Chapter 14
Suddenly Single—What a Trip!
Trip Tip: A special tip from Nettie! Join the ship's Speed Dating for Solo Travelers event—because who needs a hook-up app when you can meet your future ex in person?
"I have a lot of explaining to do?" The surly specter floats right through the glass balcony door and into my cabin, settling just inches away from me. A spooky lime green supernatural glow surrounds him and tints everything in this room that eerie hue.
I'm no stranger to the unexpected, but the sight of Hank Silverman in his ghostly form, adorned in full pirate regalia with a beard alive with slithering snakes, tops my list of surreal encounters.
"Arrr, ye landlubber"—he thunders in a gruff, swashbuckling tone as he points a crooked finger my way— "ye'll be finding Roger's killer or I'll be haunting ye till the seas dry up."
I cross my arms, unfazed. "Cut the act, Hank. I know about your partnership with Jolly Roger Spirits. You weren't yanked off some pirate ship of yore—you're just a man who made some questionable choices."
I'm not sure if he had or hadn't made questionable choices in business, but he certainly made them in the fashion department.
His shoulders slump and those snakes grow limp for a moment.
"I'm not the one who specialized in questionable choices," he gruffs. "That was Roger's department." He lands in the recliner, and I take a seat on the edge of my bed.
"So you were his partner. Connie told me as much, so did Elsie. Connie also mentioned that you were the one who had common sense. Roger was the wild card. I just threw that little tidbit about questionable choices in to see if I could rile you up."
"Clever, girl." He wags his finger my way once again. "Now let's see how clever you can really be. There's an entire pirate cove up in paradise with every last pirate who ever lived. They're throwing a big party for us all. It's a big to-do and I can't miss a minute of it, Trixie. You've got to help me track down Roger's killer so I can get back to the big ship in the sky."
"So you know my name and understand your assignment," I say, amused.
He shrugs. "I read your name off the card with the flowers. And as for the assignment, Mike filled me in before he pushed me back down to this dry and dusty planet."
"Mike?"
"You know, Michael, the archangel. He's the Big Guy's heavy, his first mate. He's the leader of the heavenly armed pack you might say."
"Wow, that brings me right back to Sunday school. I guess I do know about him."
"Well, he knows about you, too," he growls. "And he says the more I help, the quicker I can get back. Now what can I do for you? Hank Silverman here and all of my seafaring friends"—he runs his fingers through those garden snakes attached to his face and they go wild—"at your service."
"You can start by telling me who would want to see Roger Maxwell toes up at the bottom of the proverbial sea."
"Everyone," he grunts. "How does that narrow things down for you?"
"Funny," I say. "But we can probably narrow down the suspect list to those people who came onto the ship with him."
"Four hundred surly souls," he growls again. "Narrow enough?"
"Hardly." I make a face. "What do you know about Connie? And do you think she'd want him dead?"
"She's a witch through and through. Of course, she'd want him dead. She might be beautiful, but his appetite for beautiful women was insatiable. Roger had an ego. And if a pretty woman stroked it, she could stroke him, too. Connie had just discovered one of Roger's many dalliances before I passed away. Boy, was she piping mad. But then again, she was using Roger for his money and we all knew it. Heck, he knew it, too. However, she is a looker—so in turn Roger looked the other way while she was fleecing him and the company. You can't talk common sense into some people—especially if their name was Roger Maxwell. He liked to live on the edge with both his women and his booze."
"Which brings me to my next point," I say. "Who's Mr. X? And why the mystery around this person? Do you think they would want Roger dead?"
"Mr. X." He waves it off with a look of annoyance and every last snake on his face hisses as if agreeing. "That was Roger's way of stopping our competition from shaking down our top mixologist. Roger found the guy and hired him before I was brought into the company. I was the financial backbone that got Jolly Roger off to its rocky start. Mr. X took us the rest of the way. Roger was so intent on protecting his formulas, he kept Mr. X's identity from me as well. Whoever it is, they're creative and darn good at whipping up a decent brew. The yearly sales figures can attest to that."
"But why hide their identity from you, of all people? You were Roger's partner."
"Eh." He shrugs again and the snakes do a little dance. "Given enough time, I may have been wooed over by the competition myself. I used to work for a local distillery that distributed to a few other companies who were also trying to make a name for themselves in the liquor business. Roger always saw me as a potential threat, no matter how many times I tried to assure him that I was one hundred percent on board with his business."
"You would think he'd realize it after you backed the venture with your capital."
"You would, but that means inserting logic into the situation. Roger spent his life surfing the wave of the illogical. Some might say that's how he grew so successful. And I never pushed the topic when it came to Mr. X. I figured if they worked their magic, and Roger worked his magic, the money would keep rolling in—and it did."
"It sounds as if you found a true treasure chest," I say.
"I did and it was filled with the best booze in town."
"Speaking of booze, Connie mentioned something about a hallucinogenic moonshine? Something called Blackbeard's Brew?"
"That junk?" A hard grunt evicts from him and his aura lights up in a brilliant shade of blue. "Steer clear if you ever come across it. I told Roger to do the same, but he insisted on having an underground label. He said it was the stuff that legends were made of. I told him it was the stuff that prison sentences were made of, but yet again he didn't listen to my sound advice. We sold more bottles of Blackbeard's Brew than we did anything else—mostly to high-end drug dealers and underground casinos. Customers were getting addicted with as little as one sip. And, of course, they were coming back for more."
"Holy smokes," I say. "That's diabolical. That's basically a street drug."
"It's exactly the same. I've seen it ruin lives. People lost jobs, their spouses gave them the boot, so they lost their families. And after losing those two, you don't have a whole lot left."
"Nothing but despair," I say as my wheels start turning. "Hey? Maybe the killer lost everything, no thanks to Roger, and that's why they decided he had to go?"
He shakes his head. "Now that would be logical. But something tells me that in order to catch Roger's killer we need to think like Roger—and ride the wave of the illogical." He taps his temple. "What's your next move?"
"Connie mentioned that Elsie James might have a clue about who Mr. X might be. I guess I'll speak with her."
"I liked Elsie. Tell her I said hello." He floats up from the chair and heads straight for the ceiling. "Just call my name if you need me—that is, unless I'm eating. Then I can't be interrupted. I'm off to the lido deck." He begins to dissipate, and once he's gone, the room loses its lime-green glow.
"Wait," I call out. "I wanted to ask about your death!" I know about the car accident, but I'm wondering if there were a few other details involved. "Oh! And I just remembered that Connie mentioned something about Roger's phone being lost. Can you help me find it?"
The room is deadly silent, with not one hint of the dead in sight.
Hank is off to feed himself and those slithering snakes of his by proxy.
I take a quick shower, get dressed, and snatch up my purse before heading out the door.
I've got something to feed myself—an appetite for justice.
If there's a missing phone somewhere on this ship, I'm about to find it.
I make a beeline to the promenade deck and straight to the dark alcove where Roger's corpse decided to interrupt an intimate moment between Ransom and me.
A pair of thick velvet curtains hang to the right of where Roger was standing before he toppled over like a ton of bricks. I pull back the curtain to see it divides the corridor from a closet stocked with beach towels, napkins, and other emergency supplies the staff might need for the passengers on deck. But there's no sign of a phone.
The fabric from the curtains pools in a puddle on the floor, and I kneel down and begin riffling through the folds of fabric, picking up the lush velvet and shaking it out until—bingo! a svelte smartphone topples to the floor.
I scoop it up and the screen glows blue. And to my surprise, there's no password protecting it.
Fortune is on my side this evening.
I head straight to his messages in hopes to garner a clue, or a killer—just as footsteps creep up from behind.
"You'll put that down"—a deep voice growls from over my shoulder—"that is, if you value your life."