‘Fancy meeting you here,’ I said, sliding onto the bar stool next to him.
He blinked twice, as if trying to focus. ‘Hannah. How did you get on with Pia, then?’
‘Club soda with lime,’ I told the bartender.
David sipped his drink appreciatively, one eyebrow raised.
‘It’s far too dangerous,’ I told him. ‘There has to be another way.’
David’s head bobbed, his lips never leaving the rim of the glass.
I touched his hand lightly. ‘I’m sorry.’
David set his glass on the coaster, rocking it this way and that until the base was precisely centered in the middle of the Phoenix Cruise Lines logo. ‘Don’t worry,’ he muttered. ‘It’s not that I didn’t expect it.’
The bartender had delivered my drink. I took a sip and set it aside. ‘Westfall’s going to be put away, David. The F.B.I. is going to see to that.’
Head still bowed, he considered me with a single, watery eye. ‘Just let nature take its course, then, is that your recommendation?’
‘Not nature, exactly, but the long arm of the law.’
David drained his glass and raised it in the air, signaling for another. ‘I want to thank you, Hannah. You’ve been more than kind. I appreciate that.’
We sat side by side, drinking quietly. There seemed nothing more to say.
I finished my club soda, brushed his cheek with a kiss, and bid him goodbye. I left him sitting alone at the bar, long-faced, looking as if he had lost his last friend which, in a way, he had.
‘I have to pack,’ Georgina said, ‘and I won’t let her go up there alone.’
‘Go where,’ I asked, ‘and where’s Ruth?’
‘I’m hungry,’ Julie whined. ‘I was going to the Firebird to score some nachos. Mom’s being a pain.’
Georgina folded a hoodie and placed it carefully in her suitcase. ‘Ruth’s at guest services, arguing with them about something on her bill. She may be there for a while. The line was humongous.’
‘I’ll take Julie up,’ I said. ‘You get on with your packing.’
Julie tore out her earbuds, hopped off her bunk and presented herself to me, beaming. She wore flip-flops, a pair of skinny denim jeans and a white T-shirt that had ‘Friend Me’ on it, printed in glitter.
‘Come on, you,’ I told her. ‘Let’s go get those nachos.’
The Firebird was crowded so it took us a while to find an empty table. ‘Go get your nachos,’ I told my niece, ‘while I save the table. And bring me a Coke!’
Julie bounced off to the buffet tables while I looked around. Diners passed me with trays heaped high, as if pigging your way from one end of the All-You-Can-Eat buffet tables to the other was a lifetime goal.
I was thinking about snagging some of the chicken tikka kabobs we’d passed on our way in when Julie came streaking back, empty-handed. She grabbed my arm and pulled me down, her mouth nearly touching the tabletop. ‘I need to get out of here, Aunt Hannah. I saw him! He’s here! And he saw me!’
‘Jack Westfall is here?’ I asked, my head bowed, too, on a level with hers.
Julie buried her face in her arms and began to weep. ‘I think I might have made a terrible mistake.’
I laid a hand gently on her arm. A horrible sinking feeling came over me. ‘What do you mean, sweetie?’
‘I was positive that the man who attacked me was that guy, Jack, from the art gallery, but now I’m not so sure. I just saw… oooh! I’m really not sure, now, Aunt Hannah, and it’s freaking me out!’ She began to sob.
‘Let me get this straight. You just saw a guy you think could be your attacker, and that guy is not Jack Westfall?’
Without raising her head, Julie nodded miserably.
‘Who is it, then. Who did you see, Julie?’
‘I don’t knoooow!’ she wailed. ‘I was going to the nachos, and this guy was coming from the other way, and I didn’t see him, and I practically ran into him, like, and when I looked up to say sorry, he gave me this creepy look, and I went eeeek, and I wanted to barf and I saw in his eyes that he knew that I knew, so what am I going to do now?’
‘Breathe slowly, Julie,’ I suggested, gently stroking her back. ‘In. Out. In. Out.’
I was kicking myself for allowing Julie to go off to the buffet alone, but that ship had already sailed.
‘What did the man look like, sweetheart?’
‘He’s wearing a black shirt with a squiggly logo, and a black hat!’
I raised my head, stretching a bit so I could see over the decorative etched glass panel that divided our section of the café from the others. A man in a yellow T-shirt waiting for a burger; a guy in a festive Hawaiian number loading his brownie with whipped topping; uniformed wait staff bustling about, but nobody in a black polo shirt.
I swiveled in my chair to check out the other side of the café, but my view was blocked by a broad expanse of black cotton knit with ‘Waterway Marine’ embroidered on the pocket. Then, next to me, a familiar voice said, ‘I came over to apologize.’
Buck Carney.
I gasped and pressed a hand to my chest. ‘Mr Carney! You startled me.’
‘I think I startled this young lady here, too. Zigged when I should have zagged,’ he explained. ‘Ran right into her.’
‘Julie,’ I said, trying to breathe normally and give nothing away. ‘This is Mr Buck Carney, a photographer who’s doing a book for the cruise lines. He took some photographs of your mother the other day.’
‘I need a napkin,’ Julie sniffed, turning her face toward the wall.
I gave her mine and watched while she pressed it to her eyes, using it as a delaying tactic, I imagined, to gather enough courage to look at Carney.
‘I hope I’m not the guy responsible for all those tears, little miss,’ Carney drawled.
Julie squared her shoulders, gazed up at him dispassionately. ‘No, no,’ she improvised wildly. ‘My boyfriend just broke up with me, is all. It was kind of a shock.’
Carney flashed a disarming, toothy grin. ‘Well, begging your pardon, miss, but that boy must be out of his cotton-pickin’ mind.’ When Julie didn’t respond, he focused his attention on me. ‘Gave me quite a turn when I ran into Miss Julie here,’ he said. ‘Never saw a girl who so favored her mother, never. Thought it was her mother, in fact, until I got a closer look. I’d love to be able to photograph the two of them together. Do you think that’d be OK?’
I thought of the times Carney’d appeared to be stalking us in the past few days and knew he was lying through his expensively capped teeth. What had Georgina said about Carney earlier? That she was sure he’d been following her and Julie. Considering his disturbing obsession with my sister, the man would have to be blind not to have noticed Julie and try to take her photo, too. Julie, in all likelihood, would have been oblivious. A sudden, sickening through came over me. Had all the attention he had given Georgina simply been a ruse in order to get close to her vulnerable fourteen-year-old daughter? How far would Carney go? I could feel the bile rising in my stomach.
‘You’ll have to ask her mother,’ I practically spat, trying to hold myself back from saying more. ‘I’m just the aunt.’
‘Will you be at dinner in the dining room tonight, then?’ Carney asked.
‘Maybe,’ I said, and let it go at that.
‘Good, good. Perhaps there’ll be an opportunity then.’ He stepped away from the table, then stopped short. ‘Sorry if I upset you, Julie.’
To her credit, Julie dredged up a smile from somewhere and pasted it on her face.
We both watched, waiting until Carney was seriously busy filling up his plate at the buffet – heavy on the fried chicken and mac and cheese – then we fled the café. When we reached the elevator lobby, Julie dragged me into the ladies’ restroom, where she stopped to catch her breath, pressing her back against the wall of the handicapped stall.