We could hear the shrieks before we reached the end of the dock, and I swallowed hard and shifted from a walk into a run.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Kate said, her heels clip-clopping behind me.
Even though both voices were high pitched and verging on hysterical, it didn’t narrow down the list of possible shriekers. I ran though options in my head: Richard, Fern, Kristie, Jeremy Johns, Mrs. Barbery, the unnamed space healer I still imagined wearing dramatic robes. I just hoped it wasn’t Richard or Fern.
We reached the ship and I ran up the wooden gangway, not stopping until I reached the top and remembered the hard-and-fast rule about not wearing shoes on board.
I smacked my forehead. “Shoes,” I said, hopping on one foot to take them off as Kate nearly ran into me from behind. She muttered something but took hers off as well, and we followed the sounds of chaos.
The voices seemed to be coming from one of the top decks, so we ran up a narrow flight of steps on the back of the boat. As we rounded the corner to the rear outdoor lounge, I stopped short.
Two women stood nose-to-nose screaming, and I didn’t recognize either of them. One wore a white T-shirt and black cargo pants and had her pale hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, while the other had lots of dark, wavy hair cascading loose down her back and across the straps of her white tank dress. Caren stood next to them in her Mystic Maven uniform. From her hand gestures it looked like she was trying to calm them down, but her words were drowned out by the shouting.
Kate looked around her. “Who are these people? Are we on the right boat?”
Before either of us could check the side of the boat for the name, Fern appeared around the corner. He looked impeccable in a slim, dark suit and seafoam green shirt with a matching pocket square folded perfectly into the breast pocket. I took a moment to admire his folding skills since I’d had more than one battle with a groomsman’s pocket square in the past.
“Annabelle! Kate!” He beamed as he ignored the catfight in front of him and rushed to us for air-kisses.
“What’s going on?” I asked, after Fern stepped back from our pseudo embraces.
Fern raised an eyebrow and then started twisting the gargantuan amethyst ring on his finger. “Oh, yes.” He darted a glance at the women, who had stopped screaming and were glaring at each other and breathing heavily. “This is Sonia Romanov-Feinstein, the space healer.” He gestured to the woman in the dress and dropped his voice. “She may be descended from the last Russian tsar, but now she lives in Hoboken.”
“Oh, boy,” Kate said.
“And I’m Janet Evans.” The other woman turned from the spiritualist-cum-Russian-tsarina and held out her hand. “The producer for Diamond Weddings.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said, shaking her hand. This explained a lot. “Why are you on board? I thought you already scoped out the ship the other day.” I couldn’t help but remember Kristie’s first reaction to the film crew coming aboard and had hoped they wouldn’t be making regular appearances before the wedding day.
Janet took a breath and seemed to be picking her words carefully. “We were requested to come on board.”
“As was I,” Sonia said, her fists planted on her hips. “Kristie brought me on for the sole purpose of ridding her wedding venue of negative energy. And all these cameras are throwing the energy out of balance.” She pushed a loose strand of hair off her face. For a space healer, she was giving off some pretty hostile vibes.
I held up my hands. “Okay, okay.” I turned to Janet. “Who asked you to come back?” I tried to sound sympathetic but firm. “You know Kristie has an issue with all this media coverage.”
Caren nodded. “She’s very upset.”
Janet rolled her eyes. “Believe me, I didn’t drag my guys down to the docks for fun. Mrs. Barbery requested we film her first session with her stylist.”
“Jeremy Johns?” Kate asked. “But he’s been here for days.”
Janet shook her head. “No, her personal hair and makeup stylist. The one from Paris.”
I’d forgotten she had a stylist from Paris. Why was I surprised? I glanced at Fern to see how he was handling the competition.
Fern bobbed his head up and down. “Damian. He’s divine. He’s been giving me all the scoop on Babs and her friends and their jewelry.”
There wasn’t much Fern loved more than enormous jewelry and juicy gossip. The combination was his personal Valhalla.
“So if you were with Damian, where’s the bride?” I asked Fern.
He gave me a blank look. “I thought she was with Sonia. The last I knew, they were clearing the negative energy from the main foyer when Damian came in with the film crew headed up to Mrs. Barbery’s suite. Damian admired my ring and we started talking about jewels and the time just flew by and the next thing I knew, I heard screaming.” Fern fluttered a hand to sum up his story, and I tried hard not to let out a sigh of exasperation.
“I can’t wait to meet this Damian guy,” Kate whispered to me. “Since when have you seen Fern like this?”
I had to agree. It was unusual for Fern to be impressed by anyone.
“They ruined our ritual, so Kristie went to talk to her stepmother,” Sonia said. Her voice had become much calmer now and she seemed to be returning to her spiritualist persona. “I insisted this woman remove her invasive technology from the ship, but she refused.”
Janet shrugged. “I have to get the shots. This is a big wedding.”
“Can you shoot in Mrs. Barbery’s suite and avoid the rest of the boat while Ms. Feinstein performs her rituals?” I asked.
“That’s Romanov-Feinstein,” the spiritualist corrected me.
I ignored Kate’s suppressed giggle as I turned to Sonia. “Does that work for you? You can clear the rest of the boat, but just don’t touch Mrs. Barbery’s room.”
Sonia sniffed and gave the smallest nod of her head. “Space healing wouldn’t work in there anyway. I’d need a whole fleet of healers.”
I tended to agree with her. It would take a team of exorcists to tackle Babs Barbery and more time than we had until the wedding.
“Well, I’d better get back to Damian,” Fern said, bouncing on the balls of his feet. He motioned to Janet. “I’ll take you to the suite.”
Fern led Janet away, Sonia disappeared inside the boat ringing her finger cymbals as she went, and Caren mouthed a ‘thank you’ to me as she hurried out of the room.
I let out a breath. “Problem solved.”
“Not exactly.” The woman’s voice from behind made me jump.
Mandy descended the stairs from above with a tall man I’d never seen before following closely behind her. He wore a black polo shirt tucked into a pair of black slacks, and since there was no monogram on his chest, I knew he wasn’t affiliated with the ship. From the ever-so-slight gray peppering his brown hair, I could tell he was about a decade older than most of the staff aboard. I also noticed he lacked a suntan.
“We need to have a word,” the mystery man said, his expression stony.
“This doesn’t look good,” Kate said.
I gulped. When Kate was right, she was right.