DRESSED TO KEEL
by Candy Calvert
ISBN: 0-7387-0879-8
Publisher: Midnight Ink
Release Date: May 2006

Don't ask ER nurse Darcy Cavanaugh why she's climbing the gangway of a cruise ship--she'll mutter something about job burnout, Firefighter Sam, or that unfortunate incident with an R-rated peanut butter sandwich. The Fall Foliage Tour with champagne, melting wedges of Brie and well-stuffed tuxedoes could mean time to re-think her career, get her life together and plant her Jimmy Choos firmly back on the ground. Only trouble is, everything under Darcy's feet is moving, cruising full speed ahead toward disaster.

When mini-strokes, jewel theft, and a dubious Halloween suicide point a finger of suspicion at her best friend, Darcy dons a mermaid suit and fights a tidal wave of trouble to defend her; stowing clues in her cleavage, torching socks in the shower and even dangling from a lighthouse cliff.

She can handle the flotsam of eccentric suspects and victims: Prom Princess, Yoga Nazi, Queen Bee, Miss Bliss and the Phantom Dancer, but that gorgeous Dance Host, Luke Skyler, makes her dash for a lifejacket---why is the man so blasted baffling? Are his arms a safe berth or leading her to Tango with a killer? When Spa treatments turn deadly, a lifeboat careens overhead and Darcy is threatened with her own sexy lingerie, it looks like she may be next to walk the plank.

DRESSED TO KEEL
copyright© 2006 Candy Calvert

Chapter One

The cruise brochure promised confetti, melting wedges of Brie, well-stuffed tuxedoes and silver buckets of Dom Perignon. Glamorous, right? You bet. The Fall Foliage Tour would be a quiet time to mull things over and re-think my muddled life while sailing from New York to Canada and back. Boston, Bar Harbor, Halifax and Quebec City, it all sounded wonderful. But the fact was that--right then, right that minute--I was basically fighting to stay upright on a treadmill surrounded by miles of ominous ocean. More than weird. Like planting my pink Nikes on some sweaty, revolving techno island. And darned dangerous too. Champagne was the last thing on my mind. Jeez--was that a whale?

I let go of one handgrip to push a sopping strand of my reddish hair back toward a ponytail that was starting to frizz like a Chia Pet. My fingers trembled as I glanced toward the huge window again. I was used to dodging doggy doo and spiky-haired skateboarders when I jogged--no biggie--but a rubber lipped, blow hole-topped, Pinocchio-eating whale? Unbelievable. God’s truth, I should’ve fallen flat on my face and been catapulted across the ship’s gym when the thing surfaced near the window in front of me. But I kept running, like the relentless rhythm of my nurse’s clogs across the ER floors back home. Sweating and puffing and getting absolutely nowhere. Nowhere. Career and treadmill both. And if that weren’t enough, now there was a teeny woman in a zebra print leotard calling my name and peppering me with questions. She was about my grandma’s age, I’d guess. That bingo champion, Edie Greenbaum. I’d been trying to avoid her since before Monstro surfaced, but it wasn’t working. Her zebra stripes shimmered in my peripheral vision like I was wearing 3-D glasses. I was getting queasy. Maybe if I pretended that I was engrossed in the TV, she’d go away.

“Miss Cavanaugh . . . Darcy? Yoo hoo?”

No. I’d been trying to be polite but there was a limit. This cruise was supposed to be about hanging out with my best friend, eating great food . . . okay, and maybe making an ass of myself doing that Chicken Dance in the Lobster Disco last night. I should never, under any circumstances, drink rum. But I was still entitled to some shred of dignity, right?

“Well, dear?” Edie squinted at me through rhinestone-trimmed bifocals and smiled, tipping her pinkish blonde head backward in order to see my face. At five-eight I would tower over her by at least a foot, even if I were standing on the floor beside her. There was a lipstick speckle on her front tooth. Or maybe some of that incredible cherry tart from the lunch buffet.

“Mmm.” I ran my tongue over my teeth, smiled, and then glanced back up at the TV like I hadn’t really heard her. The ship’s channel was running the info-mercial about protecting your valuables, a throaty Elizabeth Taylor impersonator loading jewels into a cabin safe. “Ladies, give him the key to your heart, but never ever the combination to your safe.” It was the third time they’d run it since I arrived in the gym. A bit much. But still, there had been all that buzz about some shipboard purse snatchings, and I’d bet that was what Edie wanted to gossip about.

I raised my fingers to my neck and counted my heartbeat for six seconds, multiplied by ten and compared it to the treadmill’s digital display. One hundred-sixty? Could that be true?

“Excuse me Darcy, but I was asking what brings a pretty young lady like you onto a cruise ship full of old folks?”

“What? Oh, pardon me--whoops.” I grabbed for the handgrips as the ship rolled and dropped beneath me like a watery earthquake. My gaze darted to the expanse of Plexiglas and the dark ocean beyond. A whale couldn’t tip a ship over, could it?

Edie Greenbaum patted her cotton candy hair and grinned up at me; wiry little legs splaying wide as she hunkered down and swayed with the wave motion like a salty merchant marine. Her perfectly lined eyes twinkled behind her glasses and she batted blue-tipped lashes.

“First cruise? You’ll get used to it, sweetie. Same with that awful roar of the cabin toilets. Won’t really suck your tushie in. Relax. It takes time,” she patted her zebra striped thighs, “to develop your sea legs.”

I tried to smile. “Of course. No problem. I’m sorry, but did you . . . ask me . . . something, before?” My words came out in short puffs even though I’d slowed my jog to half-pace. I was barely thirty years old and, except for some therapeutic macaroni and cheese binges, I was far too fit to be winded like this. What was wrong?

The woman cackled and tapped a jewel-studded fingernail against my hipbone. “My husband, Bernie--you know, he works in the show? Well, we have a bet going with a few of the other passengers about why a lovely young thing like you would be traveling with a crowd of Florida retirees.” She clucked and tugged at my waistband. “I mean look at you, dear. What is that little waist of yours, all of twenty-five inches?” Her gaze climbed, eyes squinting like she was checking the odds on a racetrack tote board, until her eyes fixed on my neon-striped Lycra tank. Checking out my breasts. “Genuine articles?”

Omigod. I coughed and stepped sideways on the treadmill to avoid the woman’s probing fingers. The waistband stretched wide and my brows rose in disbelief. I was being felt up by a Munchkin! Where was my best friend when I needed her?

“Hey, Edie. Easy there.” My voice climbed as her grip tightened.

“And those coppery curls, peachy skin and green eyes,” she oozed. “Like a wild Irish rose, I told my Bernie.” She sighed and winked up at me, lowering her voice like a conspirator. “I’m betting on love, a broken heart. You’ve gone to sea to forget some scrumptious man?” She belched, exuding a waft of garlic. “Excuse me, dear, midnight buffet. Absolutely delicious. So why are you here?”

I pressed a fingertip to the digital controls and felt the treadmill begin to slow. Enough was enough. Time to tell my cover story again. About why I’d grabbed the chance to take this cruise, go anywhere for that matter. The treadmill slowed to a halt as the ship rolled once more and my stomach lurched. I’d probably get eaten by a whale for what I was about to do. But what the heck? I was feeling more than a little reckless lately.

“It was pretty much the peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” I said with a slow smile. Loving it.

Edie raised her precisely drawn brows. “What?”

“Why I came on the cruise. It was the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. White bread, trimmed crust . . .” I paused, enjoying the moment, “and that penis of course.”

I watched Edie Greenbaum’s grin dissolve and her mouth form a tight little “O.” The woman tilted her head like a cat with ear mites and tapped her fingernail against a tiny plastic hearing aid. She let go of my Danskins and staggered a few steps backward, yanking the appliance out to blow on it.

“Excu-uuse me?” She shouted, whining through her nose. Her eyes were wide and her hand was over her heart like she’d just heard the whispered confession of Lorena Bobbit.

I closed my eyes, shook my head and sighed. Great. Now I felt guilty. It was the truth though. Well, part of it.

Maybe only another nurse could understand, but there comes a day of reckoning, of self-evaluation. When, after seven years of living in Gumby-green scrubs and feeling a stethoscope smack you in the boobs every time you move, that you start to wonder if there isn’t something more. Ann Taylor suits, Prada pumps, a buttery leather attaché case and Notebook--doing paperwork on a real desk instead of the top of a Biohazard waste bin. For me the catalyst had been a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

It had been like any other day in the emergency department triage office--fevers, kidney stones and lawnmower injuries, the usual. And really, psychiatric patients were only too common. It must have been my frame of mind that day. The last straw piled onto a growing haystack of career doubts.

I’d read the patient’s chief complaint on the sign-in sheet: “Rash.”

Suitable for the clinic, I’d thought as I called his name through the microphone. It took forever for the kinky-haired man to walk across the crowded waiting room, maybe because he ambled like a pigeon, bobbing his head with each knock-kneed step. So slow. I’d smiled and waved my hand to encourage him when I noticed that he was clutching a handful of his khakis. At the crotch. Oh je-ez.

“Got a rash and maybe some bugs,” he mumbled, his face solemn and his fist as tight as an outfielder with a last-inning-last-out fly ball.

“Where?” I asked, wishing I didn’t have to, knowing I did, and wondering for the very first time what it felt like to be a bank teller.

“Here.” He answered.

I was fully prepared to see a penis. That wasn’t the problem. In my career as a nurse I’d probably seen hundreds of them, all shapes and sizes and colors, and for that matter had heard all the ridiculous euphemisms.

“I’ve probably seen more tally whackers than a hooker,” I’d announced after nervously downing two dirty martinis on a blind date last year. The sweaty-palmed little CPA, too short and with no sense of humor, never called me back of course. My track record with men is pretty pathetic.

Anyway, it wasn’t that I was unprepared to see a penis that day. It was just that I wasn’t ready to see the half-eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the hand that covered the khaki-clad organ. White bread, no crust and molded by proximity to the shape of the painful part. And worse--what still made me shudder--was to watch my patient raise the warm, crumpled sandwich to his lips and take a bite. Ughhh.

I was fairly sure that as a bank teller--or even an orthotic sales representative, which was my only real alternative--I would never have to witness that phenomenon again.

I looked over at the composite horror and confusion on Edie Greenbaum’s face and sighed. Peanut butter and a demented flasher? Total lie. Sure it happened, but nurses didn’t leave the profession because of that kind of stuff. Not in a heartbeat. Those tales were the war stories, badges of courage and hands down the finest topping for any greasy pizza devoured on a holiday night shift. Those things didn’t make nurses leave the profession. The truth was so much worse. And it was exactly why I was here in the middle of the Atlantic, and at the mercy of whales, re-thinking my future.

The truth. I ran my tongue across my lip and tasted salt, then shook my head. Pick up a newspaper. The nursing shortage was getting some press, but would people ever really get it? What did they see; long waits in emergency rooms, re-routing of ambulances and an alarming rise in insurance costs? Tip of the iceberg. You had to walk in a nurse’s shoes to really understand the effects of double shifts, short-staffing, mandatory overtime and patched-together medical teams with more and more responsibility for sicker and sicker patients. To understand the fatal effects. I squeezed my eyes shut. Like lying awake at night, knowing I’m responsible for an old woman dying alone on a hallway gurney. I exhaled slowly and pushed the image from my mind.

And then there was Sam--though I’d never admit it and let Edie Greenbaum win a bet--to clear from of my mind. Firefighter Sam.

There was only a smidgen of ache when I thought of him now, and much less than the three-alarm burst of anger. But still there was a lingering stir of my senses, the image of enormous shoulders, curly hair, dimpled grin and the God-knows-why enticing memory of musky cologne and smoke. Oh brother. Sam and that R-rated sandwich, two perfect reasons to cruise.

Edie crammed the hearing aid back into her ear and tugged at my waistband once more. “My Lord, dear, did you say something about genitals? Sandwiches? You were assaulted by a chef?”

“No, no.” I flashed her an innocent smile and said a silent apology to my grandmother. “I said that I’d had a . . . food reaction. Yes. To, uh, peanut butter. Common allergy. And actually, I’m here to keep my best friend company. We usually work together back in California, but she spends her vacation time aboard cruise ships as a Sick Bay Nurse. Her name is--”

“Marie Whitley.” A husky voice announced behind us. “And, sure, Edie’s my buddy.”

We turned to see Marie salute us and grin, an unlit cheroot waggling between her teeth. Her gray eyes glittered from beneath a fringe of dark bangs and a nicotine patch clung like a barnacle to the side of her neck.

A snort escaped through my nose as the full effect of her uniform hit me once again. In the seven years of our friendship, it was the closest thing to a dress I’d ever seen Marie wear. Such as it was--the cruise line’s prim middy, navy culottes and knee socks. A slightly chunky, almost-forty woman in a uniform fit for parochial school; I guess it proved how badly she wanted to sail. But, of course, she’d added a touch of her own. A sailor hat, complete with silver embroidered anchor, was secured over her short curls and tipped rakishly over the lushly lashed eye winking at Edie Greenbaum.

Edie giggled and then hugged Marie before sauntering away to join the assembled Yoga group. I heaved a sigh of relief, then pulled the terry band off my ponytail and patted it against my forehead. I was clammy with sweat all of a sudden.

“You know Edie the Snoop?” I asked, lifting my fingertips once again to my neck. It still felt like my heart was pounding. Marie nodded her head, dark brows rising.

“Insulin dependent diabetic, but not nearly as interesting as being sexually assaulted by a chef. Pastry I hope.” Marie pulled off her sailor hat and smacked it against my shoulder. “What was that about, Cavanaugh? I can’t take you anywhere?”

“Nothing, I . . . oh no, look.” I nodded my head toward the Yoga group who had begun to twitter and gather around the man sitting on a weight bench. “Can you believe that? It’s The Gigolo.”

“Dance Host.”

“Whatever.”

I watched as Luke Skyler slid out of his white karate robe, which was immediately and lovingly folded by one of the Yoga Ladies. My face grew warm and I told myself that it was anger and nothing more. Unbelievable, the man had no body hair. Okay, a few tufts, kind of golden and downy . . . I bit my lip and glared as he beamed at the gathered group, his teeth flashing white against his tan. I ran my tongue across my lips. “It’s revolting how those old women behave around him.”

“You’re drooling.”

“No, I’m . . .” Luke lifted the barbell, bicep bulging, and my voice dropped an octave, “not. And the guy’s pathetic--maybe actually dangerous. ”

“Oh for crissake. You’re not still obsessed with the idea that he’s trying to fleece those women, are you?”

“Has he asked you to dance?”

Marie wrinkled her brows and shot me a look.

“Okay,” I conceded, “but I’m willing to bet that if you wore a drop-dead stunning emerald necklace, he wouldn’t care that you’re gay.”

I felt the ship drop from beneath me again and my head floated, fluffy and weightless. Man, that was a bad one. Why wasn’t Marie feeling it? How did she stand so still?

I grabbed onto the treadmill’s handrails and felt my heart pound in my throat like a jackhammer as my legs went watery-weak. The room turned hazy, dark. What happened to the lights? I can’t see.

“Hey, Darcy . . . what's wrong?”

Marie’s voice floated through fathoms of water and I waved my arms, paddling through the dark liquid to hear, but it was no use. I was sinking. The matting of the treadmill, dark and rubbery as the broad side of a whale, rose toward me and slammed into my cheekbone as everything went black.