A Crafty Christmas (10 page)

Annie had it narrowed down to twelve men. Twelve single male passengers were aboard the
Jezebel
. One of them had died last night. One of them was Randy. And, of course, there was Eric. So that left nine. She sent the names to Vera, Paige, and Sheila, in hopes that one of them at least would receive her message. In the meantime, she pulled up one of her databases that listed criminal records. She keyed in “John Monroe.” Several were listed, as it was a very popular name. She scanned the list. There was one in Sarasota, which was where the Monroes had lived. She clicked on the link. The computer took a moment to catch up to itself.

His arrest record stretched back ten years, most of which was domestic violence charges. There were two DUIs. And the last one? Embezzlement. He had embezzled $325,000 from his wife's scrapbooking company.
Ouch.

And he was currently in prison. So, unless he hired someone to kill his soon-to-be ex-wife and her boyfriend, he was in the clear. He certainly wasn't on board the ship and Annie doubted he could have hired anybody, given that embezzlement was his crime. He was probably broke and the authorities would be watching all of his accounts.

Could someone else have had it in for Allie Monroe? Maybe her boyfriend, Harold? Did someone else not want to see them together? It seemed an odd thing for someone else to be so engaged with her and her life, so much so that they killed her and her lover. Annie would look into Harold's background next.

“How about lunch?” Mike asked as he entered the room.

“Sure, what do you have?” Annie replied, turning away from the computer.

“I made some egg salad. The boys are already scarfing it down,” he said, and wrapped his arms around her as she stood.

She kissed him. It was a rare thing for him to make food. She knew that he was capable—hell, more than capable. He just relied on her to do it. And during the week, she really didn't mind since he was working and she was at home. Still, she had work to do as well, and didn't feel like cooking. She didn't really want to leave her computer—or her train of thought—now, but she felt that she should because he had gone to the trouble of cooking.

The boys were already at the table and Ben's face was already smeared with the egg mixture. Mike had toasted some good rye bread and cut the sandwiches into triangles.

“Nice,” Annie said, sitting down.

“So tonight's the first night of Hanukkah, boys. We'll have a good dinner, then light the menorah. And Mom and I have a little something for you,” Mike said, before biting into his sandwich.

“The menorah was my grandmother's,” Annie said. “My mom never had one. My grandmother had Hanukkah for us at her place every year. When she died, she willed the menorah to me. I think Uncle Josh was a bit upset about that. We both had such fond memories of it.”

Ben and Sam ate happily. She didn't know if they realized how much the menorah meant to her. They probably wouldn't realize until it was passed on to one of them. She could almost hear her grandmother singing the prayers. She closed her eyes and swore that she could smell her lilac perfume, mixed with spices.

“Annie?” Mike said. She opened her eyes, surprised to find they had the pricking of tears in them. “Are you okay? Where were you?”

She smiled and waved him off. “Ay, yes. I'm fine. Just remembering my grandmother.”

“Tell us about her,” Ben said.

And so she did.

She told them about the menorah, how it was one of the few items that made it to the shore of the United States when her grandmother came from Russia as a young girl. The ship had hit a storm and the crew and passengers lost many of their items.

“Our menorah is from Russia?” Ben's eyes lit up.

Annie nodded. “And your great-grandma gave it to your grandmother. Who gave it to me. I wish you could have known her. She was strong and beautiful and kind. Everything a grandmother should be. She wore dresses every day of her life. Loved a good brisket and oh, did she love her chocolate.”

The boys and Mike sat and listened to her memories of her grandmother Doris.

Later, after Annie placed the brisket in the oven, having followed Doris's recipe to a tee, she was overcome with a longing, a melancholy for her grandmother's arms, for her voice chattering as they cooked together.

She reached into a cupboard drawer and pulled out a blank journal and a box of photos. She searched for the photo she was thinking of—the one where she was sitting on her grandmother's lap and they were looking at something off in the distance. What was it? Annie wished she could remember.

The boys had left some acrylic paints on the table. She painted a page with a strip of red, then yellow. She tore out another page and wrote in longhand. When was the last time she had done that? She wrote down some memories of her grandmother, her kitchen, her warm bed, and how the thought of her grandmother on a big ship had always troubled her.

By the time she wrote it all down, the paint was dry. She placed the photo off-center on the page, then cut the paper with her writing into four pieces so it resembled a puzzle. She placed each piece in a corner and thought about that ship that brought her family across the sea. What kind of life had they left behind? Her grandmother had never wanted to talk about it.

The thought of the sea brought her back to her friends and the murder. She set her book aside and went to her computer and keyed in Harold's name to the database. Hmmm. He had no arrest record.

But as she reviewed his personal information, she found out that he was married. So both he and Allie had been married, and trying to divorce their respective spouses so that they could be together. Annie's brain sifted through another assortment of possibilities for her friends on the high seas, none of which settled the gnawing in her guts.

“We're getting ready for Sheila's class,” Vera said into the phone.

“How is she doing? Any better?” Beatrice asked. She was sitting at her kitchen table after a lunch of tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. She was a bit tired after a morning of baking and standing on her feet.

“I can't get through to Annie, Mama. I don't know why, but if you're talking with her, can you tell her that I've gotten her list of unattached men on the cruise?”

“Sure. That sounds interesting,” Bea said, and chortled.

“She came up with a list of men who aren't here with their wives.”

“Oh yes, we talked about that.”

“You can tell her that we are going to check these guys out.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“We'll find them and talk with them and ask what they are doing here and so on. Who knows? Maybe we'll find our killer.”

“And then what?” Beatrice asked.

“We'll tell security. Or the FBI. They are supposed to be meeting the ship at the next port of call.”

“Well, you know to be careful. I don't want to get another visit from law enforcement at my house.”

Vera quieted. “I love you, too, Mama. And God knows I miss you and Elizabeth.”

“She misses you, too,” Beatrice said. No point going down that sad road. “Have your learned the latest froufrou scrapbooking techniques?”

“It's intense,” Vera said. Beatrice heard Eric mumbling something in the background. “I love scrapbooking, but I'm glad we took a bit of a break from it this morning. These people take their scrapbooking very seriously.”

Beatrice harrumphed. How seriously could one take scrapbooking?

“Sheila fits right in. Kind of. We haven't seen her since this morning. She was supposed to meet us at the pool, but she went back to her room to get some rest,” Vera said.

“Rest? That doesn't sound like her.”

“I know it,” Vera said, and then the phone went dead.

Typical.

The tropical storm was still in the area; Beatrice had been tracking it. The
Jezebel
was heading in the opposite direction, but the storm was still affecting communication. And Beatrice was still worried. Yet Vera didn't appear to be worried at all about the storm. She was more concerned about finding Allie's killer, which did not serve to alleviate Beatrice's anxiety either.

Her timer went off. Finally, her last poppy seed cake was done. She opened the oven door and sucked in the scent, felt the heat pouring out of the oven. That was all for today, she told herself. She had a meeting to go to this afternoon. It was the first year Beatrice was chairing the committee and some of the others suffered from power withdrawal—they made every little decision into a cataclysmic one and it drove her bonkers.

“Do we really need to discuss how big the signs should be for twenty whole minutes?” Beatrice had said at the last meeting.

Even with all that nonsense, she looked forward to the bazaar every year. She loved the crafts, the baked goods, and even some of the entertainment. Local kids would be singing Christmas carols and Donna Trevor was going to sit in the corner and play her dulcimer on and off all day.

Beatrice found herself thinking of the last craft fair she'd gone to. It had been in Charlottesville and she had Cookie with her. Beatrice grimaced. Whatever happened to Cookie? She was one of the few people who had liked to go to craft fairs with her. She loved the quilts, but never bought one. And as far as Bea knew, she didn't own one either.

She placed the poppy seed cake on the cooling rack and saw tiny snowflakes forming into big fat flakes against the window. The ground was covered with a couple inches of snow. Jon was at the grocery store; she hoped he came home soon. Those sidewalks could be mighty slippery until folks got around to shoveling.

She made her way back to her computer. It had become a bit of an obsession for her to check the weather in the Caribbean. She knew those storms cropped up quickly and the back end of them could be a problem, too.

She clicked on the
Jezebel
's Web site and then to the journey section. The boat was moving again—like Vera had said. It was moving toward Grand Caymen, where Sheila was going to lead a scrapbooking-photography class, the one she had been planning to lead in Mexico.

Beatrice felt she was being a bit silly and obsessed by this scrapping cruise.
Get it together, woman.

She clicked on her file that had the schedule for the week, leading up to the bazaar as well as the bazaar schedule. She printed four copies—one for each of the committee members. Even Elsie Mayhue, who was driving Bea to distraction.

In fact, there was an e-mail from her. Bea clicked on it:

Okay. Did she want a medal for doing her job?

Beatrice caught herself rolling her eyes, then heard Vera's voice chiding her. “Not everybody is as smart as you. You need to be patient with the rest of us.”

Hmph. I'm eighty-three years old and I don't have time to be
that
patient
.

The crop room was open twenty-four hours a day, and some croppers took advantage of it. Sheila overheard one woman say to her husband that she'd been up since 3:00
A.M.
cropping and had finished a whole scrapbook. The crop room was lovely, with floor to ceiling windows, so the scrappers' view was inspiring and the lighting was great during the day.

The classroom, however, was windowless. It was just a conference room, like so many conference rooms Sheila had visited. She was dressed in black slacks and a silky, flowing red shirt, with a blazer over it. Creative but professional was the look she was after. Vera gave her a thumbs-up as she entered the room.

Sheila had capped the class at one hundred participants because the cruise organizers said they only had that many laptops for attendees.

Sheila was unveiling her One Journey digital scrapbooking and journaling system today. This was part of her entry into the competion and what she wanted to sell to David's Design. One Journey was a template for use with any number of digital scrapbook applications. Each participant had already selected the application she was using and Sheila would teach to each one. Most participants were using Photoshop Elements and My Memories.

As she considered her students, she was pleased to see both Heather and Theresa, not sitting together, but each with her own group of friends or colleagues.
Interesting, since Theresa said she didn't care for her designs,
Sheila thought. Was she imagining it or did Theresa just smirk at her?

Sheila looked in the other direction—the direction of the podium. Ms. Irons approached it.

“We are so pleased today to bring you our top prize winner, Sheila Rogers. We've found during this cruise that she's as delightful as she is talented.”

Who found that?
Sheila was finding it hard not to knit her brows.

“Sheila is a perfect example of a woman who puts family first, yet has found success. And we are so honored that she's here and able to share her scrap-journaling template One Journey. But before we do that I wanted to share with you what some of our judges said about Sheila's work.

“This from David of David's Designs: ‘Grounded in classical tradition, with a nod toward the modern, and one of the freshest design eyes I've ever seen.'”

Cheering from the crowd jolted Sheila's heart into a near panic.
Really, he said that about me? These people are cheering for me? It was too much!

“This from Memory Mama: ‘Sheila's work is solid. Her style is fresh and original. Where have you been, Sheila Rogers?'”

“And this from our Allie—”

A hush came over the room.

“‘I love this woman's keen sense of design flow and color. But most of all, I love the heart and soul that goes into each one of her designs. Welcome to the big league, Sheila!'”

Much cheering from the crowd again as Sheila's face heated. She noticed that very same man she seemed to see everywhere. He was sitting next to Theresa. He wasn't going to bother her. Not now.

“And now, we give you Ms. Sheila Rogers,” the voice from the podium said.

“Thanks so much,” Sheila said. “Also thanks so much to all of the judges for their kind words.” She messed with her mike a bit. “Thanks to all of you for coming here today. Can everybody hear me?”

“Yes!” several people yelled back.

“Good,” she said. “The first thing I want you to do is to shake your body. Either stand up and shake or sit in your chair and shake your parts. Get all the kinks out.”

Much commotion ensued.

“I'm the mother of four children. We used to call this getting the wiggles out.”

Laughter, then the classroom settled.

“The next thing I'm going to ask you to do is quite . . . extraordinary. And some of you may find that you simply can't do it,” she said.

This was a technique she'd learned from Cookie Crandall's yoga class.

“I want you to take five minutes and sit quietly. No talking. At all. There's a reason for this and I'll explain it after we're finished. Let's start. Now.” She took a seat.

As in every class she taught with this technique, there were a few giggles, then sounds of people settling. As time wore on, the room stilled. At four minutes in, Sheila arose from her chair and walked back and forth in the front of the room.

“So,” she said softly. “One of the reasons I like to start my class in silence is that it focuses your energy inward. The room's energy also shifts.”

She heard sniffling
. Yes, there was always at least one woman moved to tears.
Silence was a luxury for some, especially women in the thick of doing everything for everybody in their lives. Silence was a gift.

“This kind of scrapbooking is about you. And believe it or not, this is something your kids will probably cherish more than the photos of themselves,” Sheila said.

Her eyes caught Vera's. She was glazing over.
Honestly, Vera was the worst student.
She found it hard to sit still, let alone listen to a teacher. Sheila watched her and used her as a gauge.

“Let's move on to the first exercise and then we will take a break for those of you who need it,” Sheila said. “Let's click on your screens.” She waited a few minutes to continue. “Now, the first page has a space for your photo, which if you don't have now, you can load up later. It also gives you a prompt. ‘I Am' asks you to list five things that you are. Mother, doctor, so on. This will get you going. Let's give that ten minutes or so and then we'll take a break.”

After class, Sheila was approached by people for autographs and several participants told her how much they enjoyed the class. One woman, who was young, svelte, and blond, touched her arm. “Sheila, I want you to know how powerful and moving that was for me. I've never thought about scrapbooking about myself. And you've made it so easy. Thank you.”

Sheila beamed. Even as the room thinned out, her friends still hung in there and gathered around her at the end. There were hugs from everybody.

“Just fabulous,” Vera said, with tears in her eyes. “I'm so proud of you.”

“Excuse me.” A voice came through the gathering. It was Matthew Kirtley, chief of security. “Mrs. Rogers, may I have a word with you?”

“Certainly,” Sheila said. “What can I help you with?”

“Can you come down to the office with me, please?”

“I had planned on going to the pool,” she said.

Ms. Irons approached him. “Now, I've told you to leave her alone. She's an honored guest.”

“I just want to ask her a few questions,” he said.

“Why don't you ask them here?” Sheila said. “What's this about?”

“It's about the untimely deaths on board this ship,” he replied.

“I don't know anything about them, except what you've told me,” she said, packing her things into her bag. Her friends stood motionless, watching over them.

“Can you remember anything else that might help out the FBI? We'll be docking tomorrow and they will have questions. I'm working on my report.”

“I've told you everything I can remember. Everything I know,” she said.

“There seems to be two links in the deaths. One is that they were both poisoned.”

“And what's the second link?” Sheila asked.

“You,” he replied. “You tripped over the first body and you were in the hallway when we discovered the second one.”

Sheila didn't know what to say. Could he really think she had something to do with these deaths? Her mouth dropped.

“There's something else, chief,” Randy said. “Something you might not be aware of.”

“What's that?” He turned to face Randy, who was glowing.

“Allie and Harold were seeing one another. Both were getting a divorce so they could be together,” he said.

“We knew they were in the same room together, but privacy dictates . . . a little decorum,” Matthew said with a lower voice.

“We've looked up some of this stuff on the Web,” Paige said. “It's a bad divorce situation all the way around. But John, Allie's ex, is not on the cruise.”

“But we have a list of nine men on board who are not attached to women, as we figured that they would be the most likely culprit,” Randy said.

“Really? Where did you get this information?” Matthew said.

They explained how they had worked with Annie to come up with the list.

“It's a good idea,” Matthew said. “Why didn't I think of that?”

“Well, you do have other things on your mind,” Randy said, with a note of flirtation in his voice.

Sheila's cell phone rang and she stepped aside to answer. It was DeeAnn.

“So did you find the killer yet?”