Ed Gorman - Several Deaths Later

Tobin grinned at him. "Only when I bathe regularly."

The man said, "Just watch yourself with that little secretary from Kansas."

Tobin felt his blood chill. "What?"

The man now seemed uneasy. "I just meant…"

"You shouldn't have said anything, Ernie," his wife said. She wore a straw hat and what appeared to be knickers and seemed pleasant enough.

"No," Tobin said. "Please let him go on. How do you know about the secretary from Kansas?"

"Well, you know what happened to Ken Norris last night."

"Right. He was killed."

The man shrugged. "Well, the stewards are telling us that the captain thinks she killed him. The secretary."

The sonofabitch, Tobin thought, thinking of the lugubrious captain, a man far more capable of deviousness than Tobin would have given him credit for.

"I didn't mean to upset you," the man said, sounding increasingly defensive.

"That's fine. Didn't mean to startle you."

"Come on, Ernie. Let's go have a mai-tai." The wife smiled at Tobin. "Ernie's always putting his foot in it."

Tobin went back to his cabin and tried to sleep. Uselessly. Instead he kept thinking about the captain, a man whom he'd begun to dislike in a serious way. Finally forcing himself to forget the captain, he started to doze. Then he began worrying about other things, worrying being a process that was with him from the time he opened his eyes till he closed them at the end of the day. There were the children to worry about and his career and his health and there was always the state of his soul, even though he was not sure if he had one. He wanted to be one of those people who could simply put things out of their minds but knew he never would. Ever.

Then he started wondering about the redhead, and why she'd been wrestling with Alicia Farris over a notebook.

Finally, seeing that he'd never get any sleep, he got up, took a shower, dressed for dinner, and went in search of Captain Hackett.

If he couldn't get lucky with any of the women on board, then perhaps he could solve a mystery.

"You seem angry, Mr. Tobin."

"You're spreading rumors about Cindy McBain."

"And what rumors would those be, Mr. Tobin?"

"You know damn well what rumors."

"I see."

"And you know damn well why you're spreading them."

"And why would that be, Mr. Tobin?"

"Because if everybody aboard the ship thinks she's the killer, they don't have to worry about the real killer running around loose. That's pretty goddamn despicable, if you ask me."

"The thing is, Mr. Tobin, I don't remember asking you."

Captain Hackett, still looking as if he were about to walk onto a movie set where he would portray a cruise ship captain, indicated a small shelf of bourbons and Canadian whiskeys behind his large oak desk. With the ceiling fan and the louvered blinds and the large bookcase with the sort of leather-bound editions that were never read, there was a certain studied snottiness about the room, capped by the gigantic globe on an easel in the corner, the sort of globe God probably had. "Bourbon?"

"Don't try to change the subject, Captain."

"I hardly think a bourbon would deter you from your appointed rounds, Mr. Tobin. I was simply being polite." For the first time, Tobin felt something positive about Hackett. There was a hint of irony in his tone and Tobin always believed, perhaps wrongly, that irony was a mark of genuine intelligence.

"Then I'll be polite and accept it."

"That's very charitable of you."

The captain poured healthy doses of sipping bourbon into large cut-glass snifters and handed one to Tobin.

Tobin took a sip, enjoyed it much more than he should have, then said, "You found out something this morning, didn't you?"

"Found out?"

"You and a Dr. Devane went to Cindy McBain's cabin. The doctor examined her for something. I got the impression he was disappointed. Which means that your case against Cindy is getting weaker and weaker."

"I wouldn't assume that, Mr. Tobin."

"If you really thought you had something against her, you would have had Cindy taken off the boat with the body and arrested."

The captain took his first sip of whiskey. Purple dusk tinted his white hair in a nimbus of electric blue. His Roman senator features were more imposing than ever. "You've heard of the principle of the greater good, Mr. Tobin."

"Yes. In Philosophy 101."

"Well, Mr. Tobin, sometimes I believe it's an unfortunate principle we must follow."

"In other words, give the passengers peace of mind at Cindy's expense."

Hackett smiled. He appeared both ironic and weary. "People are very emotional, especially in herds."

"Herds?"

"Like it or not, Mr. Tobin, we're animals, and we act like animals, especially in times of crisis." From a carved wooden humidor on the corner of his desk, he took a cigar, offering Tobin one as he did so.

"I quit a while back."

"Too bad. Cigars are a real pleasure."

"Well, smoking cigars isn't like smoking cigarettes, I suppose."

"Not quite as bad. Certainly not as bad for lung cancer rates. About the same for oral and throat cancer, unfortunately."

"You sure know how to talk a guy into taking a cigar."

"Even in our small pleasures, there is some element of risk, Mr. Tobin." He lifted his glass of bourbon. "The rate of esophagus cancer, for instance, increases with every drink of alcohol we have."

"Remind me to invite you to my next party."

"And it's the same with the principle of the greater good. There is some risk in it, I realize."

"That's nice of you, especially since you don't happen to be a frightened twenty-eight-year-old woman from Kansas City."

"She hardly seems helpless."

"Meaning what?"

"I have daughters of my own, Mr. Tobin. I don't like to think they're the sort who'd go to a man's room on the first night they met him."

"She's not perfect, Captain. That doesn't mean she's a terrible woman."

"Still."

Tobin had more bourbon. "Why did you have the doctor examine her this morning? What were you looking for?"

"Why should you need to know something like that, Mr. Tobin?"

"Because I'm trying to help Cindy."

"I seem to recall that you helped solve the murder of your partner."

"If you're saying I'm not a detective, you're right. But then neither are you." He finished his drink and set it down. "And I'd appreciate knowing why you had the doctor examine her."

"I'm afraid that's classified."

"'Classified' information on a cruise ship?"

Hackett smiled and not unpleasantly. "A holdover from my navy days, I suppose."

Tobin stood up. "You know she didn't do it and I know she didn't do it, and I'd like you to stop spreading those rumors just to cover your own ass."

"Your reputation seems to be true."

"Which reputation? There are several of them."

"That you're something of a hothead, Mr. Tobin."

"I just don't want to see her suffer anymore, Captain. Believe it or not, having somebody stabbed to death in your cabin is a very unnerving experience. She'll never forget it. Her whole life will be divided very neatly in two because of it." He was angry and he jabbed at the air with a small sharp finger. He wasn't tough but he was capable of rage and many times that was far more imposing than being tough. "She's a nice kid and she doesn't deserve to be used as a tranquilizer for the rest of the ship. You understand?"

"I don't like being threatened, Mr. Tobin."

"Right now, I don't give a damn what you like, Captain." He jabbed out the cigar he'd been smoking. "Right now, I don't give a damn at all.”

What he wanted was a burger and fries (hell, a cheeseburger and fries) and not the McDonald's kind, either. He wanted the kind you used to go into neighborhood burger joints for, where the guy made them on a grill right in front of you, and maybe even cut an edge out of the patty and said, "That done enough for you," and then you got a bottle of Heinz ketchup and some big chunky sweet dill slices and some wide silver slices of onion and a few dollops of mustard for taste and, man, when you tasted it, you wanted to cry it was so good. So frigging good.