Free Peggy Dulle - Liza Wilcox 03 - Secrets at Sea by Peggy Dulle Page B

inner pockets. I sighed and pulled out my passport, driver’s license, and credit card. “No, they’re all here.”
    “Now that’s interesting. What else did you have in here worth stealing?”
    “Nothing I know of,” I said.
    “I’d have thought they would have at least taken your credit card. That would have been easy to use or sell.”
    “Maybe they didn’t see it. It was tucked inside my passport.”
    “Maybe,” he said, but he looked skeptical.
    “Let’s go see if Tom’s found his passport.”
    In the living room, Tom threw his clothes back into his suitcase. He cussed under his breath and Ramirez grinned.
    “Did you find your passport, Tom?” I asked.
    “Yes,” he held it up. “It was still in my suitcase’s side pocket.
    “Anything missing from the bedroom?” Ramirez said.
    “No,” I shook my head. “It’s just the same mess that’s in here.”
    “They left her credit card,” Hansen told Ramirez.
    When Ramirez and Tom looked at me, both raised just one eyebrow. It struck me like the punch line of a great joke. Maybe it was a response to the tension that had been building since I’d found Betsy’s body, then the purse snatching and now this. I started giggling.
    “Liza?” Tom said.
    “Miss Wilcox?” Ramirez said.
    Hansen, who was standing next to me, chuckled. He’d seen the eyebrow thing, too.
    When Ramirez and Tom frowned together, Hansen and I laughed out loud. It felt good to laugh after all the negative emotions I’d been feeling in the last few days.
    “What the hell!” Ramirez barked.
    Hansen put his hand up. “Nothing, Jack. Let’s let these people clean up this mess. Nothing is missing.” He handed me a card. “If you find something is gone, call me.”
    I nodded and put the card into my sweater pocket.
    The two detectives left.
    Tom scowled at me, “What the hell were you and Hansen laughing about?”
    I thought about where Hansen and I had been before we started laughing. Did Tom think it had something to do with the twin beds? “It’s the eyebrow thing.”
    “What eyebrow thing?”
    “You know how you can raise just one eyebrow?”
    He raised his right eyebrow.
    I started laughing again.
    “Okay, that’s never been funny before.”
    “No, it’s just that you raised the right one and Ramirez raised the left one. It was like looking at two book ends. Then you frowned in unison. It was hilarious.”
    Tom scowled. “It doesn’t seem funny to me.”
    “You weren’t standing over there with Hansen and me.”
    “Your pictures are gone.” He nodded toward the coffee table.
    “I noticed that right away. Why would anyone want my pictures?”
    “I don’t know,” Tom said. “But that’s not the part bothering me.”
    “What is?”
    “They should have taken our passports or credit cards, those they could sell. The fact that they didn’t worries me.”
    “Why?”
    “Because it means they were looking for something else.”
    “Like what?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Maybe it was kids looking for money and they took the photos out of spite,” I suggested.
    “That’s possible. But we didn’t have any money in here, so it’s hard to say if they would or wouldn’t have taken it,” his frown deepened. “I’m thinking that maybe we shouldn’t go on this cruise, Liza.”
    “No, I want to go.” I walked over to him. “This is all happening in Long Beach. Once we’re out of here, it will be over.”
    “I’m not so sure and I hope this isn’t an omen.” He shook his head. “With the way our luck is going - the ship’s probably going to be taken over by terrorists!”
    It took us quite a while to clean up both rooms. Tom did a lot of cussing, and I smiled, nodded, and did my best to ignore him. In the end, the only things missing were my photos and my small suitcase was crushed beyond saving.
    “I have an idea,” I told Tom as we were resting on the couch, our feet on the coffee table, and my head on his shoulder.
    He turned and stroked the