Chapter 21
Champagne flows, the music thumps, and women in elaborate Viking costumes laugh and pose with oiled-up cover models who look fresh off the front of a paperback. Which, to be fair, most of them are.
The lighting runs low and moody, all amber and shadow, with candles flickering on every surface. The air is thick with expensive perfume and the sweetness drifting off the dessert table, where princess cake, chocolate balls, and saffron buns sit arranged like edible art.
I’d stop to admire the artistry, but the buffet already has a customer nobody else can see.
Magnus Darkwater materializes in a shower of silver stars near the dessert spread and proceeds to hobnob with the guests as though they invited him.
He laughs at jokes he wasn’t told. He drinks champagne that floats mysteriously in midair.
He noshes his way through a plate of Swedish donuts that levitate toward his mouth one by one, and I marvel at the fact that death has done absolutely nothing to slow this man’s appetite. If anything, it’s cleared his schedule.
Oddly, nobody seems to care about the floating flutes or the fried treats drifting through the air on their own. The lighting is dim enough that people assume they’re seeing things, or the champagne has done the assuming for them.
“Is your ghost here?” Marina whispers beside me as we weave through the crowd toward Sienna.
“Oh, he’s here. Currently making his third pass at the dessert table and floating champagne past unsuspecting guests. The man is about as subtle as fireworks at midnight.”
“Should we be concerned?”
“Probably. But we have bigger Viking fish to fry right now.”
Namely, the woman at the far end of the pastry station, looking as though her cake betrayed her.
Sienna stands alone with her plate, the candlelight washing her brown gown down to shadow, and a single slice of princess cake sits on it untouched.
Untouched cake at a party. If that isn’t a cry for help, I don’t know what is. In my world, it’s a full-blown distress flare.
She looks small and tired and thoroughly defeated. Even her headband has given up, letting her auburn curls stage a slow escape.
Marina and I approach carefully, and Sienna glances up with a weary smile. “Trixie, Marina. Are you enjoying the party?”
“It’s quite the event,” I say, keeping my tone light. “Can we talk to you for a minute? Somewhere quieter?”
Her smile falters. “Is something wrong?”
“Not wrong, exactly. Just... we have some questions.”
Just the small matter of a murder.
She glances around the crowded lounge, then nods toward a quiet corner near the windows where the music downgrades from deafening to merely aggressive. We follow her over, and her hands tremble as she sets down her cake.
“What’s this about?” she asks, and her shoulders hitch up around her ears the way they do when a woman is bracing for a wave she can’t outrun.
I take a breath and try to figure out how to approach this gently. Gentle has never been my natural setting, but for her, I’ll dig for it.
“Sienna, at the fortress this morning, you told me about the tea. The blackmail. What Astrid was planning for the costume gala. Everything except what she was actually holding over you.”
“Yes.” Her voice is careful. “And you didn’t push. I thanked you for that.”
“I know.” And I hate what comes next. “But we’re past the place where the not-asking helps anybody.”
“Astrid was going to make an announcement,” Marina adds softly. “About your family. We need to understand what she had.”
Sienna’s hands clench into fists at her sides.
She looks at me, and the betrayal in her eyes lands somewhere below my ribs.
“I told you it wasn’t mine alone to share.
” She gives a sigh of defeat. “It was cruel,” she whispers when neither of us fills the silence.
“Astrid said it was about maintaining club standards. That families with certain... issues... didn’t belong in the Velvet Vikings. ”
“What issues?” I ask.
She looks between us, her eyes filling with tears. “My daughter made mistakes. Serious mistakes. And she’s paying for them. But that doesn’t mean my grandchildren should suffer public humiliation because their mother—” She stops and presses her lips together.
“Because their mother what?” Marina prompts.
Sienna’s tears spill over. “Because their mother is in prison.”
Knew it.
“There. Are you happy?” she rages. “That’s the secret. My daughter embezzled money from her employer. Over a hundred thousand dollars to feed a gambling addiction. She’s been incarcerated for two years, and I’ve been raising her three children while lying to everyone about where she is.”
The words come out in a rush, and now she’s crying openly, her shoulders shaking.
“I tell people she’s traveling for work.
That she’s too busy with her career to visit much.
The kids believe me because they’re little and they trust me.
And every single day I lie to their faces because I don’t know how to explain that their mother made terrible choices and now she’s locked away. ”
And the last locked door from the fortress wall swings open.
Let’s just say life has taught me more than I ever wanted to know about how embezzlement cases work.
She wasn’t being cagey. She was being a mother.
Two years of court records and visitation glass taught her exactly where to dig for Astrid’s bones.
I want to hug her. I also want to hand her my champagne and possibly the entire dessert table. Cart and all.
My heart cracks straight down the middle. Whatever else this woman is, she’s a grandmother holding a family together with both hands and a smile she doesn’t mean.
“Oh, Sienna,” Marina says, her voice thick with emotion.
“I’m so sorry,” I quickly add.
“Astrid was going to tell everyone at the gala,” Sienna continues as she wipes at her face.
“She was going to stand up in front of the entire club and announce that my daughter is a convicted felon. That I’ve been lying.
That my family doesn’t meet the club’s standards.
” Her voice breaks, and then something harder moves in behind the tears.
“Her standards. My daughter took a hundred thousand dollars, and she’s sitting in a cell for it, sick with shame every time I visit.
Astrid took twice that from her own husband, framed an innocent man for it, and got a decade of sympathy casseroles.
And that woman was going to stand up in a Viking costume and judge my family. ”
“You knew that when she threatened you,” Marina says quietly. “You’d already found it.”
“I found it because she forced me to go looking.” Sienna’s chin lifts.
“And I never used it. Not once. I sat across from her with everything I needed to burn her down, and I couldn’t do it, because there are three little kids on the other end of every choice I make.
” Her voice breaks again. “This club is the only place I feel normal. The only place where I’m not Grandma raising someone else’s kids or the retired teacher counting every last dime.
And Astrid was going to take that away from me. ”
I let the silence sit for a moment while she composes herself. Somewhere behind us, Magnus booms out a laugh at a party he wasn’t invited to. The man is having the time of his afterlife.
“Sienna,” I say carefully. “That’s a devastating secret to have exposed. A secret a person might do desperate things to protect.”
Her chin snaps up, her tear-stained face going pale. “What are you saying?”
“We’re trying to understand what happened to Astrid,” Marina says. “And you had a very strong reason to want her silenced.”
Sienna’s mouth falls open. “Are you... are you accusing me of murder?”
“We’re asking questions,” I say as gently as I can. “You argued with Astrid hours before she died. You were overheard telling her ‘You can’t do this to me.’ You had motive. You had opportunity. And you spent three weeks learning everything there was to know about the woman.”
“I didn’t kill her!” Sienna’s voice rises, and a few nearby women glance our way with the hungry look of gossip finding a fresh trough.
She lowers her voice to an urgent whisper.
“I swear to you, I didn’t kill her. Yes, I wanted her to stop.
Yes, I was terrified of what she was going to do. But I would never—I couldn’t—”
“Why not?” I press. “If she was about to destroy your life?”
“Because I have three kids depending on me!” She trembles from head to toe. “Their mother is already gone. If I go to prison too, what happens to them? Foster care? Separation? I couldn’t do that to them. I would never risk it.”
The logic is sound. The pain is real. And I hate every second of poking at it.
“Then help us understand,” Marina says. “If you didn’t kill Astrid, who do you think could have done this?”
Sienna swipes at her eyes, her breathing ragged.
“I don’t know. But I’m not the only one with secrets.
Freya was having an affair with another member’s husband.
Astrid was going to expose her, too. And there are others.
” She pauses. “Women struggling with addiction. Women whose marriages are falling apart. Women with secrets they’d protect at any cost.” Her gaze drifts somewhere past my shoulder, out toward the dark water.
“And that man she put away has been sitting in a cell for twenty years. He has a family out there somewhere. If I were you, I’d be asking who loves him. ”
The Velvet Vikings. It’s less a book club and more a confessional with a considerable snack budget.
“Can you give us names?” I ask.
“I’d rather not throw people under the bus without proof.
” She takes a steadying breath. “But I will tell you this. Astrid confided in me about one member whose situation was particularly bad. This woman’s husband has been having an affair for years.
With someone young, someone who works for him.
And the member knows about it. She has known the whole time. ”
“Why doesn’t she leave?” Marina asks.
“Because she’s financially dependent on him. Her career is more of a hobby than real income.” Sienna’s voice drops even lower. “And that’s not even the worst part. Astrid found out this woman was stealing prescription medications from her husband’s practice. Painkillers. She’s addicted.”
Painkillers.
My pulse trips over itself. “Did Astrid say who it was?”
“No. She never used names when she gossiped. But she said the woman was on multiple charity boards. Very well connected socially. A woman whose reputation would shatter if the truth ever came out.”
Gossip without names. Astrid managed to weaponize discretion, and I didn’t think that was possible.
“What was Astrid planning to do?” I ask.
“Stage an intervention at the costume gala. ‘Public accountability,’ she called it. Said it was for the woman’s own good.
” Sienna shakes her head. “But I know Astrid. It wasn’t about helping.
It was about control. About reminding everyone that she held all the power.
” Her gaze drifts out over the room, tears glittering in her eyes.
“That’s what tonight was supposed to be about. ”
Public accountability. Because nothing says I care about you quite so much as a public flogging next to the cheese platter.
Marina and I exchange glances, but I keep my expression neutral. Or what I hope passes for neutral. My poker face has been described as a billboard. A well-lit one.
“So you’re saying this woman, whoever she is, also had motive to kill Astrid,” I say.
“I’m saying lots of people had motive.” Sienna straightens and dabs her face dry one last time.
“I wanted Astrid out of my life. But I would never kill her. I have my grandchildren to think about. They’ve lost enough already.
” She picks up her cake. Still untouched.
“I think I need to be medicated after this conversation. This whole cruise has been a nightmare.”
Medicated. On this cruise, that word is starting to feel less like a punchline and more like a plot point.
She walks away and disappears into the crowd of women in velvet and leather, and I make a mental note to send a slice of seven-layer chocolate to her cabin later. Make that two slices. Princess cake can’t carry that woman’s load alone.
Marina turns to me. “Do you believe her?”
“I think so. The grandmother argument is compelling. Nobody in their right mind poisons a cocktail with three grandbabies on the line. Although right mind is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting on this cruise.” I scan the room while my thoughts sprint through everything Sienna told us.
“But if she didn’t do it, someone else did. Someone with just as much to lose.”
“Someone whose husband is a doctor,” Marina says quietly. “Someone on charity boards. Someone addicted to painkillers.”
“Someone who’s been very helpful pointing me toward other suspects,” I add.
We stand there while the party rages on around us. Magnus floats past with another champagne flute, blissfully unaware that we may have cracked his case wide open.
Some ghosts rattle chains. Mine rattles the dessert table.
And then I see her across the room.
A woman in cream and gold laughs with a cover model, her hand drifting up to touch her own shoulder. She rolls it slightly, and her face does this tight little flinch she smothers with a flawless smile before it can testify against her.
The shoulder roll. The careful way she moves. The composure of chronic pain managed through sheer force of will and, if Sienna is right, a pilfered pharmacy.
The prescription medications. The perfect exterior hiding the crumbling interior. The concerned friend who has been ever so helpful, steering me toward everyone else in the room while wearing her innocence right next to her pearls.
And it all clicks into place with an almost audible snap.
“Oh my word,” I breathe.
Marina looks at me. “What?”
“Marina,” I say slowly, my stomach doing a swan dive, “I think I know who the killer is.”
And to think, I let that woman feed me cookies.