1 Shore Excursion (15 page)

I bit my tongue and followed in Gertrude’s wake to my shore excursion group waiting on
C Deck
, thinking that the
mysterious
Chilean deckhand
had
really got
ten
it wrong.

He had snuffed the wrong High Stepper.

T
he High Steppers waited impatiently in the sun while Phillip Wu and the Murphys took at least
five hundred
pictures of the
statue of The
Little Mermaid.
The graceful statue
is certainly beautiful and
beloved by the Danes,
but nobody needs that many pictures of her. Gertrude finally barked at them to stop.

“Enough, already. Get back on the bus. You’re wasting our time!”

For once, I think everyone was secretly cheering for Gertrude.

Every now and then someone steals the lovely little mermaid from her rock but somehow the Danes always find her
,
fix her and put her back. She has become a national symbol and is a monument to the enchanting tales of
one of their
native son
s
,
Hans Christian Andersen.

We climbed back on the bus and Kirsten, our very knowledgeable local guide, continued her narrative.
“Copenhagen
was
once
a fortified city with high ramparts
, surrounded by
a deep moat.
As you can see,
it
is
now
a city of canals
. Her citizens actively
use the canals, sometimes
even
living on them in houseboats.”

The bus crossed a bridge and we looked down on a derelict boat where a scantily-clad woman with long blond hair
tended potted plants.
A thin, bearded man, naked except for some bright purple shorts
and some impressive tattoos
, was smoking something that probably came
from the plants.

I heard my old biddies
fussi
ng
behind me
,
clucking
about the Danish hippies
,
and I
reflected
that it might not be
such
a
bad
thing
to be
sitting
on th
at
beat-up boat in the
bright
morning sun, wearing an old bikini, listening to
the
blues
, sippin
g a col
d
one.
Instead, I roll
ed
over the cobblestone streets in the bus with the High Steppers as Kirsten continued her narrative.

“We will soon pass the magnificent Christenborg Palace, now the seat of the Danish Parliament.
In olden times, Denmark was an absolute monarchy.

“Before long we will be leaving the city and traveling to the north of Denmark, where we will be visiting some of the
most
famous castles of the Danish kings and nobles, inc
luding the
highlight of the tour, the
very beautiful Kronbo
rg Castle at Elsinore.

“Legend has it that Kronbo
rg was the castle of Shakespeare’s famous Danish prince, Hamlet.
Whether or not the legend is true, I’m certain that you will enjoy such a beautiful castle, situated along the narrow stretch of water dividing Denmark and Sweden.

“Across this narrow strait, the lord of the castle once stretched a giant chain
to
stop passing ships and demand
that they
pay a toll.

“Now if you’ll look to your left, just beyond that wall
...”

I was no longer listening.
Kirsten knows her stuff, and I usually enjoy what she has to say, but
with the
sudden deaths of two of my clients
,
I had a lot on my mind.

So much that I pulled the little black plastic knob, reclining my seat, and shut my eyes,
worrying, worrying,
tuning out the tour as we rumbled through the gates of the ancient city.

The bus left the tarmac and entered the long driveway leading to our first castle.

Looking back at the High
S
teppers, I caught the Murphy
ladies
watching me and whispering
. I
knew that they and probably Gertrude Fletcher
—
seated alone
across from them
—
had been talking about me.

It happens every trip.
Gossip about the tour leader is either an occupational hazard or one of the great unadvertised pleasures of a group tour, depending on your perspective.

When we reached the first castle,
Kirsten counted us off and then led the way across the drawbridge into the courtyard, waving her red umbrella for us to follow, brightly explaining the finer points of medieval Danish architecture.

In her wake, the High Steppers
picked their way
carefully across the uneven stones, slowly moving single-file past the ticket-taker through the massive south doors of the castle keep.
Jerome Morgan impatiently pushed
his way
around
the shufflers
to go
through the gate
ahead of them
.

Chet Parker joined me on a bench in the courtyard
and
lit a cigarette.
“You don’t mind, do you?”

I shook my head.
“No. I don’t do the smoking sermon.
Not my style.
Your lungs are your own business.
I used to smoke.
But don’t you want to see the dungeon, Chet?”

“Too boring.
I like my dungeons with lots of torture machines, racks, iron maidens, stuff like that. This one just has mice. I’ve been here before.”

“Really?”

“Yep.
Several times.”
He unbuttoned his cuffs and folded them back carefully, perfectly, above his wrists, exposing tanned arms and a Cartier watch ... real or faux, I couldn’t tell.
“Empress didn’t tell you about me?”

“No.
Tell me what about you?”

“Glass Slipper.”

“Oh.”
I guess I should have known, but I don’t handle the financial end of the group trips.
The sales agents and accounting do that.
By the time I get the passenger list the final payments have been made.

Empress Lines’ Glass Slipper Host Program is one of a number of similar deals that some cruise lines quietly maintain to ensure that lonely ladies have a good time on their vacations.
Each line has some cheesy name for it.
Around the office, we just call them all Gigolo Program
s
.

The way it works, an attractive, articulate man is offered a substantial discount on the price of his cruise.
In return, he is expected to dance a lot and charm the ladies, particularly the lonely, elderly, or unattractive ones, ensuring that they leave the ship at the end of the voyage in a rosy, romantic glow, eager to book another cruise.

The dancing hosts are screened, somewhat,
and
supposedly given a
background check
.
Mild flirtation is allowed and even encouraged.
Serious involvement, which might lead to repercussions for the line, is not.

Sometimes
,
though, a rich widow returns from her vacation with the ultimate souvenir, a boy
toy
.

Blond, handsome, and fastidious, Chet Parker was a perfect Glass Slipper Host.
I should have known.

“They don’t exactly fit in
with the High Steppers
, do they?
”
Parker
said. “
Neither one of them has spent over two minutes with anyone in the group since we left New York.
”

Following his gaze, I spotted
Mr. Silent
—
Jerome
Morgan
—
standing
high
on the ramparts, looking out to sea
with binoculars
, his yellow shirt rippling across his
big
shoulders in the wind.
Morgan seemed intent on something in th
e distance.
Fernando Ortiz
, in
a dark blue windbreaker, stood beside
him, shading his eyes with his hand.

“No, they don’t,” I said, “but that’s not unusual.
There are always a few
who
don’t fit.
The tour price attracts them.”

“It would attract me.
Cheap is the only way I can go
.
I couldn’t vacation like this at all if I had to pay
full price.
I love European travel, but I really don’t have the money
,
” Parker said. “Without my discount I wouldn’t get any f
a
rther than Fire Island.”

He stood
to
crush
out his cigarette, and then sat back on the bench beside me.

“But I’ve gotta tell you,
Sidney,
” he said, “this trip is giving me the creeps.
First that old lady offs herself, then Bostick screws the dancer and gets himself killed. I don’t know.
It’s
getting
weird.”

He brushed a strand of hair back from his forehead and took his designer sunglasses from his pocket.

I didn’t say anything, just leaned back against the cold wall of the castle,
admiring it
s
beauty
and
smelling that unmistakable, musty ancient stone smell, mingled with a faint whiff of
tobacco and Chet’s
cologne.

“What do you think really happened to Al, Sidney?
Was it
really all
about the dancer?”

I wondered if I could trust him. After all, he did sort of work for Empress
and
supposedly
had been
checked out.

“I don’t know, Chet,” I said finally. “I just don’t know.
But you would think that
in
a crime of passion, the deckhand would have killed
Bostick
in his cabin
when he
found him with the girl.
So what was
Al
doing in the freezer?”

“Yeah, that’s right.
What does the girl say?”

“Nobody seems to know.
And nobody seems to know where she is, either.
They say she left the ship when we docked and no one’s seen her since. You would
expect
Empress and the cops
to
be on her like white on rice, but she supposedly just strolled off the ship and vanished. Don’t you think that’s a little odd?”

“
I think it’s a little convenient
,” Parker replied
.
“
They don’t want trouble, you know that.
No bad publicity.
You know how this stuff works, Sidney. Someone may have even paid her off, sent her back to Brazil.
Who knows? We’ll probably never know. There’s really no point in trying to find out, either.
”

“No, I guess not. She would probably be really hard to track down,
too,
even if
I
had a way to
find out
her name and home address. Especially if she didn’t want to be found.”

“True. There’s another thing about this that really
bug
s
me, Sidney
.
If the deckhand didn’t kill him, then how on earth could Al Bostick have ended up naked and strangled
in a
n off-limits
crew area,
in the freezer?”

“No one seems to know, and unless someone confesses or comes forward with more information, we may never find out. Right now, if anyone knows anything, they’re not sharing.
”

“
Al
may
have
been lured
in there
by the killer, Sidney.
O
r maybe he went with the dancer for some kinky reason and was followed
by the killer
.”

“Eeeuw.”

“Yeah.
”

“
Whoever killed him
also
had to be
really strong, and
crafty, there’s no doubt of that.
”