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“I can’t believe it!” Claudia gasped.
Wedged between a bench and a life preserver was Chad’s missing sandal.
Claudia recognized it immediately. She had been inexplicably fixated on the dead man’s missing shoe after discovering his body. It had been, she supposed, her way of processing her shock. And now the missing footwear was no longer missing.
“How did it get all the way up here?” Claudia wondered, looking around in confusion.
Chad’s body had been found a number of floors away. So what was his sandal doing on a seldom-used upper deck with no amenities? She stroked her chin thoughtfully as she stared at the sandal.
She turned it over and spotted a small amount of dark red dried blood on the bottom.
With a grimace, she set the sandal down.
“The blood is probably from his fistfight with Kyle,” she reasoned. “Or possibly from a struggle with his murderer,” she added with a shudder.
She turned and surveyed the deck again.
Aside from some cemented-in benches and life preservers, there wasn’t anything of interest up there at all. Over in one corner there were a couple of large laundry bins and a few tarp-covered pallets loaded with miscellaneous supplies. It looked like it was where surplus inventory was stashed. It was nothing of any interest to anyone.
The upper deck was a great place to savor some solitude from the often-congested other parts of the Mermaid Fantasy. It made for a nice spot to admire the view and snap some photos, too. But aside from that, there wasn’t much reason to go up there.
“This would be a good spot to kill someone,” Claudia suddenly realized. It was quiet, secluded and out of the way. There was a good chance those on the lower deck wouldn’t hear a thing even if there was a struggle.
It didn’t make sense to commit murder on one of the lower decks, which were usually busy. It would be far too risky, as there was a very good chance someone would come along and witness the crime.
Claudia looked around for signs of a struggle.
She didn’t notice anything amiss. There were a few scratches and dings on the metal bench, but there was no way to prove or disprove that they were the result of a struggle. They could have been from normal wear and tear, for all she knew.
Chad had been bleeding after his fight with Kyle. It was difficult to know whether the bleeding had stopped by the time he made it to the upper deck - if, in fact, he had been there. Claudia checked for bloodstains but found nothing. It didn’t surprise her. It had rained heavily the other evening, which would have almost certainly washed away any evidence there may have been.
“What would I do if I were in the killer’s shoes?” Claudia furrowed her brow and considered the possibilities. “Well, I would dispose of the body. On a cruise ship, the most obvious way to do that is to toss the corpse overboard and hope the ocean washes it away.”
She began to pace as she thought.
“Tossing a corpse into shallow water isn’t the smartest idea. It would almost certainly wash ashore. And we were close to shore at the time of the murder,” she recalled. “Maybe the killer’s intention was to hide the body until we were out at sea.”
Claudia walked over to the railing and stared out at the water.
“The murder mustn’t have been planned in advance,” she decided. “Otherwise, why not wait for the ship to be out at sea? That would be much less risky than hiding a body. And speaking of hiding a body, how would the killer get Chad’s body from here all the way down to the closet?”
Claudia sat down on the nearest bench and frowned.
“I must be mistaken,” she decided. “Chad was a big guy - moving that much dead weight so far would be difficult. And it isn’t as though the killer could just drag a corpse from floor to floor, obviously. So I guess Chad’s murderer mustn’t have happened here. Unless...”
Her gaze landed on the gigantic laundry carts.
They were easily large enough to stuff a person into and they were designed to handle a decent amount of weight. They were on wheels, which would make transporting a body relatively easy. And most importantly, a laundry cart could be moved from one floor to another without raising any suspicion.
“It’s plausible,” Claudia decided.
Her mind racing, she went through the possibilities.
She was mostly convinced that neither Lucy nor Ashton had been involved in Chad’s murder. It was simply what her gut told her after getting to know them. And she desperately wanted to believe Kyle was innocent. Who did that leave?
“Why would a stranger kill Chad?” she wondered.
Lucy had made it clear her dead boyfriend had been a serial cheater. And the bartender had even remarked that Chad had blatantly leered at her chest earlier that evening.
It was possible - likely, even - that he had drunkenly hit on other women that night. Maybe he had messed with the wrong woman. Maybe she or an enraged partner had flown off the handle and things had spiralled out of control.
If that had been the case, one could expect a violent crime scene.
Violent crime scenes tended to leave plenty of evidence behind.
“It was hard to tell how violent the murder was,” Claudia recalled, the hairs on the backs of her arms standing up as she remembered how Chad’s battered body had looked. “He was roughed up, but all those injuries could have been from his fight with Kyle.”
Claudia hadn’t noticed any passengers, aside from Kyle, with visible injuries. And surely someone who looked bruised and battered would raise suspicion after a murder took place. Therefore, Chad’s injuries were most likely unrelated to his murder.
“The cause of death wasn’t violent,” Claudia said to herself. “Chad was smothered.”
She eyed the laundry bins thoughtfully.
She got up and walked over to them.
The first bin was empty.
The second one, however, had some large plastic dry cleaning bags in it.
Not wanting to contaminate a potential crime scene, Claudia retrieved a tissue from her purse. Then, using it, she gingerly picked up the empty dry cleaning bags to examine them. Most were neatly folded, but the one at the bottom of the stack was rumpled.
And there was dried blood on it.
Claudia gasped and dropped the bags.
She instinctively knew the blood was Chad’s. It had to be.
