Murder on the Spanish Seas Read online

  “Virtually?”

  “Like most nationalist movements, there are always holdouts…” He looked down at his drink.

  I thought about the protestors at the quay and the two men who had tried to force their way onto the ship. But he didn’t look like he wanted to talk about it, so I changed the subject. “Do you cruise often?”

  He chuckled. “No, it was a gift of sorts from my university. And I clearly do not belong with this group of people.” He gestured down at his attire. “You?”

  “No. It’s my first and probably last one. It’s not really my thing. It was Sam’s idea.”

  “The woman at the table…Sam. Are you two together?”

  “Yes,” I said, and then realized what he meant. “I mean, we’re friends. This trip was a gift to me.”

  “That is a very nice gift. Why isn’t it your thing?”

  I explained to him that I wasn’t really into crowds, or small talk, or intestinal parasites. “But so far it’s been interesting.”

  He raised an eyebrow, encouraging me to go on.

  “There was some kind of disturbance at the quay when we boarded. A few guys tried to storm the ship.”

  He nodded. “Yes, some demonstrators.”

  “Do you know what it was about?”

  He hesitated and took a sip of his drink. “No.”

  “And it also looks like we might have a domestic conflict on board already.” I described what I’d seen earlier with the Russian couple in the bar.

  He leaned forward, encouraging me to continue. I liked that he had a curious streak.

  “What do you think was going on?” He’d set his drink on the bar and was looking at me intently.

  “No idea. It was all in Russian.”

  “I saw them earlier. There was a young woman with them.”

  “Yeah, I think they all might be related. Maybe it’s her granddaughter. She didn’t look any happier than he did to be here.”

  He paused, thinking. Then, “Russians…unhappy is their happy place.” We both laughed.

  I wasn’t used to smiling this much, and my face felt funny. It reminded me of how I felt after going to the various professional conferences I’d been forced to attend over the years, where the muscles in my face responsible for smiling and pretending to care became fatigued from overuse.

  Ander took another sip of his Coke-wine drink. “What are you drinking?”

  “Irish whiskey.”

  “They have a good selection here.”

  “Yeah, no kidding. Four top shelf tequilas, six bourbons, five single malt scotches, eight vodkas, and four gins. Not bad for a little pub.”

  Ander looked at the shelves of bottles on the wall, his lips moving as he counted.

  I mentally smacked myself for doing what Sam called my “memory thing” right off the bat. People generally didn’t respond well to my ability to perfectly recall everything around me, although it didn’t seem to bother him.

  “What do you do for a living?” he asked.

  “At the moment, nothing.”

  He waited for me to keep going and I didn’t. My employment record was not one of my strong points. The last three years as an expert witness represented the longest uninterrupted stretch of my working life. One of my physicist friends, part of my small circle of brainy social outcasts that I’d met in graduate school, described my career as “a series of high-speed random walks into brick walls.”

  As an academic rockstar I’d graduated at the top of my class, and landed an enviable position right out of college with one of the big five accounting firms. In retrospect, it’s hard to imagine a worse fit for a foul mouthed, too-smart young woman with a bad wardrobe, deep-seated anger issues, and no social skills than a prestigious Midwestern accounting firm. I was let go after six weeks, learning in my brief exit interview that dropping F bombs in front of senior partners was not appropriate.

  This was followed by a position with a boutique financial services company. My supervisor really liked me and was sorry to have to fire me, taking time to explain things in a way he hoped would help me going forward. He knew I was into food, so had used a restaurant analogy.

  “Imagine you’re in a kitchen in the best restaurant in the world, cooking superior cuisine that people come from all over the world to eat. Then imagine that food being brought to customers by angry servers who throw the plates on the tables and walk away. That’s kind of what it’s like working with you. You’re a five-star meal served by meth addicts in withdrawal.”

  Rinse and repeat, I went through five more companies in four years, my productivity inevitably overshadowed by some fatal breach of decorum that resulted in immediate dismissal.

  My essential challenge was summed up succinctly by my last manager as “a million-dollar brain and a ten-cent personality.” This was fairly accurate, although I thought on that scale my personality rated at least a quarter. But in any case, that was when I decided I needed to work for myself, and started the financial investigations and expert witness business.

  I thought it was a little too soon to share my work history with Ander. He was smart, nice looking, and apparently single, so if there was a chance we might connect on the cruise, I didn’t want to blow it the first night by letting him know too much about me.

  Exercise was always a safe topic. “Are you into sports?” He looked fit and must have done something to keep in shape.

  “I ride to work. Cycling is popular where I come from. You know Miguel Indurain is from Navarre.”

  I nodded noncommittedly. Between my aversion to spandex and sanctimony, I wasn’t much of a cycling fan, but even I knew who Indurain was. He’d won the Tour de France multiple times.

  Ander went on. It was odd how quiet his body was. I spent a lot of time in bars, and people almost always fidgeted while they talked. They’d turn their drinks in their hands, peel beer bottle labels, swing around in their chairs, something. He was comfortably still. “I used to play rugby, but that is a young man’s sport. And I do some climbing. Mountaineering is very popular as well. Have you heard of Alberto Iñurrategi Iriarte? He is from the Basque Country, and is one of eight people in the world to climb all fourteen of the eight-thousand-meter peaks in the world, each Alpine style.” In response to my puzzled look, he said, “That means without oxygen or Sherpas, and few camps.”

  I supposed that was notable, and tried to look impressed.

  “And Josune Bereziartu, she is from Lazkao, and is the first female to have climbed the grade difficulty 9a5 14d.”

  I had no idea what that meant, but assumed it was also incredible and nodded.

  “And you?”

  “No organized sports anymore, but I work out regularly. And I like to watch professional sports, especially football.”

  “You mean American football, yes?”

  “Yeah. I’m not much of a soccer fan.”

  Football, for me, was more than a sport. It was inextricably entwined with the few happy memories I had of my childhood. Sunday morning game time was special because I could usually count on my dad sticking around for that. The more he started to drift away from us, the more important that time watching games together became to me. Eventually it was the only time I saw him. In the end that had gone away too. But the safe, warm feeling that football evoked in me remained. It was a little ridiculous, but I would still get excited every fall for the season to start, turning the TV on to whatever game was playing, even if I didn’t care about the teams.

  We’d lived in Chicago most of my life, but Mom and Dad were from Cleveland and were huge Browns fans, so I was too. I still am, despite it being a lifelong exercise in futility.

  “But you know what you call soccer is the original football, yes?” He smiled.

  We got into the inevitable “soccer is the real football” discussion, about the “beautiful game,” and the purity of soccer compared to American football. I’d had that argument many times before with socce
r fans and at this point found it tedious, but it didn’t bother me with Ander. He was having fun with it, and unlike other people didn’t take it as a personal affront that I wasn’t a soccer fan. We argued good-naturedly for a few minutes and then moved on to other subjects. He was an avid reader, and well versed in history and politics. It was refreshing to be with someone who didn’t find my own varied interests overwhelming.

  I’d known ahead of time there wouldn’t be many singles on this cruise, which was fine with me. Something about being stuck on a ship with a bunch of strangers sucked the urge to connect right out of me. But I could feel it coming back.

  We finished our drinks, the first of many that lasted late into the evening.

  DAY 2

  CHAPTER 4

  I woke up late the next morning with a slight hangover, something I’d probably need to get used to on this trip. I put on jeans and a T-shirt and went to meet Sam on the pool deck where I knew she’d be sunning.

  She was surrounded by a group of admirers that would no doubt grow daily. I sat down in the deck chair next to her.

  She looked me over. “You were out late. I’m hoping it’s because you got lucky last night?”

  “If by lucky you mean I managed to avoid groups of people and drank good whiskey, then yes, very.”

  She sighed. “You know, if you give it a chance, you might actually meet some interesting people on this trip. You’ll live longer if you have more friends.” Which was probably true for most people.

  The deck was slowly filling up with what looked like uninteresting people. Mostly couples who were sunning, sleeping, or drinking. The Olympic-sized pool was already in use by several people swimming laps. I recognized one of the swimmers as the young woman I’d seen board with the Russians.

  I leaned back in my chair, taking a sip of the coffee that had magically appeared from one of the stewards. “I have you. You’re like having ten friends.” More like a hundred.

  The ship was smoothly cutting through the water, although I could barely tell by the movement of the deck. Sam looked up at the sky, closing her eyes. “I found out your Russian man’s name. It’s Boris Alekseev.”

  “What did you have to do to get the name?”

  “I’m having drinks with Palben, the chief purser.” Her eyes were still closed but I could see the start of a smile forming on her lips.

  “Isn’t crew fraternization with passengers frowned upon?”

  “Normally, yes. But he’s an executive level officer, so he gets more leeway.”

  “Thanks. I owe you.”

  “No, you don’t. He’s cute. And he can get me a behind the scenes tour of the Guggenheim when we get to Bilbao.”

  “Is ‘behind the scenes at the Guggenheim’ a euphemism for hooking up?”

  “No, you’re invited too.”

  “Great. Thanks for doing that.”

  Crew members were moving unobtrusively among guests with trays of drinks, bottles of cava, and ice buckets. The crew member to passenger ratio on this cruise was very high, almost one to one, but the crew, for the most part, was either out of sight most of the time or managed to blend in to the surroundings. I could see from their name tags that they represented a variety of countries. There were a lot of Spanish-sounding names, which made sense given that most of this cruise took place around Spain.

  On the far side of the pool, I spotted Ander leaning up against the railing, looking around. He saw me and waved. I waved back.

  “Well, I did meet someone. Remember the guy from our dinner table? The one from San Sebastian? I had drinks with him.” I pointed to Ander.

  She looked across the deck and brightened. “There you go!” She looked him over. “He’s nice looking in a rustic kind of way.” She looked back at me. “Is he smart enough?”

  Sam knew my dating history. My longest relationship in the last year had been a three-day weekend with a guy I’d met at the gym. He was gorgeous and a great guy, and it was a vigorous, sweaty affair, but, as usual, I got bored and ended it. That was par for the course. Inevitably, within a few dates, the guys I met would turn out to be either not smart enough, or boring, or both, and I’d cut them loose. Sam called me a cerebrosexual, and I supposed that was true. Occasionally, I’d hook up with someone after consuming mass quantities of alcohol, which always made other people seem more interesting. At least until it wore off.

  “It seems like it.”

  We watched Ander from across the deck. He found who he’d been looking for, and walked toward the railing at the bow where he met up with a crew member. An officer by the look of his uniform.

  I leaned over to Sam. “Who’s he talking to? Is that the captain?”

  “No, it’s the first officer, he’s the second in command on the ship. I think his name is Inigo.”

  “They seem chummy.”

  Whatever they were discussing was private. Two passengers walked to the railing next to them, looking out over the water. While they were within earshot Ander and Inigo stopped talking. A few moments later, the couple left, and the men resumed their conversation, their heads bowed together. While they were talking, another crew member walked up to Inigo and handed him a note. He said something to Ander, then turned and walked away toward the bridge. Ander left after him and we saw him go into the stairwell.

  “I wonder what that was about,” Sam said.

  I wondered too. I continued to scan the deck. On the other side of the pool, standing off to the side, was a crew member by himself. He was the only one not waiting on passengers. His head moved slightly as he gazed around the deck through mirrored sunglasses.

  “What do you think he does?”

  Sam looked him over. “I’m guessing he’s the ship’s security officer. They’re required to have one.”

  The security officer was short and skinny, with thinning black hair that was cut short. He was standing unnaturally straight, possibly to make every one of his five feet and six inches count. He held his hands behind his back in what looked like a military parade position. Kind of a ridiculous posture on the deck of a luxury cruise ship.

  “Not likely he’s going to sneak up on anyone.” The guy wasn’t exactly subtle, his face fixed with an exaggerated look of suspicion.

  “He’s part of a team, and there are probably some who are undercover as well. Security on cruise ships is serious business.”

  “Why? What are they worried about?” It hadn’t occurred to me that criminal activity would be a thing on a cruise ship.

  “Terrorism, and there’s a lot of drug smuggling that goes on. It’s big business.” She took a sip of cava. “There was a bust on one of the Caribbean cruises I took a few years ago. A couple of crew members had picked up some cocaine in Jamaica and tried to bring it into the US. Because of this there are usually security cameras everywhere on cruise ships.

  “I haven’t seen many cameras.” Actually, not a single one.

  “Yes, that kind of surveillance doesn’t fly with this clientele. People with this kind of money tend to avoid cameras. Instead, they do extensive pre-trip checking on everyone. It’s not practical on a cruise with two thousand people to do in-depth vetting, but with fewer passengers it makes sense.”

  I recalled the forms she’d had me fill out prior to the cruise, the administrative version of a complete colonoscopy. At this point, there wasn’t much they didn’t know about me. I thought it was to make sure our cruise didn’t have any undesirables on board. Now that I thought about it, it was a little surprising that they’d let me on.

  Sam continued. “In lieu of cameras, every floor with passenger suites has a concierge.”

  “You mean like Benat? I thought he was here to help us.”

  “He is. But each floor’s concierge is also responsible for keeping an eye on the passenger suites. Theft is a common problem on cruise ships. This is in addition to a lot of other security measures. We all went through a metal detector when we boarded, and we’re go
ing to do that every time we re-board after port calls. Remember how they took your luggage when you got on?”

  I nodded.

  “Everyone’s bags were taken when we get on the ship. They were turned over to handlers, and we didn’t get them back until they’d been processed. They use dogs to sniff out drugs and explosives. Those are the things I know about, but for obvious reasons, they don’t make a point to share all of their security procedures with the passengers.”

  Hearing all of this, I wasn’t sure if I felt more or less safe, but realized I was hungry. “Are you up for an early lunch?”

  “Sure.”

  We picked up her things and walked to the elevator. One of Sam’s goals was to try all of the restaurants on the ship, so we went to the top level of the atrium and into the first open lunch venue we saw.

  Bistro Entrecôte (“Alternative French”) was a small, intimate restaurant. Pendant lights hung above tables set with black and white tablecloths, and vintage photographs hung on brick veneer walls. The tables included a mix of small two-tops and larger settings.

  Sam liked being with groups for meals, and we joined a table that included a mix of international big shots from various countries and their spouses, one young trust fund couple from France, and a Dr. and Mrs. Ken Beverly.

  After surviving a round of introductions, I put my head down and focused on my salad. Sam was her usual scintillating self, drawing people out and making each one feel like they were the most important person on the planet.

  “So, Dr. Beverly, what kind of doctor are you?”

  “I’m a proctologist.”

  My head popped up, and under the table, Sam put her hand on my leg. As he described his practice, I could feel her hand tightening on my thigh, silently begging me for restraint.

  “That must be interesting—” Sam started, and I quickly interrupted her.

  “Are you into astronomy?”

  He smiled at me. “Why, yes, how did you know?” He started to regale us with details of his high-end home telescope and nightly findings, while I waited for an opening to ask him what his favorite planet was.