Ransom at Sea (14 page)

“Welcome to Golda's,” said a raspy voice as Ransom, Emily, and Lynn came through the door.

The voice belonged to a rather wide woman who barely made the five-foot mark. She had black hair interwoven with white threads, cheeks that were doughy both in color and consistency, and black, bloodshot eyes that were magnified through the thick lenses of her glasses. She waddled up to them, cradling a stack of menus in her arms. “There's three of you?”

“Yes,” said Ransom.

“You want a booth or table, I guess.” Despite the fact that the place was nearly empty, she sounded as if it would be a great inconvenience if he assented.

“Yes. A booth, if possible.”

It was a moment before she moved. She blinked once, her enlarged lashes brushing the back of her lenses like frayed windshield wipers. She then pivoted and led them around the corner into the dining room. Ransom couldn't tell if the walls were actually painted blue or it was merely the result of the sunlight filtering through the tinted windows. The booths had vinyl seats the same shade of pink as the stools, repeated again in the Formica table tops. Only three of the two dozen tables were occupied.

“You might as well have this one,” the hostess said, coming to a stop at a choice booth at the center of the side window. She peeled three menus off the top of the pile and unceremoniously dropped them on the table, then waddled away.

“You go in first,” Emily said to Lynn with a smile, “that way I won't have so far to slide.”

Lynn complied, shifting herself over to the window somewhat gracelessly, then Emily sat beside her. Ransom took his place across from them.

A rail-thin, pockmarked waitress in a pink uniform with a blue apron approached the booth with the tip of her pencil already poised on her small green pad.

“This all one check?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Ransom. He ordered eggs and bacon, and Emily ordered a club sandwich. Lynn declined any food at first, until Emily insisted that she eat in order to keep up her strength. Lynn consented to have the same as Emily, and the waitress slumped away.

“So,” said Ransom, folding his hands on the table, “why don't you start at the beginning and tell me what happened?”

Emily started to say something but Lynn cut in. “First of all, Rebecca didn't do it!”

Her two companions looked at her.

“That's what I'm here to look into,” said Ransom.

“It's no good unless you have it right from the beginning,” said Lynn, surprised at her own intensity. “You have to start out knowing that Rebecca didn't do it!”

“You seem awfully sure of that.”

“I am sure! She couldn't kill anyone, let alone her aunt.”

“You're fond of her?”

Lynn's cheeks turned red. “I like her.”

“I see.”

Her eyes flashed. “No, you don't see! I don't know her well, but I do know that she adored her aunt. She wouldn't have killed her.” She glanced at Emily and her redness deepened when she saw something close to pity in those aged eyes.

“So, Emily,” said Ransom, “all you told me on the phone was that this woman had been murdered, and you thought the police were interested in the wrong person. Possibly. Do you have a—” His eyes shifted for a split second in Lynn's direction. She was looking down at the table. “—particular reason for thinking that?”

Emily adjusted herself in her seat. “I suppose I do, but nothing that you would call conclusive. I imagine it's possible that Miss Bremmer killed her aunt—” Lynn raised her eyes and started to say something, but Emily headed her off. “I know, my dear, it would be a terribly hard thing to accept, but I'm talking in terms of conjecture.” She turned back to Ransom. “As I said, I suppose it's possible. Marcella Hemsley had become—through no fault of her own—a difficult and rather disagreeable woman, and Miss Bremmer was facing the prospect of putting her in a nursing home, a thing she was loath to do. I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility for someone in that position to…” She allowed her voice to trail off, finishing with a suggestive shrug.

“You mean mercy killing,” said Ransom.

“But she loved her aunt!” Lynn objected.

“Exactly. She loved her very much. We all witnessed how patiently and devotedly she cared for her aunt.”

After a beat, Lynn looked away from her, and Emily turned back to Ransom.

“You see, a few things have happened in the two days we've been gone that, in lieu of any sort of explanation, look a bit odd. Now, if Rebecca did indeed kill her aunt, then I suppose none of these things really matter. But if she didn't kill her, then there are things that need to be looked into. And you see, Jeremy, Sheriff Barnes didn't quite see the importance.”

“And what are these little things you're talking about?” Ransom asked.

She shook her head slowly and gave him a self-deprecating smile. “I'm afraid you're going to think I'm very foolish.…”

“I doubt that.”

“Well—”

They were interrupted by the arrival of the food. The waitress held a plate in each hand and had the third precariously balanced on her left forearm.

“I remember you're the odd man out,” she said as she placed the dish full of eggs and bacon in front of Ransom. She then put the other two plates in front of the women.

“I'll be back with coffee,” the waitress said over her shoulder as she walked away.

“This looks very nice,” said Emily, eyeing the three-decked concoction that had been cut into triangles, each of which was speared with a toothpick topped with crinkles of colored cellophane.

“You were saying?” Ransom prompted.

“Oh, yes. The first thing might've been a dream—at least in part, because I'm almost sure I was at least partially awake.” She related what she remembered of the anxious conversation on the white deck, then told him of the meeting she'd witnessed between Stuart Holmes and the stranger, and the stranger's reappearance that night on the dock.

Ransom had been listening to her thoughtfully. “I wouldn't think it was that unusual to run into someone you know in Sangamore. And, having done that, would it be so odd for his friend to visit him later on the boat?”

“But the way that guy acted at the dock,” Lynn cut in. “He turned his face away when he passed under the light. Emily called it furtive, and that's certainly the way it looked to me—like he was afraid of being recognized.”

A new thought occurred to Emily. “Recognized … or described. He did look familiar to me, somehow.…” She lost herself in thought for a moment, then shook her head. “But Jeremy, that in itself wouldn't seem strange except for one other thing: the stranger showed up here just as we all set off on our hikes. And he went into the general store where Stuart Holmes was waiting.”

“Hmm,” he said, raising his right eyebrow a fraction of an inch. “Is there more?”

“Well, of course, the big event—other than the murder—is that the night before last, our first night out, Marcella woke everyone on the boat screaming that someone had been in her room.”

“You don't think she was a reliable witness.”

Emily shook her head. “Wholly unreliable, I should think. But I wouldn't dismiss the possibility that there really was someone in her room—even though it may just have been one of the stewards looking in to check on her.”

“She accused David Douglas,” Lynn said, her brittle tone surprising the detective.

“Did she?”

Lynn smiled for the first time since the murder had occurred. “I wish you'd stop doing that.”

“What?” he asked innocently.

“Responding to me as if I'm the world's most questionable witness.”

“I'll be glad to oblige … if you'll tell me what you have against David Douglas.”

The smile disappeared and her jaw hardened. “Nothing. He's just a pest.”

“How so?”

“He … just is. He's one of those overly friendly people who don't have a sincere bone in their bodies.”

He turned to their elderly companion. “Emily?”

“He's quite an ingratiating young man,” she said with a hint of a twinkle in her eye.

“You are perhaps the only woman I know who could make that sound damning.”

Lynn said, “But Becky's aunt did say it was David she saw.” She paused, then added grudgingly, “But it couldn't have been him. The captain himself—and yes, before you ask, he is a reliable witness—said that David followed him and his wife into the corridor where the passenger cabins are.”

“Yes, he did say that,” said Emily, “and I'm sure the captain was being completely honest. But that doesn't mean that it wasn't David Douglas who was in Marcella's room.”

“If someone was,” said Ransom.

Emily nodded. “Granted.”

“How is that possible?” Lynn asked.

“Well, we were all woken from a sound sleep. It took us all a bit of time to respond to Marcella's cries, and I'd image even longer for the captain, whose cabin is at the other end of the boat. The boat isn't all that long—surely if it was David that Marcella saw, the moment she woke and started screaming he would've taken off for his own cabin.”

“How long are we talking about here?” Ransom asked.

Emily offered a genteel shrug. “Before anyone got to the corridor? I don't know … thirty seconds? Sixty seconds? Maybe longer. It wouldn't take nearly that long for someone like David to have run to the back of the boat.”

“Wouldn't he have been heard running?” Lynn asked.

Emily shook her head. “I don't think so. Not in the confusion.”

“All right,” said Ransom, “so we have the incident in the night, the stranger visiting Stuart Holmes, and the conversation you think you overheard but might have dreamed. Is there anything else?”

Emily raised her head and looked off in the distance as if something were niggling at the back of her mind. “There was one other odd thing … if I could remember what—” Her face suddenly brightened and she looked Ransom in the eye. “Oh, yes. It seems very unimportant—and it probably is—but it struck me as peculiar at the time. When we were in Sangamore, Lynn and I met Marcella and Rebecca for dinner at a pub.”

“A pub?” Ransom echoed with a grin.

“Yes. It was very crowded, and far in the back of the room there was Claudia Trenton, who has made a point of keeping herself aloof from her fellow travelers—which in itself does make me wonder why she would choose to come on a trip like this, since a certain degree of camaraderie is to be expected.…”

“Emily…”

“Oh, I'm sorry. Claudia was having dinner with Bertram Driscoll.” Having imparted this bit of information, Emily took a bite of her sandwich.

“Is that significant?”

She finished chewing and swallowed. “That's just the thing. I don't know if it is or isn't. Miss Trenton and Mr. Driscoll are polar opposites, and the last people one would expect to see dining together under any circumstances. It was just another thing that struck me as not quite right.”

“But he explained that,” said Lynn, who had been eying Emily curiously as she'd related this.

“Yes, he made a point of explaining it, when it wasn't really necessary.” Emily's brow knit slightly. “I would've thought Claudia would've been the one who would want to explain.…” Her face cleared. “But, no matter. The other thing is, Mr. Driscoll was the one who woke me up when I was overhearing the conversation on the deck.” She paused and looked at Ransom significantly.

“I see,” he said, nodding. “So since Claudia was the only one on deck, it's reasonable to suppose she was the female voice you heard, and Driscoll was the one she was talking to.”

“It's possible. It would be unlike him to be so quiet, but it would make another instance of the two of them together, in a situation that could be thought questionable.”

Ransom was looking down at his half-finished eggs and slowly drumming his fingers on the pink tabletop. “And you told all this to Sheriff Barnes?”

“Yes, and he didn't think anything of it!” Lynn snapped.

“Well, in all honesty, Lynn, if I didn't know Emily, I don't think I'd make much of it, either.”

Emily sighed. “I'm afraid it does all seem rather inconsequential. And as I said, if Rebecca is guilty, it all amounts to nothing. It may do that either way. But if she's innocent, then these things bear looking into, don't you think?”

5

Ransom wasn't at all sure that it did warrant looking into. Emily was usually unfailing in her ability to sense when something wasn't quite right, but she herself readily admitted that on this occasion her observations seemed trivial. Ransom could sympathize with Sheriff Barnes … and yet, even the sheriff had sensed that something was wrong with the setup.

A half-overheard conversation, an encounter with a stranger, the wrong people dining together: things that might have the ominous quality of the beginnings of a nightmare where minor occurrences are infused with an inexplicable foreboding before something terrible happens.

But that was exactly what happened, wasn't it?
Ransom thought.
Minor forebodings, and now a woman is dead.
With an inward sigh he admitted to himself that Emily was most likely right.

They dropped Lynn off at the sheriff's station, then headed south for the dock which was a little over a mile away.

“This isn't exactly going to be an easy task, is it?” Emily observed.

“Well,” Ransom replied, “I can question Holmes about his friend, of course. As for the rest of it, I don't know what point there would be in asking Trenton and Driscoll about their dinner, since they'd just give me the same explanation he gave you. And if there was something fishy about it, asking them would put them on their guard. Are you sure it was Claudia Trenton you heard on the deck?”