“He’d been on this cruise before?” I ask. Mrs. Black didn’t mention that, and neither did the cruise people. I’ll have to ask them to check their records.
“Uh-huh. Three, maybe four years ago. I only remember it because I prepared the presentation for his pitch to the cruise line, G and M. They were looking for a guy with a lot of landsat experience.”
“This cruise line is called Pink Pearl,” I tell him.
“Is it? Well, maybe they changed hands or rebranded or something. I’m sure it was the same cruise. Bill definitely mentioned how much the food had improved.”
“The cruise line, G and M, did they have any specialty?”
“What, like Disney’s with Mickey Mouse running around? No, not that I remember. I didn’t do the research on that pitch. Bill’s other assistant did.”
“Was that Chrisjean Olsen?” I ask.
“No. Chris only came on board with us eighteen months ago. Before her there was Haley, and before her, Melissa, who I think was Bill’s assistant at the time. It was kind of a revolving door with him.”
Was it now? “Why’s that?”
“Bill had high standards. I’m not trying to be sexist here, but women in this job?” He makes a soft huffing noise down the phone and I see Emily lean towards the phone with a frown. “You have to devote yourself to it. It’s your wife and your girlfriend and your best friend and your dog. Sometimes I travel three weeks out of four. Try doing that with kids. It just isn’t a job for someone who has a family. Really, I never understood how Reggie put up with it, but that woman’s a saint and a martyr.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose between my fingers and try not to think about what Mrs. Black is and isn’t. “I understand Chrisjean had to leave the trip because of a family emergency. Does that happen often?”
“Yeah. Chris’s daughter’s a diabetic. She doesn’t manage her illness very well. She had some kind of emergency and Chris had to fly home early. This isn’t the first time, either. About six months ago Bill called me on the way to the airport, told me to grab my passport and a change of clothes and jump the next flight to Hong Kong. Chris had to turn around at the airport. Bill was furious. I thought he was going to fire her after that, but they patched it up.”
I note this all down, my pen scrawling across the pages. “Did he say anything about firing her after she left this time?”
“Yeah. He was pretty pissed. But that was Bill. He’d flare and blow off steam and then he’d be fine a few days later. He was a great guy to work for. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”
“Thank you, Jay. You’ve been a great help. Good luck with your promotion.”
He chuckles a little. “I’ve got big shoes to fill, but thanks. I hope the cruise company figures this out. It’s funny, food poisoning when Bill said how good the food was.”
I don’t enlighten him. “Yeah, it is. That’s why I’m investigating. We don’t want anyone else getting sick. Thanks again.”
After I wrap up the call, I sit back on the couch and hold my arm out to Emily. She snatches up my notepad and holds it against my chest while she snuggles to my side. “What were the clues, Daddy? Other than he’s a sexist pig.”
I chuckle and kiss her forehead. “You tell me, baby doll. What were the clues?”
“I’m not the PI, but this thing about the pink friend seems big.”
“It’s security consultant and I think so, too. Except that the staff doctor told me that brick is usually yellow or white. Maybe they added some food coloring. Anyway, everything he said corroborates what Mrs. Black told me. Black took drugs to relax. He had a high stress job, and maybe living a double life was stressful for him, too. He used marijuana and opiates to relax. Maybe he took the brick by mistake, thinking it was an opiate.”
“That would be awful. If he died because he took the wrong drug.”
“Yeah.” I stroke her hair. “Emily, you don’t use, do you?”
“Nothing stronger than Advil, Daddy,” she says.
“Good girl.” I take the notebook from her and read over the pages. “If Olsen left the cruise on Tuesday, and MacDonald flew back on Friday, Black was alone from Friday afternoon through Sunday on the boat. I’ve got to establish a timeline of what he did those last two days.”
Emily nestles into me and looks on as I flip the pages. “How will you do that?”
“Interviews with the ship staff. It’s the same personnel on our cruise as the one Black took. Hopefully, they’ll remember him. There’s CCTV footage from public areas on the ship that the cruise people are getting for me, which could help establish when he was out of his cabin, but there aren’t any cameras in the rooms, so if he stayed in his cabin the whole time, figuring out what he was doing is going to be a ball-ache.”
Emily nods against my shoulder. “Mr. MacDonald thought he might have gotten the drugs when he was off the ship. Do you think that’s possible?”
“I don’t know. The cruise people say their security is super-tight, but they hired me because they’re afraid their own people might have breached it. While I’m on the boat, I’ll test it.”
“How, Daddy?”
“Well, one thing I’m going to do is pick up some brick while we’re in Cabo and try to get it back on the boat. That’ll be a good test of their security.”
“Won’t you get arrested if you’re caught? Or at least thrown off the ship?” She looks up at me with an anxious little frown.
“No, sweetie. Captain Lopez knows what’s going on. They tell me she’s a veteran of nineteen years and totally reliable. She’ll step in if the security people catch the drugs. If they don’t, that might help
