1 Shore Excursion (20 page)

I hated to agree with Gertrude on anything, but
the story
sounded pretty far-fetched to me, too.
There was also the matter of the puzzling argument I had overhea
r
d on the path in the park. I had forgotten all about it because of the events that followed.
So what
was going on with Dr. Sledge and Gladys? What
w
as
Dr. Sledge up to?

Angelo Petrone
had
just finish
ed
skeet-shooting off the aft deck when I found him.

“Nice shot, Angelo. I didn’t know you were a marksman.”

“Not as good as I once was, Sidney, but I try to keep my hand in.”

“Angelo, could I ask you something?
Have you got a minute?”

“Sure thing, Sidney. Here, let’s have a seat, out of the wind. What’s on your mind?”

“Angelo, the other night, when you saw Al Bostick with the dancer, where were they?
You said in the hallway.
Were they near the kitchens?”

“Nah.”
He shook his head.
“They wasn’t nowhere near them kitchens. I passed them on Continental Deck, Sidney, and then they went into his cabin. And that’s the last I seen of him. I don’t know how he got to the kitchens.
It seems funny, don’t it? The way it turned out.”

“Yeah, Angelo, it does.
It sure does.”

Dinner that night was formal and I had a terrible time getting dressed because I just didn’t allow myself enough time. I got shampoo in my eyes
, turning them
blazing red
,
I goofed up my eye makeup an
d had to redo it,
and
I couldn’t find
the
round brush
that made
my hair
behave
.
After
finally
roll
ing
my hair
in hot curlers,
I
grabbed my dress from the closet and discovered that the
hem was out
.
Jerking the curlers out of my hair,
I rummaged through a drawer, found some tape, stuck the hem i
n place, pulled the dress on over my head,
and blasted off for the dining room, hoping that the doors weren’t already closed.

The lights in the big room were
low
, with candles and flowers centering tables overlaid with crisp white linens.
The huge crystal chandelier was dimmed. A harpist was playing, and a
strolling violinist
. W
ine was being poured,
waiters were circling, taking orders,
and the
di
nner service
was about to begin.

I slid into my seat just as Captain Vargos rose to give his welcome toast.

He looked handsomer than ever in
the dark coat of his formal
dress uniform
. The gold epaulets on his broad shoulders gleamed in the candlelight.
S
eated
next to him was a beautiful
young
blond in a silvery blue dress, her perfect hair curling down her bare back.
Her lovely face smiled up at him as he completed
his toast.

Resuming his seat,
Captain Vargos
stared coldly, directly, at me and
then
quickly turned his head
, smiling,
as if
hiding a laugh. He had been staring, not at my face, but at the top of my head.

Reaching up,
I
discovered
the big
plastic
hot roller that
,
in my haste, I had failed to remove from my hair.
Great look,
Sidney
, I thought,
now he thinks you’re
really cool.
I
snatched it out, hoping no one else had noticed.
M
y face
blaz
ed
with heat
as I tucked the stinking thing into my purse.

I
couldn’t
rest
that night, not at all.
I was getting very little sleep on this cruise.
Too
much was
wrong
;
too many bad things were happening
.

I had
made myself
look like a
fool
at th
at
damn dinner, my
love life was non-exist
e
nt
,
and
my boss and my best friend were both mad at me
. Two of my clients were dead
, along with
a random guy I might have
recognized
,
and I
was no closer to
finding out
why
, much less
who
.

I f
elt as if
this whole trip
was inexorably headed toward some terrible end, just
as
our ship steadily plung
ed
at full speed through the dark water.

The ship’s destination
, however,
was fairly certain
;
mine was not.
I was handling
everything
badly
,
acting like an idiot
,
runnin
g around like a chicken with it
s head cut off,
and I didn’t have a clue how to fix
anything
.

If Jay had been there, I
would have w
o
ke
n
him up and
talk
ed
it out until his street smart
s produced
some answers, a real plan of action
. He would have ultimately said something totally outrageous and made me laugh.
But he wasn’t there, and that was my fault, too.

I looked at the clock.
Three
a.m.
I thought
some more.
I looked again.
Three fifteen
. I had been tossing and turning like this, staring at the ceiling, forever. Plus, I realized, I was hungry.
I hadn’t eaten much dinner.
The midnight buffet was long over and it was too early for breakfast, but, hey, it’s a cruise ship.
There’s always food somewhere, right? I could have called room service
—
they have it 24/7
—
but I was ready to get out of
that room for a while.
Maybe escaping the room would also help me
get away from my thoughts.

Now,
I know it was pretty goofy of me to ramble around the silent ship alone at that hour, but I
was sure that
I could be quick and careful, and
after all
, it was three o’clock in the morning.
The murderer was probably asleep, like everyone else but me.
Even murderers
have to
sleep sometime, don’t they?
Acco
rding to Jay and everyone else
, there hadn’t been any mad murders anyway, only a sad suicide, a crime of passion, and a totally unrelated incident ashore involving the grisly death of a stranger.
A stranger who had wanted to
tell me something
. I knew that
much was true
.

But still, I was pretty sure I could get away with
a quick snack run
.
I was starving, and totally sick of that cabin, tired of looking at Jay’s empty bed.

I stripped off my nightgown and pulled on gym shorts and a T-shirt, the first things I grabbed out of the drawer.
I didn’t even consider makeup.
Who would I see at this hour?

As
predicted
, I met no one in the hall
way
, not even Abdul.
S
teer
ing
clear of the elevators
,
I
zoomed
up two flights
and
then
slipped
out on deck
for the
fast
est
transit to the back of the ship.
The deck was deserted, too.
I didn’t linger. The wind was icy, and I was soon shivering in my skimpy little outfit.

T
here was always coffee and
some kind of
snack in the casino
bar
, so I headed there.

T
o reach the casino
from the port deck
, I had to go all the way around the Broadway Showroom
outside
in the cold wind and enter on the other side, or else take a shortcut through the darkened theater, which you really weren’t supposed to do.
But there was no one around to see, so I skirted the brass “Showroom Closed for Rehearsal” sign and pushed open the heavy door.
Signs like that rarely stop me, anyway, unless the High Steppers are watching.

I s
tepped
inside, and in almost total darkness felt my way down the aisle, trying not to
collide with any
thing
as I
headed for the opposite door.

I had just reached the
middle of the
dance floor, just below the stage, when I heard the laughing behind me.

I froze,
stock
still, listening and shiver
ing
all over.
I couldn’t tell whose voice it was
—
whether man or woman
or maybe the ghost
—
or even pinpoint the source of the sound.
I was almost in the center of the big room, and the eerie cackling seemed to be coming from all around me. The laughter echoed and grew louder and louder, booming in the d
imness
. Then I realized that
a spirit was out of consideration unless the spook was
at the
big master
sound board, playing with the
magician’s voice synthesizers and
special effects.
I could just make out a shadowy figure
—
whether man or woman, it was too dark to tell
—
seated behind the big board.
But in the dark?
At three o’clock in the morning?

I inched quietly forward across the dance floor, hoping to creep slowly to the exit and escape unnoticed.

Suddenly I was blinded, surrounded by a pool of white light.
The weirdo
had turned a spotlight on me.
I stood transfixed, in the center of the pool of light, the only light in the room.

Music boomed out, Sinatra singing
“
New York, New York.
”

T
hat dreadful laughter began again, and then a voice,
still unidentifiable,
distorted by the sound system’s special effects, whispered, echoing, through a microphone
,
“Dance for me, little dolly, dance.
Dance
as if your life depends on it
.”

And so I danced.
There in the darkened showroom, in the middle of the night, in the center of the spotlight, I danced
, desperately trying to think of an escape,
until the clapping and giggling and musi
c ended, and the light went out.

And then I ran, and ran and ran, ran like a scalded dog, out of the Broadway Showroom, past the photo gallery, through the arcade, down the stairs, down, down, down, never looking back to see if the banshee was following, until I finally reached my door and slammed and locked it behind me
. I
slid down the door, sobbing, to the floor
,
that horrid laughter
still
ringing in my ears.

During
that headlong flight, I had met no one, seen no one, passed no one, heard no
t a living soul
.
It was as if the ship was not the Rapture of the Deep after all, but instead, The Flying Dutchman.

When I woke, just after seven, I wasn’t sure if the night’s events
had been
real of not. Perhaps, I thought, it had all been a horrible nightmare, a product of my overwrought imagination and the stress of the last few days.

But there were my shorts and shirt in a heap on the floor by the bed.

It
had been
real, a
l
l
right.
It had happened.
I just didn’t know how I was going to deal with it.

I found some aspirin in the bathroom, then lay back on the bed, waiting for the little dwarves in the iron boots to stop jumping up and down in my head.

For a long time I stared at the ceiling, trying to decide what to do
. I
n the end
I
decided to do nothing.

As dangerous as it might be, and as h
ard as it might be, I resolved not
to tell
anyone
what had happened
until I had a better idea of
the big picture.
Telling would
only
cause a big hullabaloo with little result.
There would just be a lot of talk, but no one would do anything.
I knew
all
too well what the official line would be.

Jay would be alarmed at first, but then the image of my command performance would overwhelm him, and for years hence
he
would
tease me about
it.
What a great story to tell over cocktails! He wouldn’t be able to resist.

Could
the puppet master
have been Jay, playing a trick on me
to exact some
twisted kind of revenge?

No,
tha
t
scene
had been too strange even for Jay, and
too c
ruel.
Jay takes jokes
pretty
far sometimes, but he is not cruel
and he has never been mean to me.
Despite our differences,
Jay was one of the few people on board I knew I could trust.

And, I thought, if I remained silent, perhaps whoever had
carried out the prank
would let something slip
;
then I would know who the enemy was.

I had not been harmed, not really, and no one knew what had happened except me and the madman. This thing had to end somehow, and the more I thought about my humiliation and fear, the angrier I became.

My fear had turned me into a performing monkey, terrorized me into dancing for the
amusement of a
n insomniac
fre
ak
.
While I
spent my morning
cring
ing
over the spe
ctacle I had made of myself, that damn
ghoul was probably laughing his head off just thinking about it, or maybe something
sicker
.

But
what about the threat? Dance, if you want to live?
Had I just stumbled o
nto some
kooky
drunk messing around with the sound board or had I been followed into the theatre? Was I being stalked?
Was my tormenter
actually t
he murderer?

Whoa
, Sidney, I thought.
Don’t go down that path.
Nothing but hysteria there.
No, I had to be strong, and brave, and above all, smart.
Careful.
And no more solo midnight rambles!
Maybe I
really did
need to tell Jay what had happened, even if it meant enduring a lifetime of teasing.
I resolved to give that a lot of thought.

But first,
I
had
to find Jay and make up.
N
o way
was
I spending another night alone.