Sheila stood in shock. Hooey, indeed. But in the meantime, she still didn’t have that scrapbook.
“I do apologize,” Grace said. “It’s so embarrassing.”
“Where’s Sheila’s scrapbook?” Paige said, after a few moments of awkward silence.
“We’ve been asked to leave the room as is until the FBI can do a sweep,” Matt said. “Standard procedure. They will meet us at the next port of call. When an American citizen is murdered on a cruise, the FBI takes over the investigation.”
“FBI?” Sheila said. “I’ll never get my scrapbook back!”
“We’ll make sure you do,” Grace said. “Please don’t worry.”
“The next port of call is in two days in Mexico,” Vera said. “Do you mean that we’ll be on the ship with a murderer for the next two days?”
“Our security staff will ensure the safety of our passengers, but please keep all this to yourselves. We don’t want mass hysteria on board,” Grace said, with a tight smile, her cheeks stiff with stress. She wore bright red lipstick, perfectly applied, yet her face glowed with a sheen of sweat. “Why don’t you all go to the crop? Sit back and relax. Have fun. We’ll take care of everything.”
“I wish I could believe that,” Paige said as she turned to go.
“Please let me know when you have my scrapbook,” Sheila said, turning and following Paige. Eric and Vera trailed behind them.
The captain of the ship smiled at them as he walked by on his way to Allie’s room. “Mrs. Rogers, good day to you.”
They had had dinner together the first night she was onboard. Sheila found him an absolute bore. She smiled and nodded politely, but kept moving.
They found their way back to the crop, where Randy was saving their seats.
“Where have you all been?” he said, flinging his arms out.
“You would not believe it,” Paige said, sitting next to him. She motioned to the young server who was passing out champagne.
“I’ll take one, but do you have anything stronger?” Paige asked.
“What would you like?”
“Bourbon, straight up, please.”
“Make mine a double,” Vera said.
“What’s going on?” Randy said, looking over his almost done page. He’d watched his mother and her friends scrapbook for years and sometimes joined the crop when he was a kid, but he hadn’t scrapbooked in a long time. “It just needs a little something. Maybe glitter?”
“Stay away from glitter,” Paige said. “There’s a reason I outlawed it in our house. Lethal stuff.”
“Hmm,” he said, and placed his page back on the table.
Paige then told him what had happened.
“Murder?” he whispered. “This sounds crazy. Nuts!”
“Mama,” Vera said into her cell phone, “Sheila is fine and right here.”
But Sheila wasn’t certain she was fine. This morning she’d fallen over the dead body of Allie Monroe. Her head still ached from her concussion, and her scrapbook was still in a room where a murder investigation was taking place. She took a sip of her champagne and shrugged. At least she wasn’t dead. She glanced around at the people surrounding her—that man was still there. She took another sip and pushed her glasses back up on her nose. She glared back at him and he turned his head quickly.
“Now, croppers, I have a treat for you,” a voice said over the microphone. “I know it’s Christmas, but I love Halloween. So I’m unveiling my new Bloody Bash Halloween papers, inspired by the song ‘Monster Mash.’”
Much laughter from the crowd as “Monster Mash” blared through the intercom.
“Ladies and gentlemen, it’s Halloween in December time! Woo-hoo!”
Servers came out dressed in costumes: vampires, mummies, and Frankenstein’s monsters. They handed out packs of paper tied with a blood red ribbon.
“Well, now,” said Vera, reaching for her bourbon. “Isn’t this just in keeping with the day?”
“Cheers!” Sheila said, holding up her glass of champagne. As she did, the ship rocked and swerved a bit, causing the champagne to spill all over her pretty new paper.
Chapter 9
“We made these apple and cherry turnovers without any lard,” Hannah said, pulling out a tray for Annie to look over. The golden brown semicircle desserts looked nearly perfect. “They are kosher.”
That’s one definition of kosher, Annie thought.
“I’ll take six of each,” Annie said. “Thanks for the card.”
“Oh,” Hannah said. “You got it already?”
Hannah was pale and freckled and blushed easily.
“Yes,” Annie said, digging in her purse for cash. “Are you about due a break? We can have a coffee. How’s that sound?”
Hannah warmed. “Sounds lovely.” She gave Annie back her change and handed her the box of turnovers.
Annie walked over to the corner table, where it was at least semiprivate. Hannah followed her with a coffee tray and some gingerbread muffins.
“I hear Sheila won a design competition,” Hannah said. “How exciting to go on a cruise!”
“Yes,” Annie said, keeping the murder to herself. She didn’t want to freak Hannah out. She’d been in therapy—after much cajoling. The Mennonites preferred to keep to themselves, even with their health issues. But Hannah had been so affected by the murders that she had become uncommunicative. Her family tried to work through the church, but nobody was able to help her. So she went outside the Old Order Mennonite system and found another Mennonite who was a qualified psychotherapist.
“We’re all very proud of her,” Annie said.
“How are your boys?” Hannah asked. She stirred three packs of sugar into her coffee.
“Good, but very excited about Hanukkah,” Annie said, and then took a sip of her black coffee. “So, how are you, Hannah? Are things getting better for you?”
She looked away briefly, but nodded positive. “I guess,” she said. “Every once in a while, I still dream about the murders.”
“I do, too. In fact, I dream about every murder case I’ve been involved in. I think that’s a normal kind of processing,” Annie said, taking one of the muffins. “These smell delicious. Gingerbread?”
“Yes. I’m so glad to see you. I’m leaving in a few weeks.”
Annie’s mouth almost dropped open—it probably would have if the muffin wasn’t so good. She chewed hurriedly. “What?”
Hannah laughed. “I’m going on something similar to an Amish Rumspringa. I’ll be gone for a year.”
Annie had no idea that the Mennonites practiced something so similar. “Your parents are going to let you do that?” She felt her eyes widen and her pulse race. What were they thinking?
The young woman beamed. “Yes. I’m going with a group of women my age. There will be a chaperone, of a sort,” she said, and quieted. “I hope that by going away I’ll be able to forget.... It’s sort of unusual for the women of my family, but my parents thought it would be good for me to get away.”
Annie’s heart sank. Loss was never easy, but for young people it cut deeper. She didn’t think Hannah would ever quite get over the murder of her two best friends. Annie had never gotten over several things in her life—but she’d learned to live with them. Stay busy. Don’t look too hard at it. She still hurt when she thought about Cookie Crandall, her friend who had disappeared a few years back.
“Where will you be going?” Annie asked, upbeat. Stay focused on the exciting parts.
“New York City,” Hannah said with a wide grin.
Annie gulped her coffee. Talk about throwing lambs to the wolves. She didn’t think this was a good idea at all. But it wasn’t her business, Annie reminded herself. She was Hannah’s friend, not her mother. But she supposed she’d always feel protective over Hannah. After-all, they had almost lost Hannah to the same man who killed her friends.
“I’ve gotten an internship with a Mennonite magazine. I’ll be writing mostly for their Web site, but I was promised
a couple of articles in print,” she said. Her eyes took on a spark that Annie hadn’t seen in her in a long time. Maybe this was a good thing.
“I had no idea you wanted to write,” Annie said.
“I write mostly poetry. But my teachers all thought I had promise as a journalist. Of course, it won’t matter if I’m the best journalist in the world. Soon after my internship, I’m expected home to marry and settle in.”
“What if you don’t want to?”
“It’s a risk we all take when we leave. Some return and some don’t. But what does your faith mean if it’s never tested?”
“Ah, that’s true, I suppose,” Annie said. Once again, Annie was struck by the simplicity and the profundity of Hannah’s faith. When Annie had been in the hospital, Hannah came in and prayed for her. Normally, Annie would scoff. She was a secular Jew and jaded when it came to spiritual issues. But she could not scoff at Hannah and her faith. It seemed pure.
She suddenly was thinking of her Jewishness and how she’d never thought deeply about it until moving to Cumberland Creek, where hers was the only Jewish family. She had been thinking about making the trek on Saturdays to the Charlottesville Synagogue to give her boys more of a sense of their heritage.
Annie tapped her fingers on the Formica table and reached for her coffee. “What about this marriage business? Anybody you’re interested in?”
“It’s already planned. I’ll be marrying John Bowman,” Hannah said, and looked away.
“How can it already be planned when you are off to New York?”
“My family and his family are certain I’ll be back and that I’ll make him a good wife.”
“Wow. That’s different. How do you feel about this?”
She shrugged. “What do my feelings have to do with it? My family knows what’s best for me, right? We believe that love comes after marriage.”
Love comes after marriage? Annie felt like she had stepped back to the 1600s. Surely not!
“Haven’t your feelings for your husband deepened over the years?” Hannah asked.
“Well, yes. But I fell madly in love with Mike when we met and then we made a life together. Of course our feelings deepened,” Annie said, thinking that sounded a lot more romantic than it actually was. Sometimes it was easy in marriages. Sometimes not. Sometimes you had to work to keep it together. Adam Bryant’s face flashed in her mind’s eye. Thank the universe she had not impulsively acted on her attraction to him.
“But look, if this is the way you do things and are happy with it, who am I to say?” Annie said, and smiled. “I have to get going. If I don’t see you before you leave, be careful. Take my number and call me if you need me. I mean, if there’s a phone around. . . .”
Hannah laughed again. “Don’t worry, Annie. I’ll be fine. I’ll write to you.”
But as Annie walked out of the bakery, she could not shrug the protective feeling that had come over her. Hannah in New York City? Annie was uncertain that Hannah was ready for this. What were her parents thinking?
Chapter 10
“Beatrice, you need to eat your sandwich,” Jon said to her.
She stared out the window at the bare landscape, then briefly looked at her sandwich.
“You’ve gotten yourself too excited. I am sure that this will all get resolved. It was a simple error,” he said.
“I know that, Jon. Don’t treat me like a child,” she snapped. “For heaven’s sake.”
He clicked his tongue and went back to his cold leftover chicken sandwich.
“What has the world come to when FBI agents give you false bad news?” she said. “I only knew they were wrong because I had just talked to Vera. If I hadn’t, I would have thought Sheila had died on some godforsaken scrapbooking cruise in the middle of nowhere.”
“It was an honest mistake, Bea.” He shrugged his shoulders. “What can you do?”
“Okay, okay,” she said, waving him off. She turned her thoughts to the sandwich, picked it up, and took a bite. If he couldn’t understand her anger, then screw him. Time to move on from the subject; it wasn’t worth fighting over. She wasn’t going to let it spoil her day.
“How are the plans going for the craft fair?” Jon asked. She knew he was also trying to change the subject.
“Okay,” she mumbled after swallowing her bite of chicken sandwich. “I have more baking to do. I’m not sure I trust some of these others to get the job done.”
“DeeAnn surely—-”
“Oh yes, DeeAnn will come through. She donated some of her scones. I’m sure they will sell quickly. But we need more than DeeAnn.”
The doorbell rang, prompting Jon to rise from the kitchen table and answer it. “Detective Bryant,” Beatrice heard him say. She grimaced.
“Beatrice in?”
“Yes. Please come in. We are just having some lunch. Can I get you anything?” Jon said.
“No, just ate. Thanks, Jon,” he said as he strolled into the kitchen.
“What do you want?” Beatrice said, feeling the hair on the back of her neck prick. Whenever he came into her house, she knew it was never a good thing. It usually meant there was a murder or a kidnapping or that her daughter was acting crazy. He was a harbinger of bad news.
“Nice to see you, too, Beatrice,” he said, and sat down at the kitchen table.
She kept eating her sandwich.
“I’ve been sent by the local yahoo FBI officers,” he said, and grinned.
She dropped her sandwich. “You know about that then?” she said, her voice raised.
“I’m afraid I do. I’ve been sent to apologize to you.”
She twisted her mouth and tried to keep it shut. Difficult.
“There was a mix-up with the security on the Jezebel. Whoever wrote the report confused Sheila’s name and the person who was actually killed. I don’t know how something like that happens, to tell you the truth. Not like those cruise guys are very busy or anything. But the officers are very sorry to have troubled you.”
“Why didn’t they come tell me this themselves?” Beatrice said.
Bryant’s face colored. “They think you’re a bit . . . off. They asked about your mental health and your gun permit.”
“I didn’t believe they were from the FBI. Assholes. Shoulda shot them when I had the chance.”
Jon crossed his arms.
Bryant ignored her words. “For future reference, when someone says he is from the FBI and shows you his badge, you should believe it,” he said. “And act accordingly.”
“I don’t trust anybody anymore, particularly men who come to my door to report the death of a woman I think of as my second daughter,” she said. Her voice cracked. Old fool . . . She was an old fool. She blinked back a tear. She refused to cry in front of Bryant. She wasn’t sure if it was Sheila she was frightened for, or if the incident had prompted her to recall the horrible memories of losing Gerty, Sheila’s mom, to breast cancer way before her time. She’d promised she’d take care of Sheila. And had she?
Lawd, Sheila was a grown woman now, with four kids of her own. Beatrice had been a sort of surrogate grandmother to her kids and tried to be kind to Sheila—but maybe she should try harder. The momentary thought of losing her gave her old heart a spin.
Jon reached out and grabbed her hand. “Dear, dear Beatrice.”
Bryant looked embarrassed. “It is an odd thing to have happened. What do you hear from the cruising ladies?”
“They are fine, I guess,” Beatrice said. “But Sheila took a fall—tripped over a dead body and has a concussion.”
The detective’s jaw set and his mouth twisted. He was trying not to laugh. He looked away from Beatrice and tried to compose himself.
Chapter 11
“Ms. Rogers, so lovely to meet you,” Theresa Graves said as she stood up from a private table and extended her hand to Sheila.
“Oh please, call me Sheila.”
“Are you okay?” Theresa said, gesturing to Sheila’s bandaged head.
“I’ll be fine. I fell this morning and have a mild concussion,” Sheila said with a light slur. Goodness, she should not have drunk so much at the crop. She sat down and sipped from her water.
“I’m so excited to meet you,” Theresa said. She had a Texas twang; “you” had at least three syllables by the time she was finished with it. Sheila made a note to concentrate in order to not mimic Theresa. She loved the accent—but anytime she was around people who had an accent of any kind she found herself copying them. What was that about anyway?
“Thank you,” Sheila managed to say, like a Virginian, not a Texan. “The pleasure is mine. I’ve admired your products for many years.”
“That’s good to know,” Theresa said. “We love hearing from our customers, of course. Especially from ones with the design skills you have.”
The waiter approached them with the menus. It had been one buffet after the other. A menu was a pleasant change.
“Thanks for that,” Sheila said. “I love what I do.”
After they ordered, Sheila’s eyes wandered to the ocean. So shockingly blue and pristine. A feeling of peace and joy came over her, even though her head was starting to pound again. She reached into her bag for another ibuprofen.
“Virginia’s ocean doesn’t look like that,” she said.
“I imagine not. I rarely go to the coast. I’m just so busy with working and keeping up with my four kids.”
“Four kids? Me, too,” Sheila said.
“It’s rare to meet another mother with four children,” Theresa said, and smiled. “Maybe we should order a bottle of champagne.”
“Sure,” Sheila said, mustering a smile. Good God, if she had any more booze today, she might just tipple right over. She’d be sure to eat plenty so she’d not make a complete fool out of herself.
“Our company is considering starting a branch that’s just focused on education. We’ve always been education focused, but we’re putting even more of a focus on it. We’re starting a Life Arts Academy,” Theresa said after their lunch came, then the bottle.
A Crafty Christmas Page 4
