Marcia Talley - Dark Passage

Martin nodded. ‘Very well. Married to the gallery owner, Nicole Westfall.’

I glanced around the elevator lobby to make sure nobody was in earshot, lowered my voice. ‘Julie recognized Westfall as the man who abducted her from Breakers!’

Martin couldn’t have looked more surprised if I had pulled a baseball bat out of my handbag and bashed him over the head with it. When he spoke again, his voice was low, urgent. ‘Mrs Ives, I don’t mean to question your niece, but when I last saw her, she was practically unconscious, and she stated – for the record – that she didn’t remember what the man looked like.’

‘That’s true,’ I admitted, ‘but what else did she say? Do you remember how she described what her attacker was wearing?’

‘Black shirt, black cap.’

‘And?’

Martin grimaced. ‘What is this? Twenty questions?’

Ruth was quick to refresh his memory. ‘She said it was a polo shirt, with a squiggle on the pocket.’

Martin’s head ping-ponged toward Ruth. ‘Don’t all polo shirts have some sort of logo on the pocket?’

It ping-ponged back to me when I said, ‘Some. But if you go to the art gallery right now, you’ll see Jack Westfall wearing a black polo shirt with a unique squiggle on the pocket.’ I drew a representation of the logo in the air with my finger. ‘It’s a stylized E and a G floating on top of a wave. It’s the Eastaugh Gallery logo, Officer Martin. When Julie saw Westfall wearing that shirt it scared her so much she started to hyperventilate. Her mother had to take her back to the cabin.’

Officer Martin stroked his chin with a thumb and forefinger. ‘You’ll want me to arrest this man, I suppose.’

‘Of course I want you to arrest him!’ I sputtered, then lowered my voice a few octaves. ‘If for no other reason than he kidnapped and assaulted my niece. But there’s also the rape of Noelle Bursky and the murder of Charlotte Warren on Voyager to consider. Jack Westfall is the common denominator.

‘Officer Martin, I don’t have access to your crime reports,’ I forged on, ‘but I’ll bet you a million dollars – that’s how sure I am of this – that if you examine cases of rape of teenage girls on Phoenix ships over the course of the past few years, you will discover that the majority of them occurred on ships where Eastaugh Gallery was the art gallery concessioner and furthermore, that the rapes happened, without exception, at the same time as the art gallery auction was taking place.’

It was a long speech, and I stopped to take a breath.

‘Jesus,’ Martin said. ‘How did you…? Never mind. Warren, right?’

But wait, there’s more, I thought. I explained my suspicions about the Ketamine, and how Kira’s evidence suggested it would have been possible to introduce the drug into Julie’s drink using a straw. Knowing that the straw would had to have been prepared ahead of time, I added, ‘I’ll bet if you search his room right now, you’ll find evidence of that. Ketamine. Straws. Probably hidden in his underwear drawer.’

For the first time since I began talking, Martin hauled out a notebook and jotted something down.

‘So, what are you going to do now?’ Ruth wanted to know.

Martin tucked the notebook back into his breast pocket, his face immobile, grave. ‘As I explained to your sister earlier, I am not a cop. I can’t search a passenger’s room without good reason, and I have no authority to make arrests. I’m sorry, ladies, but the best I can do is take down what you’ve told me and pass it on to the F.B.I. I am simply not equipped to carry out a proper investigation. I don’t have the trained staff, or the facilities. They do.’

‘And by then, the evidence will be gone…’ Ruth let the thought die.

I’d already been down that path with Officer Martin. I knew it was a dead end. What we needed at that moment simply wasn’t in the man’s job description. ‘I’m disappointed, of course,’ I told him, ‘but I understand that you’re just doing your job, and I appreciate the time you’ve given us so far.’

To give him credit, Martin looked genuinely sorry when we thanked him and said goodbye.

‘Thanks for nothing,’ Ruth muttered as we watched Martin disappear into the piano bar. ‘What’s next, Hannah?’

‘I think it’s on to Plan B,’ I said.

‘A conjuring performance cannot be properly and thoroughly appreciated by anyone who does not know something about the art, for the attraction is not – or should not be – wholly centered in the secret, however wonderful it may be.’

David Devant (1868-1941), My Magic Life ,

Hutchinson, 1931, p. 116

‘What’s Plan B?’ Ruth wondered as we made our way down the corridor that led to our stateroom.

‘Hell if I know,’ I said.

‘David Warren is going to be royally pissed,’ Ruth predicted. ‘He’s worked so long and so hard. This was a big breakthrough for him.’

‘I’ll give him a call. But I don’t think he’ll be surprised. He’s been dealing with cruise-line politics for a lot longer than I have. Out here in international waters, it’s a whole other world.’

I slotted my sea pass into the lock.

Once inside, I stuck my head into the cabin next door. Julie sat on her bed, swaying to music that was leaking - chicka-chicka-chicka-chicka - out of her earbuds, and playing a game on her iPhone. If the encounter with her abductor that afternoon had upset her, she was hiding it well.

I drew Georgina aside. As I described our meeting with Officer Martin, my sister’s face grew progressively more concerned. ‘What are we going to do about Julie, then? What if Westfall…?’ She couldn’t finish the sentence, but I could fill in the blank. I shivered.

‘We’ll keep Julie close, of course,’ I said. ‘It’s only one more day.’

Georgina agreed. What choice did she have? ‘No more late nights at Tidal Wave, that’s for sure.’

‘Look at it this way,’ I said, sitting myself down on the foot of her bed. ‘Jack Westfall is a cocky bastard. He’s gotten away with rape before, and he thinks he has done it again. He uses drugs on his victims so even if they do remember seeing him, their testimony will be unreliable. What a power trip.’

‘Westfall has no idea that Julie has identified him,’ Georgina rationalized. ‘As long as he thinks he’s in the clear, I suppose she’ll be OK. It’ll be my job to keep it that way!’ Suddenly, she straightened. ‘What about dinner tonight? It’s formal. Since we missed it the first time, Julie has her heart set on going so she can wear one of her new dresses.’

‘I don’t think you need to worry. David Warren told me that the Westfalls almost always eat at the second seating, so I think we’re good to go.’

‘Julie!’ her mother called. ‘Ju-lee!’

Julie yanked out her earbuds. ‘What?’

‘If you ran into Jack Westfall, what would you do?’ her mother asked.

Julie puffed air out through her lips. ‘Walk right past and pretend like I don’t know him, of course. Duh. You think I’m one of those “ooooh ooooh something’s making a noise out in the woods so let’s go see what it is” kind of bimbos?’

Georgina sighed. ‘Fourteen going on twenty.’

‘I’m afraid so.’

Back in the cabin I shared with Ruth, I called David’s stateroom and left a message that I needed to see him. I asked the operator to connect me to Buck Carney’s cabin, too, but he didn’t pick up either, so I hung up, figuring he’d be easy enough to track down. With the focus now on Jack, I was hoping Carney had taken some pictures at Breakers! that could help us where the security cameras had failed. I also needed to telephone my husband and bring him up to speed.