Keller 05 - Hit Me

  Twenty-Eight

  At dinner that night, Keller waited until he’d finished his main course, a nice piece of fish that had been swimming not too many hours ago. If it had been on a stamp, he thought, Roy would have snatched it away from him.

  He put his fork down, patted his pockets, said, “Hell,” and got to his feet. “Something I forgot,” he said. “I’m not interested in dessert, so please go ahead without me. I’ll join y’all for coffee if I get done in time.”

  The elevator might have been faster, but he didn’t even think of it until he’d already climbed the first flight and started on the second. He was breathing hard when he reached the Sun Deck, but caught his breath by the time he was slipping the key card into the door of the Carmody stateroom. The lock turned and he was inside.

  The maids serviced everybody’s cabin during dinner, turning down beds, turning on lights, drawing curtains, and leaving a square of foil-wrapped chocolate on the pillow. The Sun Deck staterooms were essentially two-room suites, and Keller moved around the place looking at things and wondering what he was doing here. It put him in position for an ambush, but that would only work if Carmody turned up alone. And he might: he had a lot of years on his bladder and prostate, and could well feel the need for a quick pee before catching up with the lovely Carina in the lounge, where tonight’s scheduled entertainment included a comedian and a torch singer.

  But there was at least as good a chance that they’d return together, and then what did Keller do? He’d have the advantage of surprise, and he was a skilled professional up against two amateurs, one an out-of-shape older man and the other a woman. He was confident in his ability to take out both of them, and could probably do so before either one made enough noise to attract attention. And if they did get out a cry, so what? She’d sound as though she was feigning passion, while he’d come off as a self-styled Tarzan, pounding his chest and yowling in triumph.

  If he was alone, that was how he’d want to do it. The girl was collateral damage. It was safer and easier to do two for the price of one, and while Carina was a good example of what Mother Nature could do when inspired, she was unlikely to find a cure for cancer or bring about a lasting peace in the Middle East. She’d assumed a certain risk when she agreed to share a cabin with a man like Carmody, and if her luck was bad, well, that was just bad luck. Killing her would bother Keller for a while, but he knew how to deal with that sort of thing, and he’d get over it.

  That’s if he was alone. But he wasn’t, he had Julia along, and it was hard to know how Julia would take one death, let alone two. She knew that his assignments occasionally included women—Dot had more than once called him an equal-opportunity killer—but this was a woman she’d seen up close, and that made it different.

  Well, maybe both he and Carina would be lucky this time, and Carmody would come back all by himself. But then what? Carina would return sooner or later and find the body, and just how much of a flap that raised would depend on whether or not he could make it look like natural causes. If he couldn’t, there’d be cops on board the next time they made port, and he could probably handle the questioning until he had a chance to get off the ship and disappear, but once again, dammit, he wasn’t alone, he had Julia along.

  He paced the floor—the Sun Deck cabins provided ample room for pacing—and his mind kept working, trying to find a way, and then he stopped pacing and stopped thinking and froze in his tracks.

  There was a key in the lock. So soon? How could they be done with dinner already?

  He braced himself. Let it be Carmody, he thought, and the door flew open.

  It was Carina.

  His hands were out in front of him, ready to stifle her cries of alarm. But there were no cries, nor did she seem at all alarmed.

  “Thank God!” she said.

  Huh?

  “The way you look at me,” she said, moving closer to him, kicking the door shut. “And I know you saw the looks I gave you in return. But you have not approached me, and I saw you leave the dining room, and I thought maybe he’s going to my cabin, and I made some excuse, and—”

  She really was quite beautiful.

  “But there’s no time,” she said. “Not now, he’ll be here any minute. Oh, I want to be alone with you! What shall we do?”

  “Uh…”

  “Later tonight,” she said. “One o’clock. No, one thirty, he’ll definitely be asleep by then. I’ll meet you on Deck Two out on the afterdeck.”

  “Uh, port or starboard?”

  “All the way at the back,” she said. “Behind the library. At the rail, at one thirty. Can you be there? Oh, I hope you can. Oh, God, there’s no time, but kiss me. You have to kiss me.”

  And she pressed her mouth to his.

  “I don’t get it,” he told Julia. “I wonder what she wants.”

  “Your fair white body, if I had to guess.”

  “Not unless she thinks I’m a Hollywood casting director,” he said. “And it’s just as well I’m not, because she wouldn’t get the part. She’s not that good an actress.”

  “It was an act?”

  “‘Oh, I want to be alone with you! What shall we do?’ Yes, I’d say it was an act.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I frequently want to be alone with you. What shall we do? I ask myself that all the time.”

  “You usually come up with something.”

  “I asked myself just before you got back, and what I came up with was that we should call Donny and Claudia’s. It’s early, they’ll be up, and with any luck so will Jenny.”

  Everyone was still awake at the Wallings house, and everybody talked to everybody else, until Donny Wallings took the phone and said, “This is costing y’all a fortune, and y’all are having fun and so’s Jenny, so I’m gonna say good-bye now.”

  They ended the call, and Julia said, “She’s having a wonderful time.”

  “That’s great.”

  “She’ll probably want to stay there forever. With her new family, that she now likes ever so much better than her old one.”

  “Maybe we can rent out her room.”

  “Go ahead, make fun of a mother’s tears. Did you enjoy it? Was it hot?”

  “Was what hot?”

  “Kissing her. It must have been, that woman’s one of the chief causes of global warming.”

  “It was just…I don’t know. Dumb.”

  “Dumb?”

  “I knew it had to be an act, and that she had an agenda. And even if it wasn’t, I didn’t want to be there.”

  “Poor baby. Was she at least a good kisser? Did she use her tongue?”

  “Julia—”

  “And press her tits against you? I’m sorry. I’m embarrassing you, aren’t I?”

  “I don’t know. Yeah, sort of.”

  “If she doesn’t want your body—”

  “She doesn’t. It was an act, pure and simple.”

  “Pure? Simple?”

  “Well—”

  “What do you suppose she wants?”

  “I’ll find out in a couple of hours.”

  “Well, I guess you will. One thirty, did you say?” She started to say something more, than stopped herself.

  “What?”

  “No, it’s nothing. Well. What I was going to say was we could fool around a little first, to take some of the pressure off, but you’re not in the mood, are you?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “I’m as bad as she is, trying to make this about sex, and it’s not about that, is it? And I at least should know better. Have you got something to read? I’ll let you alone.”

  When Keller left their cabin, it was a little after one and most of the ship’s passengers had retired for the night. There were still some holdouts in the bars and lounges, making up in volume what they’d lost in number, and a few passengers hung around on deck, looking out at the stars or thinking deep thoughts at the rail.

  He got to the spot designated for their rendezvous a good ten minutes ahe
ad of schedule, and found a vantage point nearby where he could observe Carina’s approach and assure himself that she didn’t have anyone trailing her. He’d changed to dark clothing, and found a dark spot to lurk, and evidently succeeded in rendering himself invisible; a couple passed within a few feet of him, pausing to kiss with surprising passion, and then walked on, never aware that he was almost close enough to reach out and touch them.

  One thirty came and went. Keller stayed where he was, half hoping she’d stand him up. But then, seven minutes late by his watch, she hurried by without seeing him, positioned herself at the rail, and looked around in what looked like genuine concern.

  “Right here,” Keller said softly, and came out where she could see him.

  “Oh, thank God. I thought that you weren’t coming, or that you came and left when I was not here. I had to wait until he was sleeping. But come here, come kiss me.”

  She moved toward him, stopped when he held up a hand. “No kisses,” he said. “You’ve got an agenda, and I want to know what it is.”

  “Agenda?”

  “Tell me what you want.”

  “The same thing you want,” she said. “I saw you looking at me.”

  “Lots of men were looking at you.”

  “Yes, and women, too. But there was something about the way you looked at me.” She frowned, the original act shelved for now. “You don’t want to fuck me?”

  “You’re a very attractive young woman,” he said, “but I’m married, and no, I don’t want to have sex with you.”

  She said something in a language he didn’t recognize, frowned again, then looked up to meet his eyes as recognition dawned in hers. “Then what were you doing in my cabin?”

  His hands were at his sides, and he raised them to waist level. There was no one around, and all he had to do was break her neck and fling her overboard. If she managed to cry out first, it might pass for a scream she’d uttered on the way down.

  “Maybe we want the same thing,” she said.

  Oh? “Tell me what you want.”

  “What do I want?” She said the foreign word again. “What do you think I want? I want you to kill my husband.”

  Twenty-Nine

  Julia had been awake at one o’clock, reading what she’d called a novel of magnolias and miscegenation, but she was sleeping soundly when he let himself into the cabin. He didn’t think he’d be able to sleep himself, but a hot shower took some of the tension out of him, and he went right out.

  In the morning he told her what happened. “Apparently they’re married,” he said. “That’s why it took as long as it did for them to get to the ship Saturday afternoon. They went through a quickie wedding ceremony first.”

  “Why? To make the cruise line happy?”

  He shook his head. “Not the cruise line. The Witness Protection Program. After he testifies, they’ll set him up in some little town somewhere out west, but the only way she can be part of the deal is if she’s his wife. And I guess he didn’t think the local talent in East Frogskin would be up to his standards, so he bit the bullet and proposed.”

  “How romantic. But why did she go along? And why change her mind and want him dead?”

  “Two questions with one answer.”

  “Money?”

  He nodded. “He’s got a lot of money, or at least she thinks he does. And she’s living the life we figured, going on dates and getting presents, and the life’s not that great and neither are the presents, and these are her peak years.”

  “She’s got a lot of her youth left.”

  “But she can see what’s coming. And here’s this rich guy who wants to marry her.”

  “But that means living in, what did you call it? East Frogskin? And that’s more than she signed on for?”

  “Actually,” he said, “I think it’s exactly what she signed on for, but that was before she had a chance to think it through.”

  “And now she wants to tear up the contract. Can’t she divorce him? Get an annulment? Oh, but she wants the money.”

  “She also would like him to be dead.”

  “Oh, it’s personal?”

  “He takes a lot of Viagra,” he said, “and he has certain preferences in bed that she doesn’t care for.”

  “Like what?”

  “She didn’t get specific.”

  “What a tease. I bet I can guess, and I’d like to sit her down and explain that once you get used to it it’s actually quite enjoyable. Are you blushing?”

  “No. It’s not just what he likes to do, it’s apparently that now that they’re married she finds everything about him objectionable.”

  “And if he dies she’s a rich widow.”

  “She was pitching one of the minders, the shorter of the two.”

  “The running back.”

  “Right. I guess he didn’t push her away when she made her move.”

  “I guess he didn’t have a wife along.”

  “I don’t know if he was stringing her along, or if she’d even made her pitch about how they could be together forever if only something happened to her husband. I can’t think he’d have actually followed through with it. But when he and the tight end went off in the ambulance, her whole plan fell apart.”

  “And that’s when she started giving you the eye.”

  “Along with a peek at what she had under her bikini top.”

  “And she thought it worked, because there you were waiting for her in her cabin. And when she found out she was wrong, she just went and made another plan. Except it’s the same plan, isn’t it? But with a different prize instead of her body. What’s she offering? It would almost have to be money.”

  “An unspecified amount, payable after the estate’s settled.”

  “Lord, who wouldn’t rush to commit murder for terms like that?”

  “She’s given up the idea that I’m blinded by lust, but she evidently still thinks I’m pretty stupid. I agreed, and the first thing I explained was that we couldn’t see each other again. No more secret meetings, no kisses, no long looks. And I told her what we’d do for now was nothing at all, not until the last night of the cruise.”

  “So that we’ll be off the ship by the time they find him.”

  “And so will everybody else. She’ll be unable to rouse him, and they’ll haul him off to a Fort Lauderdale hospital and pronounce him dead, and once the estate clears probate I’ll get my very generous payment from an extremely grateful widow.”

  “So what’s the next step?”

  “Breakfast,” he said. “I’m starving.”

  “I mean—”

  “I know what you mean. There’s no next step until the night before we dock in Fort Lauderdale. All you and I have to do between now and then is enjoy the cruise.”

  “My God,” she said. “What a concept.”

  “And another little collection I’ve got,” Roy said, “is mourning covers. You probably know what those are.”

  “With the black bands?”

  “That’s right. They’ve been around about as long as stamps, since sometime in the mid-nineteenth century. Stationers made up envelopes with the black bands printed on ’em, and that’s what you bought for notes of condolence. They got a lot of use, mostly in Europe and America, and then right around 1940 the whole custom pretty much died out. Which is ironic, considering how people were dying faster than ever once the war started.”

  “Interesting thing to collect,” Keller said.

  “Morbid, you mean? That’s what Myrt says, but it’s no more about death than my other collections are about Turkey and fish.”

  “I meant interesting because of the variety. Different stamps, different dates, different countries.”

  “And sometimes the letter’s still in the envelope,” Roy said, “and like as not it barely mentions the deceased. Just a nice newsy letter, who’s getting married, who just had a baby, who got a new job. And oh, by the way, I’m sorry for your loss. Now that’s interesting, don’t you think?”


  “Very.”

  “Well, different times. Now what would they send, text messages? ‘Heard N8 dead. Bummer. R U OK?’” He sighed. “The covers, I must have close to two hundred of ’em. They’re not high priority, but when I see one that’s a little different, or that I like, well, I pick it up. But I’ve got to figure out what to do with the damn things. I’ve got a Scott Specialized album for my Turkish, and I print out my own pages for the fish, but all I’ve managed to do so far with my mourning covers is heave ’em in a box. Sometimes I haul ’em out and look at ’em, and then I just toss ’em right back in the box.”

  And did Keller collect any postal history, or just stamps? As a matter of fact, Keller said, he’d begun picking up covers mailed in Martinique, if they were interesting and attractive and reasonably priced. Martinique wasn’t exactly a specialty, but he had all of the country’s stamps through 1940, and had begun acquiring minor varieties, and somebody gave him a cover once, and—

  “Say no more, Nick. I can see the same thing happening with Turkey, when I run out of stamps to buy. Ah, here come the ladies. I wonder what they found to buy this time.”

  The cruise was an unalloyed pleasure once he was free of the need to do anything. The Huysendahls continued to provide good company, and the shore visits weren’t limited to shopping for the wives and postal expeditions for him and Roy. Twice they signed up for shore excursions, and got to see some wildlife and swim beneath a waterfall, or at least look at it.

  As he’d noted the first night, one of the chief activities of people on a cruise seemed to be talking about other cruises they’d taken, and Keller, who’d never thought much about cruises, began to see what a world of possibilities they presented.

  A smaller ship would be nice. Carefree Nights was comfortable and luxurious enough, but cruising on it was like being a guest in a huge floating hotel. In one port, they’d been berthed next to an actual sailing ship, carrying just over a hundred passengers. It had engines, so they could make good time when they had to and never worry about getting becalmed, but the ship was really beautiful with its sails flying, or whatever it was that they did.