A Crafty Christmas

by Mollie Cox Bryan

  “Yep. She says she doesn’t write it much anymore. But I saw one of her poems in a literary journal. How many Annie Chamovitzes can there be? So I asked her about it,” Paige said.

  “How about that?” Sheila said.

  The room was filled with low murmurs, laughter, and the sound of cutting boards and scissors.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Paige said. “Why don’t we see if Allie’s room is open? We could go in there and get the scrapbook and nobody would know. She’s got to have tons of scrapbooks in her room, right?”

  “Now, that’s an idea,” Sheila said, grinning. Why hadn’t she thought of that?

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Eric said. “That’s a crime scene. You shouldn’t be there.”

  “Eric’s right,” Vera said. “Just stay here and have fun. Your scrapbook will be fine.”

  “It couldn’t hurt to look,” Randy said, after a few moments. “The door’s probably locked anyway.”

  “Let’s go,” Paige said. “If the door is locked, there’s nothing we can do, right?”

  “But if it’s unlocked, I’ll slip in and get my scrapbook,” Sheila said.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea,” Vera repeated.

  “Nobody asked your permission,” Sheila said with a bit of a bite to her voice.

  Vera flung her arms out. “Fine. I’ll stay here and finish my card with Eric.”

  “Whatever suits you,” Paige said. “We’ll be right back.”

  The three of them left their crafting behind and stole away into the hallways of the cruise ship.

  “Do you know where the room is?” Randy asked.

  “Yes, we were there this morning. No worries,” Paige said. “We know where we’re going.”

  The three of them walked through the gray, snaking corridors until they arrived at the right room. Sheila reached out for the doorknob.

  “Wait!” Randy said. “Use this.” He handed her a handkerchief. “Better to be safe.” His eyes sparkled with excitement. Sheila was happy for it; he’d been so sad lately.

  “Smart,” Sheila said, reaching for the linen cloth. “That’s my boy,” she said. Then she froze and listened. “Hold on. I hear voices.”

  Randy leaned nonchalantly against the wall and Paige pretended to be passing by. Sheila just stood there, eyes wide.

  The group of people passed through the hallway.

  “Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” Sheila said. Her heart was racing and her palms were sweaty. What if they got caught?

  “Don’t be ridiculous. We’re here now,” Paige said. Her blue eyes were lit with excitement.

  Sheila knew there was no turning back. She hoped the door was open and she hoped her scrapbook was easily found.

  She wrapped the doorknob with the cloth and twisted. The door came open.

  “Isn’t that something?” Paige said. “Anybody could come in here and steal her things.” Indignant. As if that’s not exactly what they were doing.

  Sheila stepped into the pitch black room, surprised that Allie didn’t have more luxurious quarters with windows. She took her handkerchief and used it to flip on the lights.

  What she saw made her gasp. Paige and Randy clung to each side of her.

  “This is freaky,” Randy said.

  The room was completely empty. The bed was perfectly made. It smelled of disinfectant. It was one clean room. No suitcases, clothes, and certainly no scrapbooks.

  “What are you doing here?” a male voice said from behind them.

  It was Matthew Kirtley, with his dreadlocks and beautiful white teeth.

  “I thought I might come in and find my scrapbook,” Sheila said, her voice quivering.

  “Look, lady, I told you we’d get the scrapbook to you,” he said, his hands on his hips.

  “I don’t have very much confidence in that,” Sheila said. “Sorry. That book means a lot to me.”

  “I can see that, but you can’t go off to find it on your own. You’ll need to trust me on this,” he said.

  “Trust you?” Paige said. “This is Allie’s room, right?” She gestured, as if to say, What the heck is going on here?

  “Yes,” he said after a moment. He cleared his throat. “But by the time we got here the room had been cleaned out completely, unfortunately.”

  “So when we were here earlier—”

  “Yes, I’m sorry, but we really couldn’t tell you there was nothing in the room,” he said.

  “So when you tell me you’ll get my scrapbook back to me—”

  “It’s missing,” he said. “But we’re on a ship. It’s here somewhere. And we will find it along with the rest of her things.”

  Sheila noted his weariness. Dark circles under his eyes and a raspy voice led her to believe the man had not been sleeping.

  “I’m so sorry,” Randy said. “We really shouldn’t be here. Ms. Rogers has a meeting tonight and wanted her scrapbook for it.”

  Matthew glanced at Randy and smiled a weary smile. “I understand. But now that you know, can we keep this to ourselves? And try to stay out of trouble?” He cocked an eyebrow at Randy.

  Randy made a sound almost like a laugh. “Well, that’s no fun, chief.”

  There was brief eyeball exchange between the security chief and Randy. Sheila was not certain, but she thought Randy was flirting with the chief of security. A blush creeped onto Randy’s face.

  She shrugged. She wasn’t certain about much these days, but she was beginning to come to terms with the fact that she’d probably never see that scrapbook again.

  “Are you okay?” Paige’s arm went around her.

  “I think so,” Sheila said. “I think I’m giving up on that scrapbook. Maybe I’ll make a new one based on what I remember.”

  “It’s a shame,” Paige said, looking at the chief, still eyeing her son.

  “Let’s go, Randy,” she said, reaching for his arm. “Let’s finish our cards and get ready for dinner.”

  Chapter 15

  Annie dug underneath her cupboard and pulled out her box that held the menorah and other items she used for Hanukkah. She just wanted to have them on hand for tomorrow.

  Mike passed by her and patted her on the rear end. “I’m heading for bed. Are you coming?”

  “I’ll be there soon,” she said. “I have one more load of laundry coming out of the dryer.”

  “Okay,” he said, and headed for bed, knowing better than to suggest she leave it for tomorrow. She was particular about some of the laundry. The boys’ shirts needed to be folded immediately after they came out of the dryer or their sons would walk around a wrinkled mess, giving people even more reason to talk about them—the only Jewish boys in town.

  It was getting a bit easier for them, thank goodness. Ben was becoming more popular with the boys his age because he excelled at soccer. Annie was glad it was soccer and not football. Sam was starting to play a lot of soccer, too, but he didn’t take to it as much as Ben.

  The dryer’s buzzer went off and Annie pulled out the clothes. Hot. Fresh smelling. She scooped them into a basket and decided to take them into the living room and catch some news while she folded the clothes. A wave of weariness overtook her. Bed soon, she told herself. And in the morning, one more chapter on the book.

  She sat the basket down on the coffee table and clicked on the remote. The TV was turned to the Disney Channel. She flipped around the stations until she reached CNN. Then she pulled some T-shirts out of the basket and listened to the news as she folded. The stock market seemed to be rallying. That was good news. Gas prices still skyrocketing. Grrr. That she knew. She folded clothes and the world turned.

  She was trying to ignore this creeping sensation in her belly. She was worried about Hannah going to New York. But she was even more worried about her friends on the cruise ship. She hadn’t been worried before they left—but since there had been a murder on the ship, Annie’s hackles were raised. And then the really odd thing with the FBI agents visiting Beatrice and t
rying to tell her Sheila was dead . . . Talk about screwed up.

  Maybe it was just an honest mistake.

  If there was anything she’d learned by dealing with law enforcement that people would find surprising, it was how many mistakes they actually made every day. Of course most of them were good, adequate folks, but mistakes happened, just as they did in every profession.

  But maybe it wasn’t an honest mistake. That thought ticked at Annie as she folded yet another T-shirt. Maybe it was something else. But what?

  She caught herself. Rolled her eyes at herself. Get it together, Annie, you are getting paranoid. Still it couldn’t hurt to use her press credentials to get a copy of the report.

  She picked up the remote and flipped the television to the Weather Channel. It had become a habit. She loved to watch weather patterns. God, she was becoming her parents, who could talk for hours about the weather.

  She folded a pair of jeans and then another. The talking head on the Weather Channel said that Virginia was in for some snow. The boys would be thrilled.

  “In other news, we are watching a tropical storm in the western Caribbean as it makes its way to the east coast of Mexico,” said the talking head.

  “Mexico?” Annie said out loud. “Isn’t that where the Jezebel’s heading?”

  Suddenly, instead of the news being a backdrop in her domestic scene, her attention honed in on the TV. Her friends were headed for a storm. A freaky, huge storm. Surely the ship’s crew watched the weather, right? The same crew who had misinformed the FBI about who had died on the ship. Annie’s stomach flipped a bit.

  The weatherman droned on: “This storm appeared out of nowhere and we are really not certain if it will hit the coast or if it will turn toward the islands. If it hits the Mexican coast at full force, it will be devastating. If it runs in the other direction, the storm may lose momentum as it heads toward the islands. We are keeping a close eye on this system. Several ships in the area have turned around or have adjusted their routes. At this time, we have no further information on individual ships.”

  Annie folded the last pair of jeans as her heart began to race. She wished she had more confidence in this ship’s crew. Of course they knew what they were doing when it came to weather and the sea and so on. Of course they did—or else they wouldn’t be sailors.

  When a murder happened, fear took over and mistakes sometimes would be made, especially by people who’d never dealt with that type of death before. She could see the errors in dealing with the murder case.

  She placed the folded clothes back in the basket. Her hands felt warm from the clothes, but they were a bit sweaty, too. She didn’t want to think about Sheila, Paige, Vera, Randy, and Eric on the high seas during this storm. She couldn’t think too hard about it. It would make her panic.

  Instead, she decided to call Vera. She knew it would be expensive, but she needed to hear her friend’s voice.

  Of course, she couldn’t get through.

  Annie called Sheila next. Then Paige.

  All of the cell phones gave no message, no signal, nothing.

  Annie headed for her computer.

  Mike was already asleep. He was snoring softly in the background when she turned her computer on. He wouldn’t wake up. He was used to the soft blue light of the screen and the clicking of her keyboard.

  She clicked on the Skype icon and the wheel kept spinning. Nobody was available on Skype either.

  She searched online to see if there was any news. Nothing recent. Just the news of Allie Monroe’s death.

  Annie drew in a breath. What was going on?

  Chapter 16

  By the time Beatrice finished reading How the Grinch Stole Christmas! for the fifteenth time, Elizabeth was out. Before she crept out of the child’s room, Beatrice turned to look at her lying peacefully in the bed with the quilt pulled up around her and her stuffed elephant in one hand snuggled up to her chin. The child loved elephants. At three years old, she could tell you all about them, their habitats, what they liked to eat, and so on. She showed no inclination toward dance, which her mother loved so much. Beatrice smiled—the child resembled Vera, but she thought she might be more like her with her love of science. She shrugged. It didn’t really matter. But it always fascinated Beatrice to see the stew of genetics and what eventually ended up foaming at the top.

  Beatrice left the room as quietly and gracefully as her old body could muster. That was a challenge.

  Lawd, if anything happened to Vera, what would she and Elizabeth do? She clutched her chest as she made her way into her room, where Jon was tucked into bed with a book, but was almost asleep. The book was tilted down, slipping from his hands. His glasses perched on the end of his nose and his eyelids hung low with weariness. He grunted at her.

  She sat on the edge of the bed and reached for her book. She swung her legs over. They were strong, mountain-walking legs. She slipped them under the covers.

  “Why don’t you turn your light off and go to sleep?” she said.

  “Waiting on you,” he mumbled. “Worried.”

  “Me too,” she said. Her book was heavy in her hands. She turned the page to read about Agatha Raisin in the Cotswolds of England. Far away.

  “I’m worried that you’re becoming an Anglophile,” Jon said, swatting at her book.

  She playfully bopped him on the head with it. “Oh you! You know I’ll always be a Francophile.”

  He grinned.

  “Now to sleep with you,” she said.

  “You too?”

  “You know I have to read a few minutes, but I’m sleepy, so it won’t be long.”

  He kissed her, then rolled over to his other side.

  Beatrice turned her attention to her book. Soon, Jon was snoring softly and she realized that even though she was turning the pages and her eyes were skimming the words, she wasn’t reading at all. She closed her book and set it down on her bedside table, where her battered copy of Leaves of Grass had sat untouched for a few weeks. She noted that the lace tablecloth underneath it showed the dirt and dust in this light. She made a mental note to take all the tablecloths off in the morning and wash them.

  She was trying very hard not to think about her only daughter on a cruise ship in the western Caribbean where a storm was headed. From the very start of that child’s life, she had tested Beatrice. She wasn’t interested in the same things as Bea: math and physics. Her daughter wanted to dance. Vera had been through so much the last few years of her life—a new baby, a divorce, a failed love affair, and a new one that appeared to be going well. Then there was the sleepwalking and the time she was a suspect for murder.

  Even though Vera had not followed her mother’s path, Bea admired her daughter for going her own way and forging ahead with her dance studio and her life. That much Vera had gotten from her, she supposed.

  When Beatrice closed her eyes, she saw a ship rocking back and forth and waves slapping onto the deck.

  Surely not. Those ships were huge. Surely they would be untouched by rough waves of any sort.

  But the scientist in Beatrice knew that the power of the ocean could certainly take down even one of the biggest ocean liners, let alone the Jezebel. . . . She turned over to her side.

  Of course, the captain and his crew would be well trained and prepared for such things. The fact that they messed up the notification of the murder victim should not have any bearing. That was an unusual circumstance. They were probably flustered and had never dealt with such a thing before. Who gets murdered on a luxury cruise ship, right?

  Beatrice turned over to her other side.

  Damn, the whole thing rubbed her the wrong way. No use pretending that it didn’t. Sometimes you could fool yourself into a calmness. But not this time. Not tonight. She flung the covers off and reached for her robe and slipped it onto her body, bones creaking.

  She tiptoed out of the room, leaving Jon to sleep. Someone would need to be rested tomorrow to think clearly and calmly. It wasn’t going to be Beat
rice.

  She headed down the stairs and toward the kitchen, remembering the coconut pie in the fridge. There was at least half of it left. Maybe that would help her sleep. That and a big glass of warm milk—with a shot or two of bourbon in it. “Good for what ails ya” is what her daddy always said.

  Chapter 17

  Dinner was a lavish affair. Each night the ship seemed to outdo itself from the previous night. Buffet tables piled high with fresh seafood, gorgeous vegetables and fruit welcomed them each night. Even though Sheila’s grand prize allowed her to eat for free at any of the onboard restaurants, she chose to dine with her friends at the buffet. They all came to love the lavish dessert tables. A chocolate fountain surrounding delectables like pound cake, fruit, and pretzels consumed their attention this night. Even Randy was impressed.

  “I’ve often thought about working on a cruise ship,” he said. “I’d get to see the world.”

  “It would be fun,” Sheila agreed. “You’re young and now would be the time to do it.”

  “I’d never see him then,” Paige said.

  “You hardly see each other now,” Vera said. “How’s it going with Earl?”

  “We spoke on the phone yesterday,” Randy announced. “He said he was sorry to hear that Fred and I broke up.” His voice cracked and he gazed off.

  Sheila wondered if he was emotional because of chatting with his father or because of the break-up with his partner.

  “Wonders never cease,” Vera said. “Your dad is talking with you. That’s great.”

  A huge smile appeared on Paige’s face. “Earl is just working through it. He loves Randy. It’s going to be okay.”

  Randy, fair and blond, blushed easily and his face reddened as he sipped his wine. “Maybe it’s time for change in my life,” he said. “Maybe I’ll check into pastry gigs on the ships.”

  “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever had such good lobster,” Vera said. “The food is amazing. I swear I’m going home at least ten pounds heavier. And everything is so clean. Hard to imagine someone has been poisoned.”

  “But they didn’t say food poisoning, did they? I don’t think so. It’s not just the food, but the booze. I mean everywhere you go, they are shoving drinks under your nose,” Sheila said.