Jaine Austen 8 - Killer Cruise (24 page)

I whirled around and saw him standing behind me. I’d been so engrossed in my silly mnemonic device, I hadn’t heard him come in.

“What are you doing back so soon?” I sputtered.

“When I got to the elevator, I realized I had a deck of cards in my desk drawer. But that’s beside the point. The question is: what are you doing at my safe?”

By now his eyes had turned icy cold.

How on earth was I going to get out of this? What could I possibly say?
Just trying to convict you of murder?

“I was…um…I was looking for the bathroom,” I said, skittering past him, praying he wouldn’t whip out a hidden ice pick.

“The bathroom is over there,” he said, pointing clear across the room.

“No wonder I couldn’t find it. I’ve got such a terrible sense of direction. Honest. I can’t even figure out where I am in the YOU ARE HERE signs.”

But Robbie wasn’t interested in my fictional lack of navigation skills.

“I think you’d better go now,” he said.

“Yeah, I guess I should. Hope I can find my way to the elevator, ha-ha.”

I smiled feebly.

A smile that, needless to say, was not returned.

Something told me I’d seen the last of his lopsided grins.

I slinked off in disgrace, kicking myself for messing things up so badly. For crying out loud, even Prozac could have done a better job.

Trudging down the corridor to my cabin, I glanced up and saw that the door to Cookie’s cabin was open. I peeked inside, and there she was, laying out some clothing on her bed.

Omigosh, they’d let her go! The captain must’ve found the real killer. In spite of my botched investigation, Cookie was a free woman!

“Cookie!” I cried as I raced to her side. “They’ve let you go.”

“Not exactly,” she replied, nodding to a fireplug of a security guy who’d squeezed himself into her tiny armchair. “They’re just letting me pack my things before we dock tomorrow.”

Then she reached into her closet and took down a suitcase.

“Oh.” My heart sank.

“Tony,” Cookie said to the fireplug as she plopped the suitcase on her bed, “give us a minute or two alone, okay?”

“I dunno,” he said, his brow furrowed in what I was certain was unaccustomed thought. “The captain said I should stay with you.”

“Give me a break, Tony. What do you think she’s going to do—help me tunnel my way to freedom?”

“Oh, okay.” He reluctantly pried himself from the chair. “But I’ll be right outside.”

The minute he lumbered off, Cookie turned to me eagerly.

“Well? Did you have any luck? Did you find out who really killed Graham?”

“I’m afraid not,” I said, feeling about as clever as Tony.

“Oh.”

“I have my eye on someone but I have no proof.”

She forced a smile. “Oh, well. At least you tried.”

I stood by helplessly as she started tossing clothes into her suitcase.

“I hope it hasn’t been too awful for you in the brig.”

“It’s not so bad. The pillows are no lumpier than the ones here on the Paradise Deck. But I suppose it’s the Taj Mahal compared to what it’s going to be like in jail.”

“I feel so responsible for all this,” I sighed. “If only I’d done a better job, you wouldn’t be in this predicament.”

“Are you kidding?” She looked up from her packing. “You tried to help. I was the one crazy enough to get involved with Graham.

“When I think of all the years I wasted on that bum,” she said, hurling a handful of underwear into the suitcase. “Never seeing through his lies, loaning him money for his silk shirts and his Botox shots and his Italian loafers. What an idiot I was.”

Join the club
, I felt like telling her, thinking of what a sap I’d been to fall for Robbie.

“Look, Cookie,” I said, picking up a pair of panty hose that had fallen on the carpet, “I promise I won’t give up when we get to L.A. I’ll keep on investigating until I find the killer.”

I smiled bravely but it was all a front. I’d pretty much given up hope.

If Robbie knew I suspected him of murder, he was probably tossing those cuff links in the Pacific at this very minute.

Chapter 23

I
spent the rest of the afternoon holed up in my cabin hacking away at Samoa’s manuscript.

With an iron will, and a couple of Tylenol, I managed to make it through the chapter where our intrepid hero, ship’s-steward-cum-secret-agent Samoa Huffington III (son of a colorful native hula dancer and a British earl), disarms a nuclear bomb with a toilet bowl plunger from his steward’s cart.

See? All along I told you this stuff was beyond belief, and you scoffed. You thought to yourself, she’s got to be exaggerating. Now you know.

By the time Secret Agent 12 1/2 (which also happened to be the size of his ginormous private part) had saved the world from nuclear destruction, it was time for dinner.

I knew this because Prozac had been clawing my thighs for the past half hour.

Once more, I steered clear of the dining room and brought back chow from the buffet—baby back ribs and mashed potatoes for me, and Chilean sea bass for Prozac.

It was all very delicious. Things taste so much better, I find, when you’re not sitting at a table full of murder suspects.

After dinner, I took a quick shower and changed into my jammies, then hunkered down to tackle the final fifty pages of
Do Not Distub
, wherein Secret Agent 12 1/2 decimates a vicious band of international terrorists with a bottle of Windex.

At last I’d finished. Samoa Huffington III had driven off into the sunset in his Samoamobile with his true love, a buxom nuclear physicist named Passionata Von Cleef.

With Herculean effort I’d slogged my way through nine hundred pages of the most nauseating goop to come down the pike since the Valdez oil spill.

I decided to celebrate with one final brownie run at the buffet.

Too lazy to get dressed, I threw a raincoat over my PJs. Ten minutes later I was back, bearing brownies and shrimp.

“Look what Mommy brought, Pro! Yummy shri—”

But I was talking to thin air. Prozac was nowhere in sight.

I knew she wasn’t hiding because Prozac never plays hard to get when it comes to snacks. I checked out the bathroom, hoping I would find her kicking sand around in her litter box. But she wasn’t there either.

And then I noticed that Samoa had been in to turn down the beds. Dammit. He must’ve left the door open again. For crying out loud, he knew there was a cat in my cabin. Couldn’t he remember to shut a simple door?

Sure enough, I saw a note from him propped up on my night table:

Cat mising. Sneke out when I com to tun down bed. Your very sinserly, Samoa

Disgusted, I crumpled the note and hurled it across the room, then dashed out into the corridor. I spotted Prozac right away, a few cabins down, inhaling leftovers from a room service tray.

I raced over to her, but when she saw me coming, she took off like a shot. I watched in horror as she headed for the elevators.

Oh, Lord,
I prayed,
please don’t let her get on an elevator full of people.

My prayers were answered. Sort of. She didn’t get on an elevator. Instead she sprinted up a flight of stairs just opposite the elevators, her tail swishing with glee. She was loving every minute of this.

I huffed up the stairs, my coat flapping open behind me, racing past an elderly couple who stared openmouthed at my rubber duckie pajamas.

(Did I not mention my pajamas had rubber duckies on them? Well, they did. They were a Shopping Channel gift from my mom, who sometimes labors under the illusion that I am still a fifth grader.)

“Pajama party on the Aloha Deck!” I cried, then resumed chasing Prozac, who had abandoned the stairs and was now charging down a corridor.

I was delighted to see her run into an alcove.

The little devil was trapped!

Or so I thought.

When I got there I saw an open door in the alcove. And Prozac’s tail disappearing behind it.

I followed her into what was clearly the crew’s passageway.

Gone were the carpets and fancy wallpaper. Here, it was linoleum flooring and pea-green paint on the walls.

Prozac, having been cooped up in a cell-like cabin for the past six days, was not about to be taken back into captivity. She sprinted down the corridor in a joyous game of Catch Me If You Can, leading me and my pounding heart into a stairwell up several more flights and then down a byzantine maze of corridors.

I ran after her as fast as I could, garnering more than a few slack-jawed reactions from passing crew members.

Some of them tried to catch Prozac, but she evaded them all with impressive skill.

Others tried to stop me.

I had no choice but to lob them with the shrimp I’d hurriedly shoved in my raincoat pocket as I’d dashed out of my cabin. Which turned out to be quite effective. Nothing quite stops a person in his tracks like a flying shrimp.

At one point, a burly maintenance man jutted in front of me and blocked my path.

“No passengers allowed in crew quarters,” he scolded.

By now I’d used up all my shrimp, so I was forced to pelt him with one of the brownies I’d shoved in my other pocket.

Man, I hated to lose that brownie. But on the plus side, I managed to slip past him as he wiped chocolate frosting off his nose.

Seconds later he was back tugging at my coat sleeve, but I wriggled out of the coat and charged ahead. It was amazing, really, how fast I was running. As you well know from my little episode on the jogging track, I was not exactly in tip-top aerobic condition. But I guess I was like the ninety-nine-pound woman who lifts a car to save her child. Somewhere inside me I summoned the speed to evade my would-be captors.

Unfortunately, though, my encounter with the maintenance man had slowed me down. By the time I broke away from him, I’d lost sight of Prozac.

I kept running anyway, hoping I’d catch up with her. And then suddenly the corridor came to a dead end. I stood facing a large, dark, curtained-off area. Probably some sort of storage facility. In the middle was a table with black cloth draped over it.

And there—thank heavens—leaping onto the table was Prozac!

I brushed past a shadowy figure in black and dashed over to where Prozac was now busy licking her privates.

She looked up at me and yawned.

My, that was fun!

So happy was I to finally see her that I refrained from giving her the stern shriekfest she so richly deserved.

Instead, I scooped her up in my arms.

And just as I did I heard a deep voice booming from above:

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, the one, the only—The Great Branzini!”

I looked around and suddenly became aware of ropes and cables and overhead klieg lights.

Holy Mackerel. This little cul de sac I’d wandered onto wasn’t a storage area—but a stage! And that shadowy figure in black was The Great Branzini!

I was in the Grand Showroom!

Before I knew it, the curtains were parting and there I was in my rubber duckie pajamas, clutching Prozac in front of three hundred astonished passengers.

Prozac blinked out at the audience.

Anybody out there got tuna?

Minutes later two beefy security guards were escorting me and Prozac to Captain Lindstrom’s office.

Needless to say, the good captain was none too pleased to see us.

“You smuggled a cat on board ship?” he cried, aghast at the sight of Prozac in my arms.

“Well, technically, she smuggled herself on board; by the time I found out, it was too late to do anything about it.”

“You smuggled a cat on board ship,” he repeated, ignoring my argument for the defense.

Then he proceeded to launch into a recap of my many sins.

“You’re responsible for two of our passengers getting a divorce. You tried to cheat another passenger out of first prize at Musical Men. You were caught stealing sand from our sandbox. And now you show up on stage in the Grand Showroom in those ridiculous chicken pajamas!”

“Actually, they’re not chickens,” I pointed out. “They’re rubber duckies.”

Once again, he chose to ignore the technical side of things and continued ranting about my many shortcomings as a lecturer, a passenger, and a pet owner.

It’s all too painful to repeat in detail, but the gist of it was that I was persona non grata on Holiday—and probably every other cruise line on the planet.

Finally, the good captain ran out of steam and glanced down at Prozac in my arms, who was purring like a buzz saw. She had no idea what hot water she was in.

“So what’s her name?” he asked.

“Prozac.”

“Very appropriate, considering her owner.”

Then he added, in a somewhat more mellow tone of voice, “She is a cute little thing, isn’t she?”

Prozac, sensing she was being talked about, launched into her Adorable Act: big green eyes, tilted head, tail wagging saucily.

The sap fell for it like a ton of bricks.

“Come here, sweetheart.”

He plucked her from my arms and plopped her into his ample lap.

Prozac, the shameless hussy, rubbed against his belly with wild abandon.

“It’s never the fault of the animal,” Captain Lindstrom cooed into her ear. “It’s always the owner.”

She looked up at him with her baby greens.

Yes, she is impossible, isn’t she?

“Maybe we don’t have to put you in quarantine,” he said, scratching behind her ears. “After all, it’s just for one night. How would you like to stay with me, in the captain’s suite?”

By now she was rubbing against him with such fervor, I feared she’d soon be giving birth to Scandinavian kittens.

“You wait here while I get her settled,” he snapped at me, “and I’ll be back with a release form for you to sign.

“Come on, Strudel Face,” he cooed to Prozac.

Strudel Face??
And this man was in charge of a one-hundred-sixteen-ton ship??

“Let’s go set you up in Uncle Karl’s suite. You hungry, darling? How would you like a nice filet mignon from the kitchen?”