Free Murder Packs a Suitcase by Cynthia Baxter

another liner. But while they were in Cherbourg, France, one of the girls got pink eye and they had to delay their departure until she got better.”
    â€œWhat about the countess?” Mallory asked.
    â€œDefinitely first-class. She was British, married to the nineteenth Earl of Rothes, mother of two sons. A real lady, from what I understand.”
    Mallory walked just a little more gracefully than usual as she wandered over to a glass display case, which held a copy of the
New York Times
dated Tuesday, April 16, 1912. The headlines read:
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    Titanic Sinks Four Hours After Hitting Iceberg
    866 Rescued by Carpathia, Probably 1250 Perish;
    Ismay Safe, Mrs. Astor Maybe, Noted Names Missing
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    Ismay, she recalled from the movie, was the muckety-muck who ran the White Star Line, the company that owned and operated the
Titanic.
The Astors were household names simply because they were so rich. As for the number of casualties, she knew from the reading she’d done before coming to Florida that it was even larger: 1,503.
    But she copied down the headline, word for word, in case she decided to include it in her article. As she wrote, she overheard a man who had just come into the ticket office.
    â€œSo what exactly is the experience?” he asked the man behind the counter. “Do you, like, get wet?”
    Maybe I should be writing an article on macabre Florida, she thought.
    â€œWe have a few minutes before the tour starts,” she told Courtney. “Let’s check out the gift shop.”
    Mallory quickly decided that the gift shop also belonged in an article on macabre Florida. After all, there was definitely something unseemly about a retail establishment whose theme was one of the worst tragedies of the twentieth century.
    Still, she couldn’t resist a store of any kind, much less one with a clerk dressed like a maid from the early 1900s, in a long black dress and crisp white apron and cap. Mallory wandered among the displays, wondering if Jordan would appreciate a fluffy white bath towel embroidered with
White Star Line—Titanic.
    Maybe a reminder of how fragile life is would prompt him to hang it up every once in a while, she thought, instead of leaving it on the bathroom floor in a mildewing heap. When she spotted the price tag, however, she decided there had to be cheaper ways of training an eighteen-year-old boy.
    She reached for a long thin box sporting a picture of the doomed ship.
Inflatable Titanic,
the box read.
Twenty inches. Educational and fun.
    Very
educational, Mallory thought grimly. It teaches the lesson: Go by airplane.
    The box also warned,
Do not use as a flotation device,
which she decided was excellent advice.
    Nearby she spotted a plastic replica of the famous ocean liner, one that was apparently battery powered.
Cruises on surface
the copy on the box noted.
    That, Mallory concluded, was undoubtedly designed to calm potential customers who feared the toy would go under the very first time it was used.
    But showtime was imminent. As she and Courtney waited in line with two dozen other tourists who were part of the tour, their eyes were glued to a video with actual footage of the great ship.
    â€œThe ship was nearly four city blocks long,” the narrator reported with pride. “Its passengers included famous names like Guggenheim, Astor, and Strauss.”
    â€œI’m surprised you’ve never been here before,” Mallory commented, figuring that part of being a good travel writer was making conversation with the people who had sponsored her trip.
    Courtney scrunched up her nose again. “Actually, it’s been a really busy year for me. I just graduated from college last May. And then Greg and I got married in August. Planning our wedding was a huge job. But it was worth it.
    â€œYou should have seen it!” she gurgled, just assuming Mallory would be interested in the details.