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Tinsley narrows her dark eyes over mine. “Don’t you dare start rumors on that silly little blog of yours that this ship is haunted. The last thing we need is a bunch of paranormal lunatics sounding the alarm. Not only will our level-headed guests refuse to ride with us, but we’ll become a ghost hunter’s dream—and a nightmare in every other capacity. You’ve done enough damage to the Emerald Queen as it stands. I’m putting in a request to Captain Crawford to have you removed from payroll. You’re a danger to the guests and the staff alike. If Ransom is wise, he’ll throw you overboard himself.” She nods to Bess and Nettie. “Word to the wise: you keep hanging out with this one and you might just find yourselves on the bottom of the ocean yourselves.” She stalks off into the crowd, and I breathe a sigh of relief. A false sense of relief, but nonetheless.
“Nettie, we can’t tell anyone about my special abilities to see the dead,” I say just as a familiar brunette steps into our midst.
“So it’s true.” Jane Hunt stands clutching at her chest. Her lips quiver as she inspects me, and I can’t help but note a trace of blue liquid over her right arm. “Julia is dead.”
For as sad as that is, I’m glad she’s still clueless to the fact I can see the dead in the disembodied sense.
I nod. “I’m so sorry. I just found her lying there.” I glance down at her right arm again and a sense of dread fills me. “Um…do you know if Julia had any allergies?” I ask as I pull my phone from my pocket without being noticed.
“Allergies?” She winces out at the Pacific. “I don’t know. I mean, Nadine might have a clue. But Julia never mentioned anything to me.” She cranes her neck into the crowd and I covertly snap a few pictures of her arm with damning traces of blue running over her pale skin.
Bess and Nettie nod my way as the woman takes a step into the crowd and waves.
In a few moments, Nadine is upon us.
“What the heck just happened to my party?” the redhead balks. “I just stepped over to my room for five minutes and I come back to this nightmare? We just can’t take this crowd anywhere. They’re nothing but a bunch of self-serving lowlifes who will do anything, and I mean anything, for attention.” She shouts that last bit out into the night air and a handful of people turn our way.
“Stop it,” Jane reprimands her. “It’s Julia. Something horrible happened to her—she’s dead. Do you know if she had allergies?”
“Julia?” Nadine stops cold and frowns toward the lounge. “Our sweet Julia? Dead?” She shakes her head. “No. I mean, I don’t know about any allergies. She ate everything from shellfish to peanuts while she was with us.” She nods my way. “Both happened to be in the Thai food we had just a few nights ago. But maybe she did have an allergy or two, I have no clue.” She bats her lashes at Bess and Nettie. “I’ve never asked one of my friends about their allergies.” Tears come, and soon both women are comforting one another.
Jane glares in the direction of the back of the lounge. “Julia is gone—and so are all of her secrets.”
The dinner bell goes off and they migrate back into the crowd as Bess, Nettie, and I exchange a dark look.
“Did you hear that?” I hiss.
Nettie nods. “We’ve got less than fifteen minutes to work up an appetite.”
“No, not that,” I say. “The other thing.”
Bess shivers. “Jane seems sure that Julia had a few secrets. I bet they were deadly secrets, too.”
“They were deadly indeed,” I say as I stare off in the direction Jane took off in.
“Who’s hungry?” Nettie asks while patting her belly. “This girl, that’s who. I’ll see you ladies in the formal dining room. We’ll talk murder for dinner, then suspects for dessert. It’s shaping up to be a great cruise already.” She darts off and Bess calls for her to wait.
“I’d better catch up with her before she does something goofy like hopping onto the ice sculpture and confessing to murder.” She rolls her eyes. “She’s done it before.”
Bess takes off after her, and I hold myself as the night air whistles around me.
There’s another body on the ship. There very well might be a killer on board. Not to mention that Ransom is acting so strange. And here I thought I knew him well enough by now. But if twenty-five years of marriage have taught me anything, it’s you can never really know another person.
A glimmer of light illuminates from my right, and I look to find Ransom standing near the railing looking back at the Diamond Lounge with a pensive expression. But it’s not that pensive expression that has me more than mildly alarmed. It’s the fact he’s wearing that denim suit again.
A breath hitches in my throat as I inspect him like this, and I’m just about to take photographic evidence of the fashion malfeasance when he steps in the direction of the lounge and evaporates into a spray of miniature blue stars.
A loud gasp escapes me.
Julia Edwards may have had her secrets, but apparently so does Ransom.
And that little disappearing act he just did begs the question—is Ransom Baxter a ghost?
And yet the answer is all too clear.
CHAPTER 5
Another death.
