Marius opened up a door that said STAFF ONLY and loaded us into the freight elevator behind it.
“I can’t believe we have to do this,” said the tan-man who’d been roped in. The woman was still sobbing quietly beside me as Marius pressed number 9.
“No one’s holding a gun to your head,” Nathaniel said, then after a dramatic pause, “yet.”
Tan-man leaned forward, pressing the crying woman back, until she stepped on my shoe.
“If we have to do this, we’ll be doing it in an orderly fashion,” Marius said before a fight could start. “We’ll use X’s for rooms that we’ve cleared, O’s for rooms that are empty, and S’s for ones with people who are sick.” He paused to look around and make sure we weren’t all idiots. “Knock first—give the guests a chance to answer. Some of the fancy rooms are big, and some of the guests are slow or deaf. Then, if no one answers, go in and look around. Clear from room to room, including bathrooms, closets, and balconies. Okay?”
“There’s only one master key?” Jorge asked.
Marius nodded. “And it’s mine. I’m in charge of this expedition.”
The elevator doors opened and we spilled out onto the ninth floor’s very nice carpeting. “Outside rooms—you, you, and you.” He pointed to me, the other woman, and Jorge. “Inside rooms, us three.” He pointed to himself, Nathaniel, and Tan-man.
“Boys versus girls,” Nathaniel said with a shark-like grin.
“Quite,” Jorge said, aligning himself on our “ladies” side.
Marius looked at the sheet the doctor had given him. “You all have the Averys. We’ve got the Steinmetzes. Start knocking,” Marius commanded, leaning in to unlock our door and rap loudly on it while doing so by way of example.
Jorge clicked his heels and saluted him ironically.
* * *
Our door didn’t open all the way; there was still a latch closed at the top. That was good, I guessed—it meant someone was still inside.
“Hello?” I called through the gap as Marius’s group disappeared into the room behind us.
“What’s your name?” Jorge asked the crying woman.
She sniffled some. “Kate.”
“Okay. I’m not getting fresh or anything, but if you need to, you can hold my hand,” Jorge said, offering it out. Kate shook her head and gave him a sad smile.
At that moment, I would have gladly held Jorge’s hand. It would be nice to find some human comfort in all this mess. But there was an entire ship to search and only three hours to do it in. “Hello?” I asked the gap between the door and doorjamb again. “Mr. and Mrs. Avery?”
“Who are you?” A woman’s startled face appeared on the other side.
I wasn’t entirely prepared for someone standing and well. “I’m—I’m Edie Spence. I’m with the medical team. We’re here to check in on our guests. Is there anyone here needing medical attention?” I tried to sound official. I think Marius would have approved.
The woman’s eye searched me up and down, and then the door closed and reopened fully, latch undone. When she saw Jorge and Kate standing outside she frowned and clutched at her chest. That would be just great, if she were fine up until the point where seeing our trio gave her a surprise heart attack.
“Mrs. Avery?” I said, holding up my list, trying to seem official. “Are you and your husband okay?”
She got over the shock of seeing us, and composed herself quickly. “Of course we are. Why wouldn’t we be?”
“Can we see your husband too?” Visual confirmation was best.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Ask ’em why they’re here!” someone shouted from the back.
“They want to see us,” she shouted back.
“Ask them why room service is running slow!” yelled the distant voice.
The woman looked archly at me. “Well? Why is it?”
The ship swung to one side as a wave hit it. The ocean was getting rougher as the storm neared. I inhaled sharply. Jorge took my nausea-induced silence for anger and stepped in. “We’re part of a rescue mission—”
I started shaking my head as soon as the words were out of Jorge’s mouth.
“We want to go on the rescue ship. We want to get out of here,” she said, cutting Jorge off.
There was a certain kind of person who, no matter how much life had given them, would always be worried that other people were getting more. I started backpedaling. “It’s not a rescue ship, it’s a medical emergency ship. We’re here making sure that no one in this room is experiencing a medical emergency.”
“I’m almost out of wine!” shouted whomever she was related to in the back.
“That’s not a medical emergency,” I said flatly.
“It’s an emergency for me!”
Kate drew herself up to her full five-nothing height. “Look, I just watched my son die horribly downstairs. None of you all look that sick.”
Mrs. Avery looked aghast. I smiled and didn’t even care that it was fake looking. Another minute of this and I would be happy to throw up all of this lady’s shoes. “We’re glad you’re all present and accounted for. Thanks!” I reached in and slammed the door on us for her.
“That was a little abrupt,” Jorge said, finely tweezed eyebrows rising with the hint of an amused smile.
“Sorry.” Kate shrugged.
“Don’t be. I like your style.” I nodded at her. “No one calls it a rescue ship again, okay?” They both nodded.
Marius and his group reappeared in the hall. “Any luck?”
“Can I scratch a dick onto the doorjamb? I feel that symbol would be most descriptive of the occupants inside,” Jorge said. Marius made the kind of pained face that said he knew this was a bad idea all along.
“What about you all?” I asked.
“No one was home.” Marius held up the master key. “Onward.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
We knocked at the next door as Marius unlocked it for us. I didn’t know if I should be relieved or upset that no one answered. I gave Jorge and Kate a look and together we pushed in.
The room was grand. Literally. It had high ceilings—and a piano, bolted in a decorative fashion to the floor. I checked the list. “Mr. and Mrs. Inman?” I called out. No response. Jorge shrugged and started walking in.
We went into a living room bigger than some apartments I’d had. Kate and I went off to the right and Jorge went left. There was a grand bathroom with a grand shower and a grand tub—miles of marble, exquisitely soft towels, and expensive creams and lotions, the spackle of the wealthy-old. Then a bedroom with a huge flat-screen TV, with clothing and shoes tossed out. No one was here. All their belongings, clothing, toiletries. It was a ghost town—a fancy-ass ghost town. Asher was nowhere in sight.
Kate’s thoughts were still next door. “Those people are in a room like this, right?”
I grunted. “Probably.”
Kate’s eyes narrowed. “How come I had to lose my son, and they got all this?”
“One of life’s shitty mysteries,” Jorge answered her from the hallway. “Nothing over here. But the door to the balcony over here is unlocked.”
The door to the balcony on our side was locked, but I still went outside, just in case. The Maraschino seesawed back and forth, and I realized that on this higher floor there was greater motion from the sea, which was doing unkind things to my stomach. I didn’t want to lean out too far and see the wino next door—although there was a large partition set up between cabins, so that each fancy room’s residents would feel like they had their own private view—but I did look over the edge. Nine floors up, the water looked very far down.
“I think we know what happened to them.” Jorge swung the open balcony door back and forth behind me. “Bye-bye birdie.”
Kate’s expression went cold. “Hopefully.”
* * *
We returned to the hallway where Marius was drawing another O on the outside of the room. “Same here,” I said, in response to his curious look. Nathaniel and Tan-man were hanging back behind him. Tan-man still looked unhappy, and Nathaniel appeared smug. What was he getting out of this? The pleasure of watching us dance?
“The Solomons,” Marius announced, pointing behind us. I realized he’d already said it twice.
I nodded quickly. “Sure.”
The Solomons were also absent after knocking, as were the Foxes, the Doltons, the Catos, the Duffields, and the Schmidts. All of their rooms were empty museum-like testaments to capitalism with eerily open balcony doors, as though the occupants had grown wings and flown away. The sixth room had an occupant—but she was dead. Tied to a chair. Someone had had the sense to strap her down but not the time or inclination to do the same for themselves. She was facing an open balcony window.
The person left strapped behind had managed to tilt her chair over into the couch, and she’d asphyxiated on the firm-yet-giving cushions. I pulled her up and saw the teeth marks she’d left in the couch where she’d tried unsuccessfully to gnaw through its leather to escape.
“Who eats couch cushions?” Kate asked aloud.
I frowned, disgusted. “I don’t know.”
Marius’s group was having the same luck across the hall. And every time I saw Nathaniel in passing I wanted to shake him until he poured out answers. We were only halfway done with this hallway, on this one floor, and the cabins up here were twice as large as the ones below. We wouldn’t even finish a tenth of the ship before the rescue boat’s arrival put an end to our search. My stomach was churning. What if I never found Asher at all?
It was that thought that got me as we were entering yet another empty room. The Maraschino was rocked by a large swell, and I covered my mouth with my hand and pushed Kate aside.
In a large marble bathroom, the sound of me retching echoed particularly well. I didn’t make it to the toilet, I just leaned over the nearer of the two sinks, clutching its marble sides.