A Crafty Christmas

“Depending on the route of exposure, such as injection, as little as five hundred micrograms of ricin could be enough to kill an adult. A dose of that amount would be about the size of the head of a pin. A much greater amount would be needed to kill people if the ricin were inhaled or swallowed,” the voice on the other end of the phone reported.

“What about touching it?” Annie asked. “What about through the skin?”

“You’d get a nasty redness, maybe a rash. But how people get poisoned, of course, is touching it and then eating with their hands. Or licking their fingers as they flip pages or something. Then it’s a matter of time.”

“How long?” Annie asked.

“Depends on how strong the dose is. I’ve seen people who have died within two or three hours. But they ingested a huge amount of the stuff.”

“Okay,” Annie said. “Thanks, Frank.”

“No problem,” he said. “If you have any other questions, give me a call.”

Annie could hardly believe that the police had searched Sheila Rogers’s home for ricin. Of course, they didn’t find anything. And of course, Sheila was a nervous wreck, although relieved that they didn’t find poison in her home.

Annie began leafing through a pile of mail and papers.

Here were the death reports she wanted to see. Both of them: the first one and the final one. She sat them side by side on her kitchen table and compared them. Only a few differences existed in them: the names and addresses being the biggest. The type appeared the same; one wasn’t aligned with the form boxes as well as the other. Maybe the printer was off a bit.

But something else was off. She looked at each from the bottom up, comparing the two documents. She had learned to look at documents like this from the bottom up from a professional proofreader. It scrambled your brain enough to make you pick up on things rather than your eye slipping over it.

There. There it was.

Sheila Rogers: time of death 5:30

Allison Monroe: time of death 5:38

Odd. That was an awfully big disparity between the two reports.

Could be a typo. God knows the ship’s security team was careless. But she didn’t have to be careless. She picked up the phone.

“Hey, it’s Annie,” she said.

“I know that,” he clipped. “What can I do for you?”

She explained the discrepancy she found. “What do you think?”

“I think Ahoy Security has more explaining to do. I’m going to check into them a little further. You know, I have those same reports and didn’t notice that. Thanks.”

“What does it mean?” Annie persisted.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know if it means anything different from what we already know, which is that someone messed up the report.”

“I think it means something else, but I’m not sure what,” Annie said.

“When you figure it out, let me know,” he said, and paused. “It’s not really my case or my business, but I keep thinking there’s a link between the threatening note and this. And I don’t think Shelia Rogers is a killer.”

Annie breathed a mental sigh of relief. You could never tell about Adam Bryant. He went about his job in a cold, calculating manner most of the time. He was not easily read. When he didn’t don the detective mask, in his personal life, he had no control over himself.

“Does the FBI?” Annie said.

“I have no idea what those guys think. I imagine they are investigating Ahoy as well. I might be able to find out. But I do know that Sheila is a person of interest, not a suspect. At this time.”

Annie’s stomach twisted.

“Frankly, I don’t think anybody would be paying that much attention except that one of their guys was killed. One of their own,” he said.

“But that Allie woman was a pretty famous scrapbooker,” Annie said.

“Famous scrapbooker? What the hell does that mean to most people?”

“But she was the one killed. Maybe the others were accidents.”

“Or maybe the scrapbook was really meant for Sheila,” he said. “Maybe someone wanted to kill her.”

Annie sucked in the air. Why hadn’t she thought of that possibility? “Who would want to kill Sheila?” she said more to herself than to him.

“Maybe the same person who left the note? Nobody dislikes her? How can you go through life and not make an enemy or two?”

“Well, apparently she did—that Sharon Milhouse.”

“Yep, but I lost her. I can’t find her anywhere. She was released earlier this year. Her husband is now dead, so we have no idea what went on there. Nobody knows where she’s at. I’ve called her caseworker, left several messages. Maybe I’ll give her another call.”

“Can you let me know? We’re so concerned about Sheila. She’s taking this so personally,” Annie said. The more she thought about it, the more she thought it was ridiculous that Sheila might have been the intended victim.

“I can’t make any promises,” Bryant said. “But I will try.”

The phone call left Annie with a feeling of lightness. She and Adam had really sorted it out and it hadn’t gotten personal. Maybe there was hope that they could put the awkward feelings behind them and have some sort of professional relationship.

When she thought about the fact they had almost had an affair, it made her cringe. It also made her grateful that she was strong enough in her commitment to Mike that she could stop herself from acting on that base attraction to Adam Bryant.