Anchors Aweigh - 6 (7 page)

“By forcing you to choose,” Joe said. “Once and for all. Don’t think I haven’t seen the way Manny looks at you.”

“Wh-what do you mean?” I asked, terrified by what he was implying.

“There’s something there,” Joe said. “You know it. I know it. He knows it.”

“But we’re just…” I was about to say
friends
but stopped because I knew that wasn’t true. Manny and I had never been what you’d call friends. In fact, I was hard-pressed to put into words just what we were to each other. For the first time it occurred to me to wonder why I hadn’t tried to do so before now.

“Rick’s my grandson,” Joe went on. “You’re Hannah’s granddaughter. We want you both to be happy. But if you think my grandson is going to wait around forever for you to make up your mind…” He stopped and shook his head.

I felt bad then that I’d called him senile. He was just Joe. Tedious. Unpredictable. Eccentric. Obstinate. Joltin’ Joe.

He laid a wrinkled hand on my shoulder. “I’ve been around a long time. Seen a lot. Believe me when I say it’s for your own good. And Rick’s.”

I felt my eyes sting and mist up. “Cruel to be kind, huh, Joe?” I said.

“If you want to look at it that way, be my guest.”

I shook my head. “I am your guest, remember?” I told him. “And look where it got me. On a week-long cruise with no breakfast buffet, no red meat, no booze and zilch chocolate, and just seven days to make the most important decision of my life. Not to mention attempting to prevent a murder no one but me believes is about to happen. Thanks, Joe. Thanks for the freakin’ vegetable deluxe Custom Cruise package. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to thank you.”

He stared at me. “No meat? No dessert? What do you mean, no dessert? And what’s this about murder?”

I left Joe and his queries in the shrubbery and hurried back to Manny.

“Took Tressa long enough. Bodies by Manny missed you. Everything come out okay?” he asked with a grin, his dark eyes roaming over me.

“I’m cool,” I said, feeling anything but.

“Oh, what a lovely rose!” Courtney remarked. “Where did you get it? Are they giving them out somewhere? Oh, I suppose Manny gave you that. That’s so romantic. Steve! Where’s
my
rose?”

I looked down at the flower in my hand. Manny took my wrist and brought the crimson petals to his nostrils. He smelled the rose and then turned my arm slightly and kissed the soft inside of my wrist. “Very nice,” he said.

I almost wet my hot pink hipsters.

“Fancy meeting you here,” I heard, and turned to find Coral LaFavre and her husband with the three names had joined us. “Oh, that’s right! You’re engaged!” Coral grabbed my hand. “How divine,” she said. “And this delicious fellow must be your fiancé,” she said, her chocolate eyes giving Manny their full attention.

She held out her hand. “Coral LaFavre,” she introduced herself “My husband, David.” Coral didn’t bother to look at her husband, merely inclined her head in his direction. I couldn’t blame her. Compared to Manny, David looked like an anemic albino.

“Manny DeMarco,” Manny said, shaking Coral’s hand and giving her the benefit of his commercial-grade smile.

“Nice to meet you, Coral.”

“I can see why you kept Manny here a secret, Tressa dear,” Coral said. “Smart girl.”

I managed a weak smile. If only she knew.

“Manny’s a personal trainer,” Courtney cut in. “I imagine you’ve heard of him. Bodies by DeMarco.”

I cringed. This was more brutal than a stint on
The Flying Dutchman
captained by Davy Jones.

“I suppose you trainers will have us up at the crack of dawn exercising,” Coral said, sticking her full lower lip out in a pout. “You’ll probably have to come drag me out of bed. Will that be a problem, you think?” she asked with a wicked twinkle in her eye.

“Maybe your new husband could give you a good, swift kick—to help you out of bed,” I suggested, unsure why I cared whether Coral got a personal wake-up call from Manny. Except that she thought he was my fiancé and was still putting the moves on him.

Coral’s eyebrows rose and she smiled.

“This is my husband, Steve Kayser, and our best friends, Ben and Sherri Hall,” Courtney told Coral. “We’re doing the ‘New You’ Cruise together. I just have to tell you I love all your work, Miss LaFavre,” she went on. “I want you to know I wrote in and told the network you should replace Star Jones on
The View
when she left. You’d be so perfect!”

“Why, thank you,” she said, her lips twitching.

“You two better beware of Tressa here,” Ben spoke up. “She’s trolling for business.”

“Oh?” David said. “What kind of business?”

“Insurance business,” Courtney supplied. “Tressa here’s been a herald of ill fortune with her chilling warnings of misfortune at sea,” she explained. My earlier infomercial had gone way bad.

“Insurance?” Coral gave me a puzzled look. “I thought you were a newspaper reporter,” she said.

I frowned. “Who told you that?” I asked, wondering if Security Sam had spoken with her after all.

“Your Aunt Mo,” she said. “At the safety drill after you left she mentioned you were a reporter of some notoriety back home but that she hoped you’d settle down, have babies, and quit finding dead bodies once you and her nephew were married.”

I winced. Good old one-track-mind Mo.

“Dead bodies?” Sherri finally spoke.

“I thought you said you sold insurance,” Ben said.

“I did. I do,” I added, looking for a way through the tangled strands of lies before I got stuck in my own outlandish web. “The insurance is a sideline. You know. A second job. You see, I own a stable of horses back home and it costs a pretty penny to keep them in grain and grass.” I figured it would play better to take a kernel of truth and expand on that rather than going the pure balderdash route. “I hold down several jobs at various times of the year. Besides the newspaper job, I work at my uncle’s Dairee Freeze, too. And I do seasonal work in retail, as well. It keeps me busy and keeps my little herd in hay.”

“What was that about dead bodies?” Sherri asked again.

“In the course of my investigative reporting duties I might have stumbled across one or two—”

“Or four or five,” Manny interjected.

“—deceased individuals in the last several years—”

“Year,” Manny corrected.

“—but at least a couple of those unfortunate folks were killed before I officially got back into investigative journalism,” I finished.

“Killed?” Sherri said. “As in—”

“Murder,” Manny supplied. “Tressa’s got a gift—for solving mysteries,” he added with a wink. “She always gets her man.”

“Obviously,” Coral said, with another appreciative look at Manny. “How on earth did you make the leap from journalism to insurance broker?” she asked.

Via a very fertile imagination, of course.

“Well, you see,” I said, thinking I was weaving so many lies I needed Spidey’s cool wrist web shooters to do the job efficiently, “finding those unfortunate victims of crime like I did got me to thinking about how hard their demises would be on their families and loved ones, and I thought about how hard it would be emotionally and financially for them, which got me wondering how many of those who died unexpectedly had bothered to think about protecting their families from that very same sudden-death scenario, and that’s how I got into the insurance game. If I do well this quarter, I get to begin handling annuities next annum,” I added, thinking E. F. Hutton would roll over in his grave if I so much as touched anyone’s annuity. Whatever that was.

“Tressa has lots of contacts in law enforcement, which can’t hurt in the insurance biz either,” Manny added. I looked at him, thinking that if this was his way of helping me, he was going overboard—and sending a very clear message that I was a force to be reckoned with.

Alas. More fiction.

“Oh dear, look at the time. It’s been illuminating, but I have an appointment with a masseur at nine. A nice massage always relaxes me before bedtime,” Coral explained. “Good night all!”

“About that life insurance?” I asked.

“I’ll let you know if I’m interested,” Coral responded. “Good night again.”

“Good night as well,” David added, giving me a quizzical look before following in his wife’s wake.

I shook my head. Coral seemed different from earlier that day. I knew some women changed their personas when they were around good-looking men, so maybe that was it. Frankly, I’d never understood why women did that. You could only pretend to be someone you weren’t for so long. Eventually you’d want to find someone who liked you for you. Wouldn’t you?

I twirled the rose. Townsend!

“Damn!”

“Problem?” Manny asked.

“My bag! I left my bag in the restroom!” I announced. “Be right back!”

I excused myself and jogged back to the Cove. The booth was empty but there were two bottles of beer and two clean glasses sitting on the table. I filled a glass with beer and looked around for a second before I dunked my left hand in the cold liquid. Dunk. Dunk. Dunk. I pulled my freezing fingers out and twisted the ring. Progress. Dunk, dunk, dunk. Twist. Twist. Pull. Dunk. Dunk. Twist. Twist. Pull!

I yanked.

The ring came flying off It sailed across the room and landed behind the bar.

“Son of a—!”

I chased after the ring, diving behind the bar and crawling around on my hands and knees as I searched.

“Sorry. Lost ring.” I said to the young fellow tending bar. I stretched out a hand on the floor beneath the counter to locate the expensive stone. I snagged the ring and was just about to put my fingers around it when I heard a familiar voice above me.

“Mo’s my name, and I’m looking for a blonde with hair out to here and, if Mo’s not mistaken, she’s wearing blue jeans and some kind of T-shirt with a horse or a cowboy hat or a pair of cowboy boots on it. You seen her in here?”

I saw the bartender glance down at me. I shook my head, and put my hands together as if in prayerful pleading.

“No!” I mouthed.

“Uh, why are you looking for this woman, ma’am?” the cruise line employee asked. “Has she caused some problem?” he asked.

“If you count dragging her feet about setting a wedding date worse than a pirate being forced to walk the plank, then yeah, she’s causing a problem,” I heard Mo respond.

“I…see,” the bartender said. “Is she your daughter then?” he asked.

“Daughter? No. She’s gonna be my niece. By marriage. If she ever gets down to brass tacks and decides to set the date. I’m beginning to think she’s procrastinatin’ on purpose,” Mo said. “And that ain’t gonna fly. You see, I got me a ticker that ain’t clickin’ on all the cylinders and I ain’t got time to waste waitin’ around for little Miss Marple to be ready to settle down. That’s one reason I came on this ship. Come hell or high water, by the end of this cruise, Tressa Jayne Turner will be ready to tie that knot. Or Mo here will know the reason why.”

All of a sudden my food-deprived stomach rebelled at the unaccustomed empty-cavern quality and let out a long, loud, zesty Tony the Tiger growl.

“That your stomach, boy? You need Pepto!” I heard Mo say.

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.”

I waited a few minutes before I got off the floor.

“Thanks,” I said, brushing off my Capri pants and shirt. “I owe you. Toby, is it?” I asked, reading his I.D. badge.

“That’s right. So you owe me? We can take care of that quite easily,” he said. “Your key card?” he queried, and I grabbed it from my back pocket and handed it to him.

“Now just how appreciative are you, Miss Turner?” he asked. “Twenty bucks’ worth?”

I frowned. Blackmailing buccaneer. I hoped Joe was feeling generous.

“There you are! I thought you’d fallen overboard. You forgot your bag.” My Javelina bag materialized on the bar in front of me, courtesy of Rick Townsend. “Imagine how thrilled I was to carry that into the men’s restroom with me,” he said, and dropped onto a barstool. “Ready for that moonlight stroll?” he asked.

“Hell, yes!” I announced, and Townsend gave me a strange look.

I remembered the ring in my hand, which reminded me of Manny next door, which reminded me of the merrymakers plus one possible murder-maker.

“I just need to let my grandma know where I’m going,” I said.

“I’ll go with you,” Townsend offered.

“I won’t be a minute.”

“That’s what you said the last time.”

“You just wait here and get my key card back from Tobias there when he’s done plundering,” I said, giving Toby a dark look. “And don’t go anywhere!”

I hurried away, determined to slap the ring into Manny’s hand, instruct him to have the breakup talk with Aunt Mo immediately if not sooner and then haul my never-was-a-Girl-Scout-but-love-those-cookies attitude back to Ranger Rick Townsend and remain glued to his side until I knew exactly how I felt about him. And how he felt about me. If it took the entire bloody cruise to get there.

I faltered in mid-jog as I re-entered the Stardust.

Over in a dark corner, away from the others in the room, a lone couple appeared deep in conversation. The woman was talking, the man nodding, listening intently. Just like two old friends. My fingers tightened on the ring in my hand, the gem cutting into the flesh of my palm.

Manny DeMarco and Buttinskee Brianna.

Two bodies to die for.

I always knew fitness could be murder.

I strode over to Manny and, ignoring Brianna’s gasp, grabbed one of Manny’s muscular arms and slapped the ring into his palm.

“I wanna break up,” I snapped. “So, deal with it!” I turned on my heel and marched off I’d gone about ten feet when Manny caught up to me.

He took my arm.

“Barbie’s breaking up, huh?” he said, and I nodded.

“Break it to Aunt Mo carefully, would you?” I asked.

Manny looked down at me for several long moments. “Guess there’s only one thing for Manny to do then,” he said.

“That’s right,” I agreed, with a challenging lift of one brow.

“So be it,” Manny said, and reached out and crushed me to his broad, manly chest, bending me over backwards in a clinch worthy of Rhett and Scarlett. His lips hovered a mere fraction of an inch from my own, his dark, searching gaze locked on my own startled peepers. Then he said, “Bon voyage, Barbie,” and put his lips to mine in a deep, hot, wet, probing kiss that stole my breath and muddled my senses. What senses I had.