Evening Up the Score

                  Sammy LaVecca, Jr., thought to himself as he boiled with anger: 

     Jepson Hamilton, the stupid shyster bought and paid for by my dad, Sammy, Sr., goose stepped to my late father’s every command. He creatively manipulated dad’s will to deprive me of the millions that rightfully belonged to me. Now I will make sure the lawyer pays me back with his life.

      For eight years I had slaved away every summer in my dad’s chicken processing business in Salisbury, Maryland. while secretly completing medical school at night. 

    Sammy, Sr. paid me back for not taking over his chicken-pluckin’ business by scheming with his two-bit attorney to leave his entire estate to my stupid-ass son, Sammy, 3rd. 

    I contested the phony will for years in the courts, but the system had fallen for their slimy legal tactics and threw out my claim. Now payback time has come. 

    The scream reverberating across the Lido deck of the Futura of the Seas brought crew members scrambling to Cabin 106.

     Sammy. Jr. had posed as a crew member and snuck into Cabin 106 while Jepson and Carey Josephson, his new, young bride danced.  Junior watched as phase one of his revenge plot played out as he carefully disposed of his phony mate’s uniform in the dark closet.

      Carey had found her husband dead in their bed.

      Ship’s captain Harry Stewart joined First Mate Arthur Fulcrum and ship’s doctor Arlington Hampton in the crowded luxury liner cabin.

         According to the distraught bride, “We danced in the ship’s ballroom all night yesterday and didn’t return here until early the next morning. We toasted each other with champagne before going to bed. I got up before Jepson and went in to take a shower. When I came out I tried to wake him, but he wasn’t breathing.”

         Stewart called for more crew members to join him in the cabin and remove the corpse to Hampton’s medical room.

           “Myself and my crew will provide you with anything you need, Ms. Josephson”, he said. “We will contact the local authorities and let you know as soon as we have come to a conclusion about your husband’s death. In the meantime, I must order you to remain at our disposal until the investigation concludes.” 

            “Of course,” she replied. “I loved Jepson dearly. We had just started our lives together and we took this trip to have a precious time together free from the pressures of our respective legal practices. That is one of the reasons we kept our honeymoon plans a secret.”

      A week after the authorities removed Jepson’s body to Bermuda Hospital they came to a startling conclusion: Someone had laced the champagne in the glass with which the attorney had toasted his bride with curare.      

       The captain ordered Carey taken to the local jail in Hamilton pending the filing of formal charges of murder in the death of her husband.

        She continued to protest her innocence, and crew members discovered something hidden in a darkened closet in the rear of their cabin which helped shore up her defense–a garment made to resemble a crew member’s uniform beside a medical bag containing a partially filled bottle of curare. 

      While the captain questioned the young bride, a figure lurked in the shadows outside the cabin.

        As the Futura sat at the dock while the investigation continued, Junior fled the ship.

        As a resident medical student he had no problem getting his hands on the muscle relaxant. After spreading the poison in the special champagne flute that Jill had given her husband as a wedding gift, he sprinkled traces of what remained around the cabin. Both these moves made it easier for the bride to take the fall for Junior.    

     On the pretense of a crew member delivering a gift from the cruise line to the happy couple he had slipped into the cabin and completed the setup.

     As he planned it, the bride, 20 years younger than her husband and also an expert in estate law, became the leading suspect.

  Why wouldn’t the attorney’s new co-heir do away with the old codger so she could get her hands on Jepson’s fortune sooner and live the rest of her life with Sammy, 3rd? Junior had spread false rumors all over the internet about a torrid affair between the female attorney and Junior’s son.

     The plan to even the score had moved along like a liner cutting through the smooth waves of the ocean.

    Sammy, Jr.  hadn’t counted on crack Bermuda detective Pedro Valdez, one of the few members of the local force with a medical degree, who recently had joined the investigation..

    “Something doesn’t add up,” he said. “A passenger on a Caribbean cruise wouldn’t have easy access to curare. Hospitals administer it in unusual cases and keep it locked up because of its potentially deadly side effects. It had to come from someone with a medical background.”

      Carey breathed a sigh of relief that she apparently no longer remained on the suspect list and gladly filled in the details about Junior’s medical background and the fact that his son had an estate not far from the ship’s port. 

      She did fear that her young lover might be next on the revenge hit list.    

     “By the way,” Valdez asked Stewart, “have you signed on any new crew members lately—and did any of them jump ship in Hamilton?”

      “Now that I think of it,” said Purser Ron Jameson, “one guy—Joe Padres— signed on just as we departed from Baltimore Harbor. He cleaned all the special cabins for us, but seemed to have a big interest in the work of the ship’s doctor. Came across as an aspiring medical student. Haven’t seen him since we docked in Hamilton.”

   Since he thought he had gotten away undetected, Junior hadn’t bothered to put on any disguise besides the crew member’s uniform. 

  So, Valdez put out an all-points bulletin for someone fitting the description supplied by the bride. A few crew members had spotted him rushing from the ship before his shift ended, so it didn’t take long for the police to put together the pieces of his carefully mapped out puzzle and find him—camped out  in the visitor’s cabin on his unsuspecting son’s vacation hideaway in Bermuda.  

    Junior’s highly sophisticated intelligence network had reported that Sammy, 3rd had remained in the States, already counting the millions that did not rightly belong to him.  Soon he would be on his way back to the islands.

     The authorities handcuffed Junior and carted him off to the local lockup just in time—he had started plotting phase two of his revenge plan, on grandpa’s favorite grandson, as soon as the son returned.