“Did any actual harassment take place?” asked the Chief with a note of concern.

  “Not according to Suzanne. But I had the impression she wasn’t telling us the full truth, so it’s possible that something did happen she doesn’t want to talk about. But the crew members have closed ranks, so it’s impossible to know for sure what did or did not happen.”

  “Okay, so let’s pencil this Suzanne Palmer in as a suspect,” said the Chief. “Though she presumably left the ship along with the rest of the crew?”

  “She did. She left the Aurora only to return after the body had already been found.”

  “She could always have come back via the water,” said the Chief. “So let’s put her on the list of suspects. Anyone else?”

  “If something did happen to Suzanne, any other member of the crew might have felt compelled to take revenge,” said Odelia. “Though the person closest to Suzanne appears to have been Jeanine Bishop. According to the others, those two are best friends and spent a lot of time together.”

  “The captain also seemed very protective of Suzanne,” said Chase. “So if Robert did try something with Suzanne, Gerard might have decided to take matters into his own hands to protect her from further harm.”

  “Okay, so basically the entire crew are all suspects,” said the Chief.

  “Except maybe for Marcus O’Reilly,” said Odelia. “Who seems to have been universally despised by his colleagues. But very well-liked by Ross himself.”

  “Anyone else? What about this Sebastian Poe I keep hearing about?”

  “I did some checking on the guy,” said Chase, “and Sebastian Poe seems to have disappeared a couple of weeks ago. He lived in Miami with his girlfriend, and one day he left home and never returned. Police tracked his movements and came as far as Sunset Harbour, where Poe had a boat. He took off one morning, and that’s where the trail ends. Before he left, he told his girlfriend he was meeting a client that day—Poe was a real estate broker for a luxury property realtor—but according to his personal assistant, he had cleared his calendar and had no meetings scheduled for that day or the next.”

  “But according to the dog, Poe suddenly turned up on the Aurora?” asked the Chief.

  “That’s what Flame claims,” said Odelia, glancing in my direction.

  “Funny name, Flame,” said her uncle with a grin. But then he became serious again. “So what’s the story with this Poe?”

  “Best friends with Robert,” said Chase, “and they kept in touch, meeting up from time to time and spending holidays together. From what I could glean, they were both cut from the same cloth: confirmed bachelors who enjoyed chasing women and liked life in the fast lane, though Poe had been with his girlfriend for some time. There was even talk of marriage.”

  “Okay, so let’s follow up on this disappearance story,” said the Chief. “Check where the Aurora was when Poe went missing. Maybe he met up with his friend, and something happened. So next, we have…” He frowned at his screen. “Jane Collins?”

  “That’s right. By all accounts, Robert and Jane were high school sweethearts. But then, for some reason, they broke up, Robert left town, and Jane ended up marrying Bert Collins. I’ve already arranged for an interview with Mr. and Mrs. Collins, Chief.”

  “Could she be our mystery guest?” asked Uncle Alec.

  “It’s possible,” said Odelia. “The man returns to Hampton Cove after twenty-five years, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he wanted to meet his former girlfriend and talk about old times. Though if he did, she never showed up.”

  “Or maybe she did,” said the Chief, arching a meaningful, bushy brow. As we all made to leave his office, Uncle Alec halted us in our tracks. “So what’s all this I hear about my mother running amok in Hampton Cove?”

  Odelia gave him a shame-faced look. “I’m afraid that’s my fault, Uncle Alec. Gran was all over the crime scene, so in an attempt to make her do something useful, I asked her to talk to the people in town about Ross. You know, what they thought about him and what kind of a person he was. But instead, she’s gone and interviewed the woman who runs the awards committee for the Chamber of Commerce and roped in Scarlett to run a parallel investigation as members of their neighborhood watch.”

  Uncle Alec groaned and grabbed at the few remaining strands of hair on his scalp that had survived the attrition. “Not again with this neighborhood watch! I thought they were all done with that nonsense!”

  “Apparently not. They’re going door to door to talk to people.”

  “Which maybe isn’t such a bad thing?” Chase suggested carefully. “We’re understaffed as it is, Chief, so if they can find out what people thought of Ross or what he’s been up to since the Aurora moored here, what places he visited, and the kind of people he saw, it could help our investigation?”

  “Yeah, but she’s actually arresting people,” said the Chief. “Or at least that’s what this woman, this Caroline Poots claims. And all because she decided to give the guy an award. As if giving an actor an award is some kind of crime!”

  “I’ll talk to her,” Odelia assured her uncle. “Tell her to take it easy on the arresting people stuff.”

  “You do that. And tell her that if she doesn’t calm down, I’ll arrest her!”

  “Oh, there was one other thing,” said Odelia. “My dad talked to Grace’s daycare owner. Chantal Jones was the victim of a carjacking last night. After she finished her yoga class, someone dragged her from her car and took off in it. She suffered a sprained ankle and a concussion.”

  “Did she report it?”

  “She did, and she said it happened at ten o’clock last night near the marina.”

  “And you think there’s a connection with the Ross case?”

  Odelia shrugged. “Might be worth looking into?”

  “Check with the officer in charge of the carjacking,” her uncle instructed. “There might be something in it. And now let’s get cracking, people. Chop chop. And that goes for you, too, Max and Dooley,” he added with a slight grin.

  Dooley turned to me. “What about our litter, Max? We probably should mention the litter monster to the Chief so he can look into that, too.”

  “Maybe now is not the time, Dooley,” I told my friend.

  “But what if Flame is the litter monster, Max? This could all be connected!”

  “I doubt it, buddy,” I said.

  And anyway, somehow I had a feeling that Uncle Alec wouldn’t be all that interested in discovering who had stolen our litter that morning. The big man had more important things to deal with at the moment. Like finding a killer.

  CHAPTER 16

  Odelia and Chase first decided to drop in on the officer handling the Chantal Jones carjacking case. Sarah Flunk, a fine-boned, freckle-faced young officer with glorious red hair, was studying something on her computer when we approached her. She glanced down at us and frowned, as if wondering what a pair of cats were doing in the police precinct. And for a moment, I thought she would assume we had been placed under arrest and escort us to interview room number one for interrogation. But then I realized that her frown wasn’t meant for us but simply a consequence of her thought process, as her next words made clear.

  “I don’t get it, Chase. I’ve been going over the marina CCTV footage from last night, and it’s almost as if the carjacker knew where all the cameras were located.”

  She turned her computer, and we all looked intently at Sarah’s screen, where we were treated to not-very-clear images of the events as Chantal had already described them to us. And it was exactly as she had outlined: the moment she stopped at a red light, the carjacker had snuck up to her, yanked open her car door, and dragged her out of the car, then jumped into the car and raced off at a great rate of speed while Chantal lay on the ground, seemingly unconscious after having knocked her head on a concrete divider.

  “Is she going to be all right?” asked Odelia with concern.

  “She sustained a nasty bump to the head, but when I spoke with her, she seemed to be doing fine. Very concerned about the daycare, since under no circumstances can she take care of any kids at the moment.”

  “I know. She’s our daughter’s daycare provider,” Odelia explained. “My dad paid her a visit, and he said she mostly seemed shaken by what happened.”

  “I can only imagine,” said Sarah. “To be suddenly confronted by this maniac.” She had blown up the images, but the resolution wasn’t all that great. And definitely not sufficient to positively ID the perpetrator or even to determine whether it was a he or a she. And on top of that, he kept his face turned away from the camera at all times. “See what I mean? Almost as if he knows where the camera is. Though I’m pretty sure it’s a guy.”

  The man was dressed in a hoodie, jeans, and sneakers, and from the way he moved, it seemed plausible that he would be of the male persuasion.

  “Did you follow the car on other cameras?”

  “I did, and I got it as far as Marlin Road, but then it enters a CCTV dead zone and disappears. I haven’t been able to pick it up after that. Though I’ve put out an APB on the stolen vehicle. Maybe if we’re lucky, we’ll find it.”

  “What do you think, Chase?” asked Odelia. “Any connection with the Ross case?”

  “Apart from the fact that it happened at the marina, I’m not sure,” Chase confessed.

  “Did anything happen on the Aurora last night around ten?” asked Sarah.

  “Not that we know of,” said Chase. “But we’ll ask Captain Gerard. We’re going to see him now, and hopefully this time he’ll give us something more to work with. So far, all of the crew members have been pretty reticent.”

  “Yeah, that’s my impression also,” said Odelia. “Almost as if they’re all hiding something.”

  “Good work, Sarah,” said Chase. “Let me know when you find that car.”

  “Will do, boss,” said the officer.

  Our next stop was at the Hampton Cove Springs Hotel, where the crew of the Aurora were being put up for the time being until the investigation was concluded and they could all go home. The company that employed them paid for their stay there, and even though it wasn’t exactly a five-star hotel, it was still a fine place. Located near the marina, it was conveniently close to the Aurora, so the moment the yacht had been cleared, they could board. But for now, they were all forced to stay put, and clearly they weren’t happy about it. At least if Captain Gerard’s first words were anything to go by.

  “How long are you planning to keep us here?” the gray-haired captain asked.

  We were seated in the hotel bar, where the captain had already been having a modest party, judging by the array of glasses on the table.

  “Until the crime scene people release the yacht and the investigation is concluded,” said Chase.

  “But that could take weeks!”

  “I’m sure it won’t take that long,” Chase assured him. “Now we would like to ask you a few more questions, Mr. Gerard.”

  “Of course you do,” said the captain moodily. “Questions, questions, questions, and never any answers. That’s the way it goes.”

  “So what can you tell us about the safe in Mr. Ross’s suite, sir?”

  “Nothing,” said the captain with a touch of belligerence.

  “The safe was found empty,” Chase clarified.

  “What makes you think there was ever anything inside that safe to begin with?”

  “We have reason to believe that Mr. Ross kept his fentanyl pills in that safe. So what can you tell us about that?”

  The man lapsed into silence for a moment, then gave the detective a cautious look. “Who told you?”

  “We have our sources,” Chase said stoically.

  The captain sighed and took another swig from his drink. He didn’t look as neatly attired and groomed as he had done earlier that day. “Okay, fine. So Ross did keep his pills in that safe, you’re absolutely right about that. And he also kept his cash in there, and lots of it.”

  “Cash and pills?”

  “And other substances,” said the captain reluctantly.

  “What substances?”

  “Cocaine, mainly. The man was an addict, pure and simple. Couldn’t keep his nose out of the stuff. Basically, he couldn’t get through the day without it.”

  “And the cash?”

  “To buy his stash, or what do you think?”

  “Where did he get this stash?”

  The captain shrugged. “He had contacts. Dealers in every port, so to speak. These days everything is done online, detective, but then I probably don’t have to tell you that. You have your contacts on your phone, and then when you need something, you simply set up a delivery.”

  “So how did that work, exactly? Did he send a crew member, or did he handle everything himself?”

  “Mostly he would send a crew member. He didn’t like to get involved in the tawdry business of meeting drug dealers in the ports we visited.”

  “Who?”

  The captain’s lips thinned, but finally, he said, “Marcus. He was the only one Ross trusted enough with the money to handle his drug deals for him.”

  “According to most crew members we spoke with, Marcus was also the least popular member,” said Odelia. “Is that because he handled Ross’s drug deals?”

  “That probably was part of it, yeah,” said the captain. “But Marcus is simply a very unpleasant human being. Like Ross, he could be very manipulative and disagreeable towards women, so they pretty much banded together and protected each other from his frequent attempts to hook up with them. And then of course, he wasn’t averse to the occasional snort himself.”

  “Ross and Marcus got high together?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. As I told you this morning, Ross wasn’t the kind of person who liked to fraternize with the crew, and that included Marcus. But he did share some of his stash with him from time to time, mainly to keep him quiet in case there was trouble, and also because the man was stingy. So instead of paying him outright for his services as a courier, he paid him in pills and coke and booze.”

  “And Marcus was happy with this arrangement?”

  “Happy as a clam. He also claimed that Ross was going to get him a part in his next movie. He had high hopes, that one, and couldn’t stop annoying his colleagues with his tall tales about being the next Fox villain and becoming a major star in his own right. Though I think we all saw through it and figured Ross was simply feeding him this stuff to keep him happy.”

  Odelia and Chase shared a look, and I could tell what they were thinking. What if Marcus had discovered that all of Ross’s promises had been nothing but lies? That he never intended to cast him in any of his movies? Marcus wouldn’t have been happy about that, to say the least.

  “Okay, so let’s talk about Suzanne Palmer,” Odelia suggested.

  “What do you want to know?” asked the captain wearily.

  “Suzanne has told us that Ross kept making lewd comments to her and trying to persuade her to spend the night in his suite. She also said that nothing ever happened and that she managed to turn him down every time.”

  “But we think that something did happen,” Chase added. “A man like Ross would never take no for an answer.”

  They both stared expectantly at the captain, who shrugged his shoulders. “You’ll have to ask Suzanne. Frankly, I have nothing more to say about that.”

  “You’re the captain, Mr. Gerard,” Chase pointed out. “If something did happen, you would know all about it.”

  “Stuff happens on a ship that even the captain doesn’t know about. Like I said, if you want to know what happened between Ross and Suzanne, you’ll have to talk to her.”

  “So something did happen,” said Chase.

  But Captain Gerard wasn’t budging on this one. So Odelia leaned forward. “She can still file a complaint, you know. Even though the man is dead, it’s not too late to come forward and tell us what happened. He can’t engage any of his fancy lawyers now. So maybe this is the time to tell us the truth.”

  He stared at his drink for a long time, swirling its contents as he pursed his lips. “Look, I gave Suzanne my word I wouldn’t tell anyone,” he said finally. “And I’m a man of my word. But if you really want to know what happened, I suggest you talk to Jeanine Bishop. She’s Suzanne’s best friend. So if anything did happen, Suzanne would have told her, not me.”

  The inference was clear enough. Suzanne wouldn’t have confided in anyone other than her friend Jeanine. But at least now we knew that Ross had seriously misbehaved, which gave Suzanne a strong motive to have killed the man.

  “One more question, sir,” said Odelia. “Did something happen on the Aurora last night before or around ten o’clock? Some trouble with one of Mr. Ross’s drug dealers, perhaps?”

  The captain frowned. “I wouldn’t know, as I decided to have an early night and went to bed at nine.”

  “And you didn’t hear from the other crew members about some altercation?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing happened as far as I know.”

  “Thank you, captain,” said Chase, getting up. But then as we walked away, he turned. “One more thing. Does the name Sebastian Poe ring a bell?”

  The look of sheer panic on the man’s face told us all we needed to know.

  CHAPTER 17

  “Okay, I guess I probably should have told you this sooner,” said the captain. His drink had been topped up, and after he had quaffed deeply and greedily, he seemed ready to spill the beans. “Sebastian Poe was one of Ross’s best friends. Rumor had it they went to school together. I’m not sure if that’s true, but what is true is that they were thick as thieves. Occasionally, Poe would board the Aurora for an all-weekend binge with his good friend Ross, which would mostly include a lot of booze, a lot of drugs, and a lot of women. Sometimes others would join them, and the end result would be forty-eight or seventy-two hours of debauchery. It wasn’t a lot of fun for the crew, but we got paid handsomely to keep our mouths shut and to keep the booze and the food coming. Mostly, these parties would be organized far away from shore, so no nosy parkers would be any the wiser, and no paparazzi could snap embarrassing pictures to be sold to the tabloids, compromising all involved.”