“You don’t have to be so delicate, darling,” Rosette said. “He likes hookers. He told my husband he doesn’t have to romance them—they’re paid to worry about how he feels. He was feeling a bit battered after his last divorce. I don’t care who he sleeps with, but he dragged that one to dinner with us. That was the limit. I pleaded a sick headache.”
“If you’d seen the sleazy rag she wore, you really would have been sick,” Beth said. “I couldn’t escape. You stuck me with her. That was very naughty of you.”
Did Scotty date Arthur’s future wife? Helen wondered. Blossom was her trick name. Maybe lots of hookers used it. She did have outrageous outfits in her closet and an arrest for prostitution. Her clothes and behavior around Helen were impeccable, but Fran the housekeeper insisted Blossom had dressed to meet a man.
“Thank gawd Scotty came to his senses,” Rosette said. “She mentioned getting married on the beach once too often and he finally put her on a plane back to whatever whorehouse she came from.”
“Not before she stole his watch and who knows how much cash,” Beth said. “Scotty was too embarrassed to report it.”
“I think he got off cheap,” Rosette said.
Helen jumped when she heard Mira clattering through the crew mess. “Helen!” the head stew said. “Why are you lounging on the stairs? Go see if Mrs. Crowne needs anything.”
Helen shot through the secret passage to the Paradise stateroom, where she heard Pepper being violently sick. Then the bed creaked and there were alarming moans.
Helen tapped on the Paradise door. “Mrs. Crowne?”
“What?” Pepper gasped.
“Do you need anything, Mrs. Crowne?” Helen asked. “May I bring you some hot tea? Ginger ale? Dramamine?”
“Nothing works,” Pepper said. “I’ve tried it all.”
“Would you like your bathroom cleaned?”
“No, let me die in peace,” Pepper said, and groaned like something from a newly opened grave. “Wait! Come in. You can get me something.”
Pepper was shivering under the duvet, curled into the fetal position. Her creamy skin had a green tinge and her golden hair was plastered to her damp forehead. “I want a bucket,” she said.
“Like a plastic scrub bucket. I don’t want to keep getting up to barf. I wish I’d never seen that salmon mousse. Oh, God, not again.” Pepper jumped up and streaked toward the stateroom’s head.
Helen gently closed the door, then radioed Mira. “Give her one of the small plastic buckets in the passage,” the head stewardess said. “You’re lucky. Some guests use the wastebaskets.”
By eleven thirty, the wind was stronger. On her trips upstairs, Helen saw whitecaps on the black water. The boat was rocking like the devil’s cradle. Occasionally, she heard a crash as something slid off a shelf. The chef, Suzanne, had packed the galley cabinets with Bubble Wrap and was taping the doors and drawers shut. Mira and Louise were securing dishes and ornaments. The deckhand and second engineer had zipped the canvas covers on the deck furniture. Now they were lashing it to the rails.
Helen felt queasy. She couldn’t walk through the shifting secret passage without barking her shins or hitting her elbow. Slowly, her body got used to the yacht’s movement. First the ship would plunge down—taking her stomach with it—then rock back and forth until the next big wave hit it hard and the process started over.
The wooden blinds swung and banged against the windows, and the waves slapped the boat so loud Helen heard them when she cleaned the sky lounge head on the third deck. The stink of Scotty’s cigar hung in the sky lounge. Her queasy stomach did a backflip and Helen raced downstairs to her cabin. If she was going to get sick, she’d use her cabin head. It didn’t have to be cleaned every time.
Yeah, I’m a real old salt, Helen thought as she worshipped the porcelain. She sat briefly on her bucking bunk. The room spun.
Her radio crackled into life. “Helen, where are you?” Mira asked.
“Sick,” Helen said.
“You’re not allowed to be sick,” Mira said.
“Nobody told my stomach,” Helen said.
“I mean it,” Mira said. “You have to take hot tea, a soft-boiled egg and saltines to Mrs. Crowne. Louise is taking care of Mrs. Randolph. I’m delivering an egg and toast to the missus. Come up to the galley now.”
Helen ran into Louise in the secret passage, almost literally. She plastered herself against the wall while Louise tried to ease by with a tray loaded with gold-rimmed china and Baccarat crystal.
“A soft-boiled egg and ginger ale for Mrs. R.,” the stew said. She was so tiny, she barely came to Helen’s shoulder.
Carrying that tray must be a chore for her, Helen thought.
The ship made a sudden lurch and Helen reached out and caught the Baccarat glass before it tumbled over the side of the tray.
“Thanks,” Louise said. “I can’t afford to lose one hundred fifty bucks if that breaks. I wish I was off this damn yacht. I’m sick of waiting on rich idiots. Oops!” The yacht leaped again and Louise staggered down the passage and through the looking glass.
Later, Helen would remember that conversation.
It was the last time she ever spoke to Louise.
CHAPTER 21
Helen dragged her aching body up the stairs again, pulling herself up by the rail. She tried not to think about carrying a tray of food back down it. She had a job to do. She had a smuggler to catch. Nobody died of seasickness, did they?
At last, she was upstairs. Chef Suzanne presided over a shifting galley, where water sloshed out of steaming pots and sizzled on the Thermador stove top. Helen caught glimpses of other top-of-the-line brand names, including Sub-Zero.
Suzanne, a thin woman with straight dark hair and serious brown eyes, pointed to a napkin-covered tray on the center island. The chef had used thin, gold-rimmed china for the soft-boiled egg, saltines and tea.
“That goes to Mrs. Crowne,” Suzanne said. “The men are asleep—or passed out—in the sky lounge. Mira covered them with blankets and they’re snoring.”
The boat took another downward plunge and Helen grabbed the railing along the counter to stay upright.
“How do I get this downstairs?” Helen asked.
“Walk with your feet wide apart for balance,” Suzanne said. “Keep them spread as wide as your shoulders. Hold on to the tray with one hand and the wall with the other. And be careful. That’s Rosenthal china. Any breakage comes out of your pay. You’ll have to check on your charge every fifteen minutes.”
“She told me to go away once I delivered the bucket,” Helen said.
“You still have to stay awake in case she calls you. Mira left a thermos of coffee in the crew mess. That should keep you awake.”
Helen waited until the yacht was out of the deep swing and into the smaller rocking motions. As she started out of the galley, the yacht took another steep plunge. The china rattled and the gold-rimmed cup slid off the tray and smashed on the floor.
“It’s only a cup,” Suzanne said. “We have lots of those.”
“Where’s a broom?” Helen asked.
“I’ll sweep it up. You get that food to the guest,” Suzanne said.
“How much is it?” Helen asked.
“Eighty dollars,” Suzanne said.
Helen hoped she could put the cost of the broken china on her expense account. She picked up the tray again. After what seemed like hours, she made it down the stairs and through the passage to Pepper’s door. Her muscles ached from the effort to keep her balance.
She knocked, and found Pepper still huddled under the duvet.