Next to her sat a nice-looking man in his forties, reading a magazine. There weren’t any patients in the waiting room. A quiet day. Good-just the way I liked it.

Topaz looked up when I walked in. “What do you want?”

Yikes. What did I ever do to her? I told myself that she had a chip on her shoulder that had nothing to do with me. I’ll bet she wanted to be a nurse and flunked out of school or something like that. Or maybe wanted to be blonde with pale skin. “Oh, hi, Topaz. I’m just going to continue my orientation before I start work here Monday.”

The man looked up. He stood and held out a hand. “I’m Doctor VanHamon. Peter. You can call me Peter. You must be the…new nurse.”

I shook his hand and thought he looked a bit flustered when he’d mentioned my being the new nurse. Guess having one missing and one dead could do that to you. I introduced myself and chatted for a few minutes with Peter, learning he took his vacation from his OB/GYN practice to work cruise ships for fun.

He came from Minneapolis with his family, who was allowed to come on the cruise too. His kids weren’t in school yet, so it worked out. A free trip-as if a doctor needed that-although plenty of the docs I knew were penny-pinchers. But I liked him, and he said to make myself at home and that if I had any questions, he’d be around.

Topaz sat there filing her nails. Dark red nails today. She never said another word.

Suddenly the door swung open and a crewmember wheeled in a girl in a bikini. Apparently she’d fainted. My first thought was too much sun and too many piña coladas-or maybe I was showing my age and some fancy-named Martini with chocolate in it was to blame. The doctor and Rico, who’d come out from the back room when the bell rang signaling someone had come in, took her to an exam room.

Topaz started to question one of the woman’s friends and found out that she was the patient’s sister. All I could hear was credit card and insurance information. I noted the order of the request and decided to hang around despite Topaz’s occasional dirty looks.

“I don’t want to disturb them,” I whispered and motioned with my head toward the exam room. Guessing Topaz didn’t send me out the door because the doctor had said I could look around, I sat near the reception desk and pretended to read Peter’s copy of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

After three pages I told myself I was thrilled not be working OB anymore.

“Sign this,” Topaz said to the sister.

She leaned over and began to read the form.

Topaz shoved the pen toward her. “Standard stuff, honey. Just sign.”

The sister paused. “Force of habit. I’m a law student.”

Topaz grunted but still held the pen forward. “Well, good for you, honey. We’ve been taking care of patients for years though, and not signing means I have to go in there and tell the doc to stop doing whatever he is doing for your sister-maybe even saving her life.”

My jaw dropped. Saving her life? The girl looked fine, just a bit pale. Was that true about stopping the treatment? Somehow I couldn’t tell if she was kidding, but Topaz sure seemed forceful.

And the sister signed away.

And I told myself I had to get ahold of a copy of that form.

Eight

Topaz busied herself with the forms while the girl who’d passed out was given an IV for a few hours. It seemed as if there were hundreds of pages the poor sister had to sign. Occasionally I’d hear Topaz explain, very briefly and in a hurried voice, that this form was for the insurance company and this one was so they wouldn’t sue. She said the patient had to sign that one.

Sounded as if the forms for the insurance could be signed by the sister, but not the ones about suing.

I’d been in the medical field for many years and never had to ask someone to sign something so they wouldn’t sue. Patient care came first. The lawsuit stuff was left up to the hospital attorneys. I always gave my best when it came to care, so I really didn’t worry.

The sister begrudgingly signed so many forms she finally said, “I don’t give a damn what they are for,” wrote away and insisted she be let in to sit with her sister, whose color was now returning to her face.

I heard Rico say something about not eating all day and the sun. I concluded that a bit of alcohol had added to the problem. Guess she wanted her bikini to fit, he’d said then laughed.

While Topaz had her head down, reading, I winked at Rico, who grinned back, and then walked to the back of the next room and to the desk near the crew’s files. It was the same place Jagger and I had been before. Since Rico didn’t come by to throw me out, I parked myself in the chair. Suddenly, I remembered the file cabinet was locked. Jagger had magically produced the key, so I sat there trying to think like Jagger.

Ha!

Okay, thinking like Jagger proved to be a monumental task, so I tried to think like an investigator. Where would the staff keep the keys? They wouldn’t want to take too long to find a chart of a staff member who was injured, so…

I started opening desk drawers. I searched the desktop. Normal stuff like pens, paper, notepads and a stapler. Then I leaned back and looked up. I spied a hook beneath the desktop.

“Bingo,” I whispered.

In moments, I had opened the file cabinet and started to look through the crew’s files. Only a few names were familiar, so I began with them. Betty, of course, was the perfect example of good health, right down to all updated inoculations. However, there was a note about losing a few pounds. Yikes. I wasn’t going to pass that information along to her.

I read through the captain’s file, and then Hunter’s, which had me blushing a few times when it came to the more personal health issues. Thank goodness he had no problems or communicable diseases. I tucked all the information into the part of my brain labeled “hunks”-it was already nearly full, and had been from the first time I’d met Jagger.

I looked much more closely through quiet and gentlemanly Claude Bernard’s file. I had liked him from the first time I’d met him. I figured since he’d only been dating Jackie a few weeks, he might not know much about her death. Since he was still on the job, I supposed Claude must have had a very tight alibi. That’s right: He really had been working at the time Jackie would have been killed.

At first I’d wondered if he might have killed her because he was jealous of Remy. Maybe he’d killed Remy too? It would makes sense that a jealous lover would do something like that if he were crazy.

Claude didn’t seem crazy.

According to his chart, Claude was in darn good shape: perfect blood pressure, perfect cholesterol levels, and textbook lab results for all his other blood work. The guy had to work out, to look so good and be in such good physical health. I read through the rest of the pages, noting he was allergic to shellfish. Poor guy couldn’t enjoy some of the extravagant buffets around here.

Topaz yelled something.

I looked up to see Rico hurrying to help with another patient, who was holding his arm. A possible fracture. Peter was examining him, so I returned to my snooping. Thank goodness I had the time to “orient” myself to this place.

On the inside cover of Claude’s chart, I noticed a scribble in longhand. Tricheur. The handwriting looked distinctly female. Maybe Betty’s, but she’d write in English. Then again, she could know several languages. I’d have to find that out. Maybe Claude was involved in the fraud scam too. Damn, there were so many suspects on a cruise ship. Folks came and went way too frequently.

I jotted down tricheur on my notepad to find out the meaning. I’d had Spanish in high school and didn’t think the world looked Spanish. Hmm. Maybe…French.

Probably Jackie had written it.