Santa Cruise (11 page)

Crater tried to sit up but fell back immediately, moaning in pain.

“See what I mean!” Gephardt said triumphantly. “The medicine will start to work in a few minutes. Now just relax.”

Eric tapped the door to announce his presence and walked over to the bed. “Mr. Crater, we're so sorry about your accident. But you're in good hands with Dr. Gephardt.”

“Those miserable kids,” Crater moaned. “Who stuck me at that table?”

“Never mind,” Eric said soothingly. “From now on you'll be seated at the Commodore's table. He's wonderfully entertaining.”

“That's right,” Gephardt agreed. “Mr. Crater, you said yourself these back spasms don't last long. We hope to have you up and about as soon as possible. But you absolutely
cannot
move now. Of course, we can always summon your helicopter when the storm passes, if you feel you'd be more comfortable at home.”

Crater's face darkened. “Where's my cell phone?” he asked as he drifted off to sleep.

Gephardt nodded to Eric, indicating they should step outside. Eric followed him into his office. A lightbulb had gone off in Eric's head.

“He seems alone,” Eric said solicitously. “Is he traveling with anyone?”

“No,” Gephardt answered slowly. “He really puzzles me. His back is certainly in spasm, but he's not as sickly as he appeared. His body is surprisingly muscular and all his vital signs are perfect. I can't understand why he was wearing a grayish makeup on his face. Underneath it, his skin is ruddy, but that stuff makes him look like a cadaver.”

Eric glanced down at Gephardt's desk. Crater's chart was right there, his cabin number next to his name. “You're definitely keeping him here overnight?” Eric asked.

Gephardt nodded solemnly. “At least overnight. I know he'd prefer to be back in his own room, but with that shot I gave him he'll be lights out until tomorrow morning.” He then smiled. “Can you believe the Deitz children's mother already had them make Get Well cards for him? He tore them up unopened.”

Eric laughed, pretending to share a moment with Gephardt.

“Now, Eric, if you'll excuse me, I have a waiting room full of patients,” Gephardt said briskly.

For a split second Eric was angry at being dismissed by a nerd like Gephardt when he was dying to get out of there anyway. But the anger passed quickly. Now at least he had a plan.

Moving even faster than before, he hurried back up the companionway to the Lido. It was nearly empty. “Not too many takers for the buffet tonight?” he asked one of the waiters.

“Not with this weather.”

“I thought I'd see some of the Santas up here,” Eric said, trying to sound casual. “So many people were talking to them at dinner, they didn't get much chance to eat.”

“Two of them came up here really early. We weren't even set up yet. They took some grapes and cheese.”

Eric's pulse quickened. That had to have been Bull's-Eye and Highbridge. “Did they sit in here?”

“No, they took the food with them and went out the back.” The waiter turned his attention to the buffet table. “We're starting to put everything away early. Can I get you anything?”

“No, thanks,” Eric answered quickly. “See you around.” He knew the waiter would think he was insane if he went out the back door into the rain. Instead, he took the inside archway that led
to the bank of elevators, strode past them, and exited through a side door that opened onto the deck. A driving rain immediately soaked his uniform. Getting on his hands and knees so the waiters wouldn't see him walking around in the rain like a lunatic, he headed toward the back of the ship. If Bull's-Eye and Highbridge were hiding out there, he'd have to let them know he was in the vicinity.

He waited until he got to the sports area before he started singing, “Santa Claus is comin' to town.”

R
egan and Jack escorted Alvirah back to her room.

“Get right to bed, Alvirah,” Jack said. “The way this ship is rocking, it would be very easy to fall.”

“Don't worry about me,” Alvirah said. “For forty years I stood on wobbly tables to dust chandeliers. I always said I could have been a tightrope walker.”

Regan laughed and gave Alvirah a peck on the cheek. “Take Jack's advice. We'll see you in the morning.”

Alvirah let herself into the room and was comforted by the sight of an almost invisible Willy wrapped up in the blankets and the sound of his rumbling snore. The desk lamp was on. I'm too wound up to sleep, she told herself. And anyhow, I want to record everything that happened today while it's still fresh in my mind. My editor, Charlie, said if I could get an exciting story out of this cruise, he'd be interested, but he didn't want a
travelogue or just a feel-good piece. “I appreciate all the good deeds these people have done,” he had said, not sounding particularly appreciative, “but it doesn't sell papers.”

Well, some pretty interesting things have happened today, Alvirah thought as she retrieved her sunburst pin with the hidden recorder out of the safe and settled down at the desk.

“When we arrived at the ship, they didn't even have a room for us,” she began, her voice soft.

“Mmmmmmm.” Behind her, she heard Willy stir. Sometimes he could sleep through a fire alarm, but with the way the ship is moving, I might wake him up if I talk in here, she realized. I'll stand outside the door.

In the passageway, Alvirah grasped the railing with one hand and with the other held the sunburst pin close to her lips as she recounted every detail of the day's events. She ran down the list of what had happened: the room mix-up, Dudley's fall from the rock-climbing wall, the waiter jumping overboard, the missing Santa suits, and Ivy spotting a ghost. She paused and added one more detail. “It's funny that Dudley didn't explain immediately where that bell we found in the chapel must have come from. He had to have recognized that it was from one of the Santa caps. That really is something to think about.”

Alvirah clicked off her recorder and went back inside the room. In the bathroom, she removed her makeup, brushed her teeth, and changed into a nightgown and robe. She crawled into bed next to Willy and was about to flick off the desk lamp from the bedside switch when she noticed the cards that Willy had been playing with were resting in a furrow of the blanket. She picked up the deck, intending to put it in the night table drawer, when something caught her eye.

“That's funny,” she said aloud. The top card was the jack of hearts but there was something unusual about it. What
was
it? Around the head of the jack there was a frame with what looked like an abstract design. Alvirah studied the design closely. Acting on a hunch, she carried the cards into the bathroom and turned on the light. A makeup mirror with a magnifying glass was attached to the wall by the sink. She held the jack of hearts up to the mirror. The seemingly abstract design, as reflected in the mirror, was actually a series of numbers.

“I thought so,” she murmured triumphantly as she quickly glanced through the deck. It soon became clear that only the royal cards were marked with the abstract design. She separated the jacks, queens, and kings, and one by one held them up to the mirror. All twelve contained a different series
of numbers. What do those numbers stand for and who do the cards belong to? she wondered. When we showed them to Eric, he was so brusque and dismissive I was sure he'd never seen them before.

Hmmm. Alvirah again reviewed the day's events and remembered how Winston was surprised to find potato chips on the floor of Eric's room. Now a mysterious deck of cards was found in his drawer. Had someone
else
been using Eric's room? Could this have been the unofficial break room for some of the workers who were getting the
Royal Mermaid
ready this week? I wouldn't blame them. Next to the Commodore's suite, it's the best accommodation on the ship.

But as Alvirah got into bed, her instinct told her that it wasn't workmen who'd been in the room.

There's something else going on here, she thought, and I'm going to find out what it is.

B
ianca Garcia had been a reporter with a local Miami television station since September. Young, fiery, and ambitious, she was determined to make a name for herself in the industry. So far, she had only been assigned to fluff pieces, most of which were given about thirty seconds of airtime. She had gone to cover the Santa Cruise, expecting a boring afternoon with zip, zero, nothing to report.

But when the waiter jumped ship and Bianca's crew recorded it all on tape, she knew she had the kind of segment that might have legs. When it didn't make the six
P.M.
broadcast because of a breaking story about an overturned tractor trailer that had spilled its load of dairy products all over the highway and tied up traffic in every direction, Bianca had been chagrined.

But as it turned out—like her grandmother always said—“Sometimes when you get stinkerooed,
God has a reason for it.” Good old grandma. At eighty-five, she still was Bianca's best sounding board.

Sure enough, after the six o'clock broadcast, the producer had said, “Bianca, I'm sick of the scrambled-eggs story. I can give you more time on the ten o'clock show.”

Bianca had stayed in close touch with her contact at the police department all evening to learn if there was anything more to the swimming waiter than the fact that he was behind on his alimony checks. To her delight there was.

She also spent time researching the history of the cruise ship. In anticipation of reporting what was now a much juicier story than what she had had for the earlier broadcast, at quarter of ten Bianca touched up her makeup and brushed her long dark hair. During the commercial break, she sashayed across the newsroom, climbed up on the stool at the right of the anchor's desk, and crossed her shapely legs.

“Hello, Mary Louise,” Bianca said sweetly to the woman who had considered the ten o'clock broadcast “The Mary Louise Show” for the past decade. Bianca intended to occupy her seat before too much longer, then move on to bigger and better things.

Mary Louise was no dummy. She had gotten rid
of other ambitious newcomers, some of whom abandoned the field of journalism after a brief stint at the station. Mary Louise had already begun the process of putting the skids on this annoying snip. Her smile was thin. “Hello, Bianca. I understand you have a cute little cruise ship story for us.”

“I'm sure you'll enjoy it,” Bianca promised as the producer pointed to Mary Louise, indicating that the commercial break was over.

“It's holiday time,” Mary Louise began, “and our gal on the scene, Bianca Garcia, went to the Port of Miami today to wish a bon voyage to a special group of people sailing on a—” Mary Louise held up her fingers and indicated quotation marks, “ ‘Santa Cruise.' Bianca, I hear you had some excitement out there today. . . .”

Bianca smiled brilliantly at the camera. “I sure did, Mary Louise. This was no
ordinary
bon voyage party . . .” She gave a quick background of the Santa Cruise and how it was a celebration of people who had done good deeds during the year. One group—the Oklahoma Readers and Writers—is celebrating what would have been the eightieth birthday of legendary mystery writer Left Hook Louie. Talking about mystery writers, there's a famous one on board: Nora Regan Reilly. A shot of the Reillys and the Meehans flashed onto the
screen, as Bianca identified the celebrity passengers on the ship.

Then with great intensity, Bianca went into the story of the waiter, Ralph Knox, who had tried to escape from the police by jumping off the ship. “The passengers rushed to the rails and were taking bets on whether he could escape from the harbor police. Rest assured, he didn't.

“At first it was thought Knox was just being pursued for not making alimony payments—many of you ladies know what that's all about,” she said, then nodded toward the anchor's desk. “Right, Mary Louise?” Without waiting for a reaction, she continued, “It turns out Ralph Knox is also a glib con artist who specializes in ingratiating himself to wealthy women on cruises. There are seven warrants out for his arrest. He is accused of persuading victims to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in surefire investments that never materialized.”

Bianca paused for breath. “As if that wasn't enough excitement for the embarking passengers, the sports director, attempting to demonstrate the rock-climbing wall, fell when a prong attached to the wall snapped under his foot and the handler let go of the rope attached to his harness.”

Footage of Dudley landing with a thump appeared on the screen.

“Ouch,” Bianca editorialized. She then briefly sketched in the background of the cruise ship's two previous owners. The ship had been built for Angus “Mac” MacDuffie, an eccentric oil baron from Palm Beach, who had promptly fallen on hard times. Even though he couldn't afford to maintain the ship, he refused to let it go. Instead, he hauled it into the vast backyard of his crumbling mansion, the bow facing the sea.

A photo of MacDuffie came up on the screen, his yachting cap pulled down over his forehead, his face half-covered with dark glasses, his tartan Bermuda shorts and sneakers his only apparel. “MacDuffie spent the last few years of his life sitting on the deck, scanning the horizon with his binoculars, and barking orders to a nonexistent crew,” Bianca continued. “When he breathed his last, he was exactly where he wanted to be. On deck. His frequently uttered statement that he would ‘never give up the ship' fueled rumors after his death that his ghost remained aboard.

“The next owner was a small corporation intending to use the yacht for entertaining clients. They did just enough restoration to make the ship seaworthy, took it out for a shakedown sail, and, alas, ran it aground. The corporation was disbanded soon after. The board of directors all blamed each other for purchasing it, but defended
themselves, issuing a statement saying, ‘MacDuffie put a hex on that ship. He doesn't want anyone else to enjoy it. We wouldn't be surprised if he's haunting it right now.' The next and present owner is Commodore Randolph Weed, who, ignoring the history of the ill-fated ship, has proclaimed it to be a ‘once proud lady who only needed tender loving care.' “