Santa Cruise Read online

  Books by Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark

  The Christmas Thief

  He Sees You When You’re Sleeping

  Deck the Halls

  BOOKS BY MARY HIGGINS CLARK

  Two Little Girls in Blue

  No Place Like Home

  Nighttime Is My Time

  The Second Time Around

  Kitchen Privileges

  Mount Vernon Love Story

  Silent Night/All Through the Night

  Daddy’s Little Girl

  On the Street Where You Live

  Before I Say Good-bye

  We’ll Meet Again

  You Belong to Me

  Pretend You Don’t See Her

  My Gal Sunday

  Moonlight Becomes You

  Silent Night

  Let Me Call You Sweetheart

  The Lottery Winner

  Remember Me

  I’ll Be Seeing You

  All Around the Town

  Loves Music, Loves to Dance

  The Anastasia Syndrome and Other Stories

  While My Pretty One Sleeps

  Weep No More, My Lady

  Stillwatch

  A Cry in the Night

  The Cradle Will Fall

  A Stranger Is Watching

  Where Are the Children?

  BOOKS BY CAROL HIGGINS CLARK

  Hitched

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  Popped

  Jinxed

  Fleeced

  Twanged

  Iced

  Snagged

  Decked

  SIMON & SCHUSTER / SCRIBNER

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2006 by Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark

  All rights reserved,

  including the right of reproduction

  in whole or in part in any form.

  SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  SCRIBNER and design are trademarks of Macmillan Library Reference USA, Inc., used under license by Simon & Schuster, the publisher of this work.

  Designed by Kyoko Watanabe

  ISBN: 1-4165-4724-X

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  Acknowledgments

  The ship has come to shore. Our very special thanks to our fellow passengers aboard the Santa Cruise.

  Our editors, Michael Korda and Roz Lippel.

  Our agents, Sam Pinkus and Esther Newberg.

  Our publicist, Lisl Cade.

  Our copy editor, Gypsy da Silva.

  Thanks to Sigal Miller of Mahwah, New Jersey, who suggested our title, Santa Cruise. Cheers, Sigal!

  And of course our families and friends who saw us off and welcomed us home. A special loving tip of the hat to John Conheeney, the perfect shipmate always.

  Finally, to all our readers…until next time…. Anchors Aweigh!

  In memory of Thomas E. Newton

  A gentle man and our very dear friend

  With love

  1

  Monday, December 19th

  Randolph Weed, self-styled commodore, stood on the deck of his pride and joy, the Royal Mermaid, an old ship he had bought and paid a fortune to refurbish and on which he intended to spend the rest of his life playing host to both friends and paying guests. Docked in the Port of Miami, the ship was being readied for its maiden voyage, the “Santa Cruise,” a four-day trip in the Caribbean with one stop at Fishbowl Island.

  Dudley Loomis, his forty-year-old PR man, who would also serve as cruise director, joined Randolph on the deck. He took a deep breath of the refreshing breeze blowing off the Atlantic Ocean and sighed happily. “Commodore, I have e-mailed all the major news organizations once again to let them know about this unique and wonderful maiden voyage. I began the release, ‘On December 26th, Santa is turning in his sleigh, giving Rudolph and the other reindeer some time off, and taking a cruise. It’s the Santa Cruise—Commodore Randolph Weed’s gift to a select group of people who have in their own unique way made the world a better place this past year.’ ”

  “I’ve always liked giving gifts,” the Commodore said, a smile on his weathered but still handsome sixty-three-year-old face. “But people didn’t always appreciate it. My three ex-wives never understood what a deep and caring man I am. For goodness’ sake, I gave my last wife my Google stock before it went public.”

  “That was a terrible mistake,” Dudley said solemnly, shaking his head. “A terrible mistake.”

  “I don’t begrudge her the money. I’ve made and lost fortunes. Now I want to give back to others. As you know, this Santa Cruise was created to raise money for charity, and celebrate those who have given of themselves.”

  “It was my idea,” Dudley reminded him.

  “True. But the money to pay for this cruise is coming out of my pocket. I spent considerably more than I expected in order to make the Royal Mermaid the beautiful ship she has become. But she’s worth every penny.” He paused. “At least I hope she is.”

  Dudley Loomis held his tongue. Everyone had warned the Commodore that he’d be better off having a new ship built than dumping a fortune into this old tub, but I do admit it cleaned up rather well, Dudley told himself. He had been cruise director on mammoth vessels where he had to worry about several thousand guests, many of whom he found intensely irritating. He would now deal with only four hundred passengers, most of whom would probably be happy to sit on deck and read instead of having entertainment shoved down their throats twenty-four hours a day. Dudley had come up with the idea of the Santa Cruise when reservations for passage on the Royal Mermaid were almost nil. He was a PR man right down to the rubber soles of his yachting shoes.

  “We should have a free cruise the day after Christmas to get the kinks out of the ship before any paying passengers, or reviewers, come on board,” he had told his boss. “You’ll donate passage to charities and do-gooders. It’ll only be a few days, and in the long run it will pay for itself with the good publicity I’ll get for you. By the time our official maiden voyage rolls around on January 20th, we’ll be turning people away. You wait and see.”

  The Commodore had needed a few minutes to think about it. “A totally free cruise?”

  “Free!” Dudley had insisted. “Everything for free!”

  The Commodore had winced. “The bar, too?”

  “Everything! From soup to nuts!”

  Eventually, the Commodore agreed. The special Santa Cruise would set sail in one week, the day after Christmas, and return to Miami four days later.

  Now, as the two men walked along the freshly scrubbed deck, they went over the final details. “I’m still hoping for one of the television stations to at least attend the pre-sailing cocktail party on the deck,” Dudley said. “I’ve sent word to the ten Santa Clauses you are treating to get here early so they can try on the lightweight Santa Claus outfits that you had made for them. They should be ready to mingle with everyone at our evening cocktail party.

  “It turned out to be a blessing in disguise when I had that fender bender with that Santa Claus from Tallahassee last month. While we were exchanging insurance papers, he got weepy and confided how exhausting it was to listen to children all day long, have pictures taken with them, and, worse yet, be sneezed on. By the time Christmas Day rolled around, he’d be exhausted and unemployed again. That’s when the light went on in my head to include ten Santas among
the guests…”

  “You’re always thinking,” the Commodore agreed. “I just hope we get enough paying passengers in the next few months to keep this ship afloat.”

  “It’ll all be fine, Commodore,” Dudley said in his most cheery cruise-director voice.

  “You said we hadn’t heard from all the people who won this trip at charity auctions. What’s the status on that?”

  “Everyone is coming—we’re just waiting to hear from one passenger. She was by far the highest bidder at an auction for this cruise. I sent her a letter by FedEx, and as an enticement offered her the remaining two staterooms so she could bring friends. She’s a good person for us to have on board. She won forty million dollars in a lottery, appears on television regularly, and is a contributing columnist to a large newspaper.” He did not add that he had lost the name and address of this winner—who had attended his friend Cal Sweeney’s auction—and had just followed up on it. He almost fainted when he realized Alvirah Meehan was not only a celebrity, but a columnist.

  “Splendid, Dudley, splendid. I wouldn’t mind winning the lottery myself! In fact, I may need to—”

  “Good morning, Uncle Randolph.”

  They had not heard the Commodore’s nephew, Eric, come up behind them.

  Sneaky as always, Dudley thought as he turned to greet the newcomer. I swear he could make his living as a mugger.

  “Good morning, my boy,” the Commodore said heartily, beaming at his kinsman.

  The warm smile on thirty-two-year-old Eric Manchester’s face was the expression he reserved for the Commodore and other important people, Dudley observed. With his perfect tan, sun-streaked hair, and muscled body, Eric had obviously divided his time between the beach and the gym. He was wearing a Tommy Bahama floral shirt, khaki shorts, and Docksiders. The sight of him made Dudley ill. He knew that when the passengers came on board Eric would be outfitted as an officer of the ship, although God knows what office he was supposed to hold.

  How come I wasn’t born good-looking, with a rich uncle? Dudley wondered wistfully.

  “I’m running into town, sir,” Eric addressed the Commodore, totally ignoring Dudley. “Anything you need?”

  “I’ll let you two chat,” Dudley said, anxious to get away from the farce of watching Eric pretend he was of any use to the Commodore, the Royal Mermaid, or the upcoming Santa Cruise. Eric had wormed his way onto the payroll immediately after his uncle bought the ship.

  The Commodore smiled at his sister’s son. “Don’t need a thing I don’t already have,” he said heartily. “Have fun at the party you went to last night?”

  Eric thought of the wad of cash he’d been given at that party, the down payment on what would make the Santa Cruise a risky and dangerous trip—and profitable for him…“It was lots of fun, Uncle Randolph,” Eric said. “I was bragging to everyone about our upcoming Santa Cruise and how generous you are helping to raise money for charities. Everyone there wished they were coming with us.”

  The Commodore slapped him on the back. “Good work, Eric. Get people interested in us. Get people to sign up for one of our voyages.”

  I did, Eric thought, but you won’t know about them…He shivered slightly, yet he couldn’t help but smile at the irony.

  Eric’s guests would be the only two paying passengers on the Santa Cruise.

  2

  Friday, December 23rd

  At seven P.M. on December 23rd, a light snow was falling on New York City as last-minute shoppers and partygoers scurried through the streets of Manhattan. In the festively decorated Grill Room of the Four Seasons restaurant on Fifty-second Street, just off Park Avenue, lottery winners Alvirah and Willy Meehan and their good friends, suspense writer Nora Regan Reilly and her funeral-director husband, Luke, were all sipping glasses of wine. They were awaiting the arrival of Nora and Luke’s only offspring, Regan, and her new husband, Jack, whose surname also happened to be Reilly.

  The two couples had met exactly two years earlier, when Luke had been kidnapped by the disgruntled heir of one of his deceased clients. Alvirah had been a cleaning woman who had won forty million dollars in the lottery and then became an amateur sleuth. She had introduced herself to Regan and helped in the frantic search to save Luke. In the process, Regan had met Jack, who was head of the Major Case Squad in Manhattan, and they had fallen in love. As Luke wryly observed, “It’s an ill wind that blows no one good.”

  Now, Alvirah, her ample figure smartly dressed in a dark blue cocktail suit, was bursting with the invitation she intended to extend to the four Reillys, but also trying to figure out how to make it an invitation they couldn’t refuse.

  Willy, her husband of forty-three years who, with his white hair, map-of-Ireland face, and generous girth, was the living image of the late, legendary Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill, had been no help to her on the cab ride over from their apartment on Central Park South.

  “Honey,” he’d said. “All you can do is invite them. They’ll say ‘yes’ or they’ll say ‘no.’ ”

  Now Alvirah looked across the table at petite Nora, elegant as always in a deceptively simple black dress, and six-foot-five Luke, towering beside her, his arm loosely around the back of her chair. We always have fun and excitement when we go on trips together, she thought, then realized that her idea of fun might be their idea of too much excitement.

  “Oh, here they are!” Nora exclaimed as Regan and Jack came up the stairs, spotted them, waved, and started over to the table.

  Alvirah sighed with joy. She absolutely loved this young couple. Regan had her mother’s blue eyes and fair skin, but she was four inches taller than Nora and had inherited her black hair from her father’s side of the family. Jack, six feet two with sandy hair, hazel eyes, and a firm jaw, had an air of no-nonsense self-confidence that had made Alvirah sure from the get-go that he was the right man for Regan.

  Jack apologized for keeping them waiting. “A few last-minute things came up at the office, but it could have been worse. I’m happy to report that as of now and for the next two weeks, Regan Reilly Reilly and I are at liberty.”

  It was the opening Alvirah needed. She waited until the captain poured wine for the newcomers, then raised her own glass in a toast. “To sharing a wonderful holiday season,” she said. “I have a terrific surprise for the four of you, but first you’ll have to promise you’ll say ‘yes.’ ”

  Luke looked alarmed. “Alvirah, knowing you, I can’t make a promise like that without hearing a lot more details.”

  “I wouldn’t either,” Willy agreed. “This is what it’s about. We got roped into attending a charity auction. Need I explain more? You’ve been to plenty of them yourselves. Once they started the live auction after dinner, I knew we were in for trouble. Alvirah got that look on her face…”

  “Willy, it was for a good cause,” Alvirah protested.

  “They’re all good causes. Ever since we won the lottery, we’ve been on the list for every good cause known to man.”

  “It’s true,” Alvirah admitted with a laugh. “But I went to this one because it was being chaired by Mrs. Sweeney’s son, Cal. She’s the lady I used to clean for on Tuesdays. Cal is a trustee of their local hospital, and it needs help. Anyhow I got carried away, I admit, and I won a Caribbean cruise for two. I never heard another word about it and didn’t realize it was a Christmas cruise. It’s been such a crazy year that, to be honest, I forgot all about it until this afternoon, when a FedEx envelope arrived from a cruise director. There had been some kind of slipup, and the cruise I won at the auction is set for next week. It leaves on December 26th and comes back on the 30th.”

  “Three days from now! That’s mighty short notice,” Jack said. “Are you going to go? If not, you could probably force them to put you on a different cruise. It’s their fault you didn’t get sufficient notice.”

  “But this is a very special voyage,” Alvirah explained eagerly. “They’re calling it the Santa Cruise. Everyone on board is someone who either won the tri
p by being the highest bidder in a charity auction; or who is a part of a group that did a great deal of good helping other people during the year; or who, after submitting proof of making a generous donation to a worthwhile charity, was selected in a random lottery.”

  “You mean no one’s paying?” Luke asked incredulously as he accepted a menu from the waiter. “That cruise line must be rolling in cash!”

  “I have the brochure with lots of pictures and all the details,” Alvirah said, reaching down and fishing it out of her purse. “The ship looks gorgeous. It’s brand new. Well, almost brand new—it was refurbished from stem to stern. If you can believe it, it even has a helicopter pad and a rock-climbing wall, just like all the new big ships. The best part is that the cruise director is so apologetic about the notification mix-up that he wants us to bring four people as our guests to make up for it, and he offered two luxury rooms with balconies—just like our cabin.”

  She beamed at the four Reillys. “I want you all to sail on the Santa Cruise with us.”

  “Oh, that’s impossible,” Nora answered quickly, shaking her head and looking at Luke to back her up.

  “Aaaah, we’re just planning to relax next week…” Luke began clearing his throat as he tried to think of a stronger excuse.

  “How better to relax than on a cruise?” Alvirah insisted. “Think about it. You two are going to the South of France after the first of the year. Regan, I know you and Jack are meeting friends to ski at Lake Tahoe on New Year’s Eve. What do you have planned for those four days after Christmas that beats sailing in the Caribbean?”

  It was a rhetorical question. “Regan,” Alvirah continued, “I just heard from Jack’s own lips that he’s on vacation for two weeks. What are you committed to do the day after Christmas and the three days after that?”

  “Absolutely nothing,” Regan said promptly. “Jack, we’ve never been on a cruise together. I think it would be fun.”

  “The weather prediction for the New York area next week is freezing to frigid or the other way around, whichever is colder,” Willy said encouragingly. He knew that in the couple of hours since that FedEx package arrived Alvirah had set her heart on having the Reillys join them on the cruise. “We’re hiring a private plane to fly us to Miami on the 26th,” he added, hoping that Alvirah wouldn’t admit that this was the first she’d heard of that plan. “Think about it. A beautiful ship. Fine people as our fellow passengers. Swimming in the outdoor pool in December. Sitting on the deck reading a book. I’ll bet lots of the people will be reading your books, Nora. What do you say?”