Baked Alaska

by Josi S. Kilpack

  ">Sadie: Did you ask him where Mary Anne was?

  >Breanna: No. He looked grumpy. I think he was losing.

  Sadie considered going back to the casino herself to talk to Glen, but she wasn’t a big fan of grumpy people either. If she didn’t end up finding Jen or Mary Anne, she could stop by the casino on her way to the security office that afternoon. She had a feeling Glen would still be there.

  Sadie: Let’s keep looking. We’ve got two hours until my appointment.

  Two shops later, her diligence was rewarded when she spotted Mary Anne in the far corner of a little shop. She sent a quick text to Breanna before putting the phone in her pocket and hurrying forward.

  “Mary Anne,” Sadie said as she came up behind her.

  Mary Anne turned around and smiled. “Sadie! How wonderful to see you.”

  Sadie was immediately pulled into the woman’s squishy hug, which she gladly returned. “You too.”

  Mary Anne immediately held up the bag on her shoulder. “Look at this beauty,” she said triumphantly. It was navy blue pleather with “Alaska” embroidered in silver thread and a map of Alaska outlined with tiny diamonds. It was big enough to fit a small child or a medium-sized dog, though the stitching didn’t look as though it would hold up to that kind of load. “I chose navy because I think that makes the design look like a constellation. Don’t you agree?”

  “I get it,” Sadie said. “The diamonds are like stars.”

  “And look at this,” she said, unzipping it. “It has not two but three separate compartments, along with a hidden one inside, see?” She slid her hand into a side pocket that didn’t look all that hidden.

  “Wow,” Sadie said, trying to sound interested.

  “And there’s this little pocket right here. I think it’s for a cell phone, but it’s perfect for my ship-to-shore card.” She pulled up the flap and withdrew her ship-card just enough for Sadie to see. “It’s like it was made for it, don’t you think? Such clever merchandising. I don’t have to pull out my wallet every time I need to use my card anymore.”

  “Genius,” Sadie said, admiring Mary Anne’s knack for finding joy in the simple things and yet also eager to get her help.

  Mary Anne admired the purse again before letting it drop to her side. “My friend Millie is going to be so jealous. She’s one of those purse-hounds, you know; I bet she has no less than thirty purses in her closet. She doesn’t have anything like this, though, no sirree. And it’s blue, so it matches everything.”

  “It’s lovely,” Sadie said; it was the kind of lie you couldn’t not say. “Um, do you have a minute?”

  “I have lots of minutes,” Mary Anne said, grinning widely. “I’m on vacation!”

  Sadie smiled, sincerely that time; Mary Anne’s joy was infectious. “I was wondering if you could help me figure out the seating arrangement in your dining room.”

  “Whatever for?” Mary Anne asked, pulling her eyebrows together.

  Sadie explained her conversation with Jen and then removed the seating chart from her pocket, showing it to Mary Anne. “Do you know who she’s talking about? A younger guy named Ben. Jen seemed to think he was married.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, why is this of any interest to you? You don’t even eat in our dining room.”

  Sadie didn’t want to get into everything that had happened with Shawn or Maggie or Lorraina. “I’m worried about Ben’s wife—assuming it was Ben who died at the buffet. I wanted to see if she’s okay.”

  She’d hoped that would buy her some sympathy with the older woman, but Mary Anne looked unimpressed. “You don’t even know her.”

  “I might, actually. I’m wondering if we were on a shore excursion with them yesterday,” Sadie admitted. “Beyond that, I was widowed when I was younger and left to raise two small children. I thought maybe I could give her some advice.”

  Mary Anne was not thawed by Sadie’s second attempt at an explanation either. Sadie tried to think of another reason she’d want to find Tanice, other than the truth, when Mary Anne made it easy on her.

  “I bet that boyfriend of yours is an attorney, isn’t he?” She nodded, ready to believe it without Sadie’s confirmation. “And he wants to represent the widow in a lawsuit, right?” She pushed her glasses up on her nose. “I don’t blame you for a second. It’s highway robbery what they charge on this ship. Back in the day, everything was included, you know, now you have to pay extra for certain restaurants, some of the onboard ship tours, and the shuttle transportation. It’s ridiculous if you ask me. If you can get some money out of the cruise line, I’m all for it.”

  Sadie didn’t know what to say to that.

  Mary Anne adjusted her glasses again and then cocked her head to the side. “You’ll need to turn the paper, otherwise I’m not properly oriented.”

  Sadie turned the paper, and Mary Anne leaned closer, scrunching her nose slightly.

  “Do you know who it is Jen’s talking about?”

  “I think so, yes,” Mary Anne said. “I saw him last night so if we’re thinking of the same person, I should be able to figure this out.”

  “I’d sure appreciate it,” Sadie said. “You’d be my hero for the day.”

  Mary Anne looked at her over the top of her glasses. “I do love playing the hero role.” She smiled, then looked back at the chart. “Well, that’s our table,” she said, pointing to one of the tables on the left side of the dining room. “And that means that Ben’s table would be right...” She paused and looked up at Sadie. “Where did you get this?”

  “Oh, uh, from the dining room,” Sadie said, shrugging in hopes of keeping it casual.

  “They just hand out maps of where people are seated? That’s got to be a breach of privacy.”

  “Oh, no, it wasn’t like that.”

  Mary Anne put one hand on her ample hip. “They employ all those foreigners and they don’t always understand the laws around here. We live in the U. S. of A. and we’re entitled to our privacy. Who knows what could happen if this ended up in the wrong hands? They’ll never learn if we don’t teach them the right and proper way to do things, and if they lose their jobs for it, so be it. These jobs are a privilege, and they are lucky to have them. I’m going to talk to my steward—”

  “I stole it,” Sadie said, hoping to forestall a scene. “I snuck into the dining room and stole the seating chart.”

  Mary Anne looked shocked and blinked at her from behind her glasses.

  Sadie felt herself squirming. First Breanna and now Mary Anne was standing in judgment of her choices. Was she out of line here? She didn’t have time to consider that as Mary Anne finally spoke.

  “So your boyfriend is the ambulance-chasing type, huh?”

  Sadie shrugged, relieved when Mary Anne looked back at the chart. After a few seconds, she tapped a finger on one of the central tables. “There it is. Ben’s party was seated right here.”

  Sadie made note of his table. “His party?”

  “There were eight of them, all from Texas, I think. Friends, or associates or something. He was a handsome man.”

  “Jen said he was young, in his thirties.” She looked back at the seating chart and the table Mary Anne had pointed out. Four of the seats shared the same room number while the other four spots were made up of two sets of two. One set was on the tenth floor, but Sadie’s eyes zeroed in on the numbers 1184. Lorraina’s room was on deck eleven and that was the floor where she’d gotten off the elevator when Sadie had been trying to catch up with her.

  What if she’d gotten off the elevator, heading toward her room, but somehow come across the bottle of wine en route? Considering the disastrous turn of events on the cruise thus far, perhaps she couldn’t resist taking the wine bottle to deck twelve, where she planned to drown her sorrows. Had she considered the damage it might do to her already failing liver? Did she care? Sadie felt her neck flush at the questions and the potential answers.

  “Do you know which of these seats would have been his?
” Sadie asked.

  “Well, from my seat, I could see the man in profile,” Mary Anne said, drawing Sadie’s attention back to her. “He had a nose kind of like Tom Cruise—flat on the tip, you know—though he was several inches taller. Did you know Tom Cruise is only five foot seven? And he wasn’t nearly as sexy as Tom is. Anyway”—her finger hovered over the table—“I guess this is him here.” She pointed to the numbers 1184 on the seating chart. Sadie felt the rush of discovery course through her.

  “Do you remember much about Ben’s wife? Was she a redhead?”

  Mary Anne lowered her chin in thought. “I don’t really recall,” she said with a shrug. “So did I give you the help you needed?”

  Sadie smiled at Mary Anne’s eager face and gave the woman another hug. “You were exactly what I needed. Thank you.”

  “Anytime, dear,” she said, waving away the compliment. “Make sure your boy toy hits ’em where it hurts and helps that lady out. If you can’t have love, you should at least end up with money, that’s what I always say.”

  Sadie’s smile was a bit more forced at that, but she thanked Mary Anne again and turned to leave.

  “Are you heading back to the ship now?” Mary Anne asked.

  “Actually, I was planning to meet my daughter.”

  “Oh, wonderful. For lunch? I’m absolutely starving, and I’m sure your daughter is lovely.”

  Ten minutes later, Sadie and Mary Anne were sitting across from one another at a little table outside a store that sold Sarah Palin merchandise. Sadie had texted back and forth with Breanna, who was happy to give up the search in favor of a nap in the cabin. Her interest in dining with Sadie’s new friend was minimal, so Sadie didn’t force it.

  Pete still hadn’t responded to Sadie’s texts, but his silence reinforced Sadie’s desire to stay in Skagway a little longer. Breanna could rest, and Sadie would be close by whenever Pete finally let her know what was going on. She had the information she needed about Ben, but since she wasn’t sure what to do with that information other than tell security about it when she met with them later, taking a break didn’t seem like a bad idea.

  It wasn’t until Sadie ordered some sweet potato fries that she noticed the clock in the window. It was after two o’clock, and she realized the whale watching trip had left half an hour ago. Why hadn’t Breanna mentioned it? Had she forgotten too? Sadie couldn’t imagine that either of them would have wanted to go without Shawn or Pete, but missing the trip made her sad. Here they were, in Alaska, and not able to do the adventure Breanna had most looked forward to.

  “Did you vote for Sarah Palin?” Mary Anne asked as she picked up her hamburger. Though in her seventies, Mary Anne obviously still had all her own teeth and took a massive bite out of the burger.

  Sadie gingerly sidestepped the question and waved toward the store dedicated to the former vice-president hopeful. “Can you believe they have a whole store for her?”

  “They should have a whole mall for her!” Mary Anne said, and quickly launched into explaining why the Republican party would be ushering in the Second Coming sooner than anyone could say “Here’s what I think about gun control.”

  Sadie was relieved when the familiar Nokia ringtone started playing from the recesses of Mary Anne’s new pleather monstrosity. The phone stopped ringing before Mary Anne managed to find it, though a moment later, she held up the phone, victorious.

  Honestly, if Mary Anne still owned that purse a year from now—once the blinding thrill of the purchase had faded enough for her to see it for what it really was—Sadie would eat canned peas. And Sadie never ate canned peas.

  Mary Anne scrunched up her nose as she looked at the screen on her phone. “Glen,” she said simply, before pushing some buttons and putting the phone to her ear.

  “Hi, sweetie...Just having lunch with Sadie...Yes, that’s the one...You didn’t tell me to wait for you for lunch...No, I’m not full. I can eat again....All the way back on the ship?...Oh, well, you don’t want to miss that...Okay, I’ll be there in a few minutes...I’ll meet you at the buffet then. Kiss, kiss.” She hung up the phone and took another huge bite of her burger. “Did I mention my husband is crazy?”

  “Really?” Sadie asked, casually glancing at the clock again. Why hadn’t Pete texted her back yet? Why wasn’t he giving her an update?

  Mary Anne nodded. “See, we owned a pet store in Kansas City—built it from the ground up, and managed it for almost thirty years.”

  “Oh, wow. That’s impressive.” Sadie ate another fry.

  “It was impressive, until a big-box store moved in and took our business—and our tagline: ‘A pet store with so much more.’ Well, we contacted an attorney, and ended up with a nice chunk of change when the store decided to settle with us. They even bought the slogan from us, so I guess it worked out pretty well, but we were forced to close our store.”

  A text message lit up Sadie’s phone, and she reached for it, but Mary Anne went quiet.

  “You’re going to text while we eat?”

  “Um, no,” Sadie said, pulling her hand back. Hadn’t Mary Anne just talked to her husband?

  Mary Anne smiled. “I knew you had better manners than that. Anyway, Glen’s never really been the same since then. He has these...moods, you know? We went to couple’s therapy for a while, and the therapist talked about taking back your power and not letting anyone hold you down. I love that empowerment stuff, don’t you?”

  “I’m glad you found something to help you cope,” Sadie said, sincere but impatient as she kept looking at the phone. Had Pete finally texted her? Or maybe Shawn? She’d been waiting for hours to get an update, and Mary Anne was only halfway through her burger.

  Mary Anne told Sadie about the medication Glen’s doctor had told him to take, but that Glen hadn’t liked the side effects. She said that last bit with a wink, and Sadie smiled in hopes that would be enough of a response to keep Mary Anne from explaining what those side effects were.

  “He’s doing better, now,” Mary Anne said. “But I have to be real careful with him, you know. Make sure he’s taken care of and feeling okay.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sadie said. “That sounds difficult.”

  Mary Anne stared at her hamburger, her expression falling for a moment before she forced a smile and looked back at Sadie. “For better or for worse, right? And besides, it’s not all bad. He loves to go on cruises, and he does really well in the casinos—part of that ‘embracing your power’ the therapist taught us. Did I tell you he once won enough to pay for all our onboard expenses?”

  A second text message chimed on Sadie’s phone. She stared at it while Mary Anne began telling Sadie about her children and grandchildren—seventeen total—and as much as Sadie sensed Mary Anne needed a friend, was she really going to ignore her own son in order to listen politely while Mary Anne talk about hers?

  She was just about to explain to Mary Anne that she had to go when her phone rang, giving Sadie the perfect excuse all on its own. “I’m sorry, Mary Anne, but I really do have to take this.”

  She didn’t look at Mary Anne’s expression or listen to her response as she grabbed the phone and glanced at the caller ID. It was Shawn! “Hi,” Sadie said as she stood and walked a few steps away from the table. Sadie felt bad for leaving Mary Anne, but it was Shawn.

  “Hi, Mom,” Shawn said. He sounded worn out and dejected. He’d never been good at hiding his feelings.

  “What’s wrong?” Sadie asked, all her mom-worries triggered at once.

  “The police want Maggie and me to stay in Skagway.”

  Chapter 27

  Sadie put her free hand to her chest and felt her heart rate speeding up. “Oh, my gosh. Why? Did something happen to Lorraina? Are you under arrest?”

  “No,” he said quickly from the other end of the phone. “Lorraina’s fine—well...I mean...anyway, I don’t have to stay, but there’s some federal guy coming in the morning, and they asked me to stay. Pete thinks it’s a good idea.”

&n
bsp; “Pete said that?” Sadie said, feeling oddly hurt. “Why didn’t he call to talk to me first?”

  “He sent you a couple texts, but you didn’t answer so he suggested I try calling. He’s talking to Bre right now to see if she can stay in town with me but asked me to keep calling you until you answered.”

  “Both of you would stay in Skagway? I don’t understand. What exactly is going on?”

  “Pete explained it better than I can,” Shawn said, the strain in his voice clear. “Here...hang on.”

  Sadie heard the phone shuffling, some muted voices, and then Pete’s voice came on the line. “Sadie—”

  She didn’t give him a chance to finish. “Why does Shawn have to stay? Does this have something to do with those e-mails? Or—”

  “The police have the tests back on the wine bottle. They found cyanide.”

  “Cyanide?” Sadie said, all her breath leaving her in one rush. “Is Lorraina—?” She couldn’t finish the question.

  “They aren’t telling us much right now, but she’s still in a coma. If her condition were to worsen, or if she were to...” Pete trailed off.

  Sadie closed her eyes. She didn’t want to think what it might mean to her family—to Shawn—if Lorraina never woke up from the coma.

  Pete continued. “The cruise ship staff dumped out the contents of the bottle, so they only have trace amounts on the inside of the bottle. There’s still a lot of work that needs to be done to prove that Lorraina ingested the cyanide from the wine, and that the cyanide is what sent her into the coma, but it looks like the poison is what showed up on those initial toxicology reports. Skagway is talking with Juneau, and then coordinating with both federal agents and the labs in Anchorage. It’s getting complicated, but I’m hopeful that the federal agent can clear things up.”

  “And Shawn?”

  “He’s been cooperating, and if he continues to cooperate, he puts himself in a much stronger position. I know it’s not what you want to hear, but it’s not that unusual considering the circumstances, and I’m not sure having Shawn leave is worth the risk.” He was quiet for a moment, and the background voices got quieter, making Sadie think he’d moved away from whomever he was with. “Honestly, Sadie, I worry that if he refuses to stay, he will be arrested in order to keep him here. We don’t want that.”