Fleur De Lies(56)
He regarded me blankly, as if trying to figure out who I was.
“Emily Miceli? I’m on the tour?”
“Oh, sure. Emily. Sorry. Names and faces are my downfall, but I’m working on it.”
A tour director who was bad with names and faces was a bit like an accountant who was bad with adding and subtracting, but hey, what did I know? “You’re not alone,” I sympathized. “I think a majority of people are bad with names and faces.” But fortunately, they were wise enough to enter professions where remembering names and faces wasn’t the most essential part of their work.
“Yeah. It’s hell. No sooner do a few guests start looking familiar than they leave, and you have to start all over again with a different group.”
“I guess that’s why you encourage us to wear our name tags.”
“It’d be a lot more convenient if we could print guest names on baseball caps. That way we wouldn’t always be staring at people’s chests. The company gets a lot of complaints from the ladies about that.” He paused. “I’m sorry. What was your question?”
“Krystal’s autopsy?”
“Right. I received a call just before I left my cabin but haven’t had a chance to tell anyone other than Mr. and Mrs. Martin. She apparently died from a brain hemorrhage.”
My mouth fell open. Uff-da. I hadn’t seen that coming.
“The report states that the hemorrhage was so massive, she probably died instantly, so she was most likely dead even before she fell off the cliff. In fact, the police might have to amend their initial report to state that it was her sudden death that caused her fall rather than her poor choice of footwear.”
“Oh, my God. I don’t know what to say.” Other than I was relieved foul play hadn’t been a factor in her death, and I was sorry I’d looked at Bobbi and Dawna last night with mounting suspicion.
Krystal had died from natural causes.
There were no killers in our midst, which meant Jackie was in the protective custody of the gang for no reason at all and would therefore be treated to the full brunt of Bernice’s tirades all day.
I had to restrain my feet from breaking out in a happy dance. Yes!
“They can’t release the body until they run a few more labs. Unknown what’s going to happen after that. I’ve never had a guest die on me before, so this is all uncharted territory.”
A remembered image of Krystal’s snakeskin top photo flashed in my mind. “She suffered a nosebleed on the bus yesterday. Were you aware of that?”
“I thought everyone on the bus was aware of it. Where were you sitting that you missed it? The way she was carrying on, you’d have thought she was about to die.” He hesitated, reassessing his words. “Of course, she did die, but—”
“Is it possible that her nosebleed was the first indication that something was going terribly wrong inside her brain?”
Rob lifted his shoulders. “You got me. I’m not a doctor. I provided her with extra tissue. That’s about all I’m authorized to do.”
Feeling a sudden presence at my right shoulder, I turned my head slowly.
“What’s the purpose of all this extra crap anyway?” whined Bernice as she waved her receiver and earbuds at me. “Isn’t it bad enough that we have to schlep umbrellas because of this crappy weather?”
I stared at her, deadpan. There was no God. There was no God.