Sweet Tea and Sass Page 5

  The captain's expression was troubled. "So am I, young lady. Though if they are, I'm afraid this is an even larger legal issue that it already was."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  APRIL AND I HAD EXCHANGED numbers earlier, so I called her before we went to her stateroom. I figured there were at least even odds she wasn't there considering how beautiful it was outside. Who'd go on a cruise just to sit in their suite?

  We happened to catch her when she was changing clothes, though, and asked her to wait a few minutes.

  "Hey, April," I said when she opened the door. "We have some good news." I held up her necklace.

  She pulled in a big breath and her eyes widened as she reached out for it. "That's mine," she said. "Where'd you find it?" She looked from me to the captain. "Were my pearls with it?"

  "There's a good chance they're in one of the lifeboats," I said. "This one caught my eye when the sun glinted on it." I explained how I'd found it, leaving out the part about trying to magic her pearls for obvious reasons. That wasn't exactly something I advertised. I liked life outside of a straitjacket, thank you very much.

  "So we can go check the lifeboats right now?" she asked the captain when I was finished.

  "Absolutely," he said. "Let me call security and have them meet us there. Is your husband here?"

  April scoffed. "Not hardly. We were at the bar on the upper deck, and I couldn't put up with him anymore. It was like he didn't even care that our stuff was stolen." She shook her head. "Of course, it's no big deal to him. The only reason he has expensive stuff is to impress other rich people and lord his money over poor people."

  She held her hand up, letting the blingy necklace swing from her fingers, and looked at it with her lip curled. "And to buy his way out of never being present. He thinks if he buys me expensive crap, he can just talk on his phone all the time and be as rude as he wants. He wasn’t that way when we got married. We weren't rich yet, and he wasn't a jerk, either."

  The captain gave her a polite but neutral smile. "Money can change people."

  Bobbie Sue huffed. "I don't know so much about that. I think people mostly are who they are. Crappy poor people just ain't got the luxury of bein' hateful whenever they wanna be like crappy rich people do. But give 'em a few extra bucks and watch what happens. All the polish flies right off the turd."

  Now that got a genuine smile from the captain. "Well said, Madame." He turned to April. "Shall we?"

  "We shall," she said, and stepped out into the hall. "Do you have any idea how it ended up there, Captain?"

  He shook his head. "Not yet. We had a suspect, but no real evidence."

  I shot a sideways glance at Anna Mae at his use of past tense. She raised a brow but didn't say anything, so I adjusted my backpack straps, then followed along with the group. As we strolled, I wondered when—or if—it was gonna occur to April that her husband may have chucked her granny's pearls overboard to collect the cash.

  The more I thought about it, if I had to pick between Kevin and Gerard, dear ole Gerry was already in an orange suit, bribing his knuckle-dragging cellmate with cigarettes for protection. The man was a tool and deserved whatever he got, especially if he did something so low and hurtful.

  Four younger guys wearing ship uniforms were waiting for us when we got to the spot, and the captain excused himself to go talk to them. While we waited, April turned to us, her face troubled. "Has it occurred to any of you that unless Poseidon's gone into the jewelry business, there's only one person who'd benefit from tossin' this stuff over the railing?" She pinched her lips together for a couple seconds. "Well, two people, I guess, if you count me."

  I tried to take an unbiased look at her. I was decent at reading people when it came to picking the facts from the fiction, and I just didn't see her doing it. Maybe if she was the one holding the financial cards in the relationship, but that was unlikely. "I don't," I assured her. "Even if I didn't like you, I don't see how pitching your jewelry would directly benefit you."

  She sighed. "No, it wouldn't. I didn't have a head for business when we got married, and Gerard was so much different back then." One corner of her mouth turned upward in a wry half-smile. "Believe it or not, The King used to go by Gerry and play poker with the boys in our basement. Of course, that was the old house, not the monstrosity we live in now, and they drank Bud Light rather than hundred-year-old scotch." Her eyes took on a faraway look. "I miss those days. I'd give back all the money to go back to them."

  "Yeah," I said, dubious, "But do you think that would happen if you lost it all today?"

  "Nope," Anna Mae answered for her. "Not to be brutal, but once they have a taste of it, there's no going back. For either of them. They're not the same people they were then."

  "Sadly, she's probably right," April said. "He's not the same person, and taking away the money wouldn't change that. For that matter, neither am I. The rose-colored glasses broke a while ago. I don't care so much about the money, but I don't care for him much anymore, either."

  The captain said something else to the men and they left, disappearing down the steps located just to our left. He turned back to us and gestured in the direction the men had gone. "We need to go down a floor to gain access to the lifeboats, but it won't be hard. They're just a few feet below the railing. Out of sight, so they don't disturb the view for guests, but easy to get to if we need them."

  In the minute or two it took us to get to the spot one level beneath us, the guys had already brought up the boat and were tying it off on the railing. The pearls were still stuck on the rope, right as I'd left them. The men were peering inside the boat and one of them pointed.

  "There," he said, pointing to the far side of the boat. "There's something shiny in that crease."

  Bobbie Sue was the one to point out the pearls. "Lookie there!" she said, with the appropriate amount of surprise and excitement in her voice. "Your pearls!"

  Anna Mae, who was the closest of us to them, reached out and I released the sticky spell as soon as her hands touched them. She pulled them off and handed them to April. "I believe these belong to you."

  The immense relief on April's face chased away any remaining traces of doubt I may have had about her innocence. She looked at them in awe. "I didn't think I'd ever see them again.” She pulled Anna Mae into a hug, then did the same to Coralee, who was standing next to her. "Thank you, ladies. You don't know how much this means to me."

  I fingered one of the charms hanging on my bracelet, the one Addy'd given me for my sixteenth birthday. I would have been devastated if I'd lost it.

  "Some things are worth way more than money," Anna Mae told her.

  "There's more than the pearls, though," the captain said, plucking a cuff link out of one of them men's hands. "It looks like about half of what your husband put on the incident report he filed with us is in the boat."

  April waved him off. "I don't care about the rest of it. I got what’s important to me."

  The captain looked at the diamond-studded man jewelry in his hand. "These aren't cheap though."

  "No," April replied, "but they're not worth much either, at least to me." She clasped the pearls around her neck, then patted them. A cloud settled over her face and she frowned. "And I doubt my husband's going to be too excited to see them, either."

  The captain pressed his lips together, but didn't say anything. Instead, he turned back toward the men. Two of them were holding the boat steady while two more of them had climbed inside the boat and were running their hands underneath the benches, butts in the air and showing way more moon than was necessary at that time of day in search of pieces that may have slid under them. They didn't find anything else, but the captain stopped them when they started to untie the boat.

  "Please check the rest of the boats in this stack, too," he told them.

  The one who had been loosening the boat from the railing wrapped the rope back around the hook that held it, then followed his coworkers.

  April put her hand on his arm,
stopping him. "Guys," she said loud enough for them all to hear her. "Thank you. I know you were just doing what you had to, but it meant a lot to me." She dug into her purse and pulled out her wallet, then pilfered through until she came to her cash. She handed each of them a C-note.

  Looking from the bill in his hand to April, the youngest of them said, "Ma'am, you don't have to do that. It was our pleasure." The kid standing next to him shot him a look hot enough to sear the hair off the back of his neck, and I bit my lip to keep from smiling.

  "Maybe I don't," she replied, "but it's nothing to me compared to getting my grandma's necklace back."

  They thanked her and headed toward the stairs with a little more pep in their steps than they'd had a minute before. That was a nice little bonus they hadn't been expecting, and they hadn't had to do much for it. A win for everyone.

  "Aww," Cheri Lynn said, hovering next to April. "That was super sweet of her. Most people wouldn't have thought to do it."

  Since we couldn't respond out loud, we just nodded.

  April turned to us. "You ladies wanna go to that comedy show with me? I've heard the food is great, and dinner's on me."

  Bobbie Sue hooked her arm through April's, smiling. "You had us at free food."

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  WE WENT BACK TO OUR room to change for dinner since it was in one of the dressy places. We had a half hour left before we were supposed to meet April, so we had a glass of wine on the balcony and batted around theories about how the jewelry'd gotten in the boat.

  "As far as I'm concerned," Coralee said, taking a sip of wine, "it's a no-brainer. Gerard tossed ’em overboard but wasn't bright enough to look over."

  "Or maybe he couldn't see," Anna Mae said, thoughtful. "What if he did it last night, but didn't sound the alarm until today?"

  "That's an idea," Bobbie Sue agreed, and I could see the gears turning. "He wouldn't have done it in broad daylight. Too risky."

  "Yeah," Coralee said, "But wouldn't April have caught him?"

  "Not necessarily," Cheri Lynn said. "If you noticed, they aren't sleeping in the same bed. Two of them were rumpled, not just one."

  I hadn't noticed that, but it would have made it a lot easier for him to sneak out.

  Cheri Lynn, who look snappy in a little black dress—emphasis on little—hovered over a chair. She was adapting well to being a ghost, but said she felt weird floating above us, so she did her best to maintain living positions. "And it's almost impossible to prove, too. I mean, even if they have a record of when the safe was opened, all he has to do is say he was putting something in for the night."

  Silence fell for a few minutes while we sipped our wine and enjoyed the view.

  "Where's Addy?" Raeann asked. "She hasn't been around since this afternoon." Since she pointed it out, I realized she’d disappeared when we’d gone to get the captain.

  Cheri Lynn waved a hand. "She's hangin' out with the other ghosts. There's a little group of older folks who've decided to retire on cruise ships now that they're no longer living and the kids have divvied up their homes and stuff." She frowned. "I feel bad for one of them, because she overheard her kids talking about her, and they didn't have the kindest things to say."

  Raeann tilted her head. "What do a bunch of little old dead folks do for fun?"

  Cheri Lynn giggled. "You'd be surprised. There's all kinds of eye candy if you haven't noticed, and let me tell you—some of those gals put construction workers to shame with their catcalls and comments."

  "Hey," Coralee protested, "Buddy's a construction worker." Buddy was her long-term squeeze.

  Cheri Lynn rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean. Not all of them are like that, but they're the most well-known for doing it just because they're visible."

  That soothed Coralee's feathers.

  "So that's all they do? Float around and give dirty little old men a run for their money?" Bobbie Sue asked, looking dubious. "That doesn't sound like Addy."

  "Nah," Cheri Lynn said. "They don't do that much, actually, and there are men, too. It was just the one thing that jumped out at me as funny. They mostly play poker and gossip about what all they've seen on the ship." She pulled a face. "You wouldn't believe some of the stories they have to tell."

  Coralee perked up at the mention of gossip. "I knew there had to be good drama on a ship. I just couldn't figure out how to tap into it. I'll get her to dish tonight, if she's around when we get in."

  "Oh, she'll be around," Cheri Lynn said. "She wants to catch the comedy show."

  "And what about your new flame?" Raeann asked. "Are you gonna introduce us?"

  "Actually," she said, biting her bottom lip and looking a little unsure, "I was wondering if now's a good time. He's as anxious to meet you all as you are to meet him."

  "Bring him on," Bobbie Sue said. "What are you waitin' for?"

  Cheri took a deep breath and smoothed her dress. "Okay, Rupert, come on out."

  A man that I could only describe as debonair appeared. He was wearing a tux and was handsome. If I had to guess, I'd say he was in his mid-thirties, or at least he was when he’d died. It was often hard to tell how old a living-impaired man was. Women were easy a lot of the time because they didn't tend to be too fashion-forward, especially if they were older.

  Men, on the other hand, have worn basically the same thing for at least forty years. Once you got past the seventies, fashion all blurred together unless they had some kind of serious hang up like parachute pants or butterfly collars. But evening wear? Forget it. That hadn't changed in almost a century. Plus, many younger ghosts kept up with the times.

  "Pleased to meet you, Rupert," I said. "So how long have you been on the ship?" That was my go-to way to at least narrow down the decade they died.

  He smiled a little, and I figured he knew what I was doing. "Thirty years," he replied. "Give or take. I lose track. And I was thirty-eight when I died. I was on holiday with my brother and the shellfish killed me."

  I turned a little green thinking of all the shrimp I'd eaten that morning. A quick glance at the rest of the crew told me their minds had gone the same way.

  Rupert held up his hands. "No, no. It's not what you think. I was allergic, and the chef forgot. It was a bad day for him, but a horrible one for me. Though I do feel bad. The poor chap still carries it with him."

  We chatted for a few more minutes, then the conversation turned to what we were gonna do that night after the show. Rupert had the most charming British accent, and was pleased to fill us in on what activities were good and which ones were best avoided.

  "I'm still all for going to the casino," Coralee said, a gleam in her eye. That girl was a gambler at heart. She spent more on lottery tickets than I did on utilities, though I had to admit, she had better luck than anyone I'd ever met. She regularly hit them for a hundred bucks, and even five hundred or a thousand occasionally. I don't know if she broke even, but it was a good chunk of change to get all at once.

  A grin spread across Rupert's face. "You, madam, are a woman after my own heart. Ms. Cheri Lynn said you liked to gamble. Would you mind if we joined you for a bit at the tables?"

  "Not at all," Coralee replied, swirling the last drink of her wine before downing it. "I'd enjoy the company." She gave them a little side-eye. "Don't go tellin' me how to play my hands, though."

  "I wouldn't dream of it," Rupert said. "Though if you wouldn't mind letting me play a hand or two vicariously, that would be most generous."

  I'm sure he didn't mean to, but he gave her the same look a pup does when he's begging for a bite of your steak. Or the one Max, our talking donkey, gave me when I opened the liquor cabinet.

  "I'm sure we can work something out," Coralee replied. "Scratching off my lottos will probably be at the top of things I miss the most when I finally punch my ticket, and I hope somebody will humor me, too."

  "We do solemnly swear," Raeann said, holding up her right hand. "As long as you leave us the money to buy them for you."

 
"Wow," Rupert said, awestruck. "You group sure are tight. Not one of my friends could even see me, let alone play poker for me."

  "Yeah," Cheri Lynn said, acting all nonchalant and cool. "That's just how we roll."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE SHOW WAS FANTASTIC, at least until Gerard joined us. Thankfully, he was on the phone most of the time and at least had the manners to excuse himself when he got a call. Or at least he did after Bobbie Sue reminded him it was the polite thing to do. When the bill came, he got a little bent, though.

  "Why is everything on one check, and why did they bring it to you?" he growled at April.

  She scowled back at him and snatched the check from his hands. "Because they found my pearls, and I told them I'd buy them dinner as a thank you."

  "If it's gonna be a problem," I said, my hackles raising a little, "we're grateful, April, but perfectly capable of paying our own way."

  "I'm sure you are," she replied, glaring daggers at her husband as she signed the check with a flourish, "but I said dinner was on me, and I meant it."

  Rather than argue, Gerard got up and left. He'd been taciturn during the brief periods he wasn't on his phone, so we were glad to see him go.

  After we finished our desert, we walked together to the casino. Once there, we all split up. We each had our own games we liked, and we didn't want to be betting against each other in any case.

  I caught sight of Coralee at the poker tables a while later when I was on my way from the slots to the blackjack tables. Rupert was watching over her shoulder, and when he said something, she raised a brow, glanced at her tablemates, and acknowledge whatever he’d said with a small nod. I don't know what they were doing, but they looked like they were having fun. I just hoped it wasn't the type that would get them booted out for cheating. The last thing we needed was to have her dragged out of the casino and into the mysterious back room, never to be seen or heard from again.

  After I'd been playing for twenty minutes or so, I cast a glance over my shoulder because I felt a presence behind me. Cheri Lynn was hovering there, watching with interest. She had a quizzical look on her face as she watched him deal. I was holding nineteen, and started to hold my hand over my cards to stay.