Cruise Ship Cozy Mysteries 10 - Bed and Breakfast and Cruises Page 8

  “It’s been a terrible shock,” I said to her. “I felt like I needed something to settle my nerves.”

  “To be sure, it’s terrible.” Heidi shook her head while she spoke, and began carving out a big chunk of sprinkle-laden banana and ice cream. “Who would do such a thing? And during our annual meeting too?”

  “It really is awful. Where were you when you heard what happened?”

  When Sam and I spotted her exiting the maze with a twig in her hair, she hadn’t seen us. But surely she’d seen what was happening inside the maze at the time, hadn’t she?

  Heidi filled her mouth up with a giant spoonful of the dessert, making a verbal response impossible without being very rude indeed. She just shrugged her wide shoulders, and jerked her head outside the ice cream shop.

  I took another mouthful of my own ice cream while I waited for her to be able to speak again. When she finally swallowed, she already had another big spoonful ready to go. She clearly didn’t intend on speaking much.

  “How’s everyone taking it?”

  Heidi shrugged again. “How are we supposed to take it? It’s a terrible business. I think everyone’s just shocked.”

  Before I could follow up the question with another, she put the spoon back into her mouth and thus gagged herself again. While she was working on that mouthful, she pulled her phone out and set it on the table. She tapped at the screen, and then her eyebrows raised in apparent surprise or interest. I couldn’t make out what she was looking at, and I wasn’t sure whether she was faking it or not.

  Heidi held up a finger in front of me, in a wait a minute gesture, and still chewing, carried her bowl up to the counter. I could hear what she said from where I was sitting.

  “Could you put the rest of this in a to-go pot for me? Thank you, dear.”

  A moment later Heidi was back at the table.

  “I just got a message, I’ve got to leave. Enjoy your ice cream.”

  Before I could say anything more, Heidi was off on her way, ice-cream pot with spoon and half a banana with sprinkles sticking out in hand.

  I didn’t know what to think. Had she really just got an urgent message that had to be dealt with? Or was she trying to avoid my questions?

  Considering what had happened, it was certainly possible that she’d received an important message. The B&B association presumably had a lot of figuring out to do with regards to their program, and the organization itself. But it did seem awfully convenient, too, especially since she didn’t seem to want to answer questions about what she had seen.

  I thoughtfully returned to my ice cream, slowly scraping the melted liquid up before returning to the scoops themselves.

  The bell rung again, and this time Louise Settles entered. After my failure to engage with Heidi, I debated whether to make an effort to talk to Louise. Before I’d made up my mind, she made the decision for me. Upon spotting me, she walked over to my table.

  “Hello again,” she said in an appropriately somber tone. “I’m on my own. Do you mind if I join you?”

  “Sure,” I said waving at the empty seat.

  “Thanks, back in a minute.”

  Louise returned to the table after ordering her ice cream and put down her own modest two-scoop bowl of mint choc-chip in front of her.

  “I suppose you heard?” she said to me with a wincing smile.

  “Yes, it’s absolutely terrible what happened. Truly shocking.”

  Louise nodded. “I imagine it must be. Working on a cruise ship should be all fun and smiles, right? And then something terrible like this happens…”

  Deciding not to tell her this wasn’t exactly the first time someone had decided a cruise ship was the perfect location to commit a murder, I just gently nodded and mumbled my agreement. It was nicer to let people imagine how lovely it was to work on a cruise ship than to let them know the realities of how tough it actually was. I stared down at my ice cream bowl which I was being paid to eat and photograph. Some of the time it was tough, anyway.

  “Geraldine was quite a controversial figure, wasn’t she?”

  Louise dabbed at the corners of her mouth with a paper napkin before answering.

  “She was. Tough, but she got things done.”

  “Tough but fair?”

  Louise looked like she was about to agree, then her face fell. She leaned forward slightly. “She wasn’t always fair, actually.”

  “I know. It did seem a little unfair to blame you for the electricity going out. All you did was test the vacuum cleaner.”

  “That’s not what I meant. Though I guess that’s an example. I mean, she was pretty tough on a lot of people. And a lot of the time it wasn’t warranted. She’d get these ideas in her head that someone was wrong about something, and she’d want to not just prove that they were wrong, but punish them as well. If you had a disagreement with her she’d come after you, and she wouldn’t just limit it to that same topic!”

  Now this was intriguing. Louise seemed to know all the gossip. It wasn’t surprising though, given that she had purchased her own B&B from Geraldine. She probably had an inside track on all kinds of information, and I was very glad that she’d decided to come by for some ice cream.

  “Goodness, was there anyone on this cruise that you can remember her going after?”

  “Oh, yes. There’s a woman called Heidi Webster, she—”

  “Heidi? The Irish lady?”

  Louise nodded at me. “That’s right. You’ve met her then? She’s nice — or at least she used to be — but she and Geraldine didn’t get on at all.”

  I excitedly swallowed another mouthful. This was really good stuff I was getting from Louise. After seeing Heidi leaving the maze with a twig in her hair, and now finding out that she had a possible motive, I was getting a hopeful feeling that this case might be cracked in no time.

  “What did they disagree about?” I asked idly, as if I was just merely curious and not hoping that I was on the verge of solving the crime.

  “I don’t know exactly how it started. But I know how it ended. Bugs.”

  “Bugs?”

  Louise gave a single, authoritative nod.

  “Bedbugs. Geraldine has been telling people that Heidi’s B&B is full of bedbugs. I don’t know how she knew that, or whether she just made it up, but I know it infuriated Heidi. In our industry, even a rumor of bedbugs can be fatal. No one wants to stay at a B&B with that kind of reputation.”

  “No, I imagine not. Do you think it’s true?”

  Louise rubbed her chin in thought. “I couldn’t rightly say. It could be true. But Geraldine really did have a nasty streak in her. If she thought someone had wronged her, or insulted her, she didn’t have any qualms about using any method at all to get her own back — including lying.”

  “Oh, wow,” I said sympathetically. “It’s amazing someone like that had been chosen to head the organization in the past.”

  Louise nodded. “Most people don’t know what she was really like. They just saw the tough, take-no-nonsense and get things done Geraldine. She was a good manager for the association, apart from being stuck in her ways. And if you suggested trying new things… well. You saw how she treated Bernice.”

  “She did seem very tough on Bernice. I figured she was jealous of her being selected as the new Chair, does that sound right to you?”

  Finished with her ice cream, Louise set down the spoon neatly in her bowl, barely making a clink as it settled.

  “Certainly. If I was Bernice I would have been furious at being treated the way she was. Absolutely livid. Speaking of her though, I don’t know what’s happened to her. There hasn’t been any sign of her since this morning.”

  “She was probably hiding from Geraldine,” I suggested.

  “Perhaps.” Louise smiled again and stood up. “It’s been nice chatting to you, I think I better get going. See if I can help out with anything — or if I can track Bernice down!”

  Since Louise seemed to be such a wonderful fount of informati
on, there was one more person I wanted to ask her about.

  “Could I ask you about one more thing? Do you know Alex Martinez?”

  Louise slowly nodded, and sat down again.

  Alex had told Greg and me that he used to work for Geraldine, and while he hadn’t exactly bad-mouthed her, he hadn’t been gushing praises either. I was curious to know what Louise knew about the situation.

  “Alex? Yes, he does my desserts. When I used to be a guest at Geraldine’s B&B, before I bought it, he was the chef. He’s a nice chap, but I’m not sure how well his business is doing.”

  “Do you think it’s in trouble?”

  “It might be. The thing is, Geraldine refused to use his company after he set it up. In fact, she also made a point of telling other people not to use it either. I ignored her advice because his desserts are absolutely fantastic, but I wouldn’t have let her know that.”

  “Why do you think she told people not to use his company?”

  “I’m not sure, exactly. Maybe she was annoyed at him wanting to go out and start a business venture on his own, instead of staying working for her. Geraldine could take offense at all kinds of things; that’s just how she was. It did seem strange though. Alex knew all about Geraldine and her business, so if he wanted to, he could probably have used his knowledge to get back at her. But I guess he was too nice to do anything like that.”

  “What kind of information do you think he had?”

  “I wouldn’t know. But every B&B has its secrets. Not necessarily anything illegal, but there are things that happen out of view of the public that you don’t necessarily want them finding out. And I’m sure that’s true in Geraldine’s case. She much preferred to take cash rather than card payments, and I do remember her saying that she was morally opposed to taxation.” Louise threw her hands up and shrugged. “Who knows!”

  “Thanks, that’s all been very interesting. It’s amazing how even a seemingly innocuous group like a B&B association can have so much going on behind the scenes.”

  “It’s terrible, isn’t it? But I suppose people are the same the world over, aren’t they?”

  She had a point. I’d seen any number of groups, clubs and associations aboard this cruise ship and they all seemed to have their own infighting and grudges behind closed doors.

  “You’re right. It was nice speaking to you Louise, have a nice afternoon — as nice as it can be, under the circumstances, anyway.”

  When she was gone she’d left me with a lot to think about. Not only was Heidi present at approximately the time of the murder, it turned out she had a pretty good motive for wanting Geraldine out of the picture, too. And she hadn’t exactly been acting friendly, either, which was a marked change from earlier that morning.

  But thanks to Louise I also knew that Alex and Bernice had good reason to dislike Geraldine. And then there was Jake as well.

  I couldn’t help but shake my head at the thought of how Geraldine had lived her life. How did one person manage to accumulate so many bad relationships and enemies?

  It would be mean to think she deserved what happened to her, but I couldn’t help but think she had at last partly brought it on herself.

  I sure would have a lot to share with Ethan when I caught up with him again. And that was something I really should do soon, all things considered.

  Chapter 12

  After confirming he was there via text message, I made my way over to Ethan’s office. When I got there, the door was already open, and Ethan was pacing up and down the room.

  “Hey,” I called as I entered, pushing the door closed behind me.

  He turned and ran his hand through his hair when he saw me, waving a greeting with the other. He didn’t seem himself.

  “Everything okay? Apart from, you know, the murder?”

  Ethan blew out a long breath between pursed lips, before leaning back and sitting on the edge of his large wooden desk.

  “It’s just nonstop at the moment. Not only have we had a major crime, but the Captain is keeping me very busy with a never-ending stream of ‘disasters’.”

  “Disasters? Like what?”

  “For example, he couldn’t find the navigational charts. The paper ones. We usually use digital of course, but we have paper ones as well. That was one disaster. It was solved when we found the one he was looking for in his cabin. Then there was the coffee incident.”

  “Coffee incident?”

  “The coffee machines on the bridge have hoppers where you empty in the beans before they get ground up automatically. He called me up there, at eleven o’clock last night, because he thought he might have put the decaff beans in the wrong machine.”

  I giggled.

  “And did he?”

  “How should I know? I don’t even know what he expected me to do. Run a chemical analysis on the beans or something? And then this morning…”

  I walked to the side of the room and sat down on one of a pair of leather sofas. Ethan pushed himself off his desk, and slowly began to walk over to the sofa opposite me.

  “Let’s just say the crime scene would have been processed a lot quicker if he hadn’t been there.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Sketch.”

  I tilted my head, not quite sure if I’d heard him right. “What?”

  “He said that he had been reading some Sherlock Holmes, and in one of the stories they drew a sketch of the scene and it was immensely useful. So he decided to sketch it. Which of course first entailed him going back to his cabin to get his supplies…”

  “As head of security you should have just overruled him.”

  Ethan nodded glumly. “I should have. But he’s still my boss. I don’t think I would have gotten away with it. If it wasn’t for Kelly, I’d probably still be in that maze.”

  “What did Kelly do?”

  “She had a crisis of her own. As soon as he heard that, he finished up his sketch and went to help her. Something about an event being listed as happening at forty o’clock instead of four o’clock.”

  “They do both seem to be equally prone to panic over minor issues. It’s like they’re made for each other.”

  “Could you imagine them together? It would be crisis after crisis all day long.”

  “They’d probably enjoy that.” I smiled at the thought of it. It would be fun, but I wouldn’t want to spend too much time around them. “By the way, I kind of ended up talking to a few people who might be suspects.”

  “Yeah? Good. Because I’ve gotten nowhere yet. I’m still dealing with the paperwork. I’m definitely going to need your help again on this one.”

  “Turns out, Geraldine was pretty widely hated. I’ve got at least four people I can think of who had a pretty good reason to want to kill her. There could be more, too. I’ve only met about half a dozen of the B&B people.”

  I proceeded to fill Ethan in on everything I’d heard both before and after the murder about people who had grudges against Geraldine. By the time I was done, Ethan was rubbing his temples in thought, but seemed a little less stressed than when I arrived.

  “Excellent work, Addi. It seems to me that Heidi might be who we want to focus on first, since you saw her at the scene.”

  “And she didn’t want to talk after.”

  “And that. And the fact Geraldine was spreading gossip about her B&B. We’ll try and have a proper chat with her soon.” Ethan glanced over his shoulder at his desk where a stack of papers sat ominously. “Keep your ear to the sea and let me know what else you hear.”

  “Will do. This afternoon I have to go and take some pictures and type some stuff up for my actual job. I haven’t got much done since this morning.”

  “Of course. You do that. As soon as I get a moment I’ll try and join you and we can talk to Heidi and the rest of them.”

  There was a loud thumping at Ethan’s door, and from the way he winced I could guess who it was.

  “Ethan! Ethan! Are you in there?”

  The door swung op
en almost immediately, before Ethan could even respond, and in marched the captain, red-faced.

  Ethan and I both wearily pushed ourselves to our feet and greeted him. He brushed aside the formalities, and thrust a piece of paper toward Ethan.

  “Here you go, it’s finished, I’ll give it to you and you can put it in your report and hand it over to the police.”

  Ethan took the paper from the Captain’s hand and held it up at an angle so that I could see it too. It wasn’t just a sketch, it had turned into a full on water-color of the crime scene.

  “Thank you, sir,” said Ethan through a half-clenched jaw.

  “You’re very talented,” I said to the Captain.

  “Oh, well, I wouldn’t say very talented, it’s more of a hobby of mine. I’m what you call a painter-captain. Or a captain-painter. Which do you think is best?”

  “I wouldn’t know. Perhaps just a captain who also paints?”

  He shook his head. “No, it’s more than that. I’m a painter-captain, that’s what it is. Hopefully it’ll help the police solve this crime!”

  “If we don’t solve it first,” I said. “I’ve already got a few suspects.”

  “What, really? After last time, why don’t we just, you know, wait for the experts? We’ll be back in port in five more days and then the police can handle it.”

  “But sir, we have a murderer aboard. Don’t you think it might be wise to see if we can catch them? I mean, they might strike again.”

  The captain pulled his hat off his head and began drumming the top of it with the fingers of one hand.

  “If you do run across them, lock them up by all means. I’m sure the police would handle it much better though.” The Captain began to tap his hat against the thigh of his leg. “Now, Ethan, I’m afraid we’ve got a crisis to deal with!”

  Before the Captain could continue, I started to walk toward the door. “I’ve got to get back to work, sir. Good luck.”

  With a final wave of farewell I left a stoic looking Ethan and our drama queen of a captain behind in his office.

  I had my own work to be getting on with, and I didn’t want to be roped into one of the Captain’s crises instead.