Birds of Prey : Previously Copub Sequel to the Hour of the Hunter (9780061739101) (35 page)

“It was hard work—took us all day long to do it, but we were a bunch of young turks back then with more muscles than brains. By late afternoon, we set fire to all those tires and took off. We sailed back into town yust as everybody was going crazy because they were sure the volcano was gonna blow. They were about to fly in a volcano guy from the U Dub down in Seattle when somebody finally came up with the bright idea of having a volunteer fly over Mount Edgecumbe in a helicopter to check things out. When the authorities discovered it was all a put-up deal, they were pissed.”

“I should think they would be,” Beverly Jenssen sniffed disapprovingly. “After causing that kind of fuss, I'm surprised you didn't end up in jail.”

Lars laughed. “I am, too. As far as I know, nobody ever let on that we were the ones who did it.”

The after-dinner show that night was
Pirates Aweigh
, a bad musical revue loosely based on a pirate-ship motif. Not only were there beautifully costumed dancers in need of rescue from wicked pirates, there was also a troupe of Chinese acrobats. They sprinkled the entire performance with improbable headstands and cartwheels that had nothing whatever to do with the rest of the show. But then, the physically astonishing contortions of the acrobats made no more sense than did any of the singing and dancing numbers.

By the time
Pirates Aweigh
was finally over, Beverly and Lars, along with Claire and Florence, were ready to call it a night. Naomi and I left the four of them in the elevator lobby while we headed back to the Twilight Lounge for one more bit of
Starfire Breeze
night life.

“I get the feeling the people they hire for shipboard entertainment, especially the ‘writers,' aren't exactly the cream of the crop,” I groused.

“Lighten up,” Naomi returned lightly. “Don't be so critical. Everybody else enjoyed the show immensely.”

“There's no accounting for taste,” I said.

In the Twilight Lounge, Dahlia Lucas was singing once again, and her music only served to make things worse. Talk about a one-track mind. My internal struggle continued unabated. I had offered Naomi Pepper a safe harbor for the duration of the cruise with the understanding that the haven came with no strings attached. At least, I hadn't intended there would be strings. If she wasn't feeling the same urges I was, I didn't want to pressure Naomi or give her the idea that I was taking undue advantage of her precarious situation.

On the other hand, if she was interested, I worried about whether or not I could deliver the goods. As far as romance was concerned, I hadn't exactly been playing the field of late. As a matter of fact, I felt as if I was totally out of the game. When Dahlia Lucas launched into her sultry rendition of that old Judy Garland standby “What Did I Have I Don't Have Now?” it did nothing at all for what was, by then, a severe case of performance anxiety.

Talk about taking the coward's way out. When Dahlia finished her first set, I gamely suggested we stick around for the second.

“No,” Naomi said firmly, making up her mind for both of us. “It's been a long day. Let's go back to the room.”

“How about a walk around the Promenade Deck?” I figured a cooling-off period would do me good.

“Are you kidding? It's still pouring rain out there. Let's just go to the room.”

And so we did. I unlocked the door and let Naomi go inside first. When I stepped into the room, I expected it to be in more or less the same condition it had been in when we left it hours earlier. Not completely the same, of course. I was sure Hector would have come around by then and done his evening turndown service. I expected to find the sheets folded back and for us to have chocolate mints strategically placed on our newly fluffed pillows. What I didn't expect was that the room would be completely rearranged. The twin beds had magically joined themselves back into one. The turndown service had been done, all right. Two sets of heart-shaped mints were waiting on pillows placed at the head of a decidedly king-sized bed.

“Wait a minute,” I objected. “I had nothing to do with this.”

Naomi turned to me and smiled. “Of course not. I came up here during intermission and asked Hector to fix it. I didn't think the two of us would fit on one of those twin-sized beds, do you?”

She walked into my arms then and kissed me again. This wasn't at all the kind of congratulatory buss she had given me earlier in the Twilight Lounge when we went up to the stage to accept our trophy coffee mugs. No, this was exactly the kind of sexy, head-spinning kiss the tango had promised to deliver—that and then some.

“Wait a minute,” I objected when I came up for air. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I'm sure,” she said confidently. “Sure enough that I stopped by the gift shop and bought some of these.”

She opened her hand. Concealed inside her palm was a package of Trojans, the same brand I had purchased earlier in the gift shop. When I roared with laughter, Naomi frowned in annoyance.

“What's so funny?” she demanded. “Using protection isn't a laughing matter. It's one thing to ask you to go to bed with me. The problem is, I'm also asking you to go to bed with whoever Gary may have gone to bed with during those last few months before he got so sick that he couldn't screw around anymore. The man may be dead, but I still don't trust him any further than I can throw him.”

“That's not why I'm laughing,” I told her. “Look.”

I reached in my pocket and pulled out my own discreetly wrapped package of Trojans. Naomi's mouth dropped in amazement. “You bought some, too?” she asked. I nodded. “At the gift shop?”

“That's right.”

“No wonder the girls behind the counter got such a kick out of it,” Naomi said indignantly. “They kept giggling and whispering. I was embarrassed and thought it was extremely rude. In fact, I had half a mind to report them for it.”

We laughed about it some then together. After that we sat down on the love seat. I don't know how long we stayed there, alternately talking and necking. It could have been an hour or it could have been three, but by the time Naomi stood up and announced it was time to go to bed, I was in total agreement. And as it turned out, I needn't have worried about my performance. Making love is just like riding a bicycle. No, it's much, much better.

Afterward, I fell asleep and slept like a baby. I awakened in watery early-morning light with the strange scent of someone's perfume and shampoo in my nostrils and with the unaccustomed sound of someone snoring gently against my shoulder blade. I felt the comforting warmth of a naked body cuddled along my back. All that was good. The telephone sat on the bedside table, inches from my face. The orange message light on the phone was blinking steadily away. That was probably bad, but at least I'd had the presence of mind to turn the ringer off.

When I reached for the phone, Naomi groaned and wrapped one arm tightly around my chest. “Don't,” she said.

“Don't what?”

“Don't take that message. Whatever it is, I don't want to know about it, and neither do you.”

“I've got to,” I said.

“Go ahead then,” Naomi said. “Just don't expect me to stay here and listen.”

She got out of bed, wrapped herself in a robe, and disappeared into the bathroom. I called the voice-mail number and found there were three messages. One was from Lars and Beverly. They would be going to breakfast early in the Regal Dining Room, and did I want to join them. Later they would be going into Sitka, where Lars was anxious to show me some of his old stomping grounds. They both hoped I'd agree to come along on the trip.

The second message was also from Beverly and Lars, only this one was meant for Naomi. They invited her to breakfast and then to come on the trip to Sitka as well. In other words, the jig was up. In leaving a message for Naomi, Lars and Beverly had no doubt figured out that the two of us were staying in the same stateroom.

They were bound to find out sooner or later
, I told myself.
I suppose it could just as well be sooner
.

The third message made no sense at all. It was the from someone named Michael at the purser's desk who had left the message on the voice-mail system at 1:43
A.M.
“A woman named Dulcinea called,” the taped voice said. “No message. We offered to put the call through to you in your stateroom or to voice mail, but she said that wasn't necessary. She said she'd be seeing you tomorrow—make that today—in Sitka.”

After those three messages finished playing, Melissa Pepper's saved message came back on. I ended that one without listening to it again. I had pulled on a pair of pants and was sitting on the end of the bed still puzzling over the third message when Naomi emerged from the bathroom. Her hair was brushed and pulled back from her face. When she sat down next to me, there was a hint of mouthwash and newly applied perfume in the air.

“Good morning,” she said, snuggling up beside me.

“Good morning.”

“Who was it?”

“Beverly and Lars want to know if we'll join them for breakfast in the Regal.”

Her eyebrows went up. “They know I'm staying here?”

“They do now. They left one message for me and another for you. I'm sure they're smart enough to notice that it's the same room. They also want to know if you'll go along on a trip into Sitka. So do I.”

“But what about . . . ?” she began.

“Todd Bowman? Call him and ask him. All he said was you had to have his permission.”

“But it seems so stupid—like having to get a pass from your teacher to go to the bathroom.”

“Ask him,” I urged.

“All right,” Naomi said after a pause. “I will.”

“The last message must be for you instead of me,” I added. “Who's Dulcinea?”

Naomi shrugged. “What are you doing, checking up on my liberal arts credentials? Dulcinea is Don Quixote's girlfriend—you know, as in Cervantes. Sancho Panza is his sidekick and Dulcinea is his idealization of Aldonza, the whore. She's the focus of Don Quixote's romantic love, his ideal woman.”

“She's not someone you know?”

“Of course not. Why?”

“Never mind,” I said. “It's nothing. Do you want to go to breakfast or not?”

“Do you want a truthful answer, or do you want me to lie?”

“Truth,” I said.

“Wouldn't you like just one more quick roll in the hay before we go out to face the world?”

“Is that a trick question?”

It wasn't, and we did. By the time we showed up in the dining room, Lars and Beverly were already finished with breakfast. I was glad to see that a combination of time and deftly applied makeup were working their magic. Beverly's black eye was far less apparent.

Naomi and I had coffee and juice and hoped the looks on our faces didn't give too much away. Lars greeted us by asking if we had caught sight of Mount Edgecumbe—the seat of his youthful triumph—as we came up Sitka Sound. We both admitted that we had been too busy just then to be doing any sightseeing.

“Damned horny kids,” Lars muttered under his breath. I hope I was the only one at the table who heard him.

“What about the meeting then?” he asked. “Have you heard about that?”

“What meeting?” I returned.

“Word's gotten out on board about Mike Conyers and that other woman, the one who fell off the boat.”

“Margaret Featherman?”

“Right,” Lars answered. “That's the one. Anyway, people are upset and worried. Their kids back home are worried, too. Since two passengers have already died on this cruise, people are starting to call the cruise-ship office because they're afraid their parents may be in danger. So the captain has scheduled a meeting in the theater in twenty minutes to give whoever wants one a briefing on what's been happening. It should be over before we put in to Sitka.”

I glanced questioningly in Naomi's direction. She shook her head. “You go if you want,” she said. “Whatever I don't know isn't going to hurt me.”

“Right,” Beverly agreed. “We'll let the men sort those things out. That's what we have them for, isn't it?”

Twenty minutes later, Lars and I were seated in the plush velvet seats of the
Starfire Breeze
's Starlight Theater. It was just as well everyone hadn't come along. By the time the cruise director stepped to the microphone to introduce Captain Giacometti, the place was jammed with a standing-room-only crowd.

“I'm sure you're all concerned about what you have heard, and it is true, there have been some unfortunate happenings on this cruise,” the captain said. “Because Starfire Cruise Line is fully committed to cooperating with the authorities, the FBI has been called in to investigate. I can assure you that no one on this ship is in any danger, but in order to put your minds at ease, I would like to call on FBI Agent Todd Bowman. He will be glad to give you an overview of what has happened and to let you know what measures are being taken to see to it that nothing more out of the ordinary happens in the course of this cruise. Mr. Bowman.”

Todd Bowman, looking uncomfortable, stepped to the microphone. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'll get straight to the point. On Monday evening, while the
Starfire Breeze
was off Port Walter in Chatham Strait, a passenger named Margaret Featherman fell overboard.”

The words “fell overboard” made it sound as though Margaret had gone for an unfortunate little swim of her own volition. That was something less than the whole truth. Obviously Todd Bowman's briefing was going to gloss over the gorier details.

“In the case of Mrs. Featherman, the Coast Guard has been summoned and is conducting a search. So far we have found no trace of the missing woman. Because there was a Chatham Strait black-cod opener scheduled to begin the next day, a large number of fishing vessels are known to have been in that area. The Coast Guard has been making regular announcements on Channel 16 asking for all fishing-boat crew members to be on the lookout for her. So far none has reported seeing her,” Bowman continued.