She nodded. “I was there yesterday when he came in for a sport shirt.”
“Come along. Maybe when you see his things you’ll remember something about him that could help us.”
The staterooms for the priests had been grouped more or less together in the 600 numbers. She remembered Father Ullman saying he was in 675. When they reached it, another man wearing black pants and a sport shirt was standing outside.
“Are you finished with the room now?” he asked. “I spent the rest of the night sleeping on deck.”
“Sorry, Father. Susan, this is Father Stillwell. He found the body.”
She introduced herself and asked, “Did you share the room with Father Ullman?”
“That’s right. We just met yesterday. I have a parish in Spokane.”
Sid Cromwell unlocked the stateroom door. “I had the room dusted for fingerprints, but I expect the FBI will want to check it over in the Azores. I’ll arrange another room for you, Father.”
“I hope so,” he muttered. “I don’t think I’d want to sleep in there.”
“What did you do when you found him?” Susan asked.
“I... I phoned for help and gave him the last rites. It was terrible. I’d only known him a few hours, but it was terrible.”
“Don’t touch anything,” the security man cautioned. “Susan, that’s your store bag in the corner, isn’t it?”
It was indeed the very bag Lisa Mandrake had used for the sport shirt he bought. Susan could see a splatter of dried blood half obscuring the Mayfield’s name. “Was he wearing our shirt when he died?” she asked.
Cromwell shook his head. “Just an undershirt and pants.”
“So his visitor was probably male. A priest would have slipped on a proper shirt to receive a female guest.”
“Maybe, maybe not.” He’d donned a pair of latex gloves and was carefully opening the dresser drawers. The roommate, Father Stillwell, was standing in the doorway, afraid to come all the way in. Sid Cromwell lifted a large manilla envelope from one of the drawers and asked, “Is this yours, Father?”
“No. It must have been his.”
He opened it and slid out a thick sheaf of paper. After a moment’s inspection he closed the envelope. “I’d better take this with me,” he said.
They left the room and Sid locked the door, placing a seal over the slot for the key card. “When this is over I still owe you a drink,” he told Susan.
She dined that night with Lisa Mandrake from the shop, who was assigned to a nearby table and easily made the switch. The conversation was about the murder, as it was throughout the ship. No announcement had been made, but the word had traveled fast. “They say the FBI will be coming aboard at the Azores,” Lisa told Susan.
“I understand that’s routine on the high seas when an American citizen is involved. You know, he was one of your customers — the young priest who bought a sport shirt yesterday.”
“Yes, his roommate, Father Stillwell, told me. He was just wandering around without a room, but I guess they found one for him.”
“Have any of the other priests stopped in?”
“None that I recognized. We’re attracting a lot of women, though.”
Susan let her gaze travel across the large dining room. Since dress was more formal tonight, she spotted the tables of priests quite easily. They’d all worn their black suits and clerical collars for their photographs with Captain Mason. Between courses, Susan went over to see how Father Stillwell was doing.
“Did they find another stateroom for you?” she asked.
“They have me right up next to Captain Mason,” he said with a smile. “He’ll have me steering the ship next.”
She glanced around for anyone else she knew. “I don’t see Father Dempsey.”
“His stomach was a bit off. He said it was nothing serious.”
Sid Cromwell saw her standing by the priests’ table and came over to her. “Could I see you after dinner? Up in the Crow’s Nest?”
“Sure.”
She assumed he was going to buy her that drink, but when she joined him at the table an hour later he had something else in mind. “Captain Mason is concerned about this killing, especially since the victim was a priest on his way to Rome. He says it’s terrible publicity and bad luck for something like this to happen on a ship’s maiden voyage. To him it’s like the Titanic sinking. He says if we don’t have the killer in a cell by the time we hit the Azores it might mean his job. And by implication it might mean my job, too.”
“In a cell?”
“We’ve got an actual cell, with bars, down below in case it’s needed. Most big cruise ships have them these days.” He took a sip of his drink. “I remembered when I worked security for Mayfield’s you were involved in some crime investigations. You were quite successful in solving a few puzzles.”
“That was years ago, Sid. Believe me, my job as director of store promotions has nothing to do with solving crimes.”
“This job means a lot to me, Susan. If you could help out—”
She sighed. “What can I do?”
For the first time she noticed the large manilla envelope on the seat next to him. It looked like the one he’d found in the dead man’s drawer. He opened it and said, “Look at these.”
There were several dozen copies of a one-page form giving details of some sort of investment opportunity for clergymen, aimed at supplying extra income for their retirement years. At the bottom were spaces for a signature, address, phone number, and social-security number. “Interesting,” Susan commented, glancing through the stack of identical forms. “I’ll bet you counted them.”
He nodded. “Fifty-five. Father Ullman had fifty-five fellow priests on the voyage.”
“You suspect this is some sort of swindle?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“But a priest swindling fellow priests?” Susan protested.
“Who’s to say he was a real priest? I’ve sent a message to the Omaha archdiocese to check up on him.”
“I can talk to some of the others,” she volunteered, “to see if he approached any of them. But it was the first day of the voyage and there are no completed forms in here.”
“See what you can find out. We’ll be in the Azores by Thursday morning and I need to have something before that.”
After breakfast on a sunny Wednesday Susan walked past the photo gallery where passengers could purchase pictures of themselves with Captain Mason, then sought out the company of the priests. They were easy to spot beside the pool on the upper deck because Father Dempsey was with them in his usual black suit and Roman collar. “Are you feeling better?” Susan asked him.
“Fine. I wasn’t really sick, just a brief bit of diarrhea. I’ll have to eat twice as much at dinner tonight.”
She settled down in the deck chair next to him. “I thought you’d be in the pool with the rest of the clergy.”
He chuckled at that. “Dear lady, no one would want to see this paunch in bathing trunks.”
Father Stillwell, the victim’s roommate, came out of the pool with dripping hair and walked over to join them. “Any news on the killing yet?”
Susan shook her head. “Nothing I’ve heard.”
“I just thought of something,” he said. “You know that shirt he bought at your shop? When he tried it on it was a bit snug and he phoned the shop to see if they had a larger size.”
“Oh?”
“I think the woman there was going to drop it off at our stateroom and pick up the other one. I remember thinking Mayfield’s was very accommodating to do that.”
“We like to be accommodating,” Susan murmured, wondering if she was missing something here.
She left them at the pool and took the elevator down to the atrium floors. Lisa Mandrake was bagging a customer’s purchase and returning her credit card as Susan entered. When she’d finished, Susan motioned toward the small stockroom at the back of the store. “Could I see you for a minute, Lisa?”