Sailing to Capri (25 page)

I said quickly, “Please, Diane, Filomena, this is meant to be a civilized dinner. Bob wanted us all to have a good time.”

“Since we’re on the subject of the will, might I ask exactly
why
we are all here?” Charlie, who had continued to drink Jack
Daniel’s, said. “I’m not sure any of us could have been called Bob’s friends. For instance, that man.” He pointed at Dopplemann. “My God, he looks like a farm laborer. Nobody has heard of him for years. Why on earth would Bob invite
him?”
He stared at Dopplemann as though he was an insect under his microscope. “Come on, Herr Dopplemann,” he said, “tell us how you knew the great Sir Robert Hardwick. What’s your real story, eh?”

“Stop it, Clement,” Montana ordered. But Dopplemann had shriveled under Charlie’s attack, curling over his wineglass, head bowed. After a moment he muttered something, then he got up and walked out.

Montana went after him. He grabbed him by the shoulder but Dopplemann shrugged him off and continued on his way. Montana watched him worriedly, then came back to the table.

“I think that’s about enough for tonight,” he said coldly. “Diane, you were invited because you are Bob’s ex-wife. I don’t know what, if anything, he’s left you in his will, but I’m asking you to be civil for his sake. As for you, Clement, if you don’t want to be on this voyage you can leave tomorrow. We’ll be in Saint-Tropez around seven; the choice is yours. But I’m warning you, any more insulting behavior and I will personally have you removed. Have I made myself clear?”

“Who the hell are
you,
telling me what I can and cannot do?” Charlie pushed back his chair and followed Dopplemann out the door. “Fuck you all,” we heard him say as he left.

I glanced at my stunned guests. Then Diane got up and without a word flounced off.

Filomena’s eyes followed her. “It’s true I was Bob’s mistress,”
she said, “but we loved each other, truly we did. And I’m sad he’s dead.” She turned piteous eyes on Brandon. “How could Diane say such bad things?” Giant tears rolled down her cheeks and Brandon pulled a silk handkerchief from his top pocket and began to mop them.

“It’s all right. No damage done,” he said comfortingly.

Horrified, my eyes met Montana’s. “I think we’d better call it a night,” he said. “Hopefully tomorrow will be better.”

“Jeez,” Bordelaise whispered. “I’m heading for the bar! And I certainly hope Charlie and Diane won’t be there.”

“I’m worried about Dopplemann,” Montana said after they’d gone. “I’d better go look for him. I’ll meet you in the bar later.”

“Poor Dopplemann,” Bordelaise said as we nursed a goodnight glass of champagne. “That Charlie is a real bastard, I knew it the moment I saw him. Men like that usually have something to hide, trust me.”

Several of the young officers showed up to socialize, and Bordelaise was in her element. Melvyn played “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” and Texas sang along in a husky smoldering voice that left them rapt. Even Filomena, recovered from her tears, smiled bravely, sitting very close to Brandon.

Fifteen minutes later, Montana showed up. “There’s no sign of Dopplemann,” he said worriedly. “I had the steward check and he’s not in his cabin. I also checked the decks, no sign of him there. I’m hoping Clement didn’t goad him into doing something stupid.”

Realizing what he meant, Bordelaise and I stared at him, horrified.

“You never know with a man like that,” Montana said. “He’s capable of anything. I’m going to have to tell Captain Anders.” He called over one of the young officers and they went off together. Minutes later the yacht started to slow down; then it made a half circle and began slowly to retrace its path.

“Oh, my God,” I said. “He really thinks Dopplemann might have jumped.”

There was a few seconds’ silence while everyone gathered their wits, then we all ran onto the deck. Hanging over the rail, we searched the blue-black sea, now illuminated by a glaring light. The side of the lower deck lifted hydraulically, the tenders were put out and the officers began their search.

“Oh, no,” Filomena moaned. “It’s that dreadful man’s fault…. But that little Dopplemann is so strange.”

“It’ll be all right,” I said, trying to sound positive while still looking for a body in the water.

“Don’t bet on it,” Bordelaise said. “A man like that, humiliated in public …”

The rest of the crew were combing each deck, searching every room. The barman said Dopplemann had ordered another bottle of the Haut-Brion. He’d thought he must be taking it to his room, and Montana said he didn’t believe he’d kill himself when there was still a full bottle of good wine to be drunk.

Searchlights played over the water, turning it a rather pretty milky blue. Looking at it, I thought it might not be a bad way for the killer to go.

Everyone except Charlie and Diane was on deck, peering over the rail. The wind blew the women’s evening dresses
against their bodies and in the half-light they looked like a beautiful carved frieze: hair blown back, faces uptilted. Reg and Davis, Brandon and Hector stood watching and waiting.

“Surely Clement’s insult wasn’t enough to send a man to his death,” Reg said. “Clement was obviously pissed out of his mind and everybody knows men say things they shouldn’t when they’re like that.”

Hector paced the deck, back and forth, back and forth, and Texas, Filomena and Bordelaise huddled silently together.

Montana had returned to the lower deck. The giant steel fuel tanks gleamed under the lights and the throb of the yacht’s engines sent small shudders through the ship. Over the noise he caught another sound; a buzzing, like a hacksaw on wood. Ducking around the tanks he followed it to its source.

Dopplemann lay sprawled on his back, the empty wine bottle still clutched in his hand. He was passed out and snoring.

Montana informed Captain Anders, the medical officer was summoned and Montana went back up on deck to tell the others.

The panic was over, but not the fear. The guests slowly drifted off to their rooms, relieved that they didn’t have a dead body on their hands and that the cruise would continue and the will would still be read on Capri.

Now that we were alone, Montana looked at me. My mind was still a blank from fright and I gripped the deck rail, still shaky. The breeze played with my hair as I watched the creamy curve of the ship’s wake and the little phosphorescent fish jumping, smelling the sea and the piney scent coming from the land as we hugged the coast en route to nearby Saint-Tropez. For once I had nothing to say.

Montana said gently, “They’re taking good care of him. He’ll live.”

“I almost wish he wouldn’t,” I said bitterly. “It would have been the easy way out, then we could all have just gone home.”

“You’re being judgmental. Dopplemann was humiliated in front of us all, so he went off to hide and got drunk. The man has lived alone so long it probably never occurred to him anyone would go looking for him.”

I was still reluctant to forgive Dopplemann for what he’d
put us through. “Anyhow, how’s he going to face everybody tomorrow? Knowing we all know.”

“He’ll get over it, and so will you. Come on, Daisy, let it go why don’t you?”

He uncurled my hand from the rail and held it to his lips. Like magic, Dopplemann disappeared from my mind. My knees trembled. I hadn’t felt like this since I was a teenager, and certainly not with “the husband.” Maybe the bad sex with him was my fault but I still blamed it on him; despite his promiscuous-lover-boy image, the husband had not been a great lover. And now I was wondering if Montana was. Wrong of me, I know, but sometimes the mind just takes over and anyhow it beat worrying about Dopplemann.

Montana let go of my hand and stared out to sea. I wondered what he was thinking. He looked a hard man, with his hawklike profile, cropped head and tight lean body; a man who would always keep himself in tip-top shape, ready for whatever danger might be around the next corner. Then why, I asked myself, did I fancy him? Was it the whiff of danger that accompanied him, as well as that hard-toned body and the way he looked in a white terry bathrobe—I remembered him when he came into my room at Sneadley with the tray of tea and gingersnaps—kind of sexy and relaxed. I heaved a sigh that made him turn his head and look at me.

“You still here?” he added with an amused twinkle in his ohh-so-s-e-x-y charcoal gray eyes.

“Penny for your thoughts?” I said.

“They’re worth more than that.”

“So a quarter then.”

“More.”

“Fifty bucks.”

He held out his hand. “I’ll take it. Pay up.”

“You have to tell me first.”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way. You have to pay for the goods before you can take them home.”

I sighed again, exasperated. “You’re an ornery man, y’know that?”

“Funny, I thought you were the ornery one.”

Running out of steam, I slumped back against the rail. I felt his hand on my cheek and turned to look at him. His fingers stroked the curve of my cheekbone then smoothed their way down to my mouth, traced my lips. He took my chin in his hand and tilted my face up to his. For a long instant our eyes locked, then I shut mine tight as his face moved over me and his mouth closed in on mine. It was the kind of kiss I never wanted to end and when he finally took his mouth away and I gasped in the few necessary jolts of air, that’s exactly what I told him.

“I don’t want to stop,” I said breathlessly. “I’ve wanted you to kiss me like that for so long.”

He stroked my face again, his eyes on mine, our shaky breaths linked; then he moved his hands to the nape of my neck sending jolts of lightning through my eager body.

“What now?” I murmured, moving my neck under his hand like a purring cat. “Wanna come to my place?”

I heard his rumble of choked laughter. “Oh, Daisy, you may be the only truly honest woman I’ve ever met. Do you always say exactly what you feel?”

I nodded. “And it never fails to get me into trouble.” I eyed him up and down lasciviously. “Which is what I’m hoping it will do now.”

He moved away. Taking my hand, he walked me along the deserted deck. “I’d better escort you to your cabin,” he said, disappointing me.

We stood silently in the elevator, then, side by side but no longer holding hands, we walked along the corridor to my suite.

Outside my door I turned to face him, aware of every inch of him next to me, every nerve ending raised and expectant. “Well?” I asked, still breathless with sexual longing.

“Daisy.” He tilted my face up to his with a finger. “Are you sure about this?”

I smiled, radiant with delight. “Let me show you how sure I am,” I said, and unlocking my door, I took his hand and led him inside.

Was it that I thought I could steal his strength, make myself invincible through him? Was it that I was curious about his body, and about the secrets of his life he had so far kept from me? Like for instance the meaning of the tattoo on his right forearm? And what the
C
in Harry C. Montana stood for. And
who
he was, because of course I knew almost nothing about this man except the few words about his lonely childhood and the fact that he had once worked in a diner in Galveston and was a “kind of a friend” of Bob Hardwick.