Cruise Ship Cozy Mysteries 02 - Cooks, Crooks and Cruises Read online

  Cece winked at me and began to slip away before the arrival of Meredith. I helped her with a gentle push to send her on her way. It was time to face the music.

  “Adrienne.”

  I gulped. Now I was in for it.

  We hadn’t spoken since I announced my competition, and now I was going to have to deal with the fallout of that rather rash announcement.

  “Good evening,” I said. “The guests seem to be excited about the demonstration.”

  “Of course.” She dismissed my compliment without a thought. “Now. That competition you announced.”

  I gulped again. “Yes?”

  Then Meredith did something I hadn’t expected her to do. She smiled at me. An actual, genuine smile.

  “What a great idea that was. Vince is so popular that some of these people were getting really upset about not being able to sign up for every single event. That was some good thinking. In fact, I should have thought of it myself.”

  I blinked in astonishment, thinking that perhaps I had completely misheard everything she had just said.

  I’d been expecting a dressing down, for Meredith to lash out at me for doing something which I had no authority to do, something which would give her husband extra work. But no, she actually seemed… pleased.

  “Thanks,” I said hesitantly, waiting for a final sting, a dramatic twist that would leave me reeling. But it didn’t come.

  “That kind of thinking impresses me, Adrienne. You thought on your feet. You thought quickly, and you came up with the great idea.”

  I shuffled uncomfortably. Getting effusive praise from a woman renowned for pretty much the exact opposite had me on edge. Where was this going?

  “Tell me, is being a social media manager on a cruise ship your dream job?”

  Is this a trap? I wondered. If it was, there wasn’t much I could do about it now. Since I had nothing better to say, I decided to just go with honesty.

  “My dream was to be a journalist. Actually, I was a journalist, but it was only a small town newspaper. And then it folded.”

  Meredith nodded. “I understand. As a food critic, there’s only a few of us left who can make a real career of it. All the small town food critics are just hobbyists now.”

  I nodded, almost feeling a sense of kinship with the woman, unbelievably. Perhaps she wasn’t such a witch after all.

  “The reason I ask is that I’m looking for someone to work with Vince full-time. This foodie cruise tour, although it’s just beginning, seems to be a hit. The public loves Vince. What we’re thinking of doing is really ramping it all up. More TV shows, more cookbooks. A range of cookware, pots and pans and knives and so on. Some frozen meals, and meal-preparation kits ready to cook at home. All that kind of thing.”

  “That sounds very exciting,” I said with a smile. “It seems to be a massively growing industry.”

  “Indeed. And I want Vince to be at the very top of the game. I’m looking for someone to take over his PR. You know, write articles about him, get him in front of the press, the TV, and of course across social media. What do you think?”

  “That sounds…” I hesitated, still hardly believing she was saying all this to me, “… amazing.”

  Meredith gave a curt nod. “Yes, it does. So we’ll see how this cruise goes, but I think I’d like to offer you the position. Keep up the good work.”

  She seemed to take my bewildered blinking as a sign of interest and flashed me another eerily genuine smile, and then went back into the open kitchen to stand beside Vince and keep a watch on the crowd.

  Hardly believing my luck, I was bursting at the seams to tell someone. Sam was busy chatting with one of the guests near the front, but Cece was free. I hurried over to her, a massive grin on my face. I couldn’t contain myself. I wrapped my arms around and picked her up, spun her around, and set have back down again.

  “What’s gotten into you?” asked Cece, her mouth agape. I wasn’t prone to enormous displays of emotion, at least not usually.

  I told her all about it, and how nice Meredith was being all of a sudden.

  “That’s just great,” she said squeezing both my shoulders, “I’m so happy for you, Addy. Though I am just a little bit annoyed.”

  “Oh?”

  “If you take that job, it’ll mean you’ll be leaving us,” she said with a sad pout.

  It took a little of the wind out of my sails. It would be sad to leave. But I didn’t have the job yet. Who knew what was going to happen?

  “Look!” Cece turned my shoulder a little and pointed us toward Meredith. She was actually waving and smiling at us.

  I forced myself to smile and wave back, and then turned to face Cece again. “Do you think she has an evil twin?”

  Cece laughed. “Maybe.”

  I held up my phone and got a couple of pictures of Vince slicing up an onion faster than I ever would’ve believed possible. He then called out to the audience, asking for a volunteer.

  Moving as one, Beverly’s friend Hannah and Olivia the alleged stalker rose to their feet and started scurrying toward the kitchen before anyone else and even raised their hand. Meredith stepped toward the two of them, both of her hands held out in front with her palms up, to stop them both. Although we couldn’t hear her, we could see her telling them both to sit down, and when they had done so, she turned back to the crowd and asked them to raise their hands, like a group of schoolchildren. When all the customers who were interested in helping Vince had their hands in the air, which was almost all of them, Meredith chose an elderly gentleman from near the back of the room to come and join Vince.

  “I think the evil twin is back,” said Cece with a laugh.

  I left Cece to go into the kitchen so I could get some close-up pictures of the volunteer interacting with the chef.

  Before my eyes, Vince managed to teach the older man a new way to cut an onion. He explained to the man how to dice an onion in three easy moves, and within a few minutes, the old man was slicing up vegetables like he’d been working in a kitchen for years.

  I got some great video clips of the kitchen knife sliding through the onions, and a few good pictures of the guest and Vince smiling at each other. When this part of the demonstration was complete, I followed the man as he exited the kitchen to return to the restaurant area.

  At the back of the room someone new had arrived.

  First Officer Ethan Lee also known as First Officer Hot Stuff. Not that we called him that his face—it had been Cece’s nickname for him originally.

  He was standing by the door and looked to be quite the imposing presence in his bright white first officer’s uniform. He caught my eye and raised his eyebrows at me in an indication to join him.

  I weaved my way through the tables, brushing past passengers, trying not to look like I was hurrying as I hurried over to him.

  “Adrienne, how’s it going?” His deep brown eyes bored into me and I couldn’t help but grin up at him.

  “Amazingly well, thanks for asking.”

  “Amazingly well? That’s good to hear. You’ll have to tell me all about it. In fact, I was wondering, do you have anything on tomorrow evening?”

  I slowly shook my head. Was he going to… he wasn’t, was he… could he?

  “The captain is hosting a dinner in the Captain’s Club, and I thought… Well, I need someone to go with me.”

  “And everyone else on the ship said no?” I gave a self-deprecating laugh.

  He shook his head, not laughing. “No. I didn’t ask anyone else. I wanted to ask you.”

  I gulped. He had asked me. Just me.

  “That sounds wonderful, thank you. I’d love to join you.”

  “Well, that’s settled then. I’ll pick you up from your cabin, nineteen hundred hours.”

  I tilted my head at him. “In… nineteen hundred hours?”

  His cheeks turned just the slightest bit red in a rather endearing way. “I mean, at seven o’clock.”

  “Ohhh!”

 
We both laughed.

  “Sorry. Old habits.” Ethan Lee had spent several years in the military until forced out by injury, but it had some lasting effects on him, like preferring to use the twenty-four-hour clock. “See you then?”

  “I’ll look forward to it.”

  As I waved goodbye to him, I was wearing two stupid grins on my face at the same time: one from Meredith’s probable job offer, and the other from being asked out by First Officer Hot Stuff on top of it. It really was the icing on the cake.

  “He just asked you out,” said Cece, seeming to appear from nowhere, and squeezing my arm.

  “How do you…?”

  “Oh, I was eavesdropping. Congratulations, Adrienne. Things really seem to be going well for you.”

  I felt a tear coming into the corner of my eye. Things were going well for me. I almost felt like I was going to start bawling. Cece reached up and quickly wiped away the tear. “All those onions must be getting to you. Go on. Go take a few more pictures.”

  Suppressing a sniffle or two, I got back to work.

  Chapter 6

  Hannah

  T he morning after the omelet demonstration, Hannah was feeling very pleased with herself.

  Everything was going according to plan. She was up on the top side deck, enjoying the early morning sunshine. It wasn't too hot yet, and the morning rays warmed her skin and seemed to fill her with energy.

  The top side deck wasn’t the highest point in the ship, but it was the highest wrap-around deck that was open to the public. It was a perfect place to enjoy the break of dawn, before the ship fully came to life.

  For Hannah, it was just so exciting to be aboard the ship, finally. She’d searched so hard and waited so long for this moment, and now it was all coming together. Her life would be forever changed during this cruise. She knew it.

  It was true that not everyone was being quite as helpful as she would've liked—Meredith in particular—but all in all, her plan was working out as well as could be expected.

  It had been kind of fun, but she had also been feeling a little bit like a stalker while she put her plans into action. Following people around, watching them and snooping through their things would be enough to make anyone feel like a stalker. But she had her reasons—she had to know for sure.

  And now her snooping had paid off. She did know.

  The next step would be to lay everything out, get it all on the table, and see where the cards fell.

  In some ways, her whole life had been leading up to this.

  She was going to get the happy ending that she deserved.

  She strolled happily up and down the deck, sipping coffee out of an insulated travel mug which she had filled in the International Buffet restaurant before heading out on deck. The sun was still low in the sky, and the few wispy clouds that hung lazily over the ocean were tinged pink from their first morning kiss of sunlight.

  Hannah leaned one arm on the railing and slowly sipped her coffee with the other. In a few minutes, it would be time to move into the next phase of her plan. Nothing would go wrong,, of that she was certain.

  Everything was going to be all right.

  Chapter 7

  Early the next morning, Cece and I were heading toward the top side deck, arm in arm, to get to the next cooking demonstration.

  Vince was doing an early-morning demo that was due to start around 9 a.m., but we needed to get there even earlier to help set up.

  There had been an idea, though it turned out to be futile, that if Vince was to hold a demonstration early in the morning—and nine o’clock is very early indeed for the average cruise ship holiday-maker—it wouldn’t be oversubscribed, and thus there would be fewer disappointed Vince fans. But the guest list had completely filled up nonetheless.

  Sam was running a few minutes late and was going to catch us up, but Cece was coming with me.

  As this was a breakfast time event, Cece wasn’t officially on the clock yet. Her team didn’t start until ten o’clock, when most of the passengers had left their cabins, and she was hoping to score some primo celebrity chef food before she started work.

  In fact, we were both hoping to get a bonus breakfast today. There was nothing wrong with the staff mess, but there was nothing really right about it either. The chance of having Eggs Benedict cooked by one of the world’s top chefs (at least according to his wife) certainly beat the rubbery eggs that the canteen had been serving up that morning.

  We were trudging up some steel service stairs, up to the top side deck, because Cece claimed we needed more exercise. Personally, I wasn’t entirely convinced.

  “So tomorrow’s the big day, right?” said Cece, nudging me in the side as we started up the hundredth flight of stairs. Or according to the number painted in the stairwell, the third.

  “What do you mean?” As if I didn’t know exactly what she meant.

  “The day Hot Stuff and Farm Gal get together,” said Cece with a cheeky grin. “A match made in heaven if ever I’ve seen one.”

  Huh. So she had a nickname for me, too. I hadn’t heard that one before, though. Growing up in Cornridge, Nebraska, calling someone Farm Gal would be akin to calling them Air Breather or maybe Corn Eater.

  “Ha, ha. It’s a first date, nothing more.”

  “Dinner in the Captain’s Club? That’s fancy. I’ve never even been on a date like that. Beer and wings is my usual.”

  “Yeah, mine too.” I supposed it was a little fancy, and now she was making me nervous. “I’m not sure if I’m the type for a Captain’s Club dinner.”

  “You’ll be fine. Just follow his lead. You went to college!”

  Cece had not yet been to college and she had some funny ideas about what students got up to. Maybe my school was weird, but dining with VIPs and captains had not been on the curriculum.

  Finally, finally we ascended to the summit. Well, the final flight of stairs anyway.

  “Ahh,” breathed Cece with pleasure, sucking in the morning air, as we exited out onto the top side deck.

  It was such a lovely morning. We were planning to walk the length of the ship, from the back to the front where a temporary kitchen had been set up in an outdoor events space. By holding the event outdoors, the passengers could both enjoy the cooking demonstration and catch some morning rays at the same time.

  The cooking event was at the front of the ship, which they insisted on calling the ‘bow,’ and we still had a considerable walk to go from our current position near the back, or ‘stern,’ of the ship. Although I pretty much had those two down, I still had a habit of getting port and starboard mixed up. Apparently, it didn’t matter which way you were facing; port and starboard stayed the same, unlike left and right. Or was it the other way around?

  “Cece, how do you remember the difference between port and starboard?”

  I could tell from the smirk on her face that she had a clever answer to this one. At least, her idea of clever. That usually meant it was my idea of annoying.

  “It’s easy. So, port is the left side of the ship when you’re facing the front, and starboard is the right-hand side.”

  “Yes…” It sounded right so far. I still kept getting them mixed up though.

  “Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? How you remember?”

  “No. In fact, I think I’ve almost forgotten again already.”

  She giggled and squeezed my arm.

  “I remember it like this—if you give me any port, there won’t be any left. You see?”

  “Sorry. Don’t get it. That doesn’t help at all.”

  “Port! You know, like the strong wine? From Portugal?” She stopped walking and put her face right in front of mine. “I thought you went to college?”

  “I did! But a journalism major doesn’t exactly require a course on the wines of the world.”

  She shook her head, frowning. “No, but I thought college students drank a lot.”

  I snorted and continued to walk down the deck. “Yeah, well, it’s not compulsor
y you know. I guess I missed out on port night.”

  Cece didn’t say anything else but slowly shook her head to herself in disbelief, as if amazed someone half a decade older than her could be ignorant about such things as foreign wines despite having made it through four years of university.

  “So how’s Dr. Dreamy doing?” I asked as we continued our walk down the quiet deck.

  “I haven’t seen him once,” said Cece with a pout.

  She had at least finally admitted to me that she did find him passably attractive. Of course that meant she was actually totally head over heels for him.

  I stopped Cece and pressed my hand against her forehead. “You know…”

  Cece began to cough and splutter.

  “I think you might be coming down with something.”

  Cece was half-laughing and half-fake coughing as our walk slowed to a crawl.

  “Now that you mention it, I am feeling a little rundown.”

  We collapsed into giggles at the thought of Cece faking an illness just to see the doctor. I leaned against the railing, and Cece put an arm over my shoulder to help maintain her own balance as she folded over in mirth.

  “We’re terrible, aren’t we?” I said to her.

  “Oh…” she coughed, “we are terrible…” she gave another fake sniffle. “Uh-oh,” she said, suddenly straightening up. “Your new favorite witch is coming.”

  I tried to stand up straight, but Cece started laughing again and grabbed at me to stop from falling over. It took a moment for us to recover, and then I saw what she was talking about. Meredith had just exited the same door as we had and was now walking toward us, a curious smile on her face.

  Meredith was no doubt on her way to the cooking demonstration early like us, perhaps to check for hidden stalkers and scare off anyone who looked to be too much of a fan of her husband. She didn’t look like she was on her way to a cooking demonstration though; she looked like she was going to a high-class cocktail bar. She was wearing a tight black dress, black heels, and what appeared to be an emerald necklace. No comfort morning clothes for her on the job.