A Crafty Christmas (9 page)

Not on the ship. Unless he's using a fake name, said the text message from Sheila.

Annie put her phone down. After taking the brisket out of the freezer to thaw for their Hanukkah dinner tonight, she sat down at her computer to write another chapter on the Mary Schultz book before the boys got out of bed. They were really sleeping in this morning.

She turned her thoughts back to the
Jezebel
.

Well, there was no way she could find out anything about the man if he was using a fake name. So he could be on the ship. But if he was out to get his ex-wife, maybe he posed no threat to Annie's friends. Maybe. But if he was crazy enough to kill someone—anyone—he might do it again.

She clicked on the cruise Web site again, as if it could provide her with some peace of mind. She'd read over this site a dozen times in the last twenty-four hours. What was she looking for? Clues? Comfort?

She clicked on the newsletter, read it over. It gave the upcoming events of the day, as well as highlighted a few things that took place yesterday. In the left hand corner of page three, a death was mentioned. A death? A Harold Tuft of Sarasota, Florida—hmm . . . the same place Allie lived—was reported dead. Annie shivered. Could this guy have known Allie? Surely he did—she was a scrapbooking star from his hometown and they were on a scrapbooking cruise.

She heard the rustling around of her boys heading to the kitchen. She left her computer and followed the sound.

“Morning, boys,” she said.

“Morning, Mommy,” they said together, and ran to her, hugged her.

“Morning sugar is the best kind,” Annie said, and smiled. “Go sit down and I'll make you some eggs. How does that sound?”

They both made their way to the table and Annie headed for the fridge. She took out the eggs and readied her frying pan. She loved mornings with her boys now that they were a little bit older.

Annie beat her eggs and tried not to think of Sam beating up that boy because he said terrible things about the Jewish people. And then there was the time that Ben came home sobbing because a friend said his parent would never let a Jewish boy into their home.

Annie tried not to think about it too much, but being Jewish was on her mind because of Hanukkah. After dinner and family time, she was heading over to Sheila's basement to meet DeeAnn for their weekly crop. She was thinking about a special book. A book about being Jewish. A spiritual scrapbook—sort of like Cookie's scrapbook of shadows.
Cookie.
Finally, she was able to think of her with some fondness, without the horrible, black, bereft feeling. Still, she was unable to make complete peace with the disappearance of her friend.

She poured the eggs in the pan as Mike was entering the kitchen.

“Juice, boys?”

They both said yes. Mike tried to skirt around Annie, brushing up against her, which he couldn't help. Their kitchen was tiny and they were always tripping over one another.

The Chamovitzes were saving for a down payment on a bigger house. As the boys were getting older, space was more and more of an issue—along with the fact that they only had one bathroom.

“How did you do on that math test yesterday?” Mike said as he set the filled juice glasses on the table in front of the boys.

“I think I did okay,” Sam said. “I won't know until Monday.”

“I got a one hundred on my spelling test,” Ben said.

“Good for you,” Annie said. She scooped the eggs onto plates for her boys and sat down at the breakfast table.

After breakfast, Mike took the boys out and left Annie to work. When she went back to her computer, the screen with the cruise on it was still up. Before she got settled in to her writing she decided to give Vera a call. She knew it would be expensive, but she needed to talk with at least one of them. She really wanted to talk to Sheila, but she knew that she was in meetings off and on and had events planned. Better to call Vera.

“Hey, Annie,” Vera said.

“Hey, Vera. How's it going?”

“Honestly?” she said, and laughed.

“Well, as honest as you can make it,” Annie said, smiling.

“The food is great. The scrapbooking is intense. We took a bit of a break from it today. We're all at the pool. Well, everybody but Sheila. She's at a meeting with David's Designs.”

“How is she?”

“She still has a headache and not much of an appetite. I swear she had maybe two bites of toast this morning. Poor thing. We're all worried about her, but we're keeping an eye on her.”

“How did her meeting go yesterday?”

“Honestly, I don't know; she didn't mention it at breakfast. We talked about the murder. She had a passenger list and was ready to go over it, but then Randy saw the ship's security chief last night and he said they'd already looked through it.”

“Yep, I guess that would be the first thing a security team would do,” Annie said, more to herself than to Vera. “But what about this Harold Tuft? How does he fit in?”

Vera explained to Annie everything she knew about Harold.

“It's been awful,” she said with her voice lowered.

“I keep looking at men and wondering if they are the one. Also, they say they've got the poison situation in hand. That it wasn't food poisoning. But I don't know what to believe. Eric says I'm paranoid. But I can't stop thinking about it. I can't wait until we make land. The FBI is going to meet the ship at the next port. I'll feel so much better then.”

“So where are you headed now?” Beatrice asked Vera.

“We should reach Grand Caymen later tonight or tomorrow. Sheila will be leading a photo expedition. She was supposed to be doing that in Mexico, but with the storm and everything . . .” Vera said. “Oh, Mama, it's just so beautiful looking out over the pool and in the distance is the sea, such a beautiful blue color.”

“Try to stick together.”

“We're all here now, except for Sheila. She has a meeting this morning, then is teaching a class. We're all going to try to get there,” Vera said.

“How is Sheila?”

“Not good, Mama,” Vera said in a hushed voice.

“That's too bad. Call Elizabeth. She's with Bill. She misses you,” Beatrice said, and hung up.

Poor Sheila. But, Beatrice knew Sheila enough to know that it was hard to keep that woman down.

Her timer went off and she walked into the kitchen, grabbed a pot holder, opened the oven door, and pulled out her poppy seed cake. Ohhh, it looked perfect—and smelled of sugar, cinnamon, and poppy seed. She sat it on the counter and glanced out the window. A fine snow was starting to fall and blanketed the grass.

Beatrice's phone rang. If that was Elsie again, she might scream. This Christmas bazaar should be an easy function to put together. Why was she making mountains out of molehills?

“Hey, Beatrice. I'm on break at the bakery and thought I'd check in with you. How are you?” DeeAnn said.

“I'm fine, other than Elsie driving me crazy and the fact that my daughter is on a cruise with a killer,” Beatrice said.

“Did you hear about the second killing?”

“Yep. If her ex-husband is on the ship, there's no trace of him.”

“Maybe what we should do is get Annie to check into the background of the other guy. . . . What was his name? Harold?”

“Yes, Harold Tuft. But I don't know what good that would do. He's dead.”

“But why?”

“Obviously he was boffing that Allie woman and it upset her husband. Imagine that,” Beatrice said with a clipped tone.

“I'm kind of worried about Sheila. I mean, she knows these people and is kind of hanging out with them. What if she gets in the middle of something?”

“You're borrowing trouble. We have to trust that they will be careful and not get themselves into a bad situation,” Beatrice said, but inside she was quivering. She'd promised Gerty, Sheila's mother, that she would watch out for her daughter.

After she hung up from DeeAnn, she called Annie, a voice of reason. Most of the time.

“What do you think, Annie?”

“I think it's odd that there's not been much in the news about this. Yesterday there was a bit about Allie, but nothing today. I keep racking my brain trying to remember if I know any journalists in the area who could look into the situation more. But I don't think I do.”

“What bothers you about it?”

“For one thing, the person you'd suspect right away would be Allie's soon-to-be ex-husband.”

“A no brainer,” Beatrice said, stirring cookie dough.

“And he's not on the ship—unless he's using a fake name.”

“There's no way to figure that out. He could be anybody.”

“We could figure it out by process of elimination if we had the list. We could start by eliminating any man who's there with his wife. Guys on a ship in the Caribbean surrounded by scrapbooking women. Poor schmucks. You know they aren't up to murder. And then we go from there.”

“I'll text Vera to see if she can e-mail me the list.”

“I was also wondering if you still subscribe to your databases.”

“I do.”

“Why don't you run her ex-husband through some of them,” Beatrice suggested. “You never know what might come up.”

“I plan to do that later today, after I finish talking to you, make lunch, and put the brisket in the oven. I'm on it.”

“Good,” Beatrice said, then hung up. She reached over to the radio and turned it up. One of her favorite Christmas songs was playing, “Silver Bells,” by Perry Como. She looked out the window. It had stopped snowing, but clumps of snow were clinging to shrubs and grass. She took a deep breath—the cookie dough smelled fresh and sweet. But the nut filling smelled even better. Nut-filled cookies were a must for her season. It was a recipe her mother had used when Beatrice was growing up. It wouldn't be Christmas without those cookies.

The snow. The cookies. The music. It was the holiday season, but she knew she wouldn't fully feel it until Vera and the others were back home safely.

Just as Sheila walked into the lounge, the ship lurched and she found herself plastered against the wall. Her bag went flying and the items in it splayed all over the tiled floor. After she gathered herself and all of her things, she stood up, brushed herself off, and proceeded to walk.

David of David's Designs was sitting at a table already, but he was speaking into his cell phone. He was dressed casually, in khakis and a white-striped golf shirt. There was a woman seated next to him who rose and greeted her.

“It will be just a moment,” she said in a professional voice, but tinged with apology. “Please have a seat.”

Sheila sat down. This was awkward. She didn't want to listen to his conversation—or for it to appear that way. So she very obviously looked out the window at the ocean, which appeared to be choppier than it had been this morning.

“He got what he deserved,” David said into the phone. “He broke up a happy marriage. What did he think? That there would be no revenge?”

She could not believe what she was hearing. Was he talking about Harold?

A waiter came up and asked Sheila what she wanted to drink.

“Water with lemon, please,” she said, thinking she'd kill for a sweet iced tea. But apparently it wasn't on the menu; she'd tried to order it several times.
What did you have to do to get a sweet iced tea outside the South?

“Theresa is right about that. But listen,” David said, looking at Sheila, “I need to go.” He placed his phone on the table. “Ms. Rogers,” he beamed. “So good to meet you.” He held out his hand and they shook. His handshake was firm and his manner charming. But one minute he was talking about revenge and the next oozed charm.

“This is my associate, Heather Reynolds,” he said.

“She's in charge of my scrapbooking line. We work very closely together. I give her as much creative free range as possible. But everything gets run by me before it's released.”

“If you were to describe our designs in one word, what would that word be?” Heather asked.

Sheila thought a moment. “Classic.”

A huge smile cracked across David's face. “Indeed. Now, let's talk about your designs. I'd call them shabby chic, wouldn't you?”

Sheila sat a bit taller. “Absolutely,” she said. “But I have designed some classic paper and so on. I also have ideas for a nostalgic line inspired by a carnival.”

His eyes widened. “Sounds interesting. You know, you really are very talented. I'm not one to beat around the bush. I don't have time for it. We'd love to have you join us.”

“Really? Me?”

“Why do you seem so surprised?” Heather asked.

Sheila shrugged. “I had this meeting with Theresa Graves and she wasn't impressed with my work at all.”

David and Heather looked at one another. Heather rolled her eyes.

“Theresa wouldn't know good design if it jumped up and bit her. I don't like talking about colleagues, but that woman's company is a design mess,” he said. “You don't want any part of that.”

Interesting
, Sheila mused. She thought the designs were okay—some lines better than others. But she was astounded by the competition between the scrapbooking companies. With such a family-oriented hobby business, Sheila had assumed that all of the big shots were friends.

The server brought Sheila a glass of water. She squeezed the lemon perched on the edge of the glass and dropped the peel into her water.

“So, tell me,” Heather said, after taking a sip of some kind of dark soda. “How would you see yourself fitting in to our company?”

Sheila's heart raced. David's Designs was interested in her. She hadn't anticipated this at all because Theresa had said her designs were amateur. She hadn't rehearsed this moment, which is what she would have done if she thought she stood a snowball's chance in hell. Twinges of excitement pulsed through her.

“What I'm looking for is freelance design work,” she told them. “I still have children in school in Cumberland Creek. I have a complete home office and studio and see no reason why I couldn't manage to work from there.”

“Would you be able to come to New York, say, once a month?” David asked her.

“Certainly,” she said.

“I'd like you to consider coming to work for us. I like to put this all up front. When you work for me, you sign a contract. You can't work for anyone else. And I own your designs. It's a standard work-for-hire agreement.”

Surely not! This doesn't sound right at all.
She felt her eyebrows knitting.

“I'd suggest you think it all over,” Heather said.

“You'll be getting other offers, I'm sure. Please let us know something within a few weeks. We'd love to have you on board. What I admire about your work is your sense of color. I've not seen such inspiring work in a long time.”

“Thank you,” Sheila said. “How kind of you.”

“I like the way you're comfortable with both digital design and traditional design,” David said. His eyes sparked with passion. Design really mattered to him; Sheila saw that. “I loved that scrapbook of yours, the one you entered in the competition. Where is it?”

“That's a good question,” Sheila said, and then explained the situation with the scrapbook.

“How utterly maddening,” David said. “I'll put in a word for you with security just to reiterate that you are to get that scrapbook back.”

“I hope they find it soon,” Heather said. “In the meantime, you have pictures, don't you?”

Sheila nodded.

“Oh, thank goodness,” she said. “We wanted to buy the rights from you to create a prototype and actually sell scrapbooks with your design.”

Sheila's mouth dropped open.

“Are you okay?”

She nodded. “Yes, it's exactly what I wanted.”
Except for the rights issue—and I'll deal with it later.

“Fabulous. We'll draw up some contracts and treat this project a little differently than the freelance work,” David said. “I'll text legal right now.”

What a perfect meeting it had been. Sheila slipped away into her room for a breather before she had to teach her class. She took a photo of herself on her iPhone and looked at it.
This is what an artist looks like.

She mailed it to herself and uploaded it onto her computer, then pulled it into her scrapbooking program and journaled about her day. She chose a pallet of blue and green with waves, clouds, and starbursts.

She typed in the word “artist” large across the top of her picture and read over her journal.

She stepped back, considered her face on the screen with all of the color and words around it.
Not bad. Not bad for an old broad from Cumberland Creek.