Killer Cruise Read online

  “Please don’t tell anyone,” I begged, then launched into a fevered explanation of Prozac’s adventures as a stowaway.

  “So you see,” I concluded at the end of my recitation, “I didn’t really mean to bring her on board.”

  Alas, he was unmoved by my tale of woe.

  “Kitty not allowed on board ship,” he said, his brown eyes cold as a calculator.

  Damn. It looked like the little stoolie was going to turn her in.

  “But Samoa won’t tell.”

  “You won’t?”

  A ray of hope began to shine in my heart.

  “On one condition,” he added, that sly smile back in action.

  I certainly hope he didn’t expect any dipsy doodle. I love my cat, but there are limits, you know.

  But he was not about to ask for sexual favors.

  “You famous writer, right?”

  “I’m not actually famous,” I demurred, “although I am the proud recipient of the Los Angeles Plumbers Association’s Golden Plunger Award.”

  He nodded, impressed. Which, I have to confess, is a reaction I don’t get very often.

  “You fix Samoa’s book.”

  He looked down at the floor, and for the first time I noticed a huge pile of paper at his feet.

  Dumping Prozac from his lap, he reached down and handed me what turned out to be nine hundred manuscript pages. All handwritten in a microscopic scrawl.

  Oh, lord. He wanted me to edit his manuscript.

  “Do not disturb,” he intoned with great solemnity.

  Huh? Did he want me to edit his book or not?

  Then I realized that was the title of his book: Do Not Disturb (spelled Do Not Distub).

  He then proceeded to give me the highlights of the plot, a stirring opus of a swashbuckling steward who (in between changing bed linens) manages to foil an international terrorist plot on the high seas.

  “Best seller,” he nodded proudly.

  Oh, yeah? In what universe?

  “But Samoa’s English not so good.”

  Tell me something I didn’t already know.

  “You fix for me.”

  I eyed the massive pile of handwritten pages. Yikes. This stuff made the Rosetta stone look like Fun with Dick and Jane.

  “You fix by end of cruise.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  Sad to say, he was quite serious.

  “You fix by end of cruise, or kitty goes to jail.”

  “Okay, okay,” I sighed, kissing my relaxing vacation bye-bye.

  YOU’VE GOT MAIL

  To: Jaineausten

  From: Shoptillyoudrop

  Subject: What a Day!

  Jaine, honey, what a day it’s been. All I can say is, I refuse to fly with your father ever again. He spent the entire trip following the flight on his TV screen, convinced the captain was going the wrong way. Talk about your backseat pilots. He kept shouting things like, “Turn left at Amarillo! Left, dummy! Left!” Finally, the flight attendant asked him to lower his voice; said he was disturbing rows 14–27. Honestly, sweetheart, I was counting the seconds till we landed.

  And then, when we got to your apartment, we got the fright of our lives. The key was just where you left it under the flowerpot, but your darling cat, Zoloft, was nowhere to be found!

  Daddy was convinced somebody had broken into your apartment and stolen her. Which was ridiculous, of course, since all the windows were locked.

  I thought maybe she was hiding. Or that she’d squeezed out through your mail slot and was roaming the city, lost and afraid. Cats have been known to squeeze through extremely small places. Why, just the other day on America’s Funniest Home Videos I saw a cat who squeezed through a downspout. True, the cat got stuck in the downspout, which is why they sent in the video in the first place. But the point is, I was certain no one had broken into your apartment.

  But you know how Daddy is. The next thing I knew he was calling the police and reporting a burglary!

  Two of the nicest officers came by. Of course they said what I said all along, that there was no sign of forced entry. And even though they tried to hide it, I could tell they were peeved at Daddy for wasting their time.

  Then just as they were driving away, your neighbor Lance showed up and told us that Zoloft was with you on the cruise. I had no idea you were allowed to bring pets on a cruise. Why didn’t you tell us you were taking her, darling?

  Lance was so sweet. He could see how upset we were, so he had us over to his apartment for cocoa and biscotti. He didn’t even mind when Daddy lit up his smelly old pipe.

  Did I tell you Daddy has started smoking a pipe? He bought it at a flea market last week and has been stinking up our condo ever since. I mean, who on earth smokes a used pipe?

  He swears that it’s a collector’s item, that it was once smoked by Basil Rathbone in a Sherlock Holmes movie. Hah! The only thing it’s collected is a bunch of old germs.

  But Lance didn’t seem to mind a bit. He’s been so nice about everything, I’ve invited him to join us for dinner Tuesday night.

  That’s it for now, honey. Time to unpack.

  Love and kisses,

  Mom

  To: Jaineausten

  From: DaddyO

  Hi, Lambchop—

  Here we are in sunny L.A.—no thanks to our idiot pilot. The man had no idea what he was doing. I’m surprised we didn’t wind up in Zanzibar! But once I voiced my concerns, I’m happy to say he shaped up and finally got us here.

  Why didn’t you tell us you were taking your cat with you on the cruise? Your mom had quite a scare when she thought she was missing. I, of course, knew all along there had to be some rational explanation for why we couldn’t find her, but I phoned the police just to allay her fears.

  Everything worked out fine in the end. Well, almost everything. One of the cops scuffed your wall with his nightstick on his way out. But fear not, lambchop. I’ll clean it up.

  By the way, we met your neighbor Lance. He and your mom really seemed to hit it off.

  Well, it’s been quite a day. Time to relax with my pipe. Did Mom tell you I started smoking one? It’s a rare collector’s item, the very same pipe Basil Rathbone smoked in the Sherlock Holmes movies! Lucky for me, I have a discerning eye and was able to snap it up for only a buck fifty.

  Love & kisses,

  Daddy

  To: Jaineausten

  From: Sir Lancelot

  Subject: Such a Hoot!

  I can’t believe Prozac stowed away on board ship. Oh, well. At least now you’ll have someone under eighty to hang out with.

  I know I was supposed to tell your parents she was with you, but I met some friends for dinner after work, and by the time I got home, your dad had already called the police.

  Your mom was so frazzled, I asked them over for cocoa and biscotti. Your parents are such a hoot. Do you know your father actually smokes a used pipe? What a contrast to my parents, who are about as much fun as dried oatmeal. In the meantime, your mom has invited me for dinner on Tuesday. What a sweetie!

  Well, happy cruising! And if you meet any cute guys, give them my number. Haha.

  XXX,

  Lance

  To: Jaineausten

  From: Shoptillyoudrop

  Subject: PS

  Why didn’t you tell me Lance was so attractive? I wonder why a darling man like him isn’t married. Oh, dear. I’ve got to go open the window. The smell of Daddy’s pipe is driving me crazy.

  Chapter 4

  My neck was stiff as a board the next morning from sleeping without a pillow. Prozac, the spoiled brat, had hogged it all night and had only reluctantly abandoned it to perch on my chest and claw me awake for her breakfast.

  I plucked her off and rolled over, only to see Samoa’s manuscript looming on my night table, waiting to be edited. All nine hundred pages.

  Oh, groan.

  But I had to look on the bright side. Now that Samoa knew about Prozac, I’d be getting maid servic
e. I could even ask him for another pillow.

  See? There’s always a silver lining.

  Working on the Silver Lining principle, I got dressed and scooted over to the buffet, where I scored a divine breakfast of bacon, eggs, and cheese Danish for me and baked ham for Prozac. Countless calories later, I made my way up to the Sports Deck, where I ran a few brisk laps on the ship’s jogging track. (Okay, so technically I didn’t run any laps, but I did watch other people run laps. Does that count?)

  Having burned off approximately three and a half calories, I headed over to the ship’s computer room to check in with my parents and make sure they’d arrived safely. I’d recently bought a fancy new cell phone that did everything except brew coffee. One thing it did not do, however, was work on board ship. So I’d arranged with my parents to communicate with them via e-mail.

  I found the computer room sandwiched between the ship’s chapel and the Photo Studio. Several Webaholics were seated at a bank of computers getting their daily Internet fix.

  One of them was Kyle Pritchard. Clad in a designer polo and Bermuda shorts, he was tapping away at his computer. At his feet was an attaché case, no doubt made of some endangered species. And spread out next to him were what looked like a bunch of financial statements.

  “Hi, Kyle,” I chirped.

  “Hmmph,” was his cheery reply.

  Careful to put plenty of space between us, I settled down at a computer and tried to get an Internet connection. For some idiotic reason, I thought it would be free, as part of my “free, all-expenses-paid” cruise. But, alas, the helpful Holiday staffer on duty informed me that I wasn’t about to be comped on e-mails.

  “How much is it?” I asked.

  “A buck fifty.”

  Gee, that wasn’t so bad.

  “A minute,” he added.

  Holy Moses. I made a mental note to keep my communications with my parents to a bare minimum. But after reading my e-mails I’m afraid I wasted valuable Internet minutes staring into space, agog at the thought of the cops charging into my apartment on a “catnapping” call.

  It was so typical of Daddy, creating an uproar over nothing. I love him to pieces, but the man is a born crazymaker. I swear, he’s caused more ulcers than pepperoni pizza and jalapeno chiles combined. How Mom has put up with him all these years, I’ll never know.

  Of course, Mom is not without a few quirks of her own. Not only is she constitutionally incapable of remembering my cat’s name, she’s probably the only person on the planet to move to Florida to be near the Home Shopping Channel, not for the weather or the oranges. Somehow she’s convinced she gets her packages faster that way.

  But I couldn’t waste any more time dawdling over my e-mails. It was almost ten o’clock. Time for my first class of the cruise.

  I have to confess I was a tad nervous.

  When I’d first asked Paige how many people I could expect at my class, she’d replied:

  “Oh, the big-name celebrities can attract hundreds. But someone of your caliber”—and there was no doubt she ranked me somewhere in the Three Stooges caliber of lecturer—“the most you can expect is fifty, maybe seventy-five.”

  Seventy-five people?? Gaack! To me that was a cast of thousands. The only other writing class I’d ever taught was at the Shalom Retirement Home, where I could count my students on the fingers of one and a half hands.

  So it was with butterflies frolicking in my stomach that I raced back to my cabin to gather the seventy-five handouts I’d xeroxed for the class. Just my luck, the elevator took forever to show up, and when it finally did, it stopped at every floor.

  Which meant that I was five minutes late when I finally came puffing up to the Galley Grill Restaurant, where the class was scheduled to take place. By now, those butterflies in my stomach were doing the conga.

  My fear quickly turned to flop sweat when I walked into the restaurant.

  There, seated at the tables that had been set up for the class, was a grand total of five students!

  Five measly people? What happened to all the others?

  I walked over to them, a sickly smile pasted on my face.

  “Hello, there!” I said, my voice echoing in the cavernous restaurant. “Welcome to Writing Your Life Story.”

  I prayed some latecomers would straggle in. Maybe some of them got held up in the elevator, like I did. Yes, I had to think positive thoughts. A whole bunch of them would probably come streaming in any minute now.

  I introduced myself, and after explaining that I was no relation to the Pride and Prejudice Jane, I started passing out my handouts: a series of memory-stimulating questions about my students’ childhoods, their jobs, their marriages, their children—in short, their lives.

  If completed, I told them, the questionnaire would serve as a memoir to pass on to future generations. Or it could serve as a springboard to a longer, more ambitious project. All the while I chatted, I kept looking at the door hoping for somebody else to wander in. But alas, it looked like it was just me and my gang of five.

  “So,” I said, my smile now frozen in place, “why don’t you all take turns and state your name and tell everybody why you decided to take this course.

  “You, sir?” I asked a bushy-bearded guy with an opulent unibrow.

  “I’m Max,” he said. “Actually, I wanted to take Professor Heinmann’s lecture series on his Arctic explorations, but, unfortunately, he had to cancel his cruise, so the class was called off.”

  So that’s why Paige had offered me the job. I was a last-minute replacement.

  “And bingo was too crowded,” he added, “so I wandered in here.”

  Great. Nothing like an enthusiastic student to get the ball rolling.

  “I’m Rita,” piped up the woman sitting next to him, a wiry-haired dame with small, squinchy eyes. “I’m president of the West Secaucus Women’s Reading Club, and I never miss an opportunity to hear an author speak.”

  Okay, at least this one had a vague interest in writing.

  “On my last cruise,” she announced proudly, “I saw Mary Higgins Clark.”

  “Really?” I said. “That must’ve been fun.”

  “Yes, she was fabulous. Just fabulous. Utterly spellbinding.”

  “Looks like I’ve got a tough act to follow. Haha.”

  “Humpph,” she sniffed, clamping her arms over her chest, having clearly reached the conclusion that it would be a cold day in hell before I came close to filling Mary H. Clark’s shoes.

  “And what about you?” I asked a long-haired teenage boy, sitting at a table some distance away from the others. He couldn’t hear my question, though, thanks to a pair of earbuds stuffed in his ears. Totally oblivious, he nodded his head in time to music from his iPod.

  “Young man!” I screeched.

  “Who? Me?” he asked, popping out an earbud and peering at me through his fringe of bangs.

  “Yes. What’s your name?”

  “Kenny.”

  I couldn’t help wondering what a kid his age was doing in a class like this.

  “Well, Kenny. Tell everybody why you’re taking this class.”

  “My parents made me. They want you to help me with my book report on The Scarlet Letter.”

  Oh, for heaven’s sake. First Samoa, and now this. It seemed like everyone on board had something for me to edit.

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you with that. This is a memoir-writing class. Feel free to drop out if you want.”

  I hated to lose him, but I was not about to play High School English Teacher.

  “Nah,” he said, “that’s okay. There’s nothing else to do on this dumb ship. Everybody here is like a hundred years old. Besides, my parents are paying me fifty bucks if I stay out of their hair for an hour.”

  I nodded wearily to my last two students, a sixty-something couple, dressed in identical jogging suits—his blue, hers pink.

  “We’re David and Nancy Shaw from Seattle,” the man said.

  “And after forty years o
f marriage we’re taking this cruise to renew our wedding vows,” his wife chimed in.

  Eyeing their matching jogging suits, wide, toothy grins, and Early Beatle bobs, I wondered if they’d always looked like each other, or if they were one of those couples who grew alike as the years went by.

  “Anyhow,” David said, “we thought it would be a wonderful idea to write down our memories to pass down to our children.”

  Alert the media! At last I had some people who actually wanted to write their memoirs.

  “That’s wonderful,” I said, fighting the impulse to race over and kiss them.

  I spent the next few minutes giving my students a mini-lecture on the principles of writing, trotting out the old “Show, Don’t Tell” adage, urging them to go for specific memories rather than sweeping generalities.

  “Just remember,” I said, winding up my little chat, “what you write doesn’t have to be perfect. Just keep writing. If you have difficulty, pretend you’re writing a letter to a friend. Now let’s get started. Everybody take out your pads.”

  “I don’t have a pad,” Kenny, my teen angel, sulked.

  “I don’t either,” Max chimed in.

  “I do,” Rita said, with a virtuous sniff. “I always come prepared.”

  “You can write on the back of these,” I said, tossing Max and Kenny some of my extra handouts.

  Then, just as I was about to give them their first writing exercise, a tiny, white-haired woman drifted into the room. In her hands she carried a tote bag almost as big as she was.

  “I’m so sorry I’m late,” she said in a whispery voice.

  “That’s perfectly all right,” I said, grateful for another mate on my motley crew. “What’s your name?”

  “I’m Amanda.”

  “Take a seat, Amanda. Here’s a handout. We’re just about to get started.”