“I’m Cealie Gunther. I went to school with the woman you all picked up from the iceberg.” I handed him my driver’s license and sailing card.
He took forever to write the information, while I peered helplessly at Gil. He stood beside a large rack of mysteries. His gray eyes met my gaze, his face giving away nothing about Tetter’s fate. Possibly he didn’t know it.
I did a quick scan of the room.
A number of passengers sat on sofas and chairs. All looked apprehensive and checked us out, maybe wanting to learn about our connection to Tetter, exactly like I was wondering about them.
And why was Gil here?
“You’re with her?” the guard asked Jane, returning my license and card. He put a hand up in front of me, which seemed to mean I should wait with her.
“Yes, we both went to school with Tetter.” Jane handed him the card with her information, glanced at Gil, and gave him a little wave.
Tight lipped, he nodded in return.
The officer gave back Jane’s things, and I stepped aside, ready to rush to Gil. I needed his arms around me and his sturdy chest on which to rest my head.
“Come this way, please,” the officer told me, extending his hand toward the door we had entered.
I peered back at Gil and shrugged. He gave me a small reassuring smile before I followed the officer out the door. The crowd parted for us, making comments. I kept my eyes forward. I did not want to see faces of people I would try to avoid later. My leader spoke into a small device I couldn’t see well and said words I couldn’t make out.
Three rooms down the hall, a door opened to Conference Room C. A bulldog of an officer with unyielding eyes let me in. My guide departed.
“I’m Mitchell Hayden, in charge of investigating what happened to your friend. These are members of our security team.” He swept his arm around to indicate men and women in uniform around the room. I’d seen many of them getting information from passengers when we entered and left the ship. One was a bartender at the Ginger Bar. “Please sit,” Hayden said, pulling a wooden chair back from a table.
I sat. He took the chair next to me, a tape recorder, pen, and pad at his place. “Do I have your permission to tape our conversation?” he asked, and I nodded. He pressed a button on the recorder. Saying his name and mine and the date, he again asked for permission to tape what we said, and I agreed.
“Why am I in here alone?” I asked, then glanced at all of the other guards and back at him. “You know what I mean.”
“We’re questioning people who had some connection to our guest who was found on the iceberg—people who knew her and those who might have seen her last.”
“Tetter Hargroove. She’s my good friend. How is she?”
Lips tight, he sucked a breath of air in through his nostrils. “I’m not at liberty to say at this time.”
“Then at what time can you say?” I shouted, shoving my hands into the air. “At nine o’clock? Ten? When? She’s one of my dearest friends,” I said and considered that statement. I’d seldom seen Tetter since our graduation. “At least she was in high school. I need to know if she’ll be all right.”
His Adam’s apple slid up and down as he bided time. His gaze remained speared against mine. “I can tell you the doctor is still examining your friend.”
Tears bit my eyes. Sudden relief flooded through me when he called her my friend, not
the body
.
“We are questioning people one at a time,” he continued, “and want to know everything you can tell us that might help in our investigation of what happened to her.”
Words bubbled from my mouth. I told about when I’d first met Tetter in ninth grade. Jane had called me over to come into this circle of kids in the schoolyard at recess. Tetter was there, having everyone’s attention, a sparkle in her eye as she told a joke, and all of us had laughed. She had given me a huge smile. Later that week, I’d seen her in the hall and introduced myself. She’d hugged me and made me, at fifteen, glad I attended that school. She’d been the life of the crowd, cheering up everyone, a friend to every person she met.
He jotted notes on his pad, maybe not wanting to listen later to everything people said on the recorder. He might be noting comments he thought could be important.
“And she continued to be cheerful and friendly with everyone all through her life?” he asked.
I nodded, then stopped. “I’m sure she was. I hadn’t really had a lot of contact with her these last years. But people don’t change much, do they?”
“You tell me.” His gaze nailed my fingers, which I quit moving once I noticed his stare at them. I wanted to squirm but figured he would consider me guilty of something.
“She’s been having a major problem,” I said, and then told about why I’d decided to come on the trip. He questioned me more, and I gave details about trying to pry into her difficulties so I could help, to no avail. “But our good friend Jane Easterly, who’s Tetter’s roommate on the trip, tried and didn’t get anything out of her, either.”
He pushed, asking about my experiences with Tetter during this cruise, and when I’d last seen her. Exhaustion in my brain extended into every tissue of my body by the time he dismissed me from the room.
“We might call on you again with other questions,” he warned.
Out in the corridor, I peered toward the library, where Gil and Jane and those others still waited. I couldn’t get in there if I wanted to, I figured, seeing the crowd still gathered around that door an officer guarded. Voices mumbled from the group. A woman noticed me leaving the conference room and pointed. People raised excited voices.
I stamped away in the opposite direction. I’d prefer to shove through that crowd and reach Gil. I’d rest my head against his shoulder and feel his reassuring hand massage my back. He’d know what I needed.
What I did not need was more questions from all the people waiting for answers and snapping pictures of me, and I didn’t need reprimanding from the guard at the door. I limped away from all of them, my ankle aching. I needed to know what happened to Tetter. My gosh, I’d come aboard this ship to help her.
Needing to leave this deck, I stepped into an elevator’s open door.
“Good morning. You’re going down. What deck?” a buff man inside asked.
The question made my shoulders tense, my brain numb. Where was I heading? I needed to go somewhere. My stateroom? No, too depressing to stay alone now.
“Uh, that one,” I said, pointing one button down from the lit one.
“You’ve seen enough beautiful mountains and ice this morning?” he asked, and I nodded, wishing I could stop envisioning the woman draped over an iceberg.
“I’m picking up someone and then going up higher. You have a good one,” he said, holding the door open so I could get out first.
I nodded and aimlessly walked, hoping useful ideas would take hold. On the wall beyond the restrooms, signs pointed to room numbers fore and aft. I walked the opposite way, where art lined the walls. The pieces lost their appeal and now all looked gaudy.
Reaching the base of the Grand Atrium, I was satisfied to find few people. The atrium’s wide-open expanse felt less confining than my room would. I went for a heavily cushioned sofa, needing all of the comfort I could find.
Sue strutted from a hall of staterooms looking sharp in dressy casuals.
“Sue,” I called.
“Hey, where are you going?”
“Do you know what happened?” I dreaded telling her.
“To Tetter?”
“Yes. You heard?” I felt my eyes squeeze together and forehead tighten. An ache started in my right temple and wrapped itself around my scalp, squeezing as quickly as a python might snag victims. We were talking about our precious lifelong friend.
“I saw her down there.” Sue’s mouth pinched into a frown. “What a pity.”
“It’s awful.” I grabbed her in a hug.
She patted my back and stepped away.
“Did you go upstairs and tell the security team what you know?” I asked.
“What do you mean, what I know? I don’t know anything.” Her stance stiffened.
“I don’t mean you’d know anything about her fall. I mean what you know about her as a person. If you haven’t yet, you should go to the library and tell them you know her. They’ll ask questions, and you can tell them about our friendship and meeting her on the ship. Or anything else you might know about her, like when you last saw her.”
Sue jerked her head back. “What are you insinuating?”
It took a moment for what she meant to sink in.
“Darn, Sue, you’re my aunt. I’m not suggesting a thing. I just think you ought to talk to the security team if you haven’t already done so. I did.”
Tension in her face relaxed. “Oh, you spoke to them? Then I don’t need to. I don’t know anything more than you do. She died. That’s it.”
“Died?”
My pulse stopped. Breaths trapped in my throat.
“You don’t think she died from that fall?”
“Oh, nobody told you she was dead?” I breathed again after Sue shook her head. “Until I hear anything official, I can hold on to hope that she made it.”
“Whatever makes you happy.” She glanced at the few people in our area. “I’m going outside to see the sights. Want to come?”
“Not now.” I watched her flounce off toward the door to the outer deck. Drawn to the paisley printed sofa, I plopped, instantly satisfied on its soft cushioning. What did not make me satisfied was Sue’s belief that Tetter was dead. I chose to believe otherwise. I closed my eyes, trying to shut out the glittery lights and marble staircase and moving people and classical music, and I called up prayers for my friend.
“Are you Buddha?” a man asked.
I snapped my eyelids apart. “Randy.”
“You looked mighty funny with your eyes closed and hands together in your lap like you were praying.”
“I was.”
“Good. I guess I should still do that. Hey, you want to do lunch?”
“Lunch?” I asked, surprised that it might be time to eat.
“Or dinner, whatever you call it.” He glanced around the atrium. “I haven’t seen anybody else in our group yet.”
Surely he meant Tetter. And he hadn’t heard.
I patted the section of sofa beside me. “Sit down a minute.”
He sat, and I took a breath. “This morning—”
Loud voices and commotion from cameramen and women lugging huge cameras and other bulky equipment in from outside snagged our attention. Members of the ship’s staff escorted them. One man wearing a GNZ News jacket trained his camera on the opulent atrium. He moved his focus along the glass elevator carrying passengers and aimed up at the massive chandelier. Their story of the passenger who fell from this ship might start by showing much of its beauty. And then they would move to the awful part about Tetter down on the ice.
“I wonder what that’s all about,” Randy said.
I snapped my head toward him, unable to believe he didn’t know, and gripped his cool hand. “You didn’t hear that someone from our ship fell overboard?”
“You’re kidding.” His eyes narrowed in a look of disbelief. “When?”
“This morning. Or—I don’t know. Yes, it must have happened early this morning since our ship was still near her.”
“Her? A female?” He leaned back, drawing his hand away from mine.
How could I tell him, especially since he seemed to care so much about Tetter? Maybe he was in love with her.
She’s okay. She’ll be all right,
I repeated to myself. I swallowed. Sucked in a deep breath. Considered how to tell him it was Tetter.
The cameraman swooped his lens down from the ceiling and trained it on us.
I swung my face away. For long minutes, I kept my head turned, a strong pulse beating alongside my scalp.
By the time I determined the camera had moved away from us, I had formulated questions. I peeked and saw the film crew moving on.
“Randy, you really never heard anything about a person falling?”
“I knew that guy fell in the stairwell not long after we left. I think he died.”
“He did.” I envisioned his hot-pink shirt as he lay crumbled on the bottom of the stairwell. “His name was Jonathan Mill.” I said a quick prayer for Jonathan.
“You knew him?” Randy asked.
“We met.”
The Executive Chef swept into the atrium, the tall hat announcing his presence. He aimed toward the area where the news people had gone.
Should I speak to him now? Courtesy said I should. And maybe I could learn more about Tetter.
“Mr. Sandkeep,” I called, making him pause. “Thank you. I really appreciate the gift.” I forced a smile but couldn’t muster a real one.
He stared at me and glanced at Randy beside me. The chef’s brows knotted. Before I could take steps toward him, he gave me a brief nod and moved on.
Randy peered in my face. “Oh, well, I guess you’re not telling what that’s all about.” He shoved up to his feet. “I didn’t have breakfast, and I’m starving. You want to come up and eat?”
“Not now.”
“Okay. See you later.”
He ambled away. I might rush after him and tell him it was Tetter who fell. But something kept me in place.
He would know soon enough. And maybe it was best if he didn’t discover the truth yet. Her husband needed to know what happened to her. And Randy probably needed to know as much as any other person from our class.
Besides, I wasn’t yet certain of her fate.
The door that the camera crew entered opened again. Men and women wearing jackets sporting large letters of a popular national news station carried in more equipment. One man had his camera rolling as he stepped inside. He’d most likely started by taking exterior pictures and then some inside. And then he and the others would go above, probably getting pictures of all of the passengers waiting around the library.
An ache jabbed in my chest. It squeezed my lungs and pushed heat up to my eyes. Tears struck cheeks. Hot, angry tears. My friend Tetter had a major problem and I’d come aboard to help her solve it, but now she was…
“Cealie.” Gil stepped toward me, arms open wide.
I ran and welcomed them around me.
He held me tight, his breath brushing against my hair as he whispered, “You know she’s dead.”
Chapter 19
I let my tears heat Gil’s chest and trembled inside the strength of his arms.