DURING DINNER I did my best to hold up my end of the conversation. That wasn’t too difficult, since I was no longer Margaret Featherman’s principal target. That dubious honor was now bestowed on poor Marc Alley. Casting herself in the role of magnanimous hostess, Margaret saw to it that wine—a high-priced Cabernet—flowed like water. So did the double entendres.
From the moment Marc sat down at the table, I suspected that Margaret had every intention of using him, later that evening, to tick off another notch on her bedpost. By the time the second bottle of Cabernet had made the rounds, I think Marc was picking up on that same message. I don’t believe he was particularly happy about it.
The tipsy looks Margaret beamed in Marc’s direction were about as subtle as a fully loaded Mack truck. And about that enticing. Reynaldo and his assistant waiter, an attentive Portuguese named Joaô, were delivering the crème brûleé when Naomi Pepper, the woman sitting next to me, leaned over and whispered, “If Marc hadn’t shown up, my money would have been on Joaô to get lucky tonight. As things stand, I’m betting Marc is it.”
Startled and struck momentarily dumb by her comment, I glanced furtively in Naomi’s direction, only to have her wink at me. That little bit of byplay was enough to draw Margaret Featherman’s sharp-eyed attention. “Wait a minute, you two,” she said. “What’s going on over there? No secrets allowed.”
According to my scorecard, Margaret was well on her way to being snockered. I was grateful the only kind of driving she’d be doing at the end of the evening would be in the elevator going back to whichever deck her cabin was on.
“Don’t work yourself into a lather, Margaret,” Naomi said. “I was just asking Mr. Beaumont here if this was his first cruise.”
This was, in fact, a bald-faced lie, but I figured my best tactic was to follow Naomi’s lead. “First one ever,” I responded brightly. “If this is how they feed us at every meal, no one is likely to starve.”
Margaret was looking straight at me when I started to answer, but then her eyes wavered and her glance slid away. The back-and-forth movement of her irises told me she was watching someone make his or her way across the room. From the tightening of her bare shoulders and the down-turned stiffening of her lips, I could tell that this new arrival was someone Margaret wasn’t thrilled to see.
“Mother!”
“Why, Chloe,” Margaret Featherman responded enthusiastically. As she spoke, she rearranged the separate features of her face into what passed for a welcoming smile. “How wonderful to see you.”
I looked up and saw at once that Chloe could be none other than Margaret Featherman’s daughter. She was a blonde, unreconstituted, and younger, early-thirties version of her mother, but the resemblance between the two women was striking. In terms of prickly personality, she was evidently a carbon copy.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Chloe Featherman demanded.
“I’m taking a cruise,” Margaret returned. “And don’t be so rude. Say hello to my friends. You know this is the time of year when we always get together. We usually spend the week in Reno. This time we decided to come cruising on the Starfire Breeze instead.”
Chloe Featherman glanced perfunctorily around the table and nodded briefly to each of the women seated there. When her eyes reached Marc Alley, who was fumbling to his feet, napkin in hand, her jaw dropped.
“Marc!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here? You were supposed to sit at the same table with Dad and me and some of the others. We’re upstairs—in the other dining room.”
“I’m so sorry,” he stammered uncomfortably. “There must have been some kind of misunderstanding. When I got to my cabin, there was a message waiting for me about a change in the dining arrangements. The note said I would be at table sixty-three in the Crystal Dining Room rather than upstairs in the Regal.”
With her face a study in barely controlled fury, Chloe Featherman swung back to face her mother. “I doubt there’s been any misunderstanding,” she said pointedly. “And I’m sure I know who it is who left you that message. Stay out of Dad’s business, Mother,” Chloe warned. “You have no idea what’s at stake here.”
“Oh, I know what’s at stake, all right,” Margaret Featherman replied. Her voice dripped ice and so did her eyes. Clearly there was no love lost between this mother-and-daughter duo—in either direction. Moments earlier, Margaret had been flirting with Marc and giggling like a drunken schoolgirl. Now she seemed much older and stone-cold sober.
“It’s the same thing Harrison’s been chasing all his life,” she continued. “Some multimillion-dollar grant, I’ll bet, with a skirt or two thrown in on the side. Marc here was telling us all just a little while ago that he’s along on the cruise as Dr. Featherman’s exhibit A. Which reminds me, how is the lovely Leila? Has she finished up her degree yet? And doesn’t it bother you having a stepmother who’s three whole years younger than you are?”
Muscles tightened in Chloe Featherman’s slender jaw. “It happens that Leila and Dad are very happy together,” she said stiffly. “As you well know, whatever makes Daddy happy makes me happy.”
“How touching,” Margaret returned. “But then you always were Daddy’s little girl. There’s certainly nothing new and different about that. However did you know to come looking for me here?”
Chloe Featherman held out her hand. In it was an envelope with the cruise line’s distinctive logo on it. “I guess no one in the purser’s office thought there might be more than one M. C. Featherman on board the Starfire Breeze. Since it’s marked ‘urgent,’ someone brought it to me at our table upstairs. I opened it by mistake.”
Margaret took the envelope. Without even glancing at it, she stuck it into her purse. “That’s quite all right,” she said. “I’m sure you have no interest in my personal dealings.”
“You’ve got that right,” Chloe Featherman said. Then, with one final glare in poor Marc Alley’s direction, she turned and stalked off. He stood looking longingly after her as she made her way out of the dining room.
“Oh, Marc, do sit down,” Margaret Featherman said impatiently. “Obviously we’re not going to have the benefit of your company for another meal. Chloe will see to that. So we’d best make the most of the time we have.”
Snubbed by the daughter and too polite to tell the mother where to go, Marc sank back into his chair, but he made no effort to return to his crème brûlée. Margaret resumed her role of head honcho. “So what are we doing after dinner?” she said.
“There’s a musical in the theater,” Naomi offered. “That looked like it might be fun. Or else there’s a pianist/comedian in the Twilight Lounge, followed by big band music and dancing.”
“I do so love dancing to all that wonderful old music from the thirties, forties, and fifties,” Margaret said. “The Twilight Lounge sounds good to me.”
Margaret Featherman made her pronouncement with all the authority of a papal decree and with the obvious expectation that everyone else in the group would agree with her. Naturally, they did so at once, with the single exception of Marc Alley, who had nerve enough to raise an objection.
“I think I’ll turn in early,” he protested. “I have an interview with a reporter early tomorrow morning. I should probably get some sleep.”
“Oh, come on,” Margaret insisted. “Don’t be such a spoilsport. Besides, you already told us you took a nap before dinner. We’re four single women who have happened, through the luck of the draw, to come up with something that’s supposedly statistically impossible on board a cruise ship—two eligible bachelors. If you think we’re turning either one of you loose that easily, you’re crazy.”
It looked as though Marc Alley was stuck for the duration, and so was I. And that’s how, a half hour or so later, Marc and I ended up at one of the posh, upholstered banquettes in the Starfire Breeze’s spacious Twilight Lounge. André Morton, the ship’s self-proclaimed pianist/comedian, was six decades and several bushel-loads of talent shy of qualifying as the next Victor Borge. André wasn’t nearly as funny as he thought he was, and it seemed to me that he didn’t play the piano all that well, either. Victor Borge has always been considered something of a national hero in the Scandinavian-stocked homes of my boyhood in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhoods. The old Dane continues to be hilariously funny. Even pushing ninety, Borge plays the piano with a gusto André Morton will probably never achieve. In other words, I didn’t care for the show, and I wasn’t much looking forward to the dancing, either.
It’s not that I can’t dance. When I was in eighth grade, my mother saw to it that I had a year’s worth of lessons. Mother was a single parent who raised me alone without child support and without the benefit of any help or encouragement from her parents, either. She was a talented seamstress who did alterations and repairs for several Ballard-area dry cleaners. She also had a regular clientele among Seattle’s tight-fisted upper crust, who came to our upstairs apartment with photos of the latest New York and Paris fashions which they had clipped from various magazines. From the photos alone Mother was usually able to create wonderful knockoffs at a fraction of the price of the designer variety.
That’s where my dancing lessons came from—Mother’s sewing. She whipped off two or three ball gowns for a lady named Miss Rose Toledo who ran the local dance studio. The next thing I knew, I was dressed in a suit and tie and shipped off to dance lessons at four o’clock every Thursday afternoon for nine whole months—the entire duration of eighth grade.
Looking back, I wish I could have found a way to be more appreciative of what Mother was trying to do for me. Instead, I was a typically sullen and lippy teenager. I remember arguing with her that ballroom dancing was so old-fashioned—that nobody danced together anymore, not since somebody invented the twist. But Mother prevailed, and so I went—sulking all the way.
But that particular night, all those years later in the Twilight Lounge on board the Starfire Breeze, I was grateful she had insisted because dancing, it turns out, is just like riding a bicycle. I may have been rusty to begin with, but I still remembered the moves.
I confess I had my work cut out for me. I was spread thin over three partners while a much younger Marc Alley only had to deal with one. Admittedly, Marc’s was a handful. Margaret Featherman danced with her body glued to his in a way that made it look as though she was ready to seduce him on the spot. I remember Mother warning me about girls who danced that way. Miss Toledo told me much the same thing. Somehow, I don’t think anyone ever got around to telling Marc Alley.
I was taking a turn around the floor to the tune of “Dancing in the Dark” with Naomi Pepper, the plumpish woman who had winked at me earlier. We passed close by Marc and Margaret just in time to catch Margaret nibbling on the poor guy’s ear.
“Reminds me of The Graduate,” Naomi said. “How about you?”
“Marc’s so young that he’s probably never even heard of that movie,” I replied.
For me, that’s one of the advantages of hanging out with women my own age. They know the same jokes and music. We saw the same movies back when we were kids. The generation gap was something that had driven me crazy about working with my last partner, Sue Danielson. She had been so much younger than I was that we’d had major communication problems. Now, with Sue dead, there was no way those problems would ever be resolved.
“Margaret was after Marc to begin with,” Naomi confided, bringing me abruptly back to the dance floor. “Once she saw the stricken look on Chloe’s face when she caught sight of him at our table, Margaret went into overdrive. Poor Marc’s fate was sealed right then, and he didn’t even know it.”
“Isn’t it a little sick for a mother to be in that kind of overt competition with her own daughter?” I asked.
“Margaret and Chloe have been at each other’s throats from the day Chloe was born. Sometimes it happens that way between mothers and daughters,” Naomi added with what struck me as a wistful shrug.
“I take it you have kids, too?” I asked.
She nodded. “A daughter, Melissa—Missy. She’s more than ten years younger than Chloe—and a hell of a lot more trouble. At least Chloe went to school and got a degree. Missy’s getting an altogether different kind of education.”
I thought of my own daughter, Kelly. She wasn’t a problem now, but as a teenager she had marched to her own peculiar drummer. She had run away from home at age seventeen and had wound up living with a young actor down in Ashland, Oregon. She and her husband, Jeremy, are now the parents of my three-year-old granddaughter, Kayla. My son, Scott, is a newly minted electronics engineer with a good job in Silicon Valley. He had brought his girlfriend, Charisse—also a double E—to his grandmother and Lars’ wedding. At the time Scott had told me, on the Q.T., that he intended to give Charisse an engagement ring come Christmastime. In other words, I know that raising kids isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be.
Next up on my dance card was Sharon Carson. She was elegant, beautiful, and an excellent dancer. I was happy to learn that she was far more concerned about looking good on the dance floor than she was about carrying on casual conversation. As a consequence, when I danced with her, there was almost no talking, and that was fine with me.
Last came the redhead, Virginia Metz. After cruising around the dance floor with Sharon Carson, dancing with Virginia was like dancing with a plywood cutout. She held me at a firm arm’s length. “So,” she said eventually, “besides your room and board, what else do you get out of this?”
I was stumped. “What do you mean?”
“Come on, Mr. Beaumont. I know what you’re after. You cruise dance hosts are all alike. The cruise line lets you travel for free as long as you make yourself available to all the poor, lonely single women on board. Meanwhile, you’re hoping to waltz your way into some well-to-do widow’s bank account and/or bed,” she added with a reproachful and unkind look in Marc Alley’s direction.
“I think you’re operating under a bit of a misapprehension,” I said.
“Really?” she returned sourly. “I don’t think so.”
I was building up to some kind of smart-mouthed reply to Miss Poisonality’s pointed comments when a tall man with a thick mane of white hair came pushing and shoving his way through the couples on the dance floor. He ran full-tilt into Virginia’s shoulder, knocking her off balance. I had to use both arms to catch her and keep her from falling. The man, however, didn’t pause or apologize.
“Maggie Featherman!” he roared. “Just what in blue blazes do you think you’re doing?”
Margaret and Marc Alley were on the far side of the floor. As the man came charging up to them, Marc broke away. The look on his face was one of sheer astonishment. Margaret came up grinning from ear to ear.
“Why, Harrison,” she said sweetly. “How good to see you again. What a surprise, running into one another like this! I should have known Chloe would have to run straight back to Daddikins and tattle.”
“Surprise, nothing!” he shot back. “You set this whole thing up to embarrass me. You even contacted the cruise company and changed Marc’s dinner reservation. You’ve no right to do that, Maggie. It’s stalking, that’s what it is, and it’s against the law. When we get back home, I have half a mind to take you to court over it. If nothing else, I’ll at least get a court order to keep it from ever happening again.”
“Come on, Harrison, lighten up. It’s not necessary to cause a scene here. People are on vacation. They’re dancing and having a good time. They don’t need to be exposed to our messy domestic relations.”
“There’s nothing ‘domestic’ about it,” he replied. “This is war, Maggie. W-A-R. And as soon as we get home, you can tell Joe Reston that he’ll be hearing from my attorney.”
“My, my. You really are hot, aren’t you,” Margaret Featherman said with a chillingly superior smile. “And I must say both Joe and I will be shivering in our boots.”
Harrison Featherman glowered at his former wife. “You ought to be shivering, you little bitch,” he declared. “By God, you ought to be!”
By then, summoned either by the bartender or by the sound of raised voices, two uniformed members of the Starfire Breeze crew entered the lounge and were making their way across the crowded dance floor.
“Sir,” one of them said quietly, laying a restraining hand on Harrison Featherman’s shoulder. “I believe that’s enough now!”
The good doctor spun around and focused his fury in a new direction. “Enough!” he repeated with a snarl. “It most certainly isn’t enough—not nearly! I intend to find out who it was at Starfire Cruises who released my confidential travel information to my ex-wife. As soon as I do, I’ll have that asshole’s job!”
With that, Harrison Featherman shook off the crewman’s hand and stalked off across the dance floor. The band, which had let the music die a fitful death during the encounter, seemed to wind back up again, the way my grandmother’s old 78-rpm Victrola would rev back up when I’d grab the handle and give it a few spins. Throughout the confrontation, Marc had looked as though he hoped a hole would open up in the dance floor and swallow him down in a single gulp. Instead, as soon as the music began again, Margaret Featherman—looking totally nonchalant—wrapped both arms around his waist and somehow cajoled him into dancing again. Virginia Metz, on the other hand, heaved a sigh of disgust, turned, and flounced off the floor, leaving me no gentlemanly alternative but to follow her back to the table.
Flopping into her chair, she crossed her arms and shook her head.
“What was that all about?” Naomi Pepper demanded. “What’s up with Harrison?”
“I tried to warn you that coming on this cruise was a mistake,” Virginia replied. “Didn’t I tell you there was no such thing as a free lunch, especially not where Margaret Featherman is concerned?”
“You told us, all right,” Sharon Carson agreed. “I guess Naomi and I were just hoping you were wrong.”