Dead Man Docking - Mary Daheim [25]
As if on cue, Renie spoke. “So who actually discovered Mr. Cruz was dead? Émile? Rick St. George?”
Dixie shook her head. “Ah don’t recall.”
“Rick, I’ll bet,” Renie said. “Émile seemed to be helping you. Is that right?”
Dixie shook her head again, this time with more emphasis. “Ah don’t know. Ah was out cold.”
Renie made a face. “This is hopeless. We can’t figure anything out until we know what killed Magglio Cruz.”
“His heart?” Dixie suggested. “People who have heart attacks sweat a whole lot. Maybe that’s why his clothes were wet.”
Renie looked skeptical. “And in the midst of the heart attack, he jumped into the piano?”
Judith frowned. “It beats the alternative.”
The cousins exchanged meaningful glances. “Yes,” Renie said slowly, “it does.”
Dixie raised her head off the pillow. “What do you mean?”
Neither Judith nor Renie replied.
In the moments that followed, all three women remained silent. Judith could hear the slight groan of the ship, as if it were flexing its muscles in the wind. Maybe the San Rafael was anxious to get under way. Maybe the luxury liner was trying to tell them something.
Eventually, Dixie fell asleep. The cousins tiptoed out of the stateroom, but once they were in the passageway, they weren’t sure what to do next.
“The saloon?” Renie finally said.
“I suppose. We’ve done all we can for Dixie. The doctor should be calling on her after he sees Mrs. Cruz.”
The saloon, which had seemed so glamorous little more than an hour earlier, was now virtually deserted. Dirty dishes and glasses were piled everywhere, the sumptuous buffet had deteriorated, and the pheasant ice sculpture had begun to melt. The only people left were a couple of white-jacketed waiters, Rick St. George, and a burly man in a rumpled raincoat and a battered hat whom the cousins didn’t recognize.
Rick spotted Judith and Renie right away. “Everyone’s in the Sequoia Bar,” he informed them. “Same deck, turn left on your way out.”
Renie, however, wasn’t so easily dismissed. “Biff McDougal?” she said, moving toward the man in the raincoat, who was chewing on a toothpick. “My husband has told me so much about you.”
The toothpick remained in place as Biff’s small brown eyes peered at Renie. “Your husband? Who’s he?” the detective demanded, speaking around the toothpick.
“Bill Jones—better known to you as William Jones, PhD and criminal psychologist,” Renie replied, putting out her hand. “Didn’t the two of you work together on that serial arsenic-poisoning case in the Embarcadero a few years back?”
Biff moved his hat and scratched his balding head. “The Embarcadero? Arsenic? Oh!” He slapped his forehead. “You mean the Mission district. It was cyanide, as I recall. Was that Dr. Jones? I thought his name was Smith.”
“Smith, Jones, Brown—a common mistake with such a common name,” Renie said, smiling brightly. “If he’d known I was going to run into you, he would’ve sent his best. Bill always told me you knew the best watering holes in San Francisco.”
“Har har.” Biff chuckled. “You’re darned tootin’. Some of those places are gone now, all this upscale stuff taking over, but in the old days…” He chomped away at the toothpick, apparently yearning for the seedy spots of yore.
Rick put a firm hand on Biff’s wide shoulder. “Nostalgia has its charms,” he said, “but we’ve got business to do here, remember? And we mustn’t keep Mrs. Jones and her cousin from joining the others. I’m sure their nerves are as shattered as everyone else’s.”
Rick St. George couldn’t possibly guess that the cousins were too experienced in sudden death to feel only a slight fraying around the edges. “Yes,” Renie seemingly agreed, “we must leave you to your investigation. I don’t suppose you’ve had time to figure out how poor Mr. Cruz died?”
Biff’s smile was crooked, half affable, half sneering, though the toothpick stayed put. “Couldn’t tell you if we knew,” he said. “This is all hush-hush stuff.”
But Renie looked disturbed. “We’re terribly upset,