Read Set Sail for Murder for Free Online Page A

in?” Polly hedged.
    “Preserving potential evidence,” said Officer Brown.
    “Evidence?” Tim managed to say.
    Polly, Tim, and Placenta each looked at each other withgrowing apprehension. Placenta swallowed hard. “Has there been a crime?”
    “You should know. You just stated that the victim got what she deserved,” Officer Brown said.
    “Victim?” Polly brought a hand to her lips.
    “Is Laura …?” Placenta couldn’t bring herself to complete her thought.
    “Yep.”
    “I was going to say, ‘Is Laura going to miss a show or two?’”
    “Same answer,” Office Brown said.
    “How many?” Polly asked, remembering Laura’s comment that if the entire troupe wasn’t on stage, they wouldn’t get paid.
    “How many shows are you doing?” Skyler asked.
    “Seven.”
    “That’s your answer,” he said. “Get dressed. The captain is waiting.”

C HAPTER 4
    A big ship is like a small town, and soon the details of Laura Crawford’s death swirled like gossip and hair-spray at the Clip ‘n Curl beauty salon. Word quickly spread throughout the ship that Laura’s body was discovered on a massage table in the Starfish Spa. Her carotid artery had been slashed. The weapon of choice: a DVD, the edge of which had been filed to the sharpness of Sweeney Todd’s razor. The bloodied title on the disc: Season Six of—
The Polly Pepper Playhouse.
    Despite being associated with the implement of execution, no one would ever suggest that the universally beloved Polly Pepper was in any way connected with, or capable of, a murder. In fact, there was an outpouring of genuine compassion for the legend in her own time/mind. As her colleague and one-time costar took up space in the crisper section of the morgue’s refrigerator, strangers queued up to buy Polly as much sympathy champagne as she could swallow.
    In exchange for picking up the bar tab, Polly left her fans with a souvenir sheet of damp Kleenex. It wasn’t easy coaxing compassionate tears for Laura Crawford. To put on a plausible performance of grief, Polly had to dig deepinto her actor’s bag of tricks and retrieve genuine moments of sorrow in her life: Karen Carpenter’s untimely death. The day her mother spitefully threw away her copy of
How to Become a Famous Movie Star.
The earthquake that rattled one of her Golden Globe Awards off the display shelf and cracked its cheap-o base. When she thought of those experiences, her eyes welled sufficiently to imitate heartache.
    “You survived those two dreadful husbands, and the horror of Vicki Lawrence taking
your
Emmy Award home the year that the Academy made a mistake!” said a female fan who was comforting Polly with a bottle of Piper-Heidsieck. “You’ll get over this tragedy, too, sweetie.”
    With each new acquaintance telling her how sorry they were about Laura’s death, and how she must be feeling the terrible loss more deeply than anyone, Polly became genuinely morose. She realized she wasn’t responding appropriately to the tragedy. “Why do I have to force tears?” she complained to Tim and Placenta.
    “Probably because you know that Laura Crawford was a mean-spirited harridan who used you and your fame to get ahead in her own career,” Tim said. “She diminished your stardom by convincing you to perform on this has-beens cruise.”
    “Maybe you’re not as nice as you and the whole wide world think you are,” Placenta stated matter-of-factly. “A friend is dead. Murdered. It’s not natural to be as unmoved as you are.”
    Polly was silent for a long while as she considered Placenta’s words. Finally, she nodded. “What’s wrong with me?” she asked. “Although I feel bad about how Laura died, I’m not sad that she’s gone. You’re right. I’m not nice!”
    “That’s not altogether true,” Tim said, comforting his mother, and handing her a flute of champagne. “You’re very nice—for a diva. I’ll bet Alec Baldwin and Christian Bale and Vanessa Hudgens and Lindsay and Shannon