Cruise Control Read online

  “Vendors only,” he said.

  “I’m private security for a vendor.”

  The guard gave me a scowl and I could see one of those turf-war things coming on.

  “I’m not here to tell you how to do your job,” I said. “The client’s just a little paranoid, you know?”

  He didn’t drop the scowl.

  “Mr. Jones.”

  I turned to find Frederick Connors, still in his blue blazer, white pocket square still perfectly in place and blue travel bag over his shoulder. He looked past me at the security guard.

  “Anastasia’s,” he said, holding up his ship pass ID.

  The guard consulted a clipboard and then nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “And these two are with us,” Frederick said. I assumed he was referring to Danielle and me, but he might as well have been talking about his pet Chihuahuas.

  I had to fish my ID out of my pocket. The guard checked us off and then stepped aside to let us in. The interior of this ballroom looked like an art gallery. There were lots of sculptures and display cases and paintings hanging from wire frames. But the lighting was all wrong. Instead of bland walls and white spotlights, these walls were dark and the lighting a cabaret mix of blue and green and red. If it were really an art gallery, it could only have been in Las Vegas. A podium with a lectern had been set up at the front of a few rows of chairs, I assumed to facilitate the auction.

  Frederick led us over to an area that looked like a mini Tiffany & Co. showroom. A range of display cabinets sat waiting to be filled. I didn’t see the point. I couldn’t fathom why someone would go on a cruise to buy jewelry or a picture for their drawing room wall. But I figured there was a lot I had to learn about how and why rich people spent their money, not to mention what the hell a drawing room was for, other than for hanging all this art they were picking up on cruises.

  Frederick found a glass cabinet that was labeled Anastasia’s. It was a counter-height cabinet with lighting on the inside that made the white interior glow. It was particularly bright because it was empty.

  “Where is your wife’s jewelry?” I asked.

  “She has it. She will be here shortly.”

  “Where is she?”

  “In our suite.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes, Mr. Jones, alone.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She was getting ready. She would not interrupt that for a liaison.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know my wife, Mr. Jones.”

  I let it go. I didn’t see an upside in bringing up the fact that if he knew his wife so well I wouldn’t be on a cruise ship talking to him. Instead, we waited and watched other vendors setting up their wares. Guys in white gloves hung paintings that looked old but could have been printed onto the canvas that morning for all I knew. One booth was setting up sports collectibles—action photos, autographed cards, signed helmets—which looked a little out of place given the rest of the merchandise, but was, in fact, the most relevant stuff I saw, given the cruise’s theme. I kept an eye out for Guy X. He could have been a fellow vendor. It would certainly give him good reason to be around Frederick’s wife.

  I was processing that thought when she arrived. Danielle nudged me in the ribs and directed my attention to the woman floating across the ballroom. She wore a long dress and pearls and didn’t seem to take steps, but rather slid across the room as if on a skateboard or a dolly. Her hair was tied up in a sophisticated arrangement—the word bun wouldn’t do it justice—and she held her chin high, giving her tight face a perpetual look of condescension. She made me think of Russian nobility.

  Danielle and I smiled as she reached us, but the expression was not returned. She glided behind the glass cabinets, pulling one of those suitcases on wheels. Not a big heavy thing. A tiny little one that would house a laptop and a sandwich and no more. The kind of thing that breaks a lot of ankles in airport concourses.

  She stopped the baggage at her feet and then raised an eyebrow at her husband. It was some kind of unspoken communication, the kind of thing people who have been married a long time pick up on but which is lost to everyone else. At the sign, Frederick stepped around the cabinet and put down his natty blue travel bag. He dropped the telescopic handle on the little case and then lifted it on top of the glass cabinet. Then he stepped back.

  For the first time, the woman glanced at me and Danielle. Not for long though. She returned her attention back to the case but she didn’t open it.

  “Who are these people, Frederick?”

  Frederick bowed slightly as he spoke. “This is Mr. Jones and Ms. Castle. I have taken the liberty of engaging Mr. Jones as additional security for the rings.”

  “Additional security?”

  “Yes, my dear.”

  “You decided to wait until we were in a secure room on a ship in the middle of the ocean to engage security?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not when I was transporting the items from the boutique to this very room? Not when I was on my own?”

  “It was a last-minute decision, my dear. I realized when my schedule opened up and I could join you that perhaps it might be prudent.”

  “Yes, well you know what I think of that. You’ll be seasick before dinner.” Now she looked at me again. “You’re dismissed.”

  It wasn’t the first time I had been dismissed from a case, but I couldn’t recall ever being dismissed before I even got introduced to the client. Then I recalled she wasn’t the client. She was the subject of the investigation.

  “Ma’am, I’ve already been engaged,” I said.

  “And now you are relieved.”

  “What I mean is, I require a contingency payment to engage services. I am prepaid, if you like. So I can happily leave you to your business, but it wouldn’t be proper not to inform you that whether I am here or not, the price is the same.”

  She reserved her look of disdain for her husband. It was a doozy. A guy once rammed my car full speed into a tree—on purpose—and then smashed every window and panel with a hockey stick, and I still hadn’t looked at him the way she looked at Frederick. Then she turned her gaze upon Danielle.

  “And you are what? The floozy?”

  Danielle didn’t miss a beat. She was better with people than I was. She touched my hand out of sight below the cabinet to calm me. Not that I knew what I’d do. I sure wasn’t about to take a swing at Mrs. Connors, and complaints from minions like me rarely dented the armor of her class.

  “Mrs. Connors, my name is Special Agent Danielle Castle, Florida Department of Law Enforcement.”

  I had never heard her use the title before. She had only just earned it. It was so fresh, she didn’t even yet know where she would be stationed. But it sounded good to my ear. She stood a little taller when she said it. I was impressed as hell. I was the only one.

  “The FBI wasn’t available?” The eyebrow cocked in disdain once more and she stared coolly at her husband.

  “You and I will talk later.”

  Chapter Six

  Anastasia unlocked the case. It was more secure than it appeared. It boasted two locks that were each sturdier than the average luggage lock, and the sides of the case appeared to be reinforced by something stiff and hard, maybe steel or carbon fiber, which might have explained why she hadn't lifted the case. From it, she produced a black box that was about fifteen inches long, ten inches wide, and a good four inches thick. It looked like the sort of thing the president might open up to fire the nuclear arsenal.

  Anastasia Connors removed the top with the flourish of a French waiter. Inside, the box was plush black velvet, with little indents in it like the spaces chocolates occupy in one of those expensive candy boxes men give women when they are courting in the movies. Each indent was occupied by a ring. There were more than fifty of them, each one different from the others. These were not the elegant rings that Russian princesses wore on their petite fingers. These were big and ugly and brought to mind the word bl
ing.

  “Super Bowl rings,” I said.

  “Astute,” Anastasia replied.

  “You collect Super Bowl rings?” She didn’t strike me as the type but people can surprise.

  “No, Mr. Jones, I do not collect rings. I am a jeweler.”

  “You made these?” Danielle asked.

  “Stating the obvious must be what you two have in common.”

  “They’re fakes,” I said. I knew it wouldn’t go down well the moment the words tripped from my mouth.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Most Super Bowl rings are made by Jostens,” I said.

  Anastasia arched an eyebrow again but this time it wasn’t the look one gives a ketchup stain on their favorite shirt.

  “You know more than you appear to, Mr. Jones.”

  “Usually. So they are fakes.”

  The ketchup-stain look returned. “No, Mr. Jones, they are not fakes. They are reproductions.”

  “That sounds like a lot of extra letters to say the word fake.”

  “Fakes are illegal or inferior or both. My rings are officially licensed by the National Football League. They are exact replicas of the original rings from every Super Bowl, down to the carat. Exact and exquisite in every detail.”

  I had to admit the handiwork was impressive, but I wouldn’t have used the word exquisite. Exquisite makes me think of Lamborghinis and wedding dresses and Grace Kelly. Super Bowl rings are big and loud and gaudy, much like the men they are made for. But seeing the entire collection was something. I noted the first one, designed for the Green Bay Packers back when Super Bowls were just plain old championship games. The rings were in chronological order, and as I looked through the set they got bigger and louder and the number of diamonds grew. Even on a big ring there was a limit to how many diamonds a jeweler could fit but it seemed that NFL champions were determined to push that limit. I looked for and found the New England ring from Super Bowl LI, which I knew contained 283 diamonds, to celebrate the comeback from 28–3 down against the Falcons. It would have been useful at picnics to put your beer and hot dog on, or to reflect the light from the sun to destroy far away planets. I cast my eye back to one ring I had seen before. The 1974 Pittsburgh Steelers ring. Anastasia’s version looked exactly like the one I had seen at the home of BJ Baker, the same guy whose Heisman was in the ship’s Hall of Fame. The ghost of BJ Baker seemed to be hanging over my voyage like the flu.

  Anastasia slipped another box out of her case and opened it. Another complete set of rings were nestled inside.

  “Two sets?” I asked.

  “Correct. Two of each ring, from the first game through to last year.”

  “And people buy these?”

  “This is a football-themed cruise, is it not?”

  A tailgate at the Florida–Georgia game in Jacksonville was football themed. This was something else entirely.

  Anastasia pulled a third item from her case. This one was a leather folio, zipped closed.

  “Here comes Arnold now,” she said.

  I turned to see a small, balding man in a bow tie striding across the room toward us. He looked like an accountant, but not the kind of accountant who does the books in Palm Beach. He was an H&R Block kind of guy. Someone who would do my taxes. His shirt looked expensive, but it had a sheen to it that suggested this was his only one. He carried the ubiquitous sky blue cruise ship travel bag. He looked Anastasia in the eye but didn’t smile. Instead, he took her hand and bowed. Maybe she was Russian aristocracy.

  “Anastasia, always a pleasure.”

  “Arnold,” she replied.

  Arnold shook Frederick’s hand and then he glanced at me and Danielle. Mostly Danielle.

  “Security,” said Anastasia.

  “Ah,” he said. “Shall we?”

  The little guy pulled out a jeweler’s monocle and attached it to his eye like some sort of bionic enhancement. I had seen Sal Mondavi use a less sophisticated version of the same thing to check jewelry that was pawned in his shop. Arnold’s version looked like it might have had night vision. He slipped on a white glove and then picked up the first ring. Green Bay.

  He inspected it all over, paying particular attention to the diamonds. He put more effort into it than I put into buying shoes. When he was done he replaced the ring carefully and took the second one, Green Bay again.

  Arnold repeated the process with each and every ring, and then he moved on to the second case and repeated the dose. I used the time to looked around for Guy X. I didn’t see him, so I started thinking about the map of the ship and where the bars were.

  When Arnold was done with the last ring he replaced it as carefully as he had the first and then removed his monocle.

  “Exquisite,” he said to Anastasia. She didn’t smile. She just nodded as if such a statement of fact warranted no pride. Arnold made no comment about the gaudy nature of the jewelry, but then I guessed if he commented on all the ugly stuff that rich people wore and bought and lived in, he’d never shut up.

  “I have set the reserve at thirty thousand for each ring,” Arnold said.

  “Dollars?” I spat.

  “Of course we deal in dollars,” he said. “But I have no doubt many of the pieces will fetch much higher. We have a most discerning guest list for the auction on Saturday night.”

  I always enjoyed the way people became discerning when they were loaded with cash.

  “May I have the certificates of authenticity?” Arnold asked.

  Anastasia handed over the zipped folio.

  “You have a safe at your disposal under your display area,” said Arnold. “I assure you the pieces will be quite safe there until we open the gallery tomorrow morning.” He glanced at me as if to reinforce the point that I was superfluous. “Now, if you’ll accompany me to sign the necessary documents, we’ll have you finished in a moment so you can prepare for the opening ceremony and cocktails.”

  I wasn’t sure what preparing for cocktails required other than finding a bar, but Anastasia already looked ready to attend a coronation. She slipped the lids back on both boxes of rings and then bent down below the display case. I stepped around Frederick to take a look. This wasn’t any hotel room safe. It was considerably larger and appeared to be both drilled into the floor and very heavy.

  Anastasia glanced up at me. “Do you mind?”

  I smiled and stepped away to let her set the code for the safe. Once she was done, she stood and brushed her dress.

  “Frederick,” she said.

  “Of course, my dear.”

  Anastasia headed across the room with Arnold, and Frederick moved in behind the counter. I had a few things I wanted to ask him: about Anastasia, about his marriage, about the type of man who would have an affair with a woman like that. But I couldn’t think of a remotely diplomatic way to ask any of them, so I kept my mouth shut.

  “I didn’t realize these rings were worth so much.”

  “Yes. At reserve, a little more than three million for the collection.”

  I made my impressed face.

  “Have you seen him?” Frederick asked.

  “Guy X?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not sure I’d know him if I did. Your picture didn’t give a lot of definition.”

  “He might be here.” He took the first closed box of rings and crouched down to slip them inside the safe. I turned back to the room.

  “It’s possible,” I said. “But I’d say the best chance is to watch your wife.”

  “Perhaps you’re right.” He took the second box. I kept my eye on Anastasia, talking with Arnold the auctioneer. He was having her sign something. Arnold certainly wasn’t Guy X. I watched Anastasia to see if she was looking for anyone, or if anyone else in the room was paying particular attention to her. I saw nothing. Which was what I expected to see.

  “There’s a problem,” I said, turning back to Frederick. He stood but left the safe open. “You going to lock that?”

  “No. Anastasia will want to
do that. What problem do you see?”

  “You.”

  He frowned. “How am I the problem?”

  “You’re here. I understand the compulsion to get in between your wife and some other man, but your wife seems like a very considered person.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning she doesn’t seem one for rash or careless moves. And now that you’re on board, hooking up with Guy X would be risky.”

  “Some people like that risk.”

  “Your wife doesn’t strike me as one of those people, Mr. Connors.”

  He considered this. “No, you are right. She is not. Except that you have to acknowledge that an affair is itself inherently risky.”

  “Life is risk,” I said. “Getting up in the morning, driving to work, swimming in the ocean, shopping on Worth Avenue. All have an attached risk. You might get in an accident if you go out, a plane might land on your house if you don’t. Life is about risk mitigation. And the prudent move for her now is to do nothing.”

  “Unless I’m not around.”

  “We’re on a ship. Where could you go?”

  “My wife is right. I don’t feel great, Mr. Jones. I feel every little tremble in the ship, every little bit of motion.”

  “The ocean’s flat. I checked. Besides, we haven’t left the dock yet.”

  “I’m telling you what I feel, Mr. Jones. It is likely that I will stay in our suite.”

  “Incapacitated,” I said. “So your wife can go wherever she pleases.”

  He nodded. “As long as I have your assurance that you will keep an eye on her.”

  “That’s why you hired me, Mr. Connors.”

  He gave no reply but watched over my shoulder. I felt Anastasia return before I heard her.

  “We should prepare for the opening,” she said as she moved behind the cabinet.

  “I think I might retire to the suite, my dear. Do you mind?”

  “I told you so,” she said. “You know you don’t do well on water.”