Free Birds of Prey by J. A. Jance

Marc Alley, my heart fell.
          Great, I thought. That means I’ll be stuck in the hot seat between Naomi Pepper and Margaret Featherman.
          I expected the two latecomers to arrive together. Instead, Naomi showed up alone. She was dressed in a black suit that passed for formal attire but wasn’t nearly as dressy as the clothing the other women were wearing. I was hoping we could just take up our conversation where we’d left off at the buffet that morning, but that didn’t happen — at least not at first. Naomi seemed to be in a bad mood. She was downcast and disinclined to talk. I wondered if it was something I had said or done. It wasn’t until she was halfway through her first glass of wine that she seemed to come alive.
          Reynaldo took orders for drinks and then stalled for a while. He seemed to be waiting for Margaret, the table’s last missing diner, to arrive before taking our food orders. Eventually, though, the waiter could delay no longer. As he started around the table, I realized that I was enjoying not having to deal with the snide biting commentary that passed for Margaret Featherman’s dinnertime conversation. And to be honest, no one else seated at the table appeared to miss her all that much, either.
          By the time we had finished appetizers and moved on to soup, conversation was flowing freely. Even Naomi’s flagging spirits seemed to have made a remarkable recovery. The only people who remained anxious about Margaret’s continued absence appeared to be the wait staff. In the course of the meal, all the servers — everyone from Joaô, up through the headwaiter — made polite inquiries. Would Madame Featherman be joining us? Was she perhaps feeling unwell? Marc and I answered the queries with genuinely puzzled shrugs. The women rolled their eyes and exchanged knowing smirks. I wondered if the wait staff received extra points or a bonus of some kind based on the number of bottles of wine served per table. In that case, Margaret would be sorely missed since, without her in attendance, per capita wine consumption went way down.
          Finally, finished with my entrée, I suggested that perhaps someone from the group should be dispatched to phone Margaret’s room to check on her and make sure she was all right. Immediately thereafter, Naomi Pepper leaned over to set me straight. “Remember this morning how you said you’d see us at dinner unless you got a better offer?” she inquired in a discreet undertone.
          I nodded.
          “Margaret probably did just that,” she added. “Got a better offer, I mean. That’s par for the course with Margaret. The four of us would plan for weeks to do something together, but then something unexpected would come up — usually a male something — and Margaret would bail on us. We’re used to it.”
          “Fair enough,” I told her. After all, if Margaret’s best chums were prepared to turn a blind eye to her flaky behavior, who was I to object? Besides, without having her in attendance, everyone else seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely. Sharon Carson and Virginia Metz remained totally focused on Marc Alley. Laughing and chatting away, he was apparently rising to the occasion.
          All during dinner the ship’s photographers worked the room, taking pictures right and left. Just prior to dessert, they showed up at our table. We shifted chairs around so Marc and I could stand behind the three ladies. The resulting photo shows the women wearing dazzling, white-toothed smiles. Marc and I, on the other hand, are wearing a matched pair of inane grins. We both look as though we have no idea about what to do with our hands — which, in actual fact, we didn’t.
          When it came time to deliver the dessert menus, the reason for the wait staff’s continuing concern over Margaret Featherman’s absence became clear. The headwaiter himself — a heavyset man named Angelo — came to