Cruise Ship Cozy Mysteries 10 - Bed and Breakfast and Cruises Page 7

  Chapter 9

  While Jake stood their awkwardly, Sam gripped my arm while I dialed the phone.

  “Ethan is first officer and head of security,” said Sam in a low voice to Jake by way of explanation.

  Jake slowly nodded his head in response but didn’t say another word. His wide eyes just stared at us blankly.

  As soon as Ethan answered, I explained very quickly, but very carefully, exactly where we were and what we’d found, including the fact that Jake Cheltenham was standing right in front of us.

  While I was talking on the phone, Jake started to rock side to side, nervously, bouncing from one foot to the other. Then, he took another, jerky step to the side, his swinging foot causing a rock to skitter across the gravel and between two of the planters.

  As soon as I’d hung up the phone, I turned my focus back to Jake.

  “The security team is going to be here in a minute, along with the doctor.”

  Jake peered down at Geraldine. “I don’t think a doctor’s going to do much good.”

  “No, but there are other things he can do.” I didn’t want to go into the details, but Dr. Ryan would be trying to work out the cause of death, and of course, it was to his medical facility that the body would have to be taken to eventually, once Ethan had finished working the scene.

  “What happened, Jake?”

  “I don’t know. I just walked through the maze, and when I got here, she was… she was… dead.”

  “She was on the floor? Just like that? Did you touch her at all? Perhaps to check on her?”

  “I crouched down, and I felt her forehead. I was going to check for a pulse, but the way her eyes were open and staring at me, I knew it wouldn’t do any good. I didn’t know what to do. I’ve just been standing here, trying to process it. Thank goodness you came!”

  Jake took a step toward me.

  “Hold on,” I said to him. “Can you go back to where you were just now, when I arrived?” I pointed to where he had been standing.

  Nodding dumbly, he did as he was told. As soon as he was back in position I gave him an apologetic look and began to take pictures.

  “I was asked by security to document the scene exactly as I found it. And that includes where you were standing. It’s nothing to worry about, just normal procedure.”

  “Normal for you,” whispered Sam in my ear.

  I jabbed her with my elbow. While this wasn’t my first similar experience, I didn’t like to think of finding dead bodies as normal.

  “So,” said Sam loudly, “you just found her here? You didn’t, you know, smack her on the head with a rock?”

  Jake’s eyebrows shot up and he began to babble, “No! No! Not me, it wasn’t me, I didn’t do it, I just found her like this, you mustn’t think it was me I had nothing to do with it I was just walking through the maze and I got to the middle and she was here and it wasn’t that I hit her it must have been someone else because I’d never—”

  I held up a hand to stop him. He was rambling and it wasn’t making much sense.

  “Geraldine wasn’t very nice to you, was she? In the vendor room she was telling people she didn’t think much of your software.”

  Jake shook his head rapidly. “But that’s just Geraldine, that’s what she’s like. Was like. I didn’t have anything to do with this, I swear!”

  Slowly I stepped around the perimeter of the ‘scene’, as I now thought of it. I took more pictures from each angle.

  Finally, I got to Jake.

  “Why don’t you go and stand over there?” I pointed to where Sam and I had entered from. Sam very quickly stepped around the edge of the hedgerow so she wouldn’t be standing right next to him.

  Jake carefully and slowly walked over. When he had moved, I crouched down, and peered between two of the planters. While I’d been on the phone to Ethan, Jake had kicked a rock down there.

  Sure enough, between two of the planters, was a rock about the size of a fist. Grabbing a twig that had dropped from one of the shrubs, I reached into the gap and gently teased the rock out, careful not to touch it with my hands or disturb any evidence that might be on it.

  Once the rock had slid out, I immediately took some pictures of it. The rock was dark gray, but one side of it was now damp and stained a darker color. I suppressed a shudder as I took some close-up photos.

  “What’s that?” called Jake.

  “Just a rock,” I answered.

  When he’d kicked the rock, it had looked accidental. But was it? If he was trying to hide it, he would have done his best to make it look like an accident when he kicked it away, wouldn’t he? But he did seem genuinely dazed and confused by what he’d found. Maybe he didn’t realize what he had done.

  “What do we do now?” asked Jake.

  “We wait for security and the doctor. They’re going to need to question you properly. Keep this to yourself for the moment, but if you have any plans for the next hour or so you better cancel them.”

  “I don’t have any plans,” he said rather sadly.

  When I’d finished taking my pictures, I stood up again.

  “Hello?” called a distant but familiar voice. “Addison?”

  “Here!” I yelled. “In the center of the maze!” I turned to Sam. Why don’t you go and see if you can help them get through?

  “Okay.”

  And then she was gone, hurrying back the way she’d come.

  As soon as Sam was gone, I wondered whether I’d made a mistake. I’d just ordered myself to be left alone with someone who was possibly a killer.

  Jake didn’t make any threatening moves though. He just stood still, staring across the center of the maze toward the still corpse of Geraldine. I hadn’t even looked at it properly myself.

  I walked back over to the body and looked down. She looked a lot more peaceful than she had in life, the rather sour expression she’d had on her face before now mellowed in death. Her forehead had an ugly, red wound and I surmised that she had been bashed in the head with the rock I’d found.

  “Addison?”

  “Here! The center is here! You sound pretty close!”

  I could hear the vague sound of voices conferring, but the hedgerows didn’t allow the conversation to carry all the way to us.

  I crouched back down again to look at Geraldine and see if I could glean anything more before they arrived.

  Why did it always have to be me?

  Chapter 10

  After the sound of conferring, the voices stopped. Then more ominous noises commenced.

  There was a loud scraping, roaring and crunching sound followed by yelling.

  “What’s that?” asked Jake nervously.

  The harsh sounds recommenced after a brief pause, and it sent a shudder of fear down my own back.

  “I don’t know…”

  Jake and I both shuffled away from the direction it was coming from.

  “And… PULL!” There was another loud crunch, followed by a harsh scraping sound. Finally, I figured out what it was.

  “Oh. It’s just security. I guess they’re moving the planters so they can walk straight through.”

  Now that I thought about it some more, manipulating a stretcher around the tight and narrow paths through the maze would be some feat, especially if they got lost along the way. I had to suppress a smile as I thought how morbidly ridiculous it would be to be lost in a maze while trying to tilt a stretchered dead body around tight hedgerow corners while searching for the exit.

  Instead Ethan and his team, were channelling a route straight through the maze, pulling the planters aside and opening it up.

  The noises of scraping and pulling and yelling and dragging got louder and louder until, red-faced and breathless, the face of Ethan appeared from between two planters.

  “Hi!” His head disappeared again. “Last two guys, ready, and… pull!”

  Like the parting of the sea, one of the walls of the hedgerow disappeared as the planters were dragged aside, to reveal a new, st
raight path directly through the maze, back to the nearest bulkhead door of the ship. It looked a lot closer now than it had felt after traversing the maze.

  “Over here,” I said to Ethan, leading him to the body. “Nothing’s been touched, except—” I lowered my voice and, out of Jake’s earshot, explained to him about the rock that Jake had kicked — perhaps accidentally, perhaps not — while I’d been on the phone to him, and then pointed it out.

  “Thanks, Addi. Good work. Excuse me a moment.” Ethan stood up straight, and turned to face his team. There were three young men and one woman all in security uniforms, and behind them was Dr. Ryan. “Right, you know the drill. I want everything documented, everything bagged, everything labelled. Let’s get this done quickly, but perfectly. If you’re not sure about anything, bag it anyway and tell me. Dr. Ryan, if you’d like to join me?”

  The blond-haired young doctor, who was Cece’s boyfriend in his off-duty moments, slipped between the security team and came to join us next to the body. His expression was serious as he crouched down over Geraldine and began a purely visual examination.

  “I think you know what I’m going to say. First impressions are obviously that she was killed by a blow to the head. When I have her back in the medical bay I’ll do a thorough examination, but I suspect we won’t find anything else.”

  “Any particular reason you say that?” asked Ethan.

  “First, it’s simply that the most obvious cause of death usually is the cause of death. That’s just statistics. But if you look at the scene, there’s little sign of struggle. The gravel isn’t too messed up, and the body clearly hasn’t been dragged anywhere or moved around much.”

  “Good,” said Ethan nodding in approval. “I was thinking the same thing. As soon as we get everything documented we’ll help you get her down to your lab.”

  Ryan reached out a hand and gently pressed it against Geraldine’s forehead.

  “From her temperature, and looking at the wound, I’d say this happened less than an hour ago.”

  Ethan nodded.

  “Good to know. Hopefully since the body has been found so quickly, we’ll be just as swift in finding the culprit.” Ethan turned back to face his team. “Okay people, let’s begin.”

  Ryan stood up straight and walked back toward the edge of the crime scene to wait while Ethan’s team did their work. While the security officers began the process of documenting and recording everything, Ethan turned back to me.

  “Do you know when Jake arrived here?”

  “Actually, yes. At least roughly. Sam and I saw him entering the maze about ten minutes before us. We waited a bit and took some photos outside the maze first.”

  “So there would have been time to kill her.”

  “Yes, in theory there would. It would have been very tight though. Jake seems very shook up by what’s happened. He doesn’t strike me as a killer.”

  “You know what it’s like. It’s never who you suspect, is it?”

  He had a point there.

  “I guess not.”

  “Did you see anyone else?”

  I blinked. We had seen someone else, but there was no sign of her now.

  “Yes, actually we did. Before we entered the maze we also saw a woman called Heidi Webster. She’s another B&B owner. I met her this morning, she seemed quite nice.”

  “Well that gives us something to work with at least. Any best first guesses?”

  “Not any that I would be confident in yet. I think we need to talk to a few people. I will say this though, Geraldine was not well-liked. She was pretty rude, and she upset a lot of people — including Jake. He makes software, but she’d been telling people it was no good and not to use it.”

  “That’s some motivation. But she upset other people too?”

  “Yep. I bet half the people in the B&B Association have something against her. She was a controversial figure. I’ll keep my ears open and see what I can find out.”

  “Thanks. It looks to me like that rock is going to be our murder weapon, but we don’t have the resources to run a full analysis on it on the ship. We’re going to have to solve this the old-fashioned way.”

  “That’s what we’re good at, right?”

  He squeezed my shoulder. “You know it. I’m going to talk to Jake. We’ll regroup later on and go over what we know, and see what we can figure it out. You’re going to have to—”

  “—write a report about finding the scene? Yeah, yeah, I know. Sam and I will get started on that now. Speaking of which, where is she? I sent her out to guide you in.”

  “I haven’t seen her.”

  “Ethan!” came a deep bellowing voice. We both turned to see who it was, and saw the Captain hurrying toward us with quick but heavy gravel-crunching steps. “What’s happened now?” He demanded when he arrived.

  “Well, sir…”

  Leaving Ethan to it, I slipped away from the crime scene and walked out through the new direct path that had been created out of the maze.

  When I exited, I spied Sam sitting on a bench by the bulkhead door.

  “What happened to you?” I asked her.

  “I got lost getting out! They shoved the planters around getting in and blocked off half the paths. I had to climb through a hedgerow to get out. And by then, they’d made it inside, so I decided not to interrupt.”

  Laughing, I pulled a small sprig of green leaves out of her hair and tossed it onto the deck.

  “Looks like you took some of the maze out with you.”

  “And I scratched my arm, look!” She showed me that she did indeed have a light scratch on her right forearm.

  I sat down on the bench beside her. “We’ve got to write a report about finding the scene. Want to work on it together?”

  “Not really.” Sam blew out a long, annoyed sigh. “But I suppose we better.” After a brief pause, she raised her scratched arm and pointed. “Look.”

  Appearing from the side of the maze, with an annoyed look on her face, was Heidi Webster.

  “Looks like she took some of the maze out with her, too.”

  While we watched, she reached up to her head, and snatched out a fairly lengthy twig that had got caught in her auburn hair. It took her three yanks to get it out of her locks, so entangled was it.

  When she’d retrieved the twig, she held it in front of her face, staring at it angrily, before tossing it aside.

  She didn’t walk toward us to go inside, instead cutting across the deck toward the path that led along the perimeter of the ship.

  “Doesn’t look like she enjoyed the maze very much,” I said thoughtfully.

  “You should definitely add her to your list of suspects.”

  “My list of suspects?” I said innocently.

  “Yep. Don’t even pretend you’re not going to be investigating.”

  I grinned. Of course she was right.

  “They should give you a new job title,” Sam continued. “Social Media and Murder Manager.”

  “That’d make some business card. Come on. Let’s get this report over with.”

  Arm in arm, Sam and I headed inside and down to our cabin.

  Murders are a time-consuming business.

  Chapter 11

  A few hours later, Sam and I had written up our report and had been heading over to Two Scoops for a well-deserved treat after the morning’s shock. Unfortunately, along the way, Sam got called away to deal with a customer liaison issue.

  Bravely, I soldiered on alone and soon had myself a bowl with two bright and cheerful looking scoops of ice cream. I’d opted for chocolate brownie and butterscotch this time, thinking the extra sugar in those two flavors would give me the fortification I needed to get through the afternoon.

  Before eating, I took a picture of the bowl, trying to arrange the spoon so it caught the light just right, with the background scene of the ice cream shop tastefully blurred in the background. I was working, after all.

  I was pleased with my third attempt at taking the
picture, and after putting a pretty border around the image I sent it out into the universe with a caption reading: Nothing like some ice cream when you need a pick me up! Two scoops are better than one! Along with a dozen or so appropriate hashtags.

  I never stop working, I thought to myself with a little smile as I began to eat. My job would be a lot easier if it didn’t get interrupted by crime though. Finding the dead body meant that I was intimately involved in what had happened, and it needed to be solved before we returned to port, otherwise the killer might disappear.

  Geraldine hadn’t been a popular woman, and I knew she had several enemies among the B&B association members. So it was almost certainly one of them that did it. But which?

  Jake had been there, and discovered the body. Heidi was also there. But there could have been other people in the maze we hadn’t seen, or who had left before Sam and I even arrived.

  After the way Bernice had been embarrassed in front of everyone by Geraldine she would have as much reason as anyone to want her dead. And that was just what I’d picked up in one day! Who knew how many other people Geraldine had angered over the years she’d been involved in the B&B world?

  Ethan and I would have to carefully investigate everyone who’d shown the slightest bit of animosity toward Geraldine. And see if we couldn’t dig out any hidden grudges we hadn’t yet seen.

  There was a ting-a-ling sound as the bell above the door rang brightly with the entry of another customer. When I looked up, I was pleased to see it was Heidi. Pleased, because she was one of the people I wanted to speak to.

  Heidi went straight to the counter and ordered herself a large banana split with four scoops of ice scream spread along its length. When the order was handed to her and she turned around to choose a seat, I stood up and waved at her.

  “Hi! Would you like to join me?”

  She couldn’t very well say no to that, could she? But for a moment I thought she might. She hesitated, one foot raised to begin walking in my direction and a frown on her face. Then her features softened into a smile, and she started coming my way, thank goodness. It would have been terribly embarrassing if she hadn’t.