The only other men in my life over the course of the last year were Manny DeMarco, an enormous enigma of his own; Trooper Patrick Dawkins, a dishy trooper I’d met last summer and who liked me for me; Joe Townsend, who was already taken (praise the Lord and pass the Ben-Gay); my two pony-sized pups with bad hair and dog breath, and a goofy Appaloosa quarterhorse named Joker waiting for me back home.
Chances were I could eliminate Butch, Sundance, Joker, and the other joker (Joe) from consideration. That left Dishy Dawkins who, as far as I knew, had only met my sister a couple of times last summer, Manny DeMarco, who I just couldn’t see having much in common with Taylor beyond a fanaticism for fitness, and Ranger Rick. My Ranger Rick.
Or not.
I mentally crumpled up my idea of spilling my guts to Ranger Rick. I’d have to switch to Plan B.
And as soon as I had one, I’d do just that.
I made my way to the ship’s Internet center and decided it might be worth the considerable cost of wireless access to see what I could come up with on my prime suspects, David Frazier Compton, Steve Kayser and his best bud, Ben Hall.
I had to wait half an hour for a computer to free up. I typed in
David Frazier Compton
first and got a long list of hits, all of them related to his role as Coral LaFavre’s agent. There were a number of pictures of them together. Coral looked beautiful in many of them, but in an ice-queen sort of way. I came to one entry and frowned. I clicked on it. It was an article from almost three years earlier. An article on Coral LaFavre’s arrest for drunk driving. I blinked when I clicked on her mugshot. Egads. It was worse than the image I saw in the mirror every morning!
I clicked some more articles, finding that every picture of Coral from that day on also featured her agent, David Frazier Compton. I searched for information relating to Compton but found nothing prior to his becoming Coral’s representative. No other clients he repped. No other positions he’d held. Weird. It was almost as if he had done nothing before he hooked up with Coral.
Just for the heck of it, I typed in both Steve and Ben’s names but discovered nothing. Ditto for Courtney and Sherri. I typed in Farley, the name of their hometown, and got several hits. Most led me to the chamber of commerce or the city hall. One headline led me to the local paper.
Lottery prize still unclaimed,
it read.
Clock ticking.
So, Sherri’s little rip on Farley had been grounded in fact. Someone had purchased a winning lottery ticket worth over five million bucks at a local convenience store but so far had not turned it in to claim their prize. The article stated that the winner had until October 11th to come forward with the ticket or it would be too late.
I shook my head. I imagined the flurry of folks frantically searching pockets of jackets and coats, hauling out old purses and dumping the contents, checking in glove boxes and under car seats, junk drawers, and wastebaskets, desperate to find the winning ticket. That was why I didn’t buy lottery tickets. With my luck I’d misplace the winning ticket. Of course, the fact that I had little discretionary income to spend on lottery tickets also factored into my decision not to play.
Before I logged off the computer, I couldn’t resist sending a “R.emember-me-I-find-dead-people” greeting to my boss, Stan the Man Rodgers, at the
Gazette,
making sure he remembered that I would be back bright and early on Monday morning ready to scope out all the news that was news in Grandville (but nowhere else) and adding another little reminder that my office chair had better not be permanently imprinted with the posterior prints of one Shelby Lynne Sawyer, aka Sasquatch to those with more courage than me.
Shelby Lynne and I had worked together on a story last fall that had more twists and turns than my hair after a night of camping out. At over six feet, the red-headed homecoming queen and wannabe reporter was hard to say “No comment” to. Shelby Lynne had her eye on my ergonomic office chair—and my job. I decided to dash off a quick “You-may-be-bigger-but-I’ve-got-a-nose-for-news” e-mail to Shelby Lynne.
Hey, Shelby.
Take heart. Your mentor will be back soon! (Keep that chair warm for me, y’hear?)
—Tressa
I logged off the computer, let the attendant swipe the key card adding to Joe’s bill and left. I’d gone about half a dozen steps when I stopped and slapped a hand to my forehead.
The e-mails! My e-mails! E-mails I shouldn’t have sent. E-mail recipients I shouldn’t remember!
“Shouldn’t you be surfing the beaches and not the Web?” A tap on my shoulder spun me around. David Frazier Compton stood there, flashing a blinding white grin at me. “Trying to discover something?” he asked, and I tensed until he continued. “About yourself, I mean. Your past. To refresh your faulty memory. It’s amazing what you can find out about almost anyone on the Internet,” he said.
Or what you couldn’t when it came to David Frazier Compton.
“I wouldn’t know. I was playing solitaire,” I lied.
He smiled. “A gambler at heart, eh?”
I shook my head. “Word Worm wouldn’t load,” I said.
I told him I was meeting people, excused myself and left, ripping myself a new one for being so careless. (Caution: self-mutilation like this is particularly painful, folks. I don’t advise it.)
I dropped by the lobby area and picked up the daily bulletin Taylor kept bugging me to read. I had a now-they-tell-me moment when I read the warning at the bottom.
Remember, the ship is moving. Please be careful, watch your step, and use the handrails.
Durr.
I checked my watch. A little after eight. I checked the activities listed for eight. Hmm. Coral’s show in the Tiki Lounge had just started. I located the Tiki Lounge on the ship’s diagram and started that way.
I hadn’t gone too far when I got that icky feeling again, the feeling you get when you think you’re being watched. You know, like when you think you’re alone with a roll of chocolate chip cookie dough and you’re just about to slice off a hunk and you get this feeling that someone is watching you. Just watching and waiting for you to show your true colors and to saw off a section and hightail it out of there with no one presumably the wiser. That kind of feeling. Not that I personally know about cookie dough thefts or the like. That example was fabricated for metaphorical purposes only, you understand.
I frowned. Since I was pretty sure I had a serious case of bedhead my pink ball cap couldn’t quite conceal, and my clothes were probably a tad rumpled, I didn’t for one moment suspect someone’s scrutiny of me had anything to do with a gotta-have-a-piece-of-that state of mind. Thus, odds were someone was keeping an eye on me to catch me up in my own little version of the memory game.
Go on, punk. Make my day, I challenged. See if I betray by word or deed that I have a clue. See if I look like I even suspect anything. See if I resemble compos let alone mentis.
I frowned. I was thinking I needed therapy.
Despite my suspicion that I was being followed, I made my way to the Tiki Lounge determined to keep an eye on Coral and, hopefully, find an opportunity to discover her plans for the land excursion tomorrow.
I had hoped to maintain a low profile, enjoy the show, have a glass of anything but grapefruit juice and keep a watchful eye. Yeah. Like that was gonna happen.
“Yoo-hoo! Tressa Jayne! Over here!” someone hissed.
I saw my grandma waving from a table right up front. Naturally. Joe was seated close to her. Coral wasn’t onstage yet. A competent pianist was performing.
I joined the newlyweds, taking care to select a seat with full view of the entrance.
“Hello,” I said. “How are you two?”
“It’s we who should be asking you that,” Joe observed. “How’s the memory? Still MIA?”
“More like AWOL,” I said. “But I continue to hope for the best. What have you two decided to do tomorrow when we dock at Montego Bay?” I asked, holding up the ship’s brochure. “Sunbathing? Sightseeing? Golfing?”
“Snubaing,” my gammy said.
I frowned. “What?”
“We’re gonna snuba,” she said, and I searched for any possible word substitutions that might make sense but came up dry.
“What the heck is snuba?” I asked.
“It’s a combination of snorkeling and scuba diving,” Joe said.
“Oh. That snuba,” I said, ignoring the tremor in my right eye. “Did you clear this with your son and his wife?” I asked, thinking my folks would have a fit if they found out the newlyweds were wanting to get up close and personal with a coral reef.
My gammy shook her head.
“Haven’t heard boo from them two since we set sail,” she said. “I think they’re spending quality time together.” She pursed her lips. “That’s not like my son. Mr. Romance, he ain’t. Takes after your Paw Paw Will, bless his soul. Something’s fishy here and it ain’t got nothing to do with that crab salad they shoved at us for lunch.”
“So you have no idea what my—the parents have planned for tomorrow?” I asked, cringing at the mere thought of my mother and father and shipboard sex. Eeow!
Gram shook her head.
“Probably some stick-in-the-mud, old fogey activity,” she said.
“Hannah here wanted to parasail, but since she has osteoporosis and broke those bones a couple years back, they won’t let her, so we had to come up with something easier on the joints,” Joe said.
“Are you sure you want to try this snuba thing?” I asked. “There are tons of slippery little fish in that water, Gram. Swimming all around you. Nipping at your nose.” I sounded more like freakin’ Jack Frost here, but the idea of my gammy squeezing into a wet suit and stepping into the sea, given her own history of calamities, was not a Custom Cruise moment we wanted to risk taking.
I have to level with you. My reminder about the fish was deliberate—and somewhat underhanded. You see, ever since my grandma fell into the goldfish pond at the zoo and came home with not only flopping flesh but flopping fish in her bra, she’d avoided fish altogether. She forbade me to have tuna in the house. Her poor cat, Hermione, was limited to a chicken-not-of-the-sea diet. Heck, I couldn’t even get her to take advantage of a buy-one-get-one-free fish filet offer at Mickey D’s, and I was forced to eat both sandwiches against my will. Yes, I said forced. (Hey, didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s impolite to snort?) Oh, and by the way, if you see my Uncle Frank, don’t tell him I prefer Mickey D’s filets to his. It would devastate the poor man. ‘Kay?
“Fish? What kind of fish?” Gram asked.
I shrugged. “Cute, slender little fish. And some not so little ones, too, I guess.”
“How many fish?”
“Why, a virtual underwater plethora of tropical organisms, I imagine,” I described.
“Huh?” Gram said.
“Lots and lots,” I told her. “Oh, and do be sure you take an underwater camera and get lots of ‘lovers in underwater tropical paradise’ moments, would you?” I added.
Gram adjusted her brassiere as if recalling the fish fiasco. She looked at Joe.
“Let’s go with Plan B,” she said, and I thought surely it couldn’t be as bad as Plan A.
“Plan B?” I asked.
“The camel trekking safari experience,” Gram said. “Then a hike to some falls.”
“Camels? Since when do you like camels?” I asked.
“Since them fish got too friendly,” Gram said. I winced.
“I was looking over the shore excursion information and I saw a sweet outing and thought immediately of you two,” I said.
“What? Visiting the Montego Bay senior center?” Joe asked.
“Maybe next cruise,” I told him. “No, this one features an air-conditioned drive along the wonderfully scenic and lovely coast of Jamaica and up to this spectacular falls. You’ll enjoy a scrumptious picnic and have a chance to get up close and personal with real live dolphins and still have time to buy lovely little souvenirs for family and friends as you take a leisurely stroll through the craft village,” I said, sounding like the announcer on “Wheel of Fortune” detailing the trip contestants could win.
“Dolphins? Aren’t they great big fish?” Gram asked.
I shook my head. “Actually they’re not fish. They’re marine mammals,” I reassured her. “They’re very friendly creatures,” I added.
“I know what a dolphin is,” Gram said. “I watched
Flipper.”
“How does that excursion sound?” I asked. “Flipper, Niagara Falls, and shopping all in one outing.”
“Whaddya think, Joe?” Gram asked.
“Anywhere with you is romantic,” he replied, giving my gammy’s hand a squeeze. Always the opportunist, he gave me a see-what-you’re-missin’-girlie? look.
“What are your plans for tomorrow, Tressa dear?” Gram asked.
I shrugged. “With things mixed up the way they are, I don’t like to plan ahead,” I said, thinking more about murder plots than memory lapses. “I’ll wait to see how things shake out and decide tomorrow,” I told them.
“You could always snuba,” Gram suggested. “We’ve already booked it.”
As tempting as it was to suck my gut in enough to don a wetsuit and frolic with Gram’s foes amid the coral reef and let the human beings sort out their own issues, I knew in good conscience I couldn’t do that. As much of a long shot that I could prevent a would-be killer from acting out his fatal fantasy as it was, I still had to do whatever I could.
“Thanks for the offer, but I’m just going to play it by ear right now,” I told them. “Maybe you can get a refund, or maybe your grandson might be interested, Joe.”
“Rick’s got a golf foursome planned with his dad, your dad and Craig,” Joe informed me.
I frowned. Did I sense a shirking in the courtship competition?
The lights dimmed and the piano music ended. Coral walked out on the modest stage. In a shiny sleeveless shell teamed with a jacket of the same material and tailored black trousers, Coral LaFavre looked every inch the star—and way different from her mug shot. Her dark hair was pulled up at the sides with shiny black combs, the length of it falling onto her shoulders.