Killers of a Certain Age(19)

Helen turned to face her. “Thank you, dear. My friend has a touch of seasickness and I thought I’d see her to her cabin. She just needs a little lie-down.”

I hunched over, clutching my stomach, and Heather Fanning’s face puckered in distaste. “Oh, that is a shame! If you need the doctor, do let us know. In the meantime, we offer a full assortment of ginger-based natural remedies in the wellness shop on the Hygieia deck.”

I growled a little in the back of my throat.

“Thank you, dear,” Helen told her sweetly. “But I brought some edibles.”

She took the key card from my hand and swiped it viciously, shoving me inside the cabin and shutting the door firmly on Heather Fanning’s shocked face before I burst out laughing.

“Edibles?”

She went to put the attaché case down on Mary Alice’s bed. “I hate people like her. Talking to us like we’re toddlers.” Her voice rose in perfect mimicry. “You’re missing a swell dinner. Rice pudding for dessert!”

“She said it was a very lovely rose petal congee,” I reminded her.

“I don’t care what she calls it. It’s rice pudding, and I am so goddamned tired of being old.” She sat heavily on my bed, and I saw the glimmer of tears in her eyes. I went to the bathroom and got a hand towel. The ice bucket had been filled and left with an orchid on the console. I tossed the orchid aside and wrapped a handful of ice in the cloth. I brought it to Helen and laid it gently on the back of her head.

“You took a crack.”

She held it in place. “I suppose it’s no use complaining about feeling decrepit when there’s a bomb ticking down five feet away and I may never get any older,” she said reasonably. “It’s just that ever since Kenneth died, I’ve aged twenty years. I can’t even touch my toes anymore, let alone do what you just did,” she added in an accusing tone.

“Helen, cut yourself some slack. I didn’t lose the love of my life. Mourning is a bitch. And it’s a process. You’re just not finished with it.”

“That’s the point,” she said. “I think I am. At least I want to be. I am so sick and tired of waking up feeling like someone tore off one of my limbs. Every morning, for just a few seconds, I forget. I wake up and it hasn’t happened yet. There’s nothing but emptiness and calm. And then it comes crashing down and I hate it. I hate it so much.”

I sat next to her, shoulder to shoulder. “I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t help.”

“No, it doesn’t,” she said. “Not even a little. It feels like a physical weight, something that somebody thrust into my arms and made me carry. I didn’t ask for this. I wish I could break pieces of it off and hand them over to other people. Let them have their turn.”

“We all have our turn in the end,” I said. I put my arm around her, trying not to feel how little flesh was left on her bones. If I blew hard enough, I could send her tumbling away like a dandelion seed. God only knew where she would land.

She took a deep breath. “Well, I suppose if we die tonight, I’m okay with it. I’ve had a good life, you know. I was married to Kenneth for over thirty years. Eighteen of them were really happy. That’s not so bad.”

“What happened to the other twelve?”

“Erectile dysfunction and his abortive attempt to breed Weimaraners.”

I burst out laughing and for an instant she bristled like she was getting ready to take offense. But then she laughed too.

Just then the door opened and Mary Alice and Nat appeared with our handbags and boxes of leftovers. “What happened to you two?” Mary Alice asked as Natalie held up one of the boxes.

“Some sort of rice pudding shit with rose, but it’s good,” she said. She handed out spoons as Mary Alice looked at the case on her bed.

“What’s this?” she asked. I told her the code and she opened it. “Well, hell,” she said, stepping back.

Nat shoved a spoonful of rice pudding into her mouth before coming close, bending over the explosive like a fond mother with a newborn child.

“Oh, that’s good stuff,” she said. “So the little prick was getting ready to blow the boat—with us on it.”

“We’re either the marks or the Museum doesn’t care if we were collateral damage,” I said.

“That’s hurtful,” Mary Alice put in. “We’ve given forty years to those assholes and this is how they repay us. But why? It doesn’t make sense.”

“That’s not a now problem,” I said, reverting to training. It was a reminder to focus on the job at hand and set the priorities where they should be. “Right now, we have to figure out how to dismantle this or how to get everyone off this boat before it blows.”

“Easy,” Nat said, spooning up more of the pudding. “Override code.”

Helen cleared her throat. “Billie removed Fogerty from the equation before we could secure it.”

“How far removed?” Mary Alice asked.

“Completely,” I said.

“Dammit, Billie—” Nat began.

Helen put up her hand. “Billie did what she had to do,” she said. For all her prissiness, Helen was loyal as a lapdog. “And it’s done now. We checked his cabin and pockets. He must have memorized it like he was supposed to instead of leaving it lying around.”