Claire Gulliver #04 - Cruisin' for a Bruisin' (32 page)

Her mother’s look of alarm caused her to quickly change the subject. “Mom, are you meeting with the police this morning?’

Millie nodded. “Yes, I’m scheduled for nine. You?”

“Nine-thirty. Look do you want to meet for coffee later, say before the lecture? Then we can compare notes.”

Millie nodded. “I’m a little nervous. But I’m just going to tell them what happened.”

Claire patted her hand. “Don’t worry, you’ll do fine. They just want to gather all the evidence. I guess, since Heidi said the helicopter took off without anyone getting on board, that Richard and Kim are still here.”

“I guess so. The security man, Larry, said they had a jail on board. Imagine that? This ship is like a whole city. They have a morgue and a jail and that doctor we saw last night said they have a hospital and even operating facilities. I guess they’re ready for anything.” The ladies left the dining room. Today was their last day and they didn’t intend to waste a moment of it.

“Ms. Claire Gulliver?” The man waved her into the small conference room. “Please have a seat. I’m Lieutenant Phil Washington.” He displayed an open wallet with his police identification in a window compartment opposite his gold badge. “This is Sergeant Nancy Keely.” He nodded at the attractive black woman seated at the table.”

She stood up and offered her hand to shake while holding out her badge and identification with the other.

“Coffee?” he offered, then seeing Claire’s head shake, proceeded. “Ordinarily, we would board when the ship docks, but because of what transpired here yesterday Captain Dixon thought we’d need a bit more time to process the crime scene. Six of us arrived this morning by helicopter. We have a forensics team checking out all three cabins. We have two teams interviewing the witnesses.”

“Now, Nancy, can you show Ms. Gulliver the information we have on her to make sure it is correct?”

“Call me Claire,” she murmured as she looked at the paper with her name, address and other vital information which Nancy held out to her.

“Yes, this all looks correct.”

“Now we’d like to record this conversation. Is that acceptable to you?” The lieutenant was very polite.”

“Fine, no problem.”

So Claire told them about meeting Mrs. Bernbaum, the visits to her cabin, the friendship that developed between them. She spoke about the strangeness of Anita’s disappearance, her request of Sean Dixon to check Anita’s house in San Francisco and her concern about Mrs. Bernbaum’s well-being when she didn’t come to dinner the night they left Ketchikan.

She told them absolutely everything except about finding Ian with the
Heart of Persia
in his hand when she walked in on him in Mrs. Bernbaum’s cabin that night. Nor did she mention they locked up Mrs. Bernbaum’s jewelry before calling security to report her death. She told herself neither of those events effected the case against Richard and Kim and would, in fact, probably only muddy the waters.

“Now, Ms. Gulliver, um, Claire, had you seen or met this woman, Kim, before yesterday?” Nancy asked.

“No. Well, I had seen her. I saw Richard with her a couple times. Once he was in the casino with her. Once I saw him with her in the piano bar late, but I didn’t have any reason to think she was connected to him or Mrs. Bernbaum in any way. I have no idea if Mrs. Bernbaum knew her or not. I just assumed it was someone Richard met on board and was attracted to.”

“Did you ever see her with Anita?”

Claire was startled by that idea and then thought about it. Finally she shook her head. “No, I don’t remember ever seeing them together. Actually, I don’t think I ever saw Anita except in Mrs. Bernbaum’s cabin the first couple of times I was there.” Then she asked, “Why? Do you think Kim was involved with Anita?”

Then she said thoughtfully, “You know Richard was certain Anita had gotten off the ship to teach Mrs. Bernbaum a lesson about how important she was to her. But now, considering what Richard did to Mrs. Bernbaum I’m not sure I can give any credence to his theory.”

“We found some personal items in Kim’s cabin which we believe belonged to Anita. A small bag with a hairbrush, toothbrush, make up and a few clothes, and more importantly, we found Anita’s ship identification card in the bag,” the woman told her gravely.

“Oh, my god! You think they did something to Anita, don’t you? Oh, my god! This was all planned!” Her voice quaked with horror as she sat back from the table. She felt chilled and at the same time she felt perspiration running down her back. “And he was so caring, so attentive. That poor woman. He was just conning her, and all the time he was planning to kill her.” She couldn’t stop the shudder that ran through her.

The lieutenant and sergeant just looked at her, keeping their expressions neutral, however their eyes were sympathetic. They had not yet become so inured to evil that they couldn’t be appalled by what people were willing to do to get what they wanted.

“It appears so. Kim came out from Florida with him. We think they intended to see what they could get from his only relative. Luckily for him she was wealthy and alone. She must have appeared to be an easy mark except for her caregiver, who was apparently too protective. That was unfortunate for both Mrs. Bernbaum and for her caregiver. We got lots of information from Miami. The Captain appreciated your sending the link to that newspaper story. Dr. Richard Walmer has quite a history in Florida, no wonder he was thinking of moving his practice to California.”

When they finally finished with Claire, she staggered out of the conference room in time to slip into a seat in the darkened theatre, part way into the lecture, happy for the time to help put her thoughts back in order. She didn’t know why she was so shocked and horrified when she heard how Richard had planned this whole trip so he could kill his aunt. She knew it was true. It had all become clear to her when she found the syringe. But thinking it and hearing it stated as fact by the police were two different things. She still felt chilled by the cold brutality of it. She still wanted to scream at him; to claw at him; to somehow hurt him for his gall in sitting there at the table with all of them, night after night, pretending. And all the time he was planning, calculating how to rid himself of his aunt.

And what about Richard’s blonde friend, Kim? She looked normal. Pretty, youngish, vivacious, yet she was a vicious monster. She not only was willing to push them overboard, but she seemed to be an advocate of that action. And now it appeared she might have played a role in Anita’s disappearance. It all seemed too wicked, too vile, to accept.

When the lecture was over she found Millie. Her mother didn’t even mention that Claire didn’t show up for their tentative coffee date, which led Claire to think that Millie’s own interview was probably as stressful as hers had been. They agreed to meet Ruth for lunch at the buffet and went their separate ways. Millie went to a cooking demonstration, and Claire to find a quiet corner to read her book or just to stare out at the passing nothingness of the ocean.

The ship had slipped under the Golden Gate Bridge before the sun had even risen and was secured to Pier Thirty-three by six o’clock. When Ruth, Millie, Claire and Lucy met in the dining room for their last breakfast the entire ship was in an uproar as everyone prepared to leave. They had all been issued color coded luggage tags the night before, which dictated the order of the disembarkation. The luggage had to be packed and placed outside their doors before midnight last night, each passenger keeping only the essentials for the morning.

Their luggage, sporting lavender luggage tags indicating they would not be processed until ten o’clock, was long gone, the last of their essentials were packed in their carry-on bags, so now the ladies were going to have a leisurely last breakfast.

Last night had been bittersweet. Everyone at the table had exchanged addresses, and Claire, Pearl and Ian had taken so many pictures it was as if the paparazzi were on board. And as this was the last night, it was also time to distribute their little envelopes with gratuities to the dining room personnel. This was done with many thanks and hugs and promises to remember. Then people dispersed to their cabins to get their packing done. Later Lucy and Claire had gone up to the Starlight Lounge and found Millie and Ruth, Sean and Ian. Later Antonio arrived and had a drink with them before he and Lucy disappeared.

Claire had watched them go, wondering if Lucy was really as unconcerned with this parting as she said she was. But now today, Lucy appeared in fine spirits, anxious as they all were to get home and back to her life.

That’s what Ruth said to them. “Isn’t it funny that no matter how much fun you have on vacation you’re still so happy to get home?”

Lucy nodded in complete agreement. Millie looked surprised. “Do you feel that way too? I thought it was just that I don’t travel much, so naturally I am anxious to be home.”

And Claire thought, but didn’t say, that every time she took a trip she was just thankful to get home alive. What was it about travel that seemed to put her in danger? But Lucy, who knew about Claire’s other trips muttered so only Claire could hear, “And for once you had a trip that was just normal, Claire. This is how traveling is supposed to be. The excitement of travel comes from seeing new things and having new experiences, not from avoiding death and destruction.”

Claire looked at her smiling friend with amazement. Just then she realized that Lucy was entirely clueless about Richard’s perfidy and Mrs. Bernbaum’s death. But this was neither the time nor place to tell her about what had really happened. Oh, well, she thought, let her have this time to enjoy, the newspapers will apprise her of the real excitement of this cruise soon enough.

“Hey Mom, where are you?”

“In the kitchen, dear. Come on back.” Millie looked up and smiled at her daughter. “How nice, you’re early. I hope you’re not too hungry to wait for Ruth. She won’t be here until about 5:30.”

“No, I’m early because I talked to Sean Dixon this morning, and he said he would come by and give us an update. He’ll be here in a few minutes, okay?”

“Of course, I’ll be glad to see him, you know that. And I confess I’ll appreciate hearing what is really going on. I swear between the television reports and the newspapers, I’m not even sure I know what happened, and I was in the middle of it.”

Claire nodded. She felt the same frustration. The newspapers were full of the story. It was just what they loved to exploit, a local woman, intrigue and treachery, and a romantic setting on board the ship. But even though she had been there, it was hard to reconcile what she knew happened to what the papers said happened.

She smiled at the memory of the phone call she had gotten early one morning when the story first appeared in the newspaper. Lucy couldn’t believe she had been so involved in her shipboard romance she missed the entire drama unfolding around her, including, and this really rocked her to her toes, Richard’s attempt to rid himself of Millie and Claire by dumping them overboard. “But why didn’t you tell me? We were rooming together for god’s sake,” she protested.

Claire finally calmed her down by reminding her that it happened near the end of the cruise and the few times they were together they were also surrounded by other people. It wasn’t appropriate to tell her then. She wasn’t keeping it from Lucy, she assured her. After all, Lucy was privy to details of some of Claire’s other adventures which no other person knew; it was more that she just hadn’t had the opportunity to tell her.

So Lucy had been mollified, as well as stupefied, but finally satisfied. Now she was in England on another research trip for her current book, so she would miss their first halibut dinner. Ruth caught the fish, Millie was cooking it and Claire agreed she would help eat it.

Claire helped herself to a bite of the tomato her mother was cutting up for the salad when the door bell rang. “That’s Sean. I’ll let him in.”

After all the hugs and inquires about Sean’s wife, Maureen, and the newest antics of his grandchildren, they settled around the kitchen table to talk. Claire and Millie had wine, but Sean declined, saying Maureen had him on a tight regime to control his escalating blood pressure.

“Well, ladies, Richard’s fingerprints were all over the syringe and empty bottle of potassium chloride. The coroner found the needle mark on Mrs. Bernbaum’s arm. But if you hadn’t grabbed the bag before it dropped into the ocean, Millie, we would never have had proof that Mrs. Bernbaum hadn’t died a natural death. Apparently potassium chloride is hard to detect in the body, so if you hadn’t alerted us to the possibility the coroner says he most likely wouldn’t have detected its presence. Richard was being very clever. If he had held onto that bag of stuff and hidden it in his luggage he would have, most likely, gotten away with murder.”

Millie put her hand over her heart, her eyes wide as she shook her head in disbelief. “I still can’t believe it. I wasn’t thinking about what he was throwing away. It’s just that when I saw that plastic bag, I grabbed it. I felt I had to save the porpoises.”