths into the back of my mind. I’m not sure if I ever got to acceptance. It was more like I chose to forget, to push the hurt and the pain away, and just go on with my life.

Now it all flooded back, like an endless black sea. I closed my eyes in the shower and let the water flow over my head and down my body. Finally, my fingers were wrinkled and the water was cold. I didn’t feel any better, but it was time to get out and open the box.

I wrapped a huge white terrycloth bathrobe around my dripping body and went to the kitchen. First I fixed myself a nice Chinese Chicken Salad. It’s the one meal I can make. As I prepared the salad, adding the mandarin oranges and noodles, I kept glancing over to the box on the table. I didn’t think I was ready to open it but I needed to, not only for myself but also for my parents. After I finished eating, I put the leftovers into the refrigerator and leisurely cleaned up the dishes. Then I sat back down at the table.

When I lifted the lid and set it next to the table, Shelby came over and put her head on my lap. I petted her. She seemed to know I was going through something difficult. She lifted her head and licked my arm.

“Thanks, girl.”

She barked several times and then lay down next to my foot.

I took the photos out and placed them on the table. The tears started as I cried through pictures of my sister and me when we were little, some where we played in the pool at the Texas house, others in the backyard swing at my parents’ home in California. There were pictures of my parents at several different environmental rallies and on their cruise vacations. Family pictures of Christmases and Halloween costumes my mother had made Jordan and me. She didn’t believe in buying costumes, so we just recycled whatever we had around the house into costumes.

When I found a picture with people I didn’t recognize, I set it on the table. The rest I put back in the box. Three hours later I was cried out and had a stack of pictures to go through again, some of them duplicates. My mom always got double prints. She’d keep one copy and give the other to the friends in the picture.

As I quickly flipped through the pictures, I couldn’t tell which cruise or what year they had been taken. No dates were stamped on any of them.

My dad looked exactly the same in each photo. He was tall, almost six foot four, with slightly graying hair and a huge smile. In each picture he was dressed the same: khaki shorts, Birkenstock sandals, and a loud obnoxious Hawaiian shirt in bright primary colors. I could never understand why he liked those shirts so much. His favorite was black with hula dancers and surfboards. It was hideous!

My mom, on the other hand, looked different in every picture. She loved to change her hair style and color. Sometimes it would be wavy, long, and red, like mine, other times it would be straight, long, and blonde, and then again it could be very short and brown. I separated the duplicates and then sorted the pictures by my mom’s hair style. After a few minutes, I had six piles - exactly the number of cruises mom and dad had taken before their deaths.

I spread them out into six rows, one for each year. The bottom row held the most recent cruise - my mom had been wearing her hair short and blonde that year, and there was a copy of the photograph from the anonymous email. The names were not listed under it, but it was definitely the same picture. And it was the only photo of Adam. The others were mostly the same people: three men and four women, one of whom was Betsy, and then mom and dad, although there were a few group photos with other people. And I had no idea who they were. There were ship pictures, some sipping cocktails, dancing, and dinner shots. A few must have been taken on excursions because the background was tropical and my dad looked hot and uncomfortable.

I picked up the photo that matched the one from the email. Did Adam’s death have anything to do with my parent’s deaths? Would the people they cruised with have any idea what was going on? Were any members still cruising?

There was only one way to find out. I went to the website for the cruise line. In two days, one of their ships left for the Mexican Riviera. It was the last week of July and I was sure it was the cruise my mom and dad would have taken. The fare wasn’t too bad, probably because it was a few days before the departure and they were trying to fill up the ship. I booked a double cabin and made a call.

Tom answered on the first ring, “Hey, honey.”

“Are you serious about coming to my house for a while?”

“Well,” he hesitated, then continued, “I guess so.”

“I’m thinking about going on a cruise to the Mexican Riviera, would you like to go with me?”

“Sure. I do have several weeks of vacation I need to take. When’s the cruise?”

“Two days from now.”

“That soon?”

“Yes.”

“A spur of the moment decision?”

“I’m bored again.”

“You need a hobby, honey.”

“Well, it’s too late to get one now. I’m leaving tomorrow for Long Beach and the ship sails the next day. I’ve already booked it. Are you coming?”

“You’ve booked the entire vacation?”

“Yes and you’ll need a passport to go into Mexico. Do you have one?”

“Yes, I got it several years ago when I had to pick up a witness in Mexico City. Let me make a few calls and see if I can take off. It’s kind of short notice and I’ve got a few court appearances next week.”

“It’s okay if you can’t go. Just think of me lying on the beach in Mexico in my little pink bikini, being waited on by cabana boys and enjoying drinks with cute little umbrellas in them.” I teased, thinking a little incentive might help.

“I’ll call you back.” He said briskly and hung up the phone.

Of course I didn’t have a little pink bikini nor did I drink, but I thought it would help Tom work a little harder to get those days off.

I called Justin back.

“Hey, Teach.”

“Hi, Justin. I changed my mind.”

“About what?”

“I’d like you to investigate Adam Sherman’s death.”

“Do you think that’s our case?”

“I don’t know. Do you think you could get access to a list of the people who went on certain cruises?”

“It’s not readily available, but I can get it.”

My stomach plummeted. “Does that mean it’s illegal?”

“Not exactly.”

“I don’t want you to end up in jail for me, Justin.”

“Don’t worry about it, Teach. Why do you want me look at the passenger manifests for a cruise?”

“I want you to go back several years, say ten, and see if you can find the names of the people who took the same cruise to the Mexican Riviera on the last week in July.”

“The one your mom and dad took?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think your mom and dad knew Adam Sherman?”

I picked up the picture and twisted it in my hand. “They might have.”

“Okay, then. Anything else?”

“No, not yet.”

“I’ll let my fingers fly over the keyboard and call you back.”

“Oh, that’s another thing. I’ve decided to take a vacation.”

“Great. Where are you going?”

“On a cruise.”

“To the Mexican Riviera?”

“Yes. And I need a favor.”

“Of course, I’ll watch Shelby. You may have to buy me new tires for my wheelchair when you get back. You know the way she likes to bite them when I’m trying to get around.”

“Thanks, Justin, you’re the best.”

“I know. When are you going?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Wow, that’s quick.”

“Yeah, I’ll drive down to Long Beach, stay in a motel, and board the boat the next afternoon.”

“Sounds like a plan, Teach.”

“Hey, how am I going to get the information from you about Adam?”

“They have complete Internet access on the ship. I’ll just email you the info.”

“That’s great, Justin. Do you want me to bring Shelby over tomorrow?”

“No, leave her at home. I’ll come and get her later in the day. I’ll be over at the high school in the morning.”

“Using their high-speed Internet?”

“Yes,” he laughed. “Super Cyber Sidekick, away!”

I went to my bedroom and started packing. There were two formal nights on the weeklong cruise, so I packed my long black skirt and two tops, one black lace and the other black with gold sequins. I filled the suitcase with shirts, shorts, pants, light jackets, underwear, nylons, shoes, and socks

I tucked one set of the cruise photos between several pairs of shorts. In the end, I had to sit on the suitcase so I could zip it closed.

Hungry again, I ate the rest of the chicken salad I made earlier. If it was good for one meal, then it surely was good for two. Afterwards, I packed a small bag to carry onto the ship. It was one of the things my mom used to complain about. You give them your luggage at the port and you don’t see it again for hours. I wanted a fresh outfit to wear to dinner and also to hand-carry my make-up. I didn’t wear it often, but didn’t want it spilling inside my suitcase, either.

I got my driver’s license and credit card from my wallet and put them with my passport, which I had gotten several years ago but had never used. It would be nice to finally get a stamp in it. I put the documents into my carry-on’s inner pocket. I could lose everything, my knock-off Guess purse and all my clothes, but I didn’t want to lose my driver’s license, credit card, or passport. Everything else I could buy again.

I put the second set of cruise photos inside the small suitcase. There really wasn’t a need to take both sets, but I figured if I ran into any of my parents’ friends, I’d give them a copy. Just like my mom used to do.

It got late and I hadn’t heard from Tom. I guessed he couldn’t get the time off. Oh well, I was going anyway. Besides, he might get in the way of my investigation. Sometimes it’s hard to ask people questions when they know you have a cop standing next to you.

It was after midnight when I crawled into bed. I was exhausted, probably from all the crying earlier. I lay my head on the pillow and closed my eyes. There were no tears left, but I thought about my mom and dad and how life had been before they died. Both retired, they would travel between Jordan’s home in New York and mine in California. They’d come in like a whirlwind, turning my world upside down. The entire time they visited we would run here, there and everywhere, trying new restaurants, museums, and amusement parks. My dad loved roller coasters, the faster the better. He’d fly us down to Disneyland or take us to Great America every weekend. I was always exhausted and sad when they left.