Miz Scarlet and the Imposing Imposter

by Sara M. Barton

  At a quarter to twelve, I climbed the stairs and quietly opened the door of the White Oak Room. Lonnie was in the twin bed by the window, gently snoring. I spied her tray on the dresser and tip-toed across the room to collect it. She had eaten a little of everything. I took that as a positive sign. As I collapsed the folding feet of the tray, I accidentally knocked into the plastic pill bottle next to it.

  “Damn!” I grabbed it in midair. Luckily, the cap was on. I set it upright, and as I did, I caught sight of the label. It wasn’t the dosage instructions or the physician’s information that caught my eye. It was the patient’s name. Janice Paden. Who was that?

  Picking up the bottle, I read the drug name on the label. Temazepam, better known as valium, the much-prescribed tranquilizer. Had Gretchen given her mother something to relax her? Why did the bottle have someone else’s name on it? Even as I stood there, asking myself these questions, I knew I was wasting valuable time. I pulled out my cell phone and snapped three photos of the bottle, figuring that Kenny would want to see it when he arrived, on the off-chance that it was relevant.

  I made lunch for my mother and Paul. I set the table for two in the dining room, and called them to seat themselves before I served the hot minestrone soup and chicken salad sandwiches on multigrain bread.

  “This does look tasty,” said the elderly cardiac patient, not realizing that it was heart-healthy. I took great pains to make it taste decadent.

  “I love chicken salad,” my mother replied, taking a bite of hers.

  I left them as they were making plans to invite Dorothy Wyman and Mavis Weinberg over for a game of Scrabble. I made myself a salad with grilled chicken in the kitchen, eating as I chopped the vegetables for dinner. I decided on roasted winter vegetables and scalloped potatoes to go with pork tenderloin in mushroom gravy.

  Lonnie was still sleeping when I checked her at one o’clock. It seemed odd that Gretchen was still out. I had taken her at her word that she would be back by noon. Maybe she got lost. Maybe she was delayed. I watched Lonnie’s chest rise and fall for a few moments, monitoring the rhythm of her chest, to make sure she was breathing normally.

  “Oh!” said a voice from the doorway. “I wasn’t expecting to find anyone in here.”

  “Gretchen,” I turned, whispering softly. “I just wanted to make sure she was still comfortable. She slept the whole time you were out.”

  The woman got between me and her mother. It struck me as a defensive move. I felt like she was trying to maneuver me away from the sleeping figure in the twin bed.

  “Good.” That single word was my cue to exit the room. I slipped past Gretchen and went out into the hallway. I was on the fifth step down when she stopped me. “I have to go out again this afternoon. Could you check Lonnie from time to time?”

  I let my eyes study the face of the woman making that request. She seemed to sense my added scrutiny, because she rushed into an explanation.

  “My cousin needs me.” There was something furtive about the way Gretchen glanced down at me. This was a woman with a secret, and it wasn’t that she was a closet smoker. My best guess was that the man was a cousin at least once removed and they had a romantic connection. Maybe it was the amount of perfume wafting down as she leaned over the banister railing, or the tight black dress and the dark red lipstick. It screamed illicit rendezvous.

  “Not a problem,” I assured her, even as I decided I was concerned for Lonnie’s welfare.

  “Great,” she said, nodding tentatively. “I should be back by five.”

  “Why don’t you give me your cell phone number, and I’ll call you if there’s a problem?”

  “Can’t you just handle it? I’m going to be busy.”

  What an odd reaction, I thought to myself. As my mother’s caregiver, I had always made sure whoever was with her knew how to get in touch with me in an emergency. Gretchen’s behavior was even more disturbing, in light of the tranquilizers prescribed for Janice Paden. Was this a case of elder abuse? If Lonnie was being medicated, so that Gretchen could slip away for romantic interludes, that was an unacceptable situation. I couldn’t be a party to putting a handicapped woman at risk for the sake of an afternoon quickie.

  Bur called me at one to say that he had collected Kenny from the airport and would be arriving after they stopped for a bite to eat. I was about to tell them about the strange turn of events, but something stopped me. After all, there was still a possibility that we had an eavesdropper at the inn. Instead, I took advantage of the brief lull in my duties to go online and search for Janice Paden. I’m not sure why I did it. Maybe I was every bit as nosey as Scrub Oak, now napping on the wing chair as I huddled at the computer in the library.

  There were eleven Janice Padens listed in the White pages, but only two in New Jersey. On a whim, I did an image search, but I came up empty. Then I tried checking for Lonnie and Gretchen Powick, using the information Gretchen provided to us. That yielded results. Only one problem. Our guests were not the Powicks of Edgewater, New Jersey. I was pretty sure they were imposters, given the fact that Alonzo Powick, no doubt called Lonnie, was eighty six years old and a man, and Gretchen, his wife, was eighty two.

  “A horse of a different color,” I muttered to myself, as I took the liberty of downloading photos of the prescription bottle, added a couple more of the bag of clothing I recovered on White Oak Hill, and wrote up a summary of what I found when I checked out the contact information the phony Gretchen gave me. I placed all of that into a file and emailed it to Bur, figuring that he and Kenny could look at it on my brother’s Smartphone before they arrived home. Next thing I knew, my cell phone rang.

  “Kenny says to stop digging right now, in case you tip off the bad guys,” my brother growled at me. I could hear his passenger protesting loudly.

  “What’s that? I can’t hear you, Bur. There’s some guy contradicting you in the background.”

  “Just stop what you’re doing, Scarlet!” he yelled. I could hear a few choice words exchanged by the two men before Kenny came on the line.

  “Miz Scarlet, how are you?” said the calm, masculine voice on the other end.

  “I’m good. How are you?”

  “I’m fine. Any chance I could convince you to hold off on any more investigating until I get there?” he asked. That seemed like a very reasonable request.

  “For you, Kenny? It would be my pleasure,” I exclaimed, trying to make my voice as sweet and pliable as possible. I could hear my brother grousing as Kenny tried to cut short the comments from the peanut gallery.

  “Let me talk to her,” Bur insisted.

  “She got the point, Colonel. She’s not an idiot.”

  “That’s what you think. She’s a bull in a china shop.”

  “I’m still on the line, boys,” I reminded them, suddenly transported back in time. I recalled the time I stood in the phone booth on the corner of Pearl Street in Hartford, while my brother and Kenny discussed how long it would take the pair of them to come pick me up. Barely fifteen, I was alone in the city as the sun went down, with a dollar in change in my wallet. He had promised my father that if he could use the family car for the afternoon, he’d swing by and pick me up after my shopping trip in Hartford. I got no apology for Bur’s forgetfulness. He wanted me to catch a municipal bus, deciding he could save time and gas if he picked me up in Manchester. Kenny wanted me to sit in a coffee shop just down the block and wait for them to show up in Hartford. As I leaned against the glass walls of my tiny telephone compartment, door shut against the passing parade of commuters, I had looked down at the three big parcels I carried from G. Fox’s. This was rush hour. The bus would be crowded. I’d probably have to wait for the second bus. And it was dark out. Did I have enough change for the fare? Chilled by the winter air, I shivered, my bare legs dressed in wool knee socks, Bass Weejuns on my feet. I had tucked two dimes in the slots on my toes, in place of the usual pennies. I wanted to be different. That gave me twenty cents more to my name.

  I
smiled as I recalled the moment Kenny prevailed, forever becoming my knight in shining armor. He snatched the phone from Bur and took over.

  “We’re coming to get you,” he told me, cutting off my brother’s adamant protests. “You go wait at Yolanda’s and we’ll be there in a jiffy.”

  Following Kenny’s explicit directions, in the days before cell phones and instant messaging, I had made my way down the street and found the door of the tiny coffee shop. The proprietor was kind enough to let me sit by the window and wait, after I explained what had happened. I watched him wipe down the tables, his white apron tied to his waist, as his waitress filled the salt and pepper shakers. Just after six, it was Kenny’s worried face that appeared in the window. Relief flooded over me as I waved to my teenage hero. I think that’s the moment I fell in love with Kenny Tolliver. Was I still in love with him? Time would tell.

  “Scarlet is the only woman I know who is capable of digging a hole faster than any earth mover, climbing in it, and burying herself neck deep. She’s a disaster when it comes to keeping secrets. You remember, Ken. She was always the tattletale!”

  “Let it go, Scooter,” said the retired Princeton University cop. “You’re a big boy now.”

  “Hell, no!” my brother fired back. “She’ll be blabbing all over the place!”

  Tattletale. All these years later, it still stuck in his craw. Bur always conveniently forgot all the stuff he did when he was a kid, like the time he thought he could make my cat, Fluffy, fly in a cardboard box airplane with a wind-up propeller powered by an elastic band. The doofus, up in the chestnut tree in the front yard, was mad when I hollered loud enough for my father to come running. Then there was the time he took his bike and tried to ride it along the ridge on the top of White Oak Hill, dressed as Zorro, black hat flopping over his eyes as he barreled along the rocky ledge, with a fifty-foot drop below -- was I wrong to run to the factory and get my father? And what about the time Bur and his high school buddies climbed out of the attic window and onto the roof of the house to watch the Fourth of July fireworks in Hartford with a case of beer? He claimed I was just a nervous Nellie. I claimed he was an idiot. Who was right? I stand by my actions.

  “Let’s just ask her nicely to refrain from working on the case until we get there. I’m sure she’ll agree.” Kenny spoke, the voice of reason.

  “You’d be better off telling her to take a long walk off a short pier,” said the expert on extracting one’s foot from one’s mouth.

  Clangs and clinks, followed by bangs and bings, filled my ear as I listened, no doubt the result of two grown men wrestling for control of my brother’s Smartphone. The voices grew louder and I realized my idiot brother hit the speaker feature, instead of the mute button.

  “Give me that!”

  “Why, so you can be a jerk?”

  “Me a jerk?”

  “I’m still here, boys, still listening to the fascinating conversation,” I said into the mouth piece. “Hello! Yoo-hoo!”

  I gave a few whistles, whoops, and an “excuse me” before the noise subsided. A moment later, I heard Bur.

  “Fine. She’s all yours. Good luck with that. And don’t say I didn’t warn you!” Disgruntled. Disgusted. Dejected.

  “Miz Scarlet,” said Kenny sweetly. Good cop to Bur’s bad cop. “It’s a nice afternoon. Why don’t you go for a walk? I’ll meet you at the top of White Oak Hill at four-thirty. Is that good for you?”

  “I have to make arrangements for someone to look after a guest who’s not feeling well, Kenny. Perhaps Colonel Grey Poupon would like to volunteer. Would you be a dear and ask him?”

  I heard Kenny chuckle before he posed the question to my older brother. It sounded like Bur was annoyed that he wasn’t to be included in the meeting in the woods.

  “But I should be there,” he insisted. “I’m the one who’s coordinating this for Boynton.”

  “I just want to explain a few things to Scarlet and get her impressions of things, Bur. We don’t want to attract a lot of unwanted attention. Can’t you just handle this? I’ll catch up to you when I get back and let you know what we talked about.”

  “Oh, fine. But let me just warn you about Miz Scarlet, Kenny. She and her boyfriend split up, so she might get a little snippy. You know how women can get when their relationships go south.” This from a guy who sulked for four months after his second wife got caught with the debonair dentist with the fancy spit sink.

  “Kenny,” I said with silken charm, “could you please convey a message to my overbearing, obnoxious older brother for me?”

  “Ah...um...sure.”

  “Could you tell him that I said he could take his pathetic little....”

  “Hang up,” Bur insisted. “Just cut her right off!”

  It sounded like there was another struggle. Kenny was chuckling as Bur demanded to be handed the phone. Next thing I knew, there was silence on the other end.

  My mother wheeled herself into the library as I was giggling to myself. She looked up at me expectantly. “Care to share?”

  “Bur and I had a difference of opinion on what Kenny should do,” I explained with a smirk.

  “And you’re enjoying every moment?”

  “Absolutely! How could I not? Kenny seems to be in charge.” Still my rescuer, even after all these years. It was reassuring to know he had not changed much.

  “That would explain the giggling,” Laurel remarked sardonically. “Sticking it to your brother yet again would explain the smirk.”

  “It would. Heading up for a nap?” I wondered. She gave me a little nod and a smile.

  “I am. I just wanted to tell you that Lacey is taking Paul to Renzi’s for dinner. She told him about the veal marsala.”

  “Not joining them?” I knew Renzi’s was one of her favorite restaurants. Friendly service, tender pasta, and intimate dining, with checkered tablecloths and candles. I was surprised.

  “They asked, but three’s a crowd, Scarlet. Besides, I was looking forward to pretending I don’t know Kenny.”

  Chapter Ten --

  “Ah,” I laughed. “Won’t that be fun?”

  “What are we having for dinner? I hope you’re fixing something nice for our guest...guests,” she corrected herself. “I must remember not to slip up.”

  “Gretchen has gone off for the afternoon,” I told her. “And I’m planning to take a long walk with the dogs. I thought pork tenderloin would be a good choice for tonight.”

  “That will be nice, dear. Didn’t Gretchen take her mother with her?”

  “She told me Lonnie isn’t feeling well. I’m to check on her. How about I ride up with you now and do that?” I pushed her chair out into the hallway as we headed to the elevator.

  “That’s fine,” she replied, welcoming the extra pair of hands to hold the door of the elevator while she navigated her wheelchair. “Are we having an appetizer before dinner?”

  “Did you want one?” Normally, I just served dinner to any guests and family members who happened to be around at six-thirty. Once in a while, I put out spiced cocktail peanuts or snack mix.

  “What about cheese toasts?” I could see where this was going. My mother wanted me to show Kenny I could be a gracious hostess. “Do we have any mushrooms you could stuff with crabmeat?”

  “How about a goat cheese log, some mango chutney, and crackers instead?” I suggested. She seemed to hesitate.

  “Can you add some fruit, dress it up a bit?”

  “I’ll take care of it,” I smiled, as she hit the elevator button to the second floor. I tucked my feet out of the path of her wheels, pressing myself against the wall of the confined space.

  “And what about dessert?” she demanded. “You’re going to serve something decent, I hope.”

  Ah, dessert. More work for me at the last minute. I needed something quick and easy. With a mental inventory of the freezer and refrigerator, I scrambled to put ingredients together. Frozen pie crust, a crisper drawer full of apples, and most of a carton
of Breyers.

  “How about an apple galette?” I replied. “And some vanilla bean ice cream?”

  “Yes, I think that will do,” Laurel decided. “Be sure you use the good china, Scarlet.”

  “Mom? We’re not supposed to let on that we know Kenny. If I fuss too much, we’ll give it away.”

  “I want Kenny to have a nice dinner.”

  “And he will. So will the Powicks and Mary Anne.”

  I pushed the wheelchair right up to her bed and fixed the brakes, waiting until my mother grabbed the handrail and stood up before I moved it to the side. Scrub Oak, seeing opportunity as he passed in the hallway, decided to join us. He padded across the bedroom floor and hopped up beside my mother. With a paw to his mouth, he began his afternoon bath, which would no doubt be followed by a nap.

  “Looks like you won’t be sleeping alone,” I laughed.

  “At least he keeps my feet warm,” was her reply. Once she was resting on her bed, her lap blanket covering her, I gave her a salute and shut her door as I left.

  Lonnie was still conked out when I poked my head in the room. I started to wonder if she was okay, but then I glanced at the pill bottle. It was now by the bedside table. Had Gretchen given her another dose? That would explain the all-day nap. I checked Lonnie’s pulse, placing my fingers on the cool, thin skin stretched across her bony wrist. It was steady enough. I wondered what Kenny would think about the doping. Would he want to let the cops in on it or hold back? Would Gretchen be facing charges before the week was out? I couldn’t help it. There was just something about that woman that got on my nerves.

  I had an hour before it was time to leave for the hike up to the top of White Oak Hill, so I got busy on prepping for dinner. I threw together most of the ingredients for pumpkin soup into the slow cooker to heat up. I’d add the Greek yogurt just before serving. I turned the pork tenderloin over in its plastic bag in the refrigerator, letting the marinade infuse the meat with flavor. Grabbing the frozen piecrust from the freezer, I set it out on the counter to thaw. Time to peel the apples. I got them chopped into bite-sized pieces, dressed in lemon juice, flour, and sugar, and in the fridge to chill. When I got back, I would just have to roll out the dough in a rough circle, put it on a baking sheet, and pile the apples on top. That’s the beauty of a galette. It’s a rustic pie without a pie plate, and it doesn’t have to be perfect. Next, I got busy with the appetizer. The other day, while out shopping, I bought a goat cheese log at the small market up the street. It was still encased in plastic. I removed the wrapper and plated it, topped it with the mango spread, and arranged a couple of clusters of red seedless grapes here and there. As I put the platter in the fridge, I noticed the figs and prosciutto at the back of the shelf. I had been planning on using those for another meal, but they would make a nice accompaniment for the goat cheese, crackers, and grapes. I draped the dry-cured ham around each piece of fruit. Just before serving, I would dress the figs with olive oil and seasonings, and then roast them under the broiler. With the food ready to go, I set my sights on the wine. I found my way to the pantry and selected a couple of bottles of white Bordeaux from the wine cupboard to chill. We have a small wine fridge in the butler’s pantry for that purpose.