Midnight Shimmer: A Toni Diamond Mystery (Toni Diamond Mysteries Book 3) (10 page)

She held her breath as the tender pulled up next to the ship. A smattering of people got off, one by one, agonizingly slowly. She saw a couple arguing. The woman snapped, “How could you not know your watch had stopped?”

“Who made me the time keeper? Your nagging is killing me.”

“Luckily, there’s a morgue on board.” And she stalked onto the gangway.

Another couple got off, giggling so hard they had to hold each other up. Toni suspected they’d been waylaid at the bar. Two crew members manhandled a heavy-looking box labeled Liquor, Duchess of the Caribbean, and as she headed for the tender, determined to grab a ride back to shore, her daughter emerged, looking strained. Behind her stepped Wade Templeton, his young mouth set in a hard line.

Toni’s tension melted and all she could think was
Thank God, she’s safe
. “Tiff,” she cried, running forward. “I was so worried about you.”

Tiffany looked close to tears and Toni had a sudden and unfamiliar attack of tact. Her daughter so clearly didn’t want to be treated like a child. She was upset, but safe.

“I’m glad you’re back,” she said quietly. Then she glanced from one to the other. There was clearly a story there and she decided to play it cool and let Tiffany tell her what was going on when she was ready. When she’d watched Tiff head out earlier, she’d been carrying one of the bright red canvas bags with the Duchess logo that every person on board had been given upon boarding the ship. It was nowhere in sight. Wade Templeton also had no bag. She found it hard to believe he’d headed out on a shore excursion in nothing but a pair of shorts and a navy T-shirt.

As much as every alarm signal in her body was pealing out loud and clear, she turned and headed for the gangway, knowing the two young people were following along with the porters carrying rest of the supplies that had come back with the last tender.

“Where’s your cruise card, miss?” the security officer patrolling the gangway asked when Tiffany arrived.

“I don’t have it. It was stolen.”

Toni was glad she was there as she was able to show her card, show some extra ID, and prove that her daughter was who she said she was.

Wade Templeton, however, was not someone she could vouch for.

Luckily, she didn’t have to.

“My card was stolen as well,” he said. She waited for him to call Alicia, but he didn’t. He said, “The captain will vouch for me. We know him personally.”

Sure enough, Captain DuFresne spoke briefly to Wade on the phone. Wade passed the phone back to the security person, who immediately let the young man through, all but bowing and scraping.

Her tactful mood continued and she said, “I’ll see you back at the cabin, Tiff.”

Tiffany wasn’t far behind her. When she fell into the cabin she didn’t even wait for her mother to begin speaking. She cried out, “It wasn’t our fault!”

Keeping her voice calm, which was much easier now that she knew her daughter was safe, she asked, “What happened?”

Tiffany shook her head, looking puzzled and a little scared. “I’m not exactly sure. We got off the boat and we weren’t going to take one of those lame excursions with everybody from the cruise ship, so we walked down the road that leads into town. Wade’s done it before, and he said that was the best way to find a local guide.”

“Did you find a guide?”

“Yes. He seemed perfect. You know how they all line up? And they have signs? And they start calling you over? It’s all super confusing. But this guy was cool. He was young, like us, he was clean, nicely dressed, and his sign was really simple. It said
Snorkeling, Secluded beaches, Under twenty-fives
. When we asked about the price, it was really reasonable.”

Linda had been sitting quietly in one of the room’s club chairs. She spoke up now. “Under twenty-five? I don’t remember seeing a sign like that.”

Neither had Toni. “Then what happened?”

“He said he had a van nearby. We gave him the money, we got in the van and we headed for the beach.” Tiffany picked at one of her fingernails, a nervous habit she’d nearly grown out of. “First, he drove us to this great little beach and we went snorkeling for a long time. When we got back, he offered us a beer.” She glanced up from under her lashes. “I didn’t have one.”

“How many other under twenty-fives were on this tour?”

Tiffany shook her head. “Only the two of us.”

When she thought of all the things that could have happened, Toni’s skin went cold. “Did he offer you anything else?”

“I had a Coke from out of the cooler. I ate a big breakfast this morning so I wasn’t hungry.” She went back to picking at her thumbnail. “Then he said he was going to take us to this really nice sunbathing beach. We got back into the van and we drove for quite a long way. Wade reminded him that we had to be back at the boat before six and he said yeah, sure, no problem.”

An announcement over the loudspeakers interrupted her story. “This is Captain Craig DuFresne speaking to you from the bridge. All our passengers are now back on board and we will soon be underway.”

Tiffany waited until his voice died away. “So he drove us to this really pretty deserted beach. We went for a swim and then the guy told us that if we walked around the headland we’d be able to see dolphins playing. They hang out there a lot.”

She glanced from one to the other, her face tight. “So we walked away. We left him there, with all our stuff. We were so stupid. We walked around the headland and watched the dolphins and admired the view and then, after maybe an hour, we figured we really needed to get going.”

Linda was now sitting on the bed, facing Tiffany, her whole body one line of tension. Toni felt the same.

“So, we walked back and the beach was deserted. Our stuff was gone. The guy was gone. The van was gone.” She threw back her head and let out a cry of frustration. “I can’t believe we trusted him.”

“Every bit of your stuff was gone?” Toni asked.

“Yes! Everything.”

“I remember that you had the bag that we got free from the ship, but what was in it?”

“There was hardly anything in mine. A towel, a dry T-shirt, suntan lotion, the book I was reading, my cruise ship card. And my cell phone. Thank goodness it was the cheap one.” They’d bought cheap drugstore phones for the trip, all of them agreeing that it wasn’t worth the risk of losing their smart phones or accidentally dropping them in the ocean or something. The phone, including plenty of minutes for a seven-day cruise, had cost forty bucks.

“What was in Wade’s bag?”

“Mostly the same that was in mine. Except he lost his wallet and his watch. And he had a new iPhone.”

“So there you were, at a deserted beach. What did you do?”

“We started to panic. Without cell phones or watches we didn’t even know what time it was, but we knew we had driven a long way. We walked up to the road. It was deserted. So we headed back in what we thought was the direction of the ship. All we had on was our beach shoes so we couldn’t even walk very fast. After a while, we got to a small town. It was so small I don’t even think you could call it a town. There was a bar with a thatched roof, and a scatter of small houses. We went to the bar and asked the bartender how to get to the police station. He laughed at us. He said the closest police station was at in George Town and it was a long walk.”

Linda spoke up. “Oh, you poor kids.”

“It was awful. We told the guy we’d been robbed. He looked at us like he didn’t believe us, like we were vagrant kids living on the beach or something. We asked for a taxi and he said, ‘How you gonna pay for it?’”

Linda again, “Oh, that rat. Who leaves two kids stranded?”

Tiffany glanced at her in gratitude. “Wade got kind of haughty and told him that we were traveling on this cruise ship and as soon as we got there we would be able to pay the driver and there would certainly be a reward. The guy just laughed and told us to get out of there. That’s when I remembered the fifty-dollar bill that you made me safety-pin inside my bathing suit. I swear, Mom, I thought you were the most overprotective helicopter parent in the world.”

“And now?”

“I still think you’re the most overprotective helicopter parent in the world.” She grinned. “Luckily.”

“You know what they say, ‘youth is wasted on the young.’”

Tiffany shook her head and did an eye roll at the same time. “If you ask me, wisdom is wasted on the old.”

“Okay. Continue with your story.”

“I said, ‘I can pay for the taxi,’ and he said, ‘Yeah? Show me your money.’ I said, ‘Show me your taxi.’ There were two other guys sitting in the bar listening to every word. One started laughing and said, ‘I like your attitude, girl. You got twenty bucks?’ ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I do.’ He got up and said, ‘Okay. I’ll drive you.’ I said, ‘Can you get us back to the ship before it leaves at six?’ He shrugged and said he’d do his best.”

As she was telling the story, Toni doubted she was even aware that she was mimicking the accents of the various characters in her drama. It was as though she was reliving every moment.

“We followed him to an ancient old beater with no suspension, no seatbelts, no air-conditioning. Before he opened the door he made me show him the money.”

“Weren’t you scared that he’d steal your money too?” Linda asked.

“No. Not really. It seems weird now, but at the time I remember trusting him. Anyway, I turned my back on both of them and got the money. I said, ‘If you get us to the ship before it leaves, you can have the whole fifty.’” She grinned for a second, her face lightening. “I would not have believed that old beater of a car could go so fast.”

“It’s like something out of a movie,” Linda said, her hands clasped on her breast.

“It felt more like a nightmare at the time. But we made it, barely. I hope you don’t mind that I gave that guy the whole fifty bucks.”

“Honey, you did exactly the right thing. I am so proud of you.”

Tiffany frowned. “I only wish we’d had time to go to the cops. That guy should not be getting away with what he’s doing.”

Linda said, “I don’t even understand why that crook stole their towels and sun screen. If they were off walking for an hour, he had plenty of time to pick through their belongings and only take the things that had value. If he got pulled over with our ship’s beach bags in his van, he might as well admit to the crime and be done with it.”

“I’m not sure theft was the motive here.” Toni said, deep in her own thoughts.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure. But I think if the van driver only wanted to steal ready cash out of Wade’s wallet, he could’ve done that while you were snorkeling at the first stop. Why drive you all the way to the end of the island?”

Linda looked puzzled. “If he wasn’t after their money, what did he want?”

“It doesn’t make sense, but I think somebody didn’t want you two to get back to the ship on time.”

“What?” both Tiffany and Linda cried at the same instant.

“I don’t understand it either,” Toni said. She shook her head. “I don’t understand it at all.” But she was quite determined that she was going to find out exactly what was going on.

“Do you think it was some kind of prank?” Linda asked.

“That’s a pretty elaborate prank.”

Was someone trying to keep Wade Templeton off the ship? Or had Wade Templeton conveniently paid someone to make sure he and Tiffany were stranded together? He hadn’t known that she had fifty dollars. Without that secret stash, they would still be on that island. But why would Wade essentially kidnap her daughter?

The more she puzzled over the strange incidents of the day, the more confused she became.

When she called Luke to let him know that Tiffany was safe, he told her to take better care of her daughter. In one day she’d been accused of being too overprotective to a careless mom. She could not seem to win.

But her baby was safe. Now all she had to worry about was keeping her that way.

The next morning, there was a purposeful rap on their stateroom door. Their steward kept such a good eye on their comings and goings that she rarely knocked when they were in the room, and if she did, it was a tentative, almost apologetic, sound. The person behind the door this morning did not sound apologetic or tentative, but like someone in charge of his or her own destiny.

Toni was wearing a full-length silk kimono patterned in large red poppies. She glanced behind her to find Linda in a black velvet pantsuit, putting the final touches on her makeup. Tiffany had left the stateroom earlier, claiming hairspray poisoning.

When Toni opened the door, she was more than a little surprised to find Wade Templeton on the other side. She didn’t know what she thought of young Wade, but she couldn’t help but associate him with the anxiety she’d experienced over her daughter’s safety yesterday. “Wade,” she said. “If you’re looking for Tiffany, she’s not here.”

He was dressed in clothes suitable for one of their smart casual dinner evenings. He wore blue chinos, crisp and freshly ironed, a white shirt, and well-polished black shoes, and his hair was nicely combed. She’d never seen him so well presented. He also seemed a little nervous. He cleared his throat. “I’m not here to see Tiffany. I’d like to talk to you.”

He’d obviously dressed to impress her, since previously she’d only ever seen him in workout gear or shorts and T-shirts. And yesterday, nothing but his bathing trunks and a T-shirt.

“Well, you’d better come in.”

He stepped in, then paused when he realized Linda was in the cabin. “Would you like to go to the balcony?” Toni asked him. It was the only place in their stateroom they could be private.

“Sure, thanks.”

“This is my mother, Linda Plotnik,” she said.

“It’s nice to meet you,” he said.

“Likewise.”

She led the way to the balcony, stopping only to pick up her big dark sunglasses, then dragging open the full-length glass doors. Fortunately, both her moisturizer and her foundation were SPF 50, so she wasn’t too worried about sunburn as she stepped out into the brilliant sunshine of a Caribbean morning at sea. He stepped out behind her, and she waved him into one of the three deck chairs, settling herself in another.

“I want to apologize for what happened yesterday,” he said. Since he hadn’t come equipped with sunglasses, he blinked against the glare. His eyes were blue, intense, guileless, but Toni needed more than a direct hit from a pair of gorgeous blue eyes to soften her heart.

“What did happen yesterday?” she asked him.

He appeared confused. “Didn’t Tiffany tell you?”

“She told me her version of events. I’d like to hear yours.” She’d slept fitfully last night, waking frequently with an ominous feeling pressing down on her. People might scoff at terms like women’s intuition and sixth sense, but Toni had learned to listen to her inner warning system.

He shifted in the chair, crossing one knee over the other. “I honestly don’t know what happened. We hired what we thought was a tour guide for an under twenty-fives tour, but he stole our stuff and left us stranded on the beach.” He leaned forward, all earnest and sincere. “I feel terrible. If Tiffany hadn’t had that cash stashed away, I’m not sure what would’ve happened. I should have taken better care of her.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “You should have.”

“I’m sorry.”

She leaned back, thinking. “What made you choose that particular tour operator? There must’ve been ten or twenty trying get your business.” She remembered the throng of eager guides looking to grab business from the crowd of cruise passengers streaming past. They’d held up big signs with color photos of the local sights, which they would take you to for a fee. They called out, vying with one another for the lucrative cruise ship trade. She remembered how quickly she and Linda had chosen their guide. He’d seemed authentic with the logo on his pocket and the crisply ironed slacks. Basically, they had trusted him, believing that shysters and criminals would be unable to get into the secure compound. But how secure was it?

He stared out to sea as though pondering the question. “I don’t know. I guess because he wasn’t much older than we are. He was dressed like someone I might want to hang out with, not in a stuffy uniform. And the tour was advertised for people under twenty-five, so we knew we wouldn’t spend the day with a bunch of old people.” He glanced back at her. “No offense.”

“None taken. Did his sign have the name of his tour on it?”

“I think it said something like Hang Loose.”

“Hang Loose?”

He shrugged. “I thought he was being ironic.”

She thought back to the tours she and Linda had seen the day before. “Was he in a uniform of any kind?”

“No. And that’s another thing we liked. He looked like a regular guy.”

“Did his van have a company logo on it?”

He shifted again, uncomfortable. “No.” He glanced up again. “I never thought in a million years that we’d get scammed. I thought those guys had to be licensed to even pitch their tours that close to the ship.”

“I guess not.” Or else the guy had snuck in. “Did you get his name?”

“He said his name was Rob. Rod. Something like that.”

There was no point in even asking if he’d recognize Rob/Rod again. They’d left the island far behind.

“I’m really sorry. I hope this won’t affect you letting me see Tiffany again?”

“I can hardly stop you seeing her. We’re all on the same cruise ship.” When they got to the end of the cruise, that would be a different story. Wade of the trust-fund Templetons lived in New York. Tiffany of the trailer-park Diamonds lived near Dallas. Once they returned to Fort Lauderdale, she imagined that would spell the end of a shipboard romance that could have ended in tragedy yesterday.

Either he didn’t know any more than Tiffany did or he was a very good actor. Instead of pressing him, she moved to another subject that interested her very much. “How is your grandmother?”

He glanced up and away again, back out to sea. “My grandmother?”

“Yes. Alicia Templeton. She and I were getting friendly when she suddenly stopped showing her face. I’ve been worried about her.”

If he was surprised to find she knew his grandmother, he hid it well. “You know there’s a Norovirus outbreak on ship? The doctor’s been in to see her every day. He’s hoping she’ll feel better in a day or two.”

“Is she well enough for visitors?” Toni had no idea those words were even going to come out of her mouth until she said them. But once she had, she realized that she really wanted to make sure Alicia was all right.

He shook his head. “She’s still not well enough to see anyone, but I’ll be sure and tell her that you’re thinking about her.”

“Yes, please do that. And if there’s anything I can do, you only have to ask.”

“Thanks. I appreciate that.”

After Wade left, she replaced Linda at the desk, which they’d turned into a vanity table. Even as she freshened her lipstick, she caught herself frowning into the mirror. She couldn’t explain why, but when Wade had told her that his grandmother wasn’t well enough to have visitors, she had felt there was something he wasn’t telling her.

“That sure is a nice-looking young man,” Linda said, emerging from the bathroom with her curling iron in her hand.

“He sure is.” Why would Wade Templeton lie about his own grandmother’s health? Too many things about that young man were not adding up.

She’d told Linda about the connection between Alicia and Wade. Now she said, “He says his grandmother is too sick to see anyone.”

“You sound like you don’t believe him.”

“I’m curious as to why, if she’s got the Norovirus and they’re sharing a cabin, he isn’t quarantined too.”