Anchors Aweigh - 6 (9 page)
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I’m Doctor Baker,
The Epiphany’s
medical officer. I took the liberty of going through your bag and found your identification and was able to track down your father. He’s on his way. How are you feeling? Are you up to telling me what happened?” he asked. The sound of a door closing gained his attention. “Oh, I bet that’s your father now,” he said, and left me long enough to steer my father into the room. The concern on my dad’s face brought new tears to my eyes.
“How are you feeling, kiddo?” he asked. “The doctor said you took a tumble down the stairs.”
“He did?” I asked, sniffling. My dad handed me his handkerchief and I dabbed at my eyes. “I did?”
“I was just getting ready to ask if she felt well enough to tell me what happened,” Dr. Baker said.
I shut my eyes again, trying to think back. I winced. It hurt to think.
“Were you dizzy? Before you fell? Did you get a sense of vertigo or motion sickness before the fall?” he asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Did you trip?”
“No.”
“Slip?”
“No.”
“Well, then what happened?”
I opened my eyes. “I think maybe I was pushed,” I admitted, as that startling revelation found its way into my addled brain. I watched as the doctor’s pupils dilated. He gasped.
“Pushed? By who?” he asked.
I raised my shoulders in a tiny shrug. “I really don’t know. I don’t recall much,” I said. “It’s all fuzzy. And it happened so fast. I remember stairs. And whispering. Creepy whispering. And money. There was money. And the next thing I knew something slammed into me, knocking me off my feet and sending me down the stairs like an out-of-control human projectile. From there, everything faded to black.”
“Why would anyone want to push you down a flight of stairs?” my father asked.
Another tiny shrug. “Beats me.” I winced. Unfortunate choice of words and all that.
“I’m sure you’re mistaken,” the gaunt guy in white said, reaching out to take my wrist and check my pulse. “How’s the head?”
I put a hand to the back of my noggin and frowned when I encountered a knot the size of a Cadbury crème egg. The big one, not the miniature.
“Still sore to be sure,” Dr. Baker answered his own question without waiting for my response. “Are you nauseous now? Dizzy?” He took a thin silver penlight from his pocket and shined it in one eye and then the other. “I don’t think we’re dealing with a concussion here, but we can’t be certain. You should remain here and take it easy for the day so we can keep an eye on you. Just in case.”
Spend my vacation cruise in the sick bay with Bones Baker hovering over me? Yeah, right. When peccaries fly.
I sat up. “I’ll be fine,” I said. “The pain has already subsided some. It’s gone from a bass drumbeat to a bongo in the last several minutes,” I told the doctor. “So, I should be fine.”
“I really wish you’d reconsider,” Dr. Baker went on. “I could monitor you here, make sure you had supplemental nutritional opportunities that aren’t available to the passengers at large,” he said.
I tried in vain to read between the lines. “What kind of nutritional opportunities?” I asked, realizing how long it had been since I’d eaten, and just how gaunt and withered I must look to the good doctor.
“Pretty much whatever you like,” Baker said. “One of the perks that comes with being the doctor in residence,” he added.
“So, say I felt like bacon,” I asked. “Would that be real bacon or synthetic?”
“The real thing,” the doctor replied. “If you like.”
“And if I had, say, a hankering for hashed brown potatoes and eggs sunny-side up? Would that be a pipedream?”
“Not at all.”
“What about coffee—and don’t hold the caffeine? What about that?”
“Not a problem.”
A phone rang nearby.
“Excuse me. I need to get that. And Mr. Turner, if you could come with me and fill out some forms, that would be helpful.”
My father nodded. “Be right back,” he said, and followed the doctor into an adjacent room.
I pressed my fingertips to my goose egg again—stark and painful evidence of my freefall down the flight of stairs. And the wicked whisper before said tumble? I hadn’t imagined that. I recalled at the time how it gave me the willies. And I hadn’t imagined the violent shove, either. I lie there quietly, trying to figure out what the assault meant for me.
And, why
me
? Unfortunately, this was a recurring refrain where I was concerned.
I thought some more. The effort hurt less than it had before. The attack had been planned and targeted. That was clear. So who on board this vegetarian vessel had a beef with me?
Aunt Mo. But she wanted me married, not buried.
Townsend? He definitely wanted a piece of me, but that particular piece started with an “a” and rhymed with bass (as in a species offish, not a musical reference).
Beyond that? Nobody. Nobody at all. Unless…
I slapped a hand to my mouth. My huge, gaping, ginormous cavern of a mouth.
The greedy groom! I’d forgotten all about him. The captain of deceit. The hateful herald of the old high seas honeymoon heave-ho.
Oh. My. Gawd! I’d done it! I’d thrown down my very own gauntlet. My impromptu insurance infomercial the other night at the Stardust, coupled with Manny’s depiction of me as a youthful Jessica Fletcher cum Bob Woodward had struck a nerve with a cold, calculating cutthroat looking to improve his bottom line through marriage, then murder.
I’d rattled his chain.
Rocked his boat.
Taken the wind out of his slimy sails.
And, as a result, I’d placed a big, ol’ target on my back.
The truly sobering rub to all this? I had no clue who aboard this calorie-counting cruise held the revolver and was fixing to take aim and pull said trigger.
I went through the previous night’s activities in my addled pate. It had to be someone who’d been at the Stardust, someone in the group Manny and I had spoken to. Someone who had overheard my over-the-top, in-your-face performance of Blind Cowgirl’s Bluff and taken it to heart. I ticked them off one by one.
There was Steve and Courtney, married five years, and their bosom buddies, Ben and Jerry. I mean, Ben and Sherri. Vic and Naomi, the
Biggest Loser
losers and the typecast actors, and Tariq and Monique. And then there was Dolph and Major, who were both life partners and lifestyle partners.
Other possibilities occurred to me, rolling through my addled mind like a frightening flipbook, leaving me vulnerable and exposed. Maybe the would-be killer had seen little Tressa with her ear to the crack in her cabin door. Maybe the girl at the front desk had blabbed about the quirky paranoid tourist and her crazy conspiracy theories. Maybe Security Chief Davenport had decided to put a bug in Coral LaFavre’s ear after all, and that’s how she really found out I was a reporter.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
What did all this mean for me?
It meant there was no way of knowing just who had it in for this spunky sailor girl reporter who just happened to have a talent for trouble, and who had no clue beyond the fact that it involved a honeymooning couple and a life insurance policy.
So, how did I protect myself from an unknown enemy on a ship full of strangers? How did I protect a nameless victim-to-be from a faceless, faithless lover with murder on his mind? I considered the possibilities.
I could stay in the sick bay or locked in my cabin for the duration of the cruise, I supposed. But that would only draw more attention to me. More suspicion. And what if the murderer-to-be wanted to play hardball? What if he thought I’d told Taylor what I’d overheard? Or my folks? Or my grandma? Or Rick? Could they all be in danger because of my big ears and even bigger mouth?
I thought back on what Taylor had implied earlier, about how I was oblivious to those who inhabited my ordinary world. How I was insensitive to their feelings. Their needs. Taylor was wrong. I knew that now. Even the slim chance that I’d placed them in peril scared me witless. But what could I do? How could I begin to keep everyone safe?
The doctor returned, and behind him my father. “You look a bit more alert, Miss Turner,” the doctor said. “Are you remembering more about your mishap now?” he asked. “You were somewhat fuzzy on details earlier.”
I stared at him.
Remember?
A sudden image of Aunt Mo refusing to accept said broken engagement, stalking me up and down the decks of
The Epiphany
like the obsessed paparazzi shadowing Britney Spears appeared in my head, of Mo shoving that humongous ring on my finger, nagging me to set a date, harping on and on about Ranger Rick—it all played like a video loop on the tiny screen in my head.
Remember?
One matchmaking mama-bear type.
Remember.
A murderer who thought I knew too much. (Hah!)
Remember.
Time to sort out my feelings.
Remember.
It was sheer lunacy.
Total madness.
Extreme psychosis.
Remember!
It was pure genius!
“You seem confused, Miss Turner. Disoriented. Are you all right?”
I looked at the doctor and at my dad. I hated to deceive him in this way—hated to put my family through this worry needlessly. But what choice did I have? Sam Davenport would never believe a killer-to-be had attempted to shut me up (a killer who obviously didn’t know me very well or they would have known this was futile) no more than he would believe my claims of spousal skullduggery. And that left me in a very scary and vulnerable place.
My dad came forward then. He sat on the edge of my bed and took my hand.
“Are you okay? Can you tell us about it? What happened?” he asked.
I looked at him, schooling my features to look blank, confused. (I know what you’re thinking. Not such a stretch for me. Right? Hey, cut me some slack. I’m lying to my pop’s face, here. It’s not a warm and fuzzy feeling.)
“I’m sorry?” I said, appearing what I hoped passed for tentative. Unsure. “Do I…know you?”
Okay, in hindsight I probably shouldn’t have done it. To be honest, the bump to my head probably impaired my judgment more than I suspected at the time. But once the idea planted itself in my brain matter, I couldn’t dislodge or disregard it. And before I knew better, I was acting on it.
Ding, ding! Tugboat Tressa, full speed ahead.
My father’s face did one of those “Play it again, Sam” moves. You know, the ones where you can almost see the person replaying words in their head.
“What?” my father asked. “What do you mean, do I know you?” he said. “I’m your father!”
“You are?” I asked, blinking in rapid succession for good measure.
Dr. Baker rushed to my bedside, fumbling to get his pen-light out of his pocket again. He pulled one of my eyelids back and shined the light into my pupil, blinding me and repeated the procedure in the other, his movements jerky, spastic and agitated, like those of a puppet whose puppet master had imbibed one too many fruity umbrella drinks.
“What are you saying, Miss Turner? You don’t recognize your father?” He turned to my dad. “You are her father, right?”
“Only for the last twenty-four years or so,” my dad snapped.
“And he doesn’t look familiar to you, Miss Turner? Tressa? Not at all?” the doctor asked, turning back to me and sticking a stethoscope to my chest.
“Maybe if I squint a little,” I said.
“I’ve heard of this, but I never thought I’d actually see a case,” Dr. Baker said, excitement tinged with concern in his voice.
“A case? A case of what?” my father asked.
“Amnesia,” he replied. “Temporary amnesia.”
“Amnesia?” I said, having second thoughts, thinking maybe I should rein in this farce before it was well and truly out of the gate and on its way to being a runaway.
“My daughter has amnesia?” my dad interrupted. “Amnesia?”
I winced. This was harder than I had expected, though why it should be was a mystery. I had never been able to fib to my father—well, not without serious attacks of conscience, that is.
“Temporary, I’m sure,” Dr. Baker said. “Sometimes a hard blow to the head scrambles things around in there a bit, mixes things up, resulting in a short-term loss of memory. Contrary to what you’ve seen on daytime TV, it’s relatively rare but it does happen.”
“And you think it’s happened to me?” I asked.
“It appears so,” the doctor said.
My father frowned. “How long does something like this normally last?” he asked. “It does wear off. Right?”
The doctor nodded. “It varies from patient to patient.”
And this patient? I was betting about six days ought to do it.
“What is the last thing you remember?” the doctor asked.
“Waking up here,” I said.
“No. Before that. Do you remember coming aboard the ship?” he asked.
“Ship? What ship?” I responded.
“This ship. You’re on the Custom Cruise ship,
The Epiphany.”
“I am?” I looked at my father. “Have I ever been on a cruise ship before?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“Sweet,” I said.
“Don’t you remember the wedding?” my father asked.
“I’m married?” I said.
“I’ll have to do some consulting, conduct some research,” the doctor was saying.
“Do you recommend we transport Tressa to a hospital for further testing?” my dad asked. “Have her seen by a specialist? A head doctor maybe?”
Nice.
“No!” I yelled, and received surprised stares in return. “Uh, I mean I’m fine, really. I want to stay here on the ship. I like it here. I do. And I’m sure the doctor is right and I’ll start to remember in no time. Please, if you’re my dad, if you love me, you won’t make me leave this ship!” I’d read somewhere that severe agitation in suspected head trauma wasn’t good, so I was hoping I could convince the two to hold off on the medical evacuation for now. “I just need time,” I added. “That’s all I need.”
My dad patted my hand. “Okay, honey. Calm down. Take it easy. What do you think, doc?” my dad asked.
“Frankly, I think it’s probably best if she stayed on board the ship—for a few days at least. I’ll keep a close eye on her and if she appears to be getting worse, we’ll have Coast Guard choppers transport her back to the States.” As Baker said this, I sighed with relief. “In the meantime, young lady, you’re going to follow my orders. No exertions. No stress. Just rest, relaxation and good nutritious meals.”
“I think maybe I could eat something,” I said, thinking if I didn’t get some food in me soon I was going to keel over again for real.
“Good. That’s a start,” Doc Baker said with a relieved smile. “Now, what was it that you thought sounded good again?”
I was just about to place my order and perhaps add a side of strawberry pancakes to it when my mother, sister, brother, sister-in-law, grandmother and Joe Townsend rushed in and stood staring at me from the foot of my bed. I felt like I was in a scene from
While You Were Sleeping.
“Tressa Jayne! My God! Are you all right?” my mother exclaimed. “Your father left a note that you’d fallen down a flight of stairs! How on earth did you manage to accomplish that?”
I felt a hand on mine. My dad’s hand.
“Tressa’s not herself, Jean,” he said.
“What do you mean she’s not herself?” my grandma piped up. “Who is she?”
“There has been an unexpected side effect from her tumble down the stairs,” the doctor broke in. “Now I expect Tressa here will be just fine, but the fact is she hit her head hard enough to lose consciousness, and that resulted in quite a large lump. In doing so, some thought processes have been scrambled about here and there and she’s having some difficulty putting things back together again.”
I frowned. He made me sound like Humpty Freakin’ Dumpty
“What do you mean, difficulty?” my mother asked, her eyes narrowing.
“She’s got amnesia,” my father announced.
“She’s got ham and what?” my grandma asked. “Where’d she get the ham? I haven’t seen a decent hunk of meat since we came on board. If you don’t count them fitness gurus struttin’ their stuff all over the boat,” she added.
“Ship,” I corrected, before I could stop myself.
“Can this be true?” my mother asked. “Tressa, is this true? You don’t remember any of us? You’ve lost your memory?”
“I’m sorry—Jean, was it?” I asked. “That’s what the doctor seems to think,” I hedged. My mother was the sharpest knife in our little cutlery collection. If I could fool her, I could fool anyone.
“Shouldn’t we do something?” my mother asked. “Take her somewhere? Have her head examined?”
Et tu,
mother dear?
Et tu?
“You heard the doctor, Jean,” my father said. “She’ll be fine. In fact, she already looks much better than she did just a few minutes ago. We’ll keep an eye on her and so will the doctor here. If there’s cause for concern, we’ll have her off the ship and to a hospital immediately. Isn’t that right, doc?”
“Absolutely,” he agreed.
My grandma shoved her way to my bedside. “It’s like what happened on one of my stories,” she said, giving me an eagle eye. “Lily fell over this cliff and when she was rescued she thought she was still married to her ex-husband, Heath, ‘cause she had no memory of her present husband, Jack. She was pregnant—it was a miracle she didn’t lose the baby—and everyone thought the baby belonged to Heath…and Heath did, too, only Lily had slept with Jack when she thought Heath was cheating on her and she got pregnant but of course she didn’t remember that and Jack didn’t know anything about it—”
I put a hand to my head. It was beginning to ache again.
“Hannah, please, can’t you see you’re making Tressa worse?” Jean—I mean, my mother—said. Gee. Am I good or what? I think that’s what you call method acting. “She obviously needs to rest.”
Gram shook her head. “Leave it to Tressa,” she said to the doctor. “She’s known for her adventures, you see. The tales I could tell. Like the one about the shyster’s stiff she found in the trunk. And the dead guy at the marina. And there was that pyro at the state fair that tried to turn her into a crispy critter.”
The doctor looked at me, his expression suddenly very different from the generous healer of earlier.
“Tressa’s got what they call a gift,” Gram said with a proud glint in her eye.
Dr. Baker cleared his throat. “Is that right?” he said.
“I do feel tired,” I interrupted before my gammy provided a complete dossier on the dead I’d discovered.
“When she gets her memory back, get her to tell you about the time we were put on ice together,” Gram said. “That’s a good one.”
I smiled. Yeah. And while I was at it, I’d enlighten the good doctor as to how my gammy got the nickname Hellion Hannah and why I suspected my own gift was her lovely little genetic legacy to me. I wasn’t the only Turner with skeletons in the closet.
“And you’re sure my daughter is going to be okay?” my mother asked.
“Your daughter is going to be fine, Mrs. Turner. Just fine. As a matter of fact, she admitted to being hungry just before you arrived, so we were just going to order her a nice big breakfast—isn’t that right, Tressa?” The doctor smiled down at me. “Now, weren’t you thinking along the lines of some nice crisp bacon, hash browns, eggs and coffee?”
Movement at the foot of my sickbed drew my attention to Taylor. She stood there, arms folded across her chest, her head cocked to one side.
“If she lost her memory, how can she remember what she likes to eat?” Taylor asked.
Damn Taylor and her overachieving ass.
“This nice doctor insisted on a nourishing breakfast,” I said, “to help me get my strength back. And, hopefully, my memory as well. Uh, by the way, who are you? A cousin? Older sister?”
Taylor frowned. “I’m her sister—her
younger
sister,” she told the doctor. “And she’ll have a bowl of fresh fruit, a bran muffin—no butter—a glass of orange juice and a cup of coffee.”
I tried to keep from overtly gagging. At least I had my coffee, I consoled myself—for as long as it took Taylor to bark another order.
“Decaf coffee, that is,” Taylor clarified, raising an eyebrow at me in silent challenge.
“Excellent choices!” Dr. Benedict Arnold Baker gushed. “Wholesome and healthful. I’ll place that order right away. You’re lucky to have a sister who looks out for you so capably.” He hurried away.
I looked from my mother to my sister to my brother and his wife to my grandma and Joe. They looked at me like I was a specimen in a Petri dish. Or like some obscure, puzzling piece of art, and they were trying to figure out just what the heck I was supposed to be.
I put a fluttering hand to my forehead. “I feel weak,” I said. “I need to rest.” I looked at Taylor. “Doctor’s orders, you know,” I added and shut my eyes.
“Uh, he probably also cautioned that with a head injury it’s best not go to sleep—or you might not wake up,” Taylor said, reaching out to squeeze my big toe.
“There’s one blessing in all this,” Joe Townsend finally spoke up.
“What’s that?” Gram asked.
“She’s not talking like a pirate now,” Joe said.
I rolled over on my side away from the gallery of curious spectators.
Good one, Gilligan, I thought. Good one.
Note to Tressa: Remember Joltin’ Joe last.