Alvirah’s reaction was remembering the quarrel she and Willy had overheard outside their suite last night between Roger and Yvonne. She wondered if that was only a temporary flare-up. Did Roger’s admission to Yvonne that he was facing twenty years in prison drive him to deliberately go overboard? She was sure Willy was thinking the same thing, but, of course, he wouldn’t say it.
Anna DeMille secretly wished that Roger had waited until later to fall overboard. She had been enjoying the Captain’s party. There had been at least a dozen A-list celebrities there. She had left Devon’s side and drifted over to the rap star Bee Buzz and his wife Tiffany. They had both been very cordial and laughed when she told them her story about not being related to Cecil B. DeMille. That was so unlike the time they turned their backs on her when she tried to start a conversation on the deck. Then, as they all sat down to hear the latest news about Roger Pearson, she had stumbled and Devon Michaelson had put his arm around her to save her from falling. It had felt so good. She had hoped he would never let her go. Later she pretended to stumble again, but this time he didn’t seem to notice. She looked around.
“And now to think, we’re all still dressed up for a party,” she said unnecessarily. “It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
“We never know from one minute to the next, do we?” Alvirah agreed.
Neither Devon nor Ted Cavanaugh bothered to answer her, each busy with his own troubled thoughts.
42
Miles away from the now-vanished ship, Roger Pearson was trying desperately to keep a slow, steady pace as he tread water. Think rationally, he told himself. I’m a very strong swimmer. If I can keep moving, I may have a chance.
He gulped in air as he continued to swim. This is a busy travel lane, he told himself. Another ship may come along. I’ve got to make it. Even if I end up in prison, I don’t care. She pushed me over. She pushed me over. She’ll go to prison too. And if they don’t believe me, there’s one other thing I can do. I can cancel that five-million-dollar policy. That’s probably why she tried to kill me. Well, I’ll fight her with every ounce of strength I have. I need to live to cancel that policy.
Roger then remembered the survival training course he had taken when he was a sixteen-year-old Boy Scout. It had worked in the swimming pool. Could he do it now when it might save his life?
Holding his breath, Roger let himself slip under the water as he struggled to wriggle out of his trousers. Kicking hard to keep afloat, he managed to tie the ends of his pants legs into a double knot. Then he looped the pants over his head with the knot behind his neck. The next, most difficult move was to scoop air and water through the open waistband of the trousers, then hold and twist the waistband to trap the air.
A feeling of real hope washed over him when the air inside the pants formed a pillow that floated about six inches above the water. To test his makeshift flotation device, he stopped kicking and held still. With no effort on his part he was now buoyant in his improvised life jacket.
Although he knew that air would slowly escape and he would have to repeat the process, he was sure he had increased the length of time he could stay afloat without succumbing to exhaustion. Would it be long enough?
A wave washed over him, causing his eyes to fill with salt spray, but he closed them and persevered.
43
It had been necessary to stop Roger from being arrested. After a late afternoon walk on the deck, he had come back to the suite pale and sweaty. “It’s no use,” he had said. “I’ve tried to talk her out of doing an outside audit of her finances, but all I did was make her more suspicious.”
Now that it was done, Yvonne was filled with dread. Roger had sat on the rail for only a few minutes, then said, “Too choppy for this perch.” Just as he tried to move forward, he almost lost his balance. That was when she lunged forward and pushed him with all her might.
Before he fell, his look had been one of surprise. Then as his body began to go down, he screamed, “No, no, no . . .” Her last sight of him was watching his legs and feet go over the rail.
She knew she should have waited longer before telling anyone that he had fallen overboard. It seemed like only minutes before the Captain and other personnel began to search the ship looking for him.
It was only then that she remembered that Roger was a strong swimmer and that he had been on the swim team in college. Suppose they found him alive? There was no way that she could make him believe that she had accidentally pushed him when she meant to help him down off the railing.
The consequences for her of Roger being rescued were so overpowering that she was trembling and shaking when the doctor gave her a tranquilizer. Brenda offered to wrap a blanket around her as she sat on the sofa in the living room of the suite.
It was time to get rid of Brenda, who with uncharacteristic sympathy had also offered to sleep on the couch.
As Brenda was holding the blanket, they could hear a loud knock on the door across the hall. A young crewmember yelled through the door. “Excuse me. We are looking for a Mr. Roger Pearson. Is he in this room?”
They heard a faint “no” from the room’s occupant. “Thank you,” the crewmember said as he moved to the next door.
Brenda turned to Yvonne. “Am I helping you by being with you or would you rather be alone?”
“Oh, thank you, I guess I’ll be all right alone. I may have to get used to being on my own. But thank you again, and I will be all right.”
When Brenda was finally gone, Yvonne got up and poured a stiff scotch on the rocks. She tilted the glass in a silent tribute to Roger. You’d have committed suicide before you faced twenty years in prison, she thought. She wondered how soon she would be getting the five million dollars in insurance money. Probably within a week after she was back in New York. If Roger did siphon off a lot of money from Lady Em, where was it? Did he have secret bank accounts he hadn’t told her about? Well, one thing for sure. If she were ever questioned by the FBI, she was sure that she could convince them that she knew nothing about Roger’s finances.
With that comforting thought the self-made widow decided to treat herself to a second, generous serving of Chivas Regal scotch.
44
“Come in,” Fairfax said after Security Chief Saunders knocked on his door.
“Did you find anything?”
“Nothing, Captain. No one reported seeing him over the last two hours. I am confident that he is not on the ship.”
“Which means he probably went overboard at the time his wife said he did.”
“I’m afraid so, sir.”
Fairfax paused. “The Pearsons were in a cabin on the ultra deck. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“So that means when he hit the water he had fallen at least sixty feet. What do you think about his chances of survival?”