Chapter 22
“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.