The dining room was almost empty at dinner. Our waiter was absent, replaced by the head waiter.
I didn’t notice until halfway through the meal and asked the others where everybody was.
“Sheila comes up from the depths of thinking serious thoughts,” Bob said.
“Don’t be teasing the girl, Robert,” Catherine admonished. “She’s trying to solve a murder.”
Petronella gasped. “Oh, no. You’re not involved in that horrible thing, are you? I mean I know you found poor Leah, but to get as far away as possible from what happened must be your only wish.”
Catherine made a sound I couldn’t spell. It told Petronella not to be silly using only consonants. “But of course she is. They’re taking that boy off this ship tomorrow and giving him to the officials in the Bahamas as the only suspect. Unless Sheila can unravel the mess.”
Gee, thanks for the pressure, Catherine.
Petronella’s eyes widened to goggling.
“That boy’s being blamed when it’s pure bigotry,” Catherine added.
Petronella blinked. “Bigotry? His race? Nationality?”
“His mood,” I said. “I think Catherine’s saying they’re prejudiced against him because he can be surly.”
Bob laughed and Petronella relaxed.
“As for your question, Sheila,” Bob said, “the rough seas have brought on an epidemic of seasickness. Even laid low our waiter, who, as she told us numerous times, has worked many cruises. We’re one of the few hardy tables intact.”
I suppose the ship was moving more than usual, but it wasn’t that bad.
Though I was grateful for the abundance of railings when we left the dining room. Bob and Catherine headed for another show — “We’ll get the prime seats with the field thinned by this,” Bob crowed — while I declared my intention to go to my cabin.
To think.
Might as well have said to fret.
A lurch sent me grabbing for a railing as a couple stumbled out of the Wayfarer Bar. No way to know who was drunk and who wasn’t, thanks to the ship’s rolling.
Petronella started to come with me to the corridor where our cabins were, then abruptly stopped and said she’d forgotten something.
* * * *
My sheets of paper covered the bed. I’d stared at them to no purpose for a good hour, when a knock sounded at my door.
I felt as if I’d spent every minute since finding Leah’s body running around asking questions. The answers remained a jumble.
Getting up disturbed a few of the pages, but no harm done, since nothing made sense anyway. Then a roll of the ship nearly took me off my feet.
Another knock. Not very patient.
Before I stumbled my way around the bed, more banging rattled the door and Petronella called, “Sheila, Sheila, I have something to tell you.”
I made it to the door by pressing my hands to the walls on either side of the narrow entry for balance.
“What’s the matter? You’re not seasick, are you?”
“No, thank heavens.” She clearly wasn’t. Just as clearly she had far better sea legs than I did.
If the ship rocked and rolled like this the first day, many more than Coral would have fallen, with or without a cane being stuck under their feet.
I stumbled my way back, past the bed, to the sofa. She followed me with no problem, staring at the bedspread of notes as she came past.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to organize ideas about suspects, motives, timing.”
“Oh, dear. All these are suspects?”
“A lot of them are. Because any one of them could have done it.”
“Oh, no.” Petronella clasped raised hands to her chest.
“You do realize it has to be someone on the ship?”
That startled her. After a pause, she said, “I suppose.” Though she appeared to be longing for the possibility of a murderous ultra-marathon swimmer. “But surely someone we haven’t met?”
“That’s possible.”
She brightened.
“Not probable.”
Her face fell. “But why?”
“Murder is most often committed by a person who knows the victim. Stranger murder is relatively rare. One of the things I learned at Aunt Kit’s knee over the past fifteen years.”
She looked puzzled.
“You know Aunt Kit writes mysteries, don’t you?” I asked her.
“Oh, yes. And other little books. Nothing important, like what you wrote, though.”
I felt myself bristling in Kit’s defense. Or in defense of all those “little” books. I’d heard it often enough from the publishing establishment.
Even though, in this case, having “my” book held up as superior to Kit’s was sort of complimenting her … while insulting her.
“Have you read any of Kit’s mysteries?”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t. Tony doesn’t approve.”
Tony was a beer-swilling beer-gutted bully. Why on earth he’d object to her reading mysteries was beyond me.
“Now you’re divorced from Tony, you can,” I said cheerfully.
Her eyes filled with tears.
Before she slid irretrievably into lachrymose, I said, “Aunt Kit’s are excellent, and she does lots of research to get things right. I’ve listened to her tell me about the research and joined her in some of it. We’ve toured police stations and talked to the FBI and ATF and lots of other people to find out about murders.”
“Oh, dear. Murders?”
“Of course.”
“But she writes mysteries.”