I closed the door of the stall, flipped the latch, and sat down, fully clothed, on the toilet.
Julie bent at the waist, rested her hands on her knees and took deep breaths. ‘What are we going to do, Aunt Hannah?’
What were we going to do?
‘First thing,’ I told her after collecting my thoughts, ‘is we tell Officer Martin. If you have any doubts, we mustn’t let him go on thinking that you’ve positively identified Jack Westfall as the man who attacked you.’
But before seeing Martin, I wanted to make sure that Carney was the actual perp, not simply a man who had made an unfortunate wardrobe choice and had the disconcerting, creepy habit of always being there, taking photos. ‘Are you sure the man who attacked you was Buck Carney and not Jack Westfall?’
‘I’m not sure of anything anymore, Aunt Hannah!’ Julie whimpered. The child was miserable. I couldn’t help thinking to myself that if Julie was going to be traumatized by the sight of any man wearing a black polo shirt with a logo on it, she was going to need extensive therapy.
‘Second, I think we should try to behave normally. This man has victimized you once. Don’t let him victimize you again. There is nothing anyone can do to hurt you when you’re surrounded by family, or in the middle of a crowd. And tomorrow morning, when we get back to Baltimore? The F.B.I. will be in charge, and somebody will be arrested. Your father and your uncles will see to that.’
Julie turned her tear-stained face to me. ‘What if he has a gun?’
‘No gun,’ I said. ‘We passed through the X-ray machine, remember? And they screened the luggage, too. I’m quite sure there are no guns aboard this ship.’
Julie nodded, her breathing still ragged. Women came and went, toilets flushed, hand-dryers roared like jet engines and still we waited, not saying another word until Julie’s breathing had returned to normal.
I deposited a still-shaken Julie with her mother, then hurried off to the security office. Ben Martin wasn’t there, but Molly Fortune gave me her full attention.
‘So, it could be anybody, is what you’re saying,’ Fortune summed up when I’d finished explaining about Westfall and Carney.
‘What I’m saying is that Julie would have a tough time picking the man out of a lineup, especially if they were all wearing black polo shirts and ball caps.’
‘This complicates things.’
‘I know. I’m sorry, but Julie was drugged, remember?’
Fortune smirked. ‘Yes, and because of that, any reasonably competent criminal defense attorney would make mincemeat of Julie’s positive identification anyway.’ She raised both hands, palms out. ‘We certainly can’t lock up every passenger fitting your niece’s rather vague description, now, can we?’
‘You owe us safe passage,’ I said, a bit steamed that she seemed to be brushing off my concerns about Julie’s safety with a predator still running about loose on board. ‘If anything happens to my niece, we will sue Phoenix Cruise Lines up one side and down the other, starting with Gregorius Simonides and going all the way down to you!’
Fortune must have earned straight A’s in How To Deal With Disgruntled Customers 101 because she nodded and smiled and soothed until I came down from the ceiling. She gave me her word that Security would keep both Westfall and Carney under surveillance, suggesting, but not coming right out and saying, that plain-clothes officers would be involved. She also assured me that she would contact the F.B.I. and make sure they were brought up to speed on the situation.
Slightly mollified, I returned to Georgina’s cabin where the four of us gathered for a sisterly pow-wow. After some discussion, my sisters and I decided to dress for dinner and try to act as if nothing had happened. ‘We can’t let scum like that spoil our last night on board, can we, Julie?’ Georgina argued and, surprisingly and bravely, Julie agreed.
Ruth and I watched as Georgina stepped into a mint-colored, one-shouldered silk georgette sheath that was a knockout with her pale complexion and apricot hair.
‘You look like a model, Mom,’ Julie commented as she removed a silk watercolor print dress from its hanger. It had a narrow belt, with a high-low skirt that floated elegantly just below her knees. This was the dress she had long-planned for the evening. After I zipped it up the back, she spread her arms, twirled. ‘Tar-jay,’ she told me. ‘Can you believe?’
I topped my pants with a teal lace tee, and Ruth hauled another oldie but goodie out of her closet, a red silk jump suit. A fringed shawl gave it an updated look, but she still resembled a refugee from Charlie’s Angels and I told her so. Julie twisted her hair into a loose knot, holding it in place with a pair of decorative chopsticks. ‘There,’ she announced. ‘I’m ready for anything!’
Thus attired, the Alexander Sisters Plus One proceeded to the Oceanus Dining Room and presented ourselves to the maître d’. Three couples were ahead of us in line.
‘I thought it was supposed to be formal night,’ Julie complained.
‘Shhhh,’ cautioned her mother, ‘but I see what you mean.’
A woman just ahead wore blue jeans and a tube top. She had managed to teeter to dinner on spike-heeled sandals of eye-stabbing blue. Her companion apparently believed that ‘formal’ meant Bermuda shorts and a collarless tee.
The maître d’ gave the couple a disdainful look up and down, straightened to his full five foot ten and said, ‘Perhaps sir and madam would be more comfortable dining in the Firebird café this evening.’
As the man huffed and the woman tottered away, Julie gave an arm pump. ‘Yes!’ Since we had made an effort to acquire the wherewithal to dress up on formal night, I was happy to see the cruise line maintaining high standards.
On the way to our table, we made a detour to visit the Rowes. Cliff and Liz were seated at their table with Elda, the schoolteacher, already enjoying their salads, but David’s seat was empty. Elda was all dolled up in a pink Michael St George suit that fit her slender frame like a dream and must have cost her a month’s retirement check. Her pretty features were accentuated with just a hint of makeup and her silver hair had been freshly coifed. She was probably in her late fifties, though she looked much younger. Liz had chosen a midnight-blue sequinned top for the occasion. ‘Do you think David’s coming?’ I asked.
Cliff shrugged his tuxedoed shoulders, seemingly disinterested, chewed on a forkful of bib lettuce.
Liz spoke for both of them. ‘I doubt we’ll see David at dinner again. Poor man. I talked with him about moving on, but that’s simply not on his agenda. Sometimes I just wanted to slap his face and scream, “David, get a life!’’’
We bid Elda and the Rowes goodbye, saying we hoped to see them later at the magic show. As we crossed the dining room to our table, I wondered if David was still in the Athena bar, curled up at the bottom of a martini glass.
‘Surf and turf!’ Julie squealed when our server handed her a menu. ‘I am so going to have that.’
I ordered a bottle of Vigonier for the table, and a Sprite for my niece.
‘Vee-awn-yay,’ Ruth repeated after the server left with our order. ‘Always wondered how to pronounce that. Helpful to have a French scholar in the family.’
I flushed. I’d majored in French at Oberlin College, but rarely had the opportunity to use it these days, with the exception of translating menus or watching Cinemoi on cable TV. The server had brought us some dakos, a kind of Greek bruschetta made with cheese and tomatoes, and as I munched on a rusk of bread decorated with the black pepper- and oregano-laced concoction, I scanned the room hoping to spot some of the plain-clothes guys who were supposed to be keeping an eye on us.
I didn’t spot anybody, but if I had, they wouldn’t have been very good at their jobs, would they? We didn’t see Buck Carney, either, which I took as a good sign.