It was the first time I’d seen David smile. ‘I’d like that very much.’
Dinner was a gorgeous surf and turf, and how they managed to serve all four hundred or so diners at approximately the same time and still deliver the lobster moist and sweet, and the steak medium rare as I’d asked for, simply amazed me. ‘You work magic, Paolo,’ I told our server as he removed my plate, as clean as if I had licked it.
I’d wanted to draw David out about his daughter, and about what he hoped to accomplish while on board the Islander, but I kept losing my nerve. The subject was bound to be a sensitive one, after all.
It was Ruth who finally broke the ice. ‘I just love to cruise,’ she drawled, ‘but my husband’s an attorney, and the only way I’d get him aboard would be bound, gagged and tied up in a sack!’
Which wasn’t far from the truth, I thought to myself.
Paolo handed dessert menus around, and as I studied it, trying to decide whether to have the key lime pie or the crème brûlée, David said, ‘I’ve always cruised alone.’
Ruth swooped in. ‘Doesn’t your wife enjoy cruising?’
‘I’m a widower,’ David mumbled into his menu.
‘I am so sorry!’ Ruth laid an apologetic hand gently on David’s sleeve and looked mortified. ‘I shouldn’t have assumed…’
‘No, no, it’s all right.’ The corners of his lips twitched up, the semblance of a smile. ‘What I can’t stand is the matchmakers. Can’t a person go on a cruise without, uh, cruising, if you know what I mean?’
Ruth nodded vigorously. ‘The solo travelers lunch, for example, and the guys who are paid to dance with you.’
Paolo was hovering over my shoulder. ‘Key lime pie, please,’ I said, handing him the menu. Paolo had already moved on to David when I added, ‘And, Paolo, perhaps a shot of tsipouro?’
Ruth looked up from her menu. ‘What’s tsipouro?’
‘A kind of Greek brandy,’ I replied. ‘From Mount Athos, I think. Thought I’d give it a try.’
The key lime pie came in due course, and I’d taken only a bite when Paolo reappeared, carrying the tsipouro in a small glass, poured over crushed ice. ‘This is for madam, too,’ he said, setting a dessert plate in front of me. Arranged artistically in the middle was a pale green square, studded with sliced pistachios. I leaned down for a closer look. ‘What’s this, Paolo?’
‘Is halva. You try it. Delicious. With tsipouro, is very good.’
Paulo waited by my elbow as I took an experimental bite of what turned out to be an impossibly rich nut butter and sugar confection. ‘Now, the tsipouro,’ he coaxed. I was expecting it to taste like ouzo, but the tsipouro was smoother, much cleaner than ouzo, but as with ouzo, the fumes shot straight up my nose. ‘Whoa!’ I turned to Paolo, fanning my lips with my free hand. ‘That’s quite an experience.’
He beamed like a proud coach, and I made a mental note to be generous with his tip.
After Paola was out of earshot, I leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘That stuff is like rocket fuel!’
David grinned, his amiable nature fully restored, and toasted me with his water glass.
‘Paul and I enjoy cruising, David, but this trip was supposed to be all about the sisters.’ I indicated the empty chair. ‘Unfortunately, Georgina seems to be avoiding us lately.’ I grinned across the table at Ruth. ‘I hope it wasn’t something I said.’
We sat in companionable silence for a while. I was sipping my tsipouro cautiously, waiting for the right moment to bring up the delicate subject of Charlotte when Ruth swooped in again, this time for the kill. ‘Do you have any children, David?’
If her question upset him, there was no sign. ‘I had a daughter, but she died,’ he said simply.
‘I have a daughter, too,’ I told him, ‘and just to think about losing her is a pain beyond bearing.’ I wondered if I should press him, but his response had been so blunt, so matter-of-fact that I thought I’d risk it. ‘Several years ago, my infant grandson was kidnapped, and the agony we went through before he was returned safely to our daughter’s arms was indescribable.’
There was a short silence then, as if David were sizing us up. ‘Charlotte worked on a cruise ship,’ he confided at last. ‘A sister ship to this one called the Phoenix Voyager. Somehow, she went overboard. But there’s more to it than that, I know,’ he declared, a steely edge creeping into his voice. ‘Much, much more.’
I reached across the table and laid a hand on his sleeve. ‘I’m so sorry, David. Did they ever find…?’
Anticipating my question, David cut me off. ‘Charlotte’s body? Yes. Many months later, on Little Cayman. When the phone call came, that was the day that my wife took her own life. Until then…’ He let out a slow breath; his Adam’s apple pumped up and down as he swallowed, hard. ‘Well, until then Elise could talk herself into believing that Charlotte was still alive, that she’d somehow managed to swim ashore. Perhaps living a Robinson Crusoe existence somewhere on a remote island, surviving on breadfruit, coconut and bananas, weaving clothing out of palm fronds.’
David sank back in his chair, spread his arms wide. ‘I can tell by the expressions on your faces that you’re wondering what this crazy old man is up to. Well, I’m here because something very fishy was happening on that ship.’ He sat up straight, fire in his eyes. ‘I’m fed up to here with the cruise line,’ he snapped. ‘They’ve been stonewalling me since day one and I’ve run out of patience. I’m going to find out what really happened to my daughter. That phone call she was seen making?’ he continued. ‘It was to my wife and me.’ The stony determination in his eyes turned to agony. ‘Every day for the rest of my life, I’ll have to live with the fact that when the phone rang at five in the morning, I simply turned over and let voicemail pick up. We’ll never know what Charlotte was going to tell us, but whatever it was, I believe that she died for it.’
The sheer pain in David’s eyes and his story was making it hard for me to keep my own emotions in check, but I managed to blurt out, ‘When you didn’t pick up, did Charlotte leave a message?’
‘She did, and that’s why I’m here. I can remember every word.’ He screwed up his eyes and took a deep breath. ‘ “Something bad is going on, Dad, and I need your advice. Call me back, OK? I don’t know what to do. Love you.” ’
Just like a character in a B movie, I thought, to leave a cryptic message rather than coming right out and saying whatever was on her mind. Why is it never, ‘Charlie’s robbing the company blind,’ or ‘Henry slipped cyanide into Sandra’s drink?’ It would certainly save the police a lot of time should the whistleblower end up dead, like poor Charlotte Warren.
‘When we listened to the message, I called her back right away, of course, but the phone went to voicemail. I simply figured she was out of range – it happened all the time on the cruise ships – but when Charlotte never called us back, I worried. We didn’t get the call from the captain until three days later. Basically he told us that he didn’t know what had happened to our daughter.’
‘Three days after she disappeared?’ Ruth sat back in shock. ‘What the heck were they waiting for?’
David slumped wearily against the cushions, the energy percolating out of him as he spoke to us now spent, leaving him looking drained. ‘They suspected she was hiding somewhere on the ship, I suppose. Even the surveillance tapes weren’t conclusive.’
I asked David the same question I had asked Pia earlier. ‘If Charlotte disappeared from the Voyager, why are you sailing on this ship, David?’
David smiled cryptically. ‘I’m following up on a hunch. It may be a complete waste of time, but I owe it to Charlotte – and to Elise – to pursue it.’