Baked Alaska (28 page)

Sadie was scrolling through her mind in search of who to call about this first—Pete, probably—when the ringing of her phone startled her. She pulled it out of her purse and looked at the numbers on the screen. She didn’t know the number, and it had an unfamiliar area code.
Tanice?

“Oh, boy,” Sadie whispered as sweat instantly bloomed on her forehead and her heart took off running. She wasn’t able to get a handle on herself before the call went to voice mail, which was probably for the best. She took the stairs down to her cabin where she let herself inside and then called her voice mailbox.

The voice she now believed belonged to the widow Tanice was just a little bit frantic. “I just found a note in my room, and I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please leave me alone.” Sadie listened to it twice more, then disconnected from her voice mail and sat on the edge of her bed, considering her options. She could call Pete. She could save all this and take it to Officer Jareg. Or...she could call the woman back. Her insides flip-flopped at the idea, and yet she had only to think about Shawn at the police department, and Breanna disembarking the ship, to find the motivation she needed to drive her forward. Her thumb hovered over the call button for a few seconds before she took a breath and called Tanice back.

Chapter 31

Worried that Tanice would recognize her voice, Sadie pitched the tone of her voice so she sounded a little like Minnie Mouse. “Hello. This is Sadie. You just left me a message?” As soon as she spoke, she knew she’d made a mistake. It would be hard to keep up the high-pitched voice for the entire phone call.

“I believe I was very clear that you weren’t to bother me.” This time the woman’s tone wasn’t mournful or snide or bubbly, but instead swung back and forth between anger and fear.

“Yes,” Sadie said in that squeaky, high-pitched voice. She wished she’d gone with a Boston accent. It was her favorite one to impersonate—wheh did you pahk the cah?—but it was too late now. “I just wanted to make sure you didn’t lose a wine bottle.”

“No,” she said, her words sharp. “I don’t just go ’round losin’ bottles of wine. Why are you askin’ me about it?”

“You’re sure you aren’t missing one?” Sadie’s throat was starting to hurt from the forced pitch.

“Look,” Tanice said, lowering her voice. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you better leave me alone.” The line went dead, and Sadie pulled her phone away from her ear, staring at it and wishing she had recorded the conversation.

This was not the reaction of a woman who was sad to see her husband gone, yet a sense of relief filled Sadie as well. If Tanice had something to do with the poisoned wine, that would get Shawn and Maggie off the hook. Once they were cleared of suspicion, Sadie could work on rebuilding her relationship with Shawn and making things better with Maggie. She was so eager for those two things to happen that she hurried out of her room and up the stairs. She would wait in the security office, going over her notes, and then, as soon as Officer Jareg was ready, she’d be right there.

She took a deep breath as she entered the hallway that led to security.

As she approached Tanice’s door, she tensed and took longer strides for fear that Tanice would open the door and confront her.

She doesn’t know it was you who left the note
, Sadie told herself, but she was still relieved when she’d passed the closed door. The farther she got from Tanice’s room, the better she felt. It wasn’t until she was in the security office, however, that she felt she could really breathe normally again.

Her new appointment was at five o’clock, and she was forty minutes early. After reviewing her notes in her notebook, she texted Pete, but he didn’t reply. Again! She texted Breanna, too, who responded to tell Sadie that Pete and Shawn were still at the police station while she was at the hotel getting ready for the conference call with Liam and his parents. Sadie wanted to be a part of that discussion, but both she and Breanna knew that was impossible. Sadie wished her luck and asked her to let her know how things went, and that if she saw Pete, to have him call her. Breanna said she would.

It was disappointing how quickly Sadie ran out of things to do; her notes were better honed than she’d thought.

The only magazine in the room was a guide to cruising that Sadie suspected was printed by the cruise line itself. Other than what looked like a really wonderful recipe for stuffed mushrooms by Chef Ferguson which she copied into her notebook, Sadie had a hard time finding anything else of interest. She checked her phone again, then put it on silent for the pending interview.

It used to be that she could deal with her impatience better than this, but since her recent bouts of anxiety, it was much harder for her to control her racing thoughts. By the time Hazel motioned her back to Officer Jareg’s office a few minutes before five, she felt as though she’d drunk three cups of coffee.

When she entered the room, Officer Jareg was finishing a phone call and writing a few words on a notebook on his desk. She sat down and waited until he hung up the phone and turned his attention to her.

“Thank you for coming in, Mrs. Hoffmiller, and for being patient with the change in appointment. I’m afraid it has been a very busy day for me. I’m glad, however, that we have a chance to talk.”

“So am I,” Sadie said, but once she’d said those words, the floodgates opened and she began jabbering away about everything, barely able to get the words out as fast as her mind was working. Several times, Officer Jareg stopped her and asked her to back up and start again. Each time that happened, her tension increased. Finally, he put up both hands.

“You must slow down, Mrs. Hoffmiller,” he said, frustrated. “This is not making sense. What do you mean you sent a note to his wife? Whose wife?”

“Ben’s wife,” Sadie said, knowing she’d explained that. Was the fact that English wasn’t this man’s first language getting in the way of this discussion?

“Ben who?”

“I don’t know his last name,” Sadie said. “But it’s the man who died last night of a heart attack at the buffet.”

Officer Jareg clamped his mouth shut in surprise, paused a few moments, and then asked her how she knew about that.

She told him about what Mary Anne had said happened and then about Jen talking about it as well. “It’s hard to keep these kinds of secrets,” Sadie said.

Officer Jareg’s expression became increasingly concerned while she spoke, which she couldn’t understand. Ben had collapsed in the buffet, right? Any number of people must know about it.

“Perhaps it would be best if you could write down what you have learned,” he said, pulling open a desk drawer and removing a spiral-bound notebook—the kind you could buy for twenty cents at back-to-school sales. No official forms?

He handed her a Seven Seas Cruise pen along with the notebook. “I have some phone calls I need to make, but I’ll use another office. I’ll be right back.” After taking a step away from the desk, however, he paused, then returned and tore off the piece of paper he’d been writing on when Sadie entered. Sadie didn’t see what it said, and he smiled slightly as he folded it in half and tucked it into the front shirt pocket of his uniform.

He then left her alone with the notebook.

Though frustrated with the lack of procedure, she gathered her thoughts and wrote about the gift tag it seemed only she had seen, and then about her conversation with Mary Anne and how it led to the note Sadie had left under Tanice’s door. She included every detail she could think of, even the ones she didn’t want to admit, like breaking into the dining room. She worried she would get in trouble for that, but what was the worst thing the cruise line could do to her? And if it helped get Shawn out of trouble with the police, then it would be worth every embarrassing detail. She didn’t say anything about Breanna helping her, however.

Officer Jareg peeked in on her twice, but she wasn’t done either time so he shut the door. She wasn’t about to be chintzy with her report; this was about her son’s future. When she finished—four pages in all—she reread it, corrected a misspelled word here and there, inserted the proper punctuation, and then put the pen on top of the notebook and pushed it toward Officer Jareg’s side of the desk.

She had every intention of waiting patiently for him to return, but then she looked at the notepad on his desk. Officer Jareg had taken the top sheet before leaving the room; she couldn’t help but wonder what it said.

From where she sat, she could see indentations in the top sheet of paper, left over impressions from whatever had been written on the paper above it. For the first minute, she looked away and distracted herself with other things in the office. However, the room was very sparse. For the second minute, she stared at the paper and listed all the reasons not to mess with it. After
those
two minutes, though, her curiosity got the better of her.

It likely has nothing to do with my interests anyway
, she told herself as her eyes rested on a mug on the far side of the desk. It was filled with pens, markers, and, more important, pencils.

She stood rather casually, ready to abandon her plan at the first hint of Officer Jareg’s return. She picked through the pencils until she found one with the sharpest point—still glancing at the door every couple of seconds—then quickly snatched the pad of paper. She was now too far in to be able to explain what she was doing if he returned, so, as fast as she could, she lightly rubbed the lead of the pencil over the surface of the paper, starting at the top. The indentations remained white while the surface of the paper turned light gray.

Sadie frowned as it became apparent that the words appearing on the paper weren’t in English. They weren’t in any alphabet she recognized. Perhaps it was in Filipino since that was Officer Jareg’s nationality.

“Biscuits.” He may as well have left the note in the office, it wasn’t as though she could have read it.

She nearly gave up but decided there was no reason to stop now, and continued lightly coloring the paper. More words showed up white against the gray. None of them could be read, except near the end where some English words were written in list form.

Seaboard

Rydell

Baker

Jenskowski

Sadie said the words out loud. Were they brands of something? Last names? For all she knew they were ports of call—though she’d never heard of Jenskowski, Alaska. Then again, she’d never heard of Skagway either, until she looked up the ship’s itinerary.

Remembering she could be caught at any moment, she tore the paper from the pad, folded it in half, and put it in her back pocket, a little disappointed in herself for having been left alone in the security director’s office and finding nothing of any significance.

Her eyes wandered to the filing cabinet behind the desk and the pile of papers on top of that cabinet, which led her to thinking about the drawers on the other side of the desk. The sheer possibility of available information created an intense temptation, but coloring on a pad of paper was much easier to justify than going through files. And less illegal. She’d already incriminated herself by telling about breaking into the Chandelier dining room and stealing the seating chart. She couldn’t afford to make things worse.

To keep her mind occupied, she pulled the notebook back in front of herself and turned to a fresh page where she sketched out the wine bottle and the gift tag, adding all the details she could remember. When she finished, she cocked her head to the side, rather impressed with her drawing since she’d never thought of herself as much of an artist. She attempted the scrolling letters on the wine bottle but knew she wasn’t getting it right. There had been a cluster of grapes in the center of the label, though; Sadie was certain of that because she found it rather cliché.

When Officer Jareg opened the door a few minutes later, she startled slightly, so carried away in her artwork that she’d forgotten about him coming back in. She was instantly aware of the folded paper in her pocket, however, and sat up straighter as though that would somehow keep her from looking suspicious.

“Finished?” Officer Jareg asked as he came around to his side of the desk. He looked at the bottle of wine she’d drawn.

“It’s just a rough sketch,” Sadie said, her tone caught between pride and embarrassment.

“I’m most interested in the gift tag,” Officer Jareg said. “You seem to be the only person who saw it. You say it was written to a Ben and Tanice?”

Sadie nodded. “And a man named Ben with a wife named Tanice died last night.” She looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to show the impact of that summation on his face, but he kept a poker face. Did security personnel take a class on that expression like she assumed detectives did?

“What more can you tell me about the tag?”

“Well, it was tied to the bottle with a green ribbon.”

“Was it handwritten or printed?”

“Uh, printed, I think. Not many people can write that pretty. The gift tag was brown, like paper-bag brown, with a black border.”