Baked Alaska (30 page)

Finally, Tanice put up her hands. “Okay, I’m sure you’re judgin’ me pretty harsh right now, but people grieve in different ways. I didn’t
kill
my husband. You have to believe that I wouldn’t do that. We have children; I’m not a murderer.” By the time she finished, the arrogant defensiveness had seeped back into her words.

“So the heart attack last night was, what? A happy accident that conveniently happened after your attempt to give your husband poisoned wine didn’t work out? That might just make your husband the unluckiest man in the entire world.”

“Until this moment I thought him droppin’ dead like that was an answer to prayer, tell you the truth,” Tanice said, her tone sounding desperate. “Heaven knows I’ve been prayin’ for months for help on how to get that man out of my life. I saw it as a faith healin’...of sorts—more for me than him, I guess, but either way, I was free, and I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“So, you prayed for your husband to die and yet expect me to believe that you only intended to make him sick on this cruise?”

“I didn’t pray for him to die—I prayed for a way out of my misery,” Tanice said, taking a step closer to Sadie and lowering her voice. “He’s been foolin’ around with a woman five years
older
than me. I’ve spent the last several weeks gettin’ my affairs in order and preparin’ for the day when I tell him that
he
ain’t leavin’
me.
No, I was going to leave
first.

“This cruise was the last part of the plan. He was gonna get sick, and I was gonna take care of him when he was upchuckin’ into the toilet. We’ve got some friends on this trip with us, and I wanted everyone to see me bein’ the best wife any man could hope for—in sickness and in health and all that.” Her face was starting to turn red, and Sadie prepared herself to run if escape became essential. “Two weeks from now, I planned to tell him I was leavin’ ’cause he was a no-good cheatin’ never mind. Our friends would have seen me bein’ so attentive on this ship,
before
they learned that he was a complete scoundrel. It’s how I was going to preserve my honor when everythin’ he’s been doin’ became the talk of the town.”

“And then the wine disappeared,” Sadie filled in.

Tears filled Tanice’s eyes as she nodded, though Sadie didn’t trust those tears for a minute. She’d already witnessed Tanice’s mood going from hot to cold at the drop of a hat.

“Everything was going so well,” she said, her voice shaky. “I was being the doting wife, and he was smiling like the jerk-faced-dog he is, and then the wine disappeared. I had no choice but to play the part of his arm candy instead of his nurse. I wasn’t sure I could pull it off all week long. When he keeled over after the show last night, I took it as a sign from the heavens that they couldn’t stand to watch it anymore either. I’m a God-fearing woman and to my mind what happened to Ben was something right out of the Old Testament—a lightning bolt if I ever did see one.”

Sadie was processing the information as quickly as she could. “What if the wine
had
killed him? Seems quite a risk to simply hope it would just make him sick and not something worse.”

“Ben wasn’t a big drinker, just one glass of wine after dinner, that’s all. One glass would make him sick, and a glass the next night would make him a touch sicker, and so on. I knew what I was doing.” She looked at Sadie as though begging for her understanding.

Sadie felt
some
sympathy for this woman, but not enough to have her change what she knew to be right and wrong.

“You can see why I need that wine back—whatever’s left. I’ll cover all your friend’s expenses for the trip, and yours too if that will help keep you quiet about this. I need to get back to Texas and have a proper funeral for my wanderlust husband, and I need that wine bottle in hand when I get off this boat.”

“The wine isn’t here,” Sadie said.

“What do you mean?” Tanice said, taking a step closer to Sadie, which caused Sadie’s muscles to tense. “Where is it?”

“The police in Juneau have it,” Sadie said, watching Tanice’s eyes go wide while the pallor of her skin went paler. “My friend drank it and went into a coma Sunday night. She’s currently in critical care at the hospital in Anchorage. No one knows if she’ll recover.”

Tanice’s mouth fell open as she stared at Sadie, disbelief and shock embedded into her features.

“You’re foolin’ with me,” she said, but her voice was laced with fear.

“I’m not. So you can see why it’s hard for me to believe that even though you wanted your husband dead, you didn’t intend to kill him with that wine.”

“I told you—I wanted him
sick
,” Tanice said, her words clipped. “I wanted him humiliated.
That
was my payoff. As it is, I’ve had to accept the fact that everyone thinks he’s going into the ground as an honorable man, instead of the dog he was.”

She seemed sincere, but a woman who planned to nurse her husband through an illness she inflicted on him specifically to make herself look doting could surely feign sincerity.

Sadie glanced toward the door, already thinking of the next step of her plan now that she knew what she needed to know. Hopefully, Officer Jareg was still in his office. “I think it would be best if we went and talked to Officer—ooph—”

Sadie’s head cracked against the wall and then the floor before she realized what had happened. The instant she figured out she was on the ground, she reached out and grabbed for Tanice, who was in the process of leaping over Sadie’s body. She managed to snag the hem of Tanice’s pants, sending her into a dive as she fell through the doorway.

Tanice rolled onto her back and kicked at Sadie’s head, not holding back an ounce of her strength in the process. Sadie saw stars and was forced to let go of Tanice’s pant leg. She rolled onto her stomach and grabbed again. This time she got nothing but air and lunged forward in time to see Tanice get to her feet and bolt down the hall toward the elevators.

“Security!” Sadie screamed at the top of her lungs as she tried to stand, blinking quickly in the hope it would help her head stop spinning. She heard a door open and looked to her right, where a woman with a pink turban wrapped around her head peeked out. “Call security!” Sadie screamed. The woman slammed the door.

Sadie made it to the far wall in the hallway and got to her feet, turning toward the elevators but knowing there was no way she could catch Tanice. The floor was pitching and rolling like they were in open sea instead of in port.

She headed for the security office instead, using the walls to keep her upright as she made her way down the hall. She was a few feet from the curtain when Hazel stepped out.

“Get Officer Jareg right now,” Sadie said, her head throbbing. “Tanice is going to try to get off the ship!”

Chapter 33

“Do you need more ice?” Pete asked, sitting across from Sadie in the ship’s infirmary located on deck four. Sadie didn’t remember how she got there.

She
did
remember Officer Jareg finding her in the hallway and asking her what happened. Seriously, she was attacked a few yards from his office; they really needed to get their security finer tuned than this.

She remembered telling him that Tanice was on the run, and then she slumped against the wall, nauseous and hurting. Someone called Pete from her cell phone—three times in a row before he finally answered, they said later—and about the time she realized she was in the infirmary, Pete had arrived, full of concern and questions. The nurse told her she might have a mild concussion, and she was supposed to stay still, sitting up in a very uncomfortable chair, for at least an hour so that the medical staff could keep an eye on her.

“It’s fine,” Sadie said to Pete. Her head had gone numb several minutes ago. The nurse had held the ice pack in place by wrapping what looked like plastic wrap around Sadie’s head several times. It was quite likely a sight to behold, and Sadie was glad not to have to look at it herself. A part of her, though, noted the fact that she wasn’t embarrassed to have Pete see her in such a state. That had to be a good sign about how their relationship was developing. “Did they find her?”

“I don’t know,” Pete said. “The ship’s still on lockdown—no one on; no one off.”

Sadie remembered him saying something about how the only reason he was able to get on the ship was because security officers had escorted him. The staff told the other passengers that it was a routine inspection of the ship and opened the dining rooms early.

“Are we stuck in port until they track her down?”

Pete lifted both shoulders. “I have no idea. I’ve been here for a good forty-five minutes, right?”

Sadie nodded even though she wasn’t sure. Her head felt foggy, but she wasn’t sure if it was because of having been kicked in the head or from the medication they’d given her to take the edge off the pain. “Have you talked to Shawn and Breanna?”

Pete shook his head. “Shawn was there when I got the call, though.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and hit a button. “When I got on the ship, I texted them both, telling them to hold tight, knowing they would want to try to come see you personally.”

She didn’t want them coming—they both had important things to do right now; it was bad enough for Pete to see her like this. “Will you call them and give them an update? Downplay it a little if you think you can get away with it. They have enough to worry about.”

Pete nodded, then stepped out into the hall to make the phone calls.

The ship’s engines started to hum, indicating that the ship was about to depart, and Sadie swallowed a lump in her throat as she thought about Breanna and Shawn still in Skagway, watching her and Pete sail away. And Maggie—where was she? Was she okay? Did the fact that they were leaving port mean that Officer Jareg had found Tanice? She’d wanted to ask someone about the possibility of Shawn and Maggie rejoining the cruise, now that they could point at Tanice for the wine—but she knew it was too late. Breanna had booked the hotel rooms, and a federal officer was on his way to Skagway. Revealing Tanice’s motives hadn’t happened soon enough to make a difference.

Sadie wasn’t in a small exam room, rather she sat on a chair in the middle of what looked like the working part of the medical center. There was a stack of files on the far counter and an entire filing cabinet a few feet past that. Knowing information was so close made her wonder what she could learn in this room, and yet there was really nothing on this ship she wanted to know more about. The questions she had about Lorraina, Maggie, and the e-mails Shawn had sent wouldn’t be answered here.

She closed her eyes and leaned back, and although she didn’t like the fuzzy feeling in her head, it was nice not to feel so bombarded with trying to figure things out. A minor head injury was nothing compared to the satisfaction of knowing the answers had been found. Tanice had poisoned the wine, so of course she found another way to get rid of her husband when her first plan didn’t work. Two cases solved—just like that. Tomorrow, the federal officer would get to Skagway, conduct his investigation, which would include the details of Tanice’s plan, and know that Shawn and Maggie were cleared. Sadie would see them again on Friday. She took a deep breath and let it out, relieved to know that things were coming together.

She heard a door open and smiled in anticipation of Pete rejoining her, but opened her eyes to see Officer Jareg instead. He attempted a smile as he walked toward her while she sat up straighter.

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” Sadie said. It wasn’t necessarily true, but she expected that she felt as well as she could under the circumstances and figured he had more important things to worry about right now. “Did you find her?”

He shook his head. “She may have gotten off the ship. We’ve alerted the airport and charter pilots.”

“But she still might be on board,” Sadie summed up.

“If she is, she’ll be found. People cannot hide on this ship for very long. We will be making up posters and talking to the staff so they know to watch for her. We are unable to stay in port any longer; there are tight schedules, not just for us but other ships as well.” Apparently nothing was more important than keeping the cruise going unhindered. “I don’t believe you are in any danger, if you are worried about that. She has nothing to gain from hurting you now.”

Strange how that didn’t make her feel much better. She liked Officer Jareg and his staff, but she didn’t feel that they had Sadie’s best interests in mind. At the same time, she didn’t know what Tanice would gain from coming after her either. If she were still on the ship, her only goal would be to get off of it, right?

“I spoke with Mrs. Jefferies’s steward, and he admitted to getting her wine out of storage and later coordinating with another staff member to remove the tag from the wine bottle to hide his breach of policy.”

“Will he lose his job?”

Officer Jareg paused, and Sadie suspected he was considering what he could, and should, say. “When you are at sea for months at a time, trust is essential. We know that things happen, unfortunate things, and we have to deal with them strongly to keep other staff from feeling there are any allowances. You understand.”