Serial Fiction - "The Cruise" - Week 9

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“You found it where?” Alex cried. “But only look! This is not my EpiPen! It’s the glucagon syringe from Sherri’s first aid kit! The antidote for insulin shock—you say someone removed it from the room? But that would mean--?”

            Fischer stared. “Attempted murder.”

 

Fischer and Nimilov froze for a moment, contemplating the horrific possibilities,  and then both leapt to their feet, galvanized into action.  They  leapt for the door,  and as Alex fumbled with the knob, handicapped by his still-tethered wrists, Agent Fischer cursed and pulled the key from his pocket. “Sorry, man,” he muttered as he freed Sherri’s trainer,  “I guess we can dispense with these.” Shaking out the soreness from his joints, Alex followed the FBI agent through the door and they raced through the ship’s long hallways towards Sherri’s cabin, hoping that they wouldn’t be too late.  As the door slammed behind them, it caused a draft to kick up the dust in the passageway, and a single small dark feather was lifted into the air from where it had settled along the edge of the carpet. As the two men disappeared around the corner, the feather spun slowly down to rest above the sill of a solitary porthole, where it adhered to the glass by condensation, framed like Exhibit A in a court case.

 

On the other side of the ship, Sherri was becoming increasingly animated as the sugar from the orange juice revived her. She stood and began to pace around the room. 

“Who would have switched my insulin?” she asked her visitor. “Who would do something like that and why?” 

“I don’t know,” Rebecca frowned. “You’re sure that you didn’t do it yourself, by accident?”

“Absolutely not,” Sherri answered emphatically. “That’s why I have the two separate cases. I keep the fast-acting one in the small case so that I don’t have to bring the whole kit with me to the dining room – I use it a lot when I’m traveling so I’m very familiar with the routine – I know which is which. The fast-acting one has not left the small case for the entire duration of this cruise!”

“Well, then we have to assume that it was done on purpose,” Rebecca said. “And we must take this very seriously. I think we can only believe that whoever did this meant to do you harm. So the question now is the obvious one: who had the motive, and who had the opportunity?” 

Sherri shook her head helplessly. “I know that there is a murderer aboard this ship,” she said, “but I don’t know why I would be a target!”

“Well, we now have this information about your adoption and your birth parents,” Rebecca mused. “And of course, the discovery that the latest murder victim may have been your own sister can’t be discounted as a factor in all of this.” 

“That’s the part that seems most unbelievable to me,” Sherri sighed. “I just can’t take it all in. To find out that I had a sister only to lose her just before we were reunited – it’s just too much! It’s funny – when I found out that Mary Beth might have been my sister, a mystery that I’ve wondered about all my life was suddenly solved.” As Rebecca watched her curiously, Sherri went to the chest of drawers that stood next to the cabin door. Rummaging in a drawer, she pulled out a little drawstring bag of dark blue velvet. Undoing its silken cords, she pulled out a silver pendant strung on a long delicate chain and returned to her chair. Rebecca noted the sorrowful look on the girl’s face as she held it out. 

“You see the engraving?” Sherri asked. “On one side, there are initials ‘MB’, and on the other, ‘SA’. I’m Sherri Anne, of course, but I never knew who ‘MB’ was…until tonight!” Her voice caught on a little sob, and she covered her mouth with a trembling hand. “I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I know it’s silly – I never even knew her, hardly ever spoke to her on the ship—but I really do feel like I’ve lost someone. And this locket…well, open it.” 

Rebecca took a closer look and realized that there was a tiny latch on the side of the silver tear-shaped disk. She pushed it gently with a careful finger and heard a little click as the front and back fell open to reveal a tiny picture pressed into the little case. It was a tiny portrait of a young ginger-haired woman who bore a slight resemblance to Sherri. “Your mother?” she asked. 

“I think it must be,” Sherri nodded. “My mother—well, the woman I always thought was my mother—gave that to me the last time that I saw her. I was only seven when she died, and I’ve kept it ever since, wondering what it meant. I thought maybe it was my grandmother, who I never met, or some other relative—mother never explained. She gave it to me as she was just boarding the plane to join my father for a skiing vacation—it almost seemed like an afterthought—and she said she’d tell me about it when she got back. But she never returned. She was killed when she missed a hairpin turn on the slopes and tumbled down a high cliff into a ravine and broke her neck. My father claimed not to recognize the woman in the picture and—“ Her sentence dissolved into a shrill scream and Rebecca whirled towards the window to see why Sherri’s face had frozen in horror. What she saw through the porthole chilled her blood.