Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
My wet pants stuck to my inner thighs with every step.
By the time I reached the suite, I couldn’t get them off fast enough.
I happily peeled them away, along with the rest of my damp clothes, leaving them in a soggy heap on the floor.
Gilly headed to her room to freshen up and use the bathroom while I hopped into the shower.
Logically, I knew the ship’s filtration system was top-notch, but Gilly calling the hydrotherapy pool “dead body soup” had planted itself firmly in my brain.
I scrubbed harder than necessary, just to be sure.
Ten minutes later, I was clean, dressed, and mostly dry.
I threw my wet clothes into the floor of the shower.
Tinted sunscreen and a touch of blush gave me enough color to look alive, and I twisted my hair into a messy bun.
Since Gilly wasn’t knocking on my door, I wandered onto the balcony, letting the ocean breeze cool my skin.
The rhythmic splash of waves lapping away from the ship was oddly calming.
A small flock of seagulls circled below, one diving and resurfacing with a wriggling fish in its beak. Huzzah.
My eyes drifted to Callie’s balcony. Had she come back to her room yet? It felt wrong not to check on her. It was the neighborly thing to do, and my mother hadn’t raised me to be unneighborly.
The partition between our balconies was barely three feet tall, a slim sheet of aluminum more for territory division than privacy or security. It wasn’t exactly Fort Knox. I swung a leg over, straddling it awkwardly before swinging my other leg over.
Easy peasy.
The curtains behind her sliding glass door were drawn open, and a bedside lamp cast a warm glow inside. Clothes were scattered haphazardly across the floor and strewn over the bed and couch. I knocked on the glass.
No answer.
I told myself to turn around. I’d checked. She wasn’t there. My job was done. But my hand was already on the handle.
It wasn’t locked.
That had to be a sign, right? If I wasn’t supposed to go inside, the door would’ve been locked.
A voice in my head called me out for the blatant nonsense, but it didn’t matter.
I couldn’t shake the feeling something was wrong.
What if Callie had slipped and hit her head in the shower?
What if she was hurt? Or what if she wasn’t the culprit, and whoever killed Sebastian, had injured Callie as well.
It wasn’t a great excuse, but it was good enough for me.
I slid the door open and stepped inside. “Callie?” I said quietly. “Are you in here? Are you hurt? Do you need help?”
Silence answered.
The emerald-green dress Callie had worn to dinner was crumpled on the floor near the bed, a pair of heels overturned near the closet.
Sebastian’s wine-stained shirt was still on him when Ezra pulled his body from the pool, which told me he probably never returned to the room after dinner.
But Callie’s dress on the floor, said she had.
So where had he gone after dinner? He mentioned meeting producers to pitch his show idea.
Would he have gone without changing into something clean?
Maybe. He hadn’t seemed embarrassed by his streaky, uneven spray tan.
Why would he care about a stain on his shirt?
The bathroom door stood wide open. The counter was littered with an explosion of makeup, cleansers, lotions, and beauty products.
A curling iron was balanced upright in a bagless wastebin.
Not a bad way to avoid burning yourself, I supposed.
I went back out into the main part of the suite and began actively hunting for scented items. Maybe I could catch a memory that would reveal all.
“Nora Black!” Gilly hissed from the open balcony door. “What in the world are you doing?”
“Looking around,” I said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“Your investigation might not get you kicked off the ship, but breaking and entering definitely will. Get out of there before someone catches you.”
“Entering,” I corrected her.
“What?”
“You said breaking and entering. The door wasn’t locked, so I didn’t break anything. I just entered.”
“Semantics, really?” Gilly’s expression was half-exasperation, half-amusement. “You’re better than that.”
I shrugged. “Am I, though?”
She pursed her lips, trying and failing to hide a smile. “This isn’t funny.”
I spread my hands in front of me, palms up. “I agree.”
“Stop it,” she said, but her voice wavered with suppressed giggles.
I gave her a pointed look. “Come in and help, or go back to your room.”
“You’re not the boss of me,” she huffed, craning her neck to peek inside. “What exactly would I be helping with?”
“Look for anything that has a strong odor I can focus on.”
She arched her brow at me. “Like dirty boxer shorts?”
I made a face and stuck out my tongue. “Gross. No. Whatever vision I’d get from that, I don’t want it. Like, ever.” I swiped the air in front of me as if I could erase the thought.
Gilly laughed. “Just trying to meet your investigative needs.”
“If you really want to help, find a letter of confession. That seems like the fastest way to wrap this whole thing up.”
“Okey-dokey.” She sighed as she reluctantly stepped inside. “One confession letter coming right up.”
“Wouldn’t it be nice if it was that easy?”
She looked at the alarm clock on the side table. “Our hour’s nearly up. We’ll have to go if we don’t find anything in the next few minutes.”
“Gotcha,” I told her. Since we didn’t have cell service, there was no way to let Pippa know if we were going to be late. “We’ll leave in five minutes, vision or no vision.”
“Unless we’re in cruise jail,” Gilly said. “You know, for entering.”
I sniffed lotions, perfume bottles, cologne, hair spray, shampoo, conditioner...You name it. If it had a scent, I inhaled it. I wasn’t getting anything.
“It’s almost like she had no sentimental or emotional attachment to anything she owned.” I scratched the base of my bun. “How’s that even possible?”
“I have no idea,” Gilly said. “I have an emotional attachment to my retired diaphragm.”
“Well, yeah.” I shot her a playful wink. “Bouncing Betty was always faithful, unlike all your exes.”
“I will cut you,” she threatened, a glint of humor in her eyes. She was searching through a Chanel carry-on bag and having as much luck as me. She glanced at the clock. “It’s time to get going.”
“I know.” My shoulders dropped. My defeat complete. I wished invading Callie’s privacy had borne any fruit. I would’ve taken a grape at this point.
“Hold up.” Her hands were still inside the bag. “There’s something behind the lining.”
“Seriously?” I crossed the suite to her. “Can you get it?”
“Someone removed the lining and then reapplied it using Velcro.” There was the tell-tale rip of one side of Velcro detaching from the other. Gilly slid her hand behind the lining and retrieved a plastic bag.
“What’s in it?” I asked.
“It looks like letters, a small bottle of Vertiliance cologne, and a square of gray fabric.” She unzipped the package and reached inside. “It feels like sweatshirt material, soft on one side and tight-knit on the other.”
“That’s an inexpensive cologne.” I picked up the bottle. “I’ve seen it at Penny’s for under thirty dollars.” I opened the cap and took a good whiff.
“God, I love the way you smell,” a woman coos to her lover.
They lay in bed, their arms and legs entwined.
“I love the way you hold me.” She slides his gray Indiana University sweatshirt up his body and over his head.
“I love the heat of your body against mine, and the way you love me like no one else has ever loved me.” I can’t see their faces, of course, but I recognize Callie’s voice.
She trails a finger across his bare chest. This man has the body of someone young and in shape.
The dancer Ramone? Doubtful. The man’s hair is light brown.
“I’m gonna spend the rest of my life with you Callie Lee,” he tells her. “There ain’t no one else in this world for me but you. You are my entire world.”
“And you’re my universe, Billy Grant.”
Billy? That was her first husband.
“Promise me,” he says. “Promise me that it’s you and me to the end.”
“I promise,” she replies. “I swear it to God. And after I get my record deal and make it big, I’m going to give you a dozen babies, and you can stay home and raise them while I bring home the bacon.”
“Oh,” he growls. “Now, I like that scenario. There ain’t nothin’ wrong with being a kept man.”
She giggles as he rolls her onto her back and crawls on top. “As long as you get to keep me right back.”
I blinked as the world came back into focus, my gut churning with heartbreak and pain.
She’d loved him. More than I could’ve imagined.
Billy Grant hadn’t been a steppingstone to bigger and better things for Callie.
He’d been her one true love. Her everything.
The fact that she had kept his cologne and what looked to be a square of the sweatshirt he’d been wearing in the vision, seemed to confirm it.
“Nora, you’re crying.” Gilly’s voice sounded worried. “Are you okay?”
I shook my head but said, “I’m okay.”
“All these letters are love notes written from Billy to Callie.” She held up one of the unfolded letters. “What does this mean?”
My chest tightened as I started reassessing everything I’d thought about Callie, all my preconceived notions. “I think it means she’s not the black widow I thought she was.”
“So, you don’t think she killed her first husband?”
I shook my head. “No. I don’t think she did. These things in this plastic bag are the only things she cares about out of all her possessions. I don’t think she would have given him up for any reason. Not even winning a show.”
“What about Sebastian? Do you think she killed him?”
That I was less confident about. Maybe she blamed him for what happened to Billy, and she’d been biding her time until she could take her revenge. Frankly, the idea seemed convoluted and unrealistic.
I met Gilly’s gaze. “That remains to be seen.” I gestured to the carry-on. “Put the letters and stuff back how you found them and let’s go see Pippa and see what she could find out.”
Maybe her research could offer insight that the visions weren’t giving. One thing was for sure. In one fell swoop, she’d become someone I pitied. Because of that, I hoped she was innocent. Only time would tell.