She cocked her head, her mouth shifting into a little moue at Bell’s stunned surprise.
“Or am I wrong?” She batted her eyes playfully.
“Marion,” Bell finally said and took her hands. He leaned in to give her a kiss and she turned her head at the last second so all he got was her silk-soft cheek. “You’re here earlier than I expected.”
“The train from L.A. caught a tailwind or something. Surprise.”
“So—” Bell cut himself off. He saw it then, shining in the back of her eyes. She wasn’t mad at all, just having fun at making him think she was. “You minx.”
She started to laugh and wrapped her arms around his neck and raised herself up on tiptoes to plant a kiss on his lips that made the travel agent blush.
“I read a newspaper on the ferry on the way over from the mainland. Lead story was about how Panamanian anarchists tried to murder a Senator here at The Del and how an unnamed individual—you, I can only surmise—saved said Senator and dispatched two of the said Panamanian anarchists here and four more following a boat chase across San Diego Bay. The reporter was quite breathless about the whole thing. Me? That’s about a five on the Isaac Bell scale of chaos and mayhem.”
Marion looked past Bell’s shoulder so she could address the agent. “We will be taking that cabin. And could you let the front desk know that we’re canceling our stay here? If there is a fee for such late notice, we understand completely.”
“What are you doing?” Bell asked his wife.
“As soon as I read that article, I knew you’d want to follow up, and that meant going to Panama. I just want time alone with you. I don’t care if it’s here at The Del or on a ship heading south. It’s us being together that I care about, not where we are.”
“I cannot love you more,” he said solemnly. “I also can’t take you with me.”
A storm started brewing in her eyes. “Think very carefully. Are you sure those are what you want your dying words to be?”
Bell had to force himself not to chuckle. “It’s dangerous, Marion. There’s an insurgency growing in Panama, and the attack last night might be the trigger for a lot more violence.”
“I’ll make you a deal,” she offered. “I come with you, and once we’re there if you deem it too unsafe, I’ll come home, no argument.”
“Promise?”
“Yes. Besides which, you need me.”
“How so, more than normal?”
“You don’t speak any Spanish, and I speak it practically con fluidez.”
Senator Densmore had used his office to get a tour of the USS Maryland for him and his extended family, so Bell couldn’t introduce Marion to Elizabeth. He left a note with the front desk for the Senator and his niece, and he and Marion went up to his room so he could pack. He’d been told earlier that Court Talbot had checked out of the hotel while he was working with Chief Wilson. While he packed, Bell told Marion all the details of the attack and the discrepancies that tugged at his subconscious. Renny Hart came by as he was finishing up. He introduced Hart to his wife.
“I knocked on your door earlier,” Bell told him.
The young agent smiled embarrassedly. “The house doc came to my room every hour all night to make sure I didn’t have a brain bleed. I finally got some real sleep sometime after five in the morning and just woke up a few minutes ago.”
“You feeling okay?” There was a puce knot the size of an egg over his right eye with threads of green and purple around it. He also had a black eye that looked like it was going to linger for weeks.
“Still a little woozy, and the bump hurts like the devil,” Hart admitted.
“You on the three o’clock train for L.A.?” Renny nodded. “Marion and I have a ship to catch this evening, but we’ll head over early and see that you make your train. I’ll cable the L.A. office to make sure someone is there to bring you home.”
“You don’t need to do all that, Mr. Bell.”
Marion piped in, “He does and he did. You saved all those lives.”
“She’s not exaggerating, Renny. Your warning gave me enough time to flip the table and give us some cover. Without that, they would have killed us all.”
The young man blushed and couldn’t meet Bell’s eye.
Bell zipped up his bag. “Let’s enjoy lunch by the pool and then make our way along to the pier.”
Hours later, Bell and Marion were in their cabin, unpacking their things, for the six-day cruise to Panama. The SS Valencia had once been a luxurious express liner plying the North Atlantic route between New York and Europe, but that had been two decades and four name changes ago. While she was clean and the cabin spacious, her age was really starting to show. The carpets in the common areas were so faded that any pattern they’d once had were now muted smears of indistinct color, and a great deal of the veneer for the paneling was becoming delaminated and curled at the edges.
And when she finally hit the open ocean and her speed began to build, she produced a rhythmic shudder that wasn’t quite as bothersome as the clack of a railway carriage, but it was a constant reminder that somewhere deep in her engine room some vital piece of equipment was out of alignment. Also, the smoke from her twin funnels was especially thick because of her inefficient boilers and was so filled with cinders of unburnt coal that standing at the fantail was all but impossible.
Bell and his wife had been apart long enough for them to have other considerations than dressing for
