Deadly Fate. Heather Graham

Home would feel good right now. Actually, New Orleans was where she’d gotten to know Jackson Crow and his wife, Angela, and where the “Krewe of Hunters” had been formed in pursuit of a killer on a high-profile case.

      And when they’d been on the Destiny...

      Her friend Alexi Cromwell had been there, and the cast of Les Miz had been large—lots of friends. When they were nervous, they’d stayed together. They’d kept working.

      Hell, they’d polished their nails and done all kinds of mundane things.

      She reminded herself that it had really only been a matter of hours that they’d been here. Long hours, but not a full day and night.

      People had died—horribly.

      There’d been a few minutes when she had tried to convince herself that the whole thing was an episode of Gotcha. Natalie Fontaine would come walking in and announce cheerfully that wow! They had all been really gotten. Special Agent Thor Erikson would prove to be an actor/stripper and the whole thing would have been a farce in extremely bad taste.

      She couldn’t pretend at all anymore—if she’d ever been able to convince herself of such a thing. Jackson Crow was here now. She knew this was real.

      “Yeah, you know, this isn’t right,” Ralph said. “Not right, and not fair. I’m reminded of The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde, you know. Wonderful quotes from that story. ‘To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness.’ Well! To be in one horrendous situation is certainly misfortune, but how in God’s name did we all manage two?” he demanded. “Carelessness?” he asked.

      Clara, Simon and even Larry stared at him.

      “Sorry, sorry, yes, no one’s fault. Still...” Ralph let his sentence end with a sigh. “I’m scared again, I guess. God! I hate being scared.”

      “We’re all right, Ralph. Really. We’re all right,” Simon said. “Two things. Both of the people killed were with reality TV, not with the cruise line or the cast. And the other—both people killed were women.”

      He winced, looking over at Clara.

      “It’s okay, Simon. I had noted that fact already,” Clara told him drily.

      “Hey!” Simon said suddenly. “Someone else is entering the fray!”

      Clara had been curled on the sofa in the parlor beneath the large picture window that looked onto the porch; at Simon’s words, she sat up and looked out.

      Someone was coming. A handsome man of about forty-five, medium height, with dark hair. He wore a double sweater beneath a thick parka and he was followed by a police officer and a shivering woman carrying a notepad.

      The police officer with him appeared to be frazzled.

      The woman looked as nervous as a cartoon rat. She was pinched thin, and wore a parka as if it were a heavy burden upon her.

      The officer, the man and the pinched-rat-like woman were stopped at the door by another state policeman.

      They talked for several minutes. At last, the officer in charge of guarding the front door opened it and let them in.

      For a moment, the man looked around the room. Then his eyes lit on Clara. He looked confused, as if he’d seen a mannequin come to life or a ghost return from the dead. Then he smiled. “My God—it’s you!”

      Clara didn’t have the least idea of what he was talking about.

      “Hello?” she said politely. She stood; the others had done the same at the man’s entry.

      He smiled—a great smile, she thought.

      “I’ve seen you! You performed a Sandra Dee character in Grease! You were amazing. I was a little bit in love!” the man said.

      “I was in Grease,” Ralph murmured.

      No one paid him any heed.

      “Thank you. And I’m sorry. Who are you?” Clara asked.

      “Marc. Marc Kimball,” he said. “I own Black Bear Island.”

      “Oh!”

      The murmur seemed like a chorus line—it so perfectly seemed to come from everyone in the room at the same time.

      “How do you do?”

      “It’s a pleasure.”

      “Marc Kimball!”

      The greetings seemed to sail around the room.

      Clara didn’t speak. She felt uneasy.

      She loved being a performer. She’d received good reviews and bad reviews. She’d been in casts when she’d been the low man on the totem pole, totally ignored by those seeking autographs. She’d had lead roles and signed and greeted people, as well. She’d been panned by critics and loved by critics and she’d been careful never to take any of it too seriously.

      She’d been admired before, and that was nice. But something about the way this man looked at her made her feel queasy.

      She tried to smile. He hadn’t done an evil thing to her.

      “It is you, right? I wasn’t sure about all the particulars, but I heard about Annabelle Lee being done on the Fate. And, I knew, of course, that Wickedly Weird Productions was using cruise line employees for Vacation USA, and I had hoped...”

      Simon sprang to her rescue.

      “We’re all in the cast, sir. Ralph Martini and Larry Hepburn are the gentlemen over there. I’m Simon Green. And, yes, our leading lady is Clara Avery,” he said.

      “Miss Avery!” Kimball said, walking over to her. He took her hand. She wanted to scream and wrench it away.

      He kept looking at her as he spoke again. “I came as soon as I heard about what happened. They said it wasn’t necessary, but...I’m so glad I’m here.”

       4

      “We’ve got to make some decisions,” Mike said, joining Thor and Jackson after the initial interviews. “The groups out there are getting restless. I’ve still got the film crew separated from the caretaker couple and from the ship’s cast, but they’re all getting edgy. One of the film guys was saying he was already getting cabin fever, but his mate, Becca Marle, was saying that she didn’t want to be out of sight of a cop for the next year. Are we getting them all on a boat or holding them here for a while longer?”

      “None of them is under arrest,” Jackson said. “We can’t really hold them.”

      “Some of them, I think, want to be held,” Mike said. “Until we find this guy.”

      They were all silent. It was a dream that a killer such as this could be caught quickly. Many serial killers had reigned for more than a decade before being caught.

      Some never were.

      “Do we have anything else? Anything more from the forensic crews?” Thor asked.

      “Still not a damned thing,” Mike said. “Doc Andropov has taken the body—says because of the snow, he’ll try to run some tests and pin down time of death. He says that from the data he has so far, she was most likely killed early this morning, murdered and bisected elsewhere. Said it’s hard to be certain because the body was packed in snow, but Amelia Carson was with the film crew last night until about eight. I just got off the walkie-talkie—talked to Detective Brennan, head on the case via the state police—Bill Meyer patched me in from the Coast Guard cutter. This is the info I have from him. They were all staying at the Nordic Lights Hotel on the waterfront in Seward,” he said, pausing to look at Thor and reminding him, “Where we arrived at the investigation into Natalie Fontaine’s murder this morning.”

      Thor