Cruise Ship Cozy Mysteries 06 - Cruise Millions Read online

  I picked it up and slung it over my shoulder. Not only would I be doing a good deed by returning it to her right away, it would also give me an excuse to sneak away and spend some time with my boyfriend.

  I headed back inside the ship, the bag in tow, eyes scanning every corner just in case I saw the fake housekeeper again.

  Chapter Six

  I could still hear a ringing in my ears from the dance music that had dominated the Claim Your Million event as I walked through the ship. I stayed on the lookout for the fake housekeeper, hoping I would pass him by chance.

  I had no such luck.

  But shortly after entering the ship’s interior, I did run into someone else I wasn’t expecting. It was the ship’s captain. Usually, the captain had some kind of entourage with him—other senior or junior officers, or some VIP passengers being given some extra-special treatment. It was unusual to see him alone, but alone he was.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” I said as I passed him. I didn’t want to stay and chat as I was eager to get to Ethan’s office, and I didn’t particularly like the captain anyway. Nor did Ethan.

  “Adrienne,” he said with a curt nod. But his eyes weren’t really on me. “I don’t suppose you saw… anyone, did you?” He hesitated in the middle of his question, as if unsure how to describe who he was looking for.

  “I’ve seen lots of people this morning, sir.”

  “Right. I mean, did you see anyone just now? A young man? Bald head, no beard?”

  “I just left the motivational speaker event. I haven’t seen anyone like that since I came back inside.” It was true, if only a little misleading.

  “Right. Carry on.”

  The captain brushed past me, his head swiveling around as he walked, as if the person he was searching for might appear from a ceiling tile or behind a potted plant.

  I bit my lip in thought as I carried on to Ethan’s office. It seemed like the captain and I were both looking for the same person. I wondered which of us would find him first.

  Outside of Ethan’s office there was an orderly stationed, a kind of ship-board equivalent of a business executive’s secretary. The orderly on duty today was a young brown-haired man with a toothy, infectious grin. He knew full well who I was, as a frequent visitor to Ethan’s office.

  “Hey,” I greeted the orderly. “This belongs to the passenger who I think Officer Lee is with…?” I swung the pink bag off my shoulder and showed it to the orderly.

  “Sure thing. Let me just check.” The orderly used the intercom to confirm it was okay for me to enter and nodded. “Go on through.”

  Entering Ethan’s office was like entering a calm cocoon, the complete opposite of the crowded, noisy motivational speaker session. The wood-paneled room had a woody, leathery scent with a hint of pine freshness, and the walls seemed to absorb noise.

  Inside, Ethan was sitting behind his large wood desk, while in front of it sat Lesley in one of the guest chairs.

  “Hi. Lesley, I think this is yours…?” I handed over the bag as soon as I entered.

  Lesley smiled. “I was just telling Ethan that I’d left my bag behind. I was worried one of the other contestants might have stolen my products!”

  “I’m sure they’re all focused on their own.”

  “Yeah, right. Their electric drink coolers and their emergency flags and cat whistles.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. Even though Lesley had disrupted my morning, she could be amusing when she wasn’t being too harsh to any particular person. Like my friends, for example.

  “There’s a big range of ideas, huh?” I wasn’t about to get into mocking any of them myself.

  “Oh yeah. From crazy to stupid and everything in-between. It’s a shame they won’t let me do a real routine about it.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Ethan, voicing the same question I had. “What kind of routine?”

  I sat down on the chair in front of the desk, next to Lesley, while she explained.

  “I wasn’t always an entrepreneurial inventor. My real vocation is comedy. I’m a stand-up comedian.”

  That explained a few things.

  “What happened?” I asked her.

  “It’s hard to break into stand-up as a new comedian. It takes time. So while I was taking acting and improv classes, I started doing some cleaning on the side, to pay for it all. And it was while I was doing that, I came up with my range of natural cleaning products.

  “It’s kind of the curse of having a brilliant, sharp mind like me—even when you’re not that excited about something you can still make groundbreaking innovations. Like with my Platinum Power products. And then when I saw that Paul Parker and his Spider’s Web team were going to be on this cruise, it became clear: I’d win this competition, and then I’d earn enough money to fund my entry into full-time comedy.”

  “You sound confident,” said Ethan.

  Yeah, borderline delusional.

  “Did you see the rest of those people? You’d have to have pretty low self-esteem to not be confident competing with that rabble out there.”

  “I’m sure some of them will be able to give you some competition,” I told her, wanting to stick up for Cece as well as some of the others I hadn’t met yet. I was sure some of them deserved it.

  “Maybe. You know, it’s funny how sometimes it’s the people you least expect.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Take this guy Alex who was in my improv class for example. He was a nothing. A nobody. But just two years later? He’s—”

  Ethan’s intercom buzzed and Lesley stopped speaking so he could answer it. “Sam and Cece?” he said to me, eyebrows arched.

  I shrugged in response, and that was enough for Ethan. He told his orderly to let them come in.

  My two friends entered, and I could immediately tell from the look on Cece’s face that she was there for nefarious reasons. I can usually read her face like a book, and it was pretty obvious to me what she was up to: checking up on Lesley and seeing what was going to happen to her. I think she was mildly disappointed not to see her in handcuffs.

  “What can I do for you?” asked Ethan.

  “One of the guests lost his product overboard in the altercation that Lesley here was part of,” said Sam, a dark look on her face. “He was wondering about compensation.”

  Lesley snorted. “The guy with the big inflatable c—”

  “Travel pillow. It’s a travel pillow,” I clarified.

  “Is that what it was? Really? Who would want to travel with that? Well, you can tell him I’ll give him ten dollars for it. It was just plastic and air, anyway. I’ll probably be overpaying.”

  Sam frowned. “Ten dollars? I don’t think that’s—”

  “Sam?” said Ethan, interrupting. “Why don’t I have a word with him later? I’m sure Swan can come up with something to appease him. Could you make arrangements for him to come visit me?”

  “Yep, sure thing.”

  “Then I’ll keep my ten dollars. I am sorry for the commotion I caused, though.”

  I was actually surprised to hear the apology coming from Lesley’s lips. She didn’t seem like the apologetic type to me.

  “I’m sorry for the fact that these people can’t take a joke!” Lesley slapped her knee as she said this, obviously finding it hilarious. “But I’m sure it’s giving you extra work, so I’m sorry for that.”

  Lesley paused and scanned the room as if looking for something. I couldn’t imagine what she would be looking for in Ethan’s office, and I still didn’t really get it when her eyes lit on one of the wood-paneled walls.

  We all watched as Lesley reached into her bag and withdrew a bottle of her Platinum Power natural cleaner.

  “May I?” she asked as she stood up and yanked half a dozen tissues out of the box on Ethan’s desk.

  She walked over to the wood-paneled wall before Ethan could respond. At about waist height, there was a brass rail that ran along the wall. I remembered Ethan mentioning somethi
ng about Cece’s attempts to clean it and the fingerprints it left behind.

  Lesley squirted several sprays of her cleaning solution along the length of the rail, and then she used the tissues she had acquired from Ethan’s desk to wipe across the entire length of the rail.

  In fewer than twenty seconds, she was standing two paces back from it, a satisfied look on her face as the newly-polished brass rail gleamed back at us.

  “Now that’s Platinum Power!”

  While Cece was busy rolling her eyes and shaking her head, the rest of us were impressed. Whatever Platinum Power was, it had done a fine job buffing up Ethan’s brass rail.

  Lesley walked back, dropping off the bottle of cleaning spray on Ethan’s desk.

  “You can keep that one. A little present from me. Now…” Lesley picked up her large pink bag from the floor where she’d left it and peered back inside it, using a hand to rummage around. “Where is it…?”

  Lesley’s digging grew frantic. I looked at Sam and Cece, who both now had mildly concerned expressions. Lesley pulled both hands out of her bag, and an intense frown appeared on her face.

  “I’ve been robbed!” Lesley stood up, put her bag on the chair, and stared around wildly between the four of us. “Someone’s been in my bag! My notes! My portable Platinum Power Ultra-cloth! They’re gone!”

  Cece seemed to be working hard to hold in a grin, while Sam looked clueless. Ethan, good man that he was, looked concerned.

  “Is it possible they fell out of your bag at the event earlier? It sounds like things got a little hectic.” Ethan’s voice was soft but firm, meant to soothe and encourage her.

  Lesley turned in a slow circle, staring at each of us, before she answered.

  “I guess it’s possible. I’ve got to get back there!”

  “I’ll come with you. Let’s look together,” I said to her.

  “Okay. My stuff had better turn up.”

  I had been hoping I would get a few minutes alone with Ethan at the end of the meeting, but my plans had been ruined. Instead, I left Cece and Sam behind while I escorted Lesley back to the scene of the morning’s drama.

  When we arrived, it looked like a bomb had gone off. The participants had left, and now the tables and chairs were scattered about haphazardly, some of the chairs knocked over while others were bizarrely placed up on top of some of the tables.

  The deck was covered in Paul Parker’s fake money, as well as large amounts of green, silver, and gold confetti. It seemed we had missed a finale to the morning’s event that had been designed to create as much mess as possible.

  I imagined there was some kind of reasoning or symbolism behind it all. Something along the lines of: when you’re rich, other people will clean up for you.

  “They’re not here! None of my stuff is here!” Lesley was already on her hands and knees, underneath the table she had been assigned to earlier.

  As far as I could tell, she was right. There didn’t seem to be anything that looked like cleaning products lingering among the mess. There was no sign of her notes either—unless they’d been turned into thousands of tiny little pieces of paper.

  “I’m sorry, Lesley. You’ll be able to make more of your product though, right?”

  She clambered back to her feet, her cheeks red.

  “That’s not the point! Someone stole my products! They’re supposed to be secret!”

  I gently squeezed her shoulder in support, glad Cece wasn’t with us. I had no doubt Lesley would be flinging accusations her way if my friend had been here.

  “Let’s hope they turn up somewhere soon. Let me take you back to your cabin.”

  Full of complaints and with a noticeable absence of jokes, the so-called comedian let me walk her back to her stateroom.

  Chapter Seven

  Lesley Stein spent most of the day flitting between feeling annoyed that her things had gone missing and depressed at the thought of someone else profiting off of her amazing cleaning products.

  She sat on one of the two chairs in her room, one arm leaning on the wooden desk bolted to the wall of the cabin.

  She had been trying to figure out who was behind it. Maybe the man she had spoken to during the event? He had been impressed with her products, and he hadn’t even sneezed despite claiming he was allergic to almost every cleaning product out there.

  Maybe it was that other girl, the housekeeper, Cece. She had a similar range of products, though she of course wasn’t operating on the same level as Lesley. Cece’s Lemony Liquid Gold product was named after a lesser precious metal, gold, whereas Lesley’s Platinum Power was clearly a step above.

  Or maybe it was neither of them. One of the other contestants could have seen what she had and, slippery like a snake, stole her precious creations during the commotion caused by that old witch Helen Johannsen.

  Lesley slumped in her chair. Helen Johannsen. It could have been her too. Maybe she wanted revenge because she couldn’t take a joke. She could have rifled through the bag before her rude stage invasion.

  Still, she hoped it wouldn’t matter in the long run. She didn’t need her notes to recreate the recipe, and the samples were just that—samples. As long as she kept a careful watch on the other contestants to make sure none of them were trying to rip off her product, maybe it wouldn’t be a total disaster after all.

  “But it’s the principle of it,” she muttered to herself. She forced herself out of her chair and began to pace up and down the cabin. There wasn’t much room for pacing, so she could only manage a few steps in each direction before she had to turn around again.

  But when you’re trying to think, a few steps are all you really need.

  Lesley began debating if she should make her way to one of the restaurants for dinner or if she’d just stay in her cabin and order room service.

  If she went out in public again, she’d no doubt run into more humorless contestants who didn’t understand a joke when they heard it. But this event was all about networking. She might run into Paul Parker himself, or one of his investors.

  Lesley grinned at how clever she was. Unlike most of the other participants, she’d figured out who the investors were almost right away. She doubted any of the other contestants had managed that.

  She had an advantage. Not an unfair one—at least no more unfair than life in general—but it was an advantage none the less. She knew one of the investors already. Surely, he’d be on her side. It would just be a matter of buttering up the other one, and Paul Parker himself, to come out on top.

  After Adrienne left her earlier, Lesley had gone out for a walk and tracked down the investor she knew. They had a pleasant conversation, a very nice one indeed. He had seemed a little nervous, but that was to be expected; a product as high in quality as hers was bound to make people nervous.

  After that, she had run into a few of the other contestants. The looks on their faces when she’d humble-bragged that, actually, she already knew the investors and they loved her products. She had ‘accidentally’ let it slip that she had the competition wrapped up already.

  It wasn’t dishonest. Not really. This was a war that could have only one winner, and there was no way she was going to let anyone less deserving than her win the competition.

  She deserved to win more than anyone.

  Once she had some serious money, she could finish taking the acting and improv classes she needed, and then she’d really be able to make it big. That’s all that had been holding back her comedy career so far. She just needed more acting certifications.

  Lesley laughed at the thought of it. She had the next few years of her life planned out now. It would be easy. Win the competition, finish studying acting, make it big, and then maybe give a little bit back to the talentless and the losers who hadn’t become a massive success like her.

  “Let’s make some mo-ney!” said Lesley to herself with a grin.

  Ding-dong!

  It was a sign! She had said Paul Parker’s magic words, and right away the do
orbell had rung. Rubbing her hands together, she skipped toward the cabin door. She hadn’t been expecting visitors. Who could it be?

  She figured there were two possibilities. Either her stuff had been found and someone was here to confess, or it might have been a staff member returning the items. Or it could be the investors, eager to strike an early deal before someone else snapped up Platinum Power for themselves.

  “Oh… hello!” she said.

  The person at the door was clutching a silver ice bucket, in which sat a bottle of champagne, in one hand. The other was clutching two glasses.

  “Can I interest you in some champagne?”

  It wasn’t who she’d been expecting, but she wasn’t about to turn down free champagne. For the last few years, relying mainly on her cleaning income, champagne rarely made the weekly shopping budget.

  Rarely meaning never.

  Of course she anticipated increasing her champagne consumption after she won the competition. Maybe she’d even get one of those coffee mugs with the sensor to let her staff know when her champagne needed refilling.

  “Yes! Let’s celebrate my success!” Lesley held the door open and ushered her guest inside. There wasn’t much room in her cabin, but her guest seemed perfectly content pulling out the other chair from under the desk.

  “Yes, to your success.” The generous guest poured two glasses of champagne in no time at all, immediately proffering one to the host.

  Lesley tried to sip the sparkling wine slowly at first, but it went down so smoothly that she’d finished her bubbly drink in no time at all. When the generous guest began to top off her glass again, she didn’t even consider declining, instead just nodding with a giggle.

  The alcohol was already going to her head!

  “I don’t think I’ll make it out to dinner tonight!”

  “No. Probably best to get some room service.”

  Lesley began to nod, but instead she found herself yawning. She covered her mouth and wondered if she’d even get around to ordering room service. Maybe she’d just have a couple of glasses of champagne for dinner. How decadent was that?