Cast into Doubt

TEN

‘These quilts are beautiful,’ Janice Pryor said, as she settled herself into a chair in the living room, and gazed at the colorful array of patterned needlework that hung from horizontal poles, decorating the walls.

Shelby was still standing by the door. ‘My daughter made them.’

Janice looked sympathetically at Shelby. ‘She had a wonderful eye for color.’

Shelby gazed at the quilts. The pain of her loss was a crushing weight on her heart.

‘Do you think I could have something to drink?’ Janice asked. ‘A soft drink maybe?’

‘There’s herbal iced tea,’ said Shelby.

‘That would be fine,’ said Janice.

Shelby went out into the kitchen and prepared a glass of tea while her mind raced. Now that she had let Janice Pryor into the house, she wondered if she had made a terrible mistake. This was a complete stranger who must have found Shelby through news reports. It could be that she was a little bit unbalanced. But the thought that Janice’s daughter had died in the same way as Chloe made Shelby painfully curious, in spite of her misgivings. She carried the glass out to the living room, the ice cubes clinking, and handed it to her visitor.

Janice took a sip and then set the glass down. Shelby remained standing.

‘Please. Sit down,’ said Janice. ‘I know how tired you must be.’

Suddenly, Shelby was keenly aware of her exhaustion, which normally hovered somewhere at the edge of her consciousness. ‘I am tired,’ she said. ‘I’ve been helping out with my grandson.’

‘Taking care of kids. It’s the hardest work there is,’ said Janice amiably.

‘His father took him out to the movies tonight.’

‘Yes, I know. I saw them go,’ said Janice, taking a sip of her tea.

Shelby was taken aback. ‘What do you mean you saw them go?’ she cried. ‘Were you spying on us?’

‘No. Nothing like that,’ Janice protested.

‘Well, what then?’ Shelby demanded.

‘Please, Shelby . . . can I call you Shelby? It’s nothing sinister. I promise you. I’ve followed the details of your daughter’s story. I know about your son-in-law and your grandson. I just wanted to wait and speak to you alone,’ said Janice calmly. ‘Mother to mother.’

Shelby was not placated. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I’m really sorry that you lost your daughter the same way I did, but that really doesn’t mean we’re linked together somehow. I mean, I appreciate your . . . interest, but perhaps it would be better if you just . . .’

‘I know you’re probably thinking that I’m some kind of a nut, but I promise you, I’m anything but. Please.’ Janice indicated the sofa.

Shelby hesitated and then perched stiffly down on the edge of the couch cushion, tensed to flee.

Janice looked at Shelby almost tenderly. ‘I read that your daughter, Chloe, was twenty-four years old.’

‘That’s . . . that’s right,’ said Shelby.

Janice reached into her pocketbook and pulled out a framed photo. Janice gazed at it fondly, and then offered it to Shelby. It was a picture of a young girl, blonde-headed and bright-eyed. ‘My Elise was seventeen. She went on the cruise with her senior class. It was a small class. A Catholic girl’s school. She disappeared overboard on the third night of the cruise. That was ten years ago.’

Shelby hung her head, imagining a pain that never lessened. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

‘Do you know what they told me happened to her?’ Janice asked indignantly. She did not wait for Shelby to respond. ‘They told me that she got drunk and accidentally fell overboard.’

Shelby looked up at her in surprise.

‘That’s what they told you about Chloe, wasn’t it?’ Janice demanded.

Shelby frowned. ‘Yes, as a matter of fact.’

Janice nodded. ‘That’s what they always say.’

Shelby, initially stunned by this similarity, didn’t know how to respond. ‘It’s probably just a coincidence,’ Shelby protested faintly. ‘I’m, afraid . . . well, I didn’t know it but apparently my daughter had a drinking problem.’

‘Who told you that?’

Shelby deflected the question. ‘It seems that she’d had this problem for some time.’

Janice folded her arms over her chest. ‘The cruise line wanted me to think that my daughter had a drinking problem. But Elise never touched alcohol.’

‘Kids do try things sometimes when they’re away from their parents,’ said Shelby. ‘You know, they experiment.’

Janice shook her head. ‘Not Elise. She hated the taste of alcohol. She always said that it made her sick to her stomach.’

‘Well, tropical places . . .’ Shelby demurred. ‘They make those fruit drinks that are so sweet. You can’t even taste the alcohol in it.’

‘NO.’ Janice slammed her open palm down on the arm of the chair. ‘That is not what happened. That is just the excuse they came up with to try to avoid responsibility. My daughter was murdered by one of their employees.’

Once again Shelby felt a mushrooming alarm that she had let a crazy person into the house. ‘Really?’ she said skeptically.

‘I’m not just guessing about this, Shelby. This really happened. They hired a convicted sexual predator without looking into his background.’

Shelby frowned. She wished, fleetingly, that she had not agreed to let this woman call her by her first name. It made her uneasy. ‘How do you know that?’

Janice shook her head. ‘Not because the cruise line admitted it. Oh no. My husband spent all his time looking into it. Night and day. He ended up losing his job. Then he had a stroke. Now he’s in a nursing home. Possibly for the rest of his life. But he found out the truth. That he did do.’

‘A sexual predator.’

‘Three arrests. One conviction,’ said Janice flatly. ‘All with young adolescents.’

‘So . . . they got this guy for killing your daughter?’ Shelby asked.

Janice held up her hands, as if in surrender. ‘Not exactly. Look. I’m not here to talk about Elise.’ She rummaged in her large pocketbook and pulled out a sheaf of pages. ‘Here. I printed these up for you. They’re not about Elise. Not entirely, anyway.’ She thrust the papers at Shelby, who reluctantly accepted them.

‘Just glance through that stuff,’ said Janice.

Shelby frowned at the pile of papers. She began to leaf through them. Each stapled set had a heading that read ‘Overboard.’ Each set of papers concerned a different person, and the story of how they were lost at sea.

‘What is this?’ Shelby asked.

‘Overboard is the name of our organization. These are some of the cases you can read about when you visit the website. We are the survivors of people who disappeared or died on a cruise ship,’ said Janice.

‘There are a lot of them,’ said Shelby wonderingly.

‘Those are just a few,’ said Janice grimly. ‘There are many others.’

Shelby scanned a few of the cases, making a special note of the outcome. She shook her head. ‘Suicides. Accidents.’

‘The cruise ships don’t want bad publicity. They’ll do almost anything to avoid it. They don’t want people to know the truth.’

Shelby could feel the outrage emanating from Janice – and from pages of the survivor’s accounts. ‘I don’t understand,’ said Shelby. She frowned at Janice. ‘What truth?’

‘That throwing someone off a cruise ship is the perfect crime,’ said Janice.

‘What?’

‘It is. As long as no one sees you do it, it’s foolproof.’

Shelby shuddered and shook her head. ‘Now, wait a minute—’

Janice leaned forward, her weary eyes suddenly fiery. ‘Just think about it. How long was it before the ship stopped, and headed back to search for your daughter?’

Shelby sighed. ‘Hours,’ she admitted.

Janice cradled her large pocketbook on her lap, and nodded sharply. ‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘People think those boats stop and search for people. But unless someone actually sees it happen, it always takes hours before they even turn back. By that time, your loved one is long gone. The bodies are never recovered.’

‘Don’t say that,’ Shelby protested.

‘Sorry. I forgot. You’re still hoping.’

Shelby could hear the pity, bordering on scorn, in the other woman’s voice. She blinked at her and then looked away.

‘Look, I know this is a lot to take in,’ said Janice gently.

‘What do you want from me?’ asked Shelby.

‘First of all, I want you to know that you are not alone. That’s number one.’

‘Well, thank you,’ said Shelby without conviction.

‘And secondly, I want you to join us. I want you to look at our website. Read the other people’s stories. You’ll see what I mean. It doesn’t cost anything. We are just people who were blindsided by a sudden loss. We had our loved ones stolen from us. Their deaths have gone unavenged for far too long.’

Shelby looked at her suspiciously. ‘You want vengeance,’ said Shelby.

Janice grimaced at the word. ‘I prefer the word justice. But we don’t even hope for justice because there is none. We are hoping that there will be power in numbers so we can exert some influence.’

Shelby studied her skeptically. ‘Influence on what?’

‘Well, for one thing, on the way these incidents are investigated. It’s a disgrace the way they respond. As if a person going overboard were a minor annoyance. Where is the urgency to continue the cruise?’

Shelby recognized the painful truth in that question. She had wondered the exact same thing. ‘The captain told me that there are a lot of false alarms on these ships,’ she offered halfheartedly.

‘Yes,’ said Janice. ‘But they are indifferent when it turns out to be an actual disappearance. I’ll tell you why: the cruise lines don’t want anyone to know that people have died on these cruises. It’s bad for their image. You hardly see a thing about these disappearances in the papers.’

‘I noticed that with Chloe,’ Shelby admitted.

‘And you won’t,’ Janice insisted. ‘The cruise lines make sure of that. Their PR departments go into overdrive whitewashing these things.’

Shelby nodded slowly. ‘Looking at these stories . . . it’s so upsetting.’

‘We want to hold them accountable for what happens on these ships. For their lack of security and their inadequate response when a crime is committed. Of course, it’s difficult, because no one is ever prosecuted for these crimes. No body, no crime. No prosecution,’ said Janice.

‘I don’t see what you hope to accomplish,’ said Shelby.

‘We want to attack them where it hurts: in the pocketbook. We want to mount a class-action lawsuit against these giant cruise lines.’

Shelby recoiled. ‘Oh,’ she said. At last she understood. Albert Markson once said that suing was the way that Americans grieved. ‘Well, I’m not interested in suing anybody. I mean, if you can find a way to profit from your loss, all well and good—’

‘Profit from my loss! My husband needs constant care in a nursing home for the stroke he had. And it’s all because of what happened to our daughter on that ship,’ Janice protested. ‘If that’s your idea of profiting from something—’

‘Mrs Pryor, please,’ she said, standing up. ‘I didn’t mean to say that in an offensive way. I understand that you’ve suffered. Believe me. I guess I’m just not thinking in terms of liability at this point.’

Janice leaned forward, her forearms resting on her purse. ‘Do you think these cruise lines should be allowed to get away with this?’

‘Look, it would be a comfort if there was someone else to blame. But if there’s anyone to blame for my daughter’s death, it’s me,’ said Shelby earnestly. ‘I gave her and her husband the cruise as a present. If it weren’t for me, they never would have been on that ship. And if that weren’t enough, I saw my daughter on a regular basis and never knew that she had a drinking problem. But she did. Apparently, she did. She drank too much and she fell overboard. Blaming the cruise ship line is not going to bring her back. Or bring me any satisfaction. All I want is to be left alone with my grief.’

Janice sighed, and stood up as well. She looked at Shelby sadly. ‘Once you read what is on our website you may change your mind. And you should feel free to contact me. My information is all there.’

‘Yes, fine,’ said Shelby.

‘Just one more thing,’ Janice said. ‘You might not want to mention this visit to your son-in-law.’

‘Why not?’ Shelby demanded.

‘Well, he was there on that boat with Chloe. It’s possible that he could be . . . involved.’

At first Shelby was baffled and then, in the next moment, she was furious. Who was this stranger to accuse Rob? She might have had her own, fleeting doubts about her son-in-law, but she had heard him at night, in this house, weeping, when he thought that everyone else was asleep. ‘All right, that’s enough,’ said Shelby. ‘I won’t listen to this.’

Janice stood at the door for a moment. ‘I’m not going to say that you’ll thank me for this visit,’ she said. ‘But I hope you can stop blaming yourself and Chloe, and figure out where the blame really belongs.’

‘Good night, Mrs Pryor,’ said Shelby, closing the door behind the departing woman and leaning against it. She waited until she heard the woman’s footsteps fading, and then she peeked out the front window to be sure she was gone.

Once the car was out of sight, she angrily picked up the sheaf of papers that Janice Pryor had left on the chair and carried them through the house to the recycling bin where she dumped them. She emptied the ice cubes out of Janice Pryor’s glass, and put the glass out of sight in the dishwasher. She felt as if she wanted to remove any trace of the woman and her dismal visit.

Shelby was shaking from head to toe, freezing, despite the mildness of the night. She felt ready to weep, and dirty all over, as if she had been splattered with filth. She had not eaten and now she couldn’t eat because her stomach was in a knot. She couldn’t watch television because she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on a show. Why did I ever open that door, she thought?

There was only one thing she could think of that she wanted to do. She would take a long hot shower. In the shower, she could weep as loudly and as long as she wanted. Even if Rob and Jeremy came home early they wouldn’t hear her. Shelby locked the front door, and the back. But even as she jiggled the handle, to be sure that she was safe, she admitted to herself with a shudder that locking the door was no guarantee of safety. If someone evil wanted to get through, she thought, they could always find a way.