Part 5 of Episode 2 of Curated Chaos!

Chapter 5

“Jimmy! What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” Breck yelled as Joey marched Victoria into a cell that a misbehaving drunk had recently vacated.

The floor still sported a few spots of vomit that the janitor had missed in his haste to escape from Breck’s rampage. Victoria tried to dodge around the mess in her designer slippers, and glared at Joey through the bars, no doubt plotting his imminent demise. She should be thanking him instead, Joey thought. Otherwise, she might have ended up being thrown overboard by a vengeful father.

“Mr. Strauss’s orders, sir,” Joey said. “She’s under suspicion of attacking a VIP.” Joey wasn’t sure if Strauss wanted his connection to the deceased Annette getting out, and telling Breck was a surefire way for everyone onboard to know before dawn. The man had no concept of ‘indoor voice’.

“What VIP? Why haven’t I heard about this?” Breck bellowed.

“Mr. Strauss would prefer to keep it quiet until things settle down. And it’s better to protect the privacy of the VIP.”

Behind him, he heard Victoria’s snort, as he called her niece a VIP.

“How did you get so close with the boss,” Breck said, eyeing Joey with suspicion.

“I just happened to be nearby when he needed assistance, sir.”

“Arnold,” a man said. His white lab coat flapped as he strode into the security office, revealing an expensive suit that had seen better days beneath. “I have a preliminary report on the girl.”

“We’re not done yet, kid. Stick around,” Breck said, before greeting the new arrival, “Dr. Ashcroft, are you done with the girl?” Joey was shocked to hear the level of deference in Breck’s voice as he spoke to the ship’s doctor.

“Well, the body suffered extensive damage from the brawl this morning. It was a terrible mess to sort through. But I believe I’ve located the cause of death.”

Dr. Ashcroft adjusted his glasses up the bridge of his nose, dark eyes darting across the office, taking in Breck, Joey, and the other security officers processing the release of some of the morning’s rioters. He paused, startled, as he spotted Victoria in the cell, but quickly fixed his expression and moved on.

“The official cause of death,” Dr. Ashcroft began, “was severe internal bleeding caused by lacerations to the kidneys.”

Breck grimaced, “Any chance it was accidental?”

“Highly unlikely. I located two puncture marks on her back.”

“She was stabbed?”

“That does appear to be the obvious conclusion, yes,” Dr. Ashcroft said. “Unfortunately, I could not find anything else helpful due to the state of the body.”

Breck growled, “I’m gonna make the scumbag who started that riot regret it. I’ve been running around all day trying to clean up that mess, and now this!”

“My office has likewise been overrun. I hardly had time to address the corpse in my office, with all the injuries that needed tending to. I haven’t dealt with such a disaster since I was an intern during my ER rotation. This is hardly why I agreed to serve as a doctor on a cruise ship,” Dr. Ashcroft sniffed with more than a hint of contempt. He cast a confused glance at Victoria, who was watching the pair with barely concealed rage.

Joey’s brow furrowed as he watched the exchange. There seemed to be some bad blood between Victoria and Dr. Ashcroft, but Joey had no idea why. The level of anger he saw on Victoria’s face was beyond even what she had directed at himself when he shoved her into the cell. She looked positively murderous. Even Dr. Ashcroft appeared taken aback by the fury in her eyes and he quickly looked away.

“Are the two of you acquainted?” Geenie suddenly asked.

Joey almost jumped, having forgotten the woman had followed him to the brig. She had an unnerving ability to blend into the background until just the right moment to startle everyone, including him. The smirk she flashed at him said she was perfectly aware of it too.

“Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?” Breck boomed, rounding on the old woman, his eyes narrowed.

“Oh, no one important at all. Just a bit of an amateur detective you know,” Geenie said. “What I believe is more pertinent, is that it seems our recently apprehended Ms. Fontaine is familiar with this fine doctor here.”

“You’re damn right I know him,” Victoria hissed. No longer concerned about the filth covering the jail cell floor, she stomped to the bars, “He’s the man who murdered my sister.”

Everyone in the room froze.

Joey glanced between Victoria and Dr. Ashcroft, confused. “I thought your sister passed away from an illness?”

“She was sick, but that’s not what killed her. Is it Dr. Ashcroft?”

Dr. Ashcroft paled. A shaky hand adjusted his glasses, and he turned away from Victoria. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, miss. I still have a lot of work waiting for me. Breck, if you need anything further, you know where to find me.”

“Wait,” Joey said suddenly, “What about the murder weapon?”

Dr. Ashcroft shrugged, still walking out the door, “Something thin and sharp. Could be anything.”

Joey turned to Geenie and caught the older woman frowning thoughtfully as she watched Dr. Ashcroft’s back disappear.

“Well, let us take a look at that report then, shall we?” Geenie said, snapping back to the matter at hand. She gazed up at Breck, her fingers tap-tap-tapping on the owl-shaped head of her cane.

“I don’t know who the hell you think you are, lady, but this is none of your business,” the chief of security said.

“Evangeline Porter,” Geenie said as if that settled the matter.

“And acquaintance of the Strauss family,” Joey said quickly, watching as Breck’s rapidly shrinking fuse suddenly flickered out.

“Strauss,” Breck said, “As in-“

“As in the owner of this vessel, yeah.”

Joey watched as Breck struggled to bite back the retort on the tip of his tongue. Still gritting his teeth, the large man finally said, “I’ll need to confirm that before I can share anything.”

“We’ve just come from their cabin,” Geenie said, “Mr. Strauss is indisposed at the moment; however, I believe Mrs. Strauss should be able to verify the veracity of young Joey’s claims of my familiarity with the family.”

Breck disappeared into his private office and anxiously emerged barely a minute later, Annette’s autopsy report still clutched in his oversized hands. “The dead girl was the boss’s daughter?” The muscle-bound man’s booming voice echoed through the entire, overcrowded cabin.

It was the first time Joey realized how noisy the room had been, up until that moment, when everything suddenly went silent. Joey could practically feel the attention of everyone in the room shift in their direction; from the handful of belligerent rioters who had yet to be processed and released, to the half-dozen security guards who were filtering through the paperwork that the morning’s disaster had caused.

“Perhaps this is a conversation best had in less public accommodations,” Geenie smoothly interrupted Breck’s burgeoning nervous breakdown.

“Right,” Breck said, looking somewhat shellshocked, and led them to his office to talk.

“Perhaps we could visit the deceased in person? We may spot something the beleaguered Dr. Ashcroft didn’t. Certainly, the poor man looked quite overwhelmed.”

Breck nodded in agreement, all his will to argue quashed by the realization that not only did he let his boss’s daughter die under his watch, but he allowed her body to be mutilated by an unruly mob.

“Wait a minute!” Victoria called at their backs. “Is it really her? Annette is dead?”

“Based on all the evidence we’ve seen, yes. The deceased is Annette Fontaine,” Geenie confirmed.

Victoria stepped away from the bars and sat down heavily on the thin cot as her legs collapsed beneath her, “I can’t believe it.”

“What does it matter to you? You abandoned her,” Joey said, eyeing the seemingly distraught woman with suspicion.

Victoria glared at Joey and snapped, “You don’t have to like someone to love them.”

Geenie hummed at that, then thumped her cane on the floor, “Quite so. Though your breed of love leaves something to be desired.”

“I thought it would be better for her, to be elsewhere. Not every woman has a maternal instinct. She needed far more than I could give her.”

“Like the money you stole from her?” Joey said.

Victoria shrugged and let out a hollow laugh, “I never said I was perfect.”

“Your bar is set so far below perfect, I don’t think you could see it from the Mariana Trench,” Joey replied.

“Go to hell.”

“Speak for yourself.”

Geenie rested her wrinkled hand on Joey’s forearm, interrupting the spat, “Let us go inspect that report and examine the body, shall we?”

Joey glared at Victoria, then nodded. “The sooner we can prove she did it, the better. We can call the Coast Guard and get her off this ship.”

He no longer cared about keeping his job, he was certain that ship had already sailed. He’d talked back to his boss, skipped out on work for the entire day, and nearly accused the owner’s son of murder. At this point, all he wanted was to find the evidence to prove Victoria murdered Annette and move on from what was rapidly becoming the worst day of his life.

Worst of all, he had no idea how he was going to spin why he’d been fired on his resume.