Free Curried Lobster Murder: Book 14 in The Darling Deli Series by Patti Benning Page A

sick and couldn’t stay in the competition anymore.”
    “Oh, how horrible.”
    “She was a really good cook, too,” Moira said with a sigh. “She won the first round. You know what? I kind of want to go find her and see how she’s doing. I had dinner with her last night, and I like her a lot.”
    “All right,” Martha said. “It was good talking to you. You’ve got to tell us how you do tomorrow, okay? I bet you’re going to win this thing.”
    “You’ve got this, Moira,” Denise added. “If anyone deserves the prize, it’s you.”
     

CHAPTER TWELVE
    On her way out of her room to go look for Daphne, Moira ran into Candice.
    “I was just coming to look for you,” her daughter said. “I saw that today’s challenge was over. How did it go?”
    “Great.” She grinned. “I won.”
    “No way! That’s awesome. So that means no matter what, you can’t be disqualified in the next round, right?”
    “Right. Though the lady who won yesterday’s challenge ended up dropping out today even though she had immunity. She’s the one who got sick. I feel bad that she decided to drop out of the competition.”
    “She probably didn’t want to risk working around food while she’s sick,” Candice said. “She could get the judges and you guys sick too.”
    “It seemed like she just had food poisoning,” Moira said. “But I guess she knows best. I was about to go find her and see how she’s doing. Do you want to come with me? It’s Daphne, one of the people we had dinner with last night.”
    “Sure.”
    Together they wandered down the hall, not quite sure where to start their search. Since Daphne was in the competition, her room would be on the third floor, but there were no convenient name tags to help them figure out which one was hers.
    “Does the ship have a hospital or anything?” Candice asked at last. “If she’s really sick enough to drop out of the competition, maybe she’s under the care of a doctor.”
    “The ship does have an infirmary,” Moira remembered. “Xavier, the first mate, said as much when he was dealing with Bobby and his wife.”
    “Well, that should be easy to find, at least,” the young woman replied. “Let’s go find one of those maps.”
    A few minutes later they had oriented themselves around the ‘you are here’ sticker on the map in the hallway and were on their way to the infirmary on the main deck. It was easy to find once they knew where they were going, and Daphne welcomed them in to her small room.
    “What happened?” Moira asked, looking at the pale woman in bed. “You were doing so well in the competition. We were all worried when you disappeared.”
    “I tried to work through,” she told them. “But I kept feeling worse and worse, and I finally told Charlie that I needed to go. When I got here, the doctor wouldn’t let me leave; he said he was concerned that I might have something contagious, and he didn’t want to risk me spreading it to anyone else on the ship. I guess viruses spread quickly on cruises.”
    “I’m sorry, I know it must be terrible to have to drop out like you did,” the deli owner said.
    Daphne made a face. “You know; I feel bad enough that I don’t even care about the competition. I just want to get better. And it would be great if my guts stopped trying to crawl out of my throat. Luckily one thing this boat has a lot of is anti-nausea medicine.”
    “You look a lot better than you did when you got up during dinner the other night,” the Moira said. She was leaning against the wall, keeping a cautious distance away from the sick woman. The last thing she wanted was to catch Daphne’s bug. “I hope whatever you had was just food poisoning and you’ll be free to enjoy the rest of the cruise before you know it.”
    “Thanks,” the other woman said. “I really think that’s all I have myself, I guess the doctor is just being overly cautious. I told him it started right around dinner time, but he still thinks that the