Flawless (New York Confidential #1)(99)

No, she wasn’t one of the largest. She still carried about seven hundred crew members.

And over twenty-four hundred passengers.

She was, in essence, a small city.

Jude looked at Crow, then studied the ship again.

“What?” Crow asked.

“He might be feeling the heat’s on him now. And that means he just might kill again before we reach our next port.”

*

“I really think you should be playing more ballads. Old ballads,” Minnie Lawrence said, her painted red lips forming a pretty pout. “This is, after all, a piano bar.”

Minnie had draped herself on one of the velvet lounge chairs near the piano. She was beautifully clad in a slinky blue gown with a matching headband around her short blonde hair. She managed to smile while maintaining her pout, behaving as the 1930s idol she’d once been. But she was truly sweet and very charming. Alexi could understand why she’d been so beloved in her day.

“I believe she means old ballads,” Blake Dalton said, coming behind Minnie to lean rakishly against the chair as they both stared at Alexi Cromwell with their most beguiling smiles. “Well, what you’d call old ballads, at any rate!”

Blake definitely had some Valentino mystery-charisma, as well.

“I do my best,” Alexi assured the two, sorting through the book she kept for the passengers who wanted to sing. She looked up at them and sighed. “Honestly. I do. But this is the twenty-first century. And I play our passengers’ requests. That’s my job.”

“I’m a passenger, and I’m requesting!” Minnie said.

But you’re a dead passenger! Alexi wanted tosay.

She refrained.

“I do a smashing version of ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow,’” Minnie said. “And it was in The Wizard of Oz. Surely, everyone knows that.”

“Or ‘In the Mood’!” Blake said. “Minnie sings that very well indeed.”

“You do way too much of that new fellow, that Billie Joel man,” Minnie said. “I just can’t fix on a key with him.”

“Most people these days don’t consider Billie Joel to be a new fellow and I’m sorry, but I never go a night without someone wanting ‘Piano Man.’ But a number of people really enjoy older numbers and ask for them, too. How about this? I promise I’ll ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ tonight. How’s that?” Alexi asked.

Before Blake or Minnie could reply, a man came tearing through the Algiers Saloon, racing through the bar area—employees only—to leap over a neighboring sofa and continue running down the hallway of the St. Charles deck.

He moved so swiftly that Alexi never saw his face. She had a fleeting impression of his height and appearance—and something a little ghastly. He looked as if he wearing make-up for a Shakespearean play or a classic Greek drama.

Gray sweatshirt, blue jeans, about six feet, maybe around two hundred pounds.

“Well, I never!” Minnie sniffed.

“How incredibly rude,” Blake said, trembling with the indignity of it all.

“We’ve seen plenty of rude. At least he didn’t jump over the sofa where you two are sitting!” Alexi told them, lowering her head so they couldn’t see her smile.

Sometimes, guests sensed the pair of ghosts. She would see them shiver and look around, remind themselves that they were on a floating island with thousands of people around them. She knew it disturbed both Blake and Minnie when people walked through them. It didn’t hurt them—they simply didn’t like it. Blake once explained to her that if felt as if someone had shoved you carelessly in a crowd. It was rude, just rude. “Some staff member who’s late reporting in, maybe,” Alexi murmured. “Anyway, my friends, I’m going to my cabin while the stampede of boarding takes place. I’ll see you soon.”

Alexi rose, scooping up her book, laptop and extra music pages. She smiled at Blake and Minnie. “I promise, we’ll start off with Judy Garland,” she assured them.

“Lovely!” Minnie called after her.

“Shall we stroll, darling?” she heard Blake ask Minnie.

“We’ll find a place high atop and watch as we sail away, watch the city disappear, and the beauty of the moon upon the water,” Minnie agreed.

Alexi smiled as she hurried on, anxious to get to the elevators and down below where the crew members had their cabins.

She loved having Minnie and Blake on the ship. The Destiny had lost many employees to the ghosts they encountered onboard. People had reported seeing images disappear and things being moved about. Sheet music seemed to do that a lot, according to people who’d had worked on the ship. In fact, Alexi owed her position to the fact that the pianist who’d been preferred by the entertainment director had lasted only one cruise. As a result, Alexi had been hired. She was sure that the musician who’d left— disturbed by the way his sheet music constantly moved and keys played when he hadn’t touched them—would find a job that made him happy. He was a far better pianist than she was. But he hadn’t felt the same need to escape, to live this strange life of fantasy the way she had.

Escape.

She couldn’t escape. Her sister, her brother, her parents, her friends—everyone had told her that. Zach was dead. He’d come back from the Middle East in a box. She knew that. She’d never escape the fact that he was dead. But she could escape New Orleans, their little Irish Channel duplex, and the places they’d frequented for years.