The Missing Passenger Read online

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Gabriella replied stiffly, her amber eyes blazing angrily as she slammed down her phone. She looked towards her husband and shook her head. “I can’t believe he could be so cold-hearted!”

  “Calm down.” Nicolas massaged his wife’s tensed shoulders. “You’ve been through an emotionally upsetting night. We know nothing about Peter Newland. For all we know, he abused his children and they’re glad he’s dead.”

  “I don’t think so,” Gabriella disagreed. “Peter was a wonderful man. And I know there was at least one member of his family that he was close to.”

  “I can see that brain of yours churning faster than a hamster on steroids,” Nicolas said, his voice growing stern. “Promise me you’ll drop this and just send the man his father’s death certificate.”

  “It’s like you can read my mind but still not understand me,” Gabriella mumbled, pushing her husband’s hands away. “How can I not get involved?”

  “By focusing on something else.”

  “I feel you’re forgetting who I am.”

  Nick sighed. “That’s not fair. I know you, and that’s exactly why I’m telling you to stay out of this.”

  “Are you telling me as my husband, or as my captain?” Gabriella snapped.

  “Both,” Nick responded curtly before instantly regretting it. “I’m sorry, Gabi.” He shook his head somberly. “That was uncalled for.”

  Gabriella sighed. “I’m sorry too. Something just doesn’t feel right about all of this—I can feel it. And I just need my husband to trust my judgement.”

  “I trust your judgement, but I also know that, as a woman,” he kissed her cheek, “sometimes a lack of sleep and highly strung emotions,” he kissed her other cheek, “cloud your judgement.”

  “I resent that.” Gabriella folder her arms and scowled. “But I know you have a point. All right, I won’t snoop any further unless the Newland family gives me cause to. How’s that for a deal?”

  “I suppose it’s a reasonable offer.” Nick grinned at her. “Are we okay though?”

  Gabriella exhaled slowly as she levelled her amber eyes on his, a million thoughts racing through her head.

  “I take your hesitation as a no.” He stroked a piece of hair out of her tired eyes. “I guess I need to chat to the vice-captain about covering a shift for me so we can talk?”

  “That would be good.” Gabriella smiled weakly. “It’s not that we aren’t doing okay. It’s just that any time we want to talk, we have to schedule it in. We’re definitely arguing more over petty things, and I think it’s because we’re living past each other.”

  “Yeah.” He looked up at the cabin ceiling. “I’ve felt it too, if I’m honest. We have grown a little distant. I’ll talk to Sean and book us a day off as soon as possible, okay?”

  “Okay.” Gabriella smiled at him, feeling her love for him well in her chest at how observant and considerate her husband was. “That would be great.”

  “Right.” He checked his watch and his shoulders slumped. “I hate to say it, but we’re out of time this morning. I should have been on the bridge ten minutes ago.”

  “That means I’m ten minutes behind on my day too, and I haven’t even showered yet,” Gabriella said as she bolted towards the bathroom.

  Her husband caught her gently by the arm and reined her back in. “Hey,” he scolded softly, “we just spoke about making more time for each other, and here we are, running off without even saying goodbye.”

  “Goodbye,” Gabriella whispered up at him as she stood on her tip-toes to kiss him.

  “I’ll see you later.” He smiled at her. “At least it seems the worst has already happened on this cruise, so it should be smooth sailing from here.”

  Gabriella’s eyes widened in panic as though the entire universe was listening in on their conversation, desperate to prove Nicolas Fischer wrong. “Never tempt fate. Haven’t you read the Odyssey?”

  Nick laughed, pecked her on the cheek, and continued to chuckle all the way out of the cabin.

  Chapter 4

  Poltergeist

  “Morning, Gabi,” Sarah’s gentle voice sounded behind her in the passageway. “I have some interesting news on the subject you requested.”

  “What did you find out?” Gabriella pulled Sarah into an alcove, away from the hustle of the morning traffic to the breakfast buffet.

  “You were right.” Sarah’s black eyes twinkled with mystery. “Peter Newland was worth a fortune. I googled him and he’s worth millions, if not billions! He founded several enormous companies and funded several prominent charities.”

  “Unbelievable,” Gabriella muttered. “No wonder his son was so eager to get a hold of the death certificate and activate the will.”

  Sarah raised an eyebrow at her older friend.

  “What?” Gabriella asked, recognizing the disapproving look.

  “I thought Nicolas told you to stay out of this,” Sarah cautioned.

  “He did, but I only promised to as long as the Newland family didn’t give me reason to,” Gabriella countered with a crafty smile.

  “There’s nothing you can do,” Sarah moaned, tugging Gabriella by the elbow so they could continue their day.

  “You didn’t stray across the name of Peter’s lawyer, by any chance, did you?”

  Sarah’s scathing look silenced Gabriella instantly.

  “Sorry. I guess I’m too emotionally invested in all of this, just like Nick said.” Gabriella sighed. “I will forget about Peter Newland for the rest of today.”

  “Uh…” a nervous voice stuttered behind Gabriella. “Can we talk for a second?”

  Gabriella put on her professional smile and Sarah had to admire how quickly she could switch gears. “Sure, how can we be of assistance, ma’am?”

  “Well, I want to log a complaint,” the woman said in a shaky voice, her eyes darting around at the people passing by. “Can we talk somewhere more privately, please?”

  “Sure, follow me. We have an office on this level.” Gabriella smiled kindly and key-carded the door open. They stepped inside together. “What seems to be the problem?” Gabriella took a seat opposite the skittish woman in her mid-fifties. She pulled out the complaints log and picked up a pen.

  “I don’t think you will believe me,” the woman began.

  Gabriella braced herself, having heard this line many times before.

  The woman resumed, leaning in closer to Gabriella while maintaining a stern gaze. “I think this ship is haunted,” she whispered.

  Gabriella had to admit that in all her years of running a cruise ship, this was the first time they’d been accused of housing ghosts. “Can you perhaps explain why you have this… uh… perception?” she asked calmly, keeping her face perfectly controlled.

  “Last night, I was sound asleep in my cabin,” the woman said, relieved to have an audience. She paused, her eyes darting to Gabriella’s hand. “Why aren’t you writing this down?”

  “I like to listen first so I know how best to record the complaint in a… concise manner.”

  “Anyway,” the woman continued with a slight scowl, “A terrible noise awoke me.”

  “What kind of noise?”

  “It was a howling. Like a whoooooo hoooooo,” she demonstrated.

  Gabriella scratched her forehead, trying not to laugh. “Sometimes the wind picks up at sea and howls across the decks of the ship, creating a kind of wailing –”

  “No! It was not the wind! And you can’t hide from me what it really was!”

  Gabriella raised an eyebrow. “And what might that be?”

  “A ghost!” the indignant woman explained, her annoyance rising.

  “Ma’am,” Gabriella said coolly but firmly, “I can assure you, as the captain’s wife, we have never had a ghost onboard this ship.”

  “I believe you,” the woman huffed aggressively. “But that was until last night when that man dropped dead from unknown causes. Some say he was danced to death by the old woman,
and now his ghost will forever haunt this ship!”

  Gabriella slammed the complaints log book shut with slightly more force than she intended. “Thank you for bringing this matter to the attention of the crew. We’ll be certain to look into it.”

  “You people always say that,” the woman scoffed as she stood and grabbed her handbag. “But I can tell by your shifty eyes that you don’t believe a word I’m saying.”

  “I’m sorry if it appears that way,” Gabriella apologized, saddened to have an unsatisfied passenger. “Could you tell me your cabin number, just so I can be sure where to look?”

  ***

  By lunchtime, Gabriella had received over two dozen complaints about passengers who’d been disturbed by howling noises in the night. Some claimed to have heard an eerie voice relentlessly wailing the name ‘Lilah’. Others claimed they saw a frail, ghostly figure dressed in white wandering over the decks of the ship.

  “Sarah,” Gabriella grabbed her friend by the elbow and tugged her into another quiet corner, “I’m so glad I bumped into you. Please tell me you haven’t spent your entire morning logging complaints about apparitions?”

  “I’ve gotten forty-two so far! Everyone seems to think the death last night has led to a ghost onboard and that he’s out for vengeance.”

  Gabriella ran her fingers through her hair, feeling as if she needed to compress her brain to prevent it from exploding. “I can’t believe people are so stupid!”

  “It’s mob mentality,” Sarah explained. “Start a rumor and it catches like wildfire. Do you know I had to listen to a man for twenty minutes while he claimed that he saw a vampire back-flip off the deck and fly away to the moon?”

  “That’s just wrong on so many levels.” Gabriella leaned against a wall, exasperated. “What do we do?”

  “I have no idea, boss. I guess we just have to be patient and wait for all of this to blow over.”

  “You’re right.” Gabriella rolled her head on her neck and felt several vertebrae click painfully back into place. “This will pass like every other storm we’ve gone through.”

  “There’s something else…” Sarah gave Gabriella a few seconds to prepare herself for even worse news. “It’s not just the passengers who are complaining. I received a complaint from the galley on level four claiming someone stole an entire trolley of dessert.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been trying to get there all day, but I keep getting stopped along the way.”

  “From now on, I want to know every single thing that goes wrong on this ship,” Gabriella ordered.

  “There’s more,” Sarah squealed in an almost inaudible voice.

  “More?”

  Sarah nodded. “A passenger claimed his luggage was stolen, and he found all of his clothes thrown around the passageway outside his cabin.”

  “I’m honestly starting to believe –”

  “In a poltergeist?”

  Gabriella blinked, thrown off her own train of thought. “A what?”

  “You know,” Sarah continued in a whisper, “a ghost who messes around with people’s things and upsets everyone because they’re angry about stuff.”

  “Sarah, I’m not about to believe in the supernatural just because some pudding got stolen and a few clothes were flung around.”

  “I was just mentioning it because that’s what people are calling it…”

  “I think someone is onboard this ship to destroy our reputation,” Gabriella hissed. “We’ve moved up in the market and other cruise lines are losing business because of us.”

  “So you think there’s a spy who’s behind this?” Sarah mused, weighing up the possibility in her head.

  “It’s the only logical explanation. I want to see all the passenger lists. If we work through the names, we might figure out who’s behind it all.”

  “I’ll get started on that from the safety of my office. Would you be able to check on the galley?”

  Gabriella rolled her eyes, and she and Sarah laughed at each other.

  “It’s not that I’m scared,” Sarah insisted. “It’s just that it’s all freaky, that’s all…”

  “That’s okay.” Gabriella winked at her friend. “I’ll check on the kitchen. You get started on those lists.”

  ***

  “As you can see,” Chef Pierre exploded, “there are footprints everywhere!”

  “Well,” Gabriella heaved a sigh as she got up from her haunches, “ghosts don’t leave size twelve footprints on the floor after breaking and entering.”

  “This ghost does!” the chef protested. “And it didn’t break in and enter.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We left the storeroom locked last night and this morning, when I came in for my shift, it was unlocked and there was pudding and cake everywhere!”

  “I see. So what’s the explanation you offer for how that happened?”

  “The ghost drifted through the walls of the pantry and helped itself!”

  “Then how did the door unlock?”

  “I don’t understand,” the chef said.

  “You said it was locked last night, but unlocked this morning. So if the ghost drifted through the walls, why did he unlock the pantry?” Gabriella had believed, until this point, that the head chef was an intelligent man. Now she was forced to bite her tongue as she watched him roll his eyes at her, as if she was being the irrational one.

  “The ghost,” he explained slowly in his heavy accent, “needed to unlock the pantry,” he dropped each word one-by-one, sending Gabriella’s blood pressure through the roof, “so he could wheel out the tray of stolen pudding!” He showed the actions with exaggerated gestures.

  “Ah,” Gabriella said, realizing she was being dragged into the mud by stooping to the argument level of a fool. “I apologize, Chef Pierre. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “It’s understandable,” the chef said wisely, though clearly bemused by her calm apology. “Not everyone is as knowledgeable in these things as I am.”

  Gabriella nodded stiffly, fighting to keep her composure. “Has anybody followed the footprints?”

  “Excuse me?” Pierre asked, though she’d spoken clearly.

  “You know, to see where the ghost made off after he ransacked your pantry?”

  “Uh… we’ve been too busy restocking our dessert section for tonight’s buffet,” the chef replied.

  Gabriella nodded again, realizing the actual reason was probably because the entire kitchen staff was standing before her, pale-faced and trembling, terrified that the ghost was real. “I see,” she said. “Well then, I guess I’ll have to do it myself.” And with that, she whipped out of the kitchen and down the passageway where the sticky red jam tart prints could still be seen.

  She followed them for some time before they started wearing thin and then vanished altogether.

  Gabriella stopped, confused by the sudden lack of evidence. She turned in circles, looking for some kind of exit point or hiding spot where the so-called poltergeist could escape without leaving a trail. But there was nothing, not even a single drop of jam, to suggest what happened to it.

  Gabriella groaned again, deciding that she would take her lunch alone in her cabin that day. She wearily made her way to the bridge, her feet feeling heavy as her brain fought to wrap itself around the bizarre day.

  She stopped in front of her cabin door. As though on autopilot, she removed her card and swiped it, allowing her access. She glanced up at the golden nametag on the door and noticed words had been carved into the wood of her cabin door.

  Gabriella instantly snapped out of her brain-dead stupor and fixed her eyes on the two words blatantly vandalizing her door: Help Me.

  That was the final straw for Gabriella. At that point, she vehemently decided that the war that had been waged by an unknown party from an enemy cruise line had not only challenged her livelihood, but pushed on the very boundaries of her personal space.

  Gabriella Fischer was determined to find out who wa
s behind it and make them pay.

  Chapter 5

  The Haunted Ship

  Unfortunately for Gabriella, as the darkness of an early winter evening grew closer, reports of a ghost flooded the entire ship. Everywhere Gabriella walked, she could hear it in haunted whispers, snatching at her heels and hair as she whisked by.

  The cleaner packing up Peter Newland’s room had fled screaming, and it took at least two hours before she finally calmed enough to relate that ‘someone’ had been in the room with her while she was cleaning. Though she hadn’t seen anything, she claimed she’d felt a presence watching her.

  Gabriella could no longer tell what was legitimately a problem caused by her enemy, and what resulted from the panic and hysteria that had gripped even the most logical members onboard. “Billy, please tell me you have some pleasant news,” she begged as he approached.

  He shook his head gravely. “I’m afraid not. I have to be honest—they have never trained me on how to deal with something like this.”

  “Neither have I. It’s best if we just keep a clear head and not panic,” Gabriella said in a calm voice, despite wanting to scream her head off at every single person who came up to her with fear in their eyes.

  “Absolutely,” Billy agreed, though Gabriella swore she heard his teeth chattering.

  “Is there any reason no one is out on the deck tonight?” she asked, scanning the empty bow. The lanterns blinked in the disappearing sunlight as though copying the stars that were just starting to appear.

  “Everyone’s too afraid to be in the open air,” Billy explained in a quavering voice. “They claim it renders them an open target for the ghost.”

  Gabriella rolled her eyes for the millionth time that day, though she felt a chill in the surrounding air. “Can you please assure them there’s nothing to be afraid of, and that the outside entertainment is ready to begin?” She sighed, her ability to maintain her cool, controlled exterior wearing thin.

  “I’ll try my best,” he stated, though he didn’t seem able to believe it.

  Gabriella scanned the deck again, conscious that she was now alone. She was tempted to suggest Nicolas turned the cruise around after their stop at Puerto Vallarta and head back to San Diego. She was sure they could afford to reimburse each passenger and compensate them for the inconvenience this cruise had caused; anything would be better than enduring another day of the paranoia and terror surrounding them. Deep down, Gabriella knew that if they called off the cruise over rumors of a ghost, they would commit business suicide and no one would ever want to be a passenger onboard the Fischer again, except weirdoes who chased after alien sightings and crop circles.