Baked Alaska

by Josi S. Kilpack

  “It’s just a rough sketch,” Sadie said, her tone caught between pride and embarrassment.

  “I’m most interested in the gift tag,” Officer Jareg said. “You seem to be the only person who saw it. You say it was written to a Ben and Tanice?”

  Sadie nodded. “And a man named Ben with a wife named Tanice died last night.” She looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to show the impact of that summation on his face, but he kept a poker face. Did security personnel take a class on that expression like she assumed detectives did?

  “What more can you tell me about the tag?”

  “Well, it was tied to the bottle with a green ribbon.”

  “Was it handwritten or printed?”

  “Uh, printed, I think. Not many people can write that pretty. The gift tag was brown, like paper-bag brown, with a black border.”

  “How did you see it so well? It was dark on the deck when the men arrived, and the wine bottle was under the chair, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “It wasn’t very far under the chair,” Sadie said, squirming slightly. “I bent down to read the tag. I’m good at remembering details.” She almost added that she had past experience as an investigator, but she kind of liked that Officer Jareg didn’t know her history. In the past, it had worked against her to have been involved in so many investigations, and she didn’t want to add that concern to this situation.

  “Did you touch it?”

  “I...yes, I touched it, but just to see what it said. I didn’t know Lorraina’s name at that time, but I’d seen her on the ship, as I think my son told you. I thought her name was Tanice after I read the tag.”

  “So you did touch the gift tag,” Officer Jareg repeated.

  “Yes, but I had my hand in the pocket of my jacket so I wouldn’t mess up any fingerprints.”

  “Perhaps you loosened the tag and it fell off,” Officer Jareg said.

  Sadie considered that, but shook her head. “I was very careful, and I don’t remember it being loose at all.” She wondered if he was trying to come up with a reason so as to spare the accusation of the missing gift tag being put upon his officers. “What is the onboard procedure for chain of evidence? Depending on who had access to the bottle, any number of people could have removed it, accidentally or on purpose.”

  “Why would they remove it on purpose?” Officer Jareg said, looking back at Sadie’s sketch.

  She couldn’t help herself from adding more to her theory. “Look, the widow of this man isn’t brokenhearted by his death. How many couples made up of a Ben and a Tanice are on this ship? I’m sure you’ve spoken with her, right? She talked about having gone to the coroner’s office, and I’m sure she had to arrange for her husband to be shipped home, and through it all she had to have played the role of weeping widow, right? She isn’t a weeping widow, I assure you. I think you have enough circumstantial evidence to hold her for questioning. You’re holding my son based solely on your suspicions that he might have had something to do with Lorraina’s coma. But a man is dead, and my son didn’t have anything to do with that. Surely Tanice deserves some of your attention in the matter of her husband’s death.”

  He was silent for a few seconds, then met her eyes and gave her a polite smile. So be it, but she had no doubt that as soon as she left this office, he would be on the phone to the federal authorities. Sadie could only hope he would get the go-ahead to detain Tanice before she left the ship.

  “She’s probably packing as we speak—unless she’s left the ship already,” Sadie said. “And her cabin is right down the hall.”

  “This is a police matter,” Officer Jareg said, getting to his feet. “I will let you know if we need anything additional from you.”

  Sadie suppressed a sigh; bureaucracy was such a slow animal sometimes. But she understood the ship wouldn’t want to make a big deal about something that might upset the passengers. Maybe they preferred the idea of locating Tanice at the airport in Skagway—there was only one—rather than making a scene here. Either way, Sadie had done everything she could do—perhaps a little too much, if Officer Jareg’s expression was any indication.

  Sadie thanked him and left the office, a little frustrated, but content in the fact that she’d done her best. It was a few minutes before six o’clock. She might still have time to hurry to town and see her children before the ship left port.

  Sadie didn’t think to be worried about passing Tanice’s room again until she realized the door was open. She came to a stop several feet away, but to get to the elevators, she would have to pass in front of the open door. The hinges on the cabin doors had springs to ensure they always shut behind the guests. For it to be open meant something was propping it open; the stewards used little wedges as they were going back and forth between the rooms and their carts. Sadie retrieved her phone from her purse. Pete had texted her, but, more importantly, Tanice had called her twice. She turned the ringer back on before returning the phone to her purse and looking at the open door again.

  Every second she delayed was less time she’d have to say good-bye to her children, so she raised her chin and told herself she was being silly. Tanice didn’t know it was her who had slid the note under the door or answered her phone call. She would call her back in a few minutes.

  She had taken a single step forward when Tanice startled her by coming out into the hall. “Hey there.”

  “Oh,” Sadie said quickly as she fell back a step, then cleared her throat. “Hi.” She started walking again, but Tanice quickly moved in front of her, forcing Sadie back another step.

  “You sure do spend a lot of time up here on deck eleven,” Tanice said.

  “Well, my...um, this is the only access to the security office.” She attempted to angle past Tanice on the other side of the hallway, but Tanice blocked her once more.

  “What are y’all doin’ at the security office?”

  “I had an appointment. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” Sadie’s heart rate began to pick up, and she forced herself to take a full breath. She was feeling increasingly threatened.

  “Really?” Tanice drawled. She reached into the pocket of her sweat pants, pulled out her phone, and pushed a button. For a moment, Sadie was confused—was she calling security because she felt Sadie spent too much time on deck eleven?

  An instant later, Sadie’s phone started ringing in her bag.

  Chef Ferguson’s Stuffed Mushrooms

  8 ounces bacon

  16 ounces white button mushrooms (can use a larger mushroom, if desired)

  1/2 cup finely minced sweet onion

  1 clove garlic, minced

  1 (4-ounce) package cream cheese, softened

  1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

  Pepper, to taste

  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

  Using scissors or a sharp knife, cut raw bacon into small pieces. In a large sauté pan, cook bacon over medium heat until crispy. While bacon is cooking, remove mushroom stems from caps and chop stems into small pieces; set caps aside to use later.

  When bacon is done, remove from pan and drain all but 2 tablespoons of bacon grease from the pan. Set bacon aside.

  In the remaining bacon grease, sauté onion over medium heat until soft, about 5 minutes, scraping up any brown bits on bottom of pan. Add garlic and cook 30 seconds before adding the chopped mushroom stems. Reduce heat to low. Add cream cheese and Parmesan cheese. Stir until cheeses are melted and ingredients are combined.

  Add reserved chopped bacon and season to taste with pepper. Remove mixture from heat and generously stuff each mushroom cap with mixture. Bake for 20 minutes or until mushrooms are soft and filling is hot.

  Note: To keep mushroom caps from drying out during the baking process, put caps in a zip-top plastic bag. Add a tablespoon of olive oil and shake bag until caps are lightly coated, being careful not to crush the caps. You can also spray or brush them with olive oil.

  Note: Mixture can be made, cooled, and stored (covered) in the fridge for up to two day
s.

  Chapter 32

  “How ’bout that?” Tanice said while Sadie’s ringtone filled the air. “You sounded different on the phone.” She pushed a button on her phone and the ringing in Sadie’s bag stopped.

  The only escape Sadie could think of was to run back to security, but when she looked up at Tanice, it wasn’t to see a cocky expression or even an angry one. Instead, she looked almost contrite.

  “Would you come inside so we can talk for a minute?” Tanice stepped to the threshold of her room and waved her arm inside. It was a nicer cabin than Sadie’s group had booked, and though she admired the size, there was no way on this green earth she was going to go inside with this woman.

  “I would rather not,” Sadie said as diplomatically as possible.

  “Well, I don’t much like the idea of talkin’ here in the hall.”

  “Perhaps we could go to the card room or the chapel or something.”

  Tanice shook her head and ran her fingers through her long thick hair, trailing it over one shoulder. “I’m supposed to get off this ship within the next hour.” She lowered her voice. “But I’d like to take that wine with me, and I’m willin’ to compensate you for your help with that.”

  “So you do have a bottle of wine that went missing.”

  “I tried to bring it on the ship,” Tanice explained. “But they took it away and said they would return it when I left. If you saw it, though, then obviously someone else got a hold of it, right? Was it you?”

  Sadie remembered hearing something about not bringing alcoholic beverages on the ship. It made sense that if Tanice’s wine bottle was found when the bags were scanned, it would be held somewhere. But how would Lorraina have gotten it if it were in a hold somewhere? It made far more sense for Lorraina to have gotten it in close proximity to her room, which was nearby Ben and Tanice’s room, than for Lorraina to have somehow gotten it from wherever confiscated items were stored.

  “Why did you say you didn’t know anything about it?” Sadie asked.

  Tanice let out a pretty sigh. “Maybe it’s hard for you to understand, but a whole lot has been going on the last little bit. I wasn’t thinkin’ straight when I first read your note, but now that I’ve had time to think about it, I really don’t have time to have a big discussion. I’m willing to pay a reward for it.”

  “I don’t have it,” Sadie said, and watched Tanice’s jaw tighten. “A friend of mine found it, and she—”

  “Found it?” Tanice interrupted, betraying the tension she was trying to conceal. “Where’s your friend? I’ll give her a reward.” She stopped herself, repaired her expression, and then smiled before she continued. “And a little somethin’ for you as well, since you helped me track it down.”

  Did Tanice not realize that Sadie knew Ben had died?

  “Actually, I was just talking to the security office about it and—”

  Tanice jolted and that reaction, combined with what Sadie had overheard by the elevators earlier, convinced Sadie that her hunch was right: Tanice knew there was something wrong with the wine.

  A door opened farther down the hall, and Tanice quickly looked over her shoulder.

  “Please,” Tanice said, sounding more desperate than she had before. “Come on in. I’ll keep the door open if it will make y’all feel better.”

  Sadie debated, but finally nodded. Tanice entered first, which Sadie appreciated since that kept her closer to the open door. She stopped just a few feet inside, not wanting to get any farther than necessary while still ensuring them some privacy.

  Once inside, Tancie turned to Sadie, her jaw tightening again. “What did you tell security?”

  They stared each other down for several seconds, but Sadie was a master at staring contests, and Tanice finally blinked and looked away. She took a deep breath. “Okay, look, I’m real sorry to say this but your friend stole that wine. I don’t know how she got in my room, but I paid good money to get the bottle out of the hold. I put it on ice for after dinner and the show, but when my husband and I got back to the room, it was gone. If your friend had kept her hands to herself, she wouldn’t have gotten sick.”

  “How did you know she got sick?”

  Tanice blinked, her face turning pale. “You said—” she stammered.

  Sadie shook her head. “No, I didn’t.”

  When Tanice didn’t reply, Sadie pressed her advantage. “Do you know what I think? I think the wine you smuggled onboard was poisoned. And I think you intended it for your husband.”

  Anger flared in Tanice’s eyes. “I’ve had a real miserable few months, lady, and it was only fair that he have one miserable week in return.”

  Sadie considered that. Nothing Tanice had said suggested that she’d expected the wine to kill her husband, but her husband didn’t have liver disease. “And yet he died, even without the wine. Interesting.”

  Tanice’s eyes went wide with the realization that Sadie knew about Ben’s death. Sadie suspected that Tanice was also mentally reviewing the interactions she’d had with Sadie this afternoon—how very non-widow-ish she’d been acting.

  Tanice opened her mouth to speak but obviously hadn’t expected this direction and wasn’t prepared.

  Sadie waited her out, letting the moment grow more and more uncomfortable.

  Finally, Tanice put up her hands. “Okay, I’m sure you’re judgin’ me pretty harsh right now, but people grieve in different ways. I didn’t kill my husband. You have to believe that I wouldn’t do that. We have children; I’m not a murderer.” By the time she finished, the arrogant defensiveness had seeped back into her words.

  “So the heart attack last night was, what? A happy accident that conveniently happened after your attempt to give your husband poisoned wine didn’t work out? That might just make your husband the unluckiest man in the entire world.”

  “Until this moment I thought him droppin’ dead like that was an answer to prayer, tell you the truth,” Tanice said, her tone sounding desperate. “Heaven knows I’ve been prayin’ for months for help on how to get that man out of my life. I saw it as a faith healin’...of sorts—more for me than him, I guess, but either way, I was free, and I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  “So, you prayed for your husband to die and yet expect me to believe that you only intended to make him sick on this cruise?”

  “I didn’t pray for him to die—I prayed for a way out of my misery,” Tanice said, taking a step closer to Sadie and lowering her voice. “He’s been foolin’ around with a woman five years older than me. I’ve spent the last several weeks gettin’ my affairs in order and preparin’ for the day when I tell him that he ain’t leavin’ me. No, I was going to leave first.

  “This cruise was the last part of the plan. He was gonna get sick, and I was gonna take care of him when he was upchuckin’ into the toilet. We’ve got some friends on this trip with us, and I wanted everyone to see me bein’ the best wife any man could hope for—in sickness and in health and all that.” Her face was starting to turn red, and Sadie prepared herself to run if escape became essential. “Two weeks from now, I planned to tell him I was leavin’ ’cause he was a no-good cheatin’ never mind. Our friends would have seen me bein’ so attentive on this ship, before they learned that he was a complete scoundrel. It’s how I was going to preserve my honor when everythin’ he’s been doin’ became the talk of the town.”

  “And then the wine disappeared,” Sadie filled in.

  Tears filled Tanice’s eyes as she nodded, though Sadie didn’t trust those tears for a minute. She’d already witnessed Tanice’s mood going from hot to cold at the drop of a hat.

  “Everything was going so well,” she said, her voice shaky. “I was being the doting wife, and he was smiling like the jerk-faced-dog he is, and then the wine disappeared. I had no choice but to play the part of his arm candy instead of his nurse. I wasn’t sure I could pull it off all week long. When he keeled over after the show last night, I took it as a sign from the heavens
that they couldn’t stand to watch it anymore either. I’m a God-fearing woman and to my mind what happened to Ben was something right out of the Old Testament—a lightning bolt if I ever did see one.”

  Sadie was processing the information as quickly as she could. “What if the wine had killed him? Seems quite a risk to simply hope it would just make him sick and not something worse.”

  “Ben wasn’t a big drinker, just one glass of wine after dinner, that’s all. One glass would make him sick, and a glass the next night would make him a touch sicker, and so on. I knew what I was doing.” She looked at Sadie as though begging for her understanding.

  Sadie felt some sympathy for this woman, but not enough to have her change what she knew to be right and wrong.

  “You can see why I need that wine back—whatever’s left. I’ll cover all your friend’s expenses for the trip, and yours too if that will help keep you quiet about this. I need to get back to Texas and have a proper funeral for my wanderlust husband, and I need that wine bottle in hand when I get off this boat.”

  “The wine isn’t here,” Sadie said.

  “What do you mean?” Tanice said, taking a step closer to Sadie, which caused Sadie’s muscles to tense. “Where is it?”

  “The police in Juneau have it,” Sadie said, watching Tanice’s eyes go wide while the pallor of her skin went paler. “My friend drank it and went into a coma Sunday night. She’s currently in critical care at the hospital in Anchorage. No one knows if she’ll recover.”

  Tanice’s mouth fell open as she stared at Sadie, disbelief and shock embedded into her features.

  “You’re foolin’ with me,” she said, but her voice was laced with fear.