Several Deaths Later

'The idea of talking over if you're in love or not. I'm not sure that's necessary. It seems to me you're either in love or you're not.'

'That's because you've had so many affairs, Mr. Tobin. Jere and I-well, we're not really experienced.' She flushed. 'He's my first real lover and even though he won't exactly admit it, I think Alicia was the first woman he ever slept with.' In her beret and dark clothes, she was fetching. But how sad she looked leaning against the railing with the furious white wake waters below them, the dark and silver ocean covering all else.

'You could get hurt.'

'He wouldn't do that to me, Mr. Tobin.'

'He might not want to but he might have to.'

'If he decides to stay with her, you mean?'

'Yes.'

'I'm prepared for that.' But there was a catch in her throat and Tobin knew better.

'So why were you in their room?'

'Because I'd acted impulsively. Stupidly, really.'

'Tell me.'

'I'd… I'd been afraid of exactly what you were talking about.'

'Of being dumped?'

'Yes.'

'And?'

'And so tonight I wrote him a letter. It was a very… it was kind of a real blunt letter.'

'Telling him you love him?'

'Yes.'

'And telling him you want a decision right away?'

'Yes.'

He smiled and slid his arm around her shoulder. 'Joanna, we've all written letters like that. We get lonely and scared and it's only natural.'

'Yes, but I made the mistake of sliding it under his door because he told me Alicia was going to a party tonight and that he was just going to go to bed. They don't have a very good relationship and do a lot of things alone like that.' She paused, shook her head. 'So I pushed it under the door and knocked, hoping he'd wake up and see it. Then I went back to my cabin and waited for a phone call. I thought he'd read it and call me right away. I mean, I figured my knock had awakened him for sure. But then no call came. I waited for nearly two hours. Then I got this terrible feeling. What if he changed his mind at the last minute and went to the party and when they got back to their room they would find my letter on the floor? She'd see it for sure.'

'So you sneaked back to their room. How'd you get in?'

'Credit card.'

'Really?'

'One of the crew showed me how to do it.'

'Nice crew.'

'But it wasn't there.'

'The letter?'

'No.'

'And that's why you were tossing the room?'

'You mean opening drawers and stuff?'

'Right.'

'I just went crazy. Started throwing stuff around and… I really got scared. If she ever saw a letter like that she'd-she'd have proof then, not just suspicions.'

'So you didn't find the letter?'

'No.'

He said, 'Two more people were murdered tonight.'

He wasn't sure why, but he was very interested in her reaction. 'Who?'

He told her. 'Did you know or speak with either of them ever?'

'No.' Then she seemed to understand his motive. 'You think I had something to do with it, Mr. Tobin?'

He laughed and touched her shoulder again. 'No, I don't, Joanna.' He glanced at his watch. He'd left Cindy alone now for nearly half an hour. He said, 'Did you put the room back in order?'

'Yes. I was very careful.'

'Then all you can do is wait.'

'What if she came back for something and found it on the floor?'

He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. 'There are all sorts of possibilities and every one of them will make you crazy if you think of it too long. So why not go have a drink somewhere and wait till you hear from Jere? That's really about all you can do now.'

This time she touched him. 'You're really nice, Mr. Tobin. I'd heard a lot of stories about you, but.' She stopped herself. 'Well, you know, everybody tells stories about everybody.'

'I know,' Tobin said. ''Yosemite Sam.''

She giggled. 'Coming from you, it sounds funny.'

Suddenly all Tobin wanted was to go back and find

Cindy. To hell with murders. To hell with this young woman's love affair.

'I'll walk you back to your cabin,' Tobin said.

'See,' she said, 'you really are nice.”

He took her to her cabin and said good-night and said to try and get some sleep and then he went back to the deck where the bodies had been found.

The passengers were gone, and so were the corpses, and so were the captain and the stewards in white uniforms.

And so was Cindy.

He checked his own cabin and then he checked her cabin and then he tried a few of the lounges where, of course, the murders were the number one topic. In one of the lounges he saw a crew member and described Cindy to him and asked if he'd seen her and the guy said, 'Oh, the babe from Kansas City? God, isn't she all right?' He shrugged. 'She was in here a while ago but she left.'

'Alone?'

'Huh-uh. With everybody's least favorite TV cop.'

'You're kidding? Kevin Anderson?'

'Right.' He grinned. 'Why would she take him when she could have had me without hardly begging at all?”

18

3:14 A.M.

He didn't find her. He checked out her cabin several times and he checked out the various lounges but he didn't find her and he recalled once a high school girlfriend who'd made him unbelievably jealous, and how in his battered Ford he used to drive around and around her house, knowing she was out on a date with someone else, there being a kind of solace in the mere motion of driving around and around her house, there having been no solace in anything else during those terrible nights, knowing she was irretrievably gone from him. He hated being jealous, the way it demeaned him, but he never seemed able to escape its clutches long. He had been known to get jealous during the first ten minutes of a blind date when, at a party, his date had seen an old boyfriend and merely nodded, proving to Tobin (as he had admitted to Dr. Spengler during six useless months on the couch) that he was probably at least 37.8 percent crazy after all.