Midnight Shimmer: A Toni Diamond Mystery (Toni Diamond Mysteries Book 3) (14 page)

Toni imagined that Dr. Madsen was stored away in the ship’s morgue and that when they got to their next port of call, police would begin investigating. That’s what Luke had said would happen when he’d told her in no uncertain terms to stay the hell out of the way. In the meantime, she felt unsettled. She had absolutely no proof that A. Vlodovitch was anything but a fellow passenger who had happened to end up near Dr. Madsen both when he left the cruise ship in the Bahamas and when he re-embarked. Coincidences like that happened all the time.

But all her instincts told her that A. Vlodovitch had not been there by accident.

She recalled the nervous way the doctor had acted when confronted by the Russian. After Tiffany’s suggestion that the doctor could be involved in drug smuggling, Toni had done some Internet research of her own. And she hadn’t liked what she uncovered. The Russian mob had pretty much cornered the heroin market in Florida and a lot of it came through the Bahamas. Crew members and passengers had been caught with drugs strapped to their legs, smuggled in bags and cases. For all the drugs that were intercepted, many more made it to the mainland.

A doctor with a medical bag? She wondered if he was even required to run the bag through the regular screening machine.

While she was thinking about dead doctors and drug smuggling, she was also preparing the wedding makeup. Very few people knew there was a murder victim on board, so it was business – and pleasure – as usual. Caitlyn was getting married the next day and Toni was a professional. She couldn’t let her worries, or her questions, get in the way of work. She was determined to have everything ready ahead of time so that the bride’s makeup application would be as stress free for both of them as possible. She’d also allowed more time than she believed she and Linda would need, because her short acquaintance with Caitlyn told her that something was bound to go wrong.

Her mother was lunching with her new beau, Tiffany was probably having lunch with hers, and recent events had put Toni off her food. Especially anything that might once have been stored in a meat locker.

Instead, she was carrying a stack of towels and facecloths that she’d borrowed from the salon for tomorrow’s bridal makeup session.

She was running through everything she had to do for tomorrow as she hit the elevator button and stood in the hallway waiting. She was the only person there. At this time of day most of the passengers were eating lunch or lounging in deck chairs. It was rare to find anyone below deck. Hopefully, she’d be finished soon and could spend a little time in a lounger herself.

She was aware that another person was coming toward her and didn’t think anything of it until he was beside her. A tad too close. She turned and fought to hold in her gasp of shock. A. Vlodovitch was standing beside her looking terrifying. He stared at her from hard, pale blue eyes.

She had no idea what to do. She glanced around, but the surrounding area was deserted. Not even a room steward was in the vicinity. She glanced at the elevator buttons, lit up with the various floors, but what would she do when the doors opened?

She decided that if there were people inside, she’d step in, and if the elevator was empty, she’d pretend she’d forgotten something, turn around and run.

It wasn’t much of a plan, but she couldn’t think very clearly and any plan seemed better than nothing.

“I would like to talk to you,” he said. His voice was surprisingly American, though she swore she heard a hint of Russian in it. And more than a hint of menace.

“My mother told me never to talk to strangers.” Really? Had she actually said that? Nerves were making her stupid. She needed to pull herself together.

“Come with me,” he said.

“No.”

But he grabbed her arm and started pulling.

She had an arm full of towels, high heels on her feet, and she’d barely slept. She was in no mood to be manhandled by a drug dealer.

“I am not going anywhere with you,” she said.

Before he could reply, the elevator chimed and she heard the swish of doors opening. Voices told her there were people inside. She was about to turn and bolt when he said, “I wouldn’t do that,” and lifted his shirt so she could see the gun stuffed into the waistband of his shorts.

“What do you want?” she asked, her lips feeling numb.

“I want to talk to you.”

Her gaze darted to the people getting out of the elevator, but they were old and it seemed like someone yelling for help might give them a heart attack. Besides, he had a gun. She didn’t think it was a good idea to antagonize a thug carrying a concealed firearm. She swung around. “Fine.”

He pushed her forward and not until they’d gone a ways down the starboard corridor did she realize this was where his stateroom was. She stopped moving. “I’m not going into your stateroom with you.”

“Shut up.” He put a hand in the middle of her back and pressed her forward.

She didn’t think he had the gun out and pointing at her, but she experienced an itching sensation in her mid back as though there were a bull’s-eye painted on it.

He opened the door with his key card and held it for her. One last glance up and down the long corridor revealed a couple of stewards way down at the end. Even as she contemplated screaming as loudly as she could, he shoved her inside, causing her to stumble and drop the towels on the floor in the middle of his stateroom.

The stateroom was a smaller version of hers. No seating area or pull-out bed, just a double bed, small desk, the mini-bar, TV, and one chair. He also had a balcony, though the doors were shut. There was nowhere to run. If she screamed, who would hear her?

His place was a lot neater than hers. With three of them sharing, the surfaces had become cluttered. A. Vlodovitch’s stateroom was bare. Not so much as a pair of swimming trunks or a towel gave evidence that anyone was actually staying here. For some reason, the super tidiness added to her sense of dread. “What do you want?” she asked. She tried to sound tough but she didn’t believe she’d pulled it off.

“I hear you found the doctor.”

“You heard wrong.” How had her own mother heard the rumor about the gas leak while this scary man seemed to know enough of the real story to drag her in here at gunpoint?

He pulled the gun out of his pants and laid it, very deliberately, on the top of the mini-bar, where a small tray table held a wine bucket, two water glasses, and the TV remote. When he laid the gun down she heard a clicking sound as it hit the table. “Do not mess with me,” he said.

“I’m telling the truth. I didn’t find him. I was there when someone else did.”

His hard gaze narrowed on her face. “Who found him?”

“A kitchen helper. She started screaming and backed away. That’s when I went forward.”

“And what, exactly, did you find?”

She shuddered in spite of herself. He’d made the picture flash in front of her again—the shoes sticking out from under the tablecloth and the sad, blank face that seemed so vulnerable without his glasses. “You know what I saw.”

“Tell me anyway, Ms. Diamond.”

Oh, crap. He even knew her name. He probably also knew that she was traveling with the two people she cared about most in the world.

She sucked in a breath. “I saw Dr. Madsen. He was dead.”

“How long had he been dead?”

“How should I know?” Just in time, she stopped herself from blurting, “Didn’t you put him there?”

He tapped his fingertips on the tabletop, too near the firearm for her to think the gesture was absent-minded. He knew exactly what he was doing. He was terrifying her.

He was a bully, and she didn’t respond well to bullies.

“What was he wearing?”

“What was he wearing? Are you his fashion consultant?”

“Do not mess with me.”

“Oh, for heaven sake. He was wearing a tablecloth.”

She had a second’s satisfaction when he clearly had no idea how to respond. “A tablecloth.”

“Well, the tablecloth was covering him. It was the same ones we have in the dining rooms every night. I saw his shoes. And,” she gulped, “his face.”

“Where was his medical bag?”

Her gaze jerked to his. She’d figured out, of course, that this man, the doctor, and whatever was in the black bag were connected, but it hadn’t occurred to her that he wouldn’t know where the bag was.

“I don’t know.”

He tapped his fingers again, the tips brushing the handle of the gun. “You know what was in it?”

She licked dry lips. “No.”

“I don’t know what you think you know, or what game you’re playing, but it would really be in your best interest to tell me where the doctor’s medical bag is.”

“Why would I know?” All of a sudden it seemed ridiculous, her standing here getting bullied by some thug, with a snowdrift of dropped towels at her feet.

“Because you seemed a little too cozy with the good doctor for my liking.”

That was so unfair her jaw dropped. “He treated my mother. When you saw me talking to him outside your suite, I was thanking him.”

“And you were the one who found him. What a coincidence.”

“No,” she repeated. “I did not find him. A kitchen helper found him.”

They seemed to be at an impasse. And she’d had enough. She’d had no sleep, a man had been murdered on her cruise ship, which had also been struck with the Norovirus. She had little time to prepare for the wedding tomorrow and now she had to go back to the salon and get a stack of fresh towels. Assuming she lived that long.

She glared at the thug. “Are you going to shoot me or what?”

She thought a flash of humor crossed the polar vortex of his gaze. “Haven’t decided yet.”

“Well, my boyfriend is a cop, so I can assure you that if anything happens to me or my family, he will not rest until he hunts you down.”

The thug did not look terrified. He said, “Your boyfriend’s a cop?” like he didn’t believe her. “What’s his name?”

She sent him a withering look. “You know cops? They’re your personal friends?”

“I know all kinds of people.” Crooked cops, probably. Well, Luke was many things, but he would never, ever break the law he was sworn to uphold.

“Luke Marciano. Dallas PD.”

He let out a breath. “If I let you walk out that door, what are you going to do?”

“Run to my stateroom and throw up, probably.” She wasn’t kidding either. This whole thing was making her feel sick. Then she’d call Luke, or maybe she’d run straight to the captain and tell him she’d been assaulted, held at gunpoint, and confined against her will. A. Vlodovitch must know that’s what she’d do.

But what he did next surprised her. He picked up a cell phone, put a call in to the Dallas PD, and then he asked for Luke Marciano. He listened for a second, then hung up.

“Your boyfriend’s a detective.”

“I know.”

“He like your smart mouth?”

She raised her eyebrows at him.

He seemed to be debating something, then he picked up his gun and headed for a black case in the corner. She contemplated making a run for it but she’d be dead before she got past the towels.

He returned, not with some instrument of torture as she’d feared, but with a leather folder the size of his hand and flipped it open. She glanced at the shield and back to his face. “You’re kidding me.”

“I’m DEA.”

“Is your name really A. Vlodovitch?”

“Alexei. Yeah, it really is my name.”

“So you didn’t kill Dr. Madsen?”

“No. And I’d really like to find out who did.”

“Are there drugs in that bag?”

He nodded.

“I don’t understand what’s going on.”

“Madsen was smuggling. We knew it and we figured we could turn him and bust the whole ring. I came on this cruise and made the doctor a proposition. He could be arrested publicly and go straight to jail to await trial, or he could deliver the money, get the drugs, and then deliver them to his contacts in Florida. The same as usual. Except that he’d be working for us, and we’d bust the ring. In return, he’d get a reduced sentence. He took the deal.”

“Is that why you followed him on our shore excursion to the Bahamas?”

He glanced at her with something like respect. “Yes. I’ve been sticking with him the entire trip. When people turn once, they can turn again. We were waiting until he made the final drop in Fort Lauderdale, but that’s not going to happen now.”

“So you didn’t kill him?”

“No! I was trying to save his dumb ass.”

“Then who did?”

“I was hoping you might have the answer to that, Ms. Diamond.”

She thought hard. Not that she’d looked very carefully, but there hadn’t been a big bloom of blood on that tablecloth, no knife hilts sticking out, and he hadn’t been strangled. “How did he die?”

“We can’t confirm anything without an autopsy, but one of the other doctors examined him. He found a needle puncture wound and certain aspects of the body that suggest he was shot full of Botox.”

“Killed with his own medicine.”

“Looks like it.”

“But, if the drug ring found out he’d betrayed them, then whoever they sent to kill him must be on board still. And the drugs must be, too.”

“Most likely.”

She sighed and bent to retrieve her pile of towels. “And I thought cruises were supposed to be relaxing.”

After she left Alexei Vlodovitch, she headed straight for her stateroom, relieved to find it empty and she called Luke and told him about her run in with the thug who turned out to be DEA.

“So, if the doctor was murdered on board—”

“Then chances are, the murderer is still on that ship.”

So not what she wanted to hear. “But wouldn’t they jump overboard in SCUBA gear or something? Why wait around when they could get caught?”

“They’d need a killer who was also a diver, a boat nearby, and they risk losing the drugs. I think they’ll take a chance that with so many passengers and crew they can slip the stuff past. They’d find someone who seems harmless. That’s why Vlodovitch suspected you.”

“You think I’m harmless?”

“No. But I know you. He doesn’t.”

“I can’t stand thinking there’s a killer on board.”

“Now you listen to me, and you listen carefully. You keep your head down and your nose clean. There are cops being paid way too little money, but it is their job to find out what happened to the doctor. What is your job?”

Even though it was a rhetorical question she answered anyway. “My job is to make sure my daughter is safe, my mother is safe, and I am safe.”

“Exactly. And what puts you and your daughter and your mother in danger?”

“Luke—”

“You snooping. That’s what puts everybody in danger. Promise me, Toni, you’ll stay out of this or I will have no choice but to fly down there and haul your ass off that ship.”

She had to smile. Sometimes she liked the tough guy in him. “Okay.”

She wouldn’t
actively
snoop, but she’d definitely be keeping her eyes and ears open.

But it was going to be difficult to act like a woman on vacation and not to scrutinize every person on board and wonder if they were a drug ring killer masquerading as a passenger. Or a crew member.

She was checking she had everything for the bridal party when her daughter came in. “Hi, Mom. I’m getting my bathing suit, then heading up on deck. Wade’s grandmother told him to tell me to tell you that she’ll probably come down for dinner tonight.”

“I feel so foolish,” Toni said, “thinking that poor woman was being poisoned. And when I think of the way I barged in there, dressed like a crew member, it’s amazing she spoke to me at all.”

“You were only making sure she was okay,” Tiffany said soothingly.

“ I made a fool of myself. You should have seen me in that coverall. And it turned out it was the doctor who was in danger, not Alicia.”

“Well, nobody every accused you of being too subtle. But you were right. She
was
being poisoned.”

“What?”

Tiffany put her eyebrows up. “Bovine toxin?
Toxin
being another word for
poison?
That’s how that stuff works, you know—the poison paralyzes your muscles so they can’t do the things that cause wrinkles. Like smile, or frown.”

Toni stood there for a second, stunned at her own stupidity. Suddenly, she grabbed her bag. “Where’s Wade?” she asked Tiff.

Her daughter blinked at the sudden change of subject. “I think he’s getting changed too.”

“Get hold of him,” she snapped. “Tell him not to leave his grandmother alone. Not for a second.”

She ran for the door.

“Where are you going?” Tiffany yelled.

“To Alicia’s stateroom.” She only hoped she wasn’t too late.

“Are you deranged? You can’t go barging into that poor woman’s stateroom again. They’ll send the cops to get you, for sure.”

“There’s no time to explain,” she said. “Please. Just do it.”

“But—” Toni didn’t stay to hear the rest. Her sense of urgency was too great.

She sprinted down to Alicia’s suite.

As she did, she realized that things weren’t adding up. A drug ring killer who’d shot the doctor full of a cosmetic drug? Luke’s words hovered in her mind.
Poison is a woman’s weapon.

When she got to Alicia’s suite, she banged on the door, yelling, “Alicia, it’s me, Toni.”

No one answered. She kept banging until finally the door opened and Wade stood before her, looking bewildered, his phone in his hand. “Ms. Diamond. I’ve got Tiff on the phone.”

“Wade, where’s your grandmother?”

He sent her a puzzled look. “She went out.”

“Where? When?”

“I don’t know. Maybe ten minutes ago? Twenty? She got a phone call on the room phone. She stood up suddenly and said she was going out.”

“No. She muttered something, I think it was something about David, her husband, and then she left.”

“I’ve been so blind.” She turned to leave, hoping she wasn’t too late.

“Wait,” he said, “What’s going on? Is she okay?”

She turned, said, “Here’s what I need you to do,” and hurled rapid instructions at him. Then she ran.

She retraced the path she’d taken to the bride’s stateroom the day before yesterday, racing up the stairs because the elevators were too slow. Praying she was wrong even as she grew more certain that she was right.

She pounded down the corridor, past Caitlyn’s suite. She knew the bridal party was all grouped together, but not exactly who was in which suite. She squinted at name cards until she found the one she wanted. Then she knocked on the door.

Nothing.

She banged, harder this time.

Nothing.

“Susanne?” she yelled.

Nothing.

She banged again. “Sondra?”

She waited.

The door opened. For the second time in one day Toni found herself being threatened with a firearm, but instinct told her that this time she was in a lot more danger than the first time.

The woman who had called herself Susanne held a nasty-looking gun. It matched the nasty expression on her face. Toni wasn’t any kind of expert, but this one looked smaller and fancier than the firearm Alexei had threatened her with earlier. “You’d better come in.”

“You look pretty good for someone who’s sick with the Norovirus,” Toni said.

The woman smiled thinly. “I believe you know Alicia.”

Alicia Templeton sat in the single armchair, her face frozen in fear and shock. She stared at Toni. “How did you know?”

“How did I know that Susanne here is really Sondra? The woman your husband is having an affair with?”

“The woman he’s going to marry,” Sondra corrected her.

“Do you really think he’s going to marry the woman who attempted to murder his wife?”

“He’ll never know a thing about it.” She seemed assured, completely in control. Even now, knowing that she was a crazed murderer, Toni saw nothing in her face that would suggest it. Even her eyes looked sane. If anything, she was amused. “Of course he’s going to marry me. He’ll have me and Alicia’s money. It’s not like she’ll be needing it. Sorry, Toni, but you’re going to have to go too. Loose ends, you know. If you’d kept your nose out of other people’s business, you would have lived longer.”

Not the first time she’d been warned about her nosy tendencies, but this was not the time to dwell on her personal shortcomings.

“You killed the doctor.” She made it a statement, not a question, but Sondra answered anyway.

“I didn’t mean to. I planned the timing so carefully. Made sure Wade was out of the way and that the doctor would be finished trying to make the old hag look young again and she’d be tripping on drugs. I’d stick her full of Botox and she’d never know what hit her.” She scowled. “Of course, the doctor would get blamed for killing her. He’d lose his license, get sued, but it was really time he retired anyway.”

“It’s not a bizarre coincidence that you and Alicia are on the same cruise, is it?”

While she talked, she glanced rapidly around the suite. To her horror, she saw a syringe full of liquid sitting on a folded white towel on top of the desk. Surgical gloves sat beside it.

“Of course not. I’ve planned this for months.”

Alicia spoke, her voice almost toneless. “Did David know?”

“No. And he’ll never know. It was a perfect plan.” She glared at Alicia. “And it would be done by now if you weren’t so stupid. Why did you change your appointment?” She turned the gun on Alicia who said, “I ran out of my pills.”

“Moron. I figured she’d be tripping on her happy drugs, Wade on shore and the doctor long gone.”

“I knew that wasn’t a simple theft when Wade and Tiffany were left stranded, all their things stolen.”

“Pretty smart, aren’t you? I set that up before we left Fort Lauderdale. Flew out for a day and found myself a kid who didn’t mind pulling off a simple theft and getting paid well to do it. I gave him half of the money up front and he got the other half when he left those two way up island. I had him post photos to a certain Internet site, then wired the rest of the money. They were supposed to be gone all night, but it didn’t matter, so long as Wade wasn’t around when I paid a visit to his grandmother.”

“You went to a lot of trouble.”

“Of course I did. This is my future we’re talking about. It was all going perfectly. Even the Norovirus helped make it easy for me. I wore a stolen blue coverall and carried a tray of food so anyone would think I was a crew member taking sustenance to a sick person. I was about to inject her when the doctor walked in on me. He pulled me off, tried to fight me.” She shrugged. “I had no choice. Had to stick him instead.”

Toni could see it happening as though she were watching a movie. “You thought, no big deal, you’d just throw him overboard.”

Sondra’s eyebrows rose. “How did you know that?”

Toni wasn’t particularly trying to show off to a murderer. She was stalling for time, hoping Wade had understood her rapid-fire instructions. That he’d believed her. Hopefully Tiff had convinced him that her mom wasn’t crazy.

Everything came down to Wade and Tiffany now.

“You dragged him outside. At some point, his glasses fell off, but I’m guessing you never noticed. He was heavy and you were struggling. You got him out onto the balcony, figured you’d shut the drapes and leave him out there on a lounger until it was dark and the ship had set sail again, then you’d sneak back in and throw him overboard. But when you got out there, you realized you couldn’t do it, could you?”

“Damn balconies.”

“I don’t understand,” Alicia said. She might be terrified, but she also must know that the longer they could keep Sondra talking, the longer they’d both stay alive.

Toni answered. “Remember how you told me Wade used to beg to throw ice cubes off your balcony so he could hit the sunbathers below? If you look down off your balcony, there are others below that extend further out. If you dropped something from yours—like a dead body, for instance—it would land on the balcony below.”

“Oh, I see.”

“So, Sondra had to come up with something else. And you did, didn’t you?”

“I still had the suit. I also had the doctor’s passkey. Nobody was around in the medi-spa, so I borrowed a stretcher on wheels. Hauled him out and down to the kitchen. I figured he’d last in the meat fridge. If it hadn’t been for you, they wouldn’t have found him until we were back in port and all of us off the ship.”

“I can’t believe this,” Alicia said. She put shaky hands to her temples. “You’re saying the doctor’s dead because of me?”

“He’s dead because of Sondra,” Toni said tightly. “She murdered him.”

“And now I’m going to murder you two. You’re pissing me off. I can’t stand the pair of you—entitled bitches. Anything you want to say before you’re fish food?”

Toni glanced toward the sliding doors and Sondra said, “Oh, yeah. My balcony offers an unobstructed trip. But you won’t care. You’ll be dead.”

The woman rose and retrieved the syringe she’d already prepared. It seemed very full to Toni. She knew that cosmetically, the toxin was administered in parts per billion. She suspected a full syringe of the stuff would easily kill both her and Alicia.

She kept her ears tuned, hoping for some commotion outside. But she couldn’t hear anything over the sound of the air conditioning.

“You don’t seriously think you’re going to get away with this?”

“Ah, yeah. I do. I’ve been planning it for months. Even sucked up to that bitch so she’d invite me to be a bridesmaid. I needed to get on this cruise, and I needed cover.”

“But how did you know I’d be on this cruise?” Alicia asked, sounding stunned.

“Oh, please. You think David doesn’t tell me everything? I knew he was planning the cruise with you. He wanted the two of you back together, mostly because he has very expensive tastes and I have very expensive tastes and his income does not nearly cover them. I heard this bitch who goes to my gym drone on about her love life to her friend until they made me sick. But when she said she’d decided to get married at sea, I started thinking. Caitlyn does not keep friends. Plus, it was obvious that she only wanted gorgeous women who weren’t blond to be her bridesmaids. I started acting friendly at the gym. Next thing, we’re besties.” She made a gagging motion, putting two fingers of the hand not holding the gun into her mouth.

“But how could you possibly know she’d choose this cruise? The one Alicia was on?”

Sondra flicked her hair over her shoulder. As much as she wanted them dead, Toni could see that she was dying to tell someone how smart she’d been because she’d sure as hell never be able to tell anyone in the future. “Please, you think Caitlyn chose this cruise?”

Toni replayed the chatter from the afternoon she and her mama had given the bridesmaids free makeup application lessons. “She said you got her a deal she couldn’t pass up through your travel agent.”

“I subsidized all the tickets for the wedding party. Told the travel agent it was a secret wedding gift and forbade her to tell Caitlyn or the other bridesmaids. She didn’t care. She got the business.”

“That must have cost a fortune.”

She shrugged. “It was an investment.”

The ship rocked gently. She recalled an earlier announcement from the bridge that there was a storm in the forecast. An image of her and Alicia, tossed into stormy seas flashed before her but she forced it back.

“But she still didn’t ask you to be her bridesmaid, did she?”