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over there?” I asked the waitress when she turned toward me.
    She glanced over. “Let me get the maître d’ so you can ask him.”
    Daisy walked to the front of the dining room and moments later returned with the maître d’ in tow. His name tag read MR. PHILLIPS . I repeated my question.
    “The camera crew?” he said. “They’re just the ad people.”
    “Ad people?” Bess echoed.
    “Didn’t you get the insert in your info packages?” Mr. Phillips looked troubled. “It should have been covered in there.”
    Vince glanced at his wife. “We got the insert.”
    “So did we,” Coral put in as her friends nodded.
    “That explains it,” Alan said. “See, we just won this cruise last week in an online contest. We didn’t have time to get any info packs in the mail or anything.”
    Mr. Phillips nodded and explained, “The company hired the crew to do some candid filming during this inaugural cruise—just happy guests enjoying themselves, things like that. The footage will be used for future web ads and such.”
    “We could be in ads?” George sounded interested. “Cool.”
    “I do hope you won’t mind being filmed,” he continued. “But of course anyone who doesn’t wish to take part should inform a member of the cruise staff as soon as possible.” Mr. Phillips excused himself and returned to his post.
    As Daisy finished taking our order and hurried off, I glanced again at the camera crew. When had they started filming? Could they have captured any footage earlier in the day that might help with the case? I made a mental note to try to track them down later.

    “That was delicious.” Bess pushed her chair back from the table about half an hour later. “If you’ll all excuse me, I need to go powder my nose.”
    Yeah, Bess actually says things like that. Without irony, even. What can I say? It works for her.
    “I’ll come with you,” I said quickly, dropping my cloth napkin beside my plate. “Uh, for the nose powdering, that is.”
    “Me too.” George got up and followed us.
    Soon we were in the ladies’ lounge. It was just as opulent as the dining room—plush carpeting, chandeliers, a wall of mirrors with delicate upholstered stools in front of them, the works. But I barely spared a glance for any of it.
    “Is anyone else in here?” I asked, peeking under the stall doors.
    “Doesn’t look like it.” Bess sat down at the mirror and pulled a compact out of her purse. “Why? Do you have any new theories?”
    “Not really.” I quickly told her and George my idea about talking to the camera crew. “You never know,” I said. “Maybe they caught someone carryingthat mannequin around or something.”
    “Anything’s possible.” George sounded dubious. She was prowling back and forth across the lounge area, tugging at her dress as if it was choking her. “I guess this means you’ve decided there really is a mystery, huh?”
    “It’s sure looking that way.” I glanced around again, making doubly sure we were alone. “And that’s not all—I think someone’s onto us.”
    Bess stopped applying powder to her already flawless skin and glanced at me in the mirror. “Onto us? What do you mean?”
    “Something happened right before dinner,” I began. “I’ve been dying to tell you, but with Alan around . . .” I went on to tell them about the note in my suitcase.
    By the time I finished, Bess’s eyes were wide and worried. “That really sounds like someone was threatening you!”
    “Don’t sound so shocked,” George told her. “It’s not like Nancy’s never been threatened before. It kind of goes with the territory.”
    “Maybe,” I agreed. “But nobody’s supposed toknow why I’m really here, remember? So who could have done it?”
    Before my friends could answer, the door swung open. Two giggling preteen girls rushed in with their middle-aged moms right behind them. Bess smiled politely, then stood up.
    “We should get back to the table,” she said, dropping