Assaulted Pretzel

by Laura Bradford

  “Are you kidding me?” Melinda replied while simultaneously buttering a homemade roll from a nearby bread basket. “She’ll be trying to figure out how to run it herself.”

  Doug paused midchew. “Can she?”

  “She thinks she can.” When the roll in her hand was buttered to her specifications, Melinda took a tiny nibble and then set it down on the edge of her plate. “But running a multimillion-dollar company is actually quite a bit different than hosting a tea for the local gardening club. Meaning, it’s more important. With a lot more riding on it than a mention in the lifestyle section of the local paper, that’s for sure.”

  “Mrs. Karble seemed like a smart woman to me when I spoke with her in the parlor her first evening here,” Kayla pondered before taking a quick sip of water. “And besides, when you’re married to someone, you invariably hear a lot of behind-the-scenes details about their job. I mean, I heard all sorts of things about Doug’s job when we were merely dating. Now that we’re married, I imagine I’ll hear even more. So who knows, maybe she’d catch on quicker than you might realize.”

  Melinda pulled her napkin from her lap and balled it up beside her plate, her meal virtually untouched save for a few small bites. “Or maybe the thousands of people employed by Karble Toys will be under the direction of someone who knows nothing about toys or managing a large-scale corporation,” she hissed before rising to her feet. “And since their only other option is someone with half that knowledge, they’re essentially bound for the unemployment line just like me.”

  Instinctively, Doug’s arm snaked its way around his wife’s shoulder in protective fashion. “Ms. Simon, my wife was simply saying that—”

  “Yeah. I get it. But it’s not your wife’s livelihood that’s on the line now, is it, Mr. Jones?” Without waiting for an answer, Melinda vacated her spot at the table and headed for the parlor door, stopping midway across the room to address Diane. “They say that tragedy has a way of waking people up and making them see all sorts of things, Miss Weatherly. Sometimes it’s the need to stop and smell the roses and really appreciate the important people in your life. Sometimes it’s the need to be vigilant about your comings and goings. And sometimes it’s the need to fix weak spots that allowed the tragedy to happen in the first place.”

  “Allowed the tragedy to happen?” Claire echoed in disbelief. Then, holding up her hand in an attempt to silence Diane, she continued, her tone a mixture of anger and shock. “Ms. Simon, my aunt is not responsible for what happened to your boss and you know that as well as I do. He was murdered in the middle of the festival grounds more than three-quarters of a mile from here. How you could insinuate she has anything to fix in light of that tragedy is a mystery to me.”

  Melinda cast her eyes up at the ceiling and slowly shook her head, the gesture more in keeping with an exasperated preschool teacher than a businesswoman employed by a major corporation. “I’m not talking about Rob’s murder. That was inevitable. I’m talking about his room being ransacked.”

  Doug’s hand stilled on his wife’s back. “Inevitable?”

  Pulling her focus from the ceiling, Melinda nodded, her ponytail sliding across the silky material of her blouse. “He was on the cusp of making some major moves where the company was concerned. People don’t like changes. They resent them.”

  “Wait. Go back.” Claire sifted backward in the conversation a few steps. “So, if I’m hearing you right, Ms. Simon, you’re saying the biggest tragedy was the break-in?”

  “If it seals the fate of Karble Toys it is. And it all could have been avoided if Miss Weatherly, here, invested some of her earnings in a security system or, at the very least, locked the front door before heading off to sample food she’s probably tried a million times already.”

  Chapter 10

  Room by room, Claire made her way through the inn, her determination to talk to Diane rivaled only by the increasing worry over where, exactly, her aunt had gone.

  Based on an eight-month pattern, the postdinner hours usually had the woman in one of three modes—clean up, set up, or chat. Yet, for the first time, it appeared as if the pattern had changed.

  “She’s gotta be here somewhere,” Claire murmured as she looped around the center hallway and started the search all over again. Maybe, when she’d been in the front of the house, Diane had been in the back…

  Slowly, so as not to miss a telltale sound that would point her in the right direction, Claire made her way toward the kitchen, the lack of running water and ultrasoft humming virtually squashing any chance of cleanup mode. Still, though, she checked, pushing the service entry door open with one hand while fumbling for the light switch with the other.

  “Diane?” She blinked as the overhead light bounced off the vast counter space revealing a coating of flour and two distinctly used bread pans. “Diane, are you in here?” But even as she uttered the question aloud, she knew the answer. If her aunt were in the kitchen, there wouldn’t be dirty dishes and unkempt countertops.

  It just wouldn’t happen.

  Then again, she wouldn’t have expected to see the kitchen looking the way it did within ten minutes of dinner, let alone nearly three hours. Diane was fastidious about her kitchen.

  Her mental antennae rising, Claire crossed to the opposite door, flipping off the lights as she headed toward the dining room. Here, like in the kitchen, the normal tasks hadn’t been done. Sure, the dinner plates had been removed and the tablecloth replaced—Claire had done those things herself—but nothing had been set up for the next morning’s breakfast. Not the china, not the napkins, not the silverware…

  This time, she didn’t worry about the status of the lights, opting to leave the sconces on their dim setting as she turned her sights on the parlor and the conversation she dared hope to find between the innkeeper and the Grandersons. At least then she could chalk up the woman’s odd behavior to customer relations rather than the image that was starting to emerge at the base of her antennae.

  Like the kitchen and dining room, though, her favorite room in the inn was empty, save for the many touches that had earned it that distinction at first sight. Here, the warm and welcoming touches that dotted the rest of the home culminated in everything from the full-wall fireplace to the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves jam-packed with the kind of literary offerings that beckoned to the reader in everyone. Toss in the sofas and cozy lounge chairs alongside the bay window and it was little wonder why the guests tended to gravitate toward the room at some point during the day regardless of any sightseeing plans on their list.

  Claire wandered across the wood-planked floor to the bay window and dropped onto the window seat, her gaze drawn to the gas-powered lamps that dotted the quaint shopping district in the distance. Only this time, instead of reveling in the smile that normally made its way across her face at the sight, she found the worry in her heart intensifying tenfold. It was ten o’clock. The view of Lighted Way from the parlor should be thwarted by the thick velvet drapes Diane always drew closed at nine thirty.

  Always.

  Something was wrong. Very, very wrong.

  Pressing her head to the cool glass, Claire turned her sights toward the grounds surrounding Sleep Heavenly—the edge of the parking lot she could see along the side, the large rambling trees that served as a canopy atop the driveway, the shadow swaying to and fro on the porch swing just visible out of the corner of her right eye…

  Claire jumped up from the window seat and ran toward the hallway, the smack of her slippers periodically muted along the way by the occasional hooked rug. When she reached the front door, she took a deep breath, willing the worry in her heart to bypass her lips until there was reason to give it voice. To do so prematurely would be silly if the shadow she’d spied from the window was someone other than Diane.

  And even if it was Diane, it wasn’t a crime to take a break before the evening’s work was done.

  She gave the door a gentle tug and stepped onto the dimly lit front porch, the continued ch
irp of crickets in the immediate vicinity an indication of her near-silent prowess.

  “Aunt Diane?” she half whispered into the shadows. “Are you out here?”

  Sure enough, her answer came from the direction of the swing as it was toed to a stop off to her left. “I’m sorry, dear. Did I wake you?”

  Claire tried not to laugh at the typical reply. It didn’t matter the circumstance, it didn’t matter the time or place, if there was responsibility to be taken, Diane Weatherly took it. “I hadn’t gone to sleep. I was just painting some picture frames up in my room and lost track of time.”

  The moment Claire sat on the swing beside her aunt, it began to sway once again, this time propelled by an extra set of feet. “Oh. How are they coming?”

  “They look good. But I’m a long way from being ready to sell them at the shop, that’s for sure.” Shifting to the side, Claire hiked her left calf onto the empty space between them, her lips easily forming into a smile at the sight of the woman she loved so dearly. “When I realized what time it was, I came downstairs to say good night and couldn’t find you anywhere.”

  At Diane’s silence, Claire continued, her tone a mediocre masquerade of her true emotions. “I checked in the kitchen, the dining room, and the parlor and didn’t see you anywhere until I was looking out the bay window and caught a quick glimpse of your shadow.”

  “I tried to clean up after the Grandersons retired upstairs, but I just didn’t have the energy,” Diane said, looking out over the porch railing in the direction of the now pitch-black Amish fields in the distance. “I guess maybe I’m getting older whether I want to admit it or not.”

  Coming from any other mouth attached to a body that did as much as Diane Weatherly’s did on a daily basis, Claire would have had to agree. But coming from Diane, it simply didn’t add up. Not by a long shot.

  Diane had energy to spare. She’d been that way since Claire was a little girl. A person didn’t change that fast. Not at their core, anyway.

  Inhaling deeply, she considered how best to approach the elephant on the porch, deciding in the end to face it head-on. “What’s troubling you, Aunt Diane? Is it the newspaper article? Because if it is, you’ve got to know that one less-than-stellar remark doesn’t detract a single iota from two decades’ worth of rave reviews.”

  For the briefest of moments she wasn’t sure Diane was going to answer, her question hovering in the space between them with nothing to indicate it had even been heard. But just as she was gathering the courage to ask it again, the answer came in raspy and halting bursts. “If it was a poor review of a dinner I prepared, I could weigh that against the hundreds of compliments I got on the same dish knowing it’s a subjective opinion. Would it still bother me? I’d be lying if I said it wouldn’t. I like to please my guests. But I could rationalize it away as one person’s opinion. Same thing for location. What’s one person’s dream vacation can be a complete bore for someone else. Which, again, comes down to personal taste.”

  “Okay…”

  “Today was different, though,” Diane continued. “Today I was questioned on fact, not opinion.”

  “Fact?” Claire repeated above the chorus of crickets who’d chosen that exact moment to reach their collective crescendo.

  “That’s right.” Diane tilted her toes down to the porch floor in an effort to bring an end to their rhythmic sway, the resulting cessation of motion casting a harsh glow on the reality that poured from her mouth. “Because no matter how I try to rationalize it away, the fact remains that my way of doing things here at the inn puts my guests at risk, plain and simple.”

  Claire’s mouth gaped open. “Wait. What are you talking about?”

  “Twenty years ago, when I opened this inn, I did it because of an image I had in my head. An image of geographical strangers coming together and learning from one another around the dinner table as they would if they were family. Only this family would bring experiences and viewpoints the normal person wouldn’t find within their own four walls on a nightly basis.”

  It was hard not to smile as she considered her aunt’s words. So many people she’d met in life stumbled into their careers because of word of mouth, or connections, or even because it was virtually bequeathed to them by a family member. But not Diane. Diane had a way of cutting past all the fluff and finding the part that really mattered.

  “And you’ve done that,” she offered once her ears had caught up with her brain. “In spades.”

  “Twenty years ago, yes. Ten years ago, yes.” Diane pushed off the swing and wandered over to the railing that bordered the front side of the porch. “Even as recently as a year ago, maybe. But now…the way the world is…I’m not so sure.”

  It took everything in Claire’s arsenal of personal restraint not to follow behind her aunt and try to smooth the worry from a face she’d come to equate with genuine happiness. She, of all people, knew there were times in life when you just needed to talk your way through the tough spots. And like it or not, despite the pedestal she’d always put Diane on, the woman was human. Which meant Claire needed to be the sounding board Diane had always been for her.

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean,” she finally said from her spot on the swing. “What’s changed in the past year?”

  Pivoting on her sensible soled shoes, Diane leaned against the porch railing and studied their surroundings—taking in the swing, the Adirondack chairs, and the flower boxes packed tight with mums in a near-rainbow of colors. “Everything. The world…society…Heavenly.”

  Claire dropped her leg to the ground and sat up tall. “Heavenly? What’s wrong with Heavenly?”

  Diane’s soft laugh filled the night around them. “Oh, my dear, sweet Claire. Do you realize how much you sounded like me just then?”

  “Frankly, I consider that a compliment.” Stretching her arm across the back of the swing, Claire rested the side of her head against her upper arm. “But, if you don’t mind me asking, why are you saying that?”

  “Because this town has taken hold of your heart the same way it did for me twenty years ago.”

  Something in the woman’s tone made Claire’s breath hitch. “Y-you almost sound as if you don’t love this town as much as you once did.”

  “No. I love Heavenly every bit as much as I did when I decided to open my inn. In fact, that feeling has only deepened in the years since. But the Heavenly of old didn’t have murders. It just didn’t.”

  “Wait a minute. Sixteen years ago, Jakob left the Amish to become a police officer because of a murder that took place right here in Heavenly,” Claire reminded. “Granted, it was solved by the time he made the break official, but bad things happened back then, too.”

  Diane glanced over her shoulder at the lights of downtown and the darkened fields beyond, her words taking Claire by surprise. “But that was the town’s first murder in its long history and there weren’t any others until this past summer when Walter Snow’s body showed up in the alley behind your store.”

  “And that’s over now.” She lifted her head off her arm and waved her hand toward Lighted Way. “Everything was back to normal in no time.”

  “Until the festival yesterday.”

  There was nothing Claire could say. Arguing facts was an exercise in futility.

  Diane pushed off the railing and wandered over to the far side of the porch, the dark blue color of her sweater difficult to discern in the darkness. “But even forgetting all of that, people these days seem to think they can take things that don’t belong to them. That they can just waltz into someone’s home and help themselves to whatever they want just because they can.”

  “Aunt Diane, you can’t really believe what happened to the Karbles’ room yesterday was simply about thievery, can you?”

  The fading sound of footsteps stopped and then resumed once again, this time growing louder as they made their way back toward the center of the porch. “What else would you call it?”

  “Calculated. Intentional. Planned
out. Take your pick.” Claire patted the vacant spot to her left. “Aunt Diane, please come sit. It’s easier to talk to you when you’re not walking all over the place.”

  “I’m too keyed up to sit, dear,” Diane said, plopping down onto the swing and continuing the conversation, anyway. “It doesn’t matter what fancy word you give it, Claire. My guests still had their sense of safety violated in my inn. They made the choice to spend their vacation here rather than one of the chain hotels in Breeze Point and I let them down.”

  “Let them down?”

  “Of course.” Diane clasped her hands in her lap only to disengage them and start fiddling with a loose thread midway down her simple dress. “I’ve been so busy trying to create this atmosphere of home and family that I’ve become careless with my guests’ safety.”

  Before Claire could muster a protest, Diane continued. “Every week there are multiple newspaper accounts of criminal activity around the county. Yet, somehow, I thought we were immune from such nonsense here in Heavenly. And because of that naiveté, I let my guests down.”

  She considered her aunt’s words only to discard them against a reality that was being missed. “So what do you think you could have done differently? Locked the front door? Wired in a few surveillance cameras? Installed a home security system? What?”

  “All of those, I guess,” Diane said, shrugging.

  “Do you really think any of those would have mattered yesterday?”

  Diane drew back. “Of course. Don’t you?”

  “No, actually, I don’t.” This time, it was Claire who stopped the swing and rose to her feet. “Let’s say you locked the door. You don’t think a determined person could come in through, say”—she gestured toward the long windows on either side of the front door—“one of these? Because I do.

  “You don’t think a determined person could cover their head with a hood and look down at the floor as they were passing a surveillance camera? Because I do. And as for a security system…you really think, on a day that virtually every resident and police officer in this town was at that food festival, a determined person couldn’t have been in and out of this place before anyone responded? Because I don’t, Aunt Diane, and neither should you.”