A Cruise to Die For (An Alix London Mystery Book 2) by Charlotte Elkins & Aaron Elkins

Author:Charlotte Elkins & Aaron Elkins [Elkins, Charlotte]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2013-09-03T00:00:00+00:00

Ted was then whisked away by Panos, and Alix whisked herself away to her stateroom, where she hid out for the next few hours, until she was due in the music room and salon for her first “informal chat session.” Izzy and Gaby, and maybe one or two of the others, had heard Ted say that he and Alix were “old friends,” and she didn’t want to try to field questions from them about how it was that she and Ted knew each other and just what kind of relationship they had and so on and so forth. She needed to talk to him first so that she didn’t blow whatever story he’d cooked up. She was more annoyed than ever at him for not giving her any warning. For that matter, why wasn’t he getting in touch with her right now to tell her what was going on? He had really put her in an uncomfortable spot. The man did have some attractive qualities, true, but he was a long way from perfect, and he could be damn irritating.

Grumbling about Ted did her good, but she spent most of the time reviewing her art resource materials so that she wouldn’t make a complete ass of herself when it came time for the session. Midway through, she took a break, called in an order for a ham-and-cheese sandwich, and put “Pocahontas” into YouTube. Up came fifteen pages of videos, split about half and half between the Pocahontases of Walt Disney and Izzy Clinke. Watching one of Izzy’s, she would have had a hard time believing that the sensuous, exotic, extravagant creature on the screen and the lanky, low-key, tongue-in-cheek Izzy were one and the same, if not for that unmistakable helmet of orange corkscrew curls. Gaby had done a good job of describing her, the hypnotically smooth, almost boneless movements, the emotionless, unchanging expression, and the strange, grating, chant-like singing. Hair excepted, she made Alix think of one of those Indian statues of a multiarmed goddess come to life. Her costume was some kind of Indian-Egyptian-Tahitian mishmash that left only the bare minimum (of Izzy) to the imagination. As Gaby had said, it was hard to stop watching her. One would think that if Izzy hated being hounded by the fans and the paparazzi as much as she’d implied, all she had to do was to go out in public in ordinary clothes, sunglasses, and a cover for her hair. No one would know her.

At three o’clock Alix headed for the music room. Only Mirko Koslecki, the Man With Six Countries, was there, standing in front of the collection’s Renoir, one of his lush, fleshy nudes-in-the-bath. Alix walked boldly up to him and started right in doing some heavy-duty informal chatting.

“Hello, again, Mirko,” she said brightly. “Beautiful, isn’t it? Did you know that the woman is one of Renoir’s favorite models, Suzanne Valadon? She modeled for Toulouse-Lautrec too, and Puvis de Chavannes. A fascinating person, born very poor—the daughter of

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