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Feast of Murder(80)

By:Jane Haddam


He went up to the rail, leaned against it as close to her as he could get without actually touching her, and said, “I’m glad to see you’re feeling better. If I’d known how seasick you got, I’d never have insisted we come along on this trip.”

Julie blew an exasperated raspberry. “Oh, for God’s sake,” she said. “What’s the matter with you?”

“What do you mean, what’s the matter with me?” Mark was bewildered. Julie had always bewildered him, but lately she had gone past enigmatic to inscrutable. “What could possibly be the matter with me? I’m only concerned about your health.”

“Mark,” Julie said, “how much debt are we in?”

“No more than we can handle.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I don’t know,” Mark told her. “A lot. There’s the mortgage on the co-op for one thing, that’s a pile, and then we have run up the cards a little—why are you worried about what kind of debt we’re in?”

“What would happen if I quit work?” Julie demanded.

“Why would you want to quit work? Julie, you’re not making any sense.”

“Oh, yes, I am.”

“If you quit work, we’ll go bankrupt.”

Julie took a deep breath. “Well,” she said, “then get ready, because I’m going to quit work and I’m going to do it soon and I’m going to tell you why.”

“Good,” Mark said a little desperately.

“A,” Julie held up a finger, “I have come to the conclusion that public relations is the silliest endeavor ever invented by human beings. B,” another finger went up, “I am sick of it. And C—pay attention to this one here, Mark, it’s the clincher—I am four and a half months pregnant and I have every damn intention of having the baby. Put all that where it’ll do the most good and learn to live with it.”

“Right!” Mark said in the kind of voice cheerleaders use to celebrate touchdowns. His head was spinning, his stomach was raw, and he figured he was going to be seasick himself in a minute, but he figured all that could wait until he got a hold on just what was going on here.

For some reason, he couldn’t seem to make his mind think any more kind thoughts about girls with spikes in their ears.





2


From the beginning—from the very minute when she had received the invitation to spend Thanksgiving on this trip with these people—Fritzie Baird had been worried about one thing, and that was that Thanksgiving wouldn’t really get celebrated at all. Of course, Jon had always had a positive obsession about the Mayflower and the fact that his ancestors had come over on it. Fritzie had known a lot of people who had that obsession in their lives. In Jon’s case, it didn’t translate into what you might expect. Jon was so cold, really, so out of touch with the emotional side of life. He wanted to spend all his time concentrating on the “deep” things. He never understood why the things he considered superficial—like pleasantry and decoration—were so important to other people. In the normal course of events, Sheila would have been expected to take care of all that. Sheila was, after all, Jon’s wife. Sheila was also, after all, Sheila. That was why Fritzie had brought what she’d brought in her small suitcase—not the jewelry she would have been expected to bring (and that Sheila had undoubtedly brought) but the makings of a real Thanksgiving holiday. In Fritzie’s mind, the makings of a real Thanksgiving holiday had nothing to do with food, except in the sense that everything in Fritzie’s life had to do with food. What Fritzie wanted here and now was decoration. Her small suitcase was full of multicolored corn and ribbons and even candles. The candles made her feel a little foolish, because there were so many candles already on the boat. The other things gave her a great sense of peace. As soon as she’d taken her turn in the makeshift shower, she went back to her cabin and got them all out. Sheila had breakfast in bed. Fritzie didn’t have to worry about her. Jon was somebody Fritzie actually liked to talk to. As for the rest of them … Fritzie didn’t care about the rest of them. They came and went. They wouldn’t bother her.

She put the multicolored corn and the ribbons and the two packages of pipe cleaners in a brown paper bag and headed for the mess hall, which was the only room on the boat with a table big enough to accommodate what she wanted to do. She looked inside and found the room deserted, but the table set with food. She went in and shut the door behind her. The anachronistic, battery-operated toast warmers and samovars from the day before had not been resurrected here. There were only good china plates and sturdy wooden baskets lined with colored cloths. Still, the food was not “authentic” in any sense of the term. No one would have eaten it if it had been. The Puritans were very big on meat dried rock hard and lard. They drank a lot of liquor and fried almost everything they put into their mouths. What had been put out on the mess hall table were corn muffins and blueberry muffins and bran muffins and scones, each plate or basket flanked by a crock of butter and a crock of cheese and a small silver butter knife. It was just the kind of breakfast Jon had preferred when he was still living at home with her. It made Fritzie warm and soft inside, just to look at it.