One

"What? A boat? I mean a ship? I could fall overboard and drown! It could sink! Look at what happened to the Titanic!"

My skuzzy boss, Fabio Scarpello, glared at me with—well, one could never really know what Fabio thought, so I decided not to even guess.

It was more than likely X-rated anyway.

He puffed on a relit cigar. "The ship sails from New York to Miami to Bermuda and back. Who the hell ever heard of an iceberg in those waters?"

I wanted to argue that there might be pockets of cold water out in the Atlantic that could form into an iceberg, but I knew my imagination was just trying to come up with some wild excuse not to go. I wasn't going to mention my being prone to seasickness though. Fabio would turn that into something embarrassing.

After a few more puffs, he said, "Look, doll—"

"Don't call me doll. Ever." I sat straighter in my seat across from his mold-covered desk. Okay, maybe mold-covered was a bit strong, but I was guessing there had to be something growing beneath the used paper plates, coffee cups, piles of ashes and files. He had my folder in his hand.

"Okay, newbie—"

"Pauline, Ms. Sokol or Investigator Sokol will do fine," I started to sip on my decaf café latté that my coworker, friend and roommate Goldie had made me earlier, then decided it more than likely had been contaminated when I'd walked into Fabio's office.

He cursed under his breath. "Investigator Sokol is a stretch, but if you want to keep your freaking job, you better take this freaking case. High seas or not."

A nurse on a cruise ship.

I should have been excited about the assignment. I mean, come on. Salty sea air, wind in my hair, sun, bronzed males, coral sand of Bermuda and…waves. My stomach lurched.

And back into the old nursing career. That same career that I kept vowing I would never go back to. Damn.

He shoved the file toward me. "Want it or not?"

Not would have been my first choice. Pauline Sokol was not one for change. Pauline Sokol was not one for water transportation. And Pauline Sokol was not one to be stuck out in some nautical God-knows-where, investigating medical-insurance fraud…alone.

Admittedly, I've never been out of New England for a vacation or any other reason, and that probably had something to do with my reluctance to try new things. Hope Valley, a very "ethnic" community, had been my home for thirty-five years—and I kinda liked my feet on Mother Earth.

But there were those nasty things called bills that had invaded my life. And they required being paid. And that required money. Sigh. I looked up to see Fabio tapping his cigar into the dirty ashtray.

Amid the flying ashes, he asked, "Well?"

I snatched the folder. "When do I leave?"

"Friday."

"Friday? It's already Wednesday."

"One of the staff nurses onboard got, er…sick. It's perfect. Just perfect. Bon voyage, doll."

Copyright © 2006 by Lori Avocato