Welcome back to Episode 2 of Curated Chaos! Half-way done!

Chapter 4

Joey caught up to the older pair as they finally paused outside of what he presumed was the so-called Victora’s cabin. Besides being Annette’s aunt, he didn’t know much else about her, aside from the fact that she had apparently lied about Annette being onboard.

Strauss pounded on the door, and Joey half-worried the reinforced door would be rocked right off the hinges. The expression on the wealthy man’s face was twisted in anger, pain, and overwhelming regret, and it seemed the innocent door was to be his scapegoat.

After a few minutes, the door finally opened, revealing an annoyed woman in a silken robe. Her face was drawn in a severe frown and dark brunette hair tumbled down her shoulders in carefully cultivated waves. Joey struggled to see the similarity between the woman in the picture and the one standing before them. While the mother and daughter pair had been short and curvaceous, this woman was built more like a runway model. She was tall and almost sickly slender. She was all sharp angles, and her bones were clearly visible through the excessive amount of skin she was revealing.

“What do you want,” the woman snapped, then blinked at Strauss in confusion when she finally recognized the man standing in her doorway. The frown melted away, replaced by a simpering smile and a silken voice, “Corbin? How nice of you to come by to visit!” She stepped aside and gestured for Strauss to enter her room.

Strauss strode into the room and nearly growled, “Where is my daughter, Miss Fontaine?”

“Please, Corbin, we’re practically family. Call me Victoria,” Victoria said. Her eyes were glued to Strauss, and she had yet to notice Geenie and Joey following the man further into her suite.

“My. Daughter.”

Victoria sighed dramatically, pressing an elegantly manicured hand to her chest, “I told you, Corbin, Annette refused to come. She’s just been so busy with schoolwork. Honestly, that girl. All she does is cause me worry, while she’s off enjoying her college life without a single care for her dear aunt.”

“Call her,” Strauss said.

Victoria blinked, “Pardon me?”

“I said, call her.”

“I wouldn’t want to disturb her,” Victoria said, shaking her head. “She has better things to do than chat with her old auntie.”

“I didn’t ask for excuses, I told you to Call. Her. Now.”

Victoria’s frown made a rapid return, “No.”

“Fine. I’ll call her. What’s her number?”

“What’s come over you, Corbin? You didn’t care to be in her life for all these years, why are you suddenly demanding to talk to her now?”

Strauss reeled back like he’d been struck, hurt in his eyes. He opened his mouth to speak-

“Oh my, what a lovely hat!” Geenie cut into the conversation. In her hands, she held a white sunhat. The broad brim was made of delicate white lace. Very similar to the lace on the dress Annette had been wearing when Joey had found her that morning.

Victoria froze for a moment, glaring at Geenie. “Who are you and why are you holding my hat?”

“I was just admiring the lacework. It’s rare to see handmade lace these days, though the design is a tad amateur. It must have cost quite a bit.” Geenie said.

“It was just some cheap thing I bought at the gift shop. Now give it back!” Victoria marched forward and snatched the hat out of Geenie’s wrinkled hands.

“The gift shop has a lot of different hats, but I don’t recognize that one,” Joey said.

“Well, that’s where I got it!”

“It’s fascinating,” Geenie said, still gazing at the hat in Victoria’s hands. “I recall seeing a dress that bore a remarkable similarity to the pattern used in that hat. So similar one might call it the same. As if the same hand had made them to be worn together.”

Victoria’s face paled and she shoved the hat into an open luggage bag. “This is my room and I insist you all leave at once! Going through my things and traipsing all about after barging in without an invitation. This is completely unacceptable!” She stomped a slippered foot on the carpet. “Out!”

At that moment, a sharp knock came at the door.

Victoria glared murderously at the three of them, “What, did you invite more people?! Are you planning to hold a party in my room!?”

Strauss shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers, even as Joey moved to open the door.

“Whoever it is, tell them to go away!” Victoria yelled.

“Hello?” Joey said, putting on the most polite smile he could manage as the harridan shrieked behind him.

“Can you please keep it down in there? I don’t care what you’re all doing, but this is the second day in a row that that harpy’s screeching has woken my little boy right after we got him to bed. This is ridiculous!” a man said, looking tired and anxious. “This is supposed to be my vacation, and I have to listen to that crazy bitch squawking through the walls and my wife complaining about it non-stop.” The man said, glaring at Victoria.

“I’m very sorry for the disturbance, sir. We’ll take care of it,” Joey’s customer service smile brightened another watt as he straightened his uniform’s tie.

As if realizing Joey wasn’t another passenger, but a crewmember, the man nodded and brightened a bit. “Good, good.” Right as the man went to leave, he paused and whispered, “Would it help move things along if I told you my wife and I overheard that woman arguing with a young woman last night?”

Joey’s eyes widened at that, “How did you know it was a young woman?”

“We saw her leave the room, running away in tears and clutching a fresh bruise on her cheek.”

“Do you remember what she looked like?”

The man shrugged, “Young, blonde.” He thought for a moment, “I think she was wearing white?”

At that, Joey nodded quickly, “Yeah. That will help a lot. Thank you. And I’ll see if we can’t get you something for your patience and understanding.”

The man grinned and nodded, “Happy to help! Good luck with that one. She’s a real piece of work!”

Joey nodded and closed the door as the man returned to his room.

“I’ll have room service send them a bottle of champagne,” Strauss said as Joey returned to Geenie’s side. “As for you,” he said, looking straight at Victoria, “I believe you have some explaining to do. And it had better be good.”

Victoria glared at Strauss, all semblance of flirtation gone. “It was none of your business. Just some little brat demanding something that didn’t belong to her, so I put her in her place.”

“That brat was my daughter!”

Victoria gulped.

“My daughter was onboard my ship and you hid it from me! And now, she dead!” Strauss’s voice had dipped low, barely audible but filled with seething rage. “After you hit her and drove her from her own room!”

“This isn’t her room! That little stowaway bitch had the audacity to follow me! Kept asking me questions and demanding I tell her who her f…” Victoria froze, snapping her mouth shut as if realizing what she was about to say.

“Tell her who… what? Who her father is?” Strauss said, shaking with rage. “Are you telling me that all this time, she didn’t know?”

“Allegra didn’t tell her, so why should I?”

Strauss’s entire body slumped, and he sat down heavily on the edge of a chair. He suddenly looked very tired and more than a little lost, “Allegra didn’t tell her? She hated me that much?”

Victoria gathered herself, even as Strauss drained. Her back straightened and she sharply adjusted the lapels of her robe. “Why wouldn’t she? You abandoned both of them! Didn’t even bother to visit when she was slowly wasting away.”

“Allie drove me away!”

“After you ran away when she told you she was pregnant!”

Strauss flinched as if hit, his eyes dropping to the floor and he held his head in his hands.

“She did you a favor, do you really think the girl would have forgiven you for abandoning her? For pretending she didn’t exist?!”

“What about the letters I sent?”

“As if letters can make up for not having a father!”

“Mr. Strauss,” Geenie suddenly said, interrupting the man’s self-flagellation. “You said you sent money? I assume you mean to say you sent child support?”

Strauss nodded. “Of course. I might be a pathetic excuse as a father, but I wouldn’t let my own daughter live in squalor.”

“What about finances for her education?”

Confused, Strauss nodded again. “When she was born I set up a trust. Allegra had control over it until Annette turned twenty-five. It was for education or anything else she might need that the monthly support wouldn’t cover.”

“And your monthly payments stopped when she turned eighteen?” Joey chimed in, suddenly realizing where Geenie was headed.

The distraught man shook his head, “Of course not. I intended to keep sending an allowance until she graduated. What does this have to do with anything?”

“How old is…was she?”

Strauss paused for a moment, thinking. “She should be 24, almost 25, I think?”

“Almost at the age when she could access her trust herself.”

Joey and Geenie shared a look, before the older woman spoke, “If you’ve been providing so generously for your daughter, then why did she need to stowaway on the ship? Why did she have only a single change of clothes? Why was she wearing a dress I suspect she had made herself?”

Strauss froze in realization. His head snapped up and he stared at Geenie, before turning to look at Victoria.

The woman took a step back from the intensity in his gaze. She brought her hands up, as if she was fending him off and shook her head wildly. “It’s not my fault! S-she was awful. Spoiled. Crying all the time! I couldn’t handle it!”

“What did you do?” Strauss said, rising to his feet and approaching Victoria, his hands clenched at his sides.

“I thought she would be better off somewhere else! So… I…”

“You abandoned her!?”

“It’s not like what I did was worse than you! I’m just her aunt. You’re her father!”

“What happened to the support Mr. Strauss was sending each month?” Geenie said.

“And the trust? If you were her legal guardian then…” Joey added.

“I put up with the whining and crying of both of them for years! They owed me! I just took what I deserved!”

Strauss grabbed Victoria by the wrist and started dragging her to the door of the cabin.

“Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing? Let go of me!”

“Shut up!” Strauss snarled. “You think I’m going to let the crazy bitch who killed my daughter stay on my ship!?” Strauss let out a half-crazed laugh.

Joey rushed to stop his boss. “Sir, we don’t know she killed Annette. We should escort her to the brig. Even if she didn’t, she embezzled money meant for your daughter. Once we make port, we can hand her over to the police.”

For a moment, Joey feared he had overstepped, that Strauss was going to attack him. The man was literally shaking with rage. Then he sighed and nodded, pushing Victoria toward Joey.

“Take her to the brig. I… I need to go meet my daughter,” Strauss’s voice cracked as he choked on the words.

Joey nodded. “Of course, sir. If we find out anything else, you’ll be the first to know.”

Strauss barely nodded. He shuffled from the room, his anger worn away by regret and sorrow.

“Will you both get out of my room now?!” Victoria snapped, drawing Joey’s attention back to herself.

“You’re under suspicion of murder. We have a witness that says you assaulted said murder victim and have admitted to embezzling who knows how much money meant for her. Even if you didn’t kill her, you’re going to the brig.” Joey wrapped a hand around Victoria’s upper arm and began to escort her from the room.

“You’re going to regret this!”

Joey sighed, hearing the thumping of Geenie’s cane following along behind them.

I already do, he thought to himself.