Was this an unfortunate accident? Or was Charity not the true target of this attack?
After the falling clay pot incident, I offered to escort Charity, Dottie and Flora back to The Dorothy in lieu of the rest of the tour which was scheduled to stop in Salerno for a couple hours of shopping before returning to the ship. We escaped Pompeii by cab-if only its former residents had had that luxury.
Back on board, Flora went to the infirmary to have her scrape looked after, insisting she didn't need company, while Charity led Dottie and me to the nearest bar. The Cowardly Lion was empty that time of day, but early afternoon sunshine filled the cavernous space with a lovely light. We took choice seats near the front of the room, allowing us an unobstructed view of the Salerno skyline, dank and bleak upon our arrival but now bordering on picture-perfect. Circumstances had not been as kind to my client. I studied Charity's face as she sank into her chair. After the trying events of the last several days, she seemed to have lost some of her larger-than-life bravado and bluster. Her hair looked lifeless and dry and her skin seemed to have loosened its hold on her magnificent bone structure. She looked...weary.
"An untenable situation to say the least," she decided, once we were comfortably seated. She regarded me, then Dottie, and, obviously not liking what she saw, proclaimed, "The worst time of any to remain sober!" She snapped her fingers and called out to a young man polishing glasses behind the bar in the back corner of the room. "Carlos, a bottle of anything white and cold and I don't mean water!"
Okay, perhaps she had some bluster left.
"Who is it, Russell? Who killed Morris?"
Was this still about the cat? I like cats, I really do, but there were issues of more import to concern ourselves with here.
Dottie, who had pulled out her knitting, seemed to be reading my mind. "You do recognize a euphemism when you hear one, don't you, Mr. Quant?"
So Charity didn't want to admit out loud that someone was trying; to kill her. But hadn't she done it before? In front of her entire family? I gave Dottie a grateful nod anyway and turned my attention to Charity, wanting to get some work done before she got too deep into the juice. "Let's go through our list of suspects," I suggested without really wanting or waiting for an answer. "Beginning with Faith and Thomas."
"Oh no," Dottie exclaimed, scandalized at the thought, never missing a click-clack of her knitting needles. "Not them."
"I tend to agree," Charity said, though not nearly as quick to dismiss the idea as her spouse. "Faith is a former nun and Thomas a former priest. Not the most suspicious of characters, wouldn't you agree? The changes to my will that I announced would allocate much of my money to the Catholic Church." She stopped there and muttered, "Fat chance!" before continuing. "My sister and her husband are not wealthy people, poor even, but money has never been important to them. So for them, this would not be a horrible thing. If anything, they'd welcome it, imagining all the good it could do."
Fat chance? Huh? "Fat chance?" I croaked, somehow knowing I wasn't going to like what was coming next.
Charity's laugh rang out with the clarity of a church bell. "Russell! You didn't really believe that poppycock about me giving away half my money to those bleeding-heart charities and musty old churches, did you?"
I was astounded; I'm not sure why. Nothing Charity said or did should have surprised me by that point, but given her impassioned "Faith, Hope and Charity" speech, I
did
think she meant to change her will. But it was all a ruse, one of her games, a set-up to get what she wanted. "Do you mean to say you have no intention of changing your will?"
She huffed. "Of course not. Well, with one exception of course."
I cocked my head to one side.
"Well, I think it only reasonable that when you identify my murderer, he or she will be disinherited.
Don't you agree, Carlos?" she said, with a crackling cackle over her shoulder to the approaching barkeeper.
Carlos, AKA Damien to everyone else, delivered a bottle of Ruffino Libaio Chardonnay. He offered a taste but Charity fluttered her hand to quell the suggestion. "Just pour the damn stuff," she ordered. "And quickly."
I gave the poor guy a smile, hoping to soften Charity's abrasive treatment. He smiled back, ever indulgent.
After he filled our glasses and gratefully retreated to his duties behind the bar, Charity downed a couple of ounces before pressing on. "Leaving aside Faith and Thomas, there is their son, Nick. Such a mysterious sort, that one. I've never gotten to know him well, but I do love to look at him. As for Marsha and Ted, oh dear, what a pair, dreadful couple. It has always confounded me that their children turned out as well as they did. Kayla needs a bit of refining, but I adore her spunk, and of course the boys are delicious in every way."
"I understand you and Marsha had words this morning, in the bathroom in Pompeii."
"Oh that! That was nothing. She's gives me the same speech, different version at every Charity Event-has for years."
"Does she threaten you every year?"
Charity tipped her head as if she were agreeing to something of little significance. "Every year, a boring blowhard.
"James is a dithering fool who doesn't know what century it is," Charity moved on. "Patrick is a ghastly geezer, Jackson a hopeless case in a downward spiral. Harry the pleasant result of that questionable gene pool. That leaves Dottie and Flora, who, unless they are willing to commit hara-kiri in order to kill me at the same time as themselves, are as unlikely suspects as the rest of them."
"Are you saying that no one in your family could have done this? Are you saying you might have been mistaken about someone trying to kill you-the incidents in Tunis and Palermo and today in Salerno all simply bad luck?" I questioned, at the same time silently considering another possibility: could there be someone else aboard The Dorothy, someone not part of the Wiser clan, who wanted Charity dead?
Charity let out a mighty scoff. "Don't be ridiculous. Morris is still dead. Someone is responsible. And, of course, there is the matter of the notes under my door, the attack in the marketplace and the near drowning incident, as well as today's murderous flowerpot. All I'm saying, Russell, is that the homogeneity of their innocence makes them
all
the more suspicious."
"That's a very clever turn of phrase, dear," Dottie purred.
"I agree that
someone
is being very clever," I responded, studying Charity's face closely. "We simply must be cleverer."
After seeing Dottie and Charity to their cabin, I returned to mine. Erra
ll had still not returned from
Salerno-shopping fool. I tried calling Flora to see how she was but got no answer. Next, I dialled Richard's suite but he was also away, likely still on a shore excursion with other clients. I hadn't seen or spoken to him since I missed our date the previous night. I hoped he wasn't pissed with me. I slipped into a favourite pair of floppy white cotton pants and a bright red Lacoste and headed to the ship's library to check my e-mail.
When I got there, I was surprised to see Alberta. She was standing alone in an otherwise empty room, looking bored and very uncomfortable in a FOD uniform rather than one of her usual sparkly, jangling getups.
"What are you doing here?" I asked after a hug.
"Most of the ship's staff have at least two or three jobs on board," she explained. "To make our wages worthwhile, they fill our time as much as possible with whatever no-mind jobs that need doing."
"So you're not just the ship's psychic entertainment?"
"I'm also a sous-chef and library attendant." She rolled her eyes. "The ugly underbelly of my glamorous FOD career."
I smiled and shrugged. "It's not so bad, I guess."
She frowned at me. I'd seen the look before. Alberta has told me on countless occasions that my aura is one of the easiest to read. I am an open book to her. That's one of the reasons I don't hang out with her too often: I don't like being read.
"You're worried about the person overboard, aren't you?" she said in a hushed voice, even though no one else was in the room.
"It was a sad thing to happen. Phyllis was a great gal. I liked her. The whole thing makes no sense."
"Why is that?" she asked.
Good question. I was about to answer that Phyllis was one of the last people I'd expect to haul off and jump overboard, but could I really say that? I'd only known her a few days. I knew nothing about her background. Perhaps there were all kinds of crappy things going on in her life that drove her to suicide. I had no way to know. Mary and Rhoda were gone, so I had no one to ask.
About then, as sometimes happens with us curious detective types, a random theory jumped to mind.
"Alberta, is it possible that Phyllis' death wasn't an accident? Could it be that the murderous vibes you were getting during your show were about her, not Charity?"
Alberta's eyes grew wide, two chocolate dots in pools of vanilla. For a moment she said nothing, instead pulling out one of the computer station chairs and dumping her heavyset body into it. I noticed that her uniform was rather tight and where it buttoned up in the front was a row of gaping diamonds through which I could see hints of a hot pink brassiere and pale skin.
"Oh Russell," she said in a quavery voice, taking hold of one of my hands, forcing me down into another nearby chair. She seemed to be going into some kind of trance, first staring into my eyes, then around my head, then into the far off distance before coming back to my eyes. All the while her hands were running up and down the length of my arms. She kept on repeating my name. "Russell, Russell, Russell." She was freaking me out.
"What is it?" I demanded to know, hoping the sound of my voice would snap her out of her psychic shenanigans. "Am I right? Was it Phyllis the voices were talking about?"
Her eyes fastened onto mine like white on rice as she spoke, very carefully enunciating each word.
"Phyllis' death was no accident, Russell."
My blood grew chill. Whether you believe in psychics or not, hearing something creepy like that is still creepy. "So the voice in your head was really talking about Phyllis?" I stated, making sure I understood what she was saying.
She shook her head, locks of hair falling from where she'd tried to restrain them with pink plastic barrettes. She looked surprised at her own words. "No, I...it should be...but no.. .it wasn't."
Crap.
Sensing I was about to get up, her fingers tightened on my arm, her chubby knuckles turning white with the effort. "Wait...there's another thing...something else that was no accident."
I held my breath, my heart pounded in my ears.
"The other boat..." she blurted out, as if the words were coming to her as she spoke them, without knowing what she was saying.
"What other boat?"
"The other boat was not there by accident...it wasn't there for the reason she told you...she lied to you, Russell, the woman lied to you."
Other boat? She? What was Alberta blabbing on about? The only other boat I could think of was...the Kismet. The Kismet showed up just in time to rescue us. It was luck, good fortune. Wasn't it?
"It was not an accident, Russell," Alberta repeated, her face a crumpled sheet of features.
What was she saying? That the Kismet's fortuitous arrival was.. .planned? If that was true, then.. .was the woman who lied to me...Sereena?
A long-legged female in a serious-looking business suit walked into the room. She tossed a slim briefcase onto an armchair with one hand and released her voluminous hair from the confines of a bun with the other. She turned so I could see her face clearly for the first time. She looked like Lynda Carter from
Wonder Woman,
only blonde, complete with oversized eyeglasses and a chest to match. Exhausted after a day of toiling in the office, she collapsed on the couch, first bringing up one leg to remove a spike-heeled shoe (she must have a sit-down job, I thought to myself) then the other. She hiked up her skirt and, after releasing the garter tops with a snap, crackle, pop, she slowly began to peel off her sheer black hose from thigh to toe. Left leg, then right. She pulled the skirt up even more so that now it was a band of cloth around her tiny waist. I could feel a crimson rash begin to grow over my face. The woman was not wearing any underwear and was about to show me why.
"Russell?"
My head whipped towards the door of the cabin where Errall stood, hands on hips, staring first at me then at the TV screen where
Wonder Woman
was now in the process of releasing a couple litres of silicone from captivity.
"Are you watching a pornographic movie?" she asked with a look on her face I'd never seen before, a spicy mixture of astonishment and mirth. "Lesbian porn?"
My tongue was thick and useless.
"Are you pitching a tent in your shorts?"
My eyes shot to my crotch in horror. But it's
Wonder Woman!
All gay guys love
Wonder Woman.