Anchors Aweigh - 6 (22 page)

I think—at least for me—it might just be love.

I sat up on the bed, my bra inching downward.

“As a matter of fact, she’s right here. Sure. Hang on.” Townsend held the receiver out to me. “It’s your sister. Says she needs to talk to you.”

I got up and took the phone, yanking my bra straps back up in place. “Taylor?” I answered, my tone somewhat chilly, wondering if she’d suspected I might be with Townsend, then feeling all guilty because I was with Townsend and he was presently nuzzling my neck. I shooed him away. “What is it?” I asked.

“Oh, Tressa, I’m so glad I found you. You’ve got to come quick. Something’s happened!” Taylor said, her voice unnaturally high, her words uncharacteristically rushed.

My God! My sister with an actual, documented case of motormouth?

“What’s wrong, Taylor? It’s not Mom or Dad or Gammy? Or Craig or Kimmie? Is it?” I asked, my heart racing.

“No. No. It’s David Frazier Compton, Coral’s husband.”

I frowned. “
Oo
kay What about him?”

“He’s missing. He never returned to the ship last night,” Taylor said. The same blood that just seconds before had been at a high boil now cooled like pizza when the carton top is left open. My chin almost reached my bellybutton my mouth dropped open so far.

“What are you talking about? What, you mean he missed the departure?”

“Yes! That’s exactly what I mean,” Taylor said. “He never made it back to the
Epiphany.
Can you believe it?”

No.

And, strangely…yes.

“What could have happened to him?” Taylor asked.

“They do warn tourists to be careful and not go out on their own,” I pointed out, but thinking no way would David have anything to fear from MoBay riff-raff. He was one of them. “I imagine he just lost track of time,” I said, hoping I was correct.

“Then why doesn’t he just go to the cruise terminal and have them contact the ship?” Taylor asked.

“He didn’t?”

“No, he didn’t.”

Maybe because…he can’t.

The thought hung there between us, and I shivered when I remembered that the last time I’d seen David he was in danger of having his windpipe crushed by a 14 wide.

“We have to tell the authorities what we know!” Taylor whispered. “Tell them what happened.”

“No! We can’t do that! Not yet. We need to talk. Get our stories straight,” I said, and Ranger Rick’s hands slid from my shoulders.

“Get your stories straight?” he mouthed, shaking his head in a “What’s going on now?” motion.

I waved a hand at him.

“Listen. Stay in the cabin. I’m on my way. We’ll figure out our next move. Stay there!”

I slammed the phone down, threw my shirt over my head, readjusted my clothing and grabbed Harry.

“What’s going on, Tressa?” Rick said. “Who missed the ship?”

“Coral LaFavre’s husband, David.”

“Oh? And why are we so concerned about this David?” He looked at me in such a way I grew uncomfortable.

“Coral’s become a friend,” I said, wanting to tell Townsend everything but suddenly afraid that when I did someone I cared about could be in a great deal of trouble.

“What was all that about getting your stories straight?” he said.

“Oh, that. Gram and Joe want to go sailing on a catamaran but Taylor and I are trying to talk them into something safer. Like the pirate reenactment. Or going to hell.”

Townsend looked at me. “And that’s all?” he said. “You’re sure?”

“For now,” I replied. “Just for now. I’d better go. Taylor’s waiting.”

“You know, I had big plans for us today, too, Tressa,” Townsend said, brushing the hair back out of my eyes with a tender gesture. “Will you save some time for me?”

He looked so serious that I almost stopped then and there and tossed him on the bed, leaving no doubt that that was where I wanted to be. “I’ll try,” I said. “I’ll really try.”

I headed for the door, snagging a cinnamon roll and cold bacon from the tray on the table as I left. I’d need all the strength I could get, because I just might have stumbled onto what my faux-beau/fake-fiancé Manny DeMarco really did for a living.

Manny Dishman/DeMarco/da deadliest hitman to ever sail the seven seas. My very own candy-giving, ring-bearing, life-saving assassin. What more could a woman want?

Yup, that’s what you call a man to die for.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Okay, what’s this about Coral’s David?” I said, opening the stateroom door and skidding to a sudden stop when I saw Taylor and Coral sitting on the mini sofa. “Uh, hello,” I said. “You, uh, haven’t started without me, have you, Taylor?” I asked, wondering if my sis had already spilled the beans about our encounter with Coral’s husband and Manny’s walk-on role in our
The Turner Girls Go Wild in Jamaica
travel flick.

“You know the party never can begin without you being here, Tressa,” Taylor said as I tossed Harry Javelina on the bed. She gave me a weird look. “Where have you been? And what is that in your hand?”

I remembered the cinnamon roll—I’d eaten the cold bacon on my sprint back to the stateroom.

“It’s a bran muffin,” I lied.

“With frosting?”

Eagle-eye.

“It’s faux frosting,” I said. “Hello, Coral. How long have you been here?” I asked.

“Long enough to get the feeling you know something about David I don’t,” she said.

“That long, huh?” I responded.

“Coral stopped by to tell you about David,” Taylor said. “She was kind of here when I called.”

Son of a barnacle.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Coral asked.

I pulled the chair out from the desk and sat facing Coral and Taylor.

“Let’s go in order. You first,” I said.

Coral stared at me. “What do you mean?”

“Chronological order,” I said. “Your story came first.”

Coral’s eyelids narrowed. “What story?”

“You know. The one with all the ingredients of a best-selling whodunit,” I said. “The one that features the glamorous celebrity and her blackmailing agent-publicist husband. That story.”

Coral put a hand to her mouth. She looked at Taylor and back at me.

“How the hell—”

“It’s my gift,” I said, with a shrug. “Backstory please.”

“All right, all right. Yes. David has been blackmailing me,” Coral admitted.

“Over your drunk-driving accident,” I said, and her eyes got big again. “When you hit someone.”

“Drunk-driving?” Taylor said.

“Girl. You’re good,” Coral told me.

I nodded. “And David offered to keep his mouth shut about the hit and run—for a price. Right?” I said.

“Hit and run?” Taylor said.

Coral nodded. Tears filled her eyes, and I handed her a tissue box from the desk. She took one and dabbed. “You don’t know the half,” she said. “I didn’t just hit someone.” She hesitated. “I killed someone.”

My own gasp was drowned out by Taylor’s.

“Killed someone?” we said.

Coral blew her nose and nodded. “I know. It’s horrible. Unforgivable. And I have no defense for letting this go on for so long other than the fact that I’m a craven little coward. Well, maybe not so little,” she admitted.

“What happened?” Taylor asked.

“It was several years back. My career was on the skids. My father had just died. I’d gained weight. I was miserable. David was being an ass and not getting me any new work. I was getting ready to cut him loose. I started to drink. A little at first,” Coral explained. “It was a way to escape. Well, that’s what I thought. Instead, it made me a prisoner. I’d had the one drunk-driving arrest. I told myself after that I’d never drink again, but I was so unhappy. And I felt better when I felt nothing at all.”

“What happened that night?” I asked. “The night you hit someone?”

She shook her head. “I don’t remember all that much. I’d been drinking. So what else was new? I didn’t think I was all that bad off Of course, a drunk never does, do they? I decided to go out and get another bottle of booze. I was on my way home when I hit something. I struck my head on the dashboard and passed out. David called me on my cell. It woke me up. I told him what had happened. He showed up. Told me to take his car and drive straight home, he’d take care of things. He returned to the house with my car hours later. It was then he told me I’d actually hit someone. He showed me all the blood on the grill of the car. It was ghastly. I was devastated.”

“Why didn’t you go to the police?” Taylor asked.

Coral dabbed furiously at her eyes. “I wanted to! I told David that. But he wouldn’t hear of it. His ass was on the line, too, he said. By that time he’d already disposed of the body and he’d be charged as an accessory for tampering with evidence or something, he said. I couldn’t do that to him. At the time, I was unaware of what a real asshole he was,” Coral said.

“And later?” I asked. “How about then?”

She shook her head. “I won’t lie to you. At that point, it was self-preservation. Or just selfishness. By then my career was back on the upswing. I’d reinvented myself. Turned my life around. Sobered up. I knew my career would never survive this kind of bombshell. Drunk driving was one thing. Hit-and-run and vehicular manslaughter was quite another. The poor fellow was dead. Confessing now wouldn’t help him. So, I kept quiet. Kept David on as my manager. Even married him to keep him quiet. I’m not proud of it. I’m no better than he is. In fact, I’m worse,” she said. “I’m just ready for it to be over. Ready for it all to come out now. I can’t live like this anymore.”

Taylor patted Coral’s shoulder.

“Who did you kill?” I asked.

“Tressa! Don’t ask something like that!” Taylor scolded.

“Why not? Aren’t you curious?” I asked, a niggling suspicion beginning to eat at me.

“He was a jogger,” Coral said.

“My God,” Taylor said. “The poor jogger.”

“See? I warned you jogging could be hazardous to your health,” I said to Taylor.

She shook her head.

“How exactly did you know he was a jogger?” I asked Coral, trying not to be too indelicate. “I mean, did he have on jogging clothes? Running shoes? Did he have an iPod in his ear?”
A huge dent in his head?

“I don’t know what he was wearing. I never saw him!” Coral said.

“Hello. I think we’ve already established that. You hit him with a car, didn’t you?” I said. “I’m talking afterwards. After you hit him. What did he look like then?”

“Tressa! Eeow!” Taylor said. “That’s disgusting!”

“I told you, I never saw him,” Coral replied.

I looked at her. “Never? You never even took a quick peek when you got out of your car?” I asked.

“No! I told you, David didn’t tell me what I’d hit until much later. He got me out of my car and led me to his and told me to drive home, he’d take care of everything. So I did.”

“Then, how do you know you hit someone?” I asked.

“We already covered this. I saw the blood on the car,” Coral reminded me.

I frowned. “Animals bleed,” I pointed out. “How do you know it was human blood?”

She sniffled and looked up at me. “David. David told me,” she said. “And later he showed me the clipping.”

“Clipping?”

“The newspaper clipping. A jogger washed up on the beach a week later near where David had—disposed of the body,” she said with a shudder. “It was awful. It put a name to my victim. A sense of desperate reality to that horrible, horrible night. I wanted to go to the police but somehow I let David talk me out of it again. I almost started drinking again that night.”

“So, what you’re telling us is you’ve only got David’s word that you hit somebody that night,” I said. “You mentioned earlier you were unhappy with David before the accident. You were planning to fire him. Right?”

Coral frowned. “What are you getting at?” she asked. “You think he made it all up? I hit something out there. I know it.”

“You hit something. Something that bled. It could’ve been a deer, a dog, a mountain lion or whatever critters you have running across roads in your neck of the woods,” I pointed out. “Did David know you planned to get rid of him as your manager at the time?”

Coral nodded. “Yes. We spoke about it a month or so before the accident. I told him if I didn’t get a promising role by the end of the month, I was going to have to terminate our contract.” She looked at me. “My God. You
do
think he made it all up. You think he lied about the accident, don’t you?” She shook her head. “What kind of person could do something like that?”

I looked at Taylor. “The kind of man who’d rather arrange for my sister and I to be used as sex slaves or something worse than let us return to
The Epiphany
and rat him out,” I told her, and explained what had happened at MoBay leaving out Manny’s timely intervention.

“Oh my God. Were you hurt?”

“Just my outfit,” I said. “And my feelings. Your husband gave my Mattie Ross
True Grit
audition a big thumbs-down,” I admitted.

Coral looked lost. “So, David thought once you confronted me and started to question me about that night, I might figure out there never was a pedestrian hit-and-run?” she said.

“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” I said. “Even if the hit-and-run death wasn’t bogus, either way David was screwed if I got back to the boat. Er, ship. Being the ace cub reporter that I am, can you imagine the attention I’d grab if I claimed Coral LaFavre had committed vehicular manslaughter while driving drunk? I could sell the story for mega bucks. David would be implicated and you’d both be sent to the slammer. If the story was fake, which, after talking with you I believe to be the case, he’d lose his ability to blackmail you and, as a result, lose his cushy lifestyle,” I pointed out. “Either way his gravy train would be derailed.”

Coral stared. Not at me. Off into space like I do when my gammy is feeding me the latest gossip from the senior center.

I waved a hand in her face. “Coral? Are you all right? Coral?”

“Son of a bitch!” she said. “Low-down, scum-sucking bastard. Spawn of Satan. Fruit of Lucifer’s loins! All this time? All this time it was a lie! I’m gonna kill that gawd-damned piece of lying trash!”

“Haven’t you forgotten something?” I asked Coral. “That particular piece of poop never made it back to the poop deck last night.”

“Oh. Yeah.” She took a minute. “So how’d you get away from David and his minion again?” she finally asked.

I’d conveniently glossed over the part in my narrative where Manny suddenly appeared and almost pulled David through the car window.

“The Turner sisters are…resourceful,” I told her.

“Tressa,” Taylor pressed.

“What?
What?”
I asked.

“Go on.” She nodded her head.

Jeesch. Bossy sister.

“Okay, okay. I have a confession to make,” I told Coral. “I suppose now is as good a time as any.”

“Oh?” Coral said.

“I know about you and Sam Davenport,” I said.

“Oh.”

“Tressa?” Taylor said.

“Oh? That’s all you have to say, Coral? Oh?” I asked.

“Oh shit. Any better?”

Wow. Whoopi Goldberg in the flesh. Who knew?

“Does Davenport know about David blackmailing you?” I asked Coral.

Her sliding gaze told me affirmative.

“Did he know before the cruise?” I asked.

Again, no eye contact.

“What were you thinking?” I said. “A deadbeat husband blackmailing you. A security expert in love with you. It’s almost as if you orchestrated the whole thing with the purpose of eliminating your little problem.” I stopped. “You didn’t. Did you?” I asked.

“Did I…what?” Coral asked.

“Set this whole thing up to have Davenport take your husband out,” I said.

“You can’t be serious,” Coral said. “Is she serious?” she asked Taylor.

“Dead serious,” Taylor replied. “And it’s an interesting question, considering your husband missed the boat last night.”

I got off my chair and sat on the cocktail table across from the singer. “Tell me, Coral, did you let Security Sam deal with your blackmail issue for you? Where’s your husband, Coral?”

“I wish I knew,” she said. “Because I’d tear him apart with my bare hands.”

“If someone hasn’t beaten you to it,” I said, thinking again of Manny.

“Don’t expect me to cry him a river if that’s the case,” Coral said.

“And all along I thought he was trying to kill you,” I admitted.

Coral frowned. “Is that why you tossed my candy-coated chocolate over the side?” she asked.

I nodded. “I was desperate.”

“Sounds like you need a vacation from your vacation,” Coral said, getting to her feet. “I suppose I’d better go speak with Sam,” she said.

“I’m coming with you,” I announced, jumping up. “I need to talk to him, too.” And ask him just what business he had with Manny DeMarco, and did it pertain to the now missing David Frazier Compton.

“Oh, your friends from the Stardust. They’d just finished seeing Sam when I went to meet him,” Coral said.

I frowned. “You saw them this morning? Were they with their husbands?”

“One of the husbands was there, I think,” she said.

“Which one?” I pressed.

“The heavy one,” she said.

“Uh, not helping,” I replied. “Blond or dark-haired?”

“How would I know? He had a ball cap on.”

“Did they say what they were doing this morning?” I asked.

“One of the husbands, I can’t remember which, was under the weather, so the other three said something about going ashore,” she said. “I didn’t really pay that much attention.”

For the first time I started to doubt myself. I doubted my recollection of the whispered phone call. Second-guessed the attack in the sickbay. Began to wonder if it really was all in my head.

It was the buff that finally convinced me. The buff was real—concrete, physical evidence that my struggle with an unknown assailant had also been real. Real. Not made up. And considering there was no earthly reason for anyone to want to snuff me—with the exception of the murder plot I’d accidentally overheard—the attack on the stairs and in the sickbay had to be linked to that one phone conversation. That person on the phone and—I realized for the first time—the person on the other end of the conversation.

Damn.

“Tressa will catch up with you,” Taylor said, and I looked at her. “We need to talk.”

Coral nodded. “Okay. I’ll see you shortly, I guess,” she said and left.

“What’s the deal?” Taylor asked as soon as the door shut. “Why didn’t you tell her about Manny?”