A Crafty Christmas (5 page)

“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?

“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.

“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.

“Sounds interesting,” said Sheila.

“We're looking for teachers,” Theresa said. She was a very thin woman and reminded Sheila of a bird. Kind of a droopy, long, skinny bird. She had long jowls and sad, long eyes. “Would you be interested in joining us as a faculty member?”

“Where would this academy be located?”

“Actually, there will be a headquarters at our offices in Houston, but it will all be online. Isn't that exciting?” Theresa's hound dog eyes lit up momentarily with excitement.

Sheila shrugged. “Maybe. I think that in-person classes are so much better. I'd miss the interaction.”

“But you'd interact online. And a few times a year go to conferences to teach,” Theresa said, then took a bite of her pasta salad.

“That does sound better.” Sheila didn't want to cut off any opportunities, but she was really hoping for a freelance design job from home. Maybe she could do both. “I've designed this scrapbook-journal, which I entered the contest with. Did you see it?”

“Loved it,” the woman said, now intent on picking something out of her salad. “I loved the color scheme.”

“I was wondering about getting something like that published or made into my own scrapbook line.”

Theresa looked up from her food. “Ambitious. I like that.” She held up her champagne glass as the waiter poured first in her glass and then Sheila's.

“To ambition!” Theresa said, and clinked Sheila's glass.

“Here, here!” Sheila said, and sipped from her glass.

“I'd like to take another look at that scrapbook-journal.”

“Well, I have photos, but I don't have the book. Someone borrowed it last night and—”

“Okay, I'll take a look at the photos after tonight's crop. How's that sound?”

If she had really remembered the book, why did they need to meet again? Hmmm. Sheila wondered if Theresa was blowing smoke up her ass.

“Well, okay,” Sheila said, trying to seem enthusiastic, but she had a bad feeling about this.

Later, she met her friends back at the crop table. Deeply involved in scrapbooking, none of them paid much attention to her entrance. Randy finished a few pages and Paige was agog over them. “Who knew?” she said, and shrugged her shoulders. “My son!”

“It doesn't surprise me,” Vera said. “He's a pastry chef. So artistic.”

His pages featured several of his desserts and journal entries about them: how he came up with the ideas, what had inspired him, and how many tries it took to get the dessert to the perfection he needed.

“Makes me hungry,” Sheila said.

“How was your lunch?” Vera asked.

“Okay. Theresa and I are going to meet later. She wanted to see the book I designed, but I told her I only have pictures. I've no idea when I'm getting that back. It's so frustrating. But I have another meeting tomorrow with David's Designs. I'm hoping to have my scrapbook back by then.”

“That's the one you're most excited about, right?” Randy said.

“I love David's Designs. They do all kinds of things. I had a friend who had furniture that was David's Designs—to die for. I love designing and I love their work. But Life Arts offered me a job,” she said, and then explained about the offer.

As she did so, the ship listed to the side, sending papers, glue, cutting instruments, glitter, and every kind of embellishment imaginable reeling over the sides of tables. Sheila grabbed on to what she could while trying not to fall over herself. Sounds of screams, gasps, and curse words filled the air.

“Please remain calm,” came a voice over the intercom.

“This is your captain. We've run into an unexpected turbulence. We're cutting back the engines.”

The ship slowly righted itself.

Paige was on the floor, with Randy helping her up. She was covered in glitter and growling about it as she spit it out of her mouth and tried to brush it off her clothes.

Vera and Eric huddled together on the floor before making their way to the table.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain again. We've cut engines until we get the weather all-clear from the Coast Guard. As you were. Have fun cropping.”

Easy for you to say,
Sheila thought. What a messed up day—topped off by being on a cruise ship with a killer.

Could this cruise get any worse?