Miz Scarlet and the Imposing Imposter

by Sara M. Barton

  “Let’s make it snappy, guys,” I told them, as we walked along the bushes. January started, as if she had picked up a scent. Huck, on the other hand, was too busy sniffing at his companion’s business to care about any other scent.

  I locked up the inn, checking all the doors on the first floor. Something made me turn on the lights in the library. The Mac was in sleep mode. I could have sworn I turned it off before I went back to the kitchen. Maybe Gretchen used it when she returned from the funeral home. With a finger on the button, I shut down the five-year-old computer, and as I waited, I happened to glance at the French door that gave access to the sun porch. It wasn’t bolted.

  “I guess she was curious,” I said to myself, rising from the desk chair. Just to be on the safe side, I stepped out onto the painted wood floor of the sun room and made my way past the wicker furniture to the exterior door. That, too, was unlocked. Odd. We rarely left the house this way. Gretchen’s interest in the inn was beginning to grate on my nerves. Maybe that Smartphone was operational after all. With more force than necessary, I fixed the bolt in place, remembering what Bur had suggested, that I was the intended recipient of that threat.

  Come tomorrow, Kenny would be using the library. Gretchen would no longer have access to the room, to the computer, or to the sun porch. I’d make sure of that. I pulled the door shut behind me.

  Striding into the front hallway, I came around the corner and into the dining room. A quick check of the French door out to the porch showed that it was still locked. Satisfied, I entered the butler’s pantry, intending to set up the coffee station for morning, when a thought struck me with almost as much force as that little chickadee. What if someone already entered through the unlocked sun porch? What if there was an intruder already inside?

  The coffeemaker was on the marble counter. I grabbed the carafe and filled it with water, wondering how I was ever going to sleep tonight with that horrible thought plaguing my over-stimulated mind. First Jere, now Gretchen, monkey-wrenching my life with their little games. It was maddening.

  Once I had the dining room table set for breakfast, I went into the kitchen to fill the cereal basket with single serve boxes. Rummaging around the pantry, I picked a handful of choices, tucking them artistically into the wicker container, before I placed it on the counter in the butler’s pantry. Sometimes our guests were early risers, so I always kept milk, cream, fruit, and yogurt cups in the under-the-counter refrigerator there, just in case any of our visitors wanted to help themselves. A slight scuffling noise in the hallway caught my attention as I turned off the dining room chandelier. Popping my head out, I spied Gretchen.

  “Can I help you?” I wanted to know. She jumped at the sound of my voice.

  “Oh! Scarlet...I...wanted to use the computer, just to check my email.”

  “Now?”

  “Do you mind?” She seemed nervous. I wondered why. Even as I flipped on the light switch and fired up the Mac, I could feel her anxiety as she fidgeted behind me.

  Chapter Seven --

  “Let me know when you’re done. We have a new guest moving in here tomorrow, so the computer will not be available after tonight.” I gave her my pleasant innkeeper smile and saw what looked like apprehension. What was so important that she couldn’t use her Smartphone to grab her emails?

  “You don’t have to wait up for me,” she insisted. “I can turn it off myself. I might be a while.”

  With that, I was dismissed. I made a mental note to check back in half an hour, to be sure the inn was still locked up for the night. I didn’t trust Gretchen. Even as I stood at the door, every nerve in my body was on high alert. That woman was up to something, and that something probably wasn’t legal.

  I hung around the kitchen, biding my time. I threw together my dry ingredients for blueberry streusel muffins for the morning. I sliced my way through half a cantaloupe. By the time I was ready to lay it out on a tray for the morning, I could hear soft footsteps on the stairs. At last, Gretchen was retiring for the night.

  Once I was sure she was in her room, I paused in the doorway of the library. Something made me fumble with the light switch, that continued sense of unease. The Mac was turned off. I was just being silly. I was only letting my imagination get away from me, wasn’t I? And then I smelled it, the tiny whiff of cigarette smoke. Had Gretchen been smoking in our non-smoking establishment?

  Stepping closer to the scent of tobacco, I happened to gaze up at the deadbolt for the French door. Once again, it was unlocked. What was wrong with that woman? Had she been smoking out on the sun porch? Was that her excuse for using the library?

  I threw open the door and stepped out into the cool quiet of the windowed room. Sure enough, the smell of cigarette smoke was stronger here. By the time I reached the door to the backyard, it was nearly overpowering. With a hand on the door, I gave the knob a twist. It was no surprise the door was unlocked. Maybe Gretchen was a closet smoker. That might explain her sneaky behavior and guilty countenance. Come tomorrow, it was a moot point. I was determined to lock this porch off from other guests, and I started by once again locking the exterior door. Once that was secured, I used the hidden deadbolts on the porch side of the French door. Let’s see Gretchen sneak past those, I told myself. There’s more than one way to skin a cat. As I came back through the library, I made a point of locking that door as well. I had warned Gretchen that the Mac would no longer be available to her. Let her deal with that reality in the morning.

  I stopped to say goodnight to my mother on my way up to my attic apartment. She was sitting up in bed, reading The Tall, Dark Stranger with the Crooked Smile. It looked like a heaving bosom romance with a touch of intrigue and, judging from the swaying palms on the cover, an exotic locale. Scrub Oak was on the foot of the bed, purring softly.

  “How’s everything?” she wondered.

  “Oh, interesting. Jere and I called it quits.”

  “You did?” There was a hint of alarm in her voice.

  “It’s fine, Mom. I’ve been wanting to break it off for quite a while.” I patted her right foot, buried under the blankets.

  “You don’t mind?”

  “Mind?”

  “About Merrilee.” Who was Merrilee? I cocked my head, confused.

  “Oh,” she gasped, her fingers flying to her lips. “You didn’t know?”

  As I gazed down at her, I realized my mother had inside information she had been holding back. That’s the thing about the senior crowd. They all get together and talk. How long ago had she found out? And why had she not said anything? Had she hoped he was just having a fling? Was she hoping he was just sowing his final oats before proposing?

  “About Jere getting married?” I gave a little laugh. “She’s got her hands full with that doofus. As far as I’m concerned, she can have him.”

  “He’s marrying her?” Now my mother was mad. “We saw those two at the movies a month ago. They were all over each other. Lacey said they should get a room.”

  “Right,” I nodded. Should I be disappointed that my mother never told me?

  “I was hoping you knew. I don’t like to interfere, darling. It’s just that I always thought you could do better than a man like Jeremiah Wellstone. He’s so....”

  “Pompous? Self-important? Obnoxious?” I offered her some adjectives to fill in the blanks.

  “Well, yes. You remember when Bur married Lucy?” Lucy was my brother’s second wife. “I knew she was all wrong for him, but I also knew that if I said anything, he’d feel the need to defend her. You have to let your children lead their own lives.”

  “Did you know Lucy was cheating on him with the dentist?” My brother’s ex-wife worked at a small shop in Blue Back Square, where she constantly rubbed elbows with the building’s occupants. Dr. Helmann not only had a dental practice there, he also had a condo upstairs. It made their affair all the more convenient. At the time they married, Bur was a forest products analyst for a major investment firm, and he usually had his nose buried
in reports. He traveled to Boston, New York, and Philadelphia several times a month, so Lucy had a lot of free time to fill. She was a former beauty queen, who needed constant reassurance that she was the fairest of them all, a very tiresome personality trait. The Wilsons aren’t given to constantly handing out praise for superficial success. I saw that little shrug of my mother’s shoulders and knew that she had had more than an inkling of the affair.

  You probably find it rather tiresome that my mother would engineer a wake-up call for her love-challenged children. I chalk it up to her generation’s need to do things through back channels. You can’t tell your best friend her husband is cheating on her with a neighbor, so you stop by for a cup of sugar when the rat of a husband is sneaking through the backyard, and you happen to glance out the window in time to say, “Oh, my! What’s he doing out there?” I was beginning to wonder how Lacey learned about her husband’s affair. Was that Laurel’s handiwork?

  My mother seemed to have a knack for discovering infidelities. How much of that was due to her normal genetic need to butt in and how much of it was due to the fact that she had spent so long confined to a wheelchair? Maybe she honed those snooping skills because she worried her husband would be tempted by his secretary. I remember Gina, a young, attractive young woman from Hartford, who spent three months as my father’s secretary just after my mother’s accident. She wore spiked heels and tight skirts, painted her lips red, and had a breathless way of talking to my father. It wasn’t long before she left the Four Oaks. I heard she met a sailor in a local bar and decided to follow him to his next port of call. Looking back, that theory was now in question. Maybe Laurel didn’t want Gentleman George, as she called my father, to be constantly reminded that there were still beautiful women interested in him.

  Then again, Gina had a sly manner, and rumor had it that she had been the long-time mistress of her previous boss at Carlisle Manufacturing. I heard that juicy piece of gossip through the company grapevine, when I was filling in for the part-time receptionist out for a week with the flu. I shared that tidbit with Laurel when I returned home to fix her lunch one day and a week later, Gina was informed that her services were no longer needed. It was just as well. She had mixed up several messages from important clients and failed to collate the pages on a very important report to the board of directors. It wasn’t like anyone was particularly sad to see her go.

  Gina was replaced by Doris, a long-married, very efficient secretary who wore sensible shoes and kept up with George’s business correspondence so well, she became the “go to” girl whenever a problem surfaced. She was solid enough to be trusted with the most important company conundrums. In today’s world, she’d probably be one of the assistant managers of the company, but back then, she was my father’s right hand. Was that my mother’s doing, too? Her way of coping with her handicap, by finding him a secretary who would improve his career?

  My mother’s voice called me back to our current conversation, and I turned my attention back to her as she spoke. She seemed determined to finally spill the beans on her disliked daughter-in-law, after years of keeping quiet. Was this her way of trying to make me feel better about Jere?

  “Lucy used to take her phone calls in the living room and thought I was just some daffy old woman because I was stuck in a wheelchair. Apparently, if you’re handicapped, the assumption is you’re also feeble in other ways.”

  Her eyes met mine and I finally understood what led up to the Big Blow-Up Battle that ended my brother’s short-lived second marriage. The day that Bur took Laurel to lunch at Chez Henri’s, a new French cafe in Farmington, it was no accident. My mother expected her wayward daughter-in-law to be there with her lover. The public scene that ensued was so loud on Lucy’s part that I doubted if she could ever show her face in that establishment ever again. By the time she was done accusing the baffled Bur of stalking her, calling him every name under the sun, the restaurant manager called the police. The dentist’s wife got a call from one of the diners, tipping her off. The wayward tooth man found his romantic intentions curtailed by the possibility of losing his dental practice and his home, not to mention his bank account. Lucy, infuriated by her fall from grace, made all kinds of nasty threats when her efforts to reconcile with Bur were rebuffed. She kept up the pressure, trying hard to avoid divorce, but my brother had already burned the marital bridge behind him. Bur reminded her that they had a prenuptial agreement that clearly spelled out what they would divide and the longer she fought him, the more she had to pay her attorneys out of her pocket. That shut her up.

  So, why hadn’t Laurel found a way to warn me about Jere? Or had she? Had I missed the clues, the hints? My mother wasn’t exactly straightforward in her efforts. She had a way of beating about the bush that bordered on annoying. Many times I had said, “Why don’t you just come right out and say what you mean to say?” That was the difference between us. Whereas I was rarely known to hold my opinions back, my mother was far more circumspect. That was just her way. Maybe she had tried to tell me about my wayward boyfriend, and I was too obtuse to figure it out.

  About two months ago, Laurel and I had gone to Hascomb’s for dinner on Saturday night. Jere was there in the bar, by himself. We asked him to join us, but he demurred, claiming he was waiting for an associate. After exchanging pleasantries, he excused himself when his phone rang.

  “This must be my colleague. I should take this,” he said to us, backing out of the dining room and into the foyer. We saw him hurry out the front door, headed for the parking lot. Right after that, my mother seemed distracted and quiet. I thought she wasn’t feeling well, but looking back now, there was a different explanation for her mood. Laurel was upset her timing was bad. She had wanted me to catch the bum in the act. Even now, as I stood by her bed, she was watching me with worried eyes. I tossed her a smile.

  “Don’t worry about me, Mom. I’m an oak. I’m strong. I’ll come back better than ever.”

  “I know you will, dear. You’ll find a nice man and settle down. You have a lot to offer someone with the wisdom and insight to appreciate you.”

  “We’ll see. Not to worry,” I said with more confidence in my voice than I actually felt. “Enjoy your book.”

  “By the way, Scarlet, did you know Kenny is a widower?”

  “What?” That caught me off-guard. Bur hadn’t said a word. “He is?”

  “His wife had multiple sclerosis for twenty years. He took wonderful care of her. The man is a prince. He even sacrificed his career to do it.”

  “He did? How do you know these things?” For a woman in a wheelchair, my mother certainly got around.

  “Polly and I stayed in touch after they moved. She told me in a Christmas card a year ago that Jillian died.”

  “Oh. How come you never said anything?”

  “I didn’t think you liked Kenny. You were always giving him a lot of sass.”

  “I was?” Boy, was I learning a lot about myself. First Bur, now my mother. Had I really been so awful to the boy who made my heart go pitter pat? I was beginning to think I would never remove my own foot from my derriere.

  “You were. I’m just telling you because I want you to be nice to him while he’s here. Don’t be flippant or sarcastic,” my mother told me firmly. “He’s not some louse. You two might actually have a few things in common.”

  I bit my tongue, letting her think she was the insider. I studied her. I could see where she was going with this. Laurel Wilson might think she was a subtle matchmaker, but I could see the plan written all over her face. I had spent all these years caring for her, and Kenny had cared for his late wife. Two long-time caregivers getting together. If any man could understand why I had sacrificed myself for familial duty, it was Kenny. Even as she admonished me, I knew she and Lacey were already plotting the course of the romance. Who was I to disappoint the two Googins girls? Besides, it might turn out to be fun.

  I was up at six thirty, thanks to Huck’s determined efforts to alert me to my alarm cl
ock sounding off. January was waiting patiently on the floor over by the door. I got myself dressed while they danced around, impatiently waiting for their morning ablutions. With my feet ensconced in socks and sneakers, I was at last ready to face the new dawn. Scooping up a dog in each arm, I carried them down the two flights of stairs and deposited them in the cloakroom for our trip outside, the first of several scattered throughout the day.

  My mother and Lacey arrived in the dining room for their breakfast promptly at seven fifteen. It was a ritual between the cousins, sharing coffee and chatter at the long Victorian oak table as they sat side by side. The blueberry streusel muffins were just coming out of the oven. As soon as I removed the tender treats from the aluminum pan and tucked them into a wicker basket, wrapped in a colorful red cotton napkin, I presented them to the two eager beavers.

  “I love blueberry muffin mornings,” Lacey gushed, helping herself to a plump, moist one. For a little old lady, she had a healthy appetite and always seemed to work off the calories.

  “Me, too, although I am also partial to the banana pecan muffins,” Laurel decided. “What are you going to make for Kenny?”

  “Kenny?” Lacey asked. That resulted in a long discussion between the two women about my love life, my ex-boyfriend’s love life, and the possibility that a new Prince Charming would soon arrive at the Four Oaks Inn. I joined them at the table, ignored the conversation in favor of reading the front section of the New York Times, and managed to eat in peace.

  Mary Anne Turley emerged from her room just before eight. I offered her some scrambled eggs and whole wheat toast, which she accepted with enthusiasm.

  “This is such a lovely inn, Scarlet. I can’t imagine ever staying at a conventional hotel after all this spoiling.” Her tank of oxygen sat at her side, the cannula attached to her nose. “Perhaps you should consider turning the Four Acorns into a franchise.”

  “Oh, heavens,” I laughed. “That is high praise.”