Killed in Paradise Read online

  “He may have some adoring fans in on this,” I said. “Either that, or someone on the ship’s crew he bribed, the way we think he bribed Burkehart to make our dinner miserable that first night out.”

  Kenni stopped walking. “Hey! Do you think Schaeffer got Burkehart to steal the knives?”

  “To slaughter us all in our beds? Bunks?”

  “I wouldent put it past him. Or as a cover for stolen food. Schaeffer has to eat, wherever he’s hiding.”

  “There’s no end to the things you’re good at, is there? I never thought of that. I wish I could follow Burkehart around and see what that weasel gets up to, but on the ship, it’s impossible.”

  “But Matt, what’s the point?” He can’t hide out for the whole trip.”

  “He doesn’t have to. Here’s what I think he’s up to—he hides out until we get to St. David’s Island. Then he sneaks off the ship, or Burkehart or somebody smuggles him off, he makes tracks to the airport, and flies back to the States. Maybe he hangs around New York for a while, so people can see him and ask him if he isn’t supposed to be in the Caribbean. He tells them he got disgusted with the food or the company, or worse, with the way Billy and Karen are running things, and he bailed out.”

  “But that could hurt their business!”

  I nodded. “And with a week to spread the story around unchallenged, there’s no end to the damage he could do.”

  “That bastard.” Looking at Kenni’s face, I was glad she hadn’t stolen the knives.

  “Relax,” I told her. “I don’t know that’s what he’s up to, I just wouldn’t put it past him. But at least now you know why I want to find him before we dock.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  I had mixed emotions about the fact that it was now “we.” On the one hand, it meant I had convinced her. On the other hand, it meant I was now working closely with an enthusiastic amateur whose previous investigations had all been games.

  I decided to let it pass. She was sharp, and she might spot something. Besides, my theory was that Schaeffer was playing a game—a stupid and nasty one, but a game nevertheless.

  “What we do now,” I said, “is to toss Schaeffer’s cabin.”

  “Toss? As in search? Couldent they make us walk the plank for that?”

  “Nah,” I said. “Clap us in irons is the worst they’ll do.”

  “Very funny. How do you plan to get in?”

  “I’ll get in,” I said confidently.

  “You can’t break the door down. Even if you wanted to, the thing is steel. Are you going to pick the lock?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “You’ve got a master key?” Kenni’s eyes were very bright.

  “I’ve got something better than a master key.”

  “What could be better than a master key?”

  “A note from the purser telling the steward on that deck to use his master key and let me in.”

  Kenni did not actually say, “Wow.” Her face, however, said it for her. Now she figured I had such clout, I had convinced the purser (who is traditionally the chief investigator of crimes at sea, the captain being the judge) to deputize me to solve this mysterious disappearance.

  In reality, the purser was a mild-mannered little guy, possibly the shortest adult Norwegian alive, who was tired of being bugged about mystery games. He was just as happy to humor me if I’d get out of his hair, most of which, by the way, grew in the form of a huge handlebar moustache.

  As the steward let us into Schaeffer’s cabin, he told me he was supposed to stay and watch us, but since Kim said I was okay, he was going to go on deck and catch a smoke. Unless we wanted him around.

  I was happy to let him go. Now, in the unlikely event I found something, I wouldn’t have to make a mental note of it, to be discussed with Kenni later, and I wouldn’t have to worry about her blurting anything out.

  I was not expecting a whole lot. As far as we could tell, Schaeffer had only been in the place one day, a short time to impose your personality on a particular set or surroundings. For another thing, the steward, like a good boy, had been coming in here twice a day and cleaning up the place.

  Still, it wasn’t likely Kim’s colleague had thrown away much. Maybe we’d find a scrap of paper tucked away in a drawer that would say, “I think I’ll hide in the Engine Room, ha ha.”

  No such luck. Which is not to say we didn’t find anything in the drawers. We found something in almost every drawer. Not only did Schaeffer not believe in traveling light, he was an Unpacker. My philosophy is, if I’ve got to stick it back in the suitcase in the foreseeable future, why take it out before I want to wear it? Schaeffer was one of those people who wanted to make every room they ever slept in into a home.

  One drawer had shirts—dress shirts on the left, casual stuff on the right. Another had slacks and shorts. The third was split between socks and underwear. He traveled with an incredible number of socks. His tuxedo and two suits and more shirts were hanging in the closet, along with a pair of gray wool slacks. They all smelled of recent dry cleaning.

  “You have to wonder about a guy who brings wool slacks to the tropics,” I said.

  “Maybe he’s planning to meet someone back in New York when the boat docks. Not everybody has the panache to pull off tropical clothes in Manhattan in the autumn, you know.” Kenni was smiling prettily.

  “Good point,” I conceded.

  “Find anything?” she asked.

  “Just that burn mark on the carpet,” I said. “Schaeffer didn’t smoke—at least, I don’t think he did. I’ll check with Billy and Karen.”

  “Doesent look like a cigarette or a cigar did that,” Kenni observed. I had to agree. What it looked like more than anything was the purser’s moustache, a wide parabola with the burn deepest at the peak and fading away toward the ends. It was the kind of mark you sometimes get on a garage wall when the exhaust pipe gets too close to it.

  Kenni had wandered to the porthole. She looked down. “What’s this?” she said.

  “What’s what?”

  She handed me a piece of plastic, a curved triangle the same beige as the rug. It had some scratches on it—it had obviously been broken off something cylindrical. It was strong and stiff. It looked like Cycolac, the stuff football helmets are made of.

  Kenni said, “That might have been there for ages. A vacuum cleaner can’t get that close to the wall. It might not have anything to do with Schaeffer.”

  “That’s it,” I told her. “Cheer me down. Looks pretty fresh, though.” I rubbed the burn mark and got some faint charcoal staining on my fingers. “Still gives up particles,” I said. “I’ll ask the steward what shape the rug was in when the ship pulled out.”

  “I bet Phil and Nicola and Mike and Mrs. Furst are all getting plots for novels out of this.” She followed this with a sigh.

  “What’s so sad about that?” I said, as I dropped to the floor and attempted to look under the bunk. There was no under the bunk. The mattress was on a plinth that was attached permanently to the floor. I started checking under mattresses.

  “What’s sad about it is that I’m getting an idea for a plot about this, but with all those professionals in the same boat—”

  “So to speak.”

  She smiled. “—what chance do I have?”

  “They’re professionals, Kenni. They’re probably all in the middle of contracts. They couldn’t just drop everything and write about this. If you’ve got a good idea and the time to do it, then do it.”

  “It might be a good idea. Could I try it out on you?”

  There was nothing under the mattress of either bunk. There were no loose spots in the plinth. I put the bed back together as well as I could, but Kim’s colleague would not be pleased. To Kenni, I said, “I was sort of hinting in that direction, yes.”

  “Well, it would have to do with Gardeno.”

  “Who?”

  “Martin Gardeno, the Mafia guy. The one who skipped out on that indictment about seven
years ago. I remember, because he was in the headlines of all the papers when I first came to New York.”

  “I remember, too. He was the broker behind some of the first of the show-biz cocaine scandals. But why would he be involved?”

  “He lives on St. David’s Island.”

  “Son of a gun,” I said. “How did you find this out?”

  She blushed. “The same way I found out about you. I always research places I’m going to go. I spend my time sitting in a library, after all. It wouldent do to let it go to waste.”

  “I guess not. Tell me more. You may be on to something here.”

  “I may?” She sounded surprised. “I’ve been racking my brains trying to think of a connection between Schaeffer and Gardeno. I just think the background is neat.”

  “Tell me the background,” I said. “Maybe that will help you think of a connection.” Besides, I wanted to hear the background.

  “Well, apparently, Gardeno had people in the prosecutor’s office...”

  “Gardeno’s type has people everywhere,” I said. There was still the bathroom to look at, but it would be impolite to walk out on Kenni. I decided to toss the main cabin again while she talked.

  “I suppose they do,” she said. “That could be a plot element. Anyway, he knew well ahead of time that there would be a good chance he would be indicted, and he did something about it.

  “Right after they got their independence, there was a lot of corruption on St. David’s Island. This new group has gotten rid of it, according to our government, but about ten years or so ago, the Island was a major drug-smuggling way station. Also, they have numbered accounts in the banks here, the way they do in Switzerland and Panama. Gardeno started construction on a palatial estate on the back end of the island, paid a fortune in bribes, maybe used some threats, and got himself declared a legal resident of St. David’s Island before he even came here.”

  “Thereby staying close to his money while he beat any extradition treaty there might have been with the United States.”

  Kenni smiled at me the way she might smile at a kid who had mastered the Dewey decimal system. “Exactly. Anyway, he’d make a great character, I think. Supports all the Island charities, but never leaves his estate. Maybe he’s longing to get back to America, but he knows he never can. How desperate or violent will he get?”

  “Sounds like the new government here could make him a major tourist attraction.”

  “Oh,” Kenni said. “They don’t like him much, but he’s retired now, or at least he moves his operations through some other country. He hazzent broken any laws on the Island, so what can they do? My problem is making the leap from an exiled mafioso to the disappearance of an obnoxious mystery writer.”

  “Well,” I said, “you are definitely destined to publish your stories.”

  “Thank you. But why do you say that?”

  “You’ve got the right attitude. All week long, we’ve heard these people complaining to each other about plot problems. For God’s sake, how difficult can a job be when you’re allowed to set your own problems and make up your own answers?”

  “You’d be surprised,” she told me. “What do we do now?”

  “Now we look in the bathroom.”

  Actually, I went alone to look in the bathroom—there wasn’t room for both of us. The usual stuff was there—electric razor, after-shave (the one that made you “smell like a man”), toothbrush, toothpaste, dental floss, deodorant. The soap and towels and paper products were all ship-issue—nothing to be learned about Schaeffer from them.

  Then there was the hair stuff. I have an uncle with high blood pressure, diabetes, gout, and seven allergies, and his medicine cabinet didn’t hold as much stuff for his entire body as Schaeffer’s did for his hair. There were nutrients, made of stuff like eggs and beer and placentas, things I would fight over before I let someone rub them on my head. There was a leather case containing different brushes, one square, one round, one half round. They all had ebony handles, with reddish rubber studded with porcupinelike plastic quills at the business end. Gold letters on each said “guaranteed heatproof.” There was a special shampoo in a purple bottle that had more disgusting stuff in it, which apparently made it safe for “brittle, treated, dyed, and blow-dried hair.” This was accompanied by a can of hair spray in a can the same color purple, bearing the same legend, adding only “nonsticky.”

  “Take a look at this stuff.” I stepped out so she could pass.

  Kenni took me up on it. She was reading how protein from placentas (I was just as glad they didn’t tell us whose) was, in this particular preparation, “heat activated,” when she suddenly stopped and said, “My father says hair is like money. A man never worries about it until he starts to lose it.”

  “Is your father bald?”

  She giggled. “His head looks like an egg in a bird’s nest.” She thought for a second. “Come to think of it, though, I never caught him worrying about it. Of course, I am the youngest. I don’t remember when he wasn’t bald. Maybe he had stopped worrying by then.”

  I waved a hand around the bathroom. “Well, Schaeffer hasn’t.”

  “Matt, all you have to do is look at him to know he’s trying to cover a receding hairline. Why do you think he wore that stupid baseball cap at your Ping-Pong game?”

  “I know, I know.” I rubbed my temple, trying to stimulate a thought that wouldn’t come.

  “Then why are you so depressed?”

  “Where the hell is he?”

  “He’s hiding out, like you said. Actually, if your theory is right, I wouldent worry. If he’s going to sneak off the boat, he’s got to come back here, first. He just can’t abandon all this stuff. He diddent take anything.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Imagine what his hair looks like by now. But the more I think about my theory, the less I like it.”

  “Matt!” she said. “Don’t do that!”

  “Don’t do what?”

  “Convince me of something, then change your own mind about it.”

  I laughed. “You mean I always have to be right the first time?”

  “I mean don’t be so convincing about something before you’re sure of it.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just that it occurred to me that he didn’t have to be mysterious about everything. He could have stayed in his cabin—claimed it was seasickness or whatever the hell, walked ashore like an honest man, and flown back in a huff with no hassle whatever.”

  “But that way he’d have to face Billy and Karen, at least figuratively. This way, he’s mysterious, he’s important. Instead of asking how he could be such a jerk, they’re asking where he is. Even you. Diddent he strike you as a man who had to be the center of attention, no matter what?”

  “Of course he did, but he also struck me as a man who would never make himself uncomfortable unless it was something hip, like running marathons, or rubbing placentas into his head. I mean, unless the captain is hiding him out for some reason beyond my imagination, Schaeffer’s got to be pretty uncomfortable out there. He can’t have brought many clothes with him; and he can’t be in the passenger areas of the ship, or else Bogie’s Bloodhounds would have found him. It just doesn’t add up.”

  Kenni said, very quietly, “Maybe he did go over the side.”

  “Get serious, will you?”

  “Well, I heard how he just lost a girlfriend. And you did make him look pretty darned bad...”

  “Just cut it out, okay?” I said.

  “All right, Matt, I was just considering the possibility. I thought that’s what we were supposed to do.”

  “You will excuse me if I resist considering the possibility that I drove a man to suicide with a Ping-Pong paddle.”

  “Oh, Matt,” she said. “Even if it’s true, you shouldent hold yourself responsible. I mean, just that couldent do it. In one day, you saw how sick a person Schaeffer was. Is, is, I mean is. It’s like he’s going to come back and haunt you, for crying out—”

&nb
sp; Just then, the ship lurched, and the door to the cabin flew open with a bang. Kenni screamed.

  11

  “Can we talk?”

  —Joan Rivers

  “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” (NBC)

  THE STEWARD COULD NOT have looked at Kenni more quizzically if she had just laid an egg in his hand. He looked at her, blinked twice, and said, “Sorry. Door slipped.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “We were just telling ghost stories.”

  He shrugged. His face said he’d had crazier passengers than this. “A lady wanted to come to this room. Says she knows you. I told her I check first.”

  Jan’s voice came from behind him. “It’s me. The Dramamine they gave me finally worked, and I was going stir crazy in the cabin.”

  “She’s okay,” I told the steward. Graciously, he bowed her into the room. “By the way,” I said, “what’s your name?”

  “Chiun,” he said.

  “It is not!” I said.

  He grinned at me. “You’re right. I read that name in a book. Some big, important Korean have that name. My name is Kim. One-third all the cabin stewards on the boat named Kim. One-third all Koreans named Kim. In Korea, it works fine, not so good on the ship. Passengers get confused. Tips go astray.”

  I handed him twenty bucks. “This won’t go astray.” While he was smiling I asked him about the burn mark on the floor.

  The smile went away. “I bust my ass, sorry ladies, to keep cabin clean, but passengers are careless. I’m not responsible for that burn.”

  “Nobody says you are.”

  “Ha! You don’t work for cruise line.”

  “I just want to know if it was that way from the last trip, or if it’s new since we left New York.”

  “It happened Saturday night. Saturday evening, I come in to turn down beds, no burn. Sunday morning, I come to clean cabin, big mess. Worse than now. I ran the vacuum over it couple times, get up a lot of loose stuff.”

  “Okay, thanks. We’ll be out of here in a minute.”

  He put the twenty in his pocket and smiled again. “Take your time. Remember to close door tight when you leave, so it locks.”