Baked Alaska

by Josi S. Kilpack

  “That’s frustrating,” Sadie commiserated.

  “It doesn’t help that this is coming at a really busy time for him. They’re selling off a piece of property, and he’s been overseeing the deal. The sale is supposed to close tomorrow, but he’s really stressed out about it. This is the first time he’s done anything like this on his own. He wants to make his dad proud and all that. If I didn’t think his mom would hire the Spice Girls to sing the wedding march, I’d back off.” She took another bite, then looked up at Sadie. “So, what was the investigating you wanted help with?”

  Sadie didn’t realize that Breanna didn’t know anything about the heart attack last night until she started talking as though Breanna knew the whole thing. When her daughter responded with shock, Sadie had to back up to that morning and start the story with her morning walk with Mary Anne.

  As Sadie filled in the details, she glanced around the buffet, wondering where in this space Ben had been last night. She realized that even though she had no official confirmation that the heart attack victim was named Ben, she assumed he was.

  Breanna listened dutifully while she ate. “Wow,” she said when Sadie finished. “So, you’re going to talk to Officer Jareg about all of this, right?”

  “Eventually, yes,” Sadie said. “But my appointment with him isn’t until four o’clock and the more info I can give him at that time, the better. I mean, what if Ben’s wife or girlfriend is named Tanice? What if I can confirm that the wine bottle belonged to them? If there was something dangerous in the wine that sent Lorraina into her coma, then Shawn’s off the hook and he can come back on the boat, right?”

  “You really think you can figure all of that out?”

  “I’m not sure, but I’ve found that oftentimes it’s like pulling a loose thread—it goes further than you expect. The alternative is to sit and do nothing until my appointment. That sounds impossible.”

  “That does sound impossible,” Breanna agreed. “Sitting still has never been your strong suit.”

  It was a relief to have Breanna agree so readily that Sadie had good reason to seek this information. “I thought we could start with the Chandelier dining room. I bet they have lists and charts of who sits at which table.”

  Breanna sat up straighter, intrigued. “So we go to the dining room and ask to see the lists, right?”

  “It might be that easy,” Sadie said with a hesitant smile. “But it might not. Sometimes people don’t offer up information quite so easily, in which case we might need to be...creative. If you’re uncomfortable with it, you don’t have to come with me.”

  “No, I’m good,” Breanna said. She took the napkin from her lap and put it on her plate, then smiled nervously. “Just tell me what to do.”

  Chapter 25

  The Chandelier dining room was designed for those people who’d chosen, at the time of booking, reserved seating for their evening meals— people like Glen and Mary Anne who liked a more traditional cruising experience or like Jen and Frank who wanted an excuse to sit down together at a set time every day.

  Because Sadie’s group had chosen the flexible eating option, she’d never been to the Chandelier, but it was easy to find thanks to the color-coded maps of the ship posted in numerous locations. The outside of the restaurant was painted with an elaborate mural depicting a 1920s-type ballroom, with men in zoot suits and women with feathered headbands kicking up their heels around a dance floor. The large doors leading to the dining room itself were closed; only dinner was served in the Chandelier, and it was barely noon.

  Sadie tried the doorknob. “It’s locked.”

  “Really?” Breanna said from behind her where she’d been casting nervous glances left and right since their arrival. “Maybe we could ask someone in one of the other restaurants. I bet they could put us in contact with whoever is in charge.”

  Sadie had to keep herself from frowning. Breanna was already anxious even though all they’d done was check the lock?

  “Except that whoever is in charge might not give us the lists, which puts us in an awkward position if we try to get them after being told not to.”

  It took a few moments for Breanna to figure out what Sadie meant, but then she smiled wryly. “Ask for forgiveness instead of permission?”

  “Sort of,” Sadie said. She took a step back to get a better look at the double doors—big, heavy, commercial-grade fire doors that were up to code for a ship of this size. But the lock was standard, and Sadie could see the latch in the space between the doors. She reached in her pocket for her ship-card and slid it in between the two doors, below the latch. Breaking into a locked door with a credit card was cliché, but that was because it worked so well—on the right kind of lock.

  “The ultimate goal is not to have to ask for either one. If no one knows we took the list, then there’s no need to even ask for forgiveness.”

  “That sounds so blasphemous,” Breanna said.

  “It’s not,” Sadie said quickly. “God believes in justice, and we’re working toward that. He gets it. You stand in the hall and let me know if you hear anyone coming.”

  Breanna looked at the door. “You’re really going to break in there?”

  Sadie looked at Breanna’s doubtful expression and tried to hide the slight annoyance growing in her mind. She was used to working alone, which meant no one questioned her—at least not until they realized what she’d done. “Would you rather go back to the cabin? It’s okay if you do.”

  “No, it’s fine. I mean, we’re not going to steal anything, right?”

  “Just information, and it’s for a good cause.” Sadie was beginning to feel like the little devil on someone’s shoulder, while Breanna was taking the more angelic route.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Breanna said, looking both ways as she moved back a few feet toward the hallway.

  “Just signal me if someone’s coming.” Sadie slid the credit card upward, twisted it as much as she could to put tension on the latch, and then pushed up ever so slightly. It made progress one millimeter at a time, but it was progress all the same.

  “How should I signal you?” Breanna asked from where she’d posted herself about ten feet away. “Liam and I always use bird calls, but there aren’t a lot of birds inside a cruise ship.”

  “Why don’t you cough?” Sadie said, keeping her focus on the latch, which was still moving. She increased the pressure, but it was still slow going.

  Seconds later, Breanna coughed, and Sadie straightened and stepped back from the door. A moment later she heard voices, and gestured Breanna to come toward her. She looked up at the mural as though admiring it.

  “Isn’t it lovely?” Sadie said to Breanna just as two staff members walked past carrying what looked like table linens and speaking in a language Sadie had never heard before.

  “Um, yeah, truly...lovely,” Breanna said with her arms folded tightly across her stomach. She looked more ill than anything else.

  Sadie glanced over her shoulder and acted surprised to see the staff members. She said hello, which they returned before going back to their indecipherable words. After they turned the corner, Sadie waited a few seconds to be sure they were gone, then shooed Breanna back to her post. She hurried back to the door.

  “That was close,” Breanna said anxiously, looking both ways again.

  It wasn’t really, but it was kind of cute how worried Breanna was. Compared to other places Sadie had broken into, a dining room wasn’t a big deal at all. Sadie got back to work, slowly using the tension from the card to slide back the latch, bit by bit by bit. After nearly a full minute, Breanna coughed again. Sadie was so close to having the latch completely pulled back that she increased the tension on the card and moved faster. Sweat beaded on her forehead.

  Breanna coughed again, loud hacking coughs.

  “Come on,” Sadie whispered under her breath when she heard footsteps. She’d managed to pull the latch back almost all the way and if she stopped now, she’d have to start
all over again. She just needed a mere fraction of a centimeter in order to...finally!

  The latch pulled back and Sadie quickly slipped the card into the empty space. She looked up at a frightened Breanna at the same moment she twisted the handle and opened the door enough to dart through. There wasn’t time to do anything else, but she cringed at having left Breanna outside the door. They should have planned this part out a little better. She pulled the door closed, straining to hear what might be taking place on the other side.

  “Oh, hi,” she heard Breanna say in a high-pitched voice that hopefully didn’t sound as nervous to whoever had approached as it did to Sadie. She heard the murmur of another voice, then Breanna said, “I’m just waiting for my mom. We’re meeting here in a few minutes.”

  There were more murmurs and then silence. She counted to three before opening the door an inch, but Breanna gestured at her to close it again. “Hurry!” she whispered, then looked both ways and took a deep breath. She gave Sadie a shaky thumbs-up. “I’m good.”

  Sadie closed the door and faced the room for the first time, half expecting to see a bunch of workers staring at her, but she was alone.

  An ornate staircase led down a few steps to the actual dining room. The same mural from outside the room was repeated on the inside walls, complete with intricate crown molding along the upper edge, velvet valances on the windows, and more than a dozen huge chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. It was lovely, but Sadie hoped Mary Anne was wrong about it having the best food on the ship since that would mean Sadie would never get to try it. Flexible dining had seemed like such a good idea at the time.

  She heard the sound of dishes clinking together somewhere to her left and quickly moved into action. There was a podium at the bottom of the stairs with a door panel on the front. It made sense that there would be a seating chart, and it made even more sense that the seating chart would be stored near the entrance.

  The door panel was unlocked, which was a relief. Sadie smiled as she opened the panel and pulled out a three-ring binder with “Seating” on the front. Perfect!

  She sat on the bottom step and opened the book to find several pages of instructions in plastic sleeves. She flipped through them until she reached a page showing a diagram with several circles. A quick glance at the dining room showed that all the tables were round and sat eight people. Sadie went back to the book and located a time stamp on each page. There were four dinner shifts: 5:30, 6:30, 7:30, and 8:30. She went to the page for 7:30 and scanned the seating arrangement, disappointed not to have names listed on the tables, just room numbers.

  “Biscuits,” she muttered. The sound of voices coming from the same direction as the clanging dishes didn’t allow her the luxury of thinking through her options. She snapped open the three-ring binder and removed the page. They were on day four of a seven-day cruise and surely everyone knew where their seats were by now, right? She rolled up the seating assignment, slid it into her bag where it promptly unrolled itself, hurried up the stairs, opened the door carefully, and stepped back into the hallway. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “That was absolutely terrifying,” Breanna said as she and Sadie quickstepped away from the restaurant. “It reminded me of that sick-to-my-stomach feeling I’d get when I’d play hide-and-seek as a kid. I hated that game.”

  Sadie had used the exact same description to describe her own feelings during earlier investigations. “You were a great lookout,” Sadie assured her. “Thank you for your help.”

  “Sure,” Breanna said, but she still sounded nervous. “So, did you find out if there was a Ben and Tanice at the 7:30 seating?”

  Sadie patted her bag. “No names, just room numbers.”

  Breanna glanced at the bag hanging across Sadie’s chest and came to a stop. “You took the list?”

  Sadie stopped too, looking around to make sure no one would overhear their exchange. The ship was pretty much empty since most of the passengers were in Skagway. “Just the one page.”

  “You took it, though?”

  “I had to. There were people in the kitchen, and I worried they would come out before I could copy down the chart by hand. I had hoped for names too, believe me.”

  Breanna pursed her lips in disapproval, but Sadie took her arm and kept walking. “We’ll talk about it in the cabin, okay?”

  As soon as they entered the cabin, Sadie sat on her bed and removed the seating chart from her purse, giving herself a little pat on the back for having been successful in her quest. One look at Breanna, who had remained standing, however, caused her to drop the smile. “It’s just a list, Breanna.”

  “Someone else’s list. I didn’t think you were going to do anything illegal.”

  Sadie put the paper down and looked up at Breanna. “It’s a list, and not even a list of names. Everyone knows where they sit by now, and I think the end justifies the means.”

  “Is this the kind of thing you and Shawn do?” Breanna said. “Take stuff and—”

  “Spy on people and gather information and catch bad guys?” Sadie finished up with a nod. “What did you think we did as investigators?”

  “It doesn’t feel right.”

  Sadie took a breath and tried not to be dismissive of Breanna’s feelings. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. And I didn’t do this, or anything else I’ve done in the past, flippantly. But a man is dead, and Lorraina is in the hospital, and this”—she lifted the list—“might help us figure out how both of those things happened, and more importantly, if they are connected.”

  Breanna still looked concerned but sat down on the bed next to Sadie without further comment.

  Sadie slid the seating chart out of the sheet protector so she could fold the paper and used her pen to circle all the repeating room numbers.

  “You’re circling everyone who shares a room together?”

  “Yes,” Sadie said. “Unfortunately, most of the seats are taken by shared room numbers. Still, narrowing the list is important.”

  “Maybe if we leave a bigger tip for our steward, it will satisfy karma for us having stolen the list.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Sadie said. “Especially if it will make you feel better.”

  “It will,” Breanna said nodding, but then she smiled slightly. “It is kind of exciting, isn’t it? I mean, now that it’s over and stuff.”

  Sadie smiled back. She didn’t want to encourage rebellious behavior in her daughter who had never been one to break the rules, but there was a thrill of discovery that permeated these kinds of things.

  “So, now what?” Breanna said, after pointing out the final set of room numbers Sadie had missed. “How do you find out which room number belongs to this Ben guy?”

  “Well, Jen and Mary Anne both eat at the same time, and Jen thought she knew who it was. Maybe she could look at the list and help us narrow it down, at least to the table he sat at. She said she was taking the train with her kids this afternoon, though I don’t know what time. She seemed to think Mary Anne would be able to verify the guy too, though, so I’m wondering if Mary Anne could be just as helpful. She might be easier to find; I think all she planned to do in town was shop.”

  “What do we do if we figure out what room Ben was in? Knock on the door and see if the widow answers?”

  Sadie grimaced. “I haven’t thought that far out. Let’s just find Jen or Mary Anne and see what they can tell us. Keep in mind that the plan is to be able to give as much information as possible to the investigators I’ll be talking to at four. We’ll go as far as we can, but if we reach a stopping point, no worries. It’s still beneficial.”

  “That makes sense. So how do we find Jen or Mary Anne?” Breanna asked. “There are three thousand people on this cruise, and most of them are in Skagway along with the passengers from the two other ships that docked today.”

  If Jen hadn’t left on the train yet, she’d likely be getting lunch with her family or visiting the train station, which had a
gift shop and a museum. Mary Anne could be anywhere. The bigger problem was that Breanna didn’t know either one of the women, so she couldn’t really look for them.

  Or could she?

  There had been hundreds of photos taken since the first time Sadie had made her purchases from the photo gallery, and it took some time to find one of each of the women. Because of how badly it had turned out the last time Sadie purchased someone else’s photo, she thought hard about buying these before taking them to the counter and charging them to her ship-card. If asked, she could always tell the ladies she’d purchased them as gifts.

  Breanna opted to search on the ship, keeping the photos with her for verification purposes. She put them in Sadie’s bag and carried it over her shoulder so it wouldn’t be obvious that she was consulting the photographs as she wandered the ship. Sadie would look through Skagway—bagless.

  “You’re sure you’re okay with this?” Sadie said as they approached the gangway and she pulled her ship-card out of her pocket.

  “I’ve totally got this,” Breanna said, though she still looked nervous. “But we better leave an extra big tip for the steward.”

  Chapter 26

  Sadie checked the train station first in hopes of finding Jen and her cute family before they headed to the Yukon, but they weren’t at the depot or the gift shop or the museum. She then turned her attention to the more touristy shops, thinking that was where she’d likely find Mary Anne. After the third store, Sadie sent a text to Pete, requesting an update about his visit with Maggie, but he didn’t respond, which made her even more intent on finding Jen or Mary Anne. Any time her thoughts dwelled on Shawn for too long, her chest would get tight and her motherly instincts would tempt her to go back to the police station and make a scene.

  Bre sent periodic updates each time she finished searching an entire floor. She’d found the kids club and talked to a worker who recognized Jen’s kids, but said they’d gone ashore with their parents for the day. Breanna also thought she recognized Mary Anne’s husband in the casino, which had Sadie shaking her head for not thinking of looking there first.