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  COOKS, CROOKS, AND CRUISES

  A.R. WINTERS

  Cooks, Crooks and Cruises

  Copyright 2019 by A. R. Winters

  www.arwinters.com

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Untitled

  Sneak Peak: A Berry Deadly Welcome

  Chapter Two

  Chapter 1

  Sam, my best friend and work colleague, and I were sitting at a booth in The Rusty Anchor. We had about an hour of freedom left before we were due back aboard the Swan of the Seas, and were refueling ourselves for the journey ahead with our last decent land-food while the ship took on its own supplies.

  The simple diner-style restaurant was clean and unpretentious, making it popular with the ship’s crew and in-the-know locals.

  “There she is!” I said with more than a little excitement.

  I rose to my feet, leaning on the table with one hand and waving excitedly with the other.

  “Cece, over here!”

  She caught my eye and a moment later, our half-Puerto Rican friend was making her way over to us.

  “All right, spill,” she said as soon as she had slid down onto the bench seat next to Sam across from me.

  “Spill what?” I asked with some confusion.

  “The gossip!” She reached across the table and poked my shoulder. “It’s literally your job.”

  “That is not what being a social media manager is about.” I laced my words with mock outrage.

  Cece’s grin was contagious and Sam and I were both smiling along with her.

  “Huh,” said Cece, settling back and putting her hands behind her head. “Looks like I’m the one who’s gotta fill you in on all the news. But first…” She looked around over her shoulder and caught the eye of a waitress who quickly hurried over. “Three landlubber breakfasts with coffee, please.” She ordered for us and expertly handled the waitress’s follow-up questions, with a ‘trust me’ look toward both of us.

  That was fine with me. The plastic laminated menu had more pages than I was accustomed to and I’d barely managed to whittle my mental-shortlist choice of menu options down to half a dozen.

  “So what’s going on?” asked Sam, giving Cece a nudge, once the waitress had departed.

  “Okay, you know about the new captain, right?”

  Sam and I both shook our heads. We did not know about a new captain.

  “Really? Man, it must be nice to be so disconnected from everything,” she said with a wink in my direction.

  I should have felt insulted—after all I was supposed to be on top of my social media game, and be perhaps the least disconnected person on the ship—but after my last cruise, I’d been taking a deliberate break from non-stop Tweeting and Instagramming and Facebooking and tried to read a couple of books instead.

  “So who is he?” asked Sam.

  “His name’s Derek Carver, and there’s definitely something up with him. I just don’t know what it is yet.”

  “Why do you say that?” I asked, leaning forward.

  “He transferred to the Swan of the Seas from the Swan Queen, which is a way bigger ship.”

  “Did he get demoted?” asked Sam.

  Cece shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess? That’s why I was hoping Adrienne could fill us in. Did you really not hear any rumors?” she asked, her tone pointed.

  “Afraid not. I’ve been deliberately avoiding all that until this morning. Though there’s plenty of stuff about this fancy TV chef.”

  “Hey, that’s Vince DeLuca you’re talking about!” said Sam with a mock frown. “He’s not just a TV chef. He’s the best of the best.”

  “You sound like you know him,” said Cece with a quizzical look.

  Sam nodded. “I’ve watched every episode of his shows. Isn’t he just amazing?”

  Cece and I looked at each other for guidance.

  “Is he?” I finally asked.

  “Oh yes—” Sam was interrupted by the waitress setting three buckets of coffee in front of us. They weren’t actually buckets, but the cups were of such a size I could have seen them being used to bail out a sinking boat.

  Just as Sam was about to get going again on the wonderfulness of the celebrity chef, I got in ahead of her.

  “You better not be too interested in Vincent,” I said with a smirk.

  Sam gave me a frown. “Why not?”

  “Apparently his wife is really something. She threw a bowl of gazpacho soup at a contestant on one of his shows because she laughed too long at one of his jokes. She’s that jealous.”

  “Really?” Cece’s eyes were wide and the beginnings of a playful smile danced on her lips. “This could be a fun cruise if that’s the case.”

  “Oh yeah. There’re loads of stories online about how jealous she can get.”

  Cece poked me in the shoulder again like before. “I thought you didn’t have any gossip?”

  “Okay, okay, I admit, this morning, I finally relented. Since this guy is basically the whole point of the cruise, I had to look him up. I didn’t want the new cruise director to think I was unprepared. Speaking of which, did you hear anything about the new director?”

  “Delish!” said Sam with a squeal, clapping her hands.

  I was about to ask how she knew that, but when the waitress began to set down three porthole-sized plates loaded with breakfast foods I realized what Sam was talking about.

  “These look like sharing platters,” I said with a frown.

  Cece shook her head at me and laughed. “Yeah, right. I’ve seen the way you eat. Don’t you remember that picture you posted of your buffet breakfast last time?”

  My cheeks flushed. While it was true that I had posted a picture of a plate obscenely overloaded with food during the last cruise, in my defense, it was for a fluff piece I was writing about how to make the most of a buffet plate. The fact that I had gone on to consume everything on the plate was neither here nor there.

  “I was just doing my job,” I said with a sniff and stabbed at some bacon and hash browns to get me started.

  Cece snorted and we all began to dig in to our rather delicious looking plates of food.

  “The new cruise director’s pretty good, from what I heard,” said Cece after swallowing her first forkful. “It’s her who got Vince DeLuca to do the cruise.”

  “Well, she couldn’t exactly be worse than the last one, do you see?” I was already shaking my head at the memory. Sylvia Diaz had to depart the company after some seriously bad news about her had come to light, partially thanks to me. And she hadn’t even been the worst person on that cruise! It had been a crazy initiation into shipboard life.
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  “Yes, it will be good to have someone competent aboard.”

  “First Office Ethan Lee is still going to be there,” said Cece with a wicked grin.

  Sam frowned. “Yeah, well, I still don’t like him.”

  “That’s okay. He’s only got eyes for one person anyway, and that’s Add—”

  She stopped when I kicked her under the table.

  “Hey!”

  “He locked up my best friend and I’m not sure I can ever forgive him,” I said primly.

  Sam nodded her head in agreement. Truth was, I pretty much had forgiven him. When he’d sent Sam to the brig for murder, he’d only really been doing his job—even if he did have the wrong person initially.

  “I guess,” said Cece airily. “Though if he wasn’t so into you, he definitely would have fired Sam—no offense.”

  Neither Sam nor I did take offense, because it was patently true. Sam had gotten her job on the ship by lying that she had five years’ experience, when in fact she’d never set foot on a boat or even seen the ocean before applying.

  “It was probably a good thing he locked me up, in retrospect,” said Sam thoughtfully.

  “Yeah?”

  Sam nodded. “I was so seasick those first few days—I don’t think I could have faked doing my job even if I’d wanted to. But while I was in the brig I found my sea legs.”

  Cece’s chin was lowered and eyebrows raised. “Wow, you’re good at seeing the positive side of things. If someone locked me up for a week, I don’t think I’d ever forgive them.”

  “What about the medical crew?” I asked innocently. At least, my tone was innocent. My intentions weren’t.

  Cece gave me a pointed look. “What do you mean?”

  “Is Doctor Dreamy going to be joining us again?”

  Although I’d never used that particular nickname before, we all knew exactly who I meant. Dr. Ryan Wilson was a young doctor who totally had the hots for Cece, and the reverse was even more true. The only problem was that neither of them had yet admitted to it. Cece would crack soon though, I could tell.

  “Since Ryan is a permanent member of the Swan’s crew, I imagine he will be, yes,” said Cece as if stating the extremely obvious with very little interest. She was a pretty good actress.

  “You know, that was the biggest injustice with me being locked up,” said Sam with a serious frown. “You two got to meet all these guys while all I got was an angry orderly glaring at me when she brought in my meals three times a day.”

  Cece and I were both on the defensive immediately.

  “—we’re not an item—”

  “—I barely know him—”

  “…nothing between us.”

  “…if I wanted, anyway.”

  Sam fell back in the booth, giggling like she’d been force-fed laughing gas, her bacon-laden fork shaking so hard it looked like she’d lose that part of her breakfast.

  “Guys, I was just kidding.” She decided that our dormant love lives had provided her with enough merriment for now and tried to switch the topic. “This is the best breakfast I’ve had since Tucson.”

  As soon as Sam had finished the sentence, she quickly looked back down at her plate and got busy loading up another fork.

  We had gone to Tucson on a road trip the previous summer, and indeed had a spectacular breakfast at a truck stop diner before I’d continued along on my own, leaving Sam to meet up with her relatives. But that, unfortunately, was not the most memorable part of the trip. In fact, I’d been trying to forget it ever since—which was why Sam was now looking down at her plate with a guilt-ridden expression.

  “We should do a road trip, one day,” said Cece. “We should travel around and find the best breakfast in America.” She paused thoughtfully, staring down at her still half-full plate. “Though I think we may already have found it.”

  “Maybe we’ll get to try some of Vince DeLuca’s cooking,” I said, still trying to push aside the terrible memories of my own road trip.

  Sam perked up. “I’ve never seen him cook a breakfast, but I bet when he does, it’s the best.”

  “Uh huh.” I didn’t get her obsession with celebrity chefs, this one or any other. Surely their talent had more to do with looking good in front of a camera rather than any actual talent they had in the kitchen. “Well, if I see him cooking breakfast, I’ll see if I can snag a taste.”

  Sam glared at me. She was more than a little jealous that as the social media manager it would be my duty to follow everything he did and promote it.

  “Speaking of taste, that was one tasty breakfast.” Cece leaned back and pushed her now empty plate away from her. “And now, I’m afraid, I’ve got to leave you.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because some of us,” she said with a friendly glare, “have real jobs aboard. I’ve got a housekeeping meeting in five.”

  “In five? You’ll never get there in time!” I felt panicked and it wasn’t even me that was going to be late.

  Cece pushed herself up from the table. “I’ll make it. All that fat I just ate is pure energy.” She dropped a ten-dollar bill on the table. “Catch you later!”

  I could barely even think about standing, let alone running, but Cece was already on the move, rushing through the restaurant.

  “Is she really going to run?”

  Sam half-stood so she could get a view of Cece leaving the restaurant.

  “Yep… and she’s fast, too.”

  Laughing in disbelief, we both sat back and tried to recover from our massive breakfast.

  After a few moments of silence, Sam finally brought up the elephant in the room.

  “Are you worried?”

  I casually lied with a simple shake of my head.

  She watched me closely. “Really? Well, that’s good. It was probably nothing. Just a coincidence.”

  Sam was referring to the note that had been slid under my door on the last night of our previous cruise.

  It was a note that had simply read “I know what you did last summer,” just like the movie. But in our case, it wasn’t about a movie. It seemed to be referring to what happened to me the summer before, during the road trip that had gone disastrously wrong.

  “Yeah, just a coincidence. Probably a joke.” There was no fire in my voice, no backbone or confidence. I didn’t believe it, not really. Someone knew what had happened, and they wanted me to know it.

  “But if it’s not…” Sam leaned forward and gripped my forearm. “I’ve got your back.”

  “And my wrist,” I said with a grin. “Come on, let’s get out of here. I don’t want to have to run like Cece.”

  “I couldn’t run like Cece.”

  Sam and I both clambered to our feet, feeling much heavier than when we had arrived. It was time to get to work.

  Chapter 2

  A fter putting our things away in our small shared cabin, Sam and I headed toward the office of the new cruise director, Beverley Jax.

  We had found a rather ominous note attached to our cabin door telling us that we were to report to her immediately after we were settled. Unsurprisingly, we didn’t spend too long getting reacquainted with our room. We chatted as we made our way up above the waterline to the office of the cruise director.

  “Do you think we’re in trouble?” I asked Sam, nervously.

  “No way. How could we be? We haven’t even done anything yet.”

  Sam never thought she was in trouble, even when she had done something bad. I, on the other hand, am a bit of a worrier. I often feel guilty even when I’ve done nothing wrong at all—even if an innocent action could, possibly, be misconstrued for something else, my palms get sweaty and my cheeks flush rosy red.

  “She probably just wants to welcome us aboard.” Sam paused as she thought of something even less likely. “Or give us some kind of award!”

  “If we were going to get an award, I think we would’ve gotten it by now, don’t you?”

  Sam mumbled an affirmative.

>   “Well, let’s get this over with.”

  We were outside of Beverley Jax’s office.

  It was a simple door, with a displaying her name and job title. I idly wondered when they had fitted the sign. It hadn’t been long since the last cruise director left, unceremoniously dragged away. They could get things done quickly on a cruise ship when they needed to.

  The door was ajar, and I tentatively pushed it open and called out a quiet “Hello?”

  “Sam and Adrienne? Come in, come in.”

  I pushed the door the rest of the way open, and the interior of the cruise director’s office was revealed to us.

  It wasn’t as nice as the first officer’s, but it was still a lot better than our shared cabin.

  There was a row of windows along the back wall, a seating area around a table for small meetings, and the large desk behind which Beverley Jax sat. She was in her early thirties, but seemed to style herself after someone in their fifties. She had curly blonde hair that had been teased up to look like a golden ball on top of her head, and she wore pearl earrings, a pearl necklace, and a swan brooch clasped to her purple suit jacket.

  Lamb dressed as mutton, I thought to myself, already imagining the post I would never make on social media.

  In front of the desk were several chairs, one of which was already occupied by an elegantly dressed raven-haired lady who I already recognized, though I didn’t want to let on right away.

  “Well?” Beverly raised her eyebrows expectantly. “Which of you is which?”

  From the almost-worried frown and nervous drumming of her fingers on her desk, Beverly had an air of impatience about her.

  “I’m Adrienne, and this is Sam.”

  “Adrienne, Sam, Adrienne, Sam, Adrienne, Sam,” repeated Beverly several times, staring down at her desk, as if carving our names and visages into her memory. I was curious as to whether after such an effort she would actually remember which of us was which.

  Finally, she looked up again. “And I am Beverly Jax, the new cruise director. And this,” she indicated with her hand, “is Meredith DeLuca. I assume you have heard of her?”

  Meredith turned to look at us, appraising us with a careful run of her eyes over our forms as if she was silently judging us. She did not yet reveal her verdict.