Midnight Shimmer: A Toni Diamond Mystery (Toni Diamond Mysteries Book 3) (13 page)

When she got to the stateroom, Linda said, “You were gone so long I started to worry about you. How was she?”

“She?” Toni felt momentarily confused, and then realized that Linda had last seen her when she had been worried about Alicia. “Right.” She shook her head. “Sorry. Alicia is fine. But the doctor seems to be missing.”

“The doctor? Dr. Madsen? You mean the doctor who stood me up?” At first, when she’d returned from the spa, Linda had seemed almost relieved not to have gone through with the procedure. But now that hours had passed, Toni could see that she wished it had been done.

“I’m worried that something might have happened to him.”

“Wait. I’m confused. Now it’s the doctor we’re worried about?”

“Yes. Yes, I think so.” She understood that the captain didn’t want her speculating and causing trouble among the passengers, but there was no possible way Toni could stop herself from telling her mother about the incidents of the morning.

Linda listened, and when she got to the part about the glasses, her mother’s eyes bugged open. “What do you think happened to him?”

“I have no idea.”

“Why would his glasses be in Alicia’s suite? Did he pull them off for part of the procedure? Does she remember him doing that?”

“No. She takes a heavy tranquilizer when she knows she’s having one of those treatments.”

“Huh. That’s a good idea,” Linda said, clearly storing this piece of information for future reference.

“I wish I knew where he was, or how to find him.”

“Well, the one good thing to come out of this is that you’ve stopped thinking Wade is a murderer.”

“I didn’t exactly say—”

“You implied it. And he’s a very nice young man.”

“He’s good looking, Mama, which does not automatically mean nice.”

But her mom had made a good point. Whatever had happened in that suite, Wade had been far away.

“What are you planning to do next?”

Toni said, “Captain DuFresne made it very clear he would like me to stay out of this.”

“I didn’t ask you what the captain thought you should do. I asked
you
what you’re going to do next.”

Nobody knew her like her mama. “I’m going to talk to Wade. He’s the only one who might have some clue as to what happened. I wish Luke would hurry up and get back to me.”

“You must’ve forgotten to take your phone with you. I think Luke did try to call you.”

She had been so busy making sure she had the passkey and the blue coverall that she’d forgotten to take her cell phone with her. She headed straight for her phone, which was still plugged in and charging. Sure enough, Luke had left a message. In typical Luke fashion the message merely said,
Call me.

She called him immediately and got voice mail. She tapped her fingers against her knee and left a message when she got the tone. Then she grabbed her cruise bag once more. “I can’t just sit here. I’m going to find Wade.”

As she had suspected he would be, Wade was with her daughter. She found them stretched out side by side in matching lounge chairs, deep in conversation. Her daughter’s expression was animated and she gestured with her hands as she spoke. Wade seemed to enjoy listening to her. His gaze was intent on her face.

Toni stepped closer. “Hi, kids,” she said.

Tiffany regarded her warily. Wade also regarded her warily, as though he were about to get in trouble. She smiled reassuringly at both of them. “I saw Alicia.”

Wade started to rise, but she stopped him. “It’s okay, really. I think she was glad to have a visitor. I understand that when you told me she was too sick to see anyone, you were only doing what she asked you to do.” She thought carefully about what she wanted to say next, and finally came up with, “Your grandmother thinks Dr. Madsen is very good.”

Her daughter was looking at her strangely. She knew that Toni planned to age gracefully for as long as she could.

Wade shrugged, still sitting bolt upright on his lounger. “Yeah, I guess.”

“What about you? She says you’ve been letting the doctor into her stateroom. You think he’s doing a good job?”

“I think my grandmother looks fine without all that stuff, but if that’s what she wants to do, I guess it’s her business.” He paused and said, “He seems kind of old. When I got back from the shore excursion yesterday I went to check on her, and they were both asleep.”

Toni’s eyes opened wide. This was not what she’d expected. “They were both asleep? What, you mean your grandmother and Dr. Madsen?”

Wade crinkled his face in disgust. “Well, not together, obviously. My grandma was asleep in her bed and the doctor was stretched out on the lounger on her balcony, fast asleep.”

“This was yesterday? After you and Tiffany almost missed the last tender?”

“Yes.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“No. I told you. He was asleep. I didn’t want to bother him.”

“When did he leave?”

“I don’t know. I went to my own room and showered and changed and then I went back out again. I have my own exit so I don’t have to bother my grandma. I checked on her again before I went to bed, but the doctor was long gone. The drapes were closed but I opened them and peeked out. I wanted to make sure he wasn’t still out there.”

“What time was that?”

The handsome face creased in thought. “I don’t know. Around eleven, I guess.”

Toni didn’t like the direction her thoughts were tending. When had she become so ghoulish? But she couldn’t shake the notion that when Wade had seen him out on the deck, Dr. Madsen hadn’t been sleeping.

He’d been dead.

*

Luke’s call came as Toni was trying to decide whether she should tell the captain about what Wade had seen. She was certain it was the right thing to do, but she also thought that Luke might have better resources.

“I am so happy to hear your voice,” she said.

“What’s up?” he asked. “You sound upset.”

“I think I need some advice.”

“Do you want it before or after I tell you about Alicia’s will?”

“After.” In all the excitement, she’d forgotten she’d asked him to find out what he could about the will.

“Alicia Templeton is a very wealthy woman. If she should die before she gets divorced, her husband is her main beneficiary. But the grandson’s in for a hefty sum as well.”

“How hefty?”

When he told her, her eyes bugged out of her head. She had known they were wealthy, but not
this
wealthy. “Wow. So, even if she’s talking about divorce, and there’s a prenup, so long as she and her husband are still technically married, he’d get a huge inheritance?”

“That’s my understanding. Are you still worried that Alicia’s being poisoned?”

“I have new worries.”

“Tell me it’s an everyday worry, like choosing which shore excursion to take at the next stop.”

“I’m worried about the doctor.”

“The doctor? That quack who treated your mother?”

Naturally, she told him about her visit with Alicia and everything else, right up to her conversation with Wade.

There was a pause. She could imagine him taking it all in, running the story through his various filters and internal police procedural machines before responding. “So, Wade saw this guy sleeping and nobody’s seen him since?”

“As far as I know.”

“Don’t jump to conclusions. Sometimes the simple answer is the correct one. In fact, you’d be amazed how often the simplest answer is the right one.”

“What is the simple answer here?”

“The doctor’s old. He’s just spent who knows how long putting a tiny cosmetic needle into the delicate skin of a very wealthy woman who could end his career in a second if he gets it wrong. That’s a pretty stressful afternoon for anyone. So, he finishes injecting, he takes off his glasses, puts them down. He figures he’ll just sit outside for a few minutes, rest his eyes, make sure his patient’s doing well before he heads out. The boat’s rocking him like he’s a baby, it’s a warm afternoon in the Caribbean, and he falls asleep. He wakes up, maybe he’s disoriented. He doesn’t want to wake up his patient, so he gets the hell out of there. He doesn’t realize he’s forgotten his glasses.”

“Okay, that’s plausible. But where is he now?”

His voice was sharp as a newly honed knife. “That’s what the
captain
is going to find out.”

“There is no way the crew can do a thorough search of a cruise ship containing three thousand passengers without people being aware the search is going on.”

But even though Toni kept her word to the captain and didn’t discuss her findings, there were enough people on board who knew that Dr. Madsen hadn’t shown up for his appointments that rumor had already begun to spread like wildfire.

*

“I feel like this cruise is doomed!” Toni heard those words from one of the bridal party, crammed, as they so often were, into one of the hot pools on deck. She had deliberately set her chair close enough to hear their conversation, since she considered the bridal party a barometer of passenger feeling on the ship. If anything, due to the heightened nerves of the bride and the stressful situation, they were a particularly sensitive barometer.

“I hope that doesn’t mean my marriage is doomed,” Caitlyn said, close to tears, the steam from the hot tub flushing her cheeks. Toni couldn’t comment on that, but she suspected some of her friendships with her bridesmaids were very much in danger.

There were two ship’s doctors, as one was always on call, so it wasn’t as though the ship had no medical personnel. There were also nurses, a sick bay and the basic medical supplies.

While they were at breakfast the next morning, there was a reminder announcement about a cooking demonstration in the theater offered by the head chef, followed by an optional tour of the kitchen.

“Is the kitchen tour still on?” Toni asked their waiter.

“Yes, madam. Meeting place is the theater.”

“But what about the Norovirus? Is it safe to have passengers in the kitchen? What if some of them are carrying the virus?”

He smiled and leaned closer. “We have several kitchens. The tour will take place in one we rarely use.”

“Oh, good.”

“What do you think, Toni?” Linda asked. “Should we take the kitchen tour? I wonder if the chef will share his recipe for tiramisu? Not that I’d ever make it. But I love watching cooking shows.”

“Sure, why not?” Toni said. “Tiffany?”

“Let’s see, do I want to sit with a bunch of old people, inside, watching some old Italian guy tell me how to make a dessert I am never going to eat?” She put her head to one side. “Let me think about it. No.”

“Let me guess—you’re going to moon over a boy instead.”

“What’s the point of having a youth if you don’t misspend it?” Tiffany asked.

“Fine. Go. Tell Wade I said hi.”

She and Linda headed to the theater and found it set up very much like a cooking show on TV. The chef, wearing his big chef’s hat and a white apron, stood in front of a kitchen set and cameras filmed him making a prawn pasta dish, broadcasting the performance onto big screens so everyone could see the details. All the chopping had been done, so all the chef had to do was to talk about the recipes in a heavy Italian accent and explain how he mixed the ingredients, and then he cooked the meal in front of them. After healthy applause, he said, “And now we move on to dessert. I will show you how to make tiramisu.”

“Oh, be still my heart,” Linda said.

He moved along pretty fast, and his words sometimes got lost when he whizzed the ingredients in the blender.

“Are you getting all this?” Linda asked, leaning closer to Toni.

“No. But we can find a recipe on the Internet.”

When the demonstration was over, the interested spectators were invited to tour the kitchen. Toni loved going behind the scenes—it didn’t really matter where. She liked to see the non-public side of the operation. Linda decided to skip the tour and instead head up on deck.

Toni joined the lineup of foodies and snoops like herself. They shuffled along, through the exit, down a hallway, through a dining room she’d never been in and finally, through a doorway into the vast kitchen.

It was very clear that the kitchen wasn’t in use, since there was hardly anybody in it and all the surfaces were bare. Also, she suspected that the working kitchen would be a lot more chaotic. Still, it was interesting to see the huge ovens, acres of stainless countertop, an enormous wine cellar, locked away behind gates, and the massive refrigerators.

At one station, a kitchen helper was chopping cilantro.

There was a flurry of activity in another area where they were baking cookies. It smelled fantastic, and Toni could see ahead of her that yet another attendant was offering each tour guest a freshly baked cookie as they headed back out into the main part of the ship. She thought that was a nice touch and was telling herself that she did not need to eat a cookie simply because it was being offered, when the happy, sweet-smelling atmosphere was torn asunder by a terrible scream.

It was the kind of scream that makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck. The kind of scream that made Toni wish she’d opted for the seminar offered by the ship’s personal shopping director called Time to Talk Watches!

But she wasn’t at a shopping seminar. She was here.

She turned in the direction of the scream and saw a kitchen helper backing away from a walk-in fridge, her hand to her mouth. She was muttering hysterically in a language Toni didn’t understand.

All the tour guests stood rooted. The bakers in the corner froze. Even the girl handing out the cookies halted in place.

Toni pulled herself out of her stupor and strode toward the wailing kitchen helper. “It’s all right,” she said, putting a hand to the woman’s shoulder. “What’s the matter?”

The woman pointed with a shaking hand toward the gaping door of the fridge.

Toni gulped. She knew she’d go forward even as part of her yelled at her to stop. It was a meat fridge. Carcasses hung from hooks, an entire side was lined with shelves of bacon, and on the floor were boxes. Toni could see where the woman had moved one of the boxes out of the way and in doing so had revealed a tablecloth.

The tablecloth itself wasn’t remarkable except for the fact that a man’s feet protruded from beneath the bottom end of the fabric. The feet wore shoes. Black shoes with non-stick rubber soles, suitable for walking on a ship’s decks day after day.

She recognized the shoes, but, even so, she stepped deeper into the chilled air and gently slid the tablecloth away from the upper part of the body.

Even without his glasses it was easy to identify the dead man, for dead he most certainly was.

Dr. Madsen had injected his last cosmetic filler.

In the few moments she stood there, she searched for any evidence of the cause of death, but she could see nothing. Naturally, she didn’t pull the sheet all the way off, so perhaps the cause would be obvious once the police arrived and investigated. All she could do was to make sure the area remained uncontaminated until they were able to get here.

She stepped out to find the scene almost unchanged. She needed to get everybody out of here, preferably without causing panic.

“What’s going on?” an older man asked her. He had the look of a former military man, upright of bearing and commanding of presence. He wasn’t going to leave here because some woman in heels told him to. She beckoned him over.

When he drew near, she said, “I hope you can help me. We need to get everyone out of here. There’s a dead man in the fridge.”

He nodded, as though dead people in kitchen appliances were not new in his world. “One of the kitchen staff?”

She shook her head.

He glanced toward the open door but didn’t go any closer. “I’ll get the passengers out of here, quietly.”

“What will you tell them?”

“I think I’ll say the woman smelled gas. That will get them out of here pretty quickly.”

“Excellent.” She nodded, happy to have an unofficial helper. “And when you pass that girl with the cookies, ask her to alert the captain.”

He nodded. “You’ll remain with the body until the captain arrives?”

“Yes.”

“Keep the area free of contamination?”

“Of course.”

He narrowed his gaze. “You’ve done this before?”

She sighed. “Sadly, yes.”

“I was a colonel in the army before I retired. Thomas Farmington is my name.” He glanced at her with his colonel’s eyebrows raised.

“Toni Diamond. I recognize the dead man. He was one of the ship’s doctors.”

He nodded briefly. “That’s bad. I’ll return with the captain. I can corroborate your story.”

“Thank you.”

It wasn’t much, but between them she and her new friend could at least prevent anyone else from disturbing the doctor’s rest—or the crime scene.

 *

Once the captain arrived and Toni gratefully passed the problem on to him, she returned to the stateroom and showered for so long she was surprised the massive water holding tanks on the ship didn’t run dry. Even though she hadn’t touched anything except the corner of the tablecloth, being in that fridge with the dead man made her feel contaminated. If she could have scrubbed her lungs after breathing that cold, dead air, she would have.

Her shower was as hot as she could crank the water temperature, but she was still shivering when she stepped out. She dried herself vigorously and then spent time on her hair and her makeup. Maybe her lip liner was wobbly, but the familiar routine calmed her.

And while she applied cosmetics, her mind was clicking through a series of questions. Memories were popping up randomly.

The doctor that first day, helping her mother.

The various times she’d seen him flipped through her memory’s screen like a movie montage. She couldn’t stop the endless loop.

He was so recognizable, with his glasses and his doctor’s bag, he’d been a character as much as a medical professional.

She gasped, staring at herself in the mirror. She knew where the doctor’s glasses were. They were in the captain’s possession. But where was his bag?

Toni had a mental image of the doctor as he’d been in the cavernous meat fridge. The tablecloth that draped him hugged his body. There was no medical bag–shaped lump. And no bag in the vicinity, she was certain of it.

The last time anyone had seen him, he’d been in Alicia’s suite and she couldn’t imagine he’d done so without his medical bag. She considered checking with Alicia, but according to her, she was always drugged by the time he got to her suite. Sometime in the past twenty-four hours he’d lost both his bag and his life.

Her mother and Tiffany burst into the suite soon after that. “Toni, I came as soon as I heard,” her mother said, rushing up. “Are you okay?”

Damn. “The gossip’s already out that I found a dead body?”

“What?” her mother shrieked. “I heard you got caught in a gas leak. I was worried about your lungs.”

She let out a breath. “No. It wasn’t a gas leak in that fridge. It was Dr. Madsen.”

“Oh, my God,” Linda put a hand to her chest. “Was he…?”

“Dead? Oh, yeah.”

“Are you okay, Mom?” Her daughter had probably heard the tremor in her voice.

“I will be.”

“What do you need from us?” Tiffany was there. Solid and reliable.

“I don’t even know. Distraction, maybe.”

But that obviously wasn’t going to happen for a while. Linda had to process the news in her own way, which involved talking it through. “He was such a nice man. Remember how he helped me that first day? So kind. Such a gentleman.”

“Yes, he was.”

“Everyone spoke highly of him. I bet he saved a lot of lives in his time. How tragic that he should lose his, here. Now.”

“I know.” And personally, Toni would have been a lot happier if he’d ended his life, say, next week, when they were safely back in Texas.

“And he even treated patients on that shore excursion. Plus, he ran the medi-spa. When did he ever get time off? And when I think—”

Toni’s mind snapped back to that day in the Bahamas. She interrupted her mother’s trip down memory lane. “Mama, do you have those photos you took?”

“What photos, honey?”

“The ones you snapped of the doctor when we saw him in the Bahamas?”

“On my camera, sure.”

“Can I see them?” Her voice must have sounded urgent, for her mother looked concerned.

“Do you think maybe you should lie down for a bit? You can’t bring him back, you know.”

“I know that. There’s something I want to check.”

“Sure, honey.” Linda retrieved her camera and turned it on. Toni flipped back through her photos, then stopped and backed up again.

“Tiffany,” she said, “can you fire up your computer? And download these pictures?”

“You deputizing me?” But she was already pulling her laptop out of her backpack.

“I am.”

Tiffany loaded the photos and the three of them gathered around the screen as she flipped to the first photograph that showed the doctor. He was striding through the crowd, a man on a mission of mercy. Her mom had been unbelievably snap happy that day and Toni was deeply grateful. “Keep flipping.”

Tiffany did. Through photos of them at the beach, of the beach itself, strangers at the beach, the water, the sand, the two of them, then, when she’d asked a stranger to snap their photo, the three of them mugging for the camera.

She had photos of the outdoor displays in the shopping plaza and tons of crowd shots. In some of the later ones, the doctor appeared once more. “Wow. There he is again.”

It seemed he was returning from his appointment, presumably heading back to the ship. Even in the still photograph, you got the impression he was walking more slowly on his way back to the Duchess, as though there was no hurry. “Honey, is there any way to put the two photos up on the screen side by side?”

“I can go from one to the other, would that work?”

“I think so.”

Tiffany fiddled and up came the first photo, when he was heading away from the ship. Then she flipped to the one of him returning.

Toni nodded. “Do you notice anything odd?”

“Yes,” Linda said. “The background on the second photo is blurry. I was having trouble with the focus. Sometimes the background is in better focus than the subject I was shooting, and sometimes it’s the other way around. I should read the manual. Except I don’t know where it is.”

“Not that. Look at the bag.”

Tiffany went back, and forward. “Oh, wow.”

“Oh, wow, what?” Linda asked. “He took his bag. It’s a medical bag. He’s a doctor.”

“Look again, Mama.”

Tiffany flipped from one photo to the other once again. “Do you see that the bag in the later photo is a different shape than in the first one?”

“Really? Let me see again.”

Tiffany obliged.

Linda leaned closer to the screen. “Oh, my gosh. You’re right. It’s so much bigger when he’s coming back to the ship. Why would that be?”

“He’s bringing something back with him,” Toni said. “But what?”

“Drugs,” Tiffany said, as though it were incredibly obvious.

“Drugs? You mean illegal ones?”

“Sure. I read about it on the Internet when I was looking for reasons why we shouldn’t come. I searched Norwalk.com, crimes committed on cruise ships, the death rate, everything I could think of.” She shook her head. “Do you have any idea how many people die every year on cruises?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Well, when I started looking at the places we’d visit, it actually looked pretty cool, so I kept my mouth shut. But there’s a lot of smuggling that goes on, especially from the Bahamas.”

“What do they smuggle?”

“Heroin, mostly.”

“Good Lord. You think the doctor…” Linda couldn’t even finish the sentence. “And I was going to let him inject filler into my face.” She put her hands to her face as though making certain it hadn’t been tampered with when she wasn’t looking.

They enlarged the photos and flipped back and forth, but there was no question the bag that came back was bulkier than it had been on the trip out.

“You know what else is strange?” Tiffany said.

“What?”

“That scary-looking guy who was talking to the doctor right before karaoke the other night. He’s in the background.”

“Really?” Toni had been so focused on the bag she hadn’t thought to check out who else was in the vicinity. But Tiff was right. She scrolled through and sure enough, A. Vlodovitch showed up in the background in several of the shots. He wasn’t walking beside the doctor, speaking to him, or in any way appearing to be connected. If he’d turned up in only one of the shots, Toni would have put it down to coincidence.

But he didn’t.

In the photos where the doctor was heading away from the ship, A. Vlodovitch appeared to be ambling along. He wore baggy shorts, a tropical shirt, a ball cap, big glasses, and carried one of the cruise ship bags. He blended in seamlessly with the other passengers.

When the doctor was returning to the ship, lo and behold, there was A. Vlodovitch again, this time wearing only a white T-shirt and missing the ball cap. Had he removed the shirt because he was warm? Taken the ball cap off to let the breeze blow through his close shaven hair? Or had he deliberately tried to disguise his appearance?

In the second couple of photos where Linda had accidentally caught the doctor, she’d caught Vlodovitch, too. He strolled behind Dr. Madsen. At first glance he appeared to be part of a group with a woman and her two daughters. Toni suspected he’d tagged along with them to blend in, look like a family.

Toni felt a cold chill waft over her.

“Who is that man?” Linda asked, sounding worried.

“I don’t know,” Toni answered. “But the name plate on his stateroom says A. Vlodovitch.”

“Did he kill Dr. Madsen?” Tiffany asked.

“I don’t know,” Toni repeated. “The only thing I do know is that he is on board this cruise ship and if either of you see him, I want you to stay out of his way.”