Killed in Paradise Page 18

  I was in my cabin with Kenni when the ship sailed, doing something a lot more entertaining than waving to the folks on the pier. The throbbing of a steam engine is better than a vibrating bed. At an appropriate moment, the ship’s whistle blew. Kenni said, “Wow,” and we both laughed.

  Then she put her face close to mine. “How do you feel about clichés?” she said.

  “Clichés? I hate them like poison.”

  “I’m serious, Matt.”

  I didn’t know what she was talking about, so I just said, “Okay. Me too. Go ahead.”

  She nodded. “Here it is, the big cliché question: Will you call me when we get back to New York?”

  “You’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you?”

  Kenni said, “Oh.”

  “Hold it,” I said. “Hold it. That didn’t go over right. All I meant was, the rest of the cliché is that the guy says yes, then doesn’t do it, so what good would it do me to answer?”

  “It could give me the rest of the trip to work up reasons to hate you. Or keep me happy for the rest of the trip.”

  “Well, actually, what I was planning to do when we got to New York was to make calling you superfluous by taking you directly to my apartment.”

  “You mean that?”

  “I’ve got a lot of bad habits,” I told her, “but toying with people—good people, anyway—has never been one of them. Of course I mean it.”

  “You asked for it,” she said. “You’re going to have a tough time getting rid of me now, buster.” Then she kissed me, hard, and Kenni, I, and the S.S. Caribbean Comet steamed off into the ocean.

  The Atlantic started to get nasty at dinnertime. Tropical Storm Jason, this time. It wasn’t too bad at first, but by the end of the meal you had to time your eating to those instants the waves threw you and your plate into sync.

  It didn’t affect conversation, though.

  “The big solution comes tomorrow,” Neil Furst said.

  “I wish,” I said, and everybody laughed.

  “I mean of the mystery game. I think Grandma did it.”

  “Shame on you,” Althea Nell Furst said. “What a disloyal child.” But she was beaming on him all the same.

  Jan said, “I wonder if we’ll ever find out about that other stuff.”

  “Leave the guy alone,” Mike Ryerson said. “Can’t you see he’s worn out from working on the case?” Rough seas and all, Mike looked a lot happier than he had the other day, and Judy was positively blissful. Not so blissful, however, that she neglected to give him a subtle kick under the table. It made him grin. When he saw how his remark had made Kenni blush, he grinned some more.

  More to change the subject than anything else, I answered Jan’s question.

  “I don’t know if we’re ever going to know for sure what the hell’s been going on here, but I know where to look.”

  “Where?”

  “In the past. Janski’s, Schaeffer’s, everybody else we can think of.” What with Kenni, me, and general gossip, the inner circle was up to date on our visit to Gardeno. “For instance, the Network executive who wished this trip on me. Is he tied in with these people somewhere?”

  “How can you do that?” Jan wanted to know.

  Mrs. Furst smiled at her. “Goodness, dear, you really are not a mystery fan, are you? There are dozens of ways. Tax records, old phone books, voter lists—”

  “Registrar’s offices, old newspapers,” I went on. “It’s going to be one of those dusty, boring jobs I hate. Fortunately, I have good people I can put on it.”

  “Is your boss going to let you do that?” Neil Furst asked.

  “He’s going to insist on it. Schaeffer was published by a subsidiary of the Network.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Jan said.

  “Neither did I. Or I had forgotten. I would have been nicer to him.”

  “You keep talking about him in the past tense,” Mrs. Furst said. “You’re convinced he’s dead then.”

  I looked at the kid. He was taking it all in; but if his grandmother didn’t mind this kind of talk in front of him, neither did I.

  “I’m afraid so,” I said. “And if he’s not, when I catch up with him, he’s going to wish he was.”

  And on that rather ambiguous note, dinner broke up. Just as well, because that was when Jason decided really to cut loose. The ship started to jump so much I was sure it was going to curve in the middle, like a banana. The companion ways were carpeted hills one second, carpeted ski slopes the next. Stairways went horizontal and wiggled from side to side. My main goal in life was to make it back to my cabin, to my own private head, before losing my dinner. The smells and other evidences of the many who had not didn’t make things any easier.

  Kissing Kenni at the door of her cabin did, though, help take my mind off it, and I made it the last few yards down the hallway, once again calling myself a fool for going anywhere near an ocean during hurricane season. I consoled myself with the notion that if the ship sank I wouldn’t have to worry about Janski, Schaeffer, and the mysterious partner. I fumbled the key into a lock that kept jumping away from my hands, and staggered inside.

  Call it a moral victory. I made it to the head, but the ship lurched, and I wound up messing myself. To hell with it, I thought. I pulled my clothes off, got the Dramamine from the medicine cabinet, crunched a couple like M&Ms, avoided throwing up again only because there was nothing to throw, and lurched to the bed. Spot came and lay sympathetically beside me. I was glad to have him, if only because he kept me from rolling out of the bunk.

  I don’t know if it was the drug or lying flat that did it, but in a little while, I felt a lot better. Not great, mind you. I had simply reached a point where I now actually hoped I would live through this. Until now, I had been vacillating between complete indifference and a passionate desire to die.

  It got awfully hot in the room, after a while. Close. I guess the ship had enough to worry about in keeping the engines churning the froth out there without making the air-conditioning a major concern.

  But I was in hypochondriac heaven, with nothing to worry about but the state of my comfort. I decided I needed some air. I pulled some clothes from my laundry basket. I wound up with a shirt from yesterday and the pants I’d been wearing the day after Schaeffer disappeared, when Kenni and I had searched his cabin. I didn’t bother with socks. I let Spot have the whole bunk, which he was delighted to take, and made my way up to B deck, holding onto the wall as if it were my best friend.

  I was surprised at the number of people I passed; people, I supposed, who were immune to motion sickness, or compelled by machismo or other lunacy to pretend they were. Some of them wanted to talk to me, undoubtedly wanting to know what the Clue of the Angry Chef meant, or how Billy and Karen had gotten the St. David’s Island Police to pretend that someone had been actually murdered. I waved everybody off and opened a glass door to the outside.

  It wasn’t worth it. I found out the air conditioner had been working in my cabin, and doing a hell of a job, too. It took this fetid, hot, wet muck that reminded me of trying to breathe clam juice, and turned it into something that was merely stuffy. I turned to go back inside.

  Thirty seconds later, I was nose down to the ocean and about to go over.

  22

  “Let’s do it to them before they do it to us.”

  —Robert Proski, “Hill Street Blues” (NBC)

  I CRAMMED MORE THINKING into the next few seconds than I had done in four years of college. The killer had leverage; I had strength. Did I have enough strength to hang by my hands from a rail? Sure, I did. Did I have enough strength to hang by my hands from a wet rail? After being hit on the head? With someone trying to make me let go? That was going to take experimentation, and I only had one chance.

  On the other hand, that one chance was a chance to live. Failing that, it was a chance at revenge. Revenge can be very attractive at a time like that.

  So, I thought, you keep pushing me toward the ocean, let
’s do what you want to do for a change. I fought hard to get my feet down to the deck. I wanted as much purchase as I could get, and I wanted my playmate pushing at maximum. Then, as the ship rolled in that direction, I kicked up and over the rail. The idea was to hook legs under my friend’s armpits, drag the killer over with me, let go, and feed the bastard to the fish. Then (God willing), I’d clamber back onto the ship.

  It didn’t quite work. My friend caught wise to what I was doing and broke free just as my body went sideways over the rail. I held tight. The ship kept rolling that way, the base of the wall tilting in and away from me, leaving me blowing in the wind like a flag. The wind tried to tear me from my hold, but I forced all my energy into my fingers, telling myself this would be the worst of it, if I could just hold on until the ship came back...

  And it did, not a second too soon. I put my feet out to meet it, and held on until the slant was almost maximum. I clambered up. It wasn’t too bad, just plenty bad enough, like trying to get out of a muddy ditch in a rainstorm. I pulled myself over the railing, and collapsed on the deck, sliding back and forth like a shuffleboard disk while I tried to catch my breath.

  I strained to hear footsteps or other ominous sounds through the wind, but couldn’t catch anything. Apparently, I’d been given up for dead. Or maybe my friend didn’t like it out here any more than I did. I crawled along the deck until I found another door. I pulled myself to my feet, fought the door open against the wind, and went inside.

  People who weren’t too nauseated to be curious stared at me. I didn’t blame them. Next to me, a drowned rat would look like Lassie. I smiled at them. I’d gone quite a way when I realized I wasn’t seasick anymore.

  I was laughing as I went into sick bay.

  The next day, I was ill. Very ill. I’d be confined to sick bay, or my cabin, for the rest of the voyage. Apparently, I had gone out on the bridge for some air, foolish man, and had slipped and bashed my head against the deck. That, the doctor told everyone who asked, is all Mr. Cobb remembers of the incident. This sort of traumatic amnesia is not unusual in cases like this; with rest, Mr. Cobb should be fine.

  I had visitors. Jan and Kenni brought Spot. Kenni said it was suspicious that I should have smashed my head in just that place, and I should try to remember. I promised I would. Jan and Spot both made sympathetic noises, but only Spot licked my face.

  Billy and Karen and all the mystery writers came by and hoped I was okay. Billy couldn’t stop apologizing, as if it was his fault.

  “Forget it,” I said. “You’re not the one who hit me in the head. As strong as you are, with a black belt and all, I wouldn’t just have a minor case of amnesia.”

  Right, I thought. If my thoughts had only gone in that direction as soon as I’d seen Burkehart’s body, I could have saved a lot of grief.

  I wound up with a lot of autographed mysteries to read, and lots of cards and chachkas from the ship’s gift shop.

  I also heard a lot of Frank Sinatra music. Dr. Sato did have a good voice. I put up with it until two o’clock that afternoon. That was the time of the mandatory landing briefing, where the social director gathered everyone (except obvious invalids like me) and told them to throw the rest of the marijuana they scored on the island overboard, and how it was incumbent on New York State residents to go to Albany and pay the state sales tax on anything they bought while out of state. Try to enforce that one.

  About the time it was to start, I asked to see the purser.

  Dr. Sato looked at me. “You want to see the purser.”

  “Right.”

  He took out his little penlight and checked my eyes.

  “I’m not delirious,” I said.

  “No, and you haven’t lost your memory, either, have you?”

  “No,” I admitted, “I haven’t. How can you tell?” If I’d done that bad a job of faking it, I was in trouble.

  “It doesn’t worry you enough,” the doctor said. “Landlubbers lose their footing a lot on shipboard, and some of them lose their memory temporarily when they hit their heads. But, Mr. Cobb, in all my experience, no one ever loses his memory without being desperate to get it back. You show no signs of desperation. Therefore, I feel you remember exactly what happened to you last night.”

  I sure did. I remembered having nothing below me but ocean, and I shuddered.

  “Why are you feigning amnesia to all your friends, Mr. Cobb?”

  “Because I’m trying to make someone feel secure. Do I get to talk to the purser?”

  Sato looked at me. “I will ring him. I will be discreet. And I am sure the purser will join me in saying that we will be glad to see the last of you and your mystery-monger friends.”

  That wasn’t fair, and I would have told him so, if I hadn’t needed more favors from him. As it was, I spent the interval making plans, and listening to the doctor croon “One for My Baby, and One More for the Road.”

  Once again, the purser gave me the key to Schaeffer’s cabin and turned me loose. The burn mark on the carpet was still there. So were all of Schaeffer’s things. Or rather one very important item was missing, but it had been missing the first time I’d searched the place, too. I’d just been too stupid to register its absence. Nobody got that kind of bald spot coverage without a blow dryer. We’d spent a lot of time talking about Schaeffer’s blow-dried coif. But there was no such implement in this cabin. I knew now where it was—at the bottom of the Atlantic, along with the knife set Burkehart stole. I knew where they were, and I knew what they had been used for; and though sometime in the night the ship had passed through the storm, and the sea was now calm and gentle, I still felt a little queasy.

  This wasn’t getting the job done. I went to Schaeffer’s bathroom and got busy. Dr. Sato furnished me with absorbent cotton and some specimen bottles. I knelt and got to work. I tore off a goodly hunk of cotton and wiped it around inside the drain of the stainless steel tub. I put it in the bottle and labeled it. I did the same for the toilet and sink, though they would be less likely to produce results.

  I sighed. If I produced any results, it wouldn’t mean much. It wouldn’t come anywhere near a corpus delicti. Still, it would be an indication that I was on the right track. I had begun to suspect that last night, when I thought I had been about to die. I was so angry at the thought of dying without knowing what was going on, my imagination had just cooked up a nice story for me, so I’d go happy into the drink. Now I was stuck with it, and I wanted to make as certain as possible I was right before I took any action. Assuming, of course, that I could think of any action to take.

  I labeled up the jar from the sink, and got to my feet. Then it occurred to me that blood that got rinsed from the mouth of the drain might well wind up deeper in the pipes, in the trap, say. I didn’t have a wrench or a plumber’s snake, so I’d have to improvise.

  I opened Schaeffer’s closet and took out a wire coat hanger. I was glad I did, because I noticed something else—or rather the lack of something else—that I’d missed the day before. The clothes still smelled of recent dry cleaning. Not as strongly as they had before, but strong enough. That much was fine. I’d had a lot of my stuff cleaned before the trip, too. But I was ass deep in plastic film. Where was the plastic film off Schaeffer’s clothes? He might have skinned it all off and thrown it away, but he hadn’t done it before he’d come on board, or the smell would have dissipated by now.

  I took a chance of being discovered and went to find Chiun. Yes, Mr. Schaeffer had many dry-cleaned clothes when he came aboard. No, Chiun had not removed any plastic films from the garbage in Mr. Schaeffer’s cabin, the one night there’d been any. Chiun was sure of this, because the plastic film gummed up the ship’s incinerator if you tried to burn it, so they usually dumped it overboard, though they weren’t supposed to.

  “Now you know steward’s guilty secret,” Chiun said. “Do I give you money to keep quiet?” He grinned at the idea of giving money to a passenger. When I reached into my pocket and worked the transaction the us
ual way, the grin widened. I told Chiun the money was so that he would forget I was ever here. He nodded and said, “Why am I standing here talking to myself?” and walked away.

  I went back to the cabin and did a deeper swab of the bathtub drains. I labeled those, and brought the whole mess down to Dr. Sato.

  The doctor ran blood tests to the strains of “Cycles,” singing along.

  “Human blood,” he said, as the fluid in a test tube turned a pale blue. “That’s all I can tell you from a sample this size.”

  “Where?”

  “From the one you labeled ‘Tub drain—top,’ a little. From ‘Tub drain—deep,’ considerably more.”

  I rubbed my chin. “Some men shave in the shower, but—”

  “A man who shaves in the shower cannot avoid leaving hairs in the drain, Mr. Cobb.” Put a few pounds on him, change his accent, and he could have been Charlie Chan. “There were no such hairs in the sample you brought me, just loose head hairs, such as a balding man might leave. Also, the percentage of blood cells was far too high to have been left by anything but the most severe cut. Much worse than a man is likely to give himself while shaving.”

  “Good,” I said magnanimously. “I had been about to say that Schaeffer used an electric razor, anyway, but you sound a lot more convincing. Hold on to those specimens, will you, Doctor?”

  “I will, of course. But I have only given you my opinions. I doubt that I could qualify as an expert in any court.”

  “I can find experts if I need them. You’ve helped me a lot.”

  “I am always delighted to be of help to the passengers,” he said. “I now pronounce you well enough to return to your cabin. Relax. Take your meals there. You are not to engage in acrobatics. Not on deck with an attacker, nor in bed. Do you understand me?”