had aboard this cruise ship, a chunky, sixtyish man in a conservative western suit with a white Stetson, string tie, and bulldoglike jowls. The copy beneath these photos referred to the fact that Everett Sanderson had served first his country, then his city, and now, on a for-hire basis, he was serving the public.
'Simpson, Kentucky,' Captain Hackett said.
They sat in his office. Sunlight streamed through their whiskey glasses, giving the liquid a golden gleam, as the ceiling fan chopped briskly at stale air. The captain explained that the Coast Guard would be sending investigators within thirty-six hours.
'That mean anything to you?' Tobin said.
'No. I was hoping it meant something to you.'
Tobin smiled. 'Afraid not. But there is something that would mean something to me.'
'What's that?'
'What you and the doctor checked Cindy McBain for the other morning.'
'I guess you're on our side now.'
'Is that an answer?'
The captain sighed. 'We found blood.' The captain paused. 'Why didn't you tell me?'
'We weren't quite sure you could keep a secret.' He frowned. 'I'm sorry, Tobin.'
'Tell me about the blood.'
'There was plenty of it. He'd been stabbed.'
'A second blood type on the rug. We think that the killer must have cut him or herself while stabbing Ken Norris. So we were checking Miss McBain's hands and arms for any cut marks.'
'You didn't find any.'
'Correct.' He hesitated. Cleared his throat softly. 'But we did find somebody with exactly the sort of cut marks we would have expected.'
'You did?'
'Yes. Miss Graves.'
'The dead woman?'
'Right. And, in her belongings, we also found a notebook-a sort of journal, actually. She wrote about going into Miss McBain's room-after following Ken Norris all night. But she didn't cut herself on the knife. She cut herself on a piece of a lamp that had been knocked over and shattered. That's what she said in her journal and that squares with what we found at the scene.' Now it was his turn to smile. 'She was also the mysterious figure in the trenchcoat and snap-brim hat your friend McBain kept going on about.'
'Why the hell was she following Norris?'
'Story, presumably.' He leaned leftward, opened a drawer, and withdrew the small brown leather notebook Alicia Farris and Iris Graves had been struggling over the day of Iris's death. 'She has a lot of rambling notes in here. I spent most of last night sipping sherry and looking through them. Care to take the notebook and see what you can come up with?'
'Sure.'
The captain said, 'They're hiding something.'
'Who?'
'The 'Celebrity Circle' bunch. You'll see that very clearly when you start reading the notebook there. Something binds them together-but I'm not sure what.'
'You heard about Cassie McDowell slapping Todd Ames last night?'
'Yes.'
'Whatever binds them together seems to be coming apart.'
'That's my impression too.' He glanced out the porthole. 'Some days I wish I would have been a Greyhound driver.' He poured some brandy from his cut-glass snifter. 'My daughter from Oak Park was supposed to bring her children on this cruise. Thank Christ one of my granddaughters came down with the measles.' He turned back to Tobin. 'I don't have any idea what Sanderson was doing on this trip but I suspect he was working with her.'
'With Iris Graves?'
'Isn't it likely?'
Tobin considered. Then, 'She worked for Snoop. It's a publication that probably hires dozens of private investigators. I suppose they could have been working on a story together.'
'I keep thinking back to when they were all in the party room-when I told them about Norris's death.'
'Their reaction, you mean?'
'They reminded me of wartime. I was in Korea. I got that way-about death, I mean.' He glanced out the porthole again. A tattered golden cloud dragged by. 'The first death I ever saw-well, it was a corporal and of course I couldn't let the other fellows see me cry. But that night in my tent…' His jaw locked as he returned his gaze to Tobin. 'I guess I can understand servicemen getting that callous about death-but why would celebrities?'
Tobin sighed. 'To be fair to them, they're fighting their own war; against age and the loss of their looks, against constant competition, and against just sheer luck. There are so many people who want to make it in Hollywood. An environment like that doesn't exactly spawn wonderful people.'
'You don't seem like that.'
Tobin laughed. 'But I am. Deep down. When my partner was murdered I didn't think of anything except clearing my name. It was six months before it hit me. I was walking past a theater where we used to go when we were young and poor and where they always played black-and-whites from the forties. And then I realized that the only thing that was keeping my partner alive was my memory of him-and what we'd looked like then, and what we'd wanted to be, and how we'd tried to be cool and impress girls-and here were all these memories and I had to keep them alive because that was the only way to keep him alive. That corner had been there nearly a hundred years and hundreds of thousands of people had passed by and fashions had changed and wars had come and gone and everything that had seemed so important had vanished utterly, without a trace, but in my brain I had a memory of two young men and what that corner had been like in the summer of 1964 when Barry Gold-water was running for president and when the Beatles were popular and when the girl I was dating would cry every time we made love because she was convinced it was 'wrong.' All those things had happened and when I die nobody will know about those things anymore, at least not in the way I knew about them, the way we each know things differently, and so all I can do for my partner is remember him. You understand?'
'Of course.'
'But I don't feel that when most people die. Not the older I get, anyway. Most deaths just make me worry about my own mortality-I'm just selfish.' He held up his glass and said, 'So thanks for the compliment, Captain, but I'm afraid it's undeserved. I didn't give a damn when Norris died, either.'
'But you weren't supposed to be his friend. They were.' He nodded to the notebook. 'She's got several references in there to each of them but they don't make any sense-they're just like the rest of the notebook.'
'Newspaper people develop their own kind of shorthand the way court stenographers sometimes do. Maybe that's all it is.'
'Maybe.' Then he reached behind him and hefted a cardboard box. 'Here are Sanderson's things. Want a look at them? My security people have been through them, cataloged everything for when we turn it all over to the Coast Guard.'
'I caught him eavesdropping on the party room that night. Did I tell you that?'
'No.'
Tobin nodded. 'He probably knew who killed Norris and why and so did Iris Graves.'
Captain Hackett laughed. 'Well, if they left any clues for us, I hope you have better luck finding them than I did.' Then he glanced at his watch. 'Afraid I've got a meeting, Tobin.' He pushed the cardboard box across the desk. 'Appreciate the help.”
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