Cruise Ship Cozy Mysteries 06 - Cruise Millions Read online

  “Excuse me a moment.”

  Lesley had to force herself to keep her eyes open. The alcohol really was affecting her. She kept her focus on the guest to help keep herself awake.

  The visitor made their way back to the door of the room and opened it. They reached outside and pulled in what looked like a cleaning cart.

  “Are you… cleaning?” she said slowly, blinking and trying to shake the drowsiness out of her head. It felt like someone had wrapped her brain in fleece and was whispering lullabies in her ears.

  Cleaning. It made sense, didn’t it? She had cleaning products. Now there was a cleaning cart in the room. Yes… it was all connected. It must be.

  “Just a moment.”

  The visitor disappeared, this time in the direction of the bathroom. They were holding a bag they’d removed from the cleaning cart, and Lesley could see two plastic cleaning bottles peeking out of it.

  “I’ve got… Power… I mean… Platinum…” she called weakly. She knew she wasn’t making a lot of sense, but she wasn’t sure why. There was no response from the guest in the bathroom.

  Lesley shook her head again to try and wake herself up but quit almost immediately. It was giving her a headache.

  She sniffed. There was a strange smell. Really strange.

  “What—” Lesley went silent when the guest returned. They looked different. Very different. It was their face. It was now covered in a big black… thing.

  What was that thing? Why were they wearing it? You couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman anymore. But who was her guest again, anyway?

  Man, she was tired. Her mind really wasn’t working right.

  “Come on. Up you go. Just over here.” The guest lifted Lesley under her arms and helped her in the direction of the bathroom.

  “I… I don’t…” Lesley stopped trying to speak when she couldn’t remember what it was she didn’t want. When they got to the bathroom, her guest sat her on the edge of the tub.

  “Gasmask!” said Lesley, slurring the words together as she finally recognized what the guest was wearing. What was wrong with her head?

  The visitor nodded. Behind them, Lesley could see that the sink had been filled with something. Two bottles of cleaning products were sitting on either side of it.

  Lesley put both hands up to her mouth to cover another giant yawn. She felt so sleepy. But her throat was feeling funny. And her nose. And her mouth.

  The visitor took one step toward Lesley and then did something she wasn’t expecting. The guest gave her a shove, toppling her back into the bathtub. Her head bashed against the tile wall behind her, before she slipped completely inside, her body twisting and crumpling into a neat little heap in the bottom of the tub.

  That… was rude, she just about managed to think.

  But maybe she’d just lie down for a minute before complaining.

  “Good night,” said the guest.

  Lesley struggled to blink a few more times before closing her eyes.

  She heard the click of the bathroom door closing, but she didn’t open her eyes again.

  Instead, peacefully, she drifted off.

  Chapter Eight

  Thump, thump, thump.

  I could hear Paul Parker’s pounding dance music long before I arrived at the morning event. It made me wonder if any of the non-future-millionaire passengers had complained yet. Oh, how I hoped they would.

  Once again, the Claim Your Million team was using the outdoor area near the stern for their morning session. When I arrived just before eight thirty, it seemed as though I was the last one there.

  Every table had eager participants chatting away with one another, all of them seemingly bursting with energy.

  Almost all of them, anyway. I could see Milton McPherson still looking depressed. At his table, he was the only participant without some kind of product to pitch in front of him, with only a pencil-and-paper sketch of his inflatable pillow.

  Cece was sitting at another table, but she was having an enthusiastic conversation with the man next to her while simultaneously dancing in her seat to the music. I decided to leave her to it for now. We could catch up later.

  As I walked around, I took some pictures to throw out onto the social media streams later. One of the few benefits of events like this was that even in my photos, everyone seemed to exude a palpable sense of energy. It was easy to get good pictures.

  After touring around most of the tables, I made my way over to Sam, who’d just arrived.

  “Crazy, aren’t they?” yelled Sam in my ear. She gestured around at the people and at the speakers that were blasting out the morning music.

  “Tell me about it.”

  It wasn’t just the music I disliked at that early hour. It was the fact that Paul Parker was insisting on running his events so early in the day. Ethan and I had begun what I thought was a nice tradition during our last cruise: a breakfast date every day. But thanks to these early morning sessions, that tradition looked like it was going to be broken before it had even become properly entrenched.

  Sam nudged me in the side and jerked her head in the direction of the stage. Paul Parker was repeating his act from the day before, sprinting on from the wings and leaping with a big jump right into the middle of the stage.

  Also like the day before, the music cut out just as he landed so we could all hear the loud thump of his arrival.

  “Good morning, millionaires!” he screamed into the microphone. And I don’t mean said loudly, or even shouted. He screamed it.

  The crowd erupted. About half of them screeched a noisy “Good morning!” back at him, while the rest, their minds apparently not with them on this cruise, made incoherent screams of excitement in response.

  “I guess I should have said ‘future millionaires,’ but I don’t think we even need to make that distinction anymore. I know that within every single one of you is a million dollars desperate to claw its way out and into your bank account!”

  “Earplugs!” I shouted to Sam over the latest eruption of enthusiastic noise from the Claimers.

  She cocked an eyebrow at me.

  “We should buy earplugs!”

  She nodded back at me, not wanting to expend the energy required to be heard over the cacophony of everyone’s screams. I was sure one of the shops on board sold earplugs. It would be an investment in both the physical health of my hearing and my sanity.

  “I’ve got a special treat for you this morning! This is a power breakfast for powerful millionaires. You don’t mind if I keep calling you all millionaires, do you? No? Great! Powerful millionaires need some powerful food, right!?” He paused, his eyes fixed toward the back. “Bring on the breakfast!”

  Right on cue, the catering staff wheeled out trolleys full of food.

  Not to demean the ship’s food, but the power food looked to be a small assortment of items from the ship’s large International Buffet. It’s good stuff, but I wasn’t sure what was so powerful in it or why they were getting excited. They could have had a fresher, wider selection of food if they’d just gone to the restaurant.

  “Look, it’s Greg,” said Sam. We didn’t need to shout for a moment; the audience was watching the food carts being wheeled out and had stopped their screaming for the time being.

  Greg Washington was another friend of ours, an enthusiastic and flamboyant chef who was also exceedingly talented at his job—when he wasn’t distracted by the goings-on aboard the ship, anyway.

  Greg seemed to be leading the breakfast food troupe, and he directed the staff behind him to deliver a breakfast cart to each of the tables. Each cart had the same selection: bagels with cream cheese, a bowl of fruit, big urns of coffee and orange juice, eggs, bacon, and stacks of plates to eat it all from.

  “Fill yourselves with energy, and then, let’s…” Paul Parker gave them a knowing look, urging the crowd to say what he had trained them to repeat the day before.

  “Make some mo-ney!” the crowd finished for him with hoots of delig
ht.

  Sam and I began to wander around, both with the same question on our mind: which breakfast cart were we going to raid? We didn’t even have to discuss it.

  Sam nudged me, pointing out that one of the tables had an empty seat. We strolled over while I took a few pictures along the way.

  “Give me some hashtags,” I said to Sam.

  “Hmmm… #Powerbreakfast? #Bagelpower? #Baconbaconbacon? #DanceMusicForBreakfast,” she suggested.

  We arrived at the table with the empty seat at just about the same time as someone else did—Paul Parker himself. And he had a concerned look on his face.

  “Someone’s missing,” he said as the three of us stood around the empty chair.

  “Yep.”

  “Who? Why are they missing?”

  Did he really care that much? I—and presumably Sam—had figured that eight thirty was just a bit too early for at least one person. In fact, I was surprised there weren’t more people missing. This was supposed to be a kind of vacation, after all.

  “I don’t know, but they probably just overslept.”

  Paul Parker shook his head to himself, as if in disbelief that such an occurrence would be possible.

  “I know who it is!” said a young lady sitting next to the empty seat.

  Sam, Paul, and I looked at her expectantly.

  “It’s Lesley, the woman who went on the stage yesterday.”

  Sam and I glanced at each other and then around the rest of the event space. The young lady was right.

  “But she was such a go-getter yesterday,” said Paul with a frown. “Was she given an incorrect schedule?”

  Sam glared at him. “Everyone was given the same schedule. She must have overslept.”

  Paul Parker shook his head again. “Someone else, maybe. But not her. She was so lively, wasn’t she? Go and check on her.”

  Sam narrowed her eyes at him. While Sam was a good worker, she didn’t necessarily like being told what to do by people she didn’t regard as her superior. It was the rebellious streak inside her.

  “I’ll go. I know where her cabin is,” I said with a smile. “You run things here, Sam. I’ve got enough pictures for the time being.”

  “Yes, you need to stay here,” came a voice from behind us. A female voice.

  I turned to confirm who it was. “Good morning, Helen.”

  She was clutching her sensor-equipped travel mug and had her eyes locked on Sam. “I didn’t hear back from the complaint forms I submitted last night. Do you have a moment?”

  Sam’s face soured for only a second before her polite smile took its place. “Of course.”

  “See you later.”

  I waved to Paul, Sam, and Helen and ever-so-subtly grabbed a bagel already loaded up with cream cheese off the nearest breakfast cart as I walked past. I ate as I walked, taking my time so that I wouldn’t still be holding half a bagel when I arrived at my destination.

  I swallowed the final bite just before I arrived at Lesley’s cabin. I stopped at the door, wishing I’d grabbed a cup of coffee too. Oh well.

  I rang the doorbell and could hear the ding-dong from inside the cabin. There weren’t any sounds of movement inside. After waiting a while, I rang it two more times.

  Nothing.

  I tapped my chin in thought. Where could Lesley be? I rang the doorbell again, and this time I pressed my ear up against the door.

  I didn’t hear anything, but I did notice something else. A strange smell coming from within the room. An acrid odor, like rotten eggs but somehow much worse. I wrinkled my nose and could feel the burn creeping into my sinuses.

  That wasn’t right. That wasn’t right at all.

  I pulled out my phone, debating what to do. It didn’t take long to make up my mind.

  Even if it turned out to be nothing, at least it would give me a chance to see Ethan.

  I pressed the dial button and waited for him to answer.

  “Ethan? Are you busy? Could you come to Lesley Stein’s cabin? There’s something I need you to check…”

  Chapter Nine

  At first, Ethan had been his normal, friendly self on the phone.

  But as soon as I mentioned there was an odor somewhat like rotten eggs, his tone went serious and he had ordered me to leave the vicinity of the room immediately.

  When he finally arrived, I was down the end of the hallway with a door to the deck open beside me, breathing in some fresh sea air. Something about his tone had put a panic into me, and I’d been trying to convince myself that I wasn’t dizzy or disoriented as I tried to cycle as much fresh air through my lungs as possible.

  When Ethan got there, I barely recognized him. Only the broad outline of his shoulders and the gait of his walk gave him away. He was dressed in a full hazmat suit, with a gas mask covering his entire face and head. There was another man dressed similarly, with two security guards in their regular uniforms behind.

  Ethan spotted me at the end of the hallway and, leaving the man in the hazmat suit by Lesley’s door, he came over to speak to me.

  “Ethan?” I said, to confirm it was really him under all the plastic and rubber.

  “Adrienne, are you okay?” His voice didn’t sound like his own. It was muffled through the filter of his gas mask. It was almost creepy.

  “I think so. I was feeling fine until you told me to get away from the room. If there’s anything wrong with me, it’s probably self-induced.”

  “Okay. And you’re sure it was a smell like rotten eggs? Like sulfur? I can’t smell anything but rubber in this suit.”

  “Yes, that’s what I thought it was.”

  “Okay. Doctor Ryan—that’s who’s in the other suit if you couldn’t tell—and I are going to go into the room in a moment. You stay here, and don’t let anyone in through this door. My security guards are checking the other rooms on this hallway, and then it’ll be sealed off. One of them will be stationed next to you here to make sure no one comes in. I’m afraid this could be a dangerous gas leak.”

  It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t like the cabins had gas heaters or ovens or any other devices like that. Why would the ship be designed so that gas pipes went through passenger rooms? If that was really what had happened, someone was going to get seriously sued.

  “If you smell anything here, get outside on the deck immediately and close the door behind you. Got it?”

  “Okay,” I said, somewhat hesitantly and still confused. But I would do what I was told.

  As Ethan stalked back down the hallway, I thought it was kind of exciting. Ethan and Doctor Ryan both looked like something out of a science fiction movie in their rubber and plastic outfits and face-concealing masks.

  I watched as they checked the other nearby cabins. Thankfully, none of them were currently occupied. Their guests were presumably all still enjoying their breakfasts. One of the security guards came and stood next to me by the door to the deck.

  “How’s it going?” said the curly-haired man in uniform next to me.

  I looked down at Ethan and Ryan in their outfits.

  “It’s a lot different than how I spend most of my mornings,” I said with a smile.

  “Yeah, me too. Never seen anything like it.”

  I felt a tapping on my shoulder.

  “Excuse me! My cabin is in here. Could I get by?”

  I turned around with a wince. There was an elderly lady with silver hair peering at me and the security guard whose name I didn’t know.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but this area is off-limits for the moment. Do you think you could come back a little later?”

  She shook her head.

  “Oh, no. When I’m on a cruise, I return to my cabin to do the crossword first thing after breakfast.” She lifted up a copy of yesterday’s newspaper and waved it at me. “It’s my routine.”

  I stared at the newspaper. She had it opened to the right page already, and I could see the puzzle was already filled in.

  “Ma’am, I think you’ve got yesterday’
s newspaper. Why don’t you head down to the shop and see if you can find today’s?”

  She peered down at her newspaper with an accusatory frown.

  “So it is! Thank you, hon. Will they be done cleaning soon?”

  “I’m sure they’ll be done very soon, but it might be worth dropping by the Boulevard Café for a coffee before you return, just to be safe.”

  She nodded up at me, and it was with relief that we watched her walk away.

  “Do they have today’s newspaper in the shop?” asked the security guard.

  That was a good question. We hadn’t docked again since leaving New Orleans the day before, and it wasn’t like we had supply ships to bring us newspapers.

  “Umm, now that you mention it, probably not. Still, it got her away from here, didn’t it?”

  The security guard chuckled and we both turned our attention back down the hallway. It looked like they were ready to enter Lesley’s room.

  Ethan held up an electronic keycard with a rubber-gloved hand, and the door indicator’s LED went from red to green as it unlocked.

  Ethan opened the door, and he and Doctor Ryan hurried inside, closing the door behind them immediately to stop any further leaks from the room.

  I stood there, staring at the cabin door. The longer they were gone, the more worried I became. What was taking them so long?

  I began to worry about their suits and masks. I didn’t realize the ship was even equipped with them. It wasn’t something I’d ever thought about before. When was the last time they’d been checked? Did Ethan know how to wear one properly?

  Then I remembered he’d been a soldier before starting his civilian life. Of course he knew how to wear one. He could do anything. At least it always seemed like he could. I hadn’t yet found any weaknesses in his skill set. Unlike my own weaknesses, which seemed to be plentiful.

  When the door finally opened again, I could tell from Ethan’s posture that whatever he’d found inside wasn’t good. His shoulders were slumped, and he shook his masked head in my direction. Then, he disappeared back inside the room for a moment.