Dead Man Docking - Mary Daheim [16]
“Then I am impressed,” Judith said. “We’re not just getting first-class treatment, presumably we’re VIPs.”
Retrieving the folder, Renie looked askance. “Not really. San Francisco high society is as snobbish as New York’s. I figure the two Giddon women are mother and daughter or sisters. Captain Swafford is probably our skipper. And May Belle Beales—I know the name…Ah! She’s better known as Dixie and is a cruise director for the line. But other than that, I’m guessing.”
“St. George,” Judith murmured. “That name sounds familiar, but I can’t think why. What about you?”
Renie shook her head. “Nothing comes to mind.” She stood up. “We’d better get ready. We’re time-traveling back to the thirties.”
The old clothes Judith had found in the basement were long on practicality if short on glamour. But Gertrude’s wedding dress was perfect. She had been tall and relatively slim in those days. The simplicity of the white satin lines suited her daughter.
Renie looked up from her own toilette. “Does your mother know you’re wearing that?” she asked.
“Are you kidding?” Judith responded. “She’d kill me.”
“It’s held up pretty well,” Renie remarked, moving closer.
“I found Aunt Ellen’s black turban with the rhinestone brooch,” Judith said, holding the item up for her cousin’s viewing. “We played dress-up with this stuff. You always made me wear the ugly outfits.”
“That’s because I was older and had better taste,” Renie said, slipping into a black crepe evening gown. “How about this?”
“Elegant,” Judith declared.
Renie unzipped a garment bag. “And this?” she asked, putting on a short silver-fox fur jacket. “It belonged to my other grandmother, the one who was nuts about clothes.”
“Wow.” Judith suddenly felt underdressed.
Renie grinned at her. “Granny had more than one evening coat.” She reached into the garment bag again. “Here,” she said, handing Judith an evening wrap that was two shades of red with black fur trim. “It really goes with your new hair color.”
Judith was thrilled. After the drudgery of the past few months and the nerve-racking start to the trip, she was suddenly feeling giddy with excitement. “Oh, coz—I can’t believe we’re doing this!”
“We are,” Renie affirmed. “Let’s go find our chariot.”
The limo was waiting outside. In the twilight, the cousins gawked a bit as they headed for Pier 35. They gawked even more when they caught their first sight of the San Rafael. The ship seemed huge, more like a building than a seagoing vessel.
From her work on the original brochure, Renie had memorized the basic facts. “Ninety-one thousand tons, nine hundred and sixty-five feet long, occupancy of seventeen hundred and fifty, cruising speed of twenty-four knots.”
“I won’t remember,” Judith said as the chauffeur opened the limo’s door.
“You don’t need to,” Renie replied. “What I really want to know is, how’s the food?”
Judith noticed that the lettering on the ship’s stern indicated Mexican registration. Liveried footmen stood at the bottom and top of the flower-festooned gangway. Old ballads from the thirties crooned over the speaker system.
As the cousins reached midship on what Judith calculated was the second deck from the top, two more men awaited them. The lean, handsome man with the dark mustache and sideburns was wearing a single-breasted tuxedo with black piping on the trousers and black patent leather shoes. He would, Judith thought, have been perfectly cast as a lounge lizard in a Depression-era melodrama. His bearded, heavy-set companion wore a captain’s formal dress uniform with enough gold braid to decorate Lord Nelson.
“Serena!” the man in the tuxedo exclaimed, kissing Renie on each cheek. “You look ravishing. Muy bonita.” He turned to Judith. “And this must be your charming cousin Señora Flynn.”
“Thank you for letting me join