Barbara Silkstone - Wendy Darlin 01 - Wendy and the Lost Boys Read online

  Roger sat next to Kit and leaned into the chat. “What have you got in mind?”

  “Hook refuses to put us ashore. Maybe we can solve Marni’s murder before we escape. As long as we’re stuck here, we need to find out what we can.”

  “How?” Kit asked.

  “I’ll take Jax up on her offer to teach me to fly the chopper. Maybe I can get her to open up. She’s hiding something.”

  “How do you know?” Roger said.

  “Women know these things.” I lowered my voice even more. “We’ll operate on the theory that Marni was poisoned. Roger, can you use your medic training – such as it is – to see if any of the crew has symptoms of radiation poisoning?”

  “No problem.”

  I looked at Kit. “Chef Roscoe would be the likeliest person to put poison in food. He had access. That scares the bees out of me. Makes us all vulnerable. Can you use your gourmet lingo to get close to him?”

  “I’ll try. I just won’t sample the sauces. This is so exciting, all of us working together like the A-Team, except we’re Darlin’s Dudes.”

  Roger shook his head. “I’m so humiliated.”

  I saw a smile slip onto a corner of his mouth. “No you’re not. You’re enjoying this. Now get out of my room. I shoved their muscular bodies out the door and snapped the lock. If I didn’t get some sleep, I wouldn’t be up to the task – whatever the task was. I threw myself on the smelly sheets and tried to nap.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I slept through lunch. It felt good. I found Darlin’s Dudes ready for dinner on the upper deck. We waited for Jaxbee to join us. Unfortunately Hook came with her.

  Roscoe set out plates of pasta with tiny shrimp. We waited until Hook swallowed the first few mouthfuls. He didn’t keel over. The Dudes and I exchanged all-clear winks and dove into our dinner. I was starving.

  Jaxbee sat next to me with Kit beside her.

  “I’ve thought about those helicopter lessons. I’d like to give it a try as long as you’re still willing,” I said.

  “Good. It’ll be fun. Dale can take the bridge while I hold classes.”

  I excused myself, claiming a headache. I just didn’t feel like being sociable. I carried a doggy bag of shrimp for Tinkerbelle. She was all over me when I got to my room. I put the food in a tiny dish and filled her water bowl. The pup inhaled the shrimp almost without chewing. I spread some towels on the floor, knowing she’d be sick during the night.

  Two deaths on one yacht had my paranoia strings humming. After checking my suite for lurkers and listeners, I wedged a chair against the door. Carrying my blanket and pillows I went into the bathroom, locked that door, and climbed into the tub.

  Sometime during the night, Tink started to whimper and scratch at the door. I let her in and we huddled together till daybreak.

  Chapter Twenty

  The next morning, after I returned from walking Tinkerbelle, there was a banging on the door of my suite. As I ran from the bathroom to the door, it occurred to me that my stateroom was larger than my entire condo in Miami.

  It was Jaxbee. “Hi, student! Are you ready?” she said. “It’s time for me to do my recon, and you can have a helicopter lesson at the same time.”

  “Recon?”

  “I go up and scout the seas. See if we’re being followed,” she smiled.

  “Okay. Let me drop Tink with Kit. He can dog-sit.”

  I grabbed the dog and my sunglasses and followed Jaxbee. She stepped across the corridor, banged on Kit’s door, passed the dog to him, and said, “Here, hold this.” The pup covered his bewildered face with kisses.

  Jaxbee led the way to the helideck. Standing there I was hit with a wave of vertigo. It was either nerves or I’d become agoraphobic from being cooped up on the Predator. I had to focus on her and not look down. The dizziness was overwhelming and we weren’t even airborne yet.

  “The Shark’s a beauty isn’t she?” Jaxbee said.

  “Shark? Where?” I spun around scanning the clear water.

  She laughed. “Did you forget? The helicopter’s name is the Shark.”

  “Perfect,” I shuddered.

  As she hopped into the pilot seat and I fumbled with my seatbelt, Dale came rushing over. His skinny face was almost nose-to-nose with me. “If you disappear on this joy ride, your gay buddy takes a bullet in the skull.”

  Jaxbee turned the starter key and the motor woke up.

  I shivered. The fear of a repeat of my Cessna crash, the roller coaster ride into hell, made my hands slippery with sweat. I became hypersensitive, the sun was too bright, the chopper smelled of fuel, my hair hurt, and I had a broken nail.

  My instructor was annoyingly cheerful. “Flying a helicopter requires a more seat-of-your-pants feel than an airplane. There are four controls instead of three like on a fixed wing. You’ll pick up the feel through repetition.”

  This was crazy. I don’t do repetition. It’s so… repetitive.

  She continued with her lesson. “There are four controls. This is the cyclic… looks like a joystick. Use this to turn the chopper or move it sideways when you’re hovering.”

  That was the stick she held my hand on during the flight from Miami. “If you push the cyclic to the right the rotor disk tilts to the right and produces thrust in that direction causing the chopper to move sideways in a hover or to roll into a right turn during forward flight… like an airplane.”

  I felt myself glazing over. She was losing me with all the technical stuff.

  “If you move it longitudinally…”

  I shot her my blankest look.

  She smiled. “Lengthwise. … it pitches the nose up or down. It controls the attitude NOT the altitude.”

  My brain was going into stubborn-mode. It was rejecting the instructions as quickly as she gave them. I felt like a child. Like Treanna. My poor Treanna. I forced my mind back to flying.

  Jaxbee droned on, “This stick on my left is the collective. It changes the angle of the blades causing the bird to go up or down.”

  She leaned back and tilted her head to the left. “This thing at the top of the collective is a twist grip. That’s the throttle. See?”

  I nodded wishing I was home in my own bed with a pillow over my head. I don’t want to do this, I heard me whine.

  “Put your headset on. If it fails to operate at any time, hand-signals are okay, but keep them short.”

  Fails to operate? I gulped. Why should anything on this helicopter fail to operate?

  Her voice crackled through the earphones as she engaged the rotors. “The engine is warmed up. We’re good to go.”

  The chopper took off straight up and then dropped along the side of the yacht to about fifteen feet above the water. It skimmed the surface in a big arc for about half a mile before popping to an altitude of a hundred feet. It was a repeat of the way we’d come in on our first day. It was the cloaking device takeoff and landing maneuver. It also made me sick to my stomach.

  In what seemed way too soon we were up and circling like a hawk scouting prey. It would have been a glorious feeling except my poor brain was frozen from trying to remember all the widgets and whatnots. I can’t walk and talk at the same time… four friggin’ controls? Forget one and fall into the sea and get my face wet and my mascara all smeary.

  “Now for the pedals.”

  “Pedals?” I leaned over and looked at the damn things under her feet. Terrific… more things to worry about when I’d just mastered my seat belt.

  Jax laughed. “If you could see your face… Relax and don’t try for common sense. There is none in flying a chopper. It’s all about routine, repetition, and response.”

  We climbed another hundred feet then Jaxbee had me work some of the controls with her. Scary. The Predator was invisible behind its cloaking shield but I could feel Dale’s eyes on us. Scrawny little Nazi. Jaxbee kept us in the air for twenty minutes checking the horizon for suspicious activity. I figured I’d managed okay with the two hand controls, but working the pe
dals at the same time was beyond my lack of walking-while-chewing-gum talents.

  Finally the lesson was over. I felt as if my spine had turned into a Slinky and my limbs had divorced me. We did the evasive landing maneuver, dropping till we were right above the water line for a mile or so before popping up to the helideck. By the time we shut down, I needed a pitcher of screwdrivers without the orange juice. I left Jaxbee to button up her machine by herself.

  My legs trembled as I staggered to the salon. I braced myself on the bar, took a dozen yoga breaths, reached for the vodka, and poured myself a water-glass full.

  Roger strolled in wearing a borrowed crewman’s uniform, white shorts, white shirt and those brown shoes with brown socks. He slipped onto a barstool.

  “Those are the same socks you had on when we left Miami.”

  He looked down as if proud of his footwear. “I washed them this morning.”

  “You look like a British tourist,” I said.

  “Stop picking on my shoes. How did the flying lesson go?”

  “How do you think it went?”

  He laughed. “I have great faith in you. You’ll nail it.”

  I scrunched up my face in frustration. “There wasn’t much time for conversation. The only thing I may learn during flight school is how to fly.”

  “I’ve talked to about half the crew so far. No symptoms of radiation, although with polonium they’re not immediately obvious. No suspects yet.”

  “What about Dale? He’s obsessed with Hook. They seem to be joined at the brain. He might have resented Marni’s relationship with Hook.”

  “I’ll try to get close to him,” Roger said.

  “If Dale’s eliminating the people between himself and Hook, Jaxbee might be the next one on his list. Just be careful. He’s gun-happy,” I said right before the room started spinning. Roger helped me to one of the sofas. I curled my legs under me and nodded off. A victim of vertigo and vodka on an empty stomach.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I woke with a fuzzy tongue and a fuzzy brain. My toothbrush and a hot shower cured them. Dinner would be served at seven on the upper deck. An hour before, I knocked on Kit’s door. He opened it so quickly it startled me.

  “Darlin’s Dudes on the swim platform in ten minutes,” I whispered.

  “Roger. I mean as in okay not as in Dude Roger.” He closed his door.

  I was the first one of the team to arrive on the platform. Pulling up an inflated tube, I settled my butt in the opening and hung my legs over the sides.

  “You are such a delicate flower,” Roger said as he grinned at the way I was seated.

  “Backatcha, lover-boy.”

  Kit slipped as he stepped on the swim platform. Roger blocked his fall.

  A small laugh escaped my lips before I could stop it. “How do you manage to walk the stage in those six-inch, drag-queen heels?”

  Kit flashed a dimpled smile. “I was born to wear stilettos; it’s these flat rubber things that trip me up.”

  I patted the tube next to me, and Kit settled in. Roger crouched between us.

  “I hope someone has something to report. I came up dry,” I said.

  Roger spoke in a whisper. “I haven’t found anyone with symptoms.”

  “What would the symptoms be?” I asked.

  “If it is radioactive polonium 210, which I’m guessing, the symptoms would be severe stomach pains, vomiting, loss of hair, and high fever. The killer would have to have breathed it in or eaten a tiny amount. The symptoms are the kind you could hide from your crew mates except that you’d be spending a lot of time in the toilet.”

  The tube seat was cutting off the circulation to my legs. I scrambled out of it and stood. “Could it be another kind of poison?”

  “The last few years, polonium has been the weapon of choice. It’s easy to transport and makes for an ugly death.”

  “Where do you get radioactive poison?” I asked.

  Roger shrugged. “With the right credentials you can get it over the Internet. It’s produced in Russia.”

  Whoa! I thought of the Russian who threatened Croc. Was there a connection?

  He continued. “To get sick from it, the killer would have to be stupid enough to touch it with his fingers and then lick them or pick his nose.”

  “You said the kids on this ship aren’t the brightest.”

  “It took someone with smarts and connections to get the stuff. They had to know how to handle it. I don’t think they’d accidentally swallow some of it.”

  Kit remained silent. He never looked up. He seemed to have lost his bounce. This was probably more than his gentle soul could cope with.

  “Sweetie, did you learn anything from Roscoe?”

  He shook himself as if waking from a bad dream. “Um… Roscoe’s a talented chef. He shared a couple of gourmet tricks with me. Hook doesn’t deserve him. The guy’s from Haiti. He’s a widower. A loner.”

  “Think he’s the murderer?”

  Kit shook his head. “He liked Marni too much. She spent a lot of time with him in the galley. He taught her to cook a bunch of exotic island dishes. She was trying to please Hook. I think she really cared about the jerk pirate.”

  I stomped my feet trying to get the circulation back. “So you think Roscoe’s a dead end?”

  Kit clambered out of the tube, stood next to me and gave me an intense look. “We started off talking recipes. I don’t think I can swing him around to anything deeper.”

  “We’re not meeting with much success are we?” I asked.

  “You might try to get into Roscoe’s head. He did like Marni and she was your friend.”

  “I’m going to take another lesson from Jaxbee in the morning. I don’t see me getting much except my pilot’s license… it’s too hard to talk in the chopper.”

  Roger flipped his palms up as he spoke, “You need to get her alone in one of those girlie chats.”

  Did he take lessons in irritation? “I don’t do girlie chats. And Jaxbee is forever doing something important. Piloting one thing or another.”

  I decided to wait to approach Roscoe until tomorrow. Two of us chatting him up in one day might make him suspicious. If he was behind the poisoning, I sure didn’t want to push his buttons. He was preparing all our meals.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Next morning, Jaxbee was at my door ready for my second lesson in the magical art of flying. I knew I had to get close to her, but I had no patience with repetition. We all have our weak spots, and mine was in doing anything twice. I wanted to scream. But instead, I smiled sweetly and tried to open my brain to the mechanics of flying, and then, once back on the ground, I drowned my attitude in vodka, but less passionately than yesterday with only half a glass.

  Roger was right. I had to get Jaxbee alone in a quieter setting. I was picking up the chopper lingo, but I wasn’t learning anything about murders or motives.

  I skipped lunch, which gave me a good excuse to wander into the galley around three that afternoon.

  Roscoe was stirring a big pot of creamy white sauce. “Conch cheese sauce,” he answered my unasked question.

  “Smells delicious. Where did you learn to cook like this? You are amazing, you know.”

  He shook his head. “I’m just a quick learner.”

  “With your culinary talents why are you working for someone like Charlie Hook? This has to be a lonely life.”

  “I’m Haitian. I’ve traveled the world taking odd jobs to support my extended family back on the island. When my country was destroyed by the earthquakes, I went back to help my people. My wife, my children were dead.”

  Suddenly I felt very weak. “I need to sit down.” I stumbled to a kitchen stool, gripping the counter. Roscoe leaned over the prep table.

  “Our army of volunteers worked in a tarp-roofed shanty town housing over 50,000 earthquake survivors. You can’t imagine the misery.”

  “Oh, Roscoe. I’m so sorry.”

  “God has his reasons.”

&n
bsp; “Did Marni know this?”

  He nodded. “She loved to hang around the galley. She was always asking how this or that was made. Sometimes I’d let her cook. But we always talked. Yes. She knew about my time in Haiti.”

  “Poor Marni. She suffered so. Do you know what killed her?”

  His body stiffened and his jaw visibly tightened. “You’d best get topside.”

  I had pushed him too far.

  “I’ll bring you a lunch plate. What would you like? I have Chateaubriand in a white wine reduction with butter, tarragon and lemon juice.”

  “If you’re trying to impress me, it’s working.”

  He caught me in those dark, dark eyes and said… “Be careful. Curiosity on this ship is not a good thing. Too many strange things happening.”

  That knocked the breath out of me. I dashed up the stairs and waited on the upper deck. Never had I feared or desired anything as much as the luscious late lunch Roscoe was preparing for me.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I survived lunch, so perhaps my imagination had been running overtime. I sensed a good man, someone who cared about people. Roscoe was not a killer. But his lunch was. Absolutely delicious and so rich that it made me instantly drowsy. Would I ever catch up on my sleep? Nap time.

  A soft knock on my door woke me. I could tell by the muted sunlight filtering through the portholes it was late afternoon.

  The knock repeated.

  “Is that you, Kit?” I hesitated to unlock.

  “It’s Jaxbee.”

  I opened the door and she slipped inside.

  She had a duffle bag in her hands. “Here. You’re supposed to wear this tonight.” She pulled out black Capri pants and a black blouse with big puffy sleeves. At the bottom of the bag was a pirate’s hat with a crumpled red plume.

  “You have got to be kidding.” I bit the inside of my cheek to be sure I was awake. “Since when do I take orders from Hook? Bullshit.” I plopped down on the bed and flipped the pages of a National Geographic.

  “There’s a pirate festival on Tybee Island and in Savannah. We’re using it as our cover to go ashore. We’ll blend in with the partiers. Come to the bridge in exactly one hour. Charlie expects you to be wearing this outfit. The three of us are going up the Savannah River in a small boat.”