Miz Scarlet and the Imposing Imposter

by Sara M. Barton

  “You made the honor roll that semester and he didn’t. Your parents were so thrilled with you. Bur decided if you were really that smart, you should be able to find your way home on your own.”

  “Un-freaking-believable! That low-life, rat-faced....” How many decades later, and it still got under my skin.

  “That’s one way of looking at it, Scarlet. There’s another.”

  “There is?” I could feel my blood beginning to boil. As Ricky Ricardo would say, Bur really had some ‘splainin’ to do. Lucy!

  “I made your brother drive to Hartford to get you that night. He didn’t want to, but I threatened him. I wasn’t willing to have it on my conscience if something bad happened to you.”

  “Really?”

  “He knew after that night that I had a wicked crush on you and he made sure he rubbed my nose in it every chance he got.”

  “How come you never asked me out? I would have said yes,” I told him. Kenny sighed, adding a little shrug of his shoulders -- it was all just water under the bridge.

  “He was my pal. If a guy tells you his sister is off limits, it’s non-negotiable. That’s a pretty hard and fast rule, with few exceptions.”

  “How ridiculous! Good lord, were we really that stupid as teenagers?”

  “Some things never change. Know what he said to me this afternoon, when I told him I thought you were still gorgeous?”

  “Do tell,” I growled through clenched teeth, even as my brain absorbed the part about my good looks. Kenny thinks I’m still gorgeous!

  “Your brother advised me to wear my wedding ring whenever I’m around you, because you aren’t interested in available men. You prefer to chase the ones you can’t have.”

  “Bastard! He played us both, Kenny. I saw that wedding ring and thought it meant you were still pining for your late wife.”

  “Oh, I’ll be honest, Scar. She was a wonderful girl. There will always be a part of me that belongs to Jillian.” He looked away briefly, and I knew he really missed her. “But that doesn’t mean I’m prepared to be a bachelor for the rest of my life. I’ve been dipping my toes in the pond. I’ve had a few dates in the last year or so. Never thought I’d see you again, though. Or that you’d be single.”

  “Funny how things seem to fall into place sometimes. Maybe if I hadn’t known you were coming, I might not have forced myself to deal with my real feelings about Jere and decide to end it.”

  “Bur said you two broke up because he’s marrying someone else.”

  “Did he forget to inform you that I planned to end it before Jere made his big public announcement? Or that I told Bur about my decision before I left to go to the pub?”

  “No, he conveniently left that part out. I guess he was trying to convince me that you weren’t really worth taking a second look at, eh?”

  “Oh, I’m a real loser, right? The old spinster, never married. Can’t land a man.”

  “I think it’s more along the lines of the fact that if you’ve got a serious boyfriend, Colonel Poupon will have to pitch in more with your mother. That might put a crimp in his social life, which is apparently quite active. Right now, he’s got it made, doesn’t he? You do all the heavy lifting and he gets to always be the cheerful visitor.”

  “That’s what I get for being the responsible kid, I guess.”

  “It’s never too late to shake things up,” Kenny insisted.

  “No?” I smiled. “What does that mean, you want to date me?”

  “Sure. I like what I see. I was hoping we could take it slow and see what develops. If you’re interested,” he added, as an afterthought.

  “Oh, yeah,” I grinned. “I’m interested. Any chance we could keep it quiet, keep Bur out of it? And those Googins girls, too. Nosey old biddies.”

  “Secret romance? That sounds rather sexy,” he laughed, deliberately bumping into me as he reached for his glass of wine on the counter. “Think you can fake a happy face, so we can go join the others for a little while? I want you to help me set up some equipment later.”

  “It will be my pleasure,” I declared. “And this time, you won’t have to knock twice on the window.”

  “Oh, I like the sound of that,” he told me, picking up his plate with his free hand. I grabbed the silverware and napkin before following.

  “Me, too,” said Kenny, holding the swinging door. I caught a quick wink before he nudged me out into the hallway.

  I had only gone about five feet when I was struck by a dreadful thought. “Bur is a forest products analyst for a major investment firm. He handles a lot of information on the financial health of some pretty big corporations.”

  “So?”

  “Maybe Gretchen was the wife of some corporate mucky-muck. That kind of guy could probably hire some guys to take her out of the picture and avoid a messy divorce.”

  There was a flicker in Kenny’s eyes as he considered the possibilities, but then it was gone. “Let’s put it aside for now, Miz Scarlet. Plenty of time to delve into that when everyone else is tucked into bed. Come on.”

  The others were busy talking about the history of the silk mills, with Mary Anne leading the discussion. I realized she was making a concerted effort to distract the Googins girls from fretting about the tragic events of the day, so I joined in, sharing my knowledge of local landmarks and historic buildings in the area. We dove into the subject of the three Cheney brothers, Frank, Ralph, and Ward, who started their business with a partner in a barn in 1838. Before it all ended a century later, it had become one of the biggest and best silk manufacturers in the United States. It was reminiscent of the current economic climate.

  Bur kept the wine flowing, topping off the ladies’ glasses. I put a hand over mine as he came around. I wanted to keep a clear head. By ten, we were all talked out. I helped Laurel to her room, got her ready for bed, and tucked her into bed with a kiss on the cheek.

  “I hope that nice young officer is up to the job, Scarlet,” she said, revealing her anxiety about Officer Zuk.

  “Not to worry, Mama. Bur and Kenny will be here, too. And I’ll sleep with one eye open.”

  “In all of my time here in Cheswick, I can’t recall a single murder in this town, and now we have two.”

  “I’m sure there is a logical explanation,” I told her confidently. “Maybe there’s someone in Gretchen’s life who wanted her dead. The answer is probably back in New Jersey, with an ex-husband or ex-boyfriend. You sleep tight and don’t worry.”

  Those fearful eyes gazed up at me as my mother sat in bed. I could see her trying to wrap her mind around the possibility that the killings had nothing to do with the Four Acorns Inn. There was hope, however faint, in her response.

  “Maybe you’re right.” She reached for the current read on her nightstand. “Miranda’s Adventure on the Azure Coast” was the title. The hot pink cover suggested it was a light-hearted tale, nothing likely to induce nightmares. A sly smile on a female face half-hidden by a wide brim sunhat set the tone for the story. It looked like a playful romance.

  “Pleasant dreams,” I smiled, as I started to close her door.

  “That’s okay, dear. You can leave it open. I’ll be up for a while.”

  “Sure,” I replied, realizing that my mother didn’t want to feel cut off from the rest of us. With her limited mobility, she was all too aware of her own vulnerability. “I’ll come back and check on you later.”

  “Thanks, lovey.” The old childhood term of endearment slipped out, taking me back to the days when my mother was whole-bodied and active. Wishful thinking on her part, an attempt at self-soothing? It was understandable, under these circumstances. We all want to feel safe and secure in our homes. The last thing we expect in a closet is a real skeleton, even one that still has its flesh on it.

  I decided to check on Lacey before I headed back downstairs to help Kenny with his project. Her door was open, too.

  “Hello, hello!” I tapped twice.

  “Oh, it’s you, Scarlet.” She was sit
ting in her armchair by the windows, drapes drawn, with her feet up on her ottoman and the TV remote in her hand. She was watching “House Hunters”.

  “Just wanted to say good night,” I announced. “You okay?”

  “I thought I’d leave my door open a while, so I could hear Laurel. In case she gets nervous.” And vice versa, I thought to myself. The Googins girls were scared.

  “You need anything, anything at all, you call me on my cell,” I insisted. “I’ll be up for a while. I promised Laurel I’d come back and check on her in a little while. Bur is sleeping in the White Oak Room tonight, so feel free to wake him up if you hear anything that worries you.”

  “Where are you sleeping tonight?” She looked at me expectantly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t think you should be alone on the third floor. What if the killer comes back?” There it was, the anxiety. She had spent a long time this afternoon in my walk-in closet. Too much time to think about Lonnie’s fate, even before she knew about Gretchen’s.

  “Not to worry. I’m helping Kenny with a project, so I’m not going to sleep any time soon. When I do, I promise you I’ll be safe.”

  “You should sleep in the other twin bed.”

  “With Bur?” I shook my head and laughed. “No way. He snores. Maybe I’ll crash with Kenny.”

  “Isn’t he just dishy?” she smiled at the thought. “He’s my idea of a real man!”

  “Mine, too.”

  January and Huck were on the sofa with Mary Anne in the living room. She had a hand on each dog, giving each a scratch behind the ears in turn.

  “I hope you don’t mind if I sit here a bit longer before I head up for the night.”

  “Not at all. I’m just making sure my ducks are in a row for morning. And I’m putting off taking the dogs out for one last tinkle,” I admitted. “Did the police officer leave?”

  “No, he said he wanted to make the rounds outside. Your brother will let him back in when he calls. They decided it was safer than giving him a key.” She gave me a telling look. There was concern that the cop could get jumped while he was outside. The bad guys could get the key, and with it, access to the house.

  “Can I ask you something?” I took the seat opposite her when she nodded. I wanted to broach a very indelicate subject. It wasn’t my nature to speculate about guests, but in this case, I thought Mary Anne was a good observer of human nature. I jumped right into it. “What was your impression of the Powicks?”

  Mary Anne Turley took a deep breath. Her cannula bobbed on her chest, still tethered to the portable oxygen concentrator at her feet. When the historian met my gaze, she seemed to be weighing her words carefully, thoughtfully.

  “I don’t like to speak ill of the dead,” was how she started the conversation. She soon was spilling the beans on a conversation she overheard earlier in the day, just after breakfast.

  “I was in my room, going over my notes. I had my door open. I love how the morning light comes through the big window in the hallway,” she explained. I knew what she meant. The Red Oak Room had been mine as a kid. At the right time of day, the sun would tiptoe across the floor with pure golden rays that seemed to glow with such a wonderful warmth that lifted the spirit. “Gretchen was on the phone, arguing. I only heard her side, mind you, but it sounded like she was plotting something. She kept talking about taking down her mark.”

  “Her mark?”

  “She said he, whoever he is, would never see it coming.”

  “Really?” That got my attention, but then, I knew Bur was probably the guy in question.

  “Gretchen said the guy was already salivating over her. He was ripe for the picking. Do you think maybe that’s why she was killed?” Mary Anne seemed to be in the process of deciding whether or not to share that with the police. Or had she already done so? I wondered if Kenny knew about this.

  “Hard to say. If it’s any consolation, I got the same sense about her, that she was a real schemer.”

  “Schemer. That’s the perfect description. Pity the man who got caught up in her games.”

  “Indeed.” As much as I didn’t want to acknowledge that reality, I had to admit my brother was obviously in over his head. He had a history of choosing the wrong kind of women to romance. I thought Gretchen qualified on that front.

  “I still don’t understand why they had to kill Lonnie,” Mary Anne told me. “What kind of threat could she pose to anyone? She was unable to speak, stuck in her wheelchair!”

  I understood her concern. After all, Mary Anne was also limited by her emphysema -- who could say she wouldn’t have been equally vulnerable, had she been at the inn when the killers arrived? Given the brutality of Gretchen’s demise, and that of her mother’s, these people were serious about killing. A healthy, able-bodied target might have a fighting chance to flee, but someone handicapped? In some ways, it was probably more frightening to consider what might have happened from that terrifying perspective.

  But even as I lingered on that tragic scene in the closet, I kept coming back to one fact. Lonnie was supposedly stuck in a wheelchair, rendered helpless and speechless by her stroke. So why then did she call one of her killers “Eddie”? Was it a fluke that she managed to speak his name, or was she only posing as a stroke victim to gain access to the Four Acorns Inn? Did Bur know the real story, or was he duped by Gretchen as the mark? Maybe Lonnie had to die because she knew who they were and she would have identified them for the cops. That makes sense, I thought to myself. She might have been a real stroke patient who was faking some of her own weaknesses to stay at the inn. By pretending to be unable to communicate, she saved herself the misery of answering the endless questions of the Googins girls. She avoided being grilled on personal details of her life in the living room, over cocktails.

  But why did the killers go looking for Bur? What if they killed Gretchen and Lonnie, hoping to pin both murders on him? In that case, maybe they went to the carriage house to plant evidence. If Lacey and Paul hadn’t witnessed the crime, the killers might have gotten away with it.

  Chapter Seventeen --

  Mary Anne seemed to take comfort in the presence of her canine companions as she sat by the fire. I left her there and went on my way towards the kitchen. Bur was in the library with Kenny when I went by the open door. Poking my head in, I could hear them making decisions about the first watch. Two sets of eyes looked up at me without missing beat. I saw the collection of Best Buy bags still on Kenny’s temporary bed. Some of the boxes were open and the contents were spread out on top of the comforter.

  “Give us a few minutes, Scarlet,” Kenny asked. “We’re almost done here.”

  “Not a problem. I’ll be in the kitchen, getting things ready for tomorrow’s breakfast.”

  Ten minutes later, a noise in the dining room alerted me to their presence. I followed the sound and found Kenny and my brother out on the sun porch, setting up a camera above the exterior door. The cold wind blew in through the open door as they worked. All it took was a few screws and the wireless camera was ready to be activated. Once that was in place, they shut and locked the porch door, and then attached window sensors on each of the double-hung windows that lined three sides of the room. Bur ripped open the battery multi-packs and loaded them into the plastic compartment of each sensor, handing them off to his partner when they were operational. Kenny placed one on each window, making sure the alarm would trigger if anyone tried to open a window. I left the men to it and went back to my own tasks, putting out the breakfast cereal, setting the table, and even whipping up a batch of banana muffins. I made another pot of coffee and put it in the thermos carafe for Officer Zuk and Kenny, so they could help themselves during the night, should they be in need of sustenance.

  When Officer Zuk called Bur a short time later, his rounds completed, I took advantage of the moment to run the two dogs outside for their last trip of the day.

  Under the watchful eye of the baby-faced cop, who looked to be barely of leg
al drinking age, I walked the dogs past the bushes in front of the house. A car drove past the property slowly, never touching the brakes, and I found myself wondering if the driver was casing the Four Acorns Inn. Officer Zuk was unconcerned, even as he had a long, involved conversation with a colleague on his cell phone. He terminated the call when I reached the door.

  “Don’t worry about the car, ma’am. We’ve got unmarked vehicles doing sweeps every hour, just in case. All part of the security plan.”

  “Thanks,” I smiled, as he opened the door for me. January and Huck hopped over the threshold and waited for me to remove their harnesses. Once free, they headed into the library and hit the sofa.

  I stopped back in the library. All the empty boxes were stacked by the door. The Four Acorns Inn now had four exterior cameras hooked up to the flat screen TV mounted on the wall, and a DVR was recording the scenes outside.

  “Think of it as backup for Officer Zuk,” Kenny told me. “We’ll keep an eye on the property, with a range of about sixty feet with night vision. I’ve got cameras on all four doors.”

  “Wow,” I grinned. “Impressive.”

  “Isn’t it just!” my brother agreed.

  At eleven thirty, Bur toddled off to bed with a promise to take the next shift in front of the monitoring station. Kenny was already working on another project.

  “I also have motion detectors and wireless cameras for the first and second floor, on the off-chance we get breached.”

  “So, what do you want me to do?” I wanted to know.

  “Watch TV.”

  A ten-minute lesson on how to run the equipment gave me the basics. Once I was up to speed, Kenny rose, ready to get started on his work upstairs. “If you see anything at all, you buzz me immediately.”

  From my perch on the sofa, I sat watching the four split views, I wondered if we were doing more than necessary. Was all this an overreaction? How much had all this equipment cost us? Was anyone really planning to come back to the Four Acorns Inn to kill again? Maybe it ended with Gretchen and Lonnie’s murders. I hoped so, because if it wasn’t, we were at risk for more mayhem, and I didn’t think the Googins girls could handle much more.