Cruise Ship Cozy Mysteries 05 - Cruise Conundrum Read online

She looked down at her shoes with a frown. “I know. I’m sorry. You can go back to smooching now. Bye!”

  We both stared at her in disbelief as she ran off, clicking her way across the floor at top speed as she hurtled out of the room. We hadn’t even actually smooched. She’d interrupted it. And now the moment was gone.

  “She’s a workaholic,” said Ethan.

  “She sure is. Never seems to stop.”

  “I thought this place would be secluded enough for us to have some privacy. But I guess not. I don’t suppose you’d be interested in going somewhere else for a coffee afterward? I’ve got an espresso machine in my cabin, actually.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. He thought he was so smooth.

  “Sure. That’d be great.”

  I was nervous walking back to Ethan’s cabin. We’d never been really alone before. Not together. But it turned out that that wasn’t why I should have been nervous at all.

  We were in the section of the ship reserved for the officers’ cabins, and Ethan had the second best one after the captain. At least I assumed he did. Although I’d visited his office countless times, I hadn’t actually been in his cabin.

  We exited the elevator, and as we rounded a corner to approach his suite, we both stopped and stared. Ahead of us, there was a man standing outside Ethan’s door.

  Ethan gently squeezed my arm, indicating I should stay quiet. There had been a lull in our conversation before we had rounded the corner, and the man obviously hadn’t heard us coming.

  We both stood stock still, watching, as the clean-shaven bald man placed a keycard against the door lock. It whirred, the little LED turned green, and the door unlocked.

  Ethan released my hand and, without a word, took off in a sprint toward his room. He didn’t shout anything as he wanted to surprise the would-be intruder. But the surprise of his sudden sprint made me let out a loud “Oh!” in surprise.

  The man slowly turned his head toward us, and when he saw Ethan barreling toward him at full tilt, he turned and—far faster than I would have predicted—immediately dashed down the hall.

  Before I knew it, the two of them had both reached the end of the hallway, and one after the other, they burst through a door to a stairwell.

  I hurried after, as quick as I could in my black heels. When I opened the stairway door, I got there just in time to hear the slam of a door somewhere down below.

  They were both gone.

  T en minutes later, I was sitting on a bench in the Grand Atrium. Ethan had sent me a message telling me to meet him there.

  He walked up to me, shaking his head as he arrived.

  “You lost him?”

  He nodded back at me. “Yeah. He was fast. I guess I need to work on my own running. A few times around the ship each morning isn’t enough to cut it around here.”

  “That’s the guy, by the way. The fake housekeeper. The one with the fake beard and fake hair. The one who was talking to the captain and broke into his office.”

  Ethan nodded. “That’s what I figured. Thanks for confirming it.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Ethan sat down beside me, putting an arm around my shoulder with a squeeze.

  “Sorry, Addy, but I think I’m going to have to call it a night for us. I want to go to the security office and go through all the camera feeds, see if I can’t track down where he went, or figure out his cabin number or something. This could be important.”

  I figured as much. It’s what I would have done in his position too. But it still left me a little sad. Our date had been going so well. We’d finally stopped talking about death and murder and suspects and clues—and then this.

  Maybe Kelly had been right about there being a curse. Except maybe it was me who was cursed—not her, not the ship.

  “Good night, Ethan.”

  “Good night, Adrienne… but first, come here.”

  Ethan enveloped me in another hug, his strong arms squeezing me in a gentle-yet-firm embrace. For those few moments, I could forget about strange fake housekeepers and murderers and everything else. For a moment, I was safe. Protected. Shielded.

  “Good night,” I said again as I bade him farewell, our eyes lingering on each other as we split.

  I headed back to my own cabin, a new spring in my step.

  In more ways than one, things were heating up.

  Chapter 28

  T he following morning, I had breakfast with Sam and Cece. Afterward, I headed over to the international buffet to grab a few pictures of the breakfast food there. Ethan was still working on the attempted burglary into his cabin and hadn’t been available for a Croissant Club morning date.

  While we had been eating together, the girls had wanted to hear all the juicy details about my date. Cece was most disappointed with how it ended; I think she wanted a play-by-play of what Ethan would have done once he got me back into his cabin.

  If that was what she was hoping for, she would be waiting until she was old and wrinkled. I’m more of a kiss-and-keep-secret kind of girl.

  I had a plan to write another article. I was going to do a piece about the most popular breakfast foods on board a cruise ship. I imagined they were probably very similar to the most popular breakfast foods on land, but nonetheless, it was another little article, and it would mean I was doing my job properly.

  The best place to do the research was of course the International Buffet. With the largest array of dishes and the most customers, it would be easy to figure out what the most popular breakfast items were.

  So, just after nine o’clock, I found myself once again in the cavernous interior of the ship’s largest restaurant, eyeing up all the delicious foods and regretting having already eaten the staff swill.

  The place was full of passengers, most dressed in sundresses, shorts, and colorful T-shirts or short-sleeved Hawaiian shirts. No one was ever dressed up at breakfast time.

  “Good morning! How wonderful to see you again!” It was Xavier. He looked like he’d gotten a fantastic night’s rest and was positively bursting with enthusiasm at another exciting day ahead.

  “Good morning. I’m surprised to see you here—I thought you’d be in the VIP buffet, or the Croissant Club.”

  That seemed to put a slight dent in his exuberance, and he visibly deflated before me.

  “I would be, but then I might see Zara. I figure if she’s looking for me, that’s where she’s going to go. After all, I paid enough for all those luxuries, instead of slumming it in here.”

  I winced and looked around, but luckily none of the standard class passengers had heard his insulting comment. I thought the food at the International Buffet was absolutely fantastic, and I didn’t think the VIP places really had that much over it. The only difference between the two was in the ambiance.

  “Yeah, she seemed pretty upset yesterday. She was drinking on her own.”

  “So was I! It was great!”

  I had to stop myself from laughing. His enthusiasm and apparent delight at everything in the world at the moment were contagious. It was in stark contrast to when I’d first met him, when he’d been both rather miserable and rude. The new Xavier was a breath of fresh air.

  “Here, have a seat with me for a moment,” he said, gesturing to a small two-person table.

  I did as he requested. After what I had heard from Zara the day before, I actually wanted to pick his brain a bit.

  “I wish Andy had come clean with me. I would’ve liked to thank him in person. It’s such a shame,” he said, shaking his head sadly.

  “Andy was an interesting guy, right? Sure, he was a little arrogant, but it looks like he got up to quite a lot of… interesting things.”

  Xavier had a piece of toast in one hand, from which he had already taken a large mouthful and was busily crunching while he nodded in agreement with me. He wiped some crumbs from the corner of his mouth, took a slurp of milky coffee, and then spoke.

  “Oh yeah, he was interesting all right. A little bit sha
dy at times, but always good for a story or two.”

  “Cool,” I said, leaning over with my elbows on the table and my chin resting on the tops of my interlocked fingers. “What kind of things did he get up to? I don’t suppose it matters now.” I tried to do my best impression of an interested fangirl, hoping for some gossip. Though what I was looking for wasn’t exactly gossip—more like a motive to kill him.

  “One of the things he used to do was corporate work. You know, shots of the executives, stuff for the company magazines and advertising campaigns, that kind of thing. He’d often spend a week with the company, embedded with them, and produce a massive amount of work at the end of it.”

  So far, the gossip wasn’t especially interesting.

  “Wow,” I said, as if I was impressed. There was no need for me to have pretended to though. Xavier wasn’t done yet.

  “Ahh,” he said, holding up a single finger, “but the thing is, while he was working for one company, he’d also be working for one of their rivals.”

  “Oh? How so?”

  “What he would do is take the money from them, and then take terrible headshots of the CEOs, vice presidents, and other top execs. So while he was being paid by the company that hired him, he would take awful photographs of them and tell them they were artistic. Meanwhile, the company’s rival would be giving him an even bigger check for their little attempt at corporate sabotage.”

  “Wow. Seems like big businesses can be just as petty as high school girls.”

  “Oh, definitely. Not just big businesses. It’s the same in the magazine industry, and in modeling too, from what I’ve heard.”

  I thought about beauty pageants, and celebrity chefs, and some of the other people I’d met on various cruises. Come to think of it, a lot of the adult world was still like high school, especially the richer, more high-class sets. Then again, some of the middle-aged ladies back in Nebraska weren’t any better. Maybe it was just a human trait.

  “You think he ever did the same for wedding photos?” I was thinking specifically about Raina’s photos—the ones that Ethan and I had struggled to accept as artistic when neither of us could really see how that was the case.

  Xavier swallowed another bite of toast before responding. “Probably. He didn’t do a lot of weddings. At least not that I knew about anyway, but I wouldn’t put it past him. I mean, if someone could afford it anyway. I’m sure he would’ve charged six figures for something like that—ruining someone’s wedding pictures.”

  “He would’ve told them they were artistic though, right?”

  “Yep,” said Xavier with a nod. “That’s what we always say when we mess something up,” he said with a laugh. “Now, tell me, have you ever tried dipping waffles into miso soup?”

  “Can’t say I have. But if you’re going to, can I take a couple of pictures? I might stick it in an article I’m working on.”

  “Sure thing. I’m going to get a plate of bacon and cover it in chocolate syrup as well. I’m celebrating.” He stood up. “Back in a moment.”

  With a giggle, I pulled out my phone in anticipation of his return. Maybe I would change my article topic to something like, “The Strangest Breakfast Combinations. Or, Delicious Breakfast Combinations That You Never Would Have Dreamed of Trying.” I bet those articles would get a lot more shares than my original idea about boring old most popular breakfast foods.

  Xavier was actually quite fun, I thought. He returned a couple of minutes later, not just with the aforementioned two dishes, but with a third plate which was covered in fried rice and topped with pineapple.

  “Hawaiian fried rice?” I asked.

  He frowned. “Is it? I thought I was inventing something new,” he said, an edge of disappointment in his voice. “Oh well. Quick, take your pictures. That mountain of chocolate bacon is screaming for me to dig in.”

  Suppressing a laugh, I did as he suggested, taking a whole bunch of interesting pictures for my article.

  Xavier had given me a lot to think about. Both for my day job, and my moonlighting as an amateur detective. I really felt like I was getting somewhere now.

  Adulterous Andy sure had had more than his fair share of secrets. I just needed to uncover which one of the secrets caused his untimely death.

  Chapter 29

  A fter an enlightening breakfast with Xavier, I messaged the girls, seeing if they could meet me during lunchtime. While Sam’s schedule was flexible, or rather, it varied day-to-day depending on the photography schedule, Cece’s was pretty much fixed, and she got a lunch break every day around noon.

  I was pleased when they both texted me back saying they were on for lunch. We agreed to meet up at Hemingway’s, where they supposed to be grilling hamburgers today.

  I spent the two hours I had before lunch typing up my article. In the end, I was pretty satisfied with it. It was now titled, “Ten Amazing Breakfast Combinations You Never Knew You Wanted to Try.” It was the kind of thing that might go viral and get syndicated across a whole bunch of blogs, if I got lucky enough.

  Of course, while I’d been working on it I’d also been thinking about Andy. Not just Andy, but the various people he may have upset with his deliberately bad photography.

  When it was time, I strolled over to Hemingway’s and got us a nice shady bamboo table, not too far from where Greg Washington was working the hot coals. While he could have gotten one of the more junior chefs to control the barbecue, I knew he just loved the theater of it: the smoke, the flames, the spluttering fat, the sizzling meat, and of course the adoring looks from hungry customers.

  “Hook me up with three cheeseburger plates? With fries, salad, coleslaw, and whatever else you’ve got back there.”

  “Sure thing, honey. Y’all want bacon on those?”

  Did I want bacon on those? I just raised my eyebrows at him.

  “Got it,” he said with a laugh.

  “You girls want single or double patties?”

  “Sure. We’ll diet when we’re dead, right?”

  “That’s the spirit. I’ll double up on the cheese for you too. A Greg Special.”

  “That’s my man!”

  By the time Sam and Cece arrived, I had three plastic plates loaded up with a pretty hefty lunch for each of us.

  Cece eyed the plate I offered her with one of her usual amused smirks.

  “You trying to fatten me up?”

  “Hey, you need something to work off in your morning gym sessions, right?”

  “Yeah. And so will you. You going to be joining me finally?”

  I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. Cece was always asking me to start going to the gym with her in the morning. She kept telling me that there were hot trainers. But I didn’t need hot trainers—I already had Hot Stuff up in the officers quarters.

  “Yeah, one day.”

  While we ate our lunch, I filled them in on what I had learned about Andy and his extra money making methods.

  “Man, can you imagine how mad you would be if you found out your wedding photos had been sabotaged?” said Sam, dismayed at the thought of it happening even to someone else, let alone herself.

  “I know, right. Which reminds me. I looked at Raina’s wedding photos with Ethan before. We thought they were pretty weird.”

  “Did you check Wedding Witches?” asked Cece, nodding her head toward my phone.

  “Wedding Witches? What’s that?”

  “And you call yourself a journalist,” she said, shaking her head at me in mock pity.

  “Go on, tell us. Enlighten us all.”

  “Wedding Witches. It’s a blog. Two really catty women who just love to tear apart weddings. The photos, the dresses, all of that. Celebrity weddings, society weddings, that kind of thing. I bet Raina’s wedding is on there. She moves in those kinds of circles. See if you can dig her up and see what they said.”

  “Okay, just a minute.” My hands were both greasy and messy with ketchup and mustard as well as melted cheese. I’d have to finish this meal first.
And so I set to it like it was my job, rationalizing to myself the basically it was: I had to finish eating before I could carry on looking into the wedding photos.

  Cece whistled at me in awe. “Man, you can eat.”

  I glared at her. “I didn’t see you complaining about the double patty burger.”

  “Yeah, well, I work it off, don’t I?” She gave us a mischievous wink, as if to imply that it wasn’t only in the gym that she worked it off.

  “Well, I walk around all day. I basically never stop exercising.”

  Cece nodded at me and gave me a dubious, “Uh-huh.”

  When I was done eating, I pulled up the Wedding Witches site. I typed Raina’s name into the search box, and sure enough, it popped right out.

  “Check it out: The Ultimate Wedding Photo Fail—What Was She Thinking!??”

  “That sounds like the business. Let’s see those pictures.”

  I twisted the phone around so that they could see, and we scrolled through her wedding pictures together. These ones were even worse than the ones I’d found the first time. The photographer—Andy—had artistically chopped off her legs, the train of her dress, half her face, the groom’s parents’ heads, and on and on. They’d been touched up, some of them turned into black-and-white, and some of them with filters applied.

  As we scrolled through, it appeared that Andy had even photoshopped the actual people’s faces as well. Skin was either too light, or too dark, or too orange. Eyes seemed to be slightly unnatural colors, and it looked like one of the guests had three hands.

  “Wow. Andy really did a number on her, didn’t he?” said Sam.

  “Yeah. I guess we’re only seeing the absolute worst pictures on this blog though.”

  “That may be,” said Cece, “but look at them. They’re really bad. If I had paid a lot of money to get photos like that at my wedding, I’d…”

  “Kill them?” asked Sam.

  “Well, you’d have to, wouldn’t you?”

  She had a point.

  “Steph,” said Sam suddenly.

  Cece gave her a questioning look.