Loose Lips

Book 2: Ghostwriter Mystery

by Kemper Donovan

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Traditional Mysteries; Ghost; Mystery

Synopsis

Knives Out meets high seas intrigue on a literary cruise to nowhere in this intelligent, wildly funny locked room mystery for fans of Richard Osman, Anthony Horowitz, Nita Prose, and Agatha Christie!

The USA Today bestselling host of the "All About Agatha" podcast injects the spark and fizz of a Golden Age murder mystery into the present-day, as the ghostwriter’s skills are put to the test aboard a bestselling author’s decidedly insalubrious cruise.

Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. So goes the adage, but sometimes, even a first-rate ghostwriter and successful mystery author needs to make a buck. Even if that means setting foot on a cruise ship, something she vowed she’d never do. To top it off, the “Get Lit Cruise” is being organized by Payton Garrett, a very popular, bestselling author—and the ghostwriter’s long-time frenemy from back in their MFA days.

Over the years, Payton has reinvented herself. She gained a wife while ditching her journalist husband—who is also on board. And she’s acquired a rabid following who eagerly snapped up the invitations sent to a select few of her newsletter subscribers. The guests, all female, will receive personalized instruction from experts in five different writing genres, while basking in Payton’s reflected glow.

Between mentoring guests, flirting with Payton’s ex, and taking bets on how long before someone performs a reenactment of Titanic’s “I’m flying!” scene (answer: not long enough), there’s plenty to keep a ghostwriter occupied. But there’s one activity nobody expected: solving a murder.

When an attendee is found dead under suspicious circumstances and several others suffer symptoms of poisoning, there are numerous motives and suspects to choose from. But could it be that the victim wasn’t even the intended target? As the body count rises along with onboard tensions, no one is safe—except, perhaps, for a killer whose scruples have long abandoned ship. And of course, like every well-plotted mystery, this one has an extra twist . . .

Release date: January 21, 2025

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 336

Sample

Cruises are a love-it-or-hate-it proposition. There’s no middle ground on the matter, and from the moment I’d become aware that voluntarily imprisoning oneself at great personal expense on a slow-moving island of “fun” was a thing, I vowed never—ever—to take part in a cruise. But such promises are made to be broken, which was how I found myself watching forlornly as Slip 90 of the Cape Liberty Cruise Port in beautiful Bayonne, New Jersey, shrank into the distance.

The Manhattan skyline was too blurry to make much of an impression on this cloudy, late January morning. Just as well. I rarely think about 9/11 when I’m in the city, going about my day. But it’s impossible not to conjure those two towers when viewing downtown from a distance. They’ve officially become the world’s most distressing set of ghost twins (sorry, Shining gals; you’ve been unseated). It was windy out on the harbor—cold enough for gloves, a hat, and a scarf. Not that I minded. The winter had been so warm, I’d hardly been able to use such accessories till now. For me, winter clothes are a sneaky means of cosplaying as a fancy lady from days of yore, the only time I get to wear a hat and gloves without looking like an eccentric. As for scarves, I always have grand plans to wear them in temperate weather the way French people do, but then I always chicken out. The one I had on now was a behomoth: eggshell-white with an inky-red design blooming across its surface like creamer spreading through coffee, and long enough for me to wrap several times in loose, luxurious loops. I burrowed my face into it now, warming the tip of my nose.

There were only a handful of people on the upper deck with me, watching the departure. I was a little surprised by this—not that I expected the crowds of people you see in old black-and-white footage waving hankies from ships with so many tiers, they look more like stadiums. For one thing, there were no tiers, just the one deck exposed to the elements. There was also no one to wave at on the shore. People don’t gather to see off ships anymore, especially not puny ones like ours: a white dwarf compared to the red giant of a Queen Mary or QE 2, or any of the old trans-Atlantic steamers, which have themselves been dwarfed by the hulking supernovae to come out of the Royal Caribbean/Costa/Carnival fleets in recent years. Cruise ships put the “big” in “big business” these days.

The people who’d come to Slip 90 had all boarded the ship. There were a little over two hundred of them, the majority now snug in their cabins, unpacking their suitcases like sensible souls. My own little wheeled number stood beside me, upright like a dog on hind legs. I patted it with a gloved palm, thinking fondly of the various gels, liquids, pastes, and creams inside it, almost all of them larger than the four ounces we’re reduced to traveling with by air (speaking of 9/11 . . . ). I’d chosen to remain outside, both as a means of staving off motion sickness and from a masochistic impulse to watch my beloved isle of Manhattan slip away from me.

And yet I couldn’t help feeling hopeful as the skyline receded, fool that I was—seduced by the common fallacy that a temporary location change would make a meaningful difference in my life. Little did I know, as I closed one eye and blotted out the Statue of Liberty with the thumb of my glove, that for once the fallacy would hold true. This cruise would change my life. Permanently.

Would it have been preferable for this magical transformation not to have involved a triple homicide on the open seas? (That’s right: triple. There will be three dead bodies on this boat before you or I are done with it.) Sure. But c’est la vie.

Or la mort, as the case may be.

In the same way luxury liners departing from the English coast would cross the Channel and make a final stop in Cherbourg, France, before traversing the Atlantic, we docked in the Clifton neighborhood of Staten Island to bring another eighty people on board. I could make a joke about how uncouth this rabble was compared to those posh, fin-de-siècle crowds. But for all their bustle skirts and bowler hats, people back then were undoubtedly sicker and dirtier than the well-to-do travelers I saw bounding up the gangway, Athleta gear peeking from underneath their North Face jackets. These sybarites were propelled by an energy that requires heaps of leisure time and the disposable cash with which to enjoy it. No one gets on a boat these days unless they want to.

Unless someone is paying them to be there, of course.

Can you guess which category I fell into?

The Get Lit Cruise had been arranged for passionate (read: rich) fans of literature, who would be attending a one-week series of lectures while the ship ambled eastward into the North Atlantic and then turned around at some indeterminate point, shuffling its way back to New York. Like many cruises, it was all about the journey, not the destination. And that journey was officially starting now, as the ship pulled away from the dock and headed for the open seas.

I was standing in the back of the ship (the stern, I should say), in an area raised half a staircase above everything else. The floor consisted of wide wooden planks that contrasted with the poured cement covering the rest of the deck. My guess was that in warmer weather, people sunbathed here. There would be no sunbathing today, or any of the seven days allotted for our outing—no chance of the air temperature budging north of forty. I didn’t mind this. Warmth demands enjoyment; we’re expected to capitalize on a warm and sunny day, whereas appreciation of cold or otherwise “bad” weather is attainable on its own terms.

It struck me that a ship is one of the few places where people live out their lives according to the sort of rigid hierarchy ubiquitous a hundred years ago: the “help” toiling away unseen in support of the moneyed class of paying passengers. I was just about to formulate some deep thoughts on this topic when a seagull swooped so low, its talon nearly grazed my forehead. Seriously—this thing came so close, the force of its body whipping through the air blew actual wind onto my face.

“Is your shampoo potato-chip-scented?” asked the woman beside me after I ducked theatrically, checking myself over for blood. I suppose she had to say something.

She was wearing a trench coat, which is one of those articles of clothing that resides in Frumpsville unless all the details are just right. All the details on this trench were just right, nothing loose or baggy about it, its top half fitting her like a second skin, a horizontal stitch under the bust reminiscent of those Empire-waisted dresses we all love staring at in Jane Austen adaptations. There were epaulets on the shoulders, and an olive-green trim on the cuffs and belt, the latter of which she’d knotted to one side, showing off her lean figure. Her gray hair was frizzy and untended, but I guessed this was a choice, and that she made a practice of avoiding the chemicals found in dyes and gels and other such products. An absence of makeup was doing her face no favors in the dull yet luminous sunlight seeping through the clouds, but I could only hope my skin looked so good at her age, which I guessed to be mid-sixties or thereabouts. Her wrinkles were so fine, they gave her cheeks a feathered softness that was nothing like the dewiness of youth, but which served as a testament to a youth spent wisely. Like so many on this ship, she exuded good health. No question that inside her oversized shoulder bag was a reusable water bottle she drained several times a day.

“I’d totally use potato-chip-scented shampoo if it existed.”

She laughed—more enthusiastically than my response warranted.

“Now which one did you sign up for?” she demanded. “I’m doing personal essay. With Payton.”

“None of them,” I replied, enjoying her momentary confusion. “I’m an instructor.”

“Oh! Which one? No wait, let me guess.”

I waited, letting her guess.

“Poetry?”

I shook my head: no.

“Young adult?”

She laughed when I crossed my arms into an X.

“It can’t be romance, can it?”

I didn’t know whether to be flattered or offended.

“Not romance,” I assured her.

“So that leaves . . . Oh! It’s mystery, isn’t it?”

It was most assuredly mystery. As you may know, I wrote a mystery novel based on real events that took place up in Maine a while back. This book got me some attention. Before then, I’d earned my proverbial bread by way of ghostwriting other people’s memoirs—celebrity memoirs, mainly. For all intents and purposes I was still a ghostwriter, though I hadn’t booked a gig in some time.

“That makes you Belle Currer!”

“Belle Currer” was the pen name I’d used for my mystery. Do you see what I did there? I didn’t want to use my real name, which occasionally graced the covers (more often, the acknowledgments pages) of my ghostwritten books. And I didn’t mind that “Belle Currer” was what most people were in the habit of calling me now—even my agent, Rhonda. Beyond the Brontë of it all, it helped that Belle was easily my favorite Disney princess. Anyone whose constant refrain has to do with how bored she is, and who can negotiate a crowded street with her head buried in a book is okay by me. I told Rhonda I wanted to print up business cards with my new name on one side, and on the other: THERE MUST BE MORE THAN THIS PROVINCIAL LIFE.

She said if I did, she’d fire me.

“I’m Geraldine Forrest.” The woman held out her hand. “But please, call me Gerry.”

We shook. I leaned over the railing again, and so did she. Staten Island was already long gone, little more than a strip of land surrounded by water, and a few minutes later the strip was gone too. There was nothing but sky and water now. We were officially out on the ocean. I couldn’t believe how quickly this had happened, and a pang of alarm hit me—something halfway between a throb of the heart and a sob in the back of my throat, a spasm of remorse for dry land, which I knew I wouldn’t see for one full week. This current view was it: there would be nothing but endless blue on endless blue, though at the moment it was endless gray on endless blue.

Gerry breathed in deeply. “Smell that gorgeous ocean air,” she murmured. We were standing close enough that I could sense her head turning toward me not by sight, but by feel, a shift in the air. “You must know Payton really well then?”

“Oh yes.” I took a deep breath of my own. “I know Payton well.”

“I just love her,” said Gerry.

That’s because you don’t know her, I thought.

Payton Garrett was the mastermind behind the Get Lit Cruise, and there’s a good chance you’ve heard her name before. She’s a famous writer, but her fame is of that specifically twenty-first century, social-media-infused variety that’s more about engaging with readers than writing something and stepping back to allow the work to speak for itself. There was no stepping back where Payton Garrett was concerned.

Her first book was called A Rising Tide. A meditation on her claustrophobic Christian upbringing, it straddled the boundary between memoir and self-help, Payton explaining how she’d managed to transcend her background without rejecting it wholesale—a nuanced playbook she invited the reader to apply to her own life. It did extremely well, and deservedly so. Payton Garrett was a damn good writer. She was also a savvy entrepreneur who maintained a death grip on the buzz her book generated, using it to build a robust presence on all forms of social media, and to launch a hit podcast called Girls Will Be Girls in which she shared her life wisdom in conversation with pretty much any celebrity guest she wanted, so massive was her audience. Other books followed: another memoir, a collection of essays culled from her many think-pieces scattered across the Internet, and most recently, a sprawling novel set in the nineteenth century, fictionalizing the life of Augusta Leigh, Lord Byron’s somewhat notorious half-sister. Payton Garrett was an established brand now, an influencer. And if that meant she had to hawk teeth whiteners and food delivery programs from time to time, then more power to her because that’s the way business gets done these days.

I couldn’t help comparing myself with her because we’d known each other for ages, having gotten our MFAs together at an embarrassingly third-tier program in the backwoods of southern Illinois. (Those woods are metaphorical, by the way; I would have killed for some trees in that flat-ass, Children of the Corn–addled wasteland.) Her memoir had come out around the same time as my first—and until my mystery, my only—novel, and I think I did a decent job of pretending to be happy for her as she shot off into the stratosphere and I remained earthbound, with my lukewarm reviews and nonexistent sales. But then I began building my career as a ghostwriter, and I was savvy enough to keep in touch with her, if only sporadically. From time to time I’d ask her for career advice, which she never failed to give. That was the thing about Payton Garrett: she loved to help. It made her feel like a good person while simultaneously proving she had the upper hand.

I’m being petty. I realize this. But to give you a sense of what she was like, and of how desperate I was to have taken her up on her offer to join this wackadoodle cruise, behold the subject heading of the first e-mail she sent me on the topic: “Pretty Cool Opportunity for a Kickass Writer Lady Like Yourself Unless You’re Too Busy BELIEVE ME I GET IT .”

Jesus retched.

“Payton is amazing,” I said to Gerry.

Not a lie. Whatsoever.

I leaned farther over the railing, taking great gulps of the ocean air and enjoying the salty prickle on my soft palate. The air smelled of ice itself, which made me think of snow and glaciers and old-school adventurers like Ernest Shackleton and Edmund Hillary. My remorse turned to excitement, and I leaned out farther. The sides of the ship were painted a bright, hospital white that would be blinding when the sun came out. It must have been painted recently, as the vessel wasn’t brand-new, though it wasn’t ancient either. (It was eight years old, and yes, I’d looked this up. Eight years felt like a nice Goldilocks number for a boat: fully vetted, and yet by no means rickety.) There was a blue design just below the railing—a squarish, geometric pattern that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Grecian urn. This same blue was repeated in a thick band at the bottom of the boat, just above the water line. And above that in a lighter blue was the name of the ship: Merman Rivera, the M and R with long curlicue tails wrapping around their respective words.

The name was a partial nod to the dual nature of the ship, which was large enough for ocean voyages, but small enough to traverse rivers as well. I found it to be smaller than expected, but then, what isn’t? If I hadn’t known its capacity was three hundred, I would have guessed one hundred at most. It’s easy to pack people onto ships, though. Today was Sunday, and classes would take place Monday through Friday, the ship docking again on Saturday afternoon. This meant that for one whole week there was nowhere to go outside of the 300-by-50-foot dimensions of this floating hulk of metal. The panic returned, leapfrogging up my gut and through my throat in a hideous sort of reverse peristalsis, landing in the back of my mouth, my tongue quivering sickly. Suddenly I felt like I was going to vomit and I whipped myself upright, managing to collide with Gerry.

“Sorry!”

We said this in unison.

“Well aren’t we a pathetic pair of over-apologizing women?”

She gave me a saucy look as she said this, which was the moment I decided I liked her. Joviality pairs well with me, so long as it isn’t inane. It helps balance out my phlegmatic tendencies.

“Do you want to go inside?” I asked. “It’s getting cold.” And I don’t want to throw up in front of you, I added to myself.

“Yes, please!”

The doorway leading to the stairwell had a sizable lip at the bottom, no doubt to prevent any water on the deck from flooding inward. It had the look and feel of a porthole, and despite the awkwardness of having to lift my suitcase over it, I experienced a thrill upon stepping into this enclosed space and hearing a far-off groan of metal, the boat creaking around us.

I loved knowing that everyone could feel the same motion: that we were together, en masse, aboard this ship. It was the same collectivist spirit that sent me running to Twitter whenever I was in LA and an earthquake happened, no matter how minor. (Yes, I know technically it’s “X” now. But eff that noise. Sorry/not sorry, Elon.) For all my misanthropic ways, I enjoy feeling like I’m a part of something bigger. It’s an ancient, animal instinct, and whenever it recurs I find it both comforting and exhilarating, which shouldn’t be possible, yet somehow it is. Here we all were, three hundred strong embarking on a journey together—embarking literally, as the original definition of “embark” is to board a ship, or “bark.” (Per Shakespeare, love is “the star to every wand’ring bark.”) Looking back, I wish I’d appreciated this moment more, when everything was still ahead of us. Before long we’d be underway, then half finished, then back in this very spot—except the boat would be facing the other direction and it would all be ending. Time screws us over in this way again and again, and yet we never learn.

We never appreciate the beginnings enough.

Gerry and I descended to the second deck, where all the public rooms were situated: lounge, ballroom, dining room, and five—count ’em, five!—auditoriums of varying sizes. People on cruises love their musical theater, and according to its rather paltry Wikipedia page, the Merman Rivera had been built as an “intimate show ship,” which was another reason for its curious, bifurcated name. As many of you are no doubt aware (let’s not pretend there isn’t a higher proportion of women and gay men reading this than in the general population), Merman Rivera was a reference to the late, great songstress Ethel Merman, and the one and only Chita Rivera, a legendary performer who departed this world fairly recently—much to the world’s desolation. I have no doubt that on previous outings, these theaters had been used not just for musicals and other vocal performances but for all sorts of shows—a cringeworthy stand-up comedy routine here, a downtrodden magic act there, maybe even a mime show or two (though I hope not). We’d be using these spaces to conduct lectures: to lead group discussions pertaining to the art of the personal essay, poetry, young adult fiction, romance, and mystery. But not yet. The only event planned for tonight was a drinks reception followed by dinner. And so Gerry and I bypassed the second deck, clanking our way down the metal stairs toward the lower levels.

“Did you travel far to get here?” I asked politely. The darkness of the stairwell was having a soothing effect on my nausea.

“Not too far. I live in the Bay Area, out in Northern California.”

This tracked. She had a NorCal vitality to her—a hale, peppy energy.

“Are you here on your own?”

“I sure am!” she said. “Footloose and fancy-free, just the way I like it! Me, I live a simple life. No partner, no children, not even many friends except for the few who count. Got to be your own best friend, I find.”

I paused in the middle of the stairwell to throw her an appreciative glance.

“Good for you,” I said, hoping this wouldn’t come across as patronizing.

“It is good for me!”

Her eyes were too shiny, her smile too wide—more of a rictus, really. I should have known something was wrong. But I was too focused on finding my room, too stressed with the uncertainty over what exactly I was supposed to teach these freaky rich people for five whole days.

It’s a shame, because if I had noticed, if I’d stopped her right there on the stairs to ask what was the matter, she very well may have told me.

And then maybe all the bad things that were yet to happen could have been prevented.

Gerry’s room was on the third deck and mine was on the fourth, these two decks being devoted to en suite passenger cabins arranged in a bewildering labyrinth of hallways. We parted in the stairwell, promising to meet up at the welcome drinks in an hour. My room number was 69, and if that made you snicker then congratulations, you are as immature as I am. Upon boarding the boat I’d been given an actual key to open my door, which felt like a quaint touch in this modern age of key cards and fingerprint scans and other “smart,” high-tech means of entry. I located my room eventually, the ship bobbing as I slid the bolt back and the door swung inward. Suddenly my nausea returned tenfold—the motion sickness I’ve been prone to since childhood kicking into overdrive.

The room wasn’t much bigger than the full-size bed it contained, with a tiny closet and a chest of drawers on one side and a desk on the other, all accessible while sitting on the bed. I wasn’t fazed by this; such is the power of living in various minuscule Manhattan studio apartments for most of my adult life. Everything was bolted to the ground: a precaution in case of stormy weather. Above my bed was an honest-to-goodness porthole, adorably small and perfectly circular. I slipped off my boots and stood on the bed to gaze out of it, getting a repeat view of sky meeting water, except that it was darker now, and the grayness of the sky had overtaken the water: iron on iron.

The bathroom was a little horrifying. It was the size of a shower stall because it was a shower stall, in addition to being a water closet, one of those two-for-one deals you get sometimes on a train (and apparently also on a boat), the showerhead positioned directly above the toilet with a drain in the middle of the floor. Whenever I showered, I could see that the water was going to splash everywhere—on the sink, the mirror, the toilet. (As it turned out, I’d even have to shut the door to make sure I didn’t get the bedroom wet.) And yet I should have been counting my blessings I wasn’t swabbing decks, consigned to one of the steerage-like rooms reserved for the crew. If a ship’s hierarchy is as rigid as in days of yore, there was no denying my position was somewhere in the middle. I wasn’t a paying guest, but I wasn’t a crew member, either. Come to think of it, I was a little like the governess. Was I one of the servants, or one of the family?

A PA system turned on. The hollow drone and vibrating hum of feedback triggered an echoic memory, catapulting me back to high school in Mesa, Arizona. I found myself anticipating the nasal tones of Miss Peabody, the school secretary. Instead, it was a husky voice—rich and low, honed over hundreds of podcast episodes—a voice made for TED Talks and viral graduation speeches.

“Laaadies!” began Payton, conveying with this silky exclamation that: yes, this was cheesy, but it was also fun and what was wrong with fun? “We are thirty minutes away from our first round of cocktails in the main lounge. So powder your noses, your wigs, and your privates if that’s your thing.”

I heard titters through the door, and rolled my eyes fruitlessly.

“Don’t use talcum powder though. It’s been proven to cause lung and ovarian cancer. I mean it! See you soon.”

The PA system cut out. I should probably mention that one of the biggest selling points of the cruise was that it consisted entirely of women. It was ingenious of Payton to spin gold out of the straw reality that almost everyone who bothers to show up to bookish events is a woman. Every single one of the 275 passengers, all five instructors, the cleaning staff, the technical crew: women, all of them. Even the ship’s captain was a woman, which was quite a feat. Did you know that only three percent of all sea captains are women? Three percent! That’s as heinously skewed as it is for music conductors. What these two professions have in common is that they involve ordering people around, and since men don’t like women ordering them around, women are averse to doing these jobs in the first place, and so the snowball accumulates, the feedback loop perpetuates, and the song never ends, yes it goes on and on my friend....

But I suppose some progress has been made. Women used to be banned altogether from maritime vessels. We were deemed “bad luck” on the open seas, the only female allowed being the boat itself, on whose back these intrepid men rode from coast to coast.

This time, at least, the Merman Rivera would have plenty of female companionship.

I threw up in the toilet.

Near the toilet, I should say. Good thing there was a showerhead directly above it. I cleaned the area while still in the blessed afterglow of having evacuated one’s stomach, when it feels as though nausea has been permanentl. . .