Bon Bon Voyage (11 page)

“Cut the Irish crap,” Hartwig replied. “The whereabouts of Mrs. Gross will be my business. Mine and Patek's.”

“Just make sure she doesn't start to smell,” murmured Hanna. “Housekeeping doesn't want to deal with a rotting corpse.”

“We'll need some of those black plastic bags,” said Hartwig when everyone but Patek had gone. “The heavy ones we use to get rid of medical waste.”

16

Because I'd gone to bed early, I woke up early, or maybe it was jet lag still playing havoc with my internal clock. At any rate, I could see light through the drapes, and Luz was fast asleep, as well she might be. I'd never heard her come in. The ship was almost motionless in the water, so I assumed that we were off the coast of Morocco. After dressing quickly in the lightest, whitest outfit I had, I applied more sunscreen than makeup and tiptoed to the sliding balcony doors. And there it was: rippling blue water lightly shaded with pink from the rising sun, and the white, flat-roofed buildings of Tangier climbing away from the Strait of Gibraltar—the Barbary Coast, pirates, souks. I tiptoed back for my wide sun hat and scuttled out of the suite. We were scheduled for the nine o'clock tour, but that didn't mean I had to sit around waiting for Vera and Luz to wake up. What if they decided to sleep in? Well, not me.

Herkule—Didn't the man ever sleep?—caught me on my way to the elevator and whispered conspiratorially, “You know lobster?” I had no idea what he meant. Was
Lobster
someone on the boat? If so, how unfortunate to be named for such a tasty but unattractive creature.

“Lunch is lobster. With pastas. I have snipples from kitchen once. Is many tasteful, so yummy.” He sighed rapturously. “Not to miss.”

Not that I didn't like lobster pasta, but I wasn't cutting short my time in Tangier to get back for it. I thanked Herkule for the tip about lunch—hoping we'd have lunch in Tangier— and took the elevator to the dining room, which was almost empty, only three or four people. During breakfast and lunch, we could sit wherever we pleased. I chose an empty table with a view of the city, shivering with delight at the exotic scene before me.

After glancing over my menu, I settled on crab Benedict, which evidently substituted crab for the Canadian bacon in the traditional recipe. If Herkule asked me about lobster, I could talk about crab. After all, they're both shellfish. With the table to myself, I opened my
Eyewitness Travel Guide: Morocco.
I'd hardly ordered and read my way through the eighth-century Phoenician settlement at Tangier, the later Carthaginian and Roman towns, all BC, and the AD 711 gathering of Arab and Berber forces to sail the Strait and conquer Spain, when the Crosswayses invited themselves to join me.

I'm sure they're very nice environmental types, but I really would have enjoyed my crab Benedict more if it hadn't been accompanied by their agitated descriptions of all the awful things that cruise ships dump into the sea—sewage full of fecal matter and dangerous bacteria, petroleum waste that leaves nasty slicks, dirty gray water from dishwashers and laundry facilities with the accompanying chemicals in the detergents, not to mention other toxic substances. Jason would have been enthralled.

“When we have vacation time, we cruise to see what they're up to,” said Kev.

“But don't tell anyone,” Bev added. “They'd put us off the ship. All they care about is money.”

I gulped down my last bite of crab Benedict, took the last sip of coffee, left the toast, although a luscious looking jam in a pretty periwinkle pot accompanied it, and promised to be circumspect about their mission, whatever it was, aboard the
Bountiful Feast.
Having escaped, I checked my watch, assured that I'd never again feel comfortable swimming in the sea, and just when I was beginning to recover from a terrifying experience of an aquatic nature in Northern France.

With an hour and a half before the tour left, I went back to the suite to see if anyone had awakened. Both Vera and Luz were gone, which made me a little sad, so I wrapped a few of Jason's bonbons in Kleenex and tucked them in my purse, unplugged my laptop, and left to find a nice deck chair on a nonsmoking deck.

I'd consumed a bonbon and written two paragraphs about crab Benedict when a somewhat ursine-looking man plopped himself down beside me and opened his own laptop. “You a writer?” he asked.

“Food columnist,” I replied, peeking at him out of the corner of my eye as I continued to type so that he'd know I wasn't interested in conversation. He was stocky and muscular with rather dark skin, wild black hair, and an English accent. Actually a rather nice-looking man in a rough sort of way. His clothes certainly needed ironing. Perhaps he'd packed for himself. “The ship will iron your clothes if you like,” I couldn't resist telling him.

“I never allow my clothes to be ironed,” he replied. “It's against my principles as a thriller writer and international adventurer. Owen Griffith.” He lifted a broad hand from his keyboard and shoved it in my direction.

Obviously I was meant to shake it, so I did. His grip and handshake were so vigorous I felt that he might have dislocated my elbow, so I withdrew my own hand hastily.

“Food columnist? Doesn't sound like much fun,” he remarked.

“It's my first job, and I like it very much. I even get paid for it,” I replied defensively. I'd heard of Owen Griffith and thought he was a best-selling author, although I'd never read any of his books. “If you're an international adventurer, perhaps you can tell me if a single, elderly woman hiring a taxi in a third-world country would be putting herself in danger.”

“I wouldn't call you elderly,” he replied. “In fact, you're bloody good-looking and younger than I am, I'd guess. What's your name?”

“I wasn't referring to myself as elderly. I'm worried about an acquaintance who plans to skip the tour and—”

“Right. Then she'd be an old fool. Tell her to forget it. It's a bloody stupid idea.”

“Just what I thought,” I replied as I mused on his use of the word
bloody
and came to the conclusion that it must derive from an ancient blasphemy such as
God's blood,
which morphed over time into
s'blud
and so forth. After frowning at Mr. Griffith, I saved my two paragraphs and closed my computer. Perhaps I could catch Mrs. Gross before she embarked on a foolish expedition.

“Where are you going?” he called after me. He sounded rather peeved at my abrupt departure. Ah well, I'd introduce myself properly and explain the history of the adjective
bloody
if I ever saw him again. Perhaps he'd want to excise it from his vocabulary. With only two hundred passengers on the ship, I'd no doubt see him one of these days.

I put a call through to Mrs. Gross's room since the perky young woman at the desk wouldn't give me her room number. However, no one answered. Then I searched for the gangway that led off the ship. There was a desk with a sign that advised passengers to have their personal identification cards swiped before leaving the
Bountiful Feast.
Besides the uniformed officer behind the desk, the ugly security chief was lounging against a wall. He seemed like the right person to talk to, so I approached, introduced myself, and explained my worries about Mrs. Gross.

“Gross? She's that tall, elderly lady who wears a brown dress to dinner?” I nodded. Mr. Hartwig said she hadn't left while he'd been there. “You got a Mrs. Gross signed up for any of the tours, Mark?” he then called out. Mark checked his computer and shook his head.

“Oh, dear,” I murmured. “I've been told that it's dangerous for a single, elderly woman to hire a cab and go off sightseeing on her own. Perhaps you could keep an eye out for her and warn her of the possible consequences.”

“Sure, but she strikes me as a cantankerous old lady,” he said. “She's not likely to listen.”

Remembering my few encounters with Mrs. Gross, I had to agree. Then I recalled hearing my mother-in-law and Commander Levinson talking about how drunk Mrs. Gross had appeared the night before. Perhaps she'd been in her room sleeping off a hangover when I called. She might sleep right through the day and miss Tangier entirely, which, for her, would certainly be the safest thing. How sad that a woman her age, evidently a wealthy woman who could afford anything she wanted, was an alcoholic. “I do appreciate your concern, Mr. Hartwig,” I said politely, and turned to make my way back upstairs. Did one say “upstairs” on a ship? Or was there some nautical term?

17

Last night Dr. Beau and I had gone off to the outdoor bar to toss down a few drinks and swap stories about grisly corpses. I stayed up way too late, slept late, and would have missed the tour if Vera hadn't dragged me out of bed. I didn't catch up with Carolyn until we walked down to the gangway that put us on shore. From there, a bus picked us up and chugged off to a neighborhood that was really crowded— narrow, crooked streets stuffed with people. Tourists, guys in robes, women in tents. And it was hot. Damn. I was going to sweat on today's fancy—Babette called them casual—clothes.

Our guide was a little guy with a white beard, a white robe, leather shoes that curled up at the toes, and a fancy little hat—not one of those black-and-white checkered Yasser Arafat deals. This one was like a beanie that stuck up a couple of inches and had colored designs. Looked like something my
tia
Guadalupe might have crocheted. The guy's voice rattled and grated like my car the time some neighborhood kids loaded the hubcaps with gravel. Little bastards. That was when I was still married to my ex and still a cop.

The guide had a whistle around his neck and told us—I think; I couldn't understand him very well, although he mostly yelled—that we had to line up and stay in line so he wouldn't lose any of us in the alleys or the . . .
soup
is what it sounded like. Carolyn said it was
souk,
like market. Then he handed out scarves to all us women and said we had to put them over our hair. Vera, who was wearing this little cotton hat with a brim, griped about the scarf, and he blew his whistle in her face. Before she could tear the guide's head off, the commander grabbed her arm and told her not to make trouble in a Muslim country.

Carolyn said she, for one, was glad he didn't want us to get lost, and she put on her scarf under this big sun hat and began asking people in our group if they'd seen Mrs. Gross that morning. No one had. The idea was that we should stay lined up, follow the guide when he blew the whistle, stop when he blew the whistle, and listen to what he had to say, all of which interfered with Carolyn's search for the old lady.

“Ex-military,” said Barney, nodding toward our guide.

“Pig,” said Vera.

“They don't eat pigs,” Carolyn added helpfully, and off we went.

Everyone wanted to sell us something, but the guide drove them off and took us into stores from time to time— little, crowded, dusty places where you had to haggle over everything. I got to feel right at home, like I was in Juárez in the central market, the one that burns down every ten years or so. Carolyn took a fancy to this huge copper tray with elaborate designs all over it. She didn't even blink at the price, which was a hell of a lot of money. She told me it was a steal, but Vera said, “Nonsense,” and haggled the guy down to about a fourth of the original price, which was still a lot of money.

Muhammad, or whatever his name was—everyone was named Muhammad or Ali or something like that—congratulated her on her purchase. I figured he probably got a cut on everything his tourists bought. Then he blew his whistle at me because my scarf had fallen off for about the fourth time. I told him if he liked the damn scarf so much, he should wear it himself, and Barney had to intervene. Poor guy probably wished he'd caught a different tour. Still, he really seemed taken with Vera. Go figure. Carolyn got in on that argument herself.

Then damned if she didn't get into trouble in the souk. She was looking at caftans and Berber rugs when she caught three teenagers pointing at us and making remarks that were pretty obviously insulting. Not that I actually knew what they were saying, but if we'd been in El Paso, I'd have expected them to be showing off gang T-shirts and tattoos—your usual teenage macho crap.

Carolyn took offense and demanded that the guide translate, and the dumb shit did: “They say lady with camel-piss hair must be concubine or other bad woman for not covering head.” Whoops! Somehow or other Carolyn had lost her scarf completely, and her blond hair was hanging out from under that big sun hat. Needless to say, she was not amused. In fact, she really lost it. I haven't seen her so mad since she went after Boris Ignatenko in the office at Brazen Babes and he blacked her eye.

She whirled on those kids and really tore into them. “Concubine? Is that how you treat respectable visitors to your country?” She grabbed Muhammad's arm and ordered him to translate what she had to say, and then she lectured the boys about how their mothers would be ashamed of their terrible manners, and her children would never do anything like that because she'd taught them better. She finished them off by saying, “And since you so charmingly commented on my ‘camel-piss hair,' I'd like to say that I much prefer to have blond hair than a camel-piss personality like yours, you nasty little twerps.”

Everyone was trying to shut her up; the guide stopped translating pretty quick and started blowing his whistle, but once Carolyn takes offense, she's bound and determined to have her say, and she did.

The kids turned tail and ran, Muhammad yelled at her, and Vera was so tickled that she gave Carolyn a hug and called her a “woman after my own heart.” Then she called Muhammad “Hitler in a white dress.” Evidently Carolyn didn't get many hugs or kind words from her mother-in-law, because she looked pretty shocked. Muhammad missed the Hitler comment; he just wanted to get us out of there before we caused any more trouble, but Carolyn insisted on staying to buy two caftans. Killington, the guy from Silicon Valley, offered to carry the heavy tray for her. He was lucky she hadn't decided on one of the bright red, wooly Berber rugs. He'd probably have got stuck with that, too.