Purrfect Cruise (The Mysteries of Max Book 35) Read online

  “I think you’re exaggerating.”

  “We already lost twenty thousand followers after that last video of you on that surf simulator. How are you going to save the planet by learning how to surf, Oren?!”

  “We’ll find new followers—better ones!”

  “Oh, come on. We’re a joke right now—you’re a joke.”

  “Speak for yourself,” her partner grunted.

  “What’s our main purpose, Oren? Why did we set up our vlog in the first place?”

  “Well, to raise awareness for the plight of our planet through… through…”

  “Through what? You have no idea, Oren! No clue!”

  “Please let’s all try to stay calm,” said Garth, holding up his hands like a judge trying to quieten a courtroom. He probably wished he had a gavel right now.

  “You’re destroying us, Oren! And you’re destroying the planet!”

  “Oh? And how are you going to save the planet when we’re broke? Huh?”

  “So you’re broke?” asked Odelia.

  Both influencers looked up. “Um…” said Oren. “I wouldn’t say we’re broke, exactly.”

  “We’re broke,” said Chiquita, folding her arms across her chest. “We spent our entire savings on this cruise, and if we don’t make some money it’ll be the end of A Good Planet with Oren and Chiquita.” And judging from the angry glances she directed at her partner, it was safe to say it would also be the end of Oren and Chiquita as a couple.

  “She doesn’t look happy, Max,” said Dooley.

  “I think that’s because she’s disappointed in Oren, Dooley,” I said.

  “Too bad. They should ask Odelia and Chase for some honeymooning tips. They could tell them that the trick is to kiss a lot.”

  “I don’t think right now is the time to talk to these two about kissing a lot.”

  “Okay,” said Garth. “So if you’re broke, a diamond worth twenty million would be your saving grace, am I right?”

  The two influencers goggled at the security officer.

  “You think we did this?” asked Oren.

  “You can’t be serious,” said Chiquita.

  “It’s a lot of money,” said Garth.

  Chiquita nodded. “I know it’s a lot of money, but we would never—”

  “—ever—”

  “—never do a thing like that.”

  “You have to believe us, sir,” said Oren. “We’re not murderers.”

  “Or thieves.”

  “So you wouldn’t mind if we searched you right now?” asked Garth. “And asked you to open that backpack?”

  “No, of course not,” said Oren.

  “Search away,” said Chiquita.

  And as Odelia searched Chiquita, and Chase provided the same courtesy to Oren, they both came up empty-handed.

  “They could have swallowed that stone,” said Dooley. “They could have swallowed it and could be monitoring their bowel movements, waiting until it pops out again.”

  “If that’s the case,” I said as I marveled at the brilliance of his words, “we have no way of knowing, Dooley. And no way of catching them either.”

  “Unless we check their poop.”

  “I don’t think Garth is authorized to check his customers’ poop.”

  “How long does it take for a diamond to make its way through the human digestive tract, Max?”

  “Um… I’m sure I don’t know, Dooley. But I’m guessing not more than a day or two?”

  “So? We simply lock all these people up for two days, monitor their bowel movements, and we’ll know. Easy!”

  Somehow, though, I had a feeling the ship’s captain, or even the cruise line management, whoever they were, wouldn’t wholeheartedly embrace this idea.

  14

  Next up were Mrs. and Mr. Kettering, the parents of the girl with the kleptomaniac tendencies. The girl had joined her parents but wasn’t looking too happy at being interviewed over yet another incident, and this one even more serious than the last.

  “I didn’t do it,” she stated straight out of the gate. “Whatever you say, I didn’t have nothing to do with this. I mean, seriously? Cutting a diamond out of a person’s head? You have to be seriously sick to pull a stunt like that.”

  “Isn’t kleptomania a kind of disease, Max?” asked Dooley.

  “I believe it is, Dooley, yes,” I said with a smile.

  “Ruby is right, inspector,” said the girl’s mom. “She couldn’t have done it, since we all share the same cabin, and if she’d left in the middle of the night I would have noticed.”

  Odelia was studying what looked like a floor plan of our corridor with the different cabins clearly marked. “So you’re in cabin thirty-two—a two-bedroom unit.”

  “That’s right. And as you can clearly see, Ruby sleeps in the smallest of the two bedrooms, so if she would have left the cabin, she would have had to come through the main bedroom, and since I’m such a light sleeper, I would have heard her.”

  “We searched your cabin this morning,” said Garth, “while you were having breakfast, and we found something in Ruby’s room.”

  “You searched our cabin?” asked Charles Kettering, blinking rapidly. “But–but–but… is that even allowed?”

  “Isn’t that against the law?” asked Cynthia Kettering.

  “I can assure you that it’s perfectly legal,” said Garth, as he held up the plastic bag with the white cloth covered in some kind of red substance.

  “Blood, Max!” Dooley cried. “Look, it’s blood! She did it! Ruby killed the rapper!”

  “But… that’s my Chanel T-shirt,” said Mrs. Kettering.

  “So you identify this T-shirt as belonging to you, Mrs. Kettering?” asked Garth.

  “Yes, but… is that blood?” She turned to her daughter. “What did you do?!”

  Ruby rolled her eyes. “Enough with the hysterics, Mom. My period started last night, and I couldn’t find my tampons so I grabbed the first thing I saw.”

  “But that’s my best T-shirt!”

  “So? Just put it in the wash.”

  “It won’t come out! You ruined my best T-shirt!”

  Garth cleared his throat. “So if we investigate this blood we won’t find that it belongs to Lil Thug?”

  “Of course not. That’s my blood,” said Ruby. “And I think it’s pretty disgusting that you would go through my stuff and pick things out of the trash like that.”

  “The trash!” Mrs. Kettering screamed. “You threw my Chanel T-shirt in the trash?!”

  Ruby shrugged. “Like you said, it’s probably ruined now, right?”

  Cynthia Kettering pressed her lips together and turned to her husband. “You say something, Charles.”

  Mr. Kettering looked a little uncomfortable. “What am I supposed to say?”

  “Anything!”

  “You can’t take your mom’s best T-shirt and use it as a… um, well… a, um…”

  “Tampon?” Ruby suggested with a slight grin.

  “Exactly.”

  Ruby now reached out and grabbed the plastic bag from Garth’s hands, then handed it to her mom. “Here you go, Mom. Now you can wash it and be happy.”

  “Hey, you can’t take that,” said Garth. “That’s evidence.”

  “Try baking soda,” said Odelia. “And let it soak for a while.”

  “Baking soda?” asked Mrs. Kettering hopefully.

  “Can I have that bag back now please?” asked Garth.

  “Yeah, don’t wash it before the stain is gone,” said Odelia. “Or it’ll never come out.”

  “You think I can save my T-shirt?”

  “Oh, absolutely.”

  “Can I please have that bag now?” asked Garth.

  “I’ll give it a try,” said Mrs. Kettering gratefully. “Thanks for the tip.”

  “Hey, that’s evidence!” Garth cried, raising his voice.

  “That’s not evidence, that’s my best T-shirt,” said Cynthia Kettering.

  “Look, a
re you going to arrest me or what?” said Ruby.

  “Nobody is arresting anybody,” said Chase soothingly.

  “Look, I didn’t kill the guy, okay? So sometimes I steal stuff—big deal!”

  “It is a big deal,” said Odelia. “Especially to the people you steal from.”

  “Look, we’re going off track here,” said Garth. “You, Mr. Kettering.”

  Mr. Kettering looked up with a jerk. “Me?”

  “Yes, you. Did you hear your daughter leaving the cabin last night?”

  “No, I didn’t, detective. I didn’t hear anything.”

  “Now you wouldn’t be covering for your daughter, would you?”

  “Covering for my daughter? No, of course not. I wouldn’t do a thing like that.”

  “Or you, Mrs. Kettering?”

  But Mrs. Kettering had her mind on other matters. She was still studying at her precious T-shirt. “I hope to God they’ve got baking soda on this damn boat.”

  Garth changed tack. “So did you notice anything else last night? Anything out of the ordinary?”

  “Nothing,” Mr. Kettering murmured. “Slept like a baby.”

  “Are you a deep sleeper, Mrs. Kettering?”

  “Oh, no,” said Mrs. Kettering. “I wake up from the least little thing.”

  “And you didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary last night?”

  “No, I most certainly did not.”

  Garth consulted the floor plan. “So you’re across the corridor from…”

  “From us,” Odelia supplied helpfully.

  “And you didn’t hear anyone pass by your cabin last night? No voices in the corridor? No screams? Nothing?”

  “No, sir,” said Mrs. Kettering.

  “And how about you, Miss Kettering?”

  “What about me?” asked Ruby, looking bored.

  “You didn’t hear anything last night? Footsteps? Strange noises? People talking?”

  “Nope.”

  “Ruby likes to sleep with her headphones on,” said her mother. “She likes to listen to music.”

  “Not Lil Thug,” said Ruby with a wicked grin. “That’s for old people.”

  “Lil Thug is for old people?” asked Odelia.

  “Sure. You know he’s older than my parents, right?”

  “I hadn’t realized.”

  “Botox. Can we go now?”

  “One moment, Miss Kettering,” said Garth, once more producing the earring. “Does this look familiar to you?”

  Three Ketterings stared at the earring, then shook their heads. “What is it?” asked Ruby.

  “It looks like an earring,” said her dad.

  “I know it’s an earring, Dad, but whose is it, and what does it have to do with anything?”

  “That’s what I’d like to find out,” said Garth, a little grim-faced as he tucked the earring back into his desk drawer.

  And as the Ketterings left the office, Dooley said, “I don’t think she did it, Max. Her mom would have heard her.”

  “What if her mom did hear her, but was lying just now?”

  “But why would she do that?”

  “Because she doesn’t want her daughter to languish in some prison cell?”

  “Oh.” He thought about this for a moment. “It’s possible,” he admitted. “But would a kleptomaniac commit murder?”

  “That’s the big question,” I said, “And one Odelia and Chase will need to figure out.”

  15

  “Okay, so basically we have… nine suspects,” said Garth.

  “Eleven if you include us,” Odelia pointed out.

  “Yeah, but like I said before, I’m not including you.”

  “That’s very nice of him, Max,” said Dooley.

  “Very nice indeed,” I said. “Though if Odelia and Chase had killed Lil Thug we would have noticed, so…”

  Of course if they had killed the rapper, and we had noticed, we wouldn’t have been able to tell Garth, since the man didn’t speak our language. Then again, it simply stood to reason Odelia and Chase were innocent. Honeymooners engaging in such a heinous crime? They’d have to be crazy to do such a thing.

  “Dooley had a great idea,” I said. “What if the killer swallowed the diamond?”

  “What if the killer swallowed the diamond?” Odelia immediately echoed. “That way you’d never be able to find it.”

  “Until it came out the other end,” Chase added, nodding.

  “At which point they’d have to hide it someplace else,” said Garth. “But how to deal with that contingency? There’s no way. No, I think we need to look at motive, and as far as I’m concerned Chiquita and Oren have the best one: they admitted they’re completely broke, and if they can’t find some money soon they’ll have to drop the nice influencer lifestyle and find regular jobs, which I have a feeling won’t sit well with them.”

  “What about Ruby?” Chase suggested. “She can’t stop stealing. So maybe she tried to steal the guy’s diamond and he woke up and so she panicked and stabbed him.”

  “I don’t buy it,” said Garth, shaking his head. “She may be a kleptomaniac but she’s not crazy enough to try to steal a diamond from a person’s face.”

  “Okay, so how about the Biles family?” said Odelia. “Mrs. Biles has financial problems, and so maybe she sent her husband to kill Lil Thug and grab that diamond.”

  “Possible. But why take such a risk if her daughter is able to bail her out financially? I mean, if Laura Matz is able to pay for this cruise, she must have money.”

  “And willing to spend it on her mom,” Chase added.

  “Still, I wouldn’t exclude them from our investigation,” said Odelia.

  “Okay,” said Garth, placing his hands on his desk. “So we have our influencers and the Biles family to take a closer look at. I’ll get in touch with local police, and see if they can’t tell us more.” He smiled at his assistants. “I can’t thank you enough. It’s very unusual for me to be dealing with a violent crime like this. Usually it’s people stealing stuff, or getting rowdy and handsy when they’ve had too much to drink.”

  “You’ve never dealt with murder before?” asked Odelia.

  “Never,” said Garth. “And I’ve been doing this for fifteen years now.”

  “So what happens now?” asked Chase.

  “Now I’ll talk to the captain and see what he has to say.” He checked his watch. “We’ll be arriving in Kingstown soon, and I’ll have to brief the local authorities there.”

  “I thought that since the crime happened in international waters the Barbados authorities were in charge?”

  “Yeah, they are, but I have to hand the body of Mr. Thug over to the authorities in the next port so his family can start making the necessary arrangements for his funeral.”

  “How about the postmortem?” asked Chase.

  “Yeah, that, too,” said Garth, indicating this really was a first for him.

  “Better talk to the captain,” said Chase, “and management. And if you need us, just say the word, buddy.”

  “Thanks, Chase. I just hope we can wrap this up as soon as possible.”

  We walked out of the office and into the bright morning sunshine and immediately my mood lifted, and so, I could tell, did Odelia and Chase’s. This wasn’t exactly what they’d bargained for when they signed up for this cruise. If they wanted to solve crime they could just as well have stayed home.

  “So what’s on the schedule for today?” asked Odelia as we strode along the deck in the direction of the stairs.

  “You heard Garth. Kingstown,” said Chase.

  “Do you think it’s all right if we leave the ship?”

  “Of course. If Garth needs us he’ll give us a holler. And babe, it’s not as if this is our investigation. We’re just along for the ride on this one.”

  “Which makes for a nice change,” said Odelia with a smile.

  And just as we were about to head up to find our own deck, a sharp voice halted our progress and the
captain came striding up. He looked eager to have speech with us—or at least with our humans.

  “I wanted to thank you for all that you’re doing,” he said, as he pressed Chase’s hand warmly, then grabbed Odelia’s hands and shook them vigorously. “Garth told me you’re assisting him, and I can tell you he’s thanking his lucky stars for such good fortune.”

  “Just doing what we can, sir,” said Chase.

  “And honeymooners, too, so I’ve been told?”

  “Yes, sir, this is our honeymoon,” said Odelia.

  “I’m so sorry you had to be faced with such a terrible ordeal.”

  “That’s all right,” said Chase.

  And as the three of them chatted, I noticed that two familiar faces had settled on a bench nearby, and decided to wander over and see what they were up to. They were David Biles and Laura Matz.

  “Where are you going, Max?” asked Dooley as he toddled along.

  “Just curious what those two have to say,” I said as we both snuck up on that bench and surreptitiously disappeared underneath.

  “We can’t keep doing this, David,” said Laura. “If Mama finds out she’ll kill us.”

  “She won’t find out,” David said soothingly. He’d clasped the young woman’s hands in his and to all intents and purposes they were looking more like a couple in love than stepfather and stepdaughter.

  “We simply must tell her,” said Laura.

  “But we can’t. If we do, she’ll be devastated.”

  “But we love each other,” said Laura with a pleading note to her voice. “How much longer can we keep up this pretense?”

  “I know. I feel exactly the same way. I love you, Laura. My heart yearns for you, and seeing you and not being able to be with you—it eats me up inside.”

  “If only you weren’t married to Mama. Oh, life is so unfair sometimes.”

  “I know. If only I’d met you before I met your mother…”

  “You think you would have fallen in love with me right from the start?”

  “I did fall in love with you right from the start, didn’t I?”

  “As did I,” said Laura softly.

  There was the unmistakable sound of gentle smooching, and as I briefly ducked my head from under that bench I detected some heavy kissing activity.