“Mind if I join you?” I ask as I approach Claudette’s window-side isolation station. “The view out here is incredible.”
Claudette startles like I’ve just suggested she strip naked and tango with the ice sculptures. “Oh! Trixie, of course. Please, help yourself to these naughty treats.” She gestures to her cream puff tower with the guilt of a woman who’s been caught engaging in emotional eating at a formal event. “I can’t seem to stop myself.”
“I never refuse excellent pastry,” I say, selecting a cream puff that’s brimming with whipped cream goodness. “Especially when it’s this beautifully constructed.”
The cream puff explodes on my tongue like edible heaven designed by a chef with advanced degrees in temptation. Light, airy pastry filled with vanilla bean custard that tastes like liquid clouds infused with French sophistication. True and perfect bliss.
“These are incredible,” I manage around my food-induced religious experience.
“It’s incredible comfort food,” Claudette sighs, staring out at the dark ocean like she’s searching for answers in the endless expanse of water. “Though I suppose at my age, I should be more concerned about my figure than my feelings.”
“Your feelings seem more pressing at the moment,” I say gently. “Valentine’s Day can be complicated when your relationship status is... well, in transition.”
She laughs, but it doesn’t have an ounce of humor in it. “In transition. That’s a tactful way to describe a marriage held together with permanent ink.” She leaves out professionalnecessity.
Richard moves closer, crackling at attention as Claudette continues.
“Do you know how exhausting it is to counsel couples about trust and communication when your own husband had to tattoo his marital status on his forehead?” She takes a sip of her untouched champagne with the bitter precision of a woman washing down disappointment. “The irony isn’t lost on me.”
“It must be incredibly difficult,” I say, meaning it. “Teaching traditional values while living with the aftermath of betrayal.” Lord knows I couldn’t do it.
“The pressure is suffocating,” she admits, and I see her professional facade starting to crumble like expensive veneer over rotting wood. “Every couple I counsel is watching to see if my methods actually work. If my own marriage fails, my entire career will fall apart with it.”
She pauses and pops another cream puff into her mouth, and I follow suit. Although for me it’s less of an emotional anesthesia and more of an addiction.
“Lavender used to understand that pressure,” she continues, her voice taking on the weight of old wounds. “Before she decided traditional marriage was outdated and decided to revolutionize everyone else’s relationships along with her own.”
“You two were close,” I say, afraid to venture any deeper without chasing her away.
“That we were. Business partners. Close friends. I trusted her completely.” Claudette’s grip on her champagne flute tightens enough to make the crystal strain. A little more pressure and there will be blood. “We had a joint counseling practice, shared clients, shared philosophies. Before she embraced that lifestyle and decided everything we’d built together was repressive and outdated. Trust me, she did extensive research on the titillating topic, too. She was about to publish and make a windfall out of it.”
Richard’s expression darkens like storm clouds over the ocean.
She nods at the black sea. “When my marriage started falling apart, it was Richard who comforted me,” Claudette continues, her voice dropping to barely above a whisper. “Everything I felt for that man was real. When I found out about Mark’s infidelity, Richard wasthere. After months of emotional support, we took things a little too far.”
She gives a bitter laugh, and now I’m fearing for both her champagne flute and her sanity. “Ironically, Lavender found out about our affair and nearly destroyed us both. Funny how her progressive values suddenly shifted when they didn’t fit her personal agenda.”
“She accused me of threatening to expose her,” Claudette adds with a weak laugh that sounds hollow. “Over what, I have no idea. But I suppose that’s typical Lavender—always convinced everyone was plotting against her.”
Richard’s ghostly form goes rigid beside me, his expression shifting from melancholy to something akin to anger.
“Is that why you killed her?” I ask with the direct approach that’s served me well in both marriage and murder investigations. “Is that why you booked this cruise to coincide with the Crimson Key Society?”
“What?” Claudette blinks with genuine surprise and takes me in with a look that seems too spontaneous to fake. “Trixie, you’re badly mistaken. I didn’t kill Lavender. I couldn’t get far enough away from her. If I’d known she was coming, with or without her group, I wouldn’t have booked this cruise.” She shakes her head with a sense of bewilderment. “You know what’s odd, though. I booked this cruise a year in advance, and I know for a fact that Lavender never thinks that far ahead. She’s always been impulsive about travel—among other impulses she was prone to having.”
Richard nods as if confirming the fact. “Lavender could barely plan a week ahead, let alone a year. She was far too scattered, too focused on immediate gratification to pull something like that off.”
“But I guess there are stranger coincidences,” Claudette continues with a touch of resignation as if her luck has consistently been terrible. “But this one really takes the cake.”
I’m about to probe deeper when Mark Sterling appears like a nervous husband with excellent timing and questionable motives.
His forehead tattoo gleams under the ballroom’s crystal chandeliers as he walks out with a look on his face that suggests he knows he’s interrupting a potentially dangerous conversation.
“Ladies.” He nods my way. “Claudette, would youcare to dance?” he asks, far too polite as if he’s trying to mask the fact he wants to extract his wife from a civilian interrogation.
“Of course,” she sighs, looking more resigned than romanced. “I couldn’t deny him a single thing at this point.” She pins her stare on me once again. “Are we through here?”
I nod, watching as they disappear into the crowd of swaying couples, and judging by Mark’s protective posture, I bet he has been monitoring our conversation from a strategic distance.
