Luckily, the Golden Goddess was cruising the same itinerary as the Tiffany Star, only they were a day ahead of us. Alexander suggested that if we could just get the passenger and/or his butler to check my bags at the next port, I could retrieve them there. I wrote down the passenger’s name from his tags and prayed that Alexander was telling me the truth, and not sending me on a wild-goose chase to get me off his back.
Till There Was You
BY THE TIME I arrived at the Hotel Grande Bretagne, Pops was gone. There was a handful of people milling around the special Tiffany Cruises Line section, and hotel employees were dismantling the VIP setup. My heart leaped to my throat. Was I too late? Did I miss the ship?
Then I spotted a woman who had to be a Tiffany Star cruiser. She was in her late sixties or early seventies, but well maintained and über-rich. This I gathered from the ornate jewels that adorned her well-toned body, the crisp shopping bags she carried from Prada, Tod’s, Bulgari, and Gucci, and the chic nature of her very person down to her astonishingly pink fingers and toenails. She wore her hair in a geometrically perfect silver pageboy. Her bright lips had that puffy artificial filler look and her eyes a permanent expression of surprise. In her arm, she carried a Yorkie with Mediterranean-blue highlights. Everything about her screamed, “Rich,” “Social,” “New Money.” Naturally, I assumed her to be a snob. But then she caught my eye and sent me a smile that could light up an ocean liner. I was intrigued.
“Hi,” I said, “I’m Holly Ross. Do you know the time? Please don’t tell me I’m too late.”
The woman flashed me the face of her bejeweled Cartier. It was six diamonds past an emerald, whatever that translated to in minutes and hours. “You’re cutting it awfully close,” she said in a Southern drawl. “See, they’re closin’ up. Ship sails in less than half an hour.”
“What happens if you get there after it sails? Can you still board?”
The woman gave me a bewildered look.
I slapped my forehead. “Oh, duh. Sorry. I’ve been up for forty-eight hours. My brain is all mushy.”
“Carleen Panthollow, Tulip, Texas,” she said, holding out her hand. I was temporarily blinded by the enormous rock on her ring finger. “And this is Famous, my furry child.”
I petted the Yorkie, who was alarmingly high-strung. She quivered and shook at the sight of me. I do that to dogs.
Carleen stood and grabbed her bags, dropping Famous inside one of them. “Come, darlin’, time to go.”
We boarded the ultrafancy bus, along with a few uniformed members of the crew and one other couple loaded down with new purchases. Carleen retrieved Famous, and then threw her packages in the empty row behind ours. The specially outfitted bus boasted extra-wide leather first-class seats and ample legroom. We lurched forward and soon were humming our way through Athens, toward the water. Maybe it was my imagination, but I could swear the exhaust fumes smelled like perfume.
“You a regular cruiser?” Carleen asked.
“It’s my first. You?”
“Oh, Lord have mercy, no,” she said. “I’ve been sailing for the past seventeen months and I don’t expect to stop soon.”
“Really?” I said. “You don’t get tired of it?”
“Hay-ell no,” she said. “I have one of the big two-story penthouses and that’s plenty comfortable for Carleen Panthollow.”
“You’re so thin,” I remarked. “How do you resist all the rich food?”
“Darlin’, I’ve been on a diet since World War II. Gotta look good for the boys, not that I’ve gotten any lately,” she said with a wink.
I laughed. “I hope you don’t mind my asking, but why don’t you go home, at least to visit? Seventeen months is a long time to stay on a ship.”
“Some people have been on for years,” she said. “It’s the finest retirement community money can buy. The food is better, the service is divine, and there’s dancing every night. Plus, if you fall and break your hip in a nursing home, they stick you in bed and turn you like a pig on a spit. If you fall and break your hip on a Tiffany ship, you get a butler, a penthouse, and free spa services for the rest of your life.”
“So you’re retired to the ship?”
“Sort of,” she said. “My husband died about five years ago. We did the world cruise together ten years in a row. In fact, he died the day after we got back from our tenth trip. I’ll never forget. His bags weren’t even unpacked.” There were tears in Carleen’s eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Can I ask what happened?”
“His old ticker just gave out,” she said. “We had a ball on that last cruise.”
“You must have really loved him,” I said, touching her hand.
“Oh, I did, darlin’. I did. I was his second wife, but we were married thirty years. He bequeathed me beaucoup bucks in trust, with the remainder going to the kids from his first family after I kick the bucket. Those children of his are as nasty as you are skinny.
