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 Beatrice.

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.