Cruise Ship Murders

Clark Selby

Description

Cruise Ship Murders tells the story of two retired couples, Sonny and Jane and Gene and Susan, who are taking their lifelong dream of a world cruise to all seven continents. They planned and dreamed about taking this trip for a very long time to see places they had only read about in books or seen on TV. They had hardly started their world cruise when they attend the captains welcome aboard cocktail party and have a big surprise: the captain turns out to be Sonny's best friend from childhood. The bigger surprise is, neither Sonny's wife nor his companions had ever heard of this friend. The next surprise is a passenger is murdered in her stateroom, and the captain asks Sonny and Gene, retired homicide detectives, to take charge of investigating the murder. The ship's security staff is hardly trained to handle a murder. The cruise takes them to all the places they had dreamed of seeing and gives the reader a glimpse of what it's like to visit: Uluru; the Great Barrier Reef; the Taj Mahal; Machu Picchu, and many other places. The murders don't stop. Sonny and Gene have never had a case with almost no clues. The only thing each of the murders has in common is an association with a man named Lucky Jordan. Lucky was a very good-looking man, very charming, and women were attracted to him. Was he the killer or was there something else about him that was causing their deaths.

Informations

• Publié par: Book Venture Publishing LLC
• Date de parution: 10 septembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781641661935
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

CLARK SELBY AUTHO R OF:
DANGEROUS JOURNEY BOOK ONE
DANGEROUS FOOD BOOK TWO
DANGEROUS CARGO BOOK THREE
DANGEROUS ENEMY BOOK FOUR
TWO COWBOYS IN NEW YORK
TOGETHER FOREVER
THE POWER OF LOVE
INDIAN LEADER TRAIL BOSS
WHERE'S MY WIFE?
CRUISE SHIP MURDERS

CLARK SELBY

FRONT COVER DESIGNED BY ROBERT CLARK SELBY
Copyright © 2018 by Clark Selby.
Front Cover Designed by Robert Clark Selby
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.
BookVenture Publishing LLC 1000 Country Lane Ste 300 Ishpeming MI 49849 www.bookventure.com Hotline: [phone] Fax: [phone]
Ordering Information: Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address above.
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Control Number 2018936783 ISBN-13: Softcover 978-1-64166-191-1 Pdf 978-1-64166-192-8 ePub 978-1-64166-193-5 Kindle 978-1-64166-194-2
Rev. date: 07/24/2018
This Book is dedicated with love to my World Cruise Companion, my wife, Karen Serene Selby. Without her help, my books would never be written.
Contents
1
Life after Retirement
2
Going to Sea
3
Things Begin to Happen
4
What Will This Day Bring?
5
Working With Honolulu Police
6
The Report from the Honolulu Police
7
Cruising the Mighty Pacific
8
A New Day, a New Victim
9
The Investigation Continues
10
One New Clue
11
Arriving in Auckland
12
Sonny Has an Idea
13
This Is Uluru
14
DNA Report from Kansas City
15
Meeting with the Video People
16
Where Can We Find Clues
17
Beverly Hills Response
18
Next Stop, Guam
19
Not Another One
20
Welcome to Guam
21
Another Meeting with Lucky
22
The Autopsy Reports from Guam
23
Visiting Singapore
24
Going to the Taj Mahal
25
The Visit to the Taj Mahal
26
Dubai and Pirates
27
Aqaba and Petra
28
Aisha Makes a New Friend
29
Transiting the Suez Canal
30
Visiting Europe Was Hard Work
31
On Their Way to South America
32
Welcome to Rio
33
Going to Buenos Aires
34
Finally, Some Answers
35
The Happiest World Cruise
36
Ship’s Bells Ringing for the Wedding
37
The Last Leg Home
1
Life after Retirement
S onny Cousins and his best friend, Gene Simpson, both retired from the Kansas City Police Department on the same day. They both had joined the police department on the same day twenty years ago.
They had spent so many hours working overtime on the job; they both had accumulated over two years of comp time.
Comp time is given to police officers, instead of being paid overtime for hours worked beyond their normal eight-hour s hift.
Since police officers weren’t paid for overtime work, they were given credit hours for future time off.
So for the next two years, Sonny and Gene would be getting their full paychecks every two weeks, just the same as if they were still on the job.
Truth be known, they probably had another two years’ worth of overtime, but they were only allowed to carry over a maximum of two years of overtime h ours.
The other thing it did for them was to give them credit for two more years of service, to add to their retirement pay.
The two of them decided several years ago that they would take their wives on a cruise around the world, to make up for all of the time they weren’t there for their wives when they needed them t o be.
Now, two weeks after they retired from the police force, they were at the airport getting ready for the first leg of their trip, flying from Kansas City to San Francisco to board their ship two days l ater.
They booked an around-the-world cruise on the Golden Supreme, the flagship of the Supreme Line.
This trip would take them to all seven continents; being gone for so long, their wives were worried about their kids, even though they were all in col lege.
Sonny and his wife, Jane, had two boys and Gene and his wife, Susan, had a daughter and a son.
Sonny and Gene both told their wives, “You raised them to be independent, so let them be indepen dent.”
They told their wives their kids would get along just fine, and besides, they would be able to keep in touch with them by e mail.
If any of them had a major health problem while they were gone, they could always fly home to be with them.
Then Sonny said, “They better be really sick if we have to cut our trip short, because if they’re not, I’ll have to kill them my self.”
The wives didn’t think that was funny at all.
The four of them arrived in San Francisco and took a taxi to the Hyatt Regency Hotel, where they had booked suites. A friend of Sonny’s had connections through his travel agent to get them suites for the same price as a regular room.
When they were shown to their suites, they were very impressed and Jane said, “Sonny, are you sure this suite is the same price as a regular room?”
“Well, I would say it is because we prepaid for them for two nights at two hundred fifty dollars per night, and when we checked in, they gave us our paid receipts for five hundred dollars, including t axes.
“I’d say old Charlie did pretty well with his travel a gent.”
“Sonny, look at the beautiful flower arrangement and the bottle of champagne in the ice bucket over t here.
“Look, Sonny, here’s a note on the flo wers.”
Jane opened the note and read, “Bon Voyage, from Charlie and the gang at Charlie’s D iner.”
Sonny said, “I’ll be darned, that was really nice of Charlie and the folks at the diner, don’t you t hink?”
“I certainly think so. I think you and Gene must have drunk a lot of coffee at Charlie’s Diner over the past twenty y ears.”
“We spent a lot of time going over cases for a lot of years. I’m sure we drank a lot of coffee and had lots of meals there too, but it’s still awfully nice of him an yway.”
Jane ag reed.
Gene called and said, “Sonny, did you and Jane have flowers and a bottle of champagne in your room from Charlie and the gang?”
“We certainly did, and we’ve just opened the bottle and we’re having some now. Do you and Susan want to come and join us, or have you already opened your own bo ttle?”
“No, we haven’t, that sounds good. We’ll bring our glasses and come over to your suite and we can split our bottle with you guys l ater.”
Before Sonny could tell Jane that Gene and Susan were on their way to have some champagne, he heard a knock on the door.
Sonny opened the door and Gene and Susan came in, and Gene said, “Hey, is this joint with the free booze? We brought gla sses.”
Jane said, “This is the joint with the free champagne, bring your glasses over here, and I’ll fill them.”
Jane filled their glasses and the four of them sat down.
Gene looked around the suite and said, “This is a lot better than looking at corpses and looking for clues, don’t you think, S onny?”
“It’s a lot nicer, and there’s hardly been any blood spilled here—well, so far—t oday.
“Jane hasn’t punched me or anyt hing.”
Jane screamed, “S onny!”
Sonny looked at Jane and said, “Well you hav en’t.”
Sonny and Jane met while students at the University of Kansas. Jane was from a small town called Selby-on-the-Bay, Maryland, just south of Annap olis.
She just wanted to get away from the East Coast, where she had lived all her life.
Jane had heard the people in the Midwest had a totally different outlook on life, compared to the people on the East C oast.
It seemed to her the people on the East Coast were always trying to do better—better than their parents, better than their neighbors, or better than themse lves.
They were never satisfied being who they were.
She thought no one ever seemed to just be happy with their lives t here.
Jane’s father worked in Washington, DC, for the State Depart ment.
She was never exactly sure of what he did, but she knew it had something to do with coordinating between the State Department and the CIA.
He advised the diplomats of potential threats to US citizens traveling and working in countries he was responsible for, or of any potential threat to our country in these same count ries.
Before he worked at the State Department, he worked at the CIA as an analyst of conditions in these same countries. He would never discuss what he did or anything about his work.
Jane was born in Boston, where her father was a professor at Harvard University, teaching Eastern European His tory.
He had spent lots of time traveling those countries while studying them in college, and while he was working on his doctoral de gree.
Before she started school, her father was recruited by the CIA to work for them and was told the CIA needed his expert knowledge about these countries, and he agreed to help them if he c ould.
Her father didn’t want her growing up in Washington, so he found them a home in a small town away from Washington and a room in Washington where he could stay in during the week, so he only came home on week ends.
However, if there was some type of crisis going on in one of his countries, they might not see him for several w eeks.
Selby-on-the-Bay was a very small village on Chesapeake Bay, and they had one of the best homes in town, plus it was away from Washin gton.
It could have been a million miles away for the difference in lifest yles.
When she was looking for a college, she thought one in Kansas would be about as far away from the east or west coast that she could get.
So she picked the University of Kansas, but she would have never considered that she would live most of he