Chapter Five --

 

“I’ve got to get going. We’ve got a couple of pickpockets on the ship and they’re working the passengers. They get busy with the lunch bunch,” Bob announced, squeezing my hand. He gave me an encouraging smile. “We’ll meet up again later and talk some more. In the meantime, we’re keeping an eye out for you, so just enjoy the cruise, okay? If you get the chance, can you give Steve Kablinski a chance to reveal why he’s so interested in you?”

“I can.” It was true. I had an ally on the Beauty of the Seas. Suddenly all things seemed possible.

In the time since Henri’s death, and even long before, I had felt like a tiny boat adrift in a big, unruly sea, victim of choppy waters, unable to chart a course because I knew not how to navigate. There was something about Bob that made me believe my instincts had not been wrong, only my decisions. My doubts about Henri had often been squashed by the power and intensity of my husband’s personality. I had put myself aside so many times because I had been intimidated by Henri’s anger. Bob didn’t seem to find my concerns unreasonable. He didn’t treat me as a fanciful woman, prone to attacks of imagination. He considered my words and tried to decide if they made sense. Somewhere in the middle of our conversation, I found the woman I had been before that fateful day on the Paris metro, but she was older now and much wiser.

The sun was hiding behind a smattering of rain clouds when I arrived in the Sanctuary, an intimate indoor pool area reserved for adults, tucked away on the lido deck. The sunroof was closed to the sky, but the pool was open and there were a handful of bathers scattered around it. I put my tote bag down beside an empty lounge chair and headed to the water, to check the temperature. Warm on my skin, it felt good. Swimming had always been one of my favorite activities. Growing up, my mother had always called me her water baby. There was something therapeutic about floating in water, and I had every intention of taking advantage of the opportunity.

I went back to my lounge chair and pulled out my new copy of “Till Death Do Us Part”, John Ransom Brody’s latest novel about art critic Harry Munsen. I had read the other two in the series and was looking forward to the latest adventures of the debonair amateur sleuth. This time, the subject was the heist at the Orchard Museum, where three Impressionist masterpieces were snatched from their frames in the middle of a tour by armed men in masks. It was pure escapism, and now, in the daylight hours, while I was surrounded by fellow passengers and attendants, I was not afraid to read it.

So wrapped up in the story was I that I lost track of time. When I had read five chapters, I forced myself to stretch and take a swim break. With my room card tucked into my paperback as a bookmark, I laid it down on the small side table. My tote bag was sitting on the cement floor, out of the way, with a bottle of spring water, a small packet of tissues, some sunscreen, and my little makeup case, all the typical things a woman like me brings to a pool. There was nothing unusual about any of the items, nothing mysterious. That’s why, when I returned from my swim, I was shocked to see that the tote bag had disappeared. And then I remembered what Bob had said about the pickpockets.

“You’ve got to be joking!” I exclaimed with exasperation.

“Miss?” A pool attendant hurried over.

“Someone snatched my tote bag!” I thought about the contents. There wasn’t much I couldn’t purchase once we got to Bermuda, but I hated the idea of walking around a luxury cruise ship without makeup. “Damn!”

“I will notify security,” the attendant promised. Sure enough, a few minutes later, a uniformed man in a crisp white shirt, tie, and black slacks, with a name tag that said “Bufumo”, walked through the automatic doors and up to the now-nervous attendant, who pointed to me.

“You reported your tote bag is missing?” said the man with a craggy face who looked anywhere from fifty to sixty. He wore frameless glasses perched on his nose and a tiny American flag on his shirt pocket.

“Yes,” I told him. He asked for a description of the bag and its contents. “Let’s see. It’s a Monet bag from the Louvre, with a scene of red poppies in a field.”

“In other words, it’s distinctive?”

“I guess you could say that. I don’t think you can buy one like it in the States, if that’s what you mean.”

“That is what I mean. But you still have your room key?” I nodded. “Could you just make sure, please?”

I flipped open my book to the last page of Chapter Eight. There was a room card there, but it was for Cabin 657A.

“This isn’t mine,” I declared. “I’m in Room 819!” I handed the card to the man, who examined one side of it and then the other.

“Well, ain’t that a kick in the seat of the pants.” Mr. Bufumo picked up his radio and spoke into it, using a lot of phases I didn’t understand. When he finished, he asked me to accompany him to the security office, to fill out a report. I slipped back into my gauzy beach cover-up and sandals, suddenly self-conscious about showing so much skin away from the Sanctuary. I was going to ask if I could stop at my cabin and change first, until I realized I could no longer get into my cabin. With a shrug, I followed Mr. Bufumo, my fingers tightly clenching “Until Death Do Us Part”.

“This doesn’t seem like just an ordinary theft,” I offered, making conversation with the taciturn man’s unresponsive back. He grunted something in return. “Excuse me?”

“It’s not. Someone was watching you.”

“How do you know that?” I wondered.

“Your room key’s gone.”

“So?” We were entering the employees-only maze of passageways.

“How did the thief know to take your bookmark unless he was watching you? And why replace it with a different room key?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. I thought about that.

“It was a trap, kiddo. You were supposed to confront the passenger in Cabin 657A.”

Bob was waiting for us in one of the larger cubicles. We sat at a long table in wooden arm chairs with casters.

“I don’t understand,” I told the security man as he grabbed his notepad and a pen from the desk behind the table. “Why was it a trap? What is so special about Cabin 657A? Why would the thief expect me to go to that room?”

“Because he left you a message you didn’t get.” Bob took the card from Mr. Bufumo. He looked at it closely before handing it over to me.

“Notice anything?” he asked me. I peered down at the tropical design of the card. I could see the room number printed on the front. Flipping it over, I saw the handwritten message in permanent black marker.

“‘Meet me in the room if you want to know about Henri.’” I read those words and felt an unexpected chill. “Mr. Bufumo said it was a trap.”

“It was. Do you know what’s special about Cabin 657A, Mariem?”

“No.”

“It’s one of the few unoccupied cabins we have on this cruise and it just happens to have a balcony. It looks like the man who attacked you last night is determined to finish the job before we reach Bermuda.” No longer was Bob trying to reassure me that everything was under control. His face was grim. That’s when it dawned on me.

“How did he get a hold of that room key?” I asked, already dreading the answer.

“Probably the same way he avoided showing up on the security camera in the Sanctuary. He’s a professional and he knows our security arrangements.”

“A professional what?” Neither Bob nor Mr. Bufumo answered that question. Stunned by the news, I sat in the chair, wondering why someone was going to so much trouble to get at me. When I voiced that thought, Mr. Bufumo spoke.

“Funny, we were wondering the same thing. If I didn’t know you were a widow, I’d think your husband did it.”

“Angelo was a homicide detective in St. Louis for fifteen years,” Bob explained. “He always thinks it’s an inside job.”

“Spouses are always trying to whack each other,” he shrugged. “It’s the nature of the beast. Did your husband have a mistress?”

The question hit me hard, in the gut, like an unexpected punch from a prizefighter. I sucked in a breath as the emotional blow landed.

“I don’t know. I never thought about it.” The idea of Henri having another woman in his life was a concept I had never confronted. Looking back, there had never been any reason to suspect he was having an affair. There were only business calls late at night. I never came upon him whispering romantic things into the receiver. If anything, Henri was probably the least romantic Frenchman alive. He was cold, unemotional, and uninterested in other people’s feelings.

“A guy like that’s likely to have more than one,” Angelo decided. “The colder they are, the meaner they are, especially when they’re mobbed up. They toss out their women like used tissues. They’re real bastards.”

“The question is why is this guy so bent on killing you? Who benefits from your death?” Bob wanted to know. I didn’t have an answer for him. “Do you have a will?”

“Declan just told me last week I should revise it, but I didn’t have time to sit down and go over everything, especially since I still don’t know what happened with Maura’s handling of the insurance money.”

“How much did you get after Henri died?” Bob asked. He whistled when I told him about the two-million dollar policy.

“I didn’t even know that my husband had done that. And then, when Maura’s advice was sour on Prevenue, I transferred a lot of the money into gold and other precious metals, even though she insisted that wasn’t a good idea.”

“You overrode her advice to you?” Bob looked at me with fresh interest.

“Yes. Declan told me these things often happen when you’re dealing with that much money, but I was afraid I would lose even more if I didn’t have a safe investment. I didn’t really care if there wasn’t much of a return on it.”

“How much of the two million did you put into precious metals?”

“About $650,000. All together, Henri’s estate was worth about three and a half million, with the sale of our home. I didn’t think it was a big deal to put some money aside for a rainy day, just in case my other investments went bad.” Angelo folded his arms and gave me a big whistle.

“Hedging your bets because you don’t trust your financial planner. Interesting.”

“I only used Maura Trelawney because Declan recommended her.”

“Did she have access to that investment?” Bob made some notes on his pad. I saw him draw dollar signs for emphasis after he scribbled a word I couldn’t read.

“It wasn’t part of the portfolio she was managing for me,” I told the men. “I’m the only one authorized to handle it.

“Independent. Did you also buy your new place yourself?” Angelo inquired.

“Yes, I did. Declan actually didn’t think it was such a great idea for me to move to New Rochelle. He argued against it. He wanted me to move into his place, but I felt like I needed something of my own. My plan was to get back to work as an artist, and I needed studio space.”

“So that’s not part of any kind of trust?” I shook my head and Bob went on asking me questions. “Do you have a mortgage on the place? And are you the owner of record?”

“I paid cash for it and yes, it’s in my name.”

“How much did you pay?”

“A little over half a million dollars. It’s a two-bedroom, two bath place with a den.”

“So, out of about three and a half million dollars, you’ve got control over a little more than a million of it directly, with the rest in the hands of the person managing your finances?”

“Yes.”

“Who took over from Maura Trelawney, after she was murdered?” I could tell Bob’s interest was whetted.

“Her replacement at Oracle was Lorena del Gatos.”

“And you sat down with her, to go over your financial situation?” Angelo was equally curious.

“Actually, she canceled the first meeting we scheduled because her mother was sick in Miami and she had to fly down there. Then, we had a second meeting set up, but she said it would be best to wait, because there were three major stocks in my portfolio that were undergoing transition because the corporations were being reshuffled.”

“What kind of stocks were these?” asked Bob.

“Two were banks and one was a telecommunication company.”

“So? When did you meet with her?”

“I didn’t, actually. When I tried to schedule a third meeting, after the first two were canceled, she told me she had to be in Hong Kong for a conference, but she would be in touch when she returned. That was three weeks ago. I got busy with the cruise, so I haven’t gotten back to her yet. But she’s sent me monthly reports on the account. I’m making a little profit with most of the stocks. She actually suggested I turn in the precious metals now and consolidate the portfolio at Oracle.”