Murder [and Baklava] (A European Voyage #1)- Blake Pierce Page 0,17

me booked into the Schoenberg Suite.”

Then with a smirk he added, “I’m sure I’m the only person who wanted it.”

It took London a second to get the joke. She’d never listened to much Schoenberg, but she hadn’t liked what she’d heard. It was too strange and dissonant for her tastes. She figured many other people probably felt the same way.

But maybe Cyrus Bannister liked things to be strange and dissonant.

He said to London, “I couldn’t help noticing your altercation with that woman. I’m afraid she’s going to be, shall we say, high maintenance. I hope she won’t give you too much trouble.”

“Oh, no trouble at all,” London said diplomatically.

Then, glancing toward the boat, she added, “I don’t know what to think of her dog, though.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, he doesn’t seem to like me. He keeps growling at me.”

Cyrus Bannister’s lips twisted into a peculiar grin.

“I happen to know a few things about dogs,” he said. “And I can tell you for a fact—he wasn’t growling at you.” Peering closely at London, he added, “He was growling at her. Every time she bumped him around in that bag, he let out a growl. He doesn’t like being in there.”

London didn’t know quite what to say in reply. She finished her greeting, and Cyrus Bannister headed up the gangway, followed by his luggage.

As London got ready to greet the next passenger, she thought about the woman and her dog and how Mr. Bannister had just described her as “high maintenance.”

Sounds about right, London thought. She hoped the maintenance was taken care of for now.

But somewhere in her gut, she sensed that this wasn’t the end of complications involving Lillis Klimowski and Sir Reginald Taft.

*

London soon felt positively besieged.

She kept smiling and repeating her greeting over and over again:

“Welcome to Epoch World Cruise Lines’ first tour of the beautiful Danube.”

But she often barely got the words out before a boarding passenger made some sort of request, complaint, or demand.

“Your porter is getting our luggage mixed …”

“I’ll need a folded international newspaper waiting outside my stateroom door every morning promptly before …”

“I’ll need coffee delivered at …”

“I’ll need brandy delivered at …”

“I’ll need …”

The demands came in a seemingly endless litany. It didn’t help that most of the one hundred passengers booked for this tour had shown up as soon as boarding had opened. Things might have been easier for London if they’d straggled in at various times during the afternoon.

She was beginning to feel a bit dizzy. What had that last one asked for? London wasn’t completely sure what she had just promised a young man for his single stateroom. Additional pillows, or was he the one who wanted …? Well, she’d check her notes later.

Most of the passengers’ demands weren’t unreasonable and weren’t even unusual. She couldn’t blame them for wanting to have things their way. After all, her job was to make them happy.

But there are just so many of them, she kept thinking.

She’d never faced this kind of an onslaught as a cruise ship hostess. In those days, she’d only had to organize activities for specific groups after everybody was settled in. But she reminded herself that Amy Blassingame had said she’d take care of all these specific demands. At least London wasn’t going to have to follow up on every detail.

Still, London hadn’t felt this harried since many years ago, when she’d worked as a waitress while going to community college. She only hoped she didn’t look as frantic as she had back then during lunch and dinner rushes.

The afternoon flashed by like a series of jerky movie scenes, with smash cuts from one to the next. She felt relieved to get the final passenger in the line on board, but there was still more work to do.

She hurried around the ship alerting various crew members to their new duties concerning luggage, newspapers, coffee, and a host of other demands the passengers had made. Finally she looked at her to-do list and saw that everything was checked off—at least for the moment. She took the list to the front desk and told the receptionist to put it in Amy Blassingame’s box.

I did it! she thought.

At least she hoped she had. It had all gone so fast that it seemed like a blur.

London shook off her concerns and headed up to the open Rondo deck for a welcome breath of fresh, late afternoon air. Some passengers were chatting happily as they wandered the sundeck, and a couple of others had